Backyard camping.

COVID-19 can cause sore throats, hacking dry coughs, and headaches as some of its symptoms. It can cause anxiety, anger, loneliness, concern, and a bit of stir-craziness, especially if kids are stuck in the home as well.

When I was a wee bit of a young’un, I think around three years old or so, I stayed at my Aunt Sue’s house overnight. I was the oldest of the cousins on that side of the family, and Sue hadn’t sprouted any offspring as of yet, so I was kind of the family novelty. At least, that is the way I like to remember it.

Sue had a train track that ran behind the house, and I was fascinated with the rumble of the ground, the low-pitched horn, and the massive size of the long locomotives hauling various goods. 

That night, Aunt Sue pitched a tent in her back yard. To the best of my memory, and anyone trying to remember just a few weeks back can attest to this, my memory may not have all the details correct, but as said, to the best of it, we had peanut butter sandwiches while sitting in the tent. We probably drank some sort of Kool-Aid, cherry, strawberry or grape in all likelihood.

I also thing we had some type of snack as well. Maybe some Nabs as we called them back then. But whatever it was, it was memorable and exciting enough for me to still think back on it some 47 years later.

We had a flashlight and would shine it around the yard, looking for bears and tigers I am sure. Every now and then a lightning bug would flicker its little yellow/green beacon as if it were responding to our light.

And then I felt the rumble. I heard the metal on metal of the train on the tracks. The horn blasted. Yes, as a three-year-old, I was pretty much in Heaven for toddlers.

I bring this short story up for a reason. We are all mostly in some type of lockdown. Yes, the type of confinement varies county to county and town to town, but we have all been asked to stay put, with little public interaction.

Remember those kids I mentioned in the opening to this column? Now is the time to make some memories such as the one that stuck with me so long.

Take a tent and pitch it in the yard. Boredom for a youngster will go away immediately! Take a coupe of hot dogs and some chips and a lantern or flashlight. Roast the hot dogs over an open flame. East them by hand with no bun. Take the lights and sweep through the tree branches and leaves looking for squirrels, or even bears and tigers.

Don’t have kids? It doesn’t matter. Break the routine. You don’t have to go to some vast wilderness to create your own mini adventure.

And while you are out there, share a few ghost stories, or maybe reminisce about your first-time camping, even if it was in the backyard.

Resolutions

This is the time when we all come up with our resolutions for the next year.  Our resolutions often include losing weight or eating healthier and stopping or altering various vices.  Personally, I am looking to share special outdoors experiences with my family.

I was amazed when talking to someone a while back from New York City about how he had never been to the Statue of Liberty.  He told me it was never a priority because he could see it across the bay and knew it would always be there.  Before he knew it, he had moved and now longed to return so he could experience some of the things he missed while living there.  That brings me to my resolutions.

North Carolina is full of one of kind experiences that many will never have the opportunity to share.  Imagine a sky of white and black flowing in a swarm feathers.  Birds so plentiful the United States military had to alter its plans of building a landing strip makes for a fascinating sight.  Several years ago my oldest son Turner and I were hunting tundra swan in the Pocosin Lakes area in Northeastern North Carolina.  Off on the distance a funnel cloud of proportions indescribable rose from one of the lakes.  The funnel cloud consisted of tens of thousands of snow geese lifting from the water.  Amazing.  This January I will be in the midst of this funnel with Turner hunting the snow geese on their final resting spot for the winter.

Of course, the outdoors does not just consist of hunting.  Also on the coast on a small island, the ponies of Shackleford Banks reside.  Small frame horses roam freely on this nine mile long island.  Their history of inhabiting the area can be traced back to the early to mid 1500’s, with ancestors coming from Christopher Columbus himself as Columbus set up horse breeding farms in the New World.  This was done in order to provide horses to future colonists when they arrived to expand the territory.  Watching the small stallions feed, gallop and play has to be well worth the trip.

Then, to add a bit of mystique to our year long adventure, I figure we will have the family drive to an overlook of Brown Mountain.  Mysterious lights adorn the side of the mountain at night and have thus far been unexplained.  The United States Geological Society once investigated the strange orbs with explanations ranging from swamp gas to reflections of a train several miles away.  I can see my daughter holding us tight as we watch the light flare and then fizzle under a star lit sky.

One of my favorite places in the state encompasses the towering Mount Mitchell.  I have been to the top many times, but rarely have taken one of the long hiking trails from the pinnacle of the Appalachians’ highest mountain.  The family would surely enjoy a steady nature walk through a brightly colored autumn landscape accompanied by a picnic lunch.  The exercise would likely be as good for the soul as it is for the body.

And lastly, a thrill I have longed for is another backyard secret.  A reasonable drive to the Cataloochee area of the Great Smokies National Park will yield an experience that both hunter and non-hunter can appreciate.  Ten years after releasing a small herd of elk, they have remained mostly in the same area.  The tall antlered cervids make a distinctive bugle during the mating season.  One vision I wish to experience and share is the lifting head of the bull elk with his long rack reaching mid-back as he bellows for a mate.

If I accomplish but one of these resolutions, I feel I still will have experienced a wonderful gift from God.  Nature, wildlife, and history all melded into something I chose not to miss right here in our backyard.

Read Bill Howard's Outdoors: Goal Setting

Gear Review: ScoutLookWeather

So, here I am, 4:26pm on a Sunday, sitting in a climbing stand on the edge of the woods.  Typing on a netbook.  Crazy right?  Well, I should have about an hour before the first deer sneaks her way out of the darkened tree canopy and finds her way into shooting range for my quick and silent compound bow.

The reason I am working on this now is twofold.  One, I need to get this product review done, and two; this is the perfect time to write about what is going on with this particular hunt.

GPS systems became a great tool for the outdoors person several years ago.  Utilizing the array of satellites put in orbit by the government in order to help one find his position globally protected the hiker, hunter, or fisher from getting lost.  They developed from a display showing longitude and latitude so you could find yourself on a map, to displaying satellite and terrain images.  Along the way, the more bells and whistles the GPS system had, the more expensive the unit would cost.  Downloadable maps, some ranging several hundred dollars in cost, were neat features, but unless you were a diehard outdoorsman that traveled to exotic and unfamiliar locations, they were questionable as to whether they were worth it.

Now I like to have the tools necessary for me to be successful and safe, but I do not want to carry around a small army’s worth of supplies on my excursions.  With the GPS functions of the current smart phones, I quickly adapted to several applications available on it instead of carrying around excessive amounts of electronics.   Free mapping and weather programs were great, as I could not only pinpoint my location, but I could see weather as it developed so as not to get caught off guard on an approaching rain shower or storm.



Screen shot from ScoutLookWeather.com indicating
stand locations, expected deer movement, and scent cone.
The orange arrows were added by me to show movement.

A couple of weeks ago, I was offered the opportunity to test and review a website and smart phone application called ScoutLookWeather.  It seemed interesting enough, so I agreed.  Before downloading it on my Android based phone, I checked the website: ScoutLookWeather.com.  The website was easy enough to get a grasp of without a lot of instruction.  After the download, the application worked the same way as the website.  Also, I noticed it had immediately synced between the website and the phone application.

There she is!

After checking the app, according to my scent cone (a green cone that indicates where your scent will travel based on current conditions) I should hunt the northern stand on the property.  My scent would travel right into the path the deer usually take to the field from the southern stand.  So, that is where I am hunting.

(LONG PAUSE AS THE HUNT TIME BEGINS, THEN FAST FORWARD)

Sure enough, I had a deer come out to my left about 6pm.  After the deer paused and offered a broadside shot just 15 yards from the stand, I released the arrow for the kill.  While waiting in the stand, 10 minutes later 3 more deer came out to my right but came no closer than 40 yards from the stand.  I also noticed looking back at the southern stand, several deer in the field where I expected them to come out also.  If I had hunted the southern stand, those deer would likely have caught my scent in the slight breeze.

Blood soaked arrow does
not mean easy to trail!

Hard to follow at night with only this much sign spaced
several yards apart.



While the shot was true, the deer retreated hard into the woods.  I had a hard time finding bloodshed, but after a 20 minute or so search, I spotted small drops of blood.  The track was on.  I used the way marker feature on the ScoutLook app, using the GPS from the phone to indicate the blood trail.  I proceeded to do this each time I lost the trail so I would have a reference point to come back to.  This was extremely handy as I was in the thick brush and swamp, and light was non-existent except from my LED Lenser headlamp.  After following the trail approximately 150 yards, I lost the blood.  It was now around 9pm and I was crawling on all fours in order to track the blood I did find for the last 30 minutes.  I decided to resume the search in the morning, as the shadows from the brush limited my site lines.  Using the satellite imagery feature of ScoutLook, I made my way back out.  If not for that, this could have easily been one of those cases where the hunter gets stuck in the woods overnight.  Again, limited vision, a low concealing canopy of trees, and not so much as a single star shining through offered no help in keeping my bearings.



Blood trail way markers set
on ScoutLook.

The next day, I worked my way back into the woods, following the blood trail markers I had placed on ScoutLook.  This worked well, and I found the trail I needed to find.  After a couple of more hours, I finally found the deer.  This would never have taken place if I had not used ScoutLook for way markers the evening before.

  



Decoy set-up for incoming waterfowl
as indicated by ScoutLook.

ScoutLook is not only good for the application I tested it for, but it offers a set-up style map for waterfowl hunting, it can be used for hiking and other outdoor activities, it has a drift-point for fishing, and even has a golf mode to help with wind direction on the links.  It provides a cache for photos while in the outdoors, and it will have a log book style feature in the future.  One feature I did not have to use on ScoutLook is a radar map of your area.  This is great for when inclement weather is in the forecast.  It will allow you the opportunity to enjoy your activity until the very last moment.

This result would never had happened without ScoutLook.
Your results may vary!

Screen shot of inclement weather on ScoutLook.

Overall, ScoutLook appears to be a winner.  ScoutLook is easy to use and figure out how to use (no manual-just help screens), is cheap ($1.99 over Android Marketplace, but is available on IOS also), and syncs automatically with the regular website so you can check your locations online and on your phone.  Again, $1.99 for what some GPS systems would charge $199.00 for.  The only thing I could not test, and could not find a direct answer on, was if ScoutLook will save your location maps in areas where only GPS (no cellular) service worked on the smart phone.  I know it will save your markers, just not sure if the maps must download through the cell service each time.  I will continue to use ScoutLook and I look forward to using the log book feature in the future.

Another review of ScoutLookWeather can be found HERE on SoCalBowhunter.

 Want to read more reviews?  Bill Howard's Outdoors Reviews and GiveEmTheShaft Reviews

Bill Howard writes a weekly outdoors column for the Wilson Times and Yancey County News and the bowhunting blog site GiveEmTheShaft.com. He is a Hunter Education and International Bowhunter Education instructor, lifetime member of the North Carolina Bowhunters Association, Bowhunter Certification Referral Service Chairman, member and official measurer of Pope and Young, and a regular contributor to North Carolina Bowhunter Magazine.





Family Campouts

The first time I ever stayed in a tent, to my recollection, was at my Aunt Sue’s.  I was staying the night with her one weekend and she put up a small one in the back yard.  I always looked forward to seeing Aunt Sue for two reasons; she had two small trees that were great for climbing in her front yard, and there was a train track just a few yards from her back yard.  The tent she put up, that was just icing on the cake!

Once I was old enough for school, the summers were filled with my friends coming over and sleeping in our small orange tent.  We never slept until the morning, and usually we would be a little wet where the dew would start dripping through the tent fabric.

My wife also recalled her childhood camping trips.  Her response for going camping as adults was, “I am old enough now to know I can get a room”.  Evidently she had a change of heart after a recent trip to Asheville.  “It is so beautiful, let’s carry the kids camping.”

So we bought a tent large enough for us not to kill each other, and packed up the family for a weekend camping trip.  Oh, and we carried our two smallest dogs as well.  This could be a disaster, or it could be something special.  We planned the trip where we would fish for a bit, but mostly just relax at the campgrounds in Pisgah National Forest.  The only other extra activity would be to hike Mount Mitchell for a few hours.

If you have not been camping in a tent in a while, there are a few things to remember.  One, the ground is very hard.  Two, it gets really cold at night, especially in the mountains.  Three, there are no showers.  Well, on the first note, we had an inflatable air mattress.  It did not hold air.  The second note, sleeping bags work great.  Except when you have them opened with one for the base and one for the cover and the kid you are laying beside keeps pulling it off of you.  On the last note, a cold mountain stream does a really nice job when used to wash your hair.  Of course, that is if you have hair.  I am basing that observance off my wife and daughter.

Cooper, Bill, Julianne, and Turner heating up deer sausage by the campfire.

I will also add a couple of more notable observances.  When camping in the deep dark woods, wildlife should be abundant if you look for it.  That we did, and we saw bobcats, turkey (where were they during the season?), and a coyote.  For my wife, daughter and youngest son, it was the first coyote and bobcat they had ever seen.  The last note, campfires are a must.  As Susan mentioned one morning, there is nothing like sausage, bacon, eggs, and pancakes cooked over an open campfire.  S’mores becomes a food group when sitting on a log.  And somehow, some way that only God knows, the warmth of a campfire penetrates the family and warms the heart, taking away all bickering, aggravating, and other sibling hostilities, if but for a few moments.