Outdoors/Adventure

Pull the plug on the electronics and listen to the outdoors

Electronics have no place in the outdoors. Period.

State Senator Mike Showers is sponsoring a bill to prohibit the use of drones for hunting. Flying a drone in a hunting area 48 hours or less before the hunt, or communicating with someone who has, would be a class A misdemeanor.

This is a good bill. It goes along with same-day airborne prohibitions that are already written into our game regulations.

I think most will agree that the outlawing of drones for hunting is a good idea. But you probably won’t get a similar consensus for suggesting that other types of electronic aids should be discouraged too.

Electronics are dumbing down our hunters.

Older, experienced hunters comprise a significant portion of the hunting population that is pretty good with maps. They also are big fans of flagging kill sites with toilet paper, which washes away with a good rain.

Many young hunters tend to rely on electronics. The GPS is used to mark kill sites and recover routes along trails.

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A GPS can be a great tool. A sledge hammer is a good tool also, but not for pounding finish nails.

Hunters would be better served to learn how to read a map. Better still, look behind and around while you are moving to keep your bearings so you will be able to retrace the trail.

Electronics are easy, but “easy” is not always best.

Cell phones take wonderful pictures, unless are still living in the flip-phone age. Do you really need to have a picture of a dead animal to enjoy the hunt? Do we hunt because we want to kill something or because we wish to eat?

We can all eat food from the grocery store, but it is more important to be able to take free-running wild game as our food source. Wild game is better for your physical health. More importantly, it is better for us psychologically.

The photo diminishes this importance somehow. Native Alaskans, who rely on natural resources for their way of life, seldom -- and I mean almost never -- take photos of their kill or catch. You might see photos of them preparing their catch or eating it. They have it right.

Last year, a story in an outdoors magazine promoted the idea of using iPods and such to play music at campsites. The writer believed that loud music increased his enjoyment of the outdoors, although he acknowledged the noise might bother other campers.

What happened to listening to the music of the outdoors?

Winter nights at minus-40 are not silent. Trees crack and split with the violence of the cold. Some people claim they have heard the aurora.

The hiss of sparks when a log is tossed on the fire, along with the yelp from your buddy who just burnt his hand on the coffee pot, is all part of an experience that can only be revisited by memory.

Shut off the headlamp and watch for the vole that pokes his head from under the snow in the light of the fire.

Remember when you were a kid and there was something under your bed? “Something” was an unknown that only existed in your head. You can recapture that, just a little bit, if you let it happen.

Get rid of the drone, the GPS, the iPod and the cellphone. Walk into the wild world, and experience the outdoors in your head. That is where it belongs.

Escape to the woods, the place of time immemorial, the land of silence that never sleeps.

John Schandelmeier is a lifelong Alaskans who lives near Paxson with his family. He is a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman and two-time winner of the Yukon Quest.

John Schandelmeier

Outdoor opinion columnist John Schandelmeier is a lifelong Alaskan who lives with his family near Paxson. He is a Bristol Bay commercial fisherman and two-time winner of the Yukon Quest.

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