The immediate and strong negative reaction to the idea of changing the focus of the MacKenzie Environmental Center from youth environmental education to training mentors for trapping, angling, and hunting was encouraging.
Remember the public trust doctrine? It was probably discussed during hunter education class.
Many outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen, like most folks, are not much into making resolutions for a new year. Neither am I.
Anything that disturbs the earth and environment as much as mining does needs to be thought through thoroughly.
Everything seems to be pointing to one of the better spring turkey seasons Wisconsin has had in some time. The excitement dates back to last May and June when recruitment conditions, primarily the weather, were near-perfect in many areas of Wisconsin. Brood counts and other numbers associated with young birds continued to confirm things were going the turkey population’s way….
By now many who have an interest in things environmental have at least heard of Tom Heberlein’s new book, “Navigating Environmental Attitudes” (Oxford University Press, 2012).
A spokesperson for a police department recently reported on the news that a number of live bullets were found on a school playground. Say what? The only way one could have live bullets is if they were flying through the air, and then we’d never be able to see them. When are we going to learn that words have meaning. …
The door to changing deer seasons and rules opened with the "lesser implement" season that allows deer hunters to use archery equipment, crossbows, shotguns, muzzleloaders, rifles and handguns during the nine-day gun deer season, all under the authority of their gun license. The only reason one might find fault with this idea, introduced in 2012, was the complexity of tossing…
Some interesting issues were brought to the forefront during the 2012 gun deer season when two white deer were legally killed by hunters in Sauk County. It’s easy for news reporters to hype a store like this because there are plenty folks willing to give energy-charged interviews. There are reasons why white and albino deer can be hunted in some…
You’ve heard the complaints. “We don’t have any new trout anglers or deer hunters because the regulations are too complicated. We’d need a Philadelphia lawyer to interpret them for us.” Well, guess what. Some of us, through our favorite politician, the one we contributed heavily to during the last campaign, has helped us get a new regulation on the books…
While talking to a farm manager regarding an article about pheasant hunting recently, drought, short grasses for bird cover, and poor wild mushroom crops became an interesting sideline. This manager was lamenting not finding a single hen-of-the-woods mushroom this year. She loves this fall fungal growth form, which often appears year-after-year next to certain oak trees. She wasn’t alone in…
This year in particular – because wild turkey populations are showing the impacts of a very good recruitment year – it is time to reevaluate our general attitude about hunting this large game bird when the leaves are falling. Or how about when there’s snow covering the ground? One only needs to look at the success percentage, a paltry 9.9…
An outdoorsman called the other evening with his thoughts about ginseng harvesting in Wisconsin. He was disappointed that he had been seeing “all these glossy photographs,” of ginseng in local newspapers. His frustration was that the print media, and those who write about outdoorsy things, were showing everyone what the plants look like and these young people, or new diggers,…
Rare is the person who is so set in his or her ways, those who raise their voice every time a certain topic comes up, but then surprises us by being won over by our way of thinking. In other words, why would someone be swayed by someone else’s ideas? That’s asking them to give in to two things, not…
Now that the James Kroll report on Wisconsin deer management has been filed, and the bills paid, we’re beginning to understand that much of the problem was and is – us. In listening to the three consultants (James Kroll, David Guynn Jr. and Gary Alt) at one of the town meetings last April (Mount Horeb), I was most impressed with…
Maybe we – outdoors writers and media – should take some of the responsibility for there being so much angst swarming around Wisconsin’s deer hunting and managing issues, especially during the last decade. Seems it’s just too difficult for a writer to be unbiased when it comes to deer hunting (management), just as it probably is for most gun deer…
Deer registration stations are what makes an outdoors writer’s job more interesting, easier, and a whole lot of fun. There are all kinds of people there, many of whom killed deer, some who do not. The Department of Natural Resources employees are usually there. I could go on and on, but for many of these same reasons that I do…
We rarely forget to feed and provide water to our hunting dogs and family pets. What about some respect for special trees, shrubs and other plants we’ve spend money, time and energy planting? Some counties in southern Wisconsin, and elsewhere, continue to be short on normal precipitation, by as much as five inches since 2012 began. Still worse, most of…
Thinking about a mid-September ruffed grouse hunt is enough to take some of the sting off summer’s hot, humid days. But the news, fully anticipated for the last three years, reported a 25 percent decline in the roadside monitoring survey of drumming male birds. Still, there was some encouragement because biologists suggested that the weather this past spring was good…
Whether we know it or not, if we hunt deer in one of the 32 counties where baiting and feeding is prohibited , we are (or should be) part of a research project to study this issue and practice. This is particularly true in northwest Wisconsin. Recently four counties — Barron, Burnett, Polk and Washburn — were added to the…
A formal notice was issued by the WDNR this week reminding ATV and UTV users, but only those whose machines are registered as public use machines, that the machines are required to have a back “license” plate by July 1, 2012. This requirement does not apply to machines used on private property or farm use machines. But if someone takes…
It seems we cannot get away from playing the blame game, suggesting they, not us, are the problem. We have seen the blame game in politics for longer than we care to remember. Tell everyone who will listen about all of the wrong things the other guys and gals have been doing. But leave us out of the guilty category….
An ongoing discussion, after a number of very warm days in March, has been whether or not morel mushrooms will be plentiful, slim picking, or completely absent. The questions have not been completely answered for Wisconsin except these mushrooms began appearing in late March. I found some March 29, which were two to three days old. By April 1, a…
We’ve become accustomed to expecting many major plant and animal events to be prompted by photoperiod. Plants flower and animals mate based on increasing or decreasing day length, it seems. But what about March 2012? March was so atypical that events were weeks ahead of a normal schedule and sequence of events. Will this early spring have any impact on…
Wisconsin’s spring turkey hunters will face a few changes in how things are to be done when it comes to hunting wild turkeys this year. The six hunting periods are seven days, instead of five, Wednesday through Tuesday. No big deal to most hunters. We’re likely to see little impact on the success rates by hunters, or even total hours…
It is easy to find a newspaper story about hunters doing or acting poorly, doing things that reflect negatively on all of us, or endangering the lives of others. We owe it to the greater community to make everyone aware of some of the positive, ethical acts many hunters do routinely, just as we need to publicize unlawful acts. The…
