On a recent morning I stepped out with the dogs at daybreak. Beneath a clear, dawn sky, the air was crisp and calm. When we came inside 20 minutes later, I thought it was pretty nice outside. Glancing at the thermometer, I saw it was 16 below.

While the rest of Minnesota has experienced a warm, snowless winter, up here at the Tip of the Arrowhead, we've had snow and cold temperatures.  True, even our weather has been unusually mild, but proximity to Lake Superior and the Canadian border means we get always get a real winter with snow and ice and below zero temperatures. That's why moose live here.

Recently, a chef who wrote a book about hunting and cooking was interviewed on Minnesota Public Radio. She talked about making a recent trip to Colorado to do a cooking demonstration. While there, she was taken fly-fishing on a local river, where the guides and other anglers refused to keep fish for her to use in her demonstration. She told the MPR interviewer she was miffed by their catch-and-release ethic.

"I don't believe in catch-and-release," she said. "It's playing with your food."