Outdoors Columnist Ben Smith offers suggestions for budget-friendly gifts for the hunters in your life this Christmas season.
Every year around the same time my wife begins a steady barrage of questions asking what I want for Christmas. And every year it gets harder for me to give her an answer. It’s not that I don’t have things that I want, it’s that I have way too many things that I want. And if you know me, you know that I have champagne taste on a Natural Light budget. I’m sure there are plenty that are in the same boat as me, so here are some suggestions for a few budget-friendly gifts.
Before we begin, let’s break down a few basic needs of every hunter. First, it’s pretty tough to enjoy a hunt if you’re cold. Second, you generally need some sort of weapon to hunt. A gun, or bow, isn’t exactly budget friendly most of the time, so we’ll just focus on accessories instead. Third, you need a way to dress out your kill after the shot. Fourth, and most importantly, every hunter should have a way to prepare the meat they killed (I know a lot of PC folks like to use the term “harvest”, but we ain’t pickin’ corn). Now, let’s get rolling with some gift ideas to make things easier in the outdoors (Ladies, this part is for you).
Some of ya’ll might be box stand sittin’, heater blastin’, candy crush playin’ types of hunters and that’s okay. I won’t judge your methods. Well, I will, but to each their own. If this is you, then this gift probably won’t help you much. As for me, I’m not saying I’m above sitting in a box stand because I enjoy sitting in a barber’s chair watching 40 deer eat in the plot as much as the next guy. But I also really like to get out in the elements and enjoy the sights and sounds of the woods. In doing so, you expose yourself to the cold more than you do in a box stand. Usually, I can keep myself warm if I can keep the back of my neck warm. I’m not sure why this is, but a cold breeze on my neck will send me to the heater quicker than anything else. That said, item number one of the gift list is a neck gaiter. I use a fleece one made by Under Armour that is just thick enough to keep my neck warm, but light enough to not be a burden to wear. Coming in at less than $40, it’s a great gift for someone like myself that doesn’t like the breeze on their neck.
Hunting from an elevated stand is always more dangerous than hunting from the ground. Obviously, you’re attempting to defy gravity but there’s also the added danger of lifting your weapon up to you. If there’s one thing that I can’t stand in my backpack it’s clutter, and a bow rope has ticked me off in the woods more times than Joe Biden has fallen down during his presidency. A few years back a friend gave me a gift that solved that. Big Game Treestands makes a retractable rope that has made life so much easier. Clip it to your belt or on your stand, pull your weapon up after your situated, and watch the rope disappear into the casing. No mess, no tangles, and for less than thirty bucks, it’s perfect.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve killed a deer and spent the next little while looking for a suitable limb to throw a rope over in order to hoist it for skinning. Or how many times I just cleaned the deer on the tailgate of my truck. With the tailgate method, I always found that I ended up with a lot more hair on the meat than I’d like for there to be. A lot of you probably have a skinning rack at the place where you hunt, but if you don’t, I’ve got a game changer for you. The HME Hitch Hoist has made my life so much easier. It plugs right into your hitch receiver on your vehicle and extends to whatever height you need. I’m not sure whether, or not, you could skin out a moose with it, but it will definitely hold up any whitetail deer you can kill. As for the price, this is the most expensive item on my list at around $130, but I highly recommend it if you plan on hunting multiple locations.
A lot of you probably take your meat to the processor and go pick it up a couple of weeks later. Once again, nothing wrong with that. I used to do the same thing before I had kids and a now consistently empty wallet. Now that I’ve got to save money for three weddings in the future, I’ve gotten to where I process my own meat. Our family substitutes deer meat for beef in a lot of meals throughout the year. In order to keep the meat from getting freezer burn, I like to make sure it’s all packaged air-tight. To be able to do this you need a vacuum sealer. I use a Food Saver. They make several different options, but the one that I have is around $85 and handles all of my needs. I use it year-round to package fish, frog legs, alligator, and deer meat for our family. The other upside to it is that it reduces the amount of space that regular freezer bags take up.
Most wouldn’t consider any of these items as fancy presents, but they are all incredibly functional, which is the most important thing to me when it comes to tools for hunting and fishing. Before you pop a vein trying to find this stuff, they are all available on either Amazon or Cabelas websites. If you’ve read this and still can’t decide what to get your hunter, toilet paper is always nice as well.
