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The slow economy and high fuel prices may yet have an impact on the fall hunting season, but you couldn't tell it from the crowd at the Hunters Extravaganza on Aug. 16 in Fort Worth. The show is one of three consumer hunting shows produced by the Texas Trophy Hunters Association.

More than 400 exhibitors were scattered through the spacious Will Rogers Center, but the aisles were so packed with visitors who paid $10 each for a ticket that the crowd was reduced to moving at a slow pace I've come to regard as the TTHA shuffle.

Hunting outfitters were busy ahead of the Sept. 1 opening day of dove season. Roy Wilson of Texas Best Outfitters is a Hunters Extravaganza regular who sells an array of hunting opportunities. Wilson said he's seen a slight decrease in business, but not in the dove hunting realm.

"We're booked solid for the first couple of weeks," Wilson said. "We don't have any lodge space, not even during the week. When I look around at this show, I see outfitters who haven't been here in a few years, and I suspect they're back because their business has slowed down."

Rodney Gisler of Performance Top Drives, based in Three Rivers, Texas, said business has slowed for customized Jeeps and ATVs but his crew stays busy building upscale hunting vehicles for well-heeled hunters.

Gisler's vehicles are works of art, a blend of form and function. He was displaying a top drive built on a new crew cab GMC truck. You can literally drive this rig from on top of the truck, placing the driver and passengers about 15 feet high at eye level, high enough to see over the low brush in south Texas.

Performance Top Drives are not cheap. The most expensive rig Gisler has built used a Hummer H1 for a base and cost about $200,000. All forms of hunting blinds are getting better each year, and most are getting more expensive.

There are still some bargains out there, and I'm particularly intrigued with the tent-style pop-up blinds that can be relocated in a matter of minutes. They're available in one-man or two-man models. The fabric contains human scent very effectively, and the wariest of deer don't pay much attention to these blinds if they're set up in a good, shady spot that uses native vegetation to break up the silhouette.

The tent blinds cost as little as $50. At the other end of the spectrum are blinds like the Ranch King deluxe models that are as big as the average living room and can be constructed on a 15-foot tower with stairwell entry. These things can be rigged with air and heat, refrigerators, bunks and elbow room for a crowd of hunters.

Ranch King also makes an interesting in-ground blind designed for bowhunting. The base – the part buried in the ground – is made of aluminum so it never rots. The hunter is basically hunting at ground level. I've sat in homemade versions of these sunken blinds and found them to be very effective.

Bitter Creek in Oklahoma City makes an all-aluminum model ground hunting blind that should last for many years and weighs 380 pounds.

You can't walk through one of these shows without marveling at ingenious contraptions like the Louisiana Guard Dog device that locks an ATV securely into the bed of a pickup truck via a receiver hitch on the truck and a trailer hitch on the ATV. It's hard to explain how it works, but you can see photos at www.laguarddog.com.

There was a lot of buzz at this year's Hunters Extravaganza, and most of the buzz was about the looming hunting season.