Good Christmas gifts for the outdoor enthusiast

It’s early December and both Halloween and Thanksgiving are behind us. That means we still have Christmas and New Year’s Day to look forward to. And, with Christmas comes the traditional gift exchange we’ve all grown up with.

In all this secular celebrating, don’t lose sight of the fact that Christmas is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, Who came to earth to reconcile sinful man with a just and righteous God.

Every year around this time, I offer some gift ideas for your favorite outdoors person. First, though, I would suggest having a discussion with that person to find out what they would like to receive, enjoy using, and would appreciate finding under the tree Christmas morning.

I usually suggest items I’ve run across during the year that I would enjoy having and using. This year is no exception. Let’s start with surf fishing.

To pursue this saltwater angling activity, you need a surf fishing rod, reel, and the appropriate line to begin. What I’ve learned is that the rod needs to be at least ten feet long. Twelve feet is still good but much longer and things begin getting difficult with casting. The reel needs to be a large, spinning reel capable of holding four to five-hundred yards of twenty-to-thirty-pound test monofilament line. In the language of spinning reels, that means a reel around size 8000. I’m told braided line tends to twist more than monofilament under the casting and tidal movement conditions encountered in surf fishing.

An assortment of “J” and circle hooks larger than what you might commonly use for salmon, and another assortment of “pyramid-style” weights ranging from around four ounces up to ten or even twelve ounces are needed, not only to help with casting but to hold the bait on the bottom during the typical Cook Inlet tide changes.

If you’re fishing along the west side of the Kenai Peninsula, the heavier weights work best. If you’re fishing in Kachemak Bay, I’m told a six-ounce weight is usually sufficient.

You’ll also need some sort of rod holder to use while you’re fishing, either attached to your vehicle or stuck in the beach, as well as a gaff and club for landing and dispatching your catch. A good fillet knife is always appreciated, regardless of what type fishing you do.

The list could go on, but this amount of equipment will start you fishing. Reasonable quality rods and reels for surf fishing are not cheap, running $150 to $200 for the rod and the same for a decent reel. The sinkers will run around $3 to $6 each. If you already fish for halibut, you probably have a usable gaff, and any fish bat will serve as a club.

I’ve been reloading rifle and handgun ammunition since I was a teenager, but I had never found a case priming mechanism with which I was happy. I’ve used various hand-held priming tools and different setups utilizing the reloading press itself. This past year, I discovered a bench-mounted, so-called automatic priming tool made by RCBS that, while not without some flaws, works better than anything I’ve used to date.

I purchased a RCBS case preparation tool a couple of years ago which I only started using this past spring. I wish I had set it up sooner! The station can chamfer both the inside and outside of the case mouth, clean the primer pocket and the primer pocket hole and make it uniform in size, and probably a few other things I haven’t used it for to date. While not a tool necessary to reloading usable cartridges, it does make everything more uniform and makes the reloading process a little smoother.

Since I started shooting the “Bang ‘n Clang” matches at the Birchwood shooting range, I’ve learned the value of having a shooting box to carry ammo, cleaning supplies, earmuffs, a spotting scope, some basic tools for adjusting sights, and other items one is apt to need while shooting a relay of targets. Most of the boxes I’ve seen were made of wood and incorporated a stand for holding the rifle, pointed downrange, between shooting sessions.

I’ve found a properly sized wooden box, but I’ll need to incorporate the rifle holder on my own. Complete boxes are available online and range from $200 up to over $500 for a solid oak box. That’s out of my price range, but I already have the materials to retrofit my current wooden shooting box to do what I need.