If you're tramping a Minnesota wildlife management area (WMA) Saturday looking for pheasants on the season's first day, or following your dog on another piece of public ground or perhaps on private property, you might or might not find a limit of birds.

Regardless, take comfort in knowing that a lot of people, some of whom perhaps couldn't ...Read more

Minnesota Natural Resources Commissioner Sarah Strommen has stepped up her campaign to protect wild deer against the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) by once again halting the movement of captive deer among deer farms.

Her third emergency action against deer farms has the potential to last much longer than the previous two, and it ...Read more

Record heat. Extensive drought. "Unprecedented" wildfire conditions. By all accounts, this wildfire season could have been a disastrous one for Idaho.

By late September, about 1,200 fires had burned roughly 429,000 acres of land in Idaho during 2021 — 170,000 acres less than the average acreage burned yearly in the last decade, according to ...Read more

PITTSBURGH — A Steller's sea eagle that escaped from the National Aviary was sighted Thursday near North Park. The bird was last seen heading north with a recovery team on its tail.

After spending a few days hopping around the North Side, the big bird spread its six-foot wings and flew to Riverview Park in Perry North. Thursday, Aviary staff ...Read more

GRAND MARAIS, MINN. — Santiago, the protagonist in Hemingway's novel "The Old Man and the Sea,'' was a fisherman with a long run of tough luck, 84 days without a catch. Yet his knowledge of fish and how to pursue them carried him through the drought, and ultimately he hooked the marlin of a lifetime.

Pete Harris is like that.

And he's not.

...Read more

IN WEST CENTRAL MINNESOTA — On the wall of a duck camp here is a framed essay entitled, "What is a duck hunter?'' By turns the dissertation is corny and insightful, blarney and straight truth.

But one sentence sums up the type of person who shows up on opening day of a Minnesota duck season even when the odds of bagging a limit of birds are ...Read more

In 2020, Pittsburgh's rivers were giving up catfish at a rate that had been growing for five years. Forty-pound flatheads were taken. The biggest caught in the Pittsburgh region weighed more than 50 pounds.

"The fishing is better this year," said Tim Reddinger, an experienced flathead hunter and owner of the Reddi Bait fishing shop near the ...Read more

Resilient as bald eagles are, they are no match for wind turbine blades, whose spinning tips can reach speeds of up to 200 mph.

Intent on keeping the two apart, a team of University of Minnesota researchers with expertise in wildlife behavior, neuroscience and mechanical engineering is continuing its work to find solutions through what bald and...Read more

Loral I Delaney, the world champion trapshooter and renowned dog trainer who with her husband, Chuck, owned Armstrong Ranch Kennels in Ramsey, died Sunday after battling breast cancer for more than two years.

She was 83.

Delaney was born in the home where she lived nearly her entire life — on the grounds of Armstrong Ranch, her parents' ...Read more

DULUTH, Minn. – Until recently, the cold, pristine waters of Lake Superior have not been ideal habitat for harmful algae blooms. But with warming waters and changing precipitation patterns, the potentially hazardous pond scum is becoming more common on the big lake.

This year at least six algae blooms were reported on the western arm of Lake ...Read more

"I just enjoy watching the kids. Their smiles are the payback.''

Such were the words the other day of Fred Froehlich, describing why for some 40 years he has enjoys mentoring young hunters — a critical role for established hunters if the pastime is to continue at present participation levels, more or less.

"To continue the legacy of hunting,...Read more

Stocked trout are paid for by the anglers who use them, but Pennsylvania's wild trout are a natural resource owned by every state resident. The Fish and Boat Commission has proposed to expand its lists of Wild Trout Waters and Class A Wild Trout Streams, separate designations that have different impacts on waterways.

Wild Trout Waters are ...Read more

Fifty-five miles out in the Gulf of Mexico, Rosibel Molina slid off the back of a pink boat into the blue-green water. She steadied her spear gun.

“Remember, we saw that shark here yesterday,” Molina said to her teammate, Melody Engle, who was also entering the water.

Molina wasn’t afraid. She’d come face-to-face with a 7-foot ...Read more