MINNEAPOLIS — At 11 p.m. on a recent Saturday, Lindy Frasl put the finishing touches on the third ice-fishing wheelhouse he has built. At 20 feet, this one was bigger than the other two, but similarly outfitted, with four bunks, a TV, bathroom and small kitchen.

Five hours later, Frasl, of Brainerd, was en route to Upper Red Lake to fish for ...Read more

It would be the last hike of the season, Jessica Newton had excitedly posted on her social media platforms. With mild weather forecast and Colorado’s breathtaking fall foliage as a backdrop, she was convinced an excursion at Beaver Ranch Park would be the quintessential way to close out months of warm-weather hikes with her “sister friends.�...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota's 2020 class of 13 conservation officers are in the field in a heightened period of need for protecting the state's natural resources. Their arrival fills vacancies at field stations across the state and helps monitor the masses who've flocked in greater numbers outdoors during the pandemic.

Rodmen Smith, their boss, ...Read more

POCONO SUMMIT, Pa. — If Warren Gamaliel Harding Brown could see the hunting camp his grandson has crafted in the Poconos, he’d admire the large, stone fireplace, the taxidermied deer head, and the turkey feathers on display beside some spent shotgun shells.

The flatscreen television mounted on the wall might have surprised the late ...Read more

VERNDALE, MINN. - The fish houses are full, but nobody's landing any crappies.

Instead, diners in this central Minnesota town are reeling in chicken, steak and French fries in the parking lot outside the Pirates Den.

As the temperature last week dipped into single digits, servers hustled through the cold night bearing platters of food and ...Read more

BOISE, Idaho — Nearly a year after launching a research effort to study why moose populations in Idaho have been declining, researchers with the Idaho Department of Fish and Game are starting to get some answers.

According to a Fish and Game news release, the agency partnered with researchers from the University of Idaho to attach radio ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — When the world changed in March and most fish and wildlife workers retreated to work from home, licensing center employees at the Department of Natural Resources reported to the office to keep issuing permits of all kinds.

They kept open the machinery that fed the story of the year in Minnesota's outdoors: an unprecedented ...Read more

Like most archery season deer hunters, Craig Ihrke values his solitude in the woods. For him, above all, it's an opportunity to sit, listen, watch and absorb the natural world.

These days, because of mysterious circumstances, he wonders if his children and potential grandchildren will develop the same appreciation for the hunt. The 90 acres of ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — They could each run the 40 in 4.5 seconds, and when they ate together, or rode in a pickup alongside one another to hunt, they sat in order of their jersey numbers: Wally Hilgenberg was 58, Lonnie Warwick 59 and Roy Winston 60.

They were Vikings linebackers during the team's heyday. In one four-year stretch, 1968-1971, the ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Sarah Strommen, 46, has been Department of Natural Resources commissioner for nearly two years. In the interview that follows she discusses the effect of the pandemic on her agency's operations, the DNR's method of advocating for conservation of wetlands and roadsides, and state management of wolves, among other topics. Strommen ...Read more

DULUTH, Minn. — Whether a late-fall snow blows sideways or Lake Superior gales race up the shore, come Sunday mornings, one group of guys here is determined to get outdoors.

Tight-knit, they are men of color from the area who’ve met weekly for about three years. Nature wasn’t part of the equation at first. Instead they’d find a ...Read more

Some years back on a chilly but clear October afternoon I was in South Dakota hunting pheasants with friends. Among these were Chuck and Loral I Delaney, and Loral I as usual had a trailer full of dogs that she scattered ahead of her, a couple at a time.

A few of these were Labradors, one an English pointer, another an English setter, and ...Read more