Okay, I’m sure this is somewhere around the 4,000,000th blog post on the internet having something to do with COVID-19 or how to deal with quarantine. And believe me, I don’t want this to be the standard, “do a puzzle, FaceTime with someone, etc.” kind of article. Here, we’re all about the great outdoors! And honestly, what better time to get outdoors than when we’re supposed to be social distancing…it doesn’t get much more distant than being in the middle of nowhere.
While all of that sounds good in theory (and I had hoped I would experience something similar during this time), sometimes it’s just not possible. Maybe like me, your work-world has been totally upended and you’re trying to figure out a completely new paradigm (making it nearly impossible to take time off). Maybe like me, you’re feeling the extra parenting load with kids home from school, and the thought of bailing on your wife for a few days to go hunting just seems cruel. Or maybe like me, your Jeep broke down three weeks ago because of the bear curse you’re under, and it’s still not back from the shop yet…leaving you pretty much stuck at home even if work and family would allow you to get away. (I realize that last one was really specific, so perhaps that’s just me).
Certainly didn’t plan on this ending my Spring seasons, but it’s starting to look that way.
The real question is this: How can we fight off cabin fever and maintain some connection to the outdoors, even if the situation we’re currently in makes a long trip into the wilderness impossible?
Practice
Okay, this one should be obvious, but what better time to get some reps in with your bow or rifle? Yes, public ranges may be closed, but hopefully there’s somewhere within driving distance of your house where you can still fling some arrows. Obviously, archery is a little easier to practice near civilization, but safe and legal spots to send some lead downrange on public land can still be found. A morning of target practice is not only great to keep your skills honed for hunting season, it’s downright therapeutic. I can be maxed-out on deadlines, feeling totally cooped-up in my makeshift home office…then if I take 20 minutes and fling a few quivers of arrows downrange in the desert next to my house, it all just melts away.
Along similar lines, this is a great time to practice hauling weight in the wilderness. If you typically rely on a gym to keep your fitness dialed, you’ve already been having to get creative with at-home solutions. Now that you’re forced to think outside the box, it’s time to throw some weight in your pack (a bag of sand from Home Depot will do just fine) and put some miles on. Even under normal circumstances, this is part of my pre-hunt training regimen anyway. As much as I love and believe in barbells for training to hunt, you need to spend some time doing exactly what you’d be doing in the backcountry (like hauling a heavy pack for miles). This has the added benefit of getting you some much-needed sunshine, and even a short morning hike can do wonders for your state of mind when it seems there’s no end in sight for this quarantine.
Few things take the sting out of cabin-fever like sending some lead downrange!
Planning
Okay, this doesn’t get you outside necessarily, but it can help scratch the hunting itch. Typically right now I’d be scrambling around the wilderness trying to defeat overwhelming odds and harvest a Spring bear before all the good units close. Since that hasn’t been possible, I’m back to e-scouting for Fall hunts. I already had a few new places I wanted to check out, and since I can’t be there right now doing some early boots-on-the-ground scouting, I’m just adding more spots to the list. Once things get a little more normal and I’m able to leave the house a bit more, I’ll be doubling-down on my scouting efforts in hopes of having a killer fall.
On a more specific note, I’m still holding out hopes of heading to Colorado again to get some redemption on an OTC archery elk tag. (Check out the film from last year’s hunt here) Unfortunately, the unit I hunted last year is now a draw unit, so I’m back to the drawing board on E-Scouting for this adventure. I’m basically going back through all the steps I listed out in my series on Planning a Colorado Elk Hunt. In short, if you can’t physically be outdoors, the next best thing is planning how to be outdoors.
Organizing
Okay, the free-spirit, Type-B person within me just threw up in my mouth a little bit by writing “organizing” as a heading. Some of you are the complete opposite and already have run out of things to organize, so this may not apply to you. For the rest of us, our hunting gear gets a little out of sorts as the seasons go on. You throw some stuff in a bin, swap out some gear in between trips and don’t take the time to really clean/sort/organize, or you just get lazy and shove everything on a shelf or in a closet to be dealt with later (and later rarely comes). I’m perpetually guilty of all of those! I wish that wasn’t the case, but it’s just how I tend to roll.
But, being stuck at home has the added benefit of making you stare at your filthy mess of a gear closet or garage day after day, and eventually it drives you to do something about it. I finally tackled the garage because it was an absolute disaster area of tools, hunting gear, and garbage…a surprising amount of garbage. Finally digging in gave me the chance to see old gear I was never going to use again, find gear I thought I had lost, and basically get a real idea of what I had (and anything I need to be looking to acquire before the Fall seasons ramp up). It’s not fun, but you’ll definitely be glad you did it when you go to pack up for your next hunting adventure.
Okay, it’ll never be featured on HGTV, but the fact that I can walk through it and actually find my outdoor gear is a win!
Make the Most of It
As I sit here writing this, I am feeling the need to get outdoors deeply. The Jeep should be ready any day now, work is normalizing just a bit, and I’m going to take the first opportunity I can find to at least get out for a day and do something in the wild. But, I would hate to reach the end of this thing and feel like I didn’t make any progress in my hunting life. Just because you may not be able to be out physically doing the stuff you love doesn’t mean you can’t find some ways to move the ball down the field for your future adventures. Make a list, start checking stuff off, and I think we’ll all feel better prepared when this is all over and hunting season rolls around.