The Outdoors

By Scott Rall, Outdoors Columnist

I find it quite unbelievable that some folks can recall facts and figures from 40 years ago. I can remember the snow storm of 1976 like it was yesterday. Names and faces appear to often be chiseled in granite. I can only wonder if those same facts and figures are truly accurate or just the dispellers version of an event that I can’t prove fact or fiction one way or the other.

The same thing happens when a good hunting or fishing story is presented.  Back 39 years ago on lake X I caught 41 walleyes. Biggest was 26 inches and the average was 18 inches and I used this color lure. They can then go on to tell you 147 other stories just like this one and with the same clarity.

Another wonder as to just how much of this perfect recall is fact or fiction. I, for one, and like most of my friends, can not always tell you what we ate for lunch yesterday. A journal is about the only way to document these outings. When it comes to an outdoor journal of events, I can say I only know of about five folks that actually do this on a regular basis. Some are just the high lights and other have more detail.

One friend always captures the basics. When, where and what was the weather like. How successful they were and some basic info. on fishing presentation or, in the case of a hunting journal the cover types will be included. For avid anglers they often record the phase of the moon in these records.

There is one guy in particular that I know who is the best journalist I have ever come across. His name is Tom Carpenter and he is the editor of the Pheasants Forever Journal. He is a tech savvy guy and uses an electronic form of a national plat book. The app is called ON-X.

This guy is relentless in his capture of every hunting and fishing outing he ever participates in. If he knew he were about to die at 10 p.m. on a Saturday night he would take the last few minutes of his life to make sure his hunting journal was up-to-date before his final minutes expired. His journal using this app records the location of almost every bird he has ever flushed and for sure each and every exact location he ever successfully bagged on.

After he has hunting on the same spot for multiple years you can, with pin point accuracy, know where the birds on this spot are located and what habitat on each spot is used during different weather patterns. He records the wind speed and direction for every outing. Most of the time when I am fast asleep, he is sitting up in the dark with his phone detailing everything that happened to him and his dog on that particular day. He records birds missed, birds shot, birds retrieved and birds lost, meaning they were put on the ground but not recovered.

Then add in the GPS data from his dogs GPS location collar and he tracks and records the number of miles the dog traveled compared to his recorded step counts for the day. He can tell you at the end of any season the average number of steps he had to take that season for each bird harvested.

I can’t say for sure, but he may even record what he packed for lunch in the field each of those same outings. I have to give this guy a ton of credit for his attention to detail. This is something I am incapable of doing. One possible reason for this might be that I am a horrible typer. What he can record in a few minutes would take me an hour.

The only journal I have is that I have kept one tail feather from each rooster I have harvested since I got my first good hunting dog 31 years ago. Each season I put a rubber band around them and place them in a clear tote in my garage. I keep track of my bird totals and have the feathers to back up my stories.

The one fear I have is this. I just dealt with the death of both my mother and father 90 days apart in the past few months. Cleaning out their house of all their possession spanning 90 years was challenging. Items that were critically important to them are not the same things that are critically important to me. My friend just lost his mom and when he and his four siblings left her house, they left with five Rubbermaid totes of stuff.  Her 86 years of life were reduced to a few totes.

What happens to the journal of all of your outdoor adventure when you pass? Will this effort spanning hundreds of hours of time and effort just get tossed out with all the other unimportant stuff?

What I would suggest, whether you keep a journal or not, is to share your adventures with other folks. Share your knowledge of the outdoors. Even if they throw away your journal after you die those that are left behind can tell the stories they participated in to all of those that will listen. This will keep your legacy alive a lot longer than a written journal. Keeping facts and figures can be intriguing but changing lives goes on forever.

Sharing an outdoor lifestyle with others and the others they will share with, and so on and so on, will be a hunting and fishing journal that never has a final entry.

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If you have any questions, reach out to me at scottarall@gmail.com.