Every year as the end of May approaches, I struggle with Father’s Day presents — not the ones my kids get me, but the annual walk through sporting goods stores trying to figure out what my father needs.That, in itself, is an oxymoron; a person who already has everything doesn’t need anything.
For a couple of years, I gave up on trying to find things he could use during hunting seasons or different fishing gizmos. The last one was a seafood breader that was a clear plastic box with a lid and a slotted rack on which you placed your fillets. The flour or meal went in the bottom, and you put the lid on and shook it up real good, and, voila, instant breaded fillets, ready for the hot oil. Except it didn’t work that great.
Yeah, the fillets came out breaded but not so perfectly. So my dad went back to putting flour in a paper bag, dropping in the fish and shaking it real hard, which had worked for, oh, say, 50 or so years.
But at the Dixie Deer Classic in Raleigh this past March, I came upon a couple of things he doesn’t have, then a week or so later, I stumbled on something I don’t have. And I figure, if the three things look as good to you as they did to me, they might make great Father’s Day presents.
One of the neatest deals I stumbled upon, alas, is being discontinued. A sporting goods store from Alabama had a deep, wooden box of deer-scent poppers made by Knight & Hale and Code Blue. They were offering a handful for $5.
With my mitts — size 13 ring — I figured I was going to make out like a bandit, so I took two handfuls and got about a hundred of the little glass vials.
Scent poppers are basically glass vials filled with some kind of deer scent: doe urine, dominant buck urine, estrus doe urine. The vial has an internal chamber that keeps the liquid away from a cotton stopper that fills one end of the vial. When you’re ready to use them, you squeeze a dot on a heavy paper sleeve that covers half the vial, and that breaks the internal chamber, allowing the liquid to fill the cotton and the scent to waft over to ol’ Mossy Horns, hiding in a thicket.
So what’s great about the system?
If you’re freshening up a scrape a buck has visited, you can pull the cotton stopper and drip doe or buck urine in the scrape. But the best application I could come up with is carrying a slingshot to my stand, waiting until daylight (for morning hunts), then breaking two or three of the vials and using the slingshot to flick them out some distance from the stand.
The liquid would permeate the cotton stopper the same way it permeates cotton balls in film canisters — a popular way scent is applied.
Using the slingshot, you can flick the scent vials much farther from your stand than you can by hand.
My dad’s arm strength is probably somewhat less than it was 55 years ago when he was a junior-college baseball infielder, so I’m sure the slingshot-popper system will allow him to get his scent bombs a greater distance from his tree stands.
The same sporting goods store had a product from Alabama I fell in love with — a camouflaged, padded seat for turkey hunting or deer stands that was several grades superior to anything I’ve ever strapped to the back of a hunting vest.
Hunt Comfort’s line of padded seats include two pads of a soft foam similar to what is in Tempur-Pedic mattresses, with a unique gel cushion in between. There are a half-dozen or so different seats available, some sized to fit the seats in self-climbing deer stands and fixed-position deer stands, one with long carrying straps, one super-sized seat called the “Fat Boy,” and a folding seat that will go with me into the turkey woods as long as I hunt.
It consists of two pads joined by a system of snaps to help in loading and carrying. You sit on one pad, the other is a backrest that can be attached to the tree trunk you’ve chosen to break up your background as you call that big gobbler into range.
The seats come in a variety of camouflage patterns, including Realtree Hardwoods HD, Advantage Timber, Advantage Max-4 and Mossy Oak.
For information, call 888-757-3232 or check out www.huntcomfort.com.
Last but not least, I don’t own a boat, but I hate to be nailed to the surf when it comes to fishing during a long weekend at the coast. Because I’m also partial to backwater species such as speckled trout, puppy drum and flounder, it would seem to me that some sort of small boat would be great.
But without a proper vehicle to get it to the coast — I’m afraid my family would rebel at being left curbside at home — I remain with my feet stuck in the sand or to the pier.
Well, maybe not. A press kit came in the mail from BICSport, promoting its Yakka Kayaks.
Several years ago, I kayaked around in the Florida Keys and realized the opportunities a kayak-bound fisherman might have sliding through skinny backwaters, tossing lures near mangroves for spooky snook or puppy drum. But the kayak was rigid and would barely fit in the bed of a small pickup truck, so it was no more use to me than a john boat.
The BIC Yakkas have that part beat — they’re foldable, inflatable and storable. And, weighing less than 50 pounds, they can support paddlers who might weigh as much as 264 pounds, yet they can be disassembled and rolled along like an airport suitcase.
The portable kayak folds out to 9 feet, 5 inches, but its folded dimensions are 30×59 inches. The upper section of the hull is inflatable by using a pump that comes with the package.
Performance specifications indicate Yakka is a match for rigid and inflatable boats — the two ends of the kayak spectrum.
The possibilities are numerous for anglers. More portable than a canoe or john boat, kayaks have become more popular in recent years for coastal fishermen who need to get back to skinny waters for fish a lot of anglers can’t reach. And kayaks have long been popular at mountain rivers and streams that are homes to trout, smallmouth bass and walleye.
So if my kids are reading this, dad says, “Pool your money.” That 50th birthday is only a few months away, and I know I’ve been worth at least 100 bucks to each of you over the past 20 years or so.
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