Josh First's Blog

Great American Outdoor Show last days

This morning I received an email from a regional Yamaha dealer, offering me about a thousand bucks off the ATV I had looked at the other day, while at the Great American Outdoor Show here in Harrisburg, at the Farm Show complex.

And what a show this is, this GAOS. There is nothing else like it in the world. Something like twenty or thirty acres of floor space, covered in ATVs, UTVs, camping and RVing equipment, hunting gear, outdoor clothing and boots, firearms, gun parts, specialty ammunition, scopes, slings, binoculars, tents, roof-top tents with bike racks for your Toyota Tundra, kayaks, canoes, fishing boats (some Carolina Skiffs and some center consoles with twin Yamahas that make my mouth water), fishing rods and reels and lures, fishing and hunting guides from around the world, archery everything, tractors, farming attachments, seed dealers, etc

You, too, need to go to this show. Especially tomorrow, Saturday, or early Sunday, when many if not all of the vendors will be looking to make a deal on some of their wares, like ATVs, UTVs, forestry equipment, overlanding gear, etc. Nothing bugs a vendor more than having to lug back home all of the stuff they so carefully packed up and brought to the show a week ago. This weekend a lot of this stuff will be “priced to sell.”

And if you are a social butterfly, like I am, then you will have the added opportunity of seeing old friends here, like I did. In fact, one person I needed to see about important business just randomly sat down in a chair next to me, and kept looking at me out of the corner of her eye, while I made silly faces at her. Despite being friends for nearly thirty years, she did not recognize me, and I had to re-introduce myself. Yes, much of me is gone and what remains is unrecognizable, apparently, and that is all for the good. We ended up getting half of the business stuff done, while surrounded by all of the great energy of the Great American Outdoor Show, which included many of the people she needed to see, or expected to see, too.

See, when you are friends with a NRA national board member, and one of the better known ones at that, you have to accept taking second seat about half the time you are together anywhere in public, including at a small diner in East Succotash, PA, where such a person is really a celebrity.

I digress. Because the GAOS is really awesome, and filled with many wonders, and if you go you will make friends and see old friends and possibly empty your wallet and maybe empty your bank account, too. For all the right reasons.

Not every mountain house has to be luxurious. Maybe this is what most people can afford, and while it is small, it works just great

World class taxidermy. Imagine the trophy house this stuff goes in!

With a name like “BuckFinder” what could possibly go wrong with using a drone for hunting…er…they mean finding the deer AFTER it was shot

Old friends

Incredibly technical overlanding and cross country camping gear

Old friends

The Matthew Quigley rifle from the movie Quigley Down Under