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by Curt Kuester
Gadgets and gear are great toys
With the vast array of gadgets, tools, and assorted gear available to todays sportsmen, it would take a super human just to carry all of the stuff. If you really think about it, you could drown a full grown man if he were carrying the full accouterment of fishing gadgets that we are sold on a yearly basis.
By nature, we sportsmen are gear junkies. There is always something that we absolutely can not live without. Mail order companies thrive on this one wrinkle in our genetic makeup. They bank on the fact that, on the early spring evenings or during a spring snow storm, you are sitting in the old lazy boy thinking about fishing, while thumbing through their catalog. Inevitably, some thingamajig that you did not know about or ever thought you needed jumps out at you. So, you spring into action. Rushing to the phone, you place your order; then you wait for the thing to arrive via the mail.
Now don't get me wrong, I myself have owned a thingamajig or two in my day. They are usually the kind of devices that a guy would use to tie a knot with or hold your gun while sitting in a dove field. Once I have them in my hand, it is usually the same exercise. I will faithfully sit down to read the instructions, which, inevitably, I tore in several pieces while opening the package. If the instructions survive the opening, then they can usually be found sitting in the trash can right under that morning's coffee grounds. But if they have made it through all of the perils that can affect the said instructions and come out unscathed, you will find them written in a language that you and all of your friends just are not fluent in.
It is usually at this point in time that I abandon all reason. After all, it is just a thingamajig. How tough could it be to figure out? After several hours of bumming around the house, I give up. Digging through the coffee grounds in the trash, I can usually find six or eight of the dozen pieces, of which only half of them are readable. Using my powers of logic, it now only takes me a week or two to figure out how the thingamajig is actually used. But, nonetheless, I have mastered the little tool.
I am now almost ready to take my thingamajig out in public. Remember, it can be pretty embarrassing, in certain circles, if a guy just rushes out without knowing how to work his thingamajig. This embarrassment is only topped by having the guy you fish and hunt with show you how to use it. Many hunters have hightailed it out of hunting camps under the cloak of darkness because of the ridicule that they have received about their ineptness with their new item.
The next step in the process is the break-in period. After all, you want it to look like you have been using the thingamajig for years. I have never figured out why it is so important to outdoorsmen that everything that we use look like it made the charge up San Juan Hill with Teddy himself. But this is a crucial step in the process.
I have tried numerous methods and have found one that works great. In an absent minded moment, I leave the brand new thingamajig on my bumper, then forget that it is there. While backing out of the drive, I strategically place it where, for the next few months, it can be driven over by trucks, tractors, four wheelers, and every other sort of farm machinery that can be conceived.
Then, one day while peering down at the ground, I find the thingamajig all nice and broken in. It might be cracked, or missing a few parts, but it is now ready for serious use. If only I could remember how it works. I think I have the instructions somewhere.
