May 12, 2008
'Country lifestyle' site not unseen
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Social networking in the outdoors usually starts with borrowing bug spray or scrounging coffee from someone with a thermos or getting a jump-start for a dead-as-a-doornail battery.
Sometimes, it's interactive: telling the person who's snoring to shut up or being told yourself.
Denny Reid, a hunter and farmer from Dorchester County, and his friends figured there had to be a better way.
Borrowing from sites such as MySpace and Facebook, Reid and Co. launched CamoSpace.com last August to give hunters and anglers a free place to swap photos, videos, tips and tall tales (Hey, it wouldn't be social networking without some fibbing).
Of course, social-networking sites for sportsmen and women aren't exactly new. Brandon White's Tidalfish.com has been at it for seven years and has collected nearly 43,000 registered members, most of whom live along the Eastern seaboard. The site claims more than 3 million page-views a month.
With about 4,800 subscribers signed up in seven months, Reid, 33, isn't there yet, but he has his game plan firmly in place. CamoSpace.com will be a family-friendly site. No babes in skimpy faux-camo fur. No potty-mouth comments.
"Really, the country lifestyle is what we're promoting," says Reid, a 1996 University of Maryland graduate. "Eighty-five percent of the [subscribers] come back every day. Another 10 percent come back about every three days."
The CamoSpace.com community has been growing with every appearance Reid makes at outdoors shows from Harrisburg, Pa., to Birmingham, Ala. TV hosts such as Michael Waddell have been giving CamoSpace.com plugs on ESPN and other outdoors outlets.
Now, advertisers looking for a targeted audience are catching on, too.
By necessity, Reid has turned his attention from growing a Web site to raising crops on his 2,500-acre farm in Rhodesdale, where he plants soybeans, wheat, beans and watermelons. In his downtime, however, he thinks about the next big push.
So far, the site has attracted anglers and hunters, but Reid doesn't want to stop there, envisioning a day when campers and paddlers and other outdoors enthusiasts log on to share tips, photos and videos.
(By the way, Reid caught the 42-inch rockfish in the picture last spring off Taylors Island with Capt. Chad Muse.)
"We don't want to keep anyone out," Reid says. "We want everyone in love with the great outdoors."
According to a Natural Resources Police report, it was dark and the running lights on his boat weren't on when he was stopped in the hours before the start of the season March 15.
I'm sure the Chestertown waterman (innocent until proven guilty, natch) has an explanation, and I can't wait to report it. For his sake, let's hope it's better than: "Your honor, it's hard to see those fish, let alone the calendar, in the dark."
Joiner, 29, was charged just 10 days after the end of his one-month probation for failing to mark his gill nets in February. The fisherman was also fined $200 for setting unattended gill nets.
But Joiner's day in court is just the warm-up act for what follows May 15 in Talbot County District Court.
I can't wait to hear Joseph Bruce Janda Jr. explain to Judge William Adkins III why he came into the dock at Wittman Landing at 5:10 a.m. on March 9 with no lights on his boat. Or explain how those 12 1/2 bushels of oysters - many of them undersized - sneaked into the cabin.
Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun
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