. . . without a doubt one of the sickest and most shocking videos ever made. Women are screaming with fear as the Team Bambi hunters track them down and blast them with paintball guns. You’ll also see an actual road kill scene as a semi-truck takes out Bambi on the highway, not to mention fat chicks fighting in the mud, and much, much more.

1) Purposely shooting at persons who are not wearing a paintball mask, which could result in serious eye injury, including blindness.

2) Purposely shooting at persons not wearing clothing, which provides some protection from the impact of a paintball. Playing paintball nude may result in significant bodily injury.

Many people are questioning whether this absurd new sport is real. The snopes.com website is one of several which call the whole thing a big hoax. Eyewitness News reporter LuAnne Sorrell went back to the scene, and asked Burdick directly if he had staged the hunt for the cameras, to which Burdick replied, "No. I'll tell you I wish I was that clever."

To verify Burdick's comments, we contacted the company that hosts the HuntingForBambi website. That California company asked us not to use their name, but confirmed that they had actually processed orders for several so-called "hunts" in the past and they continue to get new orders in.

The story showed purported hunter George Evanthes stalking nude women in a desert location, shooting them with paintball guns.

"I wanted to do something exciting, something different," Evanthes said.

Evanthes, who said he owns a Las Vegas-based adult video production company called Tough Girl Productions, said he had no relationship with Burdick or anyone else from Hunting for Bambi before he paid the company $4,000 for his hour-long hunt. Though he lives in a rented, 400-square-foot condominium in an aging part of town, Evanthes said coming up with the money to buy the hunt was not difficult.

"Let's put it this way: Everything's relative," he said.

His video company produces female nude and topless boxing and wrestling videos, he said.

"I've done this three times," says Nicole, one of the three women allowing themselves to be shot at. Two other women, Gidget and Skyler, claim they have done this seven times.

So why does a woman agree to strip down and run around the desert dodging paint balls? Nicole says it's good money. "I mean it's $2,500 if you don't get hit. You try desperately not to and it's $1000 if you do," said Nicole.

The hunter that day claimed to be a businessman from Hawaii named Frank who said he'd paid $10,000 for the experience.

After a few misses, Frank hit his target — a woman named Katie — in the leg with a paintball, and the game was over. He then approached his victim, made some crude comments, but Katie told reporters she didn't feel degraded by the experience.

Even after the event, it wasn't clear if Hunting For Bambi was just a publicity stunt. The company acknowledged the $20 video sold on its Web site contains staged footage, and is not meant to be taken seriously. They insisted that Saturday's hunt was real, but they refused to provide proof that hunters have actually paid to participate.

The Hunting for Bambi video that has been sweeping the media in the past week or so is a hoax, city of Las Vegas officials said Thursday.

No "hunts" have ever been sold, and no "Bambis" have ever been shot with paintballs, the officials said in concluding a weeklong investigation.

City officials said the man who made those admissions was Michael Burdick, the self-professed mastermind behind the videos and the purported hunts of nude women in the Southern Nevada desert they portray. Burdick told several officials the hunts were staged events designed to fool the media so his video-selling operation would get free publicity, the officials said.

Officials also noted that no one, other than the man featured in the KLAS-TV report, has come forward to say they've participated in or witnessed a real hunt.

"He confessed to our investigators that this was simply an effort to get attention so he could market his video," said City Manager Doug Selby.

Burdick also told officials he offered the hunts at exorbitant prices to scare off anyone interested in booking one. Furthermore, his Web site is incapable of accepting credit card charges in the amount necessary to reserve a hunt, he said.

OLBERMANN: The mayor’s office wanted me to mention that, as it is, they're looking into criminal charges against you, especially if you've actually conducted one of these Bambi hunts. Do you still want to claim that you've actually conducted one of these Bambi hunts?

BURDICK: Absolutely.

City officials plan to prosecute the self-proclaimed mastermind behind the Hunting for Bambi video on a charge of doing business without a license.

Michael Burdick was issued a misdemeanor citation Thursday evening after city investigators said they determined he isn't listed on the license for the business that he runs and has continuously promoted in the media over the past two weeks.

"We're going to prosecute him to the full extent the city can, and do everything we can to make sure he doesn't do any business in the city from this point forward," an angry Mayor Oscar Goodman said Friday. "We have plenty of jail space available in Las Vegas."

The maximum penalty for a misdemeanor is a $1,000 fine or six months in jail.

City officials investigated Burdick's claims that he was selling, for between $5,000 and $10,000, the opportunity to use paintball guns to hunt nude women.

Goodman and other city officials said Thursday they had determined through interviews with Burdick and others that his claims were a hoax to stimulate sales of videos in which "hunters" shoot paintballs at nude women.

Goodman appeared ready at that time to end the city's inquiry.

But after Burdick continued to state in the media that the hunts were real and for sale, city officials decided to pursue licensing irregularities discovered in their investigation.