6 Kinds of Outdoor Tech You Can Buy at SCHEELS, and Which To Get First
Fish finders, ice flashers, trail cameras, rangefinders, GPS watches and Garmin handhelds: what SCHEELS stocks and what to check before you buy.
Picture a guy on a Minnesota lake in January, sitting on a bucket over an eight-inch hole, watching a screen that shows him exactly where a walleye is hovering under the ice. Ten years ago that would have sounded like overkill. Now it’s a normal Saturday.
Outdoor gear has quietly turned into a gadget category. Anglers read sonar, hunters check photos from a camera in the woods without walking out to it, and runners and golfers wear or carry more computing power than their first laptop had. SCHEELS, the sporting goods chain, stocks a surprising amount of this stuff alongside the waders and the ammo, and its electronics run deeper than most people expect from a sporting goods store.
Here are six kinds of outdoor tech you’ll find there, what each one is for, and what to look at before you buy.
🎣 Browse fish finders and chartplotters
1 and 2. Sonar for open water and for the ice
This is the biggest electronics category at SCHEELS, and the one with the most technology packed into it. The store carries Garmin, Humminbird and Lowrance units, and its fish finder pages talk about high-definition side imaging, down-scanning and real-time 3D views.
Those terms describe different ways of reading the water. Traditional sonar shows what’s directly below the boat. Down imaging gives a sharper picture of the same column. Side imaging sweeps out to the left and right, which helps you find structure and fish you’d otherwise drive right over. “Live” sonar, like Garmin’s LiveScope, shows fish moving in real time.
One detail trips up first-time buyers. Many higher-end units are sold as a head unit only. The Garmin GPSMAP 743xsv listed at SCHEELS, for instance, is a 7-inch touchscreen chartplotter with built-in ClearVĂĽ and SideVĂĽ scanning sonar and preloaded Garmin Navionics+ charts, and it’s sold without a transducer. Check the product title for “No Transducer” before you check out, and budget for the one that matches your boat.
Ice fishing gets its own electronics section at SCHEELS, which makes it the second category on this list. Garmin, Humminbird and Vexilar are among the brands, and the section includes flashers and fish finders built for the hard-water season, underwater ice fishing cameras, and the batteries that keep them running on a cold day.
If you only fish through the ice a few weekends a year, a flasher is the classic starting point. If you want to see what’s nibbling at your jig, an underwater camera is the fun upgrade.
3. Trail cameras
SCHEELS pitches these as cameras for hunting and surveillance, a way to keep an eye on your property when you’re not around. The choice that matters most is cellular or non-cellular.
A non-cellular camera saves images to a memory card, and you collect them when you visit. A cellular model sends them to your phone, so you can see what came through the food plot last night without leaving a scent trail walking in to check. SCHEELS stocks both types, with brands including Tactacam, Moultrie, Browning, Spypoint, Stealth Cam, Cuddeback, Spartan and Bushnell. It also sells the accessories that make them easier to live with, like SD card readers and solar power packs.
The store’s hunting staff published a list of their picks, naming the Tactacam Reveal X Pro 4.0 as best overall and a Muddy Outdoors three-pack as the budget choice.
đź“· Compare cellular trail cameras
4. Rangefinders, for the field and the course
A hunting rangefinder tells you exactly how far away that buck is, which is the number every shot depends on. SCHEELS lists angle compensation, high-speed readings and ballistic modes that account for bullet drop as the features to look for. Brands include SIG SAUER, Vortex, Leupold and Bushnell, and there’s a filter for rangefinding binoculars if you’d rather carry one optic instead of two.
Angle compensation is the one to prioritize if you hunt from a tree stand or in hilly country, because the straight-line distance to an animal below you isn’t the distance that matters for the shot.
Golfers get their own aisle. SCHEELS has a golf technology section with golf rangefinders from Bushnell and Vortex, plus launch monitors.
5 and 6. GPS watches and Garmin’s handhelds
On the wrist, SCHEELS carries a long run of Garmin GPS smartwatches: the Forerunner and vivoactive for runners and gym regulars, the Venu line for everyday wear, and the Instinct and fēnix adventure models for people who spend whole days outside. Its Garmin shop also lists handhelds and communicators, dog tracking and training collars, cycling computers and automotive units.
That’s a lot of choice. The easy rule is to buy for the activity you do most, not the one you might try someday.
Where to spend first
If you fish, the fish finder is the piece that changes your day the most, and it’s the one where matching the transducer to your boat matters most. If you hunt, a cellular trail camera or a rangefinder with angle compensation will make the bigger difference. Everyone else should start with a GPS watch they’ll wear daily.
Shopping SCHEELS for any of these has one more perk. The store runs a Price Match Guarantee, which covers new, in-stock items from authorized retailers at the store’s discretion, so you can buy the right unit without worrying that a better price was sitting somewhere else.
