Aldo Leopold on use of gadgets in the outdoor world...

"In their later evolution, however, they became a code of sportsmanship, a self-imposed limitation on sport. On them is a distinctively American tradition of self-reliance, hardihood. woodcraft, and marksmanship. These are intangibles, but they are not abstractions. Theodore Roosevelt was a great sportsman, not because he hung up many trophies, but because he expressed (2) this intangible American tradition in words any schoolboy could understand. A more subtle and accurate expression is found in the early writings of Stewart Edward While (3). It is not far amiss to say that such men created cultural value by being aware of it, and by creating a pattern for its growth. Then came the gadgeteer, otherwise known as the sporting-goods dealer. He has draped the American outdoorsman with an infinity of contraptions, all offered as aids to self-reliance, hardihood. woodcraft, or marksmanship, but too often functioning as substitutes for them. Gadgets fill the pockets, they dangle from neck and belt. The overflow fills the auto trunk, and also the trailer. Each item of outdoor equipment grows lighter and often better, but the aggregate poundage becomes tonnage. The traffic in gadgets adds up to astronomical sums, which are soberly published as representing "the economic value of wildlife." But what of cultural values? As an end-case, consider the duck hunter, sitting in a steel boat behind composition decoys. A put-put has brought him to the blind without exertion. Canned heat stands by to warm him in case of a chilling wind. He talks to the passing necks on a factory caller, in what he hopes are seductive tones: home lessons from a phonograph record have taught him how. The decoys work, despite the caller: a flock circles in. It must be shot at before it circles twice, for the marsh bristles with other sportsmen, similarly accoutered, who might shoot first. He opens up at 70 yards, for his polychoke is set for infinity, and the ads have told him that Super-Z shells, and plenty of them, have a long reach. The nock flares. A couple of cripples scale off to die elsewhere. Is this sportsman absorbing cultural value? Or is he just feeding minks? The next blind opens up at 75 yards: how else is a fellow to get some shooting? This is duck-shooting, model 1943. It is typical of all public grounds, and of many clubs. Where is the go-light idea, the one-bullet tradition? The answer is not a simple one. Roosevelt did not disdain the modern rifle; White used freely the aluminum pot, the silk tent, dehydrated foods. Somehow, they used mechanical aids, in moderation, without being used by them. I do not pretend to know what is moderation, or where the line is between legitimate and illegitimate gadgets. It seems clear, though, that the origin of gadgets has much to do with their cultural effects. Homemade aids to sport or outdoor life often enhance, rather than destroy, the man-earth drama; he who kills a trout with his own fly has scored two coups, not one. I use many factory-made gadgets myself. Yet, there must be some limit beyond which money-bought aids to sport destroy the cultural value of sport."