Does Anyone Go Outdoors Anymore?

In 1988 I had a red-shouldered hawk make a nest in a tree on my property. I watched this bird for many hours through binoculars as I sat in the woods barely concealed by the trunk of an oak tree. I monitored the majestic bird as it reared it’s young, hunted and kept a constant lookout over it’s territory.

That same year in the fall I spent a dozen days scouting in the woods where I was going to hunt deer. I set up mock scrapes, searched for rubs and well-worn trails and used binoculars to focus tightly on the whitetails that were potential targets.

Since the advent of trail cams, nest cams, den cams and other portable cameras their use has grown exponentially to the point where we don’t really have to go into the wild to see animals and birds anymore. We can quickly snatch a data card from a camera we hung on a tree or load a live feed from a web site on our computer, iPad or even a cell phone.

I use trail cameras, a lot, today. I do a tremendous amount of “scouting” now without even leaving my office. But lately I’m beginning to think that trail cameras and all these web sites that promote eagle, hawk and falcon nesting video or bear den video streams are ruining my outdoor experience. Really; why would I want to watch hours of a bear sleeping? But truly; watching mama feed her chicks a perch she just caught is, well, engrossing and it can keep me glued to the computer screen for many minutes.

Not too long ago I had to set some guidelines on how much I use my electronic equipment. I am a news hound so I would wake up in the morning, slide my iPad onto my lap and spend a couple hours reading the latest headlines from all the news sources. Then I would eat breakfast in front of the computer while checking out BLOGS and opinion sites. It got to the point where I felt something was lacking in the day if I didn’t get my screen time. I was becoming a personal-computer junkie. 

As I began to regulate my time each day on news and social media sites I realized I had the same disease when it came to outdoor cameras. These tools are handy but they did put me in a position where I spent less time actually outside. So now I must vow to turn that program around. I won’t kill the urge altogether because I like seeing eagle chicks fighting over a rodent carcass, but I do plan on actively scouting more this fall for deer and I’ll need to clean the lenses on the binoculars to get out and physically find some birds on my own. We should be looking for more excuses to get outside rather than finding ways to be surrounded by walls.