Childhood Memories That Last A Lifetime

© Othmar Vohringer

On Facebook I came across a “Meme” that contained the following verse: “Memories aren’t made playing video games on the computer.” I had to think about this for a minute and realized that there is a lot of truth in it. Virtually all of my most treasured and vivid childhood memories revolve around outdoor activities with family and friends. Conversely I have almost no recollection of when I started to play (the then) popular video games like Mario and Pong in coffee bars, let alone with whom I played them with and if I lost or won.

While surely not all of the widespread problems with youth today can be blamed on video games, recent social research shows us that some of the more serious social problems can be attributed to these games, especially when children spend many unsupervised hours on the computer. Research done at the Center for the Study of Violence at Iowa State University showed a clear link between juvenile violent offenders with video games as a high risk factor. Other studies on the social aspect of video gaming and online networking seem to reveal that excessive use, up to 3 hours per day, results in a severe lack of attention leading to reduced school grades, lack of patience and loss of reality in real world life. The research also showed that this in turn leads to violent and angry behaviour patterns in over 80 percent of the research subjects. An equally disturbing trend in the research found that these children also suffer from a lack of empathy, compassion and poor social skills.

In other words, they lose touch with the real world and how to behave in a social group which can lead to emotional and behavioural conflicts within the family and society.

On the flip side, a study commissioned by the Eckhard Foundation showed that outdoor activities provide children with self-esteem, a sense of belonging, and a heightened ability to learn. These children also showed more patience and better social adjustment.

There are scientific reports that children exposed to outdoor activities vastly improve their academic skills and lessen considerably their disruptive behaviour. The benefits of outdoor activities is so great in the positive development of children that many schools and youth offender facilities have developed educational outdoor programs with great success in turning “behaviourally disordered” youth into “behaviourally normal” youth.

To me these findings are a no-brainer, because all outdoor activities can be enjoyed as a family and have fun while doing it. An often ignored factor is that family is the most important social structure in a child’s life. It is in the family where our children learn social skills and the associated problem solving skills without resorting to violence, like in video games.

On that note, engage your children in some of the great outdoor activities, not only will this provide provide youth and adults alike with much needed exercise but create memories shared as a family that will last a lifetime.

New World Record Mountain Goat Taken In British Columbia

© By Othmar Vohringer

According to the Boone & Crockett Club hunter Troy M. Sheldon of Alexandria, Ky. Has bagged the new mountain goat world record. After the required drying period the official Boone & Crockett judges panel verified the goats official entry as the new world record. It surpasses the old world record by a substantial 6/8 of an inch.

Troy Sheldon took the animal in the Stikine River area while hunting with Heidi Gutfrucht of Northwest Ranching and Outfitting. As an interesting side note; Sheldon used a Tikka T3 .270 (my personal favourite calibre) to make a perfect 319-yard shot across a ravine.

Hunting deep in the jungle of Peru

© By Othmar Vohringer

Perched in his makeshift treestand the hunter could hear from somewhere deep in the jungle the monotonous beat of tribal drums. As the morning mist began to dance gracefully in the warming breeze of dawn the hunter got ready. His crossbow drawn, he waited patiently for the wild pekari’s that at any moment now would come down the narrow trail from their night quarters to the muddy little waterhole near the base of his tree. It was just light enough to see the forest taking shape. The black wall of vegetation turned into individual tree trunks that seemed to grow into the heavens above. A few sunbeams began to penetrate the dense canopy when the hunter’s heart skipped a beat or two. Right above him high in the canopy a pava de monte, a distant relative of the peacock and turkey, greeted the new day with a loud cackle and then flew with heavy wings to the damp forest floor…

When Ivan from the Asociación de Caza con Ballesta del Perú blog sent me an email to tell me all about his recent hunting adventure in the deep dark jungle of his native Peru it evoked childhood memories in me. As a child I often sat in my room reading books and stories of brave hunters pursuing exotic and dangerous game in Africa and South America. I admired these men that explored far off countries and lived off the land and learned from the native tribes the art of scouting and stalking in the jungle. Many of these hunters had hair-raising stories of life and death encounters with elephants, lions, jaguars and the odd hostile tribe to tell of. These were the adventures every little boy wanted to live.

Ivan’s recent email gave me the opportunity to ask him how he was doing and what he was up to recently. Ivan answered me back telling me about his recent hunt and kindly attached a few pictures to go with the story. Ivan does hunt peraki’s, a small but quite vicious little pig when provoked as well as pava de montes. These birds are quite a bit smaller than turkeys and peacocks but in every aspect just as beautiful. But it was the photo of Ivan holding up the gigantic anaconda that was to my mind the biggest prize. An anaconda is the largest snake it the world. These behemoths of the South American jungle can grow to more than 30 feet long. The Anaconda Ivan holds in the photo is not quite that long but is a respectable specimen by any standard. These reptiles are capable of inflicting severe injury and even death to any human not careful enough.










Here is Ivan in his jungle treestand waiting for game with crossbow ready for action.














The price of patients and stealth, a fistey pekari that, so Iam told, are very tasty too.











Here is Ivan with another trophy, this time it's a Pava de montes. In the picture you can't see what beautiful birds they are and so I included another one below.










That is a huge snake, a anaconda. I am honest with you all, I don't like snakes much. So anyone hunting them or getting otherwise close to these animals is a hero in my mind.














Tags: Hunting in Peru, Pekari, Anaconda, Pava de montes

25 Ultimate Hunting and Fishing Destinations around the World

© By Othmar Vohringer

Two day ago I received an email from Amy S Quinn from TravelHacker, titled 25 Ultimate Vacations for Outdoorsmen. Usually I get suspicious when I read emails titled like this, especially containing “hacker” in parts of the address. I was just about to hit the delete button when I thought, “Maybe there is more to it, lets have a look.”

For ones I was glad that I opened a suspected spam mail. What I found was the following message:

Hi Othmar,

We just posted an article "25 Ultimate Vacations for Outdoorsmen ". I thought I'd bring it to your attention just in case you think your readers would find it interesting.

Either way, thanks for your time!

Amy S Quinn

I followed the link provided and was not sorry I did. A list of 25 hunting and fishing destinations in such exotic places like Mongolia and South Africa are offered with links to more detailed information. If this is to exotic for you how about a fly fishing trip to Ireland or a muzzleloader and archery elk hunt in Colorado. There is something for everybody on 25 Ultimate Vacations for Outdoorsmen.

It is ironic that the very first comment came from a rabbit animal rights lobbyist.

Next time you spam my blog’s email address with advertising, you should try reading the blog content first!
I DO NOT condone animal exploitation whatsoever! INCLUDING for the entertainment of trophy hunters on vacation!!!
What a God forsaken outrageous and greedy thing for a company like yours to be involved in!!! You all should be ashamed of the conscienceless worldview you’re promoting!!!

It is interesting to note that at first the writer says, “I do not condone” but then he goes on to say “What a God forsaken outrages, (bla, bla, bla). It’s contradictive but by no means uncommon with the animal rights types.

I wanted to post a comment on the travelHacker blog to tell Jeff, the writer of the above comment, what a hypocrite he was and perhaps he should get the facts of what good hunting does for wildlife and habitat conservation first before posting animal rights diatribe. Then I remembered that I wrote a column about The Economics of Hunting on the “My Stand” blog, so I sent him the link to that article instead via email that I got from his blog.


Tags: Travel, Hunting Trips, Vacation Destinations For Outdoorsmen, Worldwide Hunting and Fishing Destinations, TravelHacker