For all of his life, Ralph Ireland has been an enthusiastic outdoorsman.

And at age 88, that adds up to a whole lot of hunting and fishing.

As recently as 2007, he was still chasing pheasants behind a couple of Labs with his son, Frank.

And he still loves to fish from his boat.

But after four-score and eight years, he would be the first to admit that his running gear isn’t quite what it once was and that the unsure, slippery footing launching and winching a boat back onto the trailer present got to be more of a chore than it was in his more youthful days.

“Launching a boat at this age got to be so much trouble that I just figured that there has to be a better way,” he said.

Providing a stable trailer platform is nothing new. A quick look through any marine catalog will reveal all sorts of devices to be attached to a boat trailer. Most are nothing more than a flat piece of metal to be bolted to the trailer.

Ireland was unimpressed.

“I have a good mind for those sorts of things ... I figured I could think of something different,” he said.

He’s not bragging. An inveterate thinker, tinkerer and inventor, Ireland’s wheels always are turning.

Several years ago, he designed and marketed shearers for cutting corrugated metal. And then there was the tool he invented that would cut and bend re-rod.

You can still see examples of the boat anchor that he designed, with flukes that could be released with a tug of the anchor rope to allow for easy retrieval, still in use on area lakes.

Over the years, he has won several awards at the annual Inventor’s Congress at Redwood Falls.

After some tinkering and fine-tuning, Ireland came up with two solutions to the challenge of scrambling around slippery boat trailer members.

The first is the Slide Step, a platform that mounts perpendicular to the trailer tongue. Unique is the ability to slide it from centered either to the left of the right, providing a stable platform from either side.