Outdoors

The Land and Water Conservation Fund hasn’t cost taxpayers a penny the past 54 years even as it funded everything from wildlife refuges to historic battlefields to Little League diamonds.

George Meyer, a self-described optimist and recent inductee into the Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame, shakes his head in dismay at recent attacks on the state’s water, wetlands and waterways.

Paul Hsu points out that when he started his business in Wisconsin, there were 3,600 pounds of wild ginseng dug and sold annually. Most recent figures put that number at 1,200 pounds, about a third.

Kit distribution will be finalized before the September 15 ruffed grouse season opener.

Aldo Leopold once warned of two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm: You assume breakfast comes from the grocery store and that heat comes from the furnace.

John Schubring, 72, estimates he shot about 60 deer during his years of hunting, and most had small racks.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Southwest Wisconsin CWD and Predator Study will launch its third winter capture season following the gun deer season, beginning in January 2019.

In May, Bernau won the gold medal in women's trapshooting at the International Junior Grand Prix in Porpetto, Italy. She represents USA Shooting's national trapshooting team in competitions.

There is one structure outdoors gatherers can count on to predict a great deal about upcoming fall gatherings. The fruit of plants, trees, shrubs, and vines are what animals, including some people, depend on.

PRESQUE ISLE -- Six times I’ve shared my cedar-strip rowboat with Scott Hassett for the Bob Ellis Row-Trolling Classic muskie tournament, and six times we’ve towed our flotilla of lures from the event’s 9 a.m. start till its 4 p.m. finish without triggering one attack, savage or otherwise.

A year ago this dedicated high school English teacher drawered his red pens for good and stocked up on pink squirrels.

He inserted fishing into his daily routine.

Wisconsin’s turkey hunters shot 38,886 birds during this past spring’s weather-ravaged season, which unleashed April blizzards and May heatwaves to spark a 10 percent decline from 43,305 turkeys killed in 2017.

Endurance, strength and favorable Colorado weather helped Josh Sanders climb 10 mountains of 14,000 feet or higher in 23 hours and 33 minutes, breaking the previous single-day record of nine mountains climbed in 2013 by Colorado native Eric Lee.

Born a mere eight-pound mammal, some are now three times that, and more, and will be about two-thirds the size of their mothers before they stop growing during the winter before resuming expansion in spring.

Wisconsin's ruffed grouse season is scheduled to begin Sept. 15 in Zone A; Oct. 20 in Zone B.

No one knows why 2017’s grouse season yielded a record low kill of 185,336, a 30 percent drop from 262,943 in 2016. Nor can anyone estimate how many grouse typically get shot in December and January.

There are a dozen DNR goose banding groups in Wisconsin, which have a state-wide quota of 4,100 birds. Travis Anderson’s crew had a 100-bird quota, while the Green Bay area bands 800 annually and Horicon handles 300.