TV is business as much as entertainment, so let’s get the money question out of the way right now: Milford’s Lou Andronaco is not getting rich from his role in The History Channel’s reality show, “Chasing Tail.”

In fact, he says, he’s not getting much of anything monetary for being one of a half-dozen bow-hunters shown stalking deer in suburban Connecticut – no payment other than some expenses covered. But he is getting attention and the chance for some fun.

“It was a little uncomfortable to begin with,” admitted the 37-year-old Andronaco, about having a film crew follow him, his cousin Mike and other family or friends. “But as the show progressed, the novelty wore off and we were just doing what we do, spontaneously.”

What they do is pretty entertaining. The History Channel has ordered 10 episodes, four of which have been shown ; it will decide later whether to order another series.

The group has contracts to hunt whitetail deer on about 30 properties in Connecticut that are overrun by the animals. Connecticut Fish and Game officials are trying to thin the shrubbery-munching herds.

“Middle-aged women love us,” said Andronaco. “With the amount of efforts that they put into the lawns, and seeing the damage that deer do, they love us.”

He said the program has appeal to women and men who aren’t hunters, who enjoy watching the personalities.

“We hear from women: they love the show, and when we release the bow, they shut their eyes,” he said.

Andronaco, who grew up in northern Vermont, has lived in Milford for a dozen years. He and his wife, Lindsay, have a fire-sprinkler business, Village Fire Protection, and an 11-year-old son who is, not surprisingly, also a bowhunter.

The hunting group made it to TV because of a cousin who was a college film
student.

“He decided to film us and pitched it,” Andronaco said. “My first reaction was, Why? Then it was, Sure!”

The show features the group gathering in a funky location they call Deer Camp, then spreading out around million-dollar homes and backyard wood lots, where they use bow and arrows, since bullets carry too far for suburbia, and equipment familiar to hunters anywhere in the Northeast: camouflage, tree stands, lighted notches called Lumenoks that make it easier to recover missed arrows, and so on.

Many of the techniques are familiar, too, but not all. Leafblowers, for example, don’t usually factor into North Country hunting strategies.

“I’ve had landscapers working on one property, and permission (to hunt) on the adjacent property. The deer steered clear of that other property and went onto mine,” he said. “Very useful.”

But then again, if you’re want to learn how to bowhunt, whether in suburbia or the Souhegan Valley, “Chasing Tail” isn’t the show to use.

It’s fun to watch, featuring the back-and-forth among colorful characters that we expect on TV plus an undercurrent of culture clash between hunters and rich Connecticut homeowners, but it’s thin on details.

“It’s not a documentary, it’s an entertainment,” said Andronaco. This distinction, he says, is lost on some hunters.

“The bowhunting community hasn’t been very receptive,” he said. “If everything is not exactly the way that they want to be portrayed, they don’t like it.”

Part of that is the nature of reality TV. “Everyone of us has got such a different personality, and it amplifies those personalities,” he said.

Andronaco’s personality is that of the underdog, because he’s a relative newcomer to the sport. He has hunted whitetail deer with a rifle for about 15 years, much of it in Wilton, but only three or four years with a bow.

Then there’s the whole idea of hunting in suburbia.

“We do get some pushback from other hunters that comment it’s like shooting a fish in a barrel, but it’s not like that at all,” he said.

The suburban season is long – from September to January – and has no real limits on take, although hunters must get continually get fresh tags from state officials as they use up old ones. (The license comes with five tags.) So that part is easy.

Generally, however, the deer live in large wooded lots owned by the state, where they can’t be pursued, and only come out at night to feed. This leads to the biggest complication faced on “Chasing Tail”: property lines.

Hunters can only go where they’ve got permission, but that distinction doesn’t stop a spooked buck or a wounded doe, greatly complicating the chase.

“Tracking a deer is hard enough, but at night, when you got to worry about trespassing, it’s damn near impossible,” Andronaco says in the first episode, while following the blood trail from a deer wounded by an arrow. “The last thing we want to do is upset the neighbors and risk losing a commission.”

The hunting also has shown him that deer life in suburbia isn’t as easy as you might think.

“I harvested a deer with pellets from a BB gun in the nose – they were trying to get the deer off the lawn and fired at it. A number have had broken limbs from car accidents. I’ve also seen deer scarred; it was attacked by a coyote or in a fight,” Andronaco said.

David Brooks can be reached
at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashua
telegraph.com. Also, follow Brooks on Twitter (@Telegraph_DaveB).