Without You, We’re Toast…

At the high rate of speed this planet is traveling, there is no telling what GON will look like a decade from now. Will GON be delivered through the air waves and show up in your living room as a holographic projection? I wouldn’t laugh too long. Been to the airport lately and seen that floating “no guns beyond this point” image?

My soul belongs down at the old school yard. I’ve got friends there, too. Is that Daryl Gay on the monkey bars? Many a day I’d like to tie a millstone around my electronic devices and throw them into the deepest ocean and then paint my fingertips with newsprint.

As I sit under that 100-year-old shady oak in the school yard, reality crashes down like a falling acorn to the noggin. In the media biz, you got to keep up or go find something else to do. However, at the current rate of change, it’s a full-time job just trying to keep up with what works and what won’t.

GON cohort Daryl Kirby mentioned it last month, and I’ll add that it’s encouraging to see a younger crowd filling a few full-time seats at the GON think tank in Watkinsville. With my brain now more than a half century in service, I don’t have much extra when it comes to pondering about Facebook algorithms or whether a submitted video from a Lake Blackshear bass story should be released as a post, story or reel… Like it or not, those are now important things to consider if you’re going to be successful when sharing content, which is what we did when we started in 1987, and what must go on.

While change is here and needs to be embraced, I’ve always said there are some constants at GON that will stick around. While it’s true that these constants will be presented to you on different platforms in coming years, the meat of those constants will remain the same.

On top of that list is GON’s Georgia Deer Records. That list started with a scratch pad and a No. 2 pencil in 1988 in a Covington garage full of boxes containing deer score sheets from old Buckaramas.

Today, there’s more than 13,800 entries on that list, and every single entry is at GON.com/georgia-deer-records for everyone to see, anytime—not just when the October issue of GON arrives and we publish the top-10 scores from each county. That list grows nearly every day as hunters kill deer, have them scored and send their score sheets to [email protected]. That’s meat that will never change. It’s one of the foundations that continues to make GON a very viable resource to Georgia hunters.

Another GON constant is our Lake & River Records program. That started before my time, and I’ve been here since 1998, which points to the longevity of those tables. They get published in the January issue every winter. However, a few years back, we knew we had to publish those tables online if we were going to stay in the game. We checked that box, and we’ve seen fruit from it. Want to know what the bluegill record is on the Canoochee River? Well, it was broken a few weeks ago, and there’s a story about it at GON.com by Craig James. By the way, that story came out before this issue went to press announcing the news. Remember, different, and often times much quicker, platforms to share content has to be embraced to keep the needle moving forward for a company founded on monthly magazines.

When I think about these two GON constants, it’s neat to see how enjoyed they are by Georgia hunters and anglers. However, we know that without you, our GON constants have no relevancy at all. If we never had another deer or fish turned in, those lists would turn to dust and become meaningless within days.

That’s reason enough to take a few pages in this issue to celebrate the 30 new anglers who have caught and certified fish for the GON Lake & River Records program since Jan. 1, 2025. I love these guys. They know when a warm day in February turns into three in a row, they better already be on the water because its time to break records and gather white meat for the batter. There is no better time of year to fish, and our noisy phones, and social feeds… are proof.

Just because the world is spinning out of control and you’re seeing new things and new ways to share GON content, we get it—without you, we’re toast.

Be watching for continued new ways to celebrate GON and you, our constants. That young crowd in Watkinsville is probably working on the pull start to the holographic projection machine as I type…