A good grump not wasted: Do TV outdoor show hosts ever smile?

Not much is happening today because it's too hot to exercise the Labs and it's too far to travel to the gun range just to go brass-picking (more on that subject some other time).

What's more the archery shop where I ordered a spare string for my now-no-longer-made Horton Vision Crossbow didn't come in as promised. And the shop's archery expert won't be in until Wednesday.

So I'm unhappy, and when I am unhappy I become, well, surly.

I just wished others wouldn't, however.

I'm talking about today's television outdoors hosts and the way their mugs appear in various outdoor magazine adverts, or advertisements.

Considering these guys and gals get paid to catch and kill things all over creation, enjoy the fawning attention of fans, and hunt plus fish with the latest in gear, they ain't got no right to look so sour-pussed.

In the most recent Peterson's Hunting magazine copy I have is an advert for the Sportsmans Channel corral of TV hunting hosts.

You think these grungy-looking, foul-tempered-appearing gentlemen had learned a thing or two from the days when their mothers took out the Instatmatic camera and shot a photo of their first day of school.

In fact, I'll do you one better.

Go visit the Sportsmans Channel's web page. You'll see a whole line-up of grumpy old men. Even Ron Spomer appears to be suffering from an infected wisdom tooth.

And that Brian Quaca, a.k.a., “Pigman,” scowls so serious-like that I swear he must quaff a pitcher of cider vinegar when he wakes up. And maybe even before he goes to bed.

Digging a little deeper this dark-cloud persona appears on the faces of a couple of the network's female hosts as well.

Geeze, are these hosts THAT unhappy with their lot in life where they must grimace with the look of having had to eat all their vegetables first before being photographed?

Now, not all of the hosts' promotional photos were sullied by frowns. Most it seems, but not all.

“Priefert's Backwoods Bloodline's” co-host Dace “Bossman” Henry is seen wearing a respectable smile; something the show's other co-host, Eddie “El Presidente” Priefert, could stand to use as an example.

Of course such thoroughly unnecessary stern dispositions aren't entirely new. Maybe it's the in genes.

I recall a few years back watching a well-known host of some well-known archery television outdoors show. The guy makes this pretty cool shot on a deer, a white-tail, if I recall correctly.

Only the moment of exuberance is wasted when the host turns to the camera and says through clutched teeth “Now that's what I'm talking about.”

It's a deer, for crying out loud; you didn't declare war. Any other (normal) hunter would have been doing cartwheels had he or she taken a book-class animal.

And I guess I could go on about how the vast riot of TV outdoors show hosts are letting themselves be photographed in less than flattering hygienic condition, too.

One supposes I could thus address how slimy, dirty, and unshaven (presumably just the male hosts) appear in the adverts; something that is a no-no when actually trying to hunt an olfactory-endowed white-tail, elk, moose, bear, or whatever.

Maybe, but I won't.

Seems I've gone and got my own peevishness out of my system. Nothing like a good grump to do that, too.

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net