I love the holiday season, except for the gift part. Like most dudes, gift selecting doesn’t come naturally to me. If all my closest friends lived nearby, I’d just throw a party and spend the evening with a shaker in hand, mixing holiday “gift” cocktails and call it good. An artfully crafted cocktail prepared by a loved one seems the perfect gift to me.
Alas, the party idea doesn’t work for all. For a variety of reasons some of us are locked into gift giving obligations. If that means you, I stand by my general rule that essential gear — firearms, fly rods — do not make good gifts. Hunters and anglers have too intimate a relationship with key gear like this. I already know specifically the next half dozen or so fly rods I intend to add to my arsenal. In this department I really don’t want any surprises.
Unless you’re buying a first-ever fly rod, or you have insider info on exactly what tops your special someone’s must-have list, a gift certificate makes the perfect present. Remember, your gift-giving duty is to give someone you care about the right gift. Sometimes the right gift is empowering someone to pick that gift out for themselves.
I’m picky about fly rods, but not so much for the accessories fly fishing requires. Gear bags, rod cases, foul weather gear, even something like a fly vest, this is stuff I can be flexible about. But you do need to know your audience. Some non-gearhead types are going to be fine with a vest off the budget rack. Others (like me) will only be happy with something with a Simms label. If so, hopefully you’ve been saving up.
I think the best approach for a hunter or angler is cookwear, but that’s just me. I like cooking almost as much as I do hunting. Again, I’m more flexible with my cooking gear. And no one who spends time in the outdoors gathering their own protein is going to be disappointed with some enameled cast iron. I’ve got a well-worn dutch oven in the kitchen that has cooked plenty of chukar, and I’m not the slightest bit embarrassed it doesn’t say Le Creuset on the ovenproof handle.
Another no brainer is a vacuum sealer if there’s not already one in the kitchen. It’s perfect for saving birds headed for the freezer, and it comes in quite handy if there’s already a sous vide cooker in the house. By the way, if there isn’t a sous vide on the premises, remember every serious cook should have a water bath cooker.
There are plenty of gifts that just about every outdoor type will appreciate:
- If you’ve got a couple appropriately spaced trees, a good hammock.
- A Leatherman, or some other quality multipurpose tool.
- Ratchet straps for tying down loads, or for the aquatically inclined, NRS straps. Actually, NRS straps may be the most universally useful gifts ever.
- An LED headlamp.
- A dry bag, again generally useful for the aquatically inclined, but these have a place in the uplands as well.
- Good quality thermal wear. That base layer is important.
- One of those inexpensive electronic fish finders that Bluetooths with your smart phone and casts to fishy looking places with rod and reel.
- An electronic fish scale that also connects to your phone via Bluetooth. On second thought, I hate scales and other fish measuring devices. They cause fish to shrink before release.
- A stainless steel cocktail shaker. Give it to them early so they can throw you a Christmas party in return.
Now some bad ideas:
- Camo toilet paper.
- Most anything camo, except actual camo.
- Compass cufflinks. There is no event in the state of Montana where a shirt and cufflinks should be required, except — depending on the dress code — your child’s wedding. In such cases, only cuff links made from elk ivories are acceptable.