the outdoors

The firearms deer season started in most of Minnesota on Nov. 7.  In the southwest part of the state it runs for 11 days.  Other regions have different dates and season lengths. I am a pretty serious deer hunter but have not harvested a deer in over 30 years. This by no means indicates that I have skipped the opportunity to buy a license and take part in the hunt for any of those three decades. I…

In previous columns I have advised keeping a cell phone in your pocket and telling others where you were going to hunt in case of an emergency. And I’ve also written about falling on a stick and ending up in the emergency room. Well, I have a different story that happened just a few weeks back that makes this all the more important. I hope my bad luck can drive home to you how important it is to…

For nearly 40 years I’ve purchased a deer license, but in that time I’ve harvested only about five deer. That’s because I get more enjoyment from watching others being successful than harvesting a deer for my personal use. Last year alone on a property I own, I mentored five kids 12 years of age or younger to their very first successful deer hunt. That makes my day and my season a success. One of…

So the opening weekend of the Minnesota pheasant season is here and gone and it took until 8 a.m. Monday morning for my phone to ring with questions regarding hunting etiquette on public lands. For sure there are different common-sense rules when it comes to interacting with other hunters who all want to hunt on the same parcel of public land at the same time. The recommendations that follow are…

I have been fortunate to be able to hunt upland birds all around the Upper Midwest for about the last 20 years. Many hunters will hunt in some years and skip other years if the bird numbers are not as high as they wished. There is lots of competition for time in the fall. There is great fishing, bow and gun hunting for deer, and ice angling in the later parts of November and beyond. I love doing…

It was almost 35 years ago that I attended my first Pheasants Forever volunteer meeting on a Thursday night in January. I was about 26 years old. I had twins at home that were about a year old. It was mainly a bunch of older white guys all talking about what they could do to increase the number of pheasants so hunting them would improve. I spent my first 15 years with that outfit in the generic…

I recently welcomed home my new puppy Ghost, a 7-week-old black Labrador puppy who is the son of my oldest dog, Tracer. Many people told me just how bad the first few weeks with a new puppy are. They are not totally off base. A new puppy that has spent the past seven weeks with his six other brothers and sisters now has to find out what being all alone is like. The reason that most puppies are…

When I wrote about this subject matter 15 years ago for the first time, I almost got my head ripped off. Letters to the editor were a regular occurrence. Minnesota had not had a morning dove season for many decades, and in 2014 that opportunity was made available again by the Minnesota legislature. I had watched my dad hunt these plentiful birds in South Dakota as a kid, and I made a great bird…

My new Labrador puppy recently joined our family that already includes three Labradors at my house. They all live inside and are all topnotch pheasant hunting dogs. They are Tracer, age 8, Sarge, age 6, and Raider, age 4. My new puppy is called Ghost. My son served in the United States Marine Corp and we have had a bunch of dogs over the years with names coming from a military background. We…

As July races by, I was thinking that in only a few weeks I will be back on the road at sunrise for four days on four routes across the county that I live in. I waited for more than 20 years to have the opportunity to participate in the Minnesota DNR’s August roadside count program. This is a program that has been in existence since 1955. Wildlife personnel and members of the Minnesota…

The Fourth of July should have every American thinking about our independence and those who made sacrifices to keep America free. I am not sure that an ever-growing percentage of our population still keeps those thoughts at the top of the list for this national holiday. As a kid growing up, I remember that almost every neighborhood would be plastered with American flags waving in the wind up and…

I was kidding my girlfriend, Cindy Scott, about how excited she would be when the new puppy shows up at our house on or about the 20th of July. She has never house-trained a dog before, and I was really piling it on when I said how much fun it would be. House training a puppy is not all that hard, but for some dog owners it is just a miserable task. If this is difficult for you, then all I have…

Does anybody know what I am talking about when I call a bird a “shy poke”? This was the name I first learned from my grandpa, Arnold Bender, who lived in Leola, South Dakota. This is the nickname for the great blue heron. Another name for them is a looper. This is for their large slow wind beats. The great blue heron was the subject of many watercolor paintings by my favorite wildlife artist,…

My friend Ken Red has wildlife property in Pine County, Minnesota, where there are pheasants, wood cock, sand hill cranes, ruffed grouse and deer. I am impressed by the difference between my similar spot in southwest Minnesota and his property only 285 miles away. His game species is way more diverse than that of the grasslands in our area. One bird I really admire that’s not found here is the…

One of the most misunderstood wildlife habitat management practices is spring burning of grasslands. I get calls all the time, and have for the past 20 years, with folks all upset about wildlife management agencies burning all the nests of pheasants, ducks and other ground-nesting songbirds. I liken burning of grasslands to when you can finally get out in the spring when everybody rakes their…

Why is that sportsmen and women in general are so reluctant to speak up about conservation issues that are important to them? It is almost universal all over the county. Only when an issue is so controversial will more than the normal 2-3 percent of hunters and anglers actually get fired up and expend some energy to make their views known. It has been this way for a very long time and it is time…