Beck armed, dangerous to wild game

John Beck has a rifle for an arm.

Actually, the senior BYU quarterback has some real rifles. And he loves to use them.

And with hunting season in full bloom, Beck is up in arms during his week off and plans to turn hunter/gatherer this weekend.

Beck personally owns three firearms, a .22 caliber semi-automatic, a .223 and a 12-gauge shotgun. Through his father, he's got access to two more .22 rifles, another .223, a pair of .243s, a .300 magnum rifle, a pair of 12-gauge shotguns and a .22 pistol.

A few seasons ago, Beck began a tradition of taking offensive linemen rabbit hunting in Beaver, where senior Jake Kuresa says his first experience stalking game with firearms began. The big guys would cram into Lance and Dallas Reynold's Suburban and with the tires bulging under the weight, they'd head down I-15 to do the outdoors.

Beck sold Kuresa on the hunt and Kuresa's wife, Robyn, who comes from a family of hunters and who sensed her husband's newfound love for hunting, bought Jake a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun for Christmas.

The next time Beck put out a call for the wild, Kuresa was ready.

"We started hunting rabbits with shotguns, but it got too easy, so we went to .22s, but that started getting too hard, so we switched back to shotguns."

Kuresa took the plug out of his pump-action chamber so he could load five shells instead of four. "You need five shots at those bunnies. I wish I got five chances to block defensive linemen."

Inspired by a video by family friend Marty McCoy of an African safari as well as cable TV outdoor features he'd seen, Beck has since produced digital "hunting shows" starring his teammates. They are complete with how-to-do-it interviews, breaking down the bunny hunts, hunter profiles, hunter portrait shots, action scenes, fade-ins and overlay graphics.

"It's hilarious," Kuresa said of the soon-to-be-released-to-friends-only DVD.

Since Beck has only one class this fall and graduates in December, he has used his spare time in summer and a little this fall posing as Curt Gowdy, wading around fishing creeks and ponds near Scofield Reservoir and others further south near Beaver, stalking coyotes, taking out foxes who predate a private pheasant refuge and spying out mule deer.

"He's always like to hunt and fish; he got it from my dad," said his younger brother Rudy.