Quarantine Activities for the Outdoorsman

Are you bored yet? If you’re anything like us – you may be going a bit stir crazy at this point. Usually after finishing our fall hunting season, staying inside to catch up on a few books or movies as we head into spring trout season and spring turkey season was no problem. Unfortunately that wasn’t quite the case for us this year.

Fortunately for us, the Pennsylvania Game Commission and Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission allowed the spring trout and turkey season to continue with proper social distancing protocol.

However, with the coronavirus quarantine seemingly on its way out and restrictions soon being lifted, you may be running out of things to do inside.

Here are some ideas of how you can weather the last days and weeks of the mandated stay at home order.

Welcome to the ultimate spring cleaning season! You may have set aside some time these past couple weeks to clean out and organize your closets, gun cabinets, and tackle boxes. If you feel like you’ve reorganized those gear boxes one too many times, it may be time to look at what you don’t need.

Donating old hunting clothes can be a great way to create space all while helping a very good cause. Most people don’t know that the PA Game Commission actually welcomes donations of usable hunting and outdoor clothing as a part of helping the National R3 Initiative(Recruitment, Retention, and Reactivation of hunters).

Most individuals who go to the PAGC looking to get into hunting and take the hunter safety course have little to no equipment. If there is equipment or clothing to borrow, most of it must be returned at the end of the day.

A good number of us could probably find something we don’t use anymore and can get in contact with the PAGC office to donate it. Plus, it gives you a chance to justify getting some new camo you’ve been looking at for a while now.

You now also have the chance to teach kids outdoor lessons after the virtual learning is done for the day. Remember when you said “if I only had the time?” Well, now you do! Outdoor activities, like archery and fishing, are perfect for kids to occupy their time instead of playing video games for 10+ hours a day.

Even though Kinsey’s Outdoors is not currently letting customers inside our retail store, you can still order archery or fishing gear on the Kinsey’s Outdoors website. You can either have the items shipped to your house, or you can pick it up curbside.

Now that you’ve got all the gear you need, you can hit the great outdoors to get some much needed fresh air and hunting and fishing action. Even if you have kids who may be too young to hunt or fish – it’s never too soon to teach them the wonderful benefits of spending time in the woods, or on the water.

Have you always wanted to learn how to trap? Get better at turkey calling? Learn to read a map? Tie Flies? Skills like these can now be learned from almost anywhere with access to information thanks to the advent of Google and YouTube. Online video tutorials can provide great opportunities to learn those outdoor activities and skills you’ve always wanted to learn.

Now’s also a great time to clean out trail camera cards or get new ones. Are you tired of the thousands of pictures you have of squirrels taking up memory on your trail cam memory cards? Now’s a great time to delete the abundance of trail cam photos and make sure your cameras are working properly. If they aren’t, now’s a great time to look at upgrading your trail camera for this upcoming scouting and hunting season.

Once all that is done, you could begin to watch outdoor-themed movies. When the day is winding down and dinner is done, you and your family can enjoy a movie night. This is a great way for everyone to spend time together while also providing a much-needed distraction from the constant news headlines.

As a lover of the outdoors, look at watching a few titles that can get the next generation excited about a life outside. Movies like White Fang or maybe some of your favorite hunting DVD’s you have laying around.

You could also grab your camping equipment and gear and do a backyard staycation and camp with your family at home. It’s also a great time to get a new cooler and test it out at home before you hit the water or the woods this year.

Another great activity is to learn to make a new recipe with wild game, or a side dish for your favorite wild game dinners. Almost every internet search will lead you to a variety of ‘wild game recipes’ and techniques that will teach you to be a better cook. Cooking with the family is a great way to spend time together while also teaching a lifelong skill.

After you’ve played all the board games in your house, you’ve played referee to yet another fight over whose turn it is with the video game, or you need a break from that puzzle that feels more like a prison sentence than a distraction – we hope this list helps. Although we don’t know how long this “new normal” will last, we hope this article provided you with some ideas to keep you and your family spending quality time together while also keeping your sanity. Did we forget anything fun and exciting that you’ve been doing lately? Let us know what you and your family have been doing to help pass the time during quarantine.