IN SOUTHEASTERN NORTH DAKOTA — Imagine yourself in this state a couple of years back. It's October, and you're in a small-town bar in a county that's home to fewer than 2,000 people.

The sun has set, dinner is a memory, and among happy talkers in the only tavern in town are a few guys from Minnesota. Decked in camouflage, these are duck ...Read more

When Luke Loewe entered the NCAA transfer portal this spring, his ideal destination had as much to do with his passion for fishing as his desire to seek a higher level of basketball.

The William & Mary grad transfer actually had his eye on Minnesota and the Land of 10,000 Lakes even before new Gophers coach Ben Johnson was hired in March.

...Read more

CONNEAUT, Pa. — Long and gray, like a big bent cigar, the muskellunge hurdled from the water, throwing its tail to the right and its head to the left in a single motion. It spit the silver lure from its mouth, splashed back into the lake and was gone.

"Muskie!" hollered Nico Summaria as his friends turned to see slack line spooling back onto ...Read more

MADELIA, Minn. — Mike Ward's German shorthaired pointer, Jax, rammed back and forth in a field of tall Indian grass before crashing into a fresh scent.

The dog stood still with intensity, nose to the ground, as two of us circled close behind. The grass fluttered, Jax pounced and a rabbit squirted away.

Fun, right? This year's opening day of ...Read more

Daniel Ritz expected to scream, shout and throw his hands in the air with joy and excitement when he reeled in his final fish. Instead, catching the Eagle Lake rainbow trout — the last catch of a monthslong journey across the West to learn about native trout species — felt almost anti-climactic.

"I was looking for a sense of closure or ...Read more

ERIE, Penn. — Jutting into Lake Erie since the end of the last ice age, the Presque Isle peninsula is an important resting and nesting place for migratory birds. More than 339 species have been identified on the 3,200-acre spit of sand, trees and marshes in Presque Isle State Park, Erie County.

On Gull Point, the peninsula's most northern ...Read more

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