​Everybody that's been Hiking, Camping and Shooting for a while has a list of gear that they always take with them on their adventures. For some people their method of keeping track of their gear is to keep it all in one place. Others make a checklist to ensure that they have everything that they need. We do both.
 
Based on our experience the gear that you need for Hiking comes in 10 categories, Camping has 10 categories, Disaster Preparedness has 9 categories and Shooting gear comes in 17 categories:

​To make it easier for you we have updated and added downloadable PDFs of the Hiking, Camping, Disaster Preparedness and Shooting gear checklists that we use. The checklists include the types of gear that we think you need in each of these 46 categories.

Our website has all the details on the specific gear that we use (536 items from these 46 categories at last count), the reasons that we selected it and links to Amazon, or other locations, where you can buy the gear. Our gear checklists have 54 Hiking items, 122 Camping items, 123 Disaster Preparedness items and 237 Shooting items.
 
You can find these downloadable PDF checklists on our Hiking, Camping, Disaster Preparedness and Shooting pages.

​Right before the Christmas/New Year holiday season we received an email from Ada, one of the homeschooling students of Ms. Anna Lee, about a project they had been working on related to gun safety. While performing research for their project they ran across our HCS website and found the information contained on it useful. They also found an article about gun safety that had some great information – so they passed it along to us and asked that we add it as a reference to our website. So, here's an overview of the 23 October 2024 "Kids and Gun Safety" article.

As everyone that owns firearms knows – a responsibility for safety comes with the territory; when shooting at a range, when carrying for everyday safety and when storing your firearms at home. Being safe is complicated when there are children in your house. So, what’s the best approach to making sure that we protect the people that we love. Well, in our opinion, and in the opinion of the article that Ada sent us, the best approach is to be proactive and to “Empower your child with knowledge” since gun safety starts at home. It’s important to teach gun safety to your children as soon as they are old enough. That way they know the risks and what to do if they see a firearm.
 
The article details three initial main steps to take:

1. Store firearms safely
2. Use childproof locks, a lockbox, trigger lock or safe
3. Store ammunition away from firearms in a locked container

 
In addition to these three steps, it’s important to talk to your children. As the article says, “Having an open discussion with your kids about gun safety can make a difference.” Personally, we find this to be a critical step to take since our children see “make believe” firearms every day in video games, movies and TV shows. So, they need to know the reality of the risks associated with firearms and how to act around them so that they don’t think they are toys.
 
The article advocates teaching children the following three things about what to do if they find or see a gun:

1. Don’t touch it
2. Leave the area quickly
3. Tell a grown-up

 
The last two areas that the article touches on are related to “Lockdown Drills and Emergency Preparedness” and “Reporting School Safety Concerns”; great areas to teach your children about given the tragic occurrences of the past 25 years. In addition to discussing why reporting concerns about dangerous actions is so important, the article also advocates taking the following 5 steps with respect to lockdowns:

1. Provide information about what a lockdown drill is and stress the importance of taking them seriously just like they would a fire drill
2. Teach your child to stay calm since the purpose of these drills help to keep them safe
3. Talk about any fears that they have so that they can ask any questions
4. Tell them to focus on listening to and following instructions in any emergency situation
5. Practice drills like this at home, just like they will at school, so that they have the knowledge they need

 
Finally, the article lists some other good sources for information to help answer the question “Does your child know what to do if he or she finds a gun?”:

• NRA's Eddie Eagle Gunsafe Program
• National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) Project ChildSafe
• Safe Kids Worldwide
• Project Childsafe  

We’re glad that Ms. Anna Lee’s students are learning about firearms safety, and that Ada sent us the article on the topic. If you want to read the entire article that Ada and Ms. Anna Lee passed along, here’s a direct link to it: "Kids and Gun Safety”

​As with previous years, during 2024 we continuously tracked our Hiking, Camping and Shooting (HCS) website traffic. Because 2024 just ended we wanted to share some of the yearly statistics with all of you so that you can see who our readers are, where they’re located and what they read.
 
In 2024 our readership increased by 144% and came from 130 different Countries from around the world. During the year we really increased our international readership. Throughout the year 61% of our readers came from the United States and 39% came from the rest of the world. The largest concentrations outside the US were from the following 20 Countries:

​Once again, we had readers from all 50 of the United States - with the largest concentrations being in the following 20 States:

​In 2024 we saw an increase in the number of people reading our blog posts – something we like since it means that people are finding value in the original content that we generated over the year. The 35 pages and blog posts that people read the most during 2024 were:

​As with last year, since we have readers from around the world - there is constant activity on the site during the day – with no single day really seeing significantly more readers than any other time​; although there is slightly more traffic on Saturday and Sunday than the other days of the week.

​Most of our readers find us either by searching on Google (67%) or by previously having been to our website and coming directly to us (28%). A smaller percentage (5%) find us through a wide variety of other sources to include our Hiking, Camping and Shooting Facebook page. It’s interesting to note that in 2024 the number or readers coming to our HCS website directly increased by 167% from 2023, and that the sheer number of sources other than Google had a correlated decrease from 46 to 41 as readers from all over the world searched for content that our website contains.

​The majority of our users view our website from either their mobile device (50%) or their desktop computer (49%). In 2024 there was an 8% increase in the number of people reading our content on their desktop computers; perhaps due to the level of detail in our product descriptions and blog posts.

​Hopefully this data shows you that in 2024 you were once again in good company as you read through our Hiking, Camping and Shooting gear write-ups and blog posts. We hope that they gave you some information that made all of your adventures a little more fun.
 
Wherever you’re from, we’re glad that you stopped by to look over our HCS website and look forward to seeing you again in 2024 as we grow even larger and add more gear write-ups, blog posts and adventure photos.