Explore the Northern Wilds
A pair of winter-proof slip-on boots are invaluable. Bogs Footwear’s Classic Ultra Mid combines a rubber boot with Neo-Tech uppers and insulation. A slip-resistant outsole is designed for snow and ice.
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This year, it was hard to tell if Minnesota was holding a firearm deer season or a horse race. The media focuses on dead deer, also known as “the harvest,” in reports of the hunting season. Many headlines during the hunt compared of how the current season’s kill matched the previous year.
In the 2011 horse race, hunters were slow coming out of the gate opening weekend, with the Duluth News-tribune reporting the kill was “Down by a Third.” The low death toll was blamed on windy weather, which apparently affected deer movements. Hunters gained some ground after the winds subsided and narrowed the harvest gap after the second weekend of the season, leading the Minneapolis Star-Tribune to report the “Harvest Stages a Rally.”
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The day began as a real drag. The previous afternoon, I’d killed a whitetail doe a long way from the truck. Too far, it turned out, to make it out with the deer before dark. My flashlight was in another jacket at home. So I pulled the doe beneath the boughs of a balsam tree to hide it from the ravens. My plan was to come back and get it in the morning.
The next day I started into the woods at daybreak. The deer was about a half-mile from the truck. I lashed it to a sturdy toboggan so it slid easily across the bare ground. In fact, the drag really wasn’t a drag—until I reached the ravine. We have some topographic ups and downs along the North Shore and this particular ravine is so steep and deep you can call it a canyon. Doe in tow, I had to traverse it to reach the truck.
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The recent announcement that Dave Epperly will no longer serve as director of the Minnesota DNR’s forestry division is discussed in the current issue of the Timber Bulletin, the bimonthly magazine of the Minnesota Timber Producer’s Association. Epperly and Forestry stalwart Bob Tomlinson were reassigned as part of what TPA executive vice president Wayne Brandt describes as “sweeping changes” within the Forestry Division. Although Epperly and Tomlinson’s reassignment received limited media coverage, it is the first ripple in the political pond we’ve seen from DNR commissioner Tom Landwehr.
And it’s a large pond. While many folks think the DNR is mostly about hunting, fishing and outdoor recreation, the agency manages millions of acres of forests. Timber harvested on state lands is the single largest source of wood for Minnesota’s forest products industry. Needless to say, the industry is a large and influential DNR constituency, especially in the north. It’s also a constituency that feels it was blindsided by the Landwehr administration’s proposed changes to the Forestry Division. Not only was the forestry constituency unaware change was in the offing, but most were satisfied with Epperly’s leadership.
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Back in the early 1980s, a Minnesota outdoor writer named Steve Grooms wrote a book with the somewhat presumptuous title of Modern Pheasant Hunting. While Midwesterners had been hunting pheasants, which were introduced from Asia, for about 50 years, a changing agricultural landscape was also changing pheasant habitat and hunting.
Clean farming techniques left little cover for the birds. Nesting and winter habitat, vital to pheasant survival, were in short supply. Suburban sprawl gobbled up lands once open to hunting. In many traditional pheasant hunting states--Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Michigan and even Minnesota--pheasant populations plummeted. Bird numbers reached new lows even in the pheasant-rich Dakotas.
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Many Minnesotans own canoes. But rare is the canoer who paddles a birch bark canoe. Rare still are bark canoe builders. Count Talon Stammen of Grand Forks, North Dakota among that rarest breed.
I met Talon, who is a high school senior, last summer when he visited Grand Marais to attend a birch- bark canoe-building class at the North House Folk School. I was impressed with this quiet young man who deeply appreciates Nature and working with his hands. At the time, he intended to spend the rest of the summer at his family’s island retreat at Lake of the Woods, working on his canoe.
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With due respect, Howard Hedstrom of Hedstrom Lumber in Grand Maraisis at an age where he really ought to be thinking about retirement rather than embarking on new endeavors. But we are living in times when anyone concerned about natural resource conservation—be they duck hunter or a lumberman—has to step up to the plate to make sure federal conservation programs are not savaged or eliminated by a deficit-reducing Congress.
Hedstrom’s primary concern is the timber management on national forests, which provides raw material for businesses such as his. He says 20 years ago, the national forests had annual timber sales totaling 12 billion board feet. Currently, the annual sales are 2.7 billion board feet.
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The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced Endangered Species Act protection is not warranted for the northern leopard frog in 19 states, including Minnesota. The decision was based on a 2006 petition to protect leopard frogs in the western U.S., where their numbers have greatly declined. Although testing showed some genetic differences among northern leopard frog populations across their range, the Service concluded that a frog is a frog. Northern leopard frogs remain common enough in the eastern U.S. to preclude Endangered Species protection.
Be that as it may, the fact the Service even considered Endangered Species protection for northern leopard frogs ought to be big news, because they are (or were) one of the most common amphibians in the northern U.S. A medium-sized green or brown frog with black spots, the leopard frog is likely to be seen near water or grassy areas. They are also the frogs commonly used for dissection in high school biology classes.
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Recently, Minnesota Outdoor News columnist Ron Schara wrote that when it comes to understanding the cause of northeastern Minnesota’s mysterious moose decline, wolves may be the elephant in the room. He points to Montana, where a wolf hunting season began this year, in part because researchers there believe wolf predation on elk calves is causing elk numbers to decline. In Minnesota, where more wolf research has occurred than just about anywhere else in the world, Schara thinks scientists have ducked the predation issue.
That may be true, but wolves are not the only predators hiding behind an elephant. Right next to them are hunters. Biologists say the annual harvests from the state and tribal moose hunts are statistically insignificant. In contrast, as I drove to work this morning, I heard a radio announcer on the local Grand Marais station say if the population decline continues at its present rate, moose will nearly disappear from Minnesota by 2020. When I reached Grand Marais, I saw some hunters clustered around truck toting a moose at the local registration station. I don’t know much about statistics, but the audio and visuals of my morning drive made a significant impression on me.
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Abby wanted to go hunting. Although it is difficult for the old dog to even climb into the cab of my small pickup, much less go for more than a short walk, she still enjoys spending an afternoon in the grouse woods. She doesn’t seem to mind that she must stay in the truck while the young dog and I walk in the woods. Like many old hunters, she just likes being there.
It was the weekend, so the forest roads were bustling with bird hunters, leaf-lookers, moose hunters and cabin-goers driving everything from foreign sedans to pick-ups pulling big trailers to all-terrain vehicles. Despite all the traffic, hardly anyone was actually in the woods. These days, very few people venture more than 100 yards from a parked vehicle. My dog and I are among the few.
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The Sport-Brella Chair is smart new version of an old standard—the fold-out sport chair. Although it is about the same size and weight as a standard chair, it has an attached swivel umbrella to shield you from the sun.
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The Triple Aught Design Valkryie Hoodie is akin to a good pair of cargo pants: durable, versatile and packed with pockets. The fleece jacket comes in both men’s and women’s styles.
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Adjusting the Leki Cressida Aergon SpeedLock AS trekking poles is a snap. You simply flip out the two blaze-orange clips, extend the pole to your desired height (the range is 65-125 cm), and flip the clips back in place to lock it.
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When I received the Mountain Hardware Kanza, I was surprised by its light weight. The size medium weighs in at just over three pounds and offers 55 liters (3,350 cu. in.) capacity, yet manages to include the adjustability and features of a heavier pack.
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Are you going duck hunting this weekend? The September 27 openingdate, a week earlier than the traditional first Saturday in October, is intended to give hunters more opportunities to kill ducks. Early migrants, such as blue-winged teal and wood ducks, are more likely to be available to hunters, because they head south when cold winds begin to blow.
To make it easier to kill birds, the DNR relaxed bag limit restrictions, increasing the mallard hen bag from one to two and the wood duck limit from two to three. The total daily bag limit is six ducks, the most allowed under the federal waterfowl harvest guidelines.
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Sometimes you hear about a place and it sticks with you. I'm not sure where I first heard of the Elk River, but I've long wanted to fish this trout stream in the Canadian Rockies, one of the few that still supports native populations of westslope cutthroat trout and bull trout. In a lifetime of chasing trout, I'd never caught either of these western fish. It was time to do so.
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On a recent trip to the northern Rockies, Vikki and I made an overnight stop in Helena, Montana, to visit our friend Tom Dickson and his partner in life, Lisa, who moved there from the Twin Cities nearly a decade ago. Tom and I first met when we were wet-behind-the-ears college grads hired by the long-defunct Fins and Feathers magazine. Hunting, fishing and work sort of blended together at Fins and we formed a lasting friendship. However, I hadn't seen Tom since he'd moved to Montana.
Tom and Lisa live in a fine old Helena home on a hillside a short walk from downtown. An even shorter walk leads to an endless network of hiking trails on Mount Helena and beyond. We took a short walk with the dogs, then enjoyed a good dinner and better conversation. They put us up in a spare bedroom--a welcome change from our camper.
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Rich Patterson believed Lake Superior was devoid of fish. After all, he’d spent two days fruitlessly casting into the lake near is campsite at the mouth of the Cross River in Schroeder. Aside from soaking up some sunshine and Superior scenery, Patterson had nothing to show for his efforts.
“There are no fish in Lake Superior,” he told me.
My job was to prove him wrong. Patterson and his wife, Marion, are members of the Outdoor Writers Association of America, as am I. They’d travelled to the North Shore from their home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to escape the summer heat. Although we’d never met, we connected through a mutual friend and I offered to take them fishing. While I never guarantee fish, I was pretty sure they’d enjoy the boat ride.
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One day last April, Craig Engwall noticed what looked like a dark freckle beneath his wrist watch. Putting on his reading glasses for a better look, he discovered it was a very tiny tick, which he removed. Engwall, who is the DNR's regional administrator in Grand Rapids, had been bitten by the miniscule nymph of a black-legged tick, also called a deer tick. Unfortunately for him, big problems can come in very small packages. Within days, Engwall says he felt awful, with pain in his joints, nausea and a rash encircling his wrist.
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Sometimes you ask a question and get an unexpected answer. Looking for information about trout fishing in the Canadian Rockies, I emailed a friend of a friend who lives in Alberta. His prompt response included great information about specific streams and where to fish them. That was to be expected.
Was what unexpected was his comment, “All streams in area have grizzly bears--always carry bear spray.”
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