Outdoor gift guide
A long time ago, hunters entered the woods carrying a spear and a sharp piece of flint. These days, most need page-long lists and multiple packs to keep track of gear and equipment.
And not just hunters. Whether a person fishes, paddles, backpacks, hikes, watches birds, forages, shoots or pursues any kind of outdoors-related activity, the time they spend packing for an outing often rivals the time they plan to be on the trail or water.
If you’re buying a gift for such a person this Christmas, the good news is there are endless options. But that’s also the bad news.
To help, we asked outdoors experts what one gift they’d buy someone who participates in their sport.
Staying warm
Courtney Goodman of Hickman gets cold easily and doesn’t like it. She has one word for anybody who pursues an outdoors activity: Wool.
“I teach people how to hunt, and it’s the one thing I tell everybody who complains about being cold,” says Goodman, a hunting training officer overseeing 30 western counties for the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR). “It’s the top, No. 1 thing I have to have, whether I’m fishing, hunting, hiking or camping.”
Wool dries quickly, it provides warmth even if wet, and it doesn’t hold smell like cotton. Wool clothing comes in many price ranges, but Goodman wears merino wool from First Lite as a base layer, available in different weights depending on the temperature.
For example, in warm weather, she wears First Lite’s Women’s Wick Quarter Zip (made of Ultralight 150 Aerowool) as her top, $115, from the manufacturer. In cooler weather, she likes the brand’s Women’s Kiln Long Jane (Midweight 250 Merino-X) for her legs, available for $110.
Other options are less expensive.
A boost for your eyes
Alex Cline was on the road to go deer hunting well before dawn one morning when he suddenly drove back to his home in Shepherdsville. Why? He’d forgotten his binoculars.
“I won’t go deer hunting without binoculars,” Cline says. “I carry them 100% of the time.”
Cline, a conservation educator for KDFWR, spends a lot of time in the woods for both work and play.
Binoculars help you identify movement from long distance. With a little moonlight, Cline says, you also can see animals moving around before the sun comes up. Conversely, he says, they break your heart by letting you see deer in the fading light after legal shooting time has ended.
An oft-mentioned rule of optics is that you get what you pay for. Cline likes the Vortex Crossfire® HD Binoculars in a 10×52 size, which Bass Pro Shops sells for $169.99. “These are a phenomenal tool,” he says. There are better models, he adds, “but these won’t break the bank.”
Cline strongly recommends a hands-free chest harness for anyone who carries binoculars. After using a less expensive model for years, he upgraded to an FHF Gear Bino Harness Pro-M, which retails for $125. “It’s a game changer,” he says.
For the next Audubon
Birdwatchers like to document what they see. So they sketch, paint and journal. If you know someone who wants to improve their skills at not only identifying birds but also documenting them, Laura Burford of Stamping Ground in Scott County suggests a gift certificate for an online course at the Bird Academy at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
Cornell Lab has an entire course catalog with classes that last from one hour to 100-plus hours, with costs ranging from free to $239.99, with many from $29.99 to $59.99.
Burford, who is the non-game program coordinator for KDFWR, took an online course on sketching birds.
“It’s one of the best things I’ve ever done,” she says. “It’s a really good value for the money, and I felt like I got really good instruction.”
In fact, she liked the class so much that she bought a gift certificate for her 12-year-old niece.
Hot drinks hot, cold drinks cold
Luke Behler grew up in rural Boone County, served in the United States Army in Afghanistan during a hostile time and fought forest fires in Idaho. In the last few years he has hunted red stag in New Zealand, elk in the Rocky Mountains, moose in Alaska (where he now lives and works for the U.S. Forest Service), blacktail deer in Prince William Sound and—just recently—caribou in Alaska’s Brooks Range.
One item that Behler almost always has with him is his 32-ounce Hydro Flask Widemouth insulated bottle (on sale now for $33.71 from the manufacturer). Like Behler, the thermos has enjoyed many adventures, and the dents reflect hard use. But it still works like new.
“I used that in military cold-weather survival school to keep tea hot and in the Arizona desert to keep water cold,” Behler says. “I’ve had it about 10 years. It’s fallen out of trucks and fallen off cliffs. Basically, I’ve used it all over the Rocky Mountains, while skiing in Alaska, and I bring it on every single hunting trip.”
Keeping gear handy
Whether you’re taking a day hike or sleeping many nights on the trail during a full-fledged backpacking trip, you need bags, packs and sacks to carry and protect your gear, not to mention organize it and keep it handy.
Nichole Nimmo of Canmer in Hart County recommends packs made out of Dyneema, a composite fabric that is extremely durable, waterproof and ultralight. She buys her stuff from Hilltop Packs.
Nimmo, nicknamed “Hilly Billy,” is a nature/backpacking videographer who has hiked thousands of miles throughout the eastern U.S. and is a guide and sweeper—the hiker at the tail end of a group—for rookies doing the Sheltowee Trace Hiker Challenge.
“My favorite item from Hilltop Packs is my custom Kentucky state flag Dyneema fanny pack,” Nimmo says. Hilltop sells the pack, which has a roll top, for $95, sans the custom design.
“Between long days sweeping hiker challengers on the Sheltowee Trace or taking a saunter on my local trails at Mammoth Cave National Park, this fanny pack keeps snacks, my phone, water, and my most frequently used hiking items within easy reach without reaching into my pack,” Nimmo says. “This bag has become a part of my daily carry … and never leaves my side.”
The state flag, she says, reminds her of home.
Night light
Tim Stein of Independence has fished with the Northern Kentucky Bass Busters for almost 50 years, so he’s used to being on a boat in the dark. After all, two of the 10 tournaments the club holds around the commonwealth every year happen at night.
“Every fisherman who fishes at night needs a good flashlight,” Stein says. “Changing baits, tying lines—you can’t do any of that in the dark.”
Nor, he says, can you retrieve a lure from a stump or a tree limb (not that he’s ever had to do that).
Stein, who wrote the outdoors column for The Kentucky Post newspaper for many years before it closed, says he hates feeling a strap on his forehead, so he eschews a headlamp for a handheld flashlight. His is a NEBO Davinci 2000 model, which uses rechargeable batteries and puts out a stunning 2,000 lumens. He admits it “wasn’t cheap” at $54.99.
But the NEBO brand from Alliance Consumer Group (google “Nebo” and “lights”) offers dozens of models starting at $22.99, with many in the $34.99 to $59.99 range. One even-more-expensive model puts out an incomprehensible 18,000 lumens.
“These are really, really, really bright,” Stein says.
Staying alive
Last year alone, Kentucky Hunter Education Association President Stacy Faulkner of London taught outdoor skills to 1,300 youth.
“Part of hunter education is survival and first aid, and that’s kind of my specialty,” Faulkner says.
“My go-to thing would be a good survival kit,” he says. “Every student who comes through my class learns how to use a flint striker, a snare and some other stuff, like a map and compass.”
When Faulkner starts rattling off the “stuff” in a comprehensive survival kit, the list is seemingly endless: emergency blanket, rope saw, knife, whistle, fishing tackle, flashlight, water purifying equipment, waterproof map container, a spoon-fork-knife set, compass, tools to start a fire, cord, first aid kit, carabiners, sewing kit, signaling mirror, instruction cards, duct tape, candle, and—in big kits—a tube tent, hatchet and trenching tool.
He says you can assemble your own kit by buying individual items at outdoors stores, grocery stores or discount department stores, or you can buy (and add to) a pre-assembled kit. Examples: a 12-piece Gordon Emergency Survival Kit from Harbor Freight for $27.99, a 47-piece Survival Kit by Ready Hour available online for $19.95 at Camping Survival, or a 256-piece Tactical Survival First Aid Kit (IFAK Molle System) currently on sale for $69.99 online at MilitaryKart.
Field to fork
When outdoors expert and educator Jean Ellen Spieles of Garrison in Carter County takes a kid (or even an adult first-timer) hunting or fishing, she takes steps to make them feel emotionally connected to the activity.
One way she does that is by writing their name on harvested game that’s packaged for the freezer.
“From deer hearts to fish, then you know who is providing the meal that night at the table,” says Spieles, who among other things is a hunting instructor for KDFWR’s Becoming an Outdoors Woman program.
If that meal comes from water, a cookbook she recommends is Hook, Line, and Supper, by Hank Shaw.
“It’s not just recipes,” says Spieles, who notes the book’s subtitle is New Techniques and Master Recipes for Everything Caught in Lakes, Rivers and Streams, and at Sea.
The book is sold by many online booksellers, and at Shaw’s huntgathercook.shop for $27.
Recipes include everything from fish cakes to Thai and Vietnamese dishes, she says, and her two sons love it.
Find outdoor equipment here
Click on these links to the recommended products and gear as you read along with our Outdoors Gift Guide in the November issue of Kentucky Living.
Cornell Bird Academy course catalog
Cornell Bird Academy gift certificate
Survival kits:
