His gun and mask speckled with green paint, Allen Zdroik exits the woods and heads to an empty picnic table. He reaches into a bag and pulls out a roll of paper towels. He wipes the gun first, then sprays his mask with cleaning fluid and polishes it.
“I grew up hunting and fishing,” Zdroik says. “When I started, it was a way to get back out in the woods.”
Seventeen then, 44 now, Zdroik is here in West Milford on a Sunday morning, playing paintball with his 13-year-old son, Brad. Game 1 pits Zdroik and two other parents against Brad and five other kids.
The kids are dominating. Jake Thomas, a 15-year-old from Montclair, tags all three adults with his Planet Eclipse Ego 08. His gun is too fast, his aim too good.
“He’s on our team from now on,” Zdroik says.
“He’s a lethal weapon,” jokes Todd Alboum, one of the other parents.
They take a break, reload their hoppers with fresh paint, and decide to change teams.
“All of us against him,” Alboum says.
“He’d probably still win,” Zdroik says.
Paintball players have been coming here ever since David Artler opened Paintball Depot in 1988. He said the opening coincided with a change in the law that once placed paintball guns and real guns under the same umbrella.
Artler operates two stores (one in Kenvil, one in Newton) and this game park – a 100-acre campus that includes 14 different courses. He said he gets a couple hundred players at this field on weekends. Artler has hosted birthday parties and bachelor parties, corporate outings and church group gatherings.
Even some rabbis play.
“The younger ones,” Artler said.
The game has various incarnations, but the object of most paintball games is the same. one team wins when every member of the other team has been splattered with paint.
“Really it’s like capture the flag,” Alboum said. “[It's] unlike laser tag, [where] there’s no advantage for you to stay hidden. This, you get hit, it’s going to hurt a little bit.”
The age limit used to be 18. now it’s 10. Young players — and older players — are populating paintball fields with increasing frequency. Although numbers have dipped slightly over the past few years, the number of Americans who play paintball at least once a year has grown by 25.9 percent since 2000, according to the Sporting Goods Manufacturing Association.
“The more you play, the better you get,” Artler said. “The better you get, the less you get hit.”
Thomas, a regular here, is one of the better players. He said his parents stand on opposite sides of the paintball-as-a-hobby fence.
“Mom’s against it,” Thomas said. “Dad’s all for it.”
Artler said there have never been more safety standards. Each player must wear a mask on the course. Outside the course, players must keep a protective covering over their guns. He said most of the injuries players sustain are not caused by the paintballs.
“Mostly cuts and scrapes, people tripping and falling,” Artler said.
And every so often, like other people who own property in West Milford, Artler has had bears wander onto the field of play. When this happens, play stops and players leave the area until Artler and his staff can shoo the bears to a different section of woods.
Most days, this is not an issue. most days, avoiding paintballs is the biggest challenge.
“He got me in the perfect spot,” laments Zdroik. “I had to put my gun up.”
The nine players return to the picnic table. they reload their guns and grab some water. Jason Wallace, one of Paintball Depot’s referees, escorts them to a different course.
Soon they will lower their masks, aim their guns, and hope those tiny spheres of green paint explode on someone else’s shirt.
E-mail: kerwick@northjersey.com
Paintball players battle it out in West Milford
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first the mask is a vforce grilz
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