In a world where outdoor adventure, in particular hunting, is often reserved for older kids or even adults, my now 14 year old son Ryder has been hard at it since he was 6…and excelling.
I know…I know…here goes another dad pumping his kids tires. This is not that, so settle down.
There’s a hard reality staring us in all in the face. Even in a state like Michigan, where hunting is very much a tradition, or at least it used to be, the number of youngsters that I know of who consistently take part in hunting or fishing is in critical decline. These young kids only have so much attention to go around, just like the rest of us. There’s hockey, there’s football, there’s baseball, there’s music, and instruments, and robotics, but that’s not all. Unfortunately there’s also gaming and electronic devices and apps specifically designed to suck the soul right out of kids that stare at these damn screens all day. To sum it up, there’s just so much shit out there for kids to fall into, some of it good and a lot of it bad. But the good news is that as parents we have the ability to make choices regarding what our kids take part in and what they don’t…and in that power to choose sits the key to stopping this cycle of mind numbing bullshit.
Using a phone or a tablet as a babysitter can certainly be easy, and I’d be lying if I said I’ve never done it…sometimes, its a great tool in the toolbox. However, I can sit here and say that out of the 10 times I could use it, I actually use it less that 1…it’s just not my style. So what do I do instead? I get my kids outside.
No different than these games and apps today, the outdoors provides stimulation…and a ton of it…except its real stimulation, not synthetic. The sights, the sounds, the smells, the textures, the bee stings…all of it.
Quick case in point. A few weeks ago Ryder and I headed to Ohio to plant some fall food plots and gear up for whitetail season. We worked up some dirt in an effort to start some new plots off on the right foot. Ryder took interest in tractor time and what we were doing for the deer, but he took way more interest in digging through the dirt to look for arrowheads left behind by the badass hunters of the Shawnee. He spent the days digging and knapping every piece of flint he could find - he was fascinated. One eye spent watching me and what I was doing to prep the land and the other eye spent searching for the ever elusive arrowhead. As we trucked back to Michigan after 3 days he had and hell of a lot dirt under his nails, a staggering collection of flint dirtying the hell out of my cupholders, a new found knowledge base of the Shawnee, a clear understanding of what we were doing to prep our food plots and why, an find it grind it experience with the clutch of that tractor, some unintentional poison ivy and smile that I’ll never forget. Sure, we tip over some awesome old whitetails on the Ohio farm every season just like he did with the 350 Legend in this video, but there’s way more to the outdoors than just that.
So, do your best to get your kid outside..they don’t have to kill something or even cast a line, just get them out there.
Every time we hit the woods and waters it’s like an information overload, and my kids can’t get enough of it. So I guess in that case you could say “Like father, like sons”.