Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

© By Othmar Vohringer

Due to work and family related commitments over the festive days I probably will not be able to write on my blogs until after the New Year. I will try but can’t promise.

Therefore I would like to take this opportunity to get a few things out that are important to me and that I feel deeply about.

First I would like to say a big thank you to my wife, all the supporters, sponsors, affiliates and fellow outdoor bloggers and last but by no means least the thousands of loyal readers that visit my blogs regularly. It is all of you that with your encouragement, critique and friendship have contributed to the success of my blogs. Without all of you my voice on these blogs would be nothing more than a whisper in a windstorm. So from my heart I thank you all and hope that in the New Year I can build upon that support and continue with my mission and plans for the future.


This has been a tremendous year in which my blog network has achieved huge leaps. From the humble beginnings of about 20 visitors per day the blog network now averages 5000 visitors per week. Writing four blogs, maybe soon five, is no easy task it demands time, commitment and dedication. This brings me to a very special person without I could not do what I do. Heidi has not only been a tireless supporter and inspiration but also still is a very patient English teacher. I am sure that many other wives’s would run to the divorce court if their husbands come home from work and head to the computer where they spend the rest of the evening writing blogs and designing websites until late in the night.

Blogging has opened new avenues for me that I never thought possible. If you go to my blogroll you can see how many other outdoor, hunting and fishing blogs are affiliated with me and each of them makes my life richer, each of them provides me with knowledge and wisdom that would be hard to come by any other way. I visit many blogs, not only outdoor blogs, and it occurred to me that many bloggers badmouth each other but interestingly enough none of them is an outdoor blogger.

Outdoor bloggers seem to be a very special breed. Although we all have different opinions we stick together and support each other. How far this support can go and how well we can work together has been clearly shown when a few of us came together and founded the Outdoor Bloggers Summit. Neither of the founding members ever have met personally; we all just know each other through communication on the blogs. If you go to the OBS blog and check out the supporter list you will see a very long list of other outdoor bloggers.

Isn’t that incredible?

That brings me neatly to my hope for the New Year. Hunters all over North America face huge challenges that take time, money and personal effort of every single hunter to overcome. There are interest groups of various persuasions that would like to see hunting and the ownership of firearms a thing of the past. Not a day goes by were we’re not confronted with anti hunting and anti gun propaganda be that in the media, the courts or at state and federal government hearings. The antis are clever self-promotion geeks that leave no opportunity pass by to make their voices heard loud and clear. It appears that they are in the majority yet they are not. In fact the antis are a very small minority. Hunters on the other hand are a huge majority and financial heavy weights. Read my article The Economics of Hunting and you will learn just how powerful a force we could be.

My hope for the future is that all the hunters in North America could do what the outdoor bloggers do. Rather than squabble with each other about personal interpretations of hunting ethics and bad mouth others for their hunting style preference we should remind ourselves more of what unites us all. Once we leave the petty finger pointing, which by the way, is a welcome information resource used against us by the anti hunters, we could all stand together shoulder to shoulder and concentrate on the real issues that threaten our hunting heritage.

In the New Year lets start to treat each other with respect and practice a little tolerance of each other and turn our efforts and energy to issues that are very pressing so we can provide a future for the young hunters as our forefathers have done for us. We’re all hunters and that makes us in some way also brothers and sisters.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Othmar Vohringer