That's My Story

THOSE THE WOLVES PULLED DOWN

Originally Published the Week of January 19, 2010 in Western Outdoor News

At the time you’re reading this, we’ll probably be in Sacramento at the California State Fairgrounds in our booth talking fishing with everyone at the International Sportsmens Expo. Great to see so many folks. So far, we’ve been in Denver and also San Mateo just outside of San Francisco.

On a sad note, you can tell it’s been a tough year for alot of outfitters, guides, charter operators and vendors. So many booths are just gone. So many friends who run operations from Mexico to Alaska and Canada to South Africa either canceled or we hear are out of business. Poof. Good friends that the wolves pulled down. Like the Garth Brooks song. Like so many others in this economy.

I hadn’t expected that. Normally, when we hit the road to visit all of these fishing and hunting shows we get to visit our own clients and hopefully sign up new ones. However, it’s also an opportunity to visit with other vendors in the same businesses.

We don’t see each other for a year as we all run off to our various operations and points on the compass. Lodges in the Arctic. Fishing camps in the Amazon. Turkey callers in Kansas. Salmon charters on the Kenai and yes, other Baja operators as well.

Instead, it’s obvious that there are fewer of us out there on the convention room floor. That’s a shame. Not for our sakes. That’s sad enough as it is, but most of us know we’re knuckleheads for trying to stake our living on the whims of nature, weather, fish and animals. It’s not an easy life. Nothing is guaranteed. And most of the guys and gals I know in this business are as resilient, tough and resourceful as any I have ever met.

That’s why they do what they do. They take people fishing in big waters; tramp through the woods leading pack animals with rifles on their shoulders; lead white-water survival camps in the Himalayas or scuba dive with sharks in Baja. They cut trees to build wilderness lodges; know how to use chewing gum to fix a boat engine; actually do know how to construct an igloo and rub two sticks together to make a fire!

The real tragedy is actually on the other end. Western Outdoor News Editor, Pat McDonell wrote about it several issues ago when he commented about the loss of Los Angeles Times outdoor writer, Pete Thomas and other outdoor writers who have had their jobs eliminated recently.

We’re not only losing our outdoors. We’re losing our access to the outdoors. We’re losing the writers who created and reported the visions and kept us in touch from our offices and homes. And, judging from what I see at the outdoor shows, we’re also losing the operators who put us at ground zero as well.

For so many of us who grew up in the last few decades, the outdoors and the outdoor lifestyles we found as our recreation were part of our psyche. Our dads and parents took us out because that’s what their parents did for them.

I understand the tragedy and economics and the times in which we live.

But as Pat brought up, the outdoors are an important part of who we are and, at least for many in my generation and the generations preceding, it helped formulate who we are and what we became.

I wanted to be Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. I can still sing the theme songs to those TV shows! I wanted to get in that Range Rover with Marlin Perkins on Mutual of Omaha and make Jim get out and get chased by the charging rhino.

I wanted to be dive with Lloyd Bridges in “Sea Hunt.” I read Field and Stream and cut out pictures when I was in grade school. I did a “show and tell” in front of Sister Jane and my 3rd grade class taken from a story in Sports Afield Magazine. I read John Steinbeck’s the “Log from the Sea of Cortez” when I was in 8th grade. I used to actually save and chart the dock counts from the Los Angeles Times.

I remember my dad telling me that if I did my homework, he’d take me to the Fred Hall Show in Long Beach. I saw the booths and all the places I promised myself I would go fishing “when I grew up.”

And now kids get a daily dose of reality shows and computer-generated sludge. The outdoors are defined by the how many bad guys you shoot in a jungle video game or the “reality” of such shows where contestants “survive” bogus dangers on deserted islands and real dangers from scheming team members (with cameras watching every ugly emotion) or how frightened you can be eating a handful of bugs. What does THAT teach them?

A generation is losing it’s heroes. Roy Rogers where are you? Better yet, where are you Captain Joe? Hunter Bob? Rod the River Guide? My kids want to come out and play. They need to come out and play. The wolves are taking away our inspiration.

Jonathan Roldan is the Baja Editor of Western Outdoor News and his column appears every other week. He can be reached in La Paz at: riplipboy@tailhunter-international.com