A few days ago, on my way home from work, I stopped at the local pizza restaurant and ordered take out. As I sat in the waiting area, it became instantly apparent that I had forgotten my cell phone. I felt naked, and rather uncomfortable as I sat there watching the lady across from me scroll through her phone as if the answers to life could be on the next page. The young girl behind the counter took a break from helping customers to check her phone, and the man who was helping himself to the buffet, didn’t seemed bothered enough to set his phone down as he filled his plate. Within minutes I had strangely placed my eyes upon every person in the building, and not one was unattached to their mobile device. I couldn’t come to the conclusion what was worse, the incredible attachment everyone has to their phone, or the strange obsession I had watching everyone looking at their phone. It was a paradox to say the least.

The cell phone phenomenon, is not exclusive to those eating pizza, and has actually made its way into the field, the one place we all go to get away from technology, and get back to communing with nature. My 80 year old grandpa, actually missed the opportunity of shooting a whitetail deer this past year because he was talking on his phone to Grandma. Talking. On his phone. Two things that I had been brought up to believe had no place in the deer woods. On the same trip, my cousin admitted that he was sitting in the woods watching Drury Outdoors Dream Season. That’s right, he was watching someone else hunt, while he was “hunting.”

The collision between technology and the great outdoors doesn’t have exclusivity to mobile devices, but the entire way we experience the outdoors has now become device driven. Over the past few decades the hunting and fishing community has embraced trail cameras, hand held GPS units, underwater cameras, satellite imagery, electronic decoys, self driving trolling motors, recorded game calls, and even mobile uploaded licenses. It brings to question; Has our generation of outdoor enthusiasts lost old fashion woodsmanship?

This past fall, when my wife gave birth to our son, I urged her to take the epidural, making the argument for the use of medical technology that makes the process easier. The same thought process is available to outdoorsmen; if it makes it easier why wouldn’t we take advantage of technology breakthroughs? Simply, in a way, it takes the challenge of uncertainty out of it.

There is no longer the mystery of what the bottom of the lake looks like. No challenge of finding that underwater stump in 20ft of water. We have (myself included) down imaging, side imaging, dual beam sonar, chirp sonar, and GPS coordinates that can all assist us in making the perfect cast every time, every single day of the year.

The same principle applies to the use of trail cameras. We may put boots on the ground, find a promising spot along an alder thicket, or a creek bed, it might have rubs and scrapes that line an old grove pine stand. What is the first thing we do? Of course its to confirm what deer is frequently visiting this area by the simple placement of a trail camera. No mystery. No uncertainty, and certainly little trust in our ability of old fashion woodsmanship.

So, do we boycott all of the technological advancements in the outdoor industry? Of course not. We just need to be mindful that the time we spend ogling over trail camera photos, could be used to learn how to read the the significant information that a single deer track can give us; the direction, the time, the size, the gender.

As I sit here at home writing this article, the irony that I am typing on a laptop, connected to WiFi, while checking my fantasy baseball updates from my cell phone, is not lost on me. There is a growing need for advancements in technology in our society, and its only natural for that technology to filter into the outdoor community. Just note that the best fisherman I know, is not the one who has all the greatest gadgets, its a man who rows his old canoe out on to the lake, drops his line in the water, and does nothing but slay walleye. An art to say the least. One that he crafted through years of learning how to read the water, and more importantly read the fish. I am willing to bet he had never missed a bite because he was watching someone else fish on his cell phone.