With nearly 600,000 gun deer hunters handling slugged shotguns, muzzleloaders, rifles, and various types of archery equipment, it behooves us to review the four rules of firearm safety before donning hunter orange caps and coats.
Each year, hunters, meat processors, and food pantries help families in need by working closely with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and its partners to donate thousands of pounds of venison to food pantries.
Before taking part in upcoming hunting seasons or placing feed for wildlife, hunters and wildlife enthusiasts should be sure to check the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources website and verify which counties currently prohibit wildlife baiting and feeding activities.
BAYFIELD COUNTY — Hunting is too often about one endeavor — taking animals, even fishes, into possession and disregarding the rest of the experience. Those take-lots escapades may ask a hunter to succeed in that single challenge above all else.
Heckrodt Wetland Reserve in Menasha recently celebrated the installation of solar panels.
One deer registration convenience led to what could be an inconvenience for some deer hunters after the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources changed to electronic registration. Hunters can now call or computer- or cellphone-transmit deer registration data instead of stopping at an in-pe…
ASHLAND — The old adage “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago; the second-best time is now” is a favored saying among some financial consultants and other professional advisers. The idea is to get things started now to achieve goals a few decades down the road. But when it comes to…
BARNEVELD — When Adrian Alan left the Madison Police Department to become the Vortex Optics shooting range operations manager, he made a point to owner Dan Hamilton that he didn’t want to just run a shooting range.
In late August, 173 volunteers waded in or trekked along the shorelines of over 100 rivers and lakes across Wisconsin, embarking on a search for aquatic invasive species as part of River Alliance’s Snapshot Day. River Alliance hosted the very first Snapshot Day in 2014, in partnership with t…
Jerry Cornelius, 73, remembers camping at Governor Dodge State Park one year after the Cox Hollow dam was created in 1958.
MADISON — Republicans on the Legislature’s rules committee voted to break with Gov. Scott Walker and scrap his new emergency chronic wasting disease regulations for deer, calling the rules too expensive and cumbersome.
WAUKESHA — Each year in the late fall, hundreds of sandhill cranes leave Wisconsin sandbars and corn fields and head south. Once on the brink of extinction, this species of crane has rebounded tremendously — with one true story of a rescued sandhill crane celebrated in a new children’s book …
Fall’s here; this is a time to begin thinking about starting to feed birds again.
BRIGHAM — Dave Marshal, John Lyons, Tim Larson and Sue Marcquenski began a lofty goal of assisting an endangered Wisconsin River fish more than a year ago.
As a conservation warden for the state Department of Natural Resources, rescuing animals is all in a typical day’s work.
River Alliance of Wisconsin is proud to recognize river and water advocates from across the state. Being recognized are five River Champion award recipients and nearly 40 Water Heroes nominated by peers, colleagues and River Alliance staff and Board for their work to protect and restore Wisc…
The Chequamegon Area Mountain Bike Association has announced that Phase Two of the CAMBA-Hayward Area Memorial Hospital Gateway Trail project is complete. This year’s work added another 2 miles to the trail, bringing the total distance to 3.5 miles. The new trail continues the meandering, fl…
Some hunters are beginning to practice what they believe about whitetail deer: The taking of an animal without antlers, with the chance it may have chronic wasting disease, just isn’t worth the effort, particularly if the venison is later tossed in a dumpster.
Deer hunters are now in the field taking part in the opening days of the state’s archery and crossbow seasons, but hunters in chronic wasting disease-affected counties will have to continue to keep an eye on the calendar.
A farmer too busy to notice asks of autumn markers. It’s odd how some seasons, particularly autumn, creep up.
A total of $75,000 in grants are now available under a new Department of Natural Resources initiative aimed at helping local governments, organizations and others recruit new anglers, particularly adult women and other groups underrepresented in the activity.
Max Wilson, 21, of Lomira weighed a combined total of 45.83 pounds to win the Cabela’s National Walleye Tour Championship Sept. 6 on Lake of the Woods in northern Minnesota.
An unusual amount of rainfall in Wisconsin has resulted in lots of standing water in places that are normally dry. Unfortunately for people, mosquito larvae, sometimes called wrigglers, develop in standing water, so their populations have surged over the last few weeks.
An angler holding a fly rod was a fine choice for a senior photo.
State agriculture officials say they’ve found no more signs of chronic wasting disease in a depopulated farm elk herd after the disease showed up in one of the facility’s female elk.
A beginner geocaching event will be Friday, Sept. 7, at the Spooner Ag Research Station’s Teaching and Display Garden just east of Spooner. Geocaching is an outdoor recreational activity in which participants use a Global Positioning System receiver or mobile device and other navigational te…
Is there anything a hunter may do prior to season openers, especially when insects are still droning, the weather is not conducive, and sauntering hillsides seems precarious?
A reintroduction success story took place recently when a whooping crane family returned to Wisconsin, flown north courtesy of Windway Capital of Sheboygan. The family will call the marsh its home until they migrate south on their own again this fall. They will be monitored by staff of the I…
Eligible hunters who are interested in participating in the 2018 gun deer hunt for hunters with disabilities are encouraged to contact a land sponsor to sign up for a hunt before the Sept. 1 hunter participation deadline.
SAND CREEK — Trout habitat improvement continues on an already high-quality trout stream flowing into the village of Sand Creek just south of where Barron, Dunn and Chippewa counties meet.
There are folks who partially use Wisconsin’s shagbark hickory tree. Many more people — even if they do pick a few nuts — know little about hickory syrup or the ton of coal it takes to match a cord of hickory wood or realize the joy of walking on hickory floors and using hard, strong tool handles.
Two years after the volunteer-run wildlife monitoring program Snapshot Wisconsin started rolling out, the innovative project is going statewide.
The death of a 2-year-old doe in March south of Eau Claire because of chronic wasting disease set off alarms regarding the health of the region’s deer population and is among the discoveries of CWD across Wisconsin that has prompted action to try to halt the spread of the malady.
Radford (Jim) and Lester (Spark) Bassett, then 23 and 21 years old, left home from Fort Atkinson hoping to paddle their canoe down the Rock and Mississippi rivers through New Orleans, into the Gulf of Mexico, eventually touching South America.
A Mushroom Foraging Workshop will be held Aug. 17-18 at Hunt Hill Audubon Sanctuary in Sarona. The workshop will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Friday and from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.
Listening to a harvest forecast of Wisconsin’s state herb, ginseng, can be a fragile conversation. Often the news is disheartening.
Lectures, a foray and demonstrations for all interest levels will be part of the free “All Things Fungi” Festival set for Aug. 24-25 at the UW’s Kemp Natural Resources Station in Woodruff.
The Chequamegon Area Mountain Bike Association has released a series of videos to better tell their story and illustrate available trails and the Chequamegon area.
SAUK CITY — John Schubring began gun deer hunting in 1958. Five years later, he shot his first buck, and since that time he’s been taking a deer now and then, picking up a skull and a few shed antlers, too.
The Cable Natural History Museum has received a $1,500 grant from Xcel Energy to fund the summer Junior Naturalist program. This program offers environmental education for children in grades K-6 through games, art and outdoor exploration.
Brenda Carter is the state’s newest state fish record holder but the lifelong angler is finding the honor a tad bittersweet: she broke the catch and release record for pumpkinseed set a year ago by her daughter, Erika Carter.
The 2018 poster design for the Flyway Film Festival features an illustration of one of the many birds that commute along the Mississippi River “flyway” — the migratory path that gave the festival its name.
IOWA COUNTY — Fly-fishing trout in Wisconsin has been part of Michael Stracco’s life since 2007. But it requires driving two and a half hours from St. Charles, Ill., west of Chicago, to Dane and Iowa counties and beyond.
An accessible nature trail will be built in the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources woodland located in Wauwatosa. The Forest Exploration Center, the nonprofit organization that manages the site, has hired a contractor to begin the trail improvement project in early August.
Anglers who fish the Mississippi River between Prescott and the Iowa border can take an online questionnaire about what they think about existing bag and size limits on that stretch of the river and their reactions to potential regulation changes.
The 2018 ruffed grouse season is scheduled to begin Sept. 15 in Zone A; Oct. 20 in Zone B. The daily bag limit is five birds in A and two in B. Possession limit is three times the daily bag limit, 15 and six respectively.
GOVERNOR DODGE STATE PARK — Herding Canada geese is an exercise in citizen science, appealing to youngsters, handling wildlife, getting dirty and gathering data.
Preliminary totals show turkey hunters registered 38,885 birds during the 2018 spring turkey hunting season in Wisconsin, a 10 percent decrease from the spring 2017 season.
Submitted photo
Researchers at UW-Madison have developed a new smartphone app to help them understand where ticks are active and how people expose themselves to ticks. The app is being released as Wisconsin faces an ever-increasing number of Lyme disease cases, sparking heightened concern about tick-transmi…
Turtles will be the topic of Hunt Hill Audubon Sanctuary’s Cakes at the Lake program Saturday, July 14. Bob Hay, director of Turtles for Tomorrow, will share turtle trivia and information about turtles that live in the lakes and wetlands of northwest Wisconsin. Participants will meet live tu…
