Is efficiency the point?

Is efficiency the point?

I’m standing in my kitchen, staring at a deer moving through the woods in southern Wisconsin. He’s hundreds of miles away, but I’m watching him on my phone. A photo snapped only seconds earlier. I haven’t stepped outside this morning. I haven’t walked the woods or even put on my boots. Yet somehow, I already know where a deer was just moments ago. Hundreds of miles from where I’m eating my breakfast.

Sometimes those pictures come from 20 minutes down the road. Sometimes from a camera in my own backyard. The distance doesn’t really matter. What matters is that I don’t have to be there. I own five cell cameras, and honestly, I love them. They allow me to stay connected to places I care about, even when I’m not able to be there. I can watch a big buck wander through the woods in the middle of the night, see what animals are moving through an area, or share pictures with my kids of things we might never otherwise get to see. Even when work and everyday life keep me away from the woods, those cameras give me a small glimpse of what’s happening. 

They’re extremely convenient. They save time, answer questions, and allow me to keep an eye on places I might not visit for weeks. But lately, I’ve started wondering whether all that convenience is necessarily a good thing.

I was talking with my uncle recently about bear hunting. He runs dogs, and he mentioned that some of the areas where they used to hunt mostly by themselves seem to have more groups running bears now. At the same time, this has been a strange year for them. They simply haven’t been seeing as many bears. That doesn’t necessarily mean there are fewer bears. There are a hundred reasons a season can feel different from another. Food changes. Weather changes. Bears change their habits. But our conversation got me thinking about something else.

Years ago, running a pile of bear baits took an enormous amount of time. You drove from bait to bait, checked tracks, cameras, and tried to figure out what had been there. If you had enough baits spread across enough country, you might have multiple trucks doing it before daylight. 

Today, theoretically, you can figure out a lot of that before you get out of bed. Just check your phone. A big bear hit the bait by the marsh this morning. Grab the dogs and go. That’s efficient. But is efficiency the point?

I ask that as someone who uses this technology. I’m not standing outside of it throwing rocks. But if cell cameras disappeared tomorrow, I don’t think it would change much about the way I hunt. And I’m beginning to wonder whether we’ve reached a point where some of our technology is advancing faster than our conversations about what it means for the outdoors.

Think about a mature buck. There was a time when finding one was part of the hunt. Maybe you found a huge track. Maybe a rub appeared on a tree that made you stop and look twice. Maybe you found a scrape line and started putting pieces together. Or somebody caught a glimpse of a buck crossing a road or heard about one from a neighbor. So you went looking. You found a track or a rub or a fresh scrape. And from that single clue, that was enough to get you started.

Now put enough cameras across a piece of property and the unknowns begin disappearing. This buck leaves this food plot. He passes this camera. He stops at this water hole. He heads toward this bedding area. Three mornings this week, he passed this spot around the same time. Eventually, you’re not trying to figure out where a deer might be. You’re waiting for him to tell you.

None of that means the person behind the camera isn’t a good hunter. Plenty of great hunters use cell cameras, just as plenty of great fishermen use forward facing sonar. Technology doesn’t erase someone’s knowledge simply because they choose to use it. What worries me is what happens when that knowledge is no longer necessary.

Woodsmanship is learned slowly. You learn to read tracks. You learn why deer use one trail and ignore another. You learn what a rub means and what it doesn’t. You learn bedding areas, wind, terrain, food, and how all of those things change through a season. Somebody teaches you some of it. You learn the rest by being wrong. That takes time in the woods. And there is an art to it.

It’s knowledge that has been passed from one generation of hunters to the next. Things learned through years of walking trails, watching animals and trying to understand why they do what they do. I hope to pass some of that knowledge to my kids. But I wonder what happens when a generation of hunters no longer needs to learn those things. When scouting becomes a matter of placing enough cameras to answer questions we once spent entire seasons trying to figure out. If we eventually decide technology has gone too far, will we still know how to hunt without it?

There is a conservation question here, too. In northern Wisconsin, I worry about our mature bucks. They already face a gauntlet that includes wolves, coyotes, winters we can’t predict, and the usual pressures of hunting seasons. We’ve already watched deer numbers change and management strategies change with them. When populations fall, every additional advantage hunters gain matters a little more. A mature buck already has to survive through plenty year after year to become a mature buck. Now imagine doing that while cameras watch food plots, trails, scrapes, water and bedding areas around the clock. At some point, we should at least ask whether the animal is keeping up with us.

I don’t know where the line should be. Maybe cell cameras remain exactly as they are. Maybe someday there are restrictions on using real-time information during an open season. Maybe none of that ever happens. But I think it’s a conversation worth having.

We’ve spent generations finding ways to become more successful outdoorsmen. Whether we’re hunting or fishing, nearly every advancement promises to make us a little more efficient. I wonder, though, how much efficiency we really need.

I think about my kids growing up in a world where technology can answer questions before they’ve even thought to ask them. I want them to know the satisfaction of finding something on their own. Of following a track without knowing where it leads. Of spending an entire morning in the wrong place and coming home with nothing more than a better understanding of the woods. I want them to experience the uncertainty that has always been part of the outdoors. Because if we eventually remove enough of that uncertainty, I’m not sure we’ve made it better. We’ve only made it easier. And I’m not convinced that’s the point.