To an old fossil like me, this collection of colored triangles all jumbled together doesn’t mean a thing. It doesn’t tell me where to find more ducks, where ol’ Thunder will fly down in the morning or even where to buy a hunting license. The danged thing looks like some kind of high-tech, low-practicality sight-in target. But I’m told it can actually do all those things and not far down the road much, much more. And the kids around NAHC HQ have me convinced we’re all going to be seeing a lot more of them, so we decrepit fossils might as well learn to get the most from them.

Here’s the scoop. What you do is pick up your smart phone (for my fellow fossils you’ll need to know that’s an iPhone, Blackberry, Droid, etc.) and go to its “application store.” There you search for “MS Tag Reader.” Or you can go “on-line” with the browser and use those clumsy thumbs to go to www.gettag.mobi. (I know this is getting to be a long list of instructions, but I promise it’ll be worth it.) Either place the app is free. Download it and install it on your wireless device.

Now you’re ready. Locate the new MS Tag Reader app icon on the screen, open it and follow the on-screen instructions. What you’ll see on the screen looks like your phone’s camera with crosshairs. Sight on the MS tag and your device will automatically reads it, or you’ll be asked to snap it like a photo. You’ll then be taken straight to whatever that the tag represents.  Could be a video or any kind of on-line media or message like a duck migration update, turkey hunting tips or even on-line hunting license sales!

If you’ve stuck with me this far, try your new app on the MS Tag up near the top of this blog. It’ll take you to a short video we put together on the recent NAHC Life Member Hunt on the Stasney’s Cook Ranch in Albany, Texas. My partner in crime is the legendary Johnnie Hudman – a fellow NAHC Life Member you’ve read about before in this blog.

In North American Hunter magazine and just about everywhere else, you’ll see these tags showing up more and more often. They’ll take you directly to features like videos and podcasts and such that there’s no way to share via ink on paper. More and more of these codes will also be showing up in ads, making it easy for you to get more information from them. On “North American Hunter TV” on Versus, you’ll bee seeing the tags, too, delivering more content than we could possibly squeeze into the half-hour show.

Maybe … just maybe … this is a new trick worth an old fossil’s time and pride to learn.