Ready to bring out the summer outdoors toys

Both the Anchorage and Mat-Su sportsmen's shows are over. I don't know the final attendance numbers but it seemed to me that things were a little slower this year. In previous years, opening day at the Mat-Su show seemed to be more crowded than this year appeared. I was at the Anchorage show on Saturday afternoon working the Hunter Education booth and, while there were a lot of folks visiting the show, it didn't seem to be as crowded as a normal Saturday afternoon.

As all interests seem to cycle, I wonder if the sportsmen's shows are moving into a period of lower attendance due to who knows what? Time will tell there.

With the election of Donald Trump as President of the United States and his positive follow through on his campaign promises to protect and uphold the Second Amendment, new firearms sales seem to have slowed. The "panic" buying of various types of guns because of the perception they would be banned by the government appears to be over, at least for the near future.

I say this because I'm getting a steady stream of calls from various sales people who work for the firearms distributors I usually buy from, asking me what I might need for orders or inventory. I'm not getting many calls from folks who usually buy guns from me. Under Obama's presidency, I rarely received distributor calls because the sales people were already busy filling the steady stream of orders being sent in. Folks had an incentive to buy guns and it kept the industry jumping. Things have slowed with the change in administration.

Former President Obama may have been the best gun salesman in history with his constant threats and attempts to undermine and eliminate our constitutional rights to keep and bear arms. It never ceases to amaze me that some folks, especially anti-gun politicians, don't understand that if the Second Amendment goes away, then the Constitution basically will also disappear in pretty short order. But then, maybe that's their intention and agenda all along!

Spring definitely seems to have sprung. I can stand on my deck and almost watch the snow melt. In the course of about three days recently, I've seen the snow depths in my yard reduced by at least six inches and the melting continues. I enjoy a snowy winter but things do get old, so the change of seasons is welcome.

I'm looking forward to getting out and doing some work on my outdoor "toys" and getting them ready for the coming open water and travelling season. I'm not a mechanic by any stretch, but some things I can do in spite of my occasional clumsy attempts to fix or "improve" some aspect of the unit being worked on.

In years past, I'd be getting the RV out of storage in the next week or so and getting the oil changed, batteries reconnected, a spring cleaning in the housing unit, and any improvements I wanted to make begun. This year will be a little delayed until the snow melts more, then things can happen. I plan to add a "Battery Tender" on the engine battery (I already have one set up for the house batteries), have a power cable extended to the outside rear of the RV to operate the boat trailer winch or the winch on my flatbed trailer. I also plan to buy an extra tire and wheel since we're hoping to make several trips this summer and I learned a long time ago that two spare tires are always better than one!

The boat trailer gets an electric winch. Right now, that's all I plan to do with it other than the spring ritual of getting the boat ready for the season. The six-wheeler is good to go other than some minor "tinkering" with tarp covers on the back rack and some permanent mounting of battery charger plug-in wires.

I made the shopping run this past week to buy the bullets, cases, and assorted items I needed to begin developing the handloads I plan to use for my caribou hunt. Now to find time to shoot and fine tune the loads for the trip.

If you haven't guessed from reading this and previous columns, I get as much enjoyment from setting up equipment to use as I do actually using it. I've always been a gadget guy and figuring out how to improve something, based on experience using it, is one of my pleasures in life!

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. This column is the opinion of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman or its parent company, Wick Communications. You can leave Delo a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.