Terrific waste of trees, anyway, f you ask me, just to make you want things you don’t know you need.  So it’s always with a certain puritanical grumpiness that I stack on Mother’s office chair the ones that she gets just about every day.

There was a time, though, long ago, that I kept a catalog beside my bed and read myself to sleep with it every night.  It was almost as fantastic as the old car catalogs; but I was young then, and anything was possible once I grew up.

It was produced by an outdoor outfitter and mail-order business in Waseca, Minnesota, named Herter’s.  The creation of George Leonard Herter and his wife, Berthe, it advertised everything from shoes and boots to tents, cooking gear, and fishing equipment.  And its unique feature was that virtually every object offered for sale was “the world’s best,” “famous,” “world’s fastest,” and other modest adjectives.  There seemed to be nothing connected with the outdoors that Herter’s wouldn’t sell.

Some of the stuff wasn’t bad, either.  I was into spin-fishing in those days, and my favorite Mepps spinners were a bit pricey.  From Herter’s I could purchase what appeared to be identical parts and assemble my own for a fraction of the price.  My imitations looked pretty good to me, but the trout of the West Branch of the Ausable could tell the difference; over the years the copies quietly rusted away in my tackle box, waiting vainly for a turn at the plate.  But I bought and wore out three pairs of ankle-high light hiking boots, so I must have liked them pretty well.  As I write this, there still are a “Herter’s famous bull cook knife” and a “world’s best fillet knife” resting in the kitchen knife drawer.  Their blades are stained black now, and they never would hold an edge, but they’ll be among my stuff when I die.  I once had a Herter’s deer call, which came with one of the funniest 45-rpm instructional records I’d ever heard.  I took it to camp quite seriously.  But when I blew it, everybody collapsed in laughter, setting my reputation back about two decades.

George Herter had some rather interesting political and scientific ideas, as well.  During the early days of the Cold War, when nuclear attack was never far from our minds, he circulated some advice for folks likely to suffer radiation poisoning.  Keep lots of tabasco sauce on hand, he advised, and if you’re exposed to radiation, or likely to be, eat lots of it for protection.  I’m not sure that was the world’s best advice, but as you can see, it was unforgettable.

Herter’s has been out of business for years now.  Its catalogs are still available on eBay, and I sometimes think it might be still nice to have one to read myself to sleep with.  The outdoor gear giant Cabela has bought the name, it appears, and sells some of its products as Herter’s.  But an era passed when George folded his tents and Berthe her world-famous cookbooks.

All is not lost, however.  As fall approaches each year, the hunting catalogs begin to come in.  Only two of them now – Bean’s and Cabela’s – and they’re still good for a late-night read.  No more rifles and pistols, but I still can get a nice Italian shotgun from Bean’s for about three grand.  I may skip that one and opt instead for a 5-megapixel night-vision digital game camera.  Just strap it to a tree in a likely spot, and next day it’ll show you what passed during the night.  Or a digital game call, loaded with 32 prerecorded predator and deep calls.  Why do I think this little $400 item would produce the same result in camp as my old Herter’s squawker?

Here’s a sack of “bio-engineered enzyme technology” items designed to mask human scent.  I wonder what the toothpaste tastes like.  Digital hearing aids, tree stands, radios, GPS units, dog beds.  The old man who first took me hunting, and was the best I’ve ever known, would snort in disdain, if he were still with us, at the range finders and tripods and spotting scopes.  His own contribution to science was a clamp that held a five-cell flashlight parallel to the barrel of his old Savage 99 for the gentle art of night hunting, prefiguring the laser sight by many decades.’

Everything now seems to be camouflaged – clothing, radios, even watch faces and bands.  Camo is the new chic.  But I can’t help but wonder why you’d want a watch face you couldn’t see.  Or why I might cover my all-terrain vehicle (if I had one) with a camouflage cover  Wouldn’t I want to find it when I needed it?  I’d have to power up my $500 metal detector and wave it around as I canvassed the woods where I thought it might be.  Two items that to me would seem very important haven’t been camouflaged, as far as I can determine – underpants and handkerchiefs.  There’s no way of knowing how many hunters, pausing briefly for refreshment or a breather, have been shot by overeager nimrods who thought they saw the flash of a deer’s white tail.

Somehow, though, the old fantasy refuses to revive for me.  All the battery-powered gear doesn’t speak to my imagination as does the simple feel of my old Winchester.  I could go into the woods with enough expensive gear to make me invisible, scentless, superauditory, and hawk-eyed.  But there’d be one important thing missing: the old urge to actually kill something.