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Friday, October 23, 2009 6:10 PM CDT
Deer hunters do the silliest things
By DAVE SHADOW, Hunting and Fishing Columnist
Did you ever stop to analyze or even look at all of the activities that deer hunters take part in? This includes their gear and clothing and vehicles and everything else connected to the sport. Now, don’t take offense and send me 400 e-mails. I realize that I do or have done most all of these, also. Most of them are connected to some marketing campaign that we either swallowed or participated in because everyone else did so.
I visited a Cabela’s store a few days ago and thoroughly enjoyed looking over all of the “improved” items as well as those that are reported as “totally new concepts” and “innovative”.
The hunting gear is almost as bad as the fishing lures in this sense. If you look at the “totally new” stuff, you can see the evidence of products that have been off the market just long enough to be forgotten and can now be revived for the new generation of hunters and anglers.
Scent elimination is one of the bigger items. Some are advocated to remove 99 percent of all human odor. I wonder what all of the major chemical companies that make deodorant, anti-perspirant and cologne and that stuff will do now? Why haven’t they marketed something like this? Humans will no longer have any odor, according to the marketing propaganda. I know some people who use cologne who need sprayed with this stuff!
If we couple this odor-removal spray with the odor-loc clothing that supposedly doesn’t let any scent escape out through its fabric, our wives may make us sleep in them. I see insect repellent that is odorless. I wonder how the insects know to avoid it if it has no smell? Think about these things, IT’S MIND BOGGLING!
Camouflage clothing is one of our sillier concepts. I see camo underwear, camo handkerchiefs and umpteen different patterns of fabric for each and every layer of clothing and concealment product. You’d have to have a semi-trailer to have one of each and then how would you decide which to wear? I even saw camouflage bras and panties for the girls. How does that work? Now, one product may make some sense. I saw some camo toilet paper. And I guess if your are using that in the woods, maybe some camo underwear would be justified, also.
But think about this in a normal sense. We get dressed and go to the woods with a camo T-shirt, camo regular shirt, camo sweatshirt and camo bibs or camo coveralls. Then we put on our camo jacket. All that shows is the outer layer, right? Lets think about this sensibly, even for a deer hunter.
It’s a fact that camo gear costs about 50 percent more than a good quality product of similar type in normal colors. Most of us have multiple sets of camo gear for the changing Illinois weather. Lighter weights for warmer days and progressively heavier weights as the winter gets more severe. Wouldn’t it make more sense to dress comfortably and warmly in layers of “normal” outdoor clothing and then put a light weight camo layer on top? That way we could dress according to the day and put the same camo on top of the selected gear, thus reducing our hunting clothing allowances so that we can spend more on the other new products.
Someone once bought me a camouflage flashlight and it worked fine till I dropped it in the woods and never did find it. I saw a camo cell phone the other day. Now that makes sense? Hey Joe, call me so that I can tell which leaf is ringing! Oh well, everyone has to make a living in some way and we should do our part by buying one of each of all of these new products. I saw some camouflage chewing gum the other day — supposed to remove all odor from your breath. Isn’t that ridiculous! I bought three flavors! It tasted good but stuck to my dentures something fierce. Had to remove them to peel it off while sitting in my tree stand. The squirrels got a kick out of that!
I’m gonna go buy me a little camo wagon to pull all this necessary gear to the woods with me!
It’s health, happiness and huntin’.
Dave Shadow is the Journal Gazette/Times-Courier’s hunting and fishing columnist.
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