The Art of the Battle : Paintball combat at an Azusa ranch is good, not-so-clean fun for weekend warriors.

Matt Valcore had staked out his spot behind a large rock along the perimeter of The Jungle, a 10-acre avocado grove that has been converted into one of 14 battlefields on a 165-acre ranch in Azusa.

Dressed in combat fatigues, his face covered by goggles and armed with an air-powered rifle capable of firing marble-sized balls of paint at speeds of 285 feet per second, Valcore had found a prime position. He could also see that most of his teammates had been shot and knocked out of the game. And the “enemy” was zeroing in. In seconds, hundreds of colorful plastic paintballs started exploding off the rock Valcore was hiding behind.

Sensing a brief lull in the shooting, Valcore lifted his head and peaked over the rim of the rock.

PLAP! A bright orange splotch of watercolor paint, about the diameter of a half-dollar, fanned across the exposed part of Valcore’s forehead. “That one hurt,” said the 25-year-old Rancho Cucamonga man, taking his place in the “dead zone” with the rest of that battle’s casualties.

“The fun part is you can always go back and die again,” offered dead enemy Eduardo Monge, a 42-year-old Amtrak administrator from Whittier.

“Reincarnation is wonderful,” agreed paintball warrior Gary Hoopfer, 49, of Cerritos, as he and the others moved on to the next round.

Possibly no one playing paintball at Ralph Covell’s ranch one weekend earlier this month could appreciate a comment like that more than Covell himself. After winning a four-month battle with Azusa City Hall to keep the paintball operation open, Covell hopes paintball battles like the recent ones will generate renewed interest in his California Paintball Ranch in San Gabriel Canyon.

An estimated 1 million people in the United States play paintball, suiting up in camouflage gear, strapping on goggles and protective headgear, arming themselves with paint guns and, after a brief safety training talk, heading out on “missions.” Sometimes the mission involves teamwork to capture the flag. Sometimes the mission is simply to eliminate players from the opposing team.

At all times players must keep their protective eye gear on. One hit and you’re out--though you can be reborn later. Referees roam the field to enforce the rules and call players out. Other than that, it’s all-out war when the whistle blows and play begins.

“Think of it as going out to shoot rabbits and the rabbits shoot back,” said Jay Livingston of Monrovia. During the week, Livingston works construction. He’s been playing paintball for about eight years and on the weekends helps Covell out with renting equipment and refereeing games.

“It’s an excellent use of the land,” said Covell, who is possibly better known for being the biggest breeder of Clydesdale horses in the western United States. “The most profitable thing I could do with the land is rock quarry it or build houses. But this leaves the land in a natural state. The paint is biodegradable and it’s great action. I have yet to have someone tell me they have come up here and say they didn’t have a fantastically good time.”

Covell said he first got the idea for using part of the ranch for paintball battles 12 years ago. At the time, little was known about the sport and attorneys advised him the liability was too great. Today, paintball is played around the world and is among the faster-growing sports in the United States.

With a $20,000 investment, used mostly to buy rifles and goggles, Covell first opened the ranch for weekend paintball games in September. He has guests sign a waiver, although he also has insurance that costs him $4,000 a year. With a stable of 57 Clydesdale horses and ponies serving as a backdrop, the simulated urban and jungle war zone settings quickly became a hit with paintball enthusiasts across the country.

Besides “The Jungle,” there’s also “Dodge City,” 40 wood-framed buildings set up in a fenced acre near the stables. The “OK Corral” is a collection of power line reels, oil drums and pallets, perfect for team play. Then there’s the “Gotcha” field, where it’s kill or be killed. Players go one-on-one in a 50-foot-by-80-foot enclosed field dotted with upright plywood planks to hide behind.

The ranch has attracted a diverse range of paintball buffs: corporate executives, staff from the county district attorney’s office, construction workers and police officers. Even doctors and lawyers have come to practice team-building techniques or just blow off some steam. The ranch has been booked solid on weekends since March.

“It’s more than just interesting. It’s a good release from the hospital. It gets your mind off the everyday routine,” said longtime paintball player Lauren Lewan, an emergency room chart clerk at Pomona Valley Hospital.

Not everyone, however, embraced Covell’s plans for the horse ranch. In December, two months after the paintball ranch opened, a handful of neighbors complained that they had never been notified of the change of use for the property. As a result, the Azusa city attorney’s office temporarily put an end to paintball play at Covell’s ranch.

Some neighbors expressed environmental concerns about the water-soluble paint, worries that proved unfounded; in fact, the U.S. Forest Service uses the paint to mark trees. One neighbor said she lost sleep over the fear of camouflaged people returning to the ranch at night and attacking her.

In March, the City Council voted 5-0 to accept Covell’s special permit application. But by then, Covell said, he had lost an estimated $12,000 in business. Azusa Mayor Steve Alexander, one of Covell’s staunchest supporters, said the ranch was already zoned for recreational use and paintball fit neatly into that criteria. The city, Alexander said, overstepped its bounds by forcing Covell to get a special permit.

“You don’t regulate something that’s not a problem,” he said. Alexander has never played paintball, but he has watched it played from a distance. “And the ranch seems to be a perfect spot for this.”

Since reopening, Covell has been steadily rebuilding his client base. Last month the ranch hosted 2,000 paintball players from around the country who competed in the two-day National Professional Paintball League Tournament. A steady stream of church groups, Girl and Boy Scout troops, corporations, even police squads have also been spending weekends at the ranch, in part to build morale and develop leadership skills, but mostly to have fun.

On a recent weekend, Dave Harrington of Carson organized a game with 25 co-workers, friends and family members.

“We thought it would be a lot of fun to try something like that,” the 25-year-old electrical engineer said. His twin brother, Darrell, an internist at Harbor-UCLA Hospital in Torrance, and their sister, Andrea, 30, also played.

“I don’t think it’s anything you want to do regularly, but it is something you can do once or twice a year. You come out of there with a couple of welts, definitely, and you’re proud of them. It tests your wits. It’s pretty cool.”

The adrenaline kick is what attracted Mark Arenas to paintball four years ago. Arenas, a victim’s advocate for the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office, organizes men and women in the office to play twice a year at paintball fields around Southern California.

“We’re always looking for new places to go,” Arenas said. Past paintball battles have been waged on fields in Malibu, Corona and Valencia. At Covell’s ranch, Arenas’ group was treated to a hayride in a wagon driven by Covell and pulled by two of his champion Clydesdales. “We had a lot of fun when we went up there. And (Covell) adds that personal touch.”

In contrast, it was all business for the West Covina police Special Weapons and Assault Team. They rented the fields to test their team skills under fire. Some of the officers said paintball is as close as you can come to re-creating a real police situation.

“This is a relatively new thing for us,” said West Covina police Detective Dennis Bennallack. Three weeks ago, the 20-member unit practiced street war drills in Dodge City, a paintball battlefield almost an acre in size, and dotted with 40 small wood-frame structures. “Our purpose for doing this is completely different from the reasons why other people go up there. We were there to brush up on our communication and our concentration. It’s excellent for realistic training.”

The only problem, he said, was the cost. For one day of play, each player was charged $25 for the field rental. They also had to rent equipment. The total cost for the SWAT team was nearly $700.

“It’s fun and we were able to get across some good training points. But it’s not real cheap,” said West Covina police Sgt. Wade Weischedel.

Like most players at one recent paintball game at Covell’s ranch, Mike Campbell of Monrovia brought his own equipment. His semiautomatic paintball rifle, one of two he owns, cost $500. Over the past eight years, Campbell estimates he has spent $5,000 to $6,000 on rifles, carbon dioxide canisters, paintballs and combat fatigues.

“It’s not a poor man’s sport,” said Campbell, 31, who plays with a San Gabriel Valley-based paintball team called the California Bushwackers. With 35 members, the Bushwackers are the largest pro paintball team in Southern California.

In the pros, players have their entry fees paid by sponsors and split tournament purses. At the league tournament played at Covell’s the winners split a $15,000 prize, also put up by sponsors. Campbell also referees games and sometimes “walks on” and joins up with teams that are short of players.

Costs aside, Richard Booth of Walnut said paintball is a great activity that he and his 16-year-old son, Richard Jr., can enjoy together. The elder Booth said he has spent more than $900 outfitting himself and his son for their weekend forays into the world of pseudo-combat.

But he added, “Compared with skiing or anything else for that matter, the start-up costs aren’t really all that big of a deal.”

Booth, a vice president at St. Vincent’s Medical Center in Los Angeles, plays at least once a month and said he enjoys the personal touch Covell offers weekend visitors to the ranch.

“It’s not as high volume as other places,” Booth said. “Sometimes they can get hundreds of people on a weekend” at other Southland paintball playing fields.

The physical toll a day of paintball exacts is another story. After their recent paintball games were over, Booth watched as teammate Monge lifted his undershirt and inspected some of the black and blue marks acquired during the battle. But Monge shrugs it off.

“The first time I played I went home and I was full of welts and full of paint and I said, ‘This is fun,’ ” Monge said.

Said Hoopfer, who works with Booth at St. Vincent’s: “It doesn’t really hurt. Sometimes you don’t even know you’ve been hit.”

“Yeah, you don’t know you’ve been hit,” Booth agreed. “Until you get in the shower.”