PITTSBURGH — While door-to-door campaigning in 2019, Dan DeMarco, president of the Ross Board of Commissioners, had several residents ask, "What are you going to do about the deer?"

Six years later, after the Board banned residents from feeding white-tailed deer and rolled out managed archery hunts, he said, there are still too many deer.

"...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Pat McGowan was already on the road at 5 one morning last November when he received a call that a boat had overturned on Leech Lake and hunters were in the water.

A Department of Natural Resources conservation officer since 2008, and a longtime duck hunter himself, McGowan knew the lake was frigid and that no one could last long...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Only if President Donald Trump and Gov. Tim Walz squared off over a Department of Natural Resources plan to lower Minnesota’s walleye limit could the proposal be more controversial than it already is.

But even those political rivals couldn’t add more sparks to a fisheries management proposition that already is sizzling among...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Some 60,000 turkey hunters are expected to head out into farms, fields and woods across Minnesota last week in the hopes of hearing the scratchy, echoing cry of a tom and calling one in. Spring turkey hunting season, which ends May 31, has begun.

Turkeys, which were once completely wiped out of Minnesota and nearly all of the ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota anglers who want to fish anytime soon are still going to need paper licenses despite last year’s assurance by the Department of Natural Resources that outdoors licenses and registrations would go digital well before opening day.

The agency has been working on the $3.5 million project since 2021 and last year hired a ...Read more

PITTSBURGH — Black bears, deer, bobcats and other wildlife used to cross Route 220 in the forests near State College, sometimes to their detriment and that of motorists.

When the I-99 extension replaced that section of Route 220 with five wildlife underpasses, animal and car collisions dropped from nine animal deaths in 2009 to one in 2010, ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — At his cabin about three hours north of the Twin Cities, Alan Page carries on a tradition that he and his late wife, Diane Sims Page, started more than a decade ago: tapping maple trees and making gallons of sweet, sticky syrup.

The former Minnesota Supreme Court justice and Hall of Fame NFL football player continues to make the...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Last week, I wrote about birders, bikers and hikers and how they’ve been getting a free ride in many instances on the backs of hunters (and anglers) who have borne the brunt of conservation funding in Minnesota.

I focused on the purchase and maintenance of the more than 1,500 state wildlife management areas (WMAs) in Minnesota...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — The first time Frank Hubert Jr. caught the New Jersey state record bowfin he figured he’d have to kill the beloved, air-breathing fish to prove it, so he took a nice picture and released his catch back into the swamps.

That behemoth bowfin weighed 13 pounds, 12 ounces by Hubert’s scale, easily besting the 2017 record of 11 ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — In a few weeks, some 200 Minnesota birders will flock to the Salt Lake Wildlife Management Area (WMA) in Lac qui Parle County near the South Dakota border.

This will be the 47th celebration of Minnesota’s oldest birding festival, and this year’s hosts will include the Minnesota Ornithologists’ Union, the Minnesota River ...Read more

PHILADELPHIA — Trout can get carsick.

That’s why millions of rainbow, golden, brook and brown trout have been crisscrossing Pennsylvania in large trucks on empty stomachs for the last month. They’re parked outside Sheetz, Rutter’s and a few Wawas while drivers grab a coffee, use the bathroom and do a fish check. They’re at rest stops ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — In August 2023, Gordon and Jennifer Fothergill were at the Itasca County Fair in Grand Rapids, Minn., when Jennifer’s phone rang.

She could tell by the area code that the call was from Alabama, where their son, Easton, was a college student and a budding professional bass angler.

A standout bass fisherman at Grand Rapids High...Read more