Winter offerings abound for outdoors enthusiasts
This time of year can give off a bleak vibe. Ohio’s hunting seasons have diminished and ice-fishing opportunities have become less certain due to global warming.
Yes, winter can seem like a vast wasteland.
“A vast wasteland” was the phrase Newton N. Minow, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission under President John F. Kennedy, used to critique American television.
Minow’s indictment was delivered during a 1961 speech. The chairman’s admonition was meant to encourage a more uplifting, possibly more enlightening, use of the people’s airwaves than heavy daily doses of vapid entertainment.
TV executives in 1962 responded to Minow’s challenge with The Beverly Hillbillies and Mchale’s Navy.
There were a few worthy and groundbreaking programs — The American Sportsman and The Flying Fisherman come to mind — on the alphabet networks during the Minow era. Nowadays entire networks are devoted to shows featuring hunting, fishing and product peddling.
Getting some sort of hunting and fishing fix by means of an electronic screen is far easier now than in days past.
However, many people would rather do than watch, and even an apparently barren real-life landscape holds enough seasonal activity to interest those who get close enough to look.
Providing proper precautions are taken, outdoors enthusiasts can find worthy entertainment even during a winter of discontent and contagion.
Here’s a reminder to those feeling trapped: Opportunity abounds.
For starters, muzzleloader season, the last concentrated deer hunt of 202122, runs until one half-hour after sunset on Tuesday. After that, hardy bow hunters can chase deer legally into early February.
On Wednesday a deer-butchering workshop will be conducted, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., at the Delaware Wildlife Shooting
Range Education Center. The workshop is free, although pre-registration at the website, wildohio.gov, is required no later than Tuesday, and participants must bring their own deer carcass. All other materials will be provided so those interested should leave their knives, blades other cutting instruments at home.
Outdoors shows in larger Ohio markets, including Columbus, used to be numerous. Lately, such shows have been jostled by competition and the pandemic.
Even before COVID-19, the shows seemed to be in long-term decline as big-box stores — offering atmosphere and spectacle, as well as a glittering array of products — began to serve as year-round fantasy destinations.
But it’s the Omicron spike that forced the rescheduling of the Cleveland Boat Show from this month to March. Locally, the Ohio RV and Boat Show at the Ohio Expo Center continues without a mask mandate today and then Wednesday through next Sunday.
The Columbus Fishing Expo is set for Feb. 11-13. The Open Season Sportsman’s Expo, primarily targeting deer and wild turkey hunters, is scheduled for a March 18-20 run. Those events are also at the Ohio Expo Center.
Meanwhile, information about a range of hikes, programs, seminars, many free of charge, can be accessed at the website ohiodnr.gov. Scroll down and click on the events link to bring up a calendar of listings mostly disconnected from electronic wastelands, vast or otherwise.