Okay, enough about the weather and deer hunting. Let’s change gears and consider that Christmas is fast approaching – just 19 more shopping days remain – and many minds are whirring as they try to figure out what to buy and give that special outdoors person on their list.

Unless the “giftee” has thrown out obvious hints (i. e. “I’d love a new Hummer in Realtree camouflage HD finish.”) the “gifter” is pretty much left to their own devices when perusing the outdoor departments or sporting goods stores. The true challenge is to avoid giving something the giftee already has, or doesn’t truly need or will use that often. And with today’s economy, the gifter needs to assure they get the most bang for their buck (I just had to sneak “something” in relating to deer hunting).

I guess we can all relate to receiving gifts that never saw the light of an outdoor day. Usually they were given by a non-outdoors person who had little or no knowledge about the lifestyles of avid outdoors people. Often, the gift idea came from a strategically worded and promoted ad seeking to unload a few warehouses full of whatever the stagnant product was. But to the inexperienced non-outdoors person, they seemed perfect for Uncle Joe, the avid sportsman. One of the all-time classics was a turkey hunting/attractor cover scent marketed by “Tink” Nathan, inventor of the “Tink’s 69” buck lure. It seemed like the perfect gift for the turkey hunter, right? Well, keep in mind that turkeys have almost a zero ability to smell. They identify everything by sight. As I recall, that product vanished rather quickly from the advertising roles, but still, many bottles were sold, probably purchased by well-meaning non-outdoors people as a gift to Uncle Joe, the turkey hunter.

I categorize gifts like these to those loud theme ties and hand-knit ill-fitting sweaters and hats that we’ve gotten from Aunt Nell or Grandma (my apologies to the knitters who actually are skilled in transforming yarn into correct sized garments). Those former ones go into the “it’s the thought that counts” gift category.

Some families go the “Christmas Wish Listî route, where each writes down some of the gifts they’d most like to get. That works in some cases, but can also be confusing when made out by an avid outdoors person and then read by an indoor-loving relative. Such obvious-to-us things as a box of .30-06 150-grain shells, an adjustable model grunt tube, a 6-weight-forward sink-tip fly line, a hammer extension for a Marlin Model 336, or a box of ballistic-tip .50-caliber sabots may read like a foreign language to others.

I’ve found the perfect solutions. First is to give that special outdoors person a gift certificate to the appropriate store that specializes in whatever activities they’re into. Next is to take their list to another outdoor person who will translate it into indoor-related language you may actually understand: “It’s rifle ammo, a deer call, fishing line, a doodad that fits on a lever-action rifle, and lastly, muzzleloader bullets.”