University of Minnesota researchers remain interested in the messy and, perhaps, offputting markings of a deer hunt: a gut pile.

The Offal Wildlife Watching project team wants hunters, after field-dressing their deer, to set up trail cameras for a month at the sites, which have become a window into the world of scavengers.

Over five hunting ...Read more

LAKE CHRISTINA, MINN. – The other evening, as the sun set over this 4,000-acre shallow body of water that straddles Grant and Douglas counties, Will Smith, Dan Gahlon and I were surrounded by ghosts, watching ducks.

In the middle of the lake, redhead ducks mixed with ringnecks, scattered among which were canvasbacks, while small flights of ...Read more

A bear attacked a security guard last month in the kitchen of the St. Regis Aspen Resort in Aspen, Colo.

The guard was treated for scratches on his back and later released from the hospital, but Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers were unable to safely capture the bear, according to a news release.

The security guard had been investigating ...Read more

NEAR GRACEVILLE, Minn. — The other morning, for about the 85th year running, with a two-year hiatus during World War II, brothers Henry and John Ernst hunkered alongside a shallow lake, shotguns in their hands.

Henry, 98, and John 96, are from St. Paul, and proudly so. But each year in October and November their seasonal residence is a ...Read more

Florida author and humorist Craig Pittman posted an observation to Facebook that could surprise some suburb dwellers who figured coyotes were a part of the American Southwest and the hapless foil in old “Road Runner” Looney Tunes cartoons.

“A few days back, around dusk, my wife and I turned our car into our neighborhood headed for home ...Read more

Call it a case of mistaken identity. The animal spotted earlier this month in Lehigh County, prompting Pennsylvania State Police to caution residents about a possible mountain lion sighting, was just a big feral house cat.

At 11:45 a.m. Sunday, state police were informed about a photo that had been taken from a second-story apartment window ...Read more

LINCOLN COUNTY, Minn. — Determined people settled in western Minnesota 150 years ago, including in this county, which borders South Dakota. Blizzards, mosquitoes, leaky sod huts and the grasshopper invasion of 1874 were among deterrents to homesteading here, and early residents who weren't tough enough, or stubborn enough, to withstand the ...Read more

PITTSBURGH — In Frick and Riverview parks, four deer were killed by hunters Aug. 30, the first day of a controversial archery hunt intended to reduce the city's white-tailed deer population.

Mayor Ed Gainey's office said last week that archers so far had harvested another 24 in Pittsburgh's first attempt to control its wildlife.

A limited ...Read more

KENAI NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE, Alaska — At sunrise, two biologists stood on a metal rooftop and scoped a frosty wooded landscape deep in the woods north of Sterling. It was pin-drop quiet when they spotted two cow moose in tall golden grasses along a fence line, and another close by.

Then, a clatter and rumble, the snapping of twigs, the ...Read more

BOISE, Idaho — An Idaho elk hunter shot and killed a grizzly bear that charged at him, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game said in a news release. It’s the second incident in one month in which hunters killed federally protected grizzlies in self-defense.

According to the news release, the man was hunting northwest of Henrys Lake on the ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — The number of muskrats trapped for their fur in Minnesota dropped last year to about 19,000, the lowest on record.

Biologists say a number of factors are at play in that drop, including fewer trappers. But it may also reflect the semiaquatic mammal's long-term decline in much of the country, including Minnesota, that experts say...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota pheasant hunters, some 70,000 of whom will be afield Saturday when the state's 2023 ringneck season opens with bright prospects, especially in the state's southwest and western regions, are fortunate, indeed.

In Britain, where public land is at a premium, wingshots who target pheasants pay thousands of dollars a day ...Read more

ESTES PARK, Colo. — As a crowd of onlookers gathered on a bike path along a nine-hole golf course in Estes Park on a brisk morning in late September, Rodney Ford peered through a magnifying scope attached to a tripod. He was focused on a magnificent bull elk that was sitting in the shade of pine trees on the ninth hole beside the Big Thompson ...Read more

He is a seventh-grader who loves to play hockey with his Thief River Falls, Minn., peewee hockey squad but finds time in his young life to practice shooting a .300 Weatherby Magnum hunting rifle.

That effort paid off for 13-year-old Ryker Copp of Warren, Minn., recently when he felled a nearly 1,000-pound bull elk in Caribou Township, Kittson ...Read more