Last weekend, we braved blizzards, freezing rain and ice to hang out with my Safari Afrika buddies at the Pacific Northwest Sportsmen’s Show in Portland – a chance to think ahead about this summer in South Africa. I also had a little more quality time with Peter Kummerfeldt, America’s survival pro. It was a great show, of course, and got me really psyched for our Central Washington Sportsmen Show (now happening in the SunDome of Paradise).
Cousin Ron – who taught me to fish the Naches River when we were seven and six – refers to our trips to the SunDome as “journeys to ‘Fantasy Island.’” I can’t argue the point. Each aisle holds answers to one or another of your fishing, hunting, camping, shooting or outdoor fantasies. Look closely and there will be small adventures, or pieces of information, which will change how you manage your outdoor life and the lives of those with whom you share it.
Let me show you what I mean. Following are some of the nuggets I discovered at the Pacific Northwest Sportsmen’s Show.
More and more of us are carrying camcorders, cameras and action cams on our hunts. One of the coolest new tools I found was Solvid’s “Film It Yourself” CamStrap. This is a simple and relatively inexpensive head strap which enables very stable photography or footage while the hunter is stalking or shooting. Remarkable, really, the footage I saw. Take a look for yourself at one of dozens of Film It Yourself hunting videos at www.SolvidFIY.com.
You, too, can be a professional fisherman. The 2014 Northern Pikeminnow Sport-Reward Fishery on the Columbia could be your dream. Earn big bucks again this year for removing these fish from the river. Find your dream job at www.pikeminnow.org.
Have you ever heard of Youth Outdoors Unlimited? Yeah, me too. It’s an up and coming outfit headquartered in Moses Lake, focused on making hunting and fishing dreams come true for young people diagnosed with a life-threatening illness and/or a physical disability. This is a tax exempt 501(c)3 corporation doing some remarkable things for kids who really need something remarkable. I expect that we will get them to Paradise for an evening with you and the Field and Stream Club one of these months soon. In the meantime, check out www.YouthOutdoorsU.org or read some heartwarming stories in the January/February issue of Horns & Hooks Magazine.
How often do you get out into the Columbia Basin? Virtually every sportsman’s show I wander, I find a team of folks inviting me to Grant County and Eastern Washington. In the Basin is fishing for warm or cold water species, playing on spectacular trails or expansive golf courses, and hunting for most anything from varmints to upland birds and waterfowl or big game. I write about this stuff, and I still forget the amazing variety of options for outdoor nuts in the country just an hour or so east of us. As I walked around a corner at the Portland Show, there again were almost-homeys handing me a map, a magazine, a list of fishing lakes and coaching for playing in Grant and Adams Counties. They had lists of people willing to help me find my outdoor playground. What do you need? Take another look at new options for you or your gang at www.Ephrata.org.
I hung out for a time with a couple instructors at the Oregon Hunter Education Program booth. Hunter ed has been a hot topic in Paradise for the last couple years. Our Kittitas County Field and Stream Club – since 1919, the oldest organized group of sportsmen and women in the state – has offered hunter education classes and firearm safety training for nearly 60 years. Our instruction team stopped offering classes a year ago, when DFW changed the game; a big push for classes taught online, no actual firearms were to be used in the classroom, and live fire could no longer be required of students. As you might hope, in the interest of safe outdoor recreation, our folks simply refused to certify anyone they had not seen handle a firearm safely and shoot it accurately. There may be some fixes coming, but the Oregon guys found the whole thing a bit amusing. Before the turn of the last century, Oregon required all hunter ed students, even those taking online classes, to demonstrate proficiency with a real firearm before they could be turned loose with a hunting license afield. “Funny,” one of them smiled, “your wildlife guys are going the other way. What are they afraid of? …Oh, yeah, that all happened about the time Washington legalized marijuana, didn’t it?”
I love these trips to Fantasy Island. See you at the SunDome.
