While not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions, there are always things to improve upon, so I thought this week I would pen a few of my thoughts concerning things I wish to improve upon pertaining to this column and the outdoors.

Joyce and I hunt deer only during the regular firearms season, yet there is a perfectly good crossbow sitting in my closet. What sense does that make?

Every year I start my vacation just before Thanksgiving, then trap coyotes until firearms deer season. We hunt through the first weekend of gun season then I have to go back to work. If I haven’t gotten a deer by then, the rest of my deer hunting is relegated to evenings and the last weekend. This coming August I hope to retire from my fulltime job to a few part-time endeavors so “not enough time” will cease to be an excuse. So, in summary, in 2015 I plan to hang the stands, build the blinds and do whatever else it takes to spend more time deer hunting earlier in the season with a crossbow.

I try to do all my coyote trapping in the couple short weeks of vacation I have and because I try to cram it all into those couple weeks I feel like I never do it justice. Oh I catch some coyotes alright, but I feel like I’m never able to give it my best as I’m always in a hurry to catch what I can quickly and move on. That needs to change! With more time in 2015, I resolve to spread my trapping out and to do a better and more thorough job of it.

Joyce and I both hate the summer heat. Because of that, and because of the blatant fact that we are just plain poor fishermen, we do very little fishing, and consequently I write very few fishing stories. In 2015 I want to do more fishing, and consequently I plan to write more fishing stories.

For years I’ve wanted to learn to hunt geese but because much of goose season is during trapping season, trapping always gets my time. This year I want to find a good goose hunter who needs a sidekick or an apprentice and put a few geese in my freezer.

Now I guess I could end this list with all the usual New Year’s resolutions like exercise more, eat better, lose weight, work toward world peace etc. but why bother when we all know how that will go! Happy New Year from Steve and Joyce from Exploring Kansas Outdoors!

Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].