It’s safe to say, and I’m a little relieved to say, the holidays are over. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a great time—family traveled to Montana and all of us gathered at my parents’ house, under one roof, all feeling pretty happy and healthy—but it’s time to get back to work. We cooked, looked at old family photos, watched every bowl game known to man, and even caught a few Christmas movies. There were no major theatrics, nobody guzzling too much booze, and no real arguments. In some ways, it was an odd American Christmas. But I’ll take it.
If you are like me and treasure family, one of the best items you can carry into the woods and on the water is a Garmin GPS system. At this point it’s safe to say that I am old school, because in my teens, 20s, 30s and 40s I used to hunt alone, far off grid, in challenging country, alone. Alaska. The North Cascades. The Bob Marshall. The White Clouds. The Pioneers. And I didn’t think twice about it. Now, I understand how daring that was, always one step away from Search and Rescue getting a phone call from my friends saying, “Yea, um, my friend went hunting and hasn’t returned. He may be in trouble.”
When Search and Rescue may have asked, “Where is he?” my friends would have said, “Well, he went into this drainage here, but he covers a lot of ground, so he might be on this ridge or he might have circled the entire basin and could have been coming out this way . . . .”
Search and Rescue might have said, “So, we don’t know where he is,” adding, “what safety gear did he have?” And a friend might have said, “A lighter, some TP, 32 ounces of water and a piece of fried chicken.”
Move forward to the modern age and we have many more safety options at our disposal, technology that can send our exact location, via GPS coordinates, to friends and family, along with text messages and images. And my tool of choice to do just that is a Garmin GPS unit.
These Garmin GPS devices are lightweight, versatile, and can save your life in the backcountry. I would not leave on another fishing or hunting trip without one.
Over the past few years I’ve tested two of these units, the Garmin inReach MINI and the Garmin inReach MESSENGER. I can not accurately articulate how much more secure I feel in the woods and on the water when I’m carrying one of these devices. With a simple click of a button I can send an SOS, via easy connection from the unit to a satellite, which beams the message back to authorities. Via text messaging through the same sequence, I can reach out to family, friends, and authorities and provide my exact location, so that people could find me. This also is a key feature if I put down an elk or a deer and I’m far from my vehicle and need help getting it out. I can also receive text messages from people who want to reach me. And I can do all of this outside of cell service, via that connection with a satellite.
There are more perks: when needed I can check in on the health of a parent or one of my kids and make sure that everything is ok, which offers peace of mind. In fact, there are occasions when I would not have gone hunting or fishing if I did not have the ability to reach out and make sure things were good.
There is a fun factor, too. I prefer to be unplugged when hunting and fishing, and I am not a full on social media nut, but I have to admit it’s cool to let people know what you are seeing in the woods, and what you might have hooked on the water. I mean, when you hook into and either land or lose a steelhead, you want to tell someone, don’t you?
If you take your fishing and hunting seriously, especially if you are hardcore and hike in to remote locations, a Garmin GPS system is a no-brainer. It can send an SOS, send and receive text messages and images, and recored and receive 30-second long voice messages. Mostly, it delivers peace of mind in the backcountry.
Truth be told, I have not used the most updated version of a Garmin MESSENGER. The new one is called the MESSENGER Plus and comes at a higher cost of entry, meaning it will set you back $500 for your initial investment instead of $250 to $299 for the original MESSENGER, which is what I own. That extra $300 gives you more features, the most notable being the ability to send and receive images, 30-second voice recordings, and text messages up to 1,600 words, a big improvement over the former limit of 160 words. This allows more detail when needed. The Messenger Plus also provides a much needed extended battery life, with the ability to go weeks without a new charge.
That’s important because where I fish and hunt, I go minimalist with gear. I usually wear a backpack and I try to go as light as possible. The MINI and the MESSENGER raced through their batteries and necessitated bringing a power bank along for recharging. Add to that a cell phone, which allows you to text and share images through a Garmin app, and you start packing on the weight. You can leave the cell phone behind and simply send pre-determined texts, such as I am OK, or Coming home soon, etc. But being that limited isn’t as much fun.
All of these Garmin units also provide provide trackback ability. That means you can turn on that function and the device records you movement. This significantly decreases the risk of getting lost. Don’t know where you are? Just hit the trackback and follow your path. You can also place waypoints along your route so you can get back to exact locations . . . where you found some fish, where you dropped that elk, where you parked your rig, where you saw those grouse, where you think you dropped that fly box or grunt tube. I know when the weather sets in that trackback ability is a godsend.
Overall, Garmin’s Messenger, Mini, and Messenger Plus are awesome tools. Again, I can’t tell you how much more secure I feel in the woods and on the water with these devices. That sense of security translates to a more rewarding experience, and opens up travel options you may not have chosen otherwise. Life is precious. Communicating with friends and family essential. These tools allow that. I won’t go into the woods again without one.
Want a more detailed description of the new MESSENGER Plus? Read Rachael Schrutz’s review in Gear Junkie, here: https://gearjunkie.com/outdoor/hunt-fish/garmin-inreach-messenger-plus-review