PATRICK DURKIN OUTDOORS

If I didn't view wild turkeys as nature’s most fickle, frustrating and fascinating bird, I might have felt guilty for shooting a gobbler May 8 as it stood confused while its buddy flapped its last among my decoys. I suspect that Emily Krumenauer, my hunting buddy and family-friend, frazzled my gobbler’s composure when she shot its running mate seconds earlier with her late father's Model 12 Winchester shotgun. The two big gobblers had spent the previous minute in a murdero

Racine’s Rob Bohmann, longtime chairman of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, will preside over the group’s annual convention for the last time when it meets May 15-16 in Green Bay. But unlike the first time Bohmann yielded that unpaid job a decade ago, he vows to never return to the group’s helm. “It’s time,” Bohmann said in a telephone interview. “I won’t come back a third time.” The WCC, a 92-year-old institution, serves as Wisconsin’s official adviser to the Na

Wisconsin’s outdoors community supports paying more to operate the state’s fish and wildlife programs, but not necessarily at any price. That’s one point to take from nearly 6,900 votes cast during mid-April’s annual conservation hearings, a statewide effort by the Department of Natural Resources and the citizen-based Wisconsin Conservation Congress. This year’s hearings consisted of in-person meetings April 13 in all 72 county seats, which drew 1,268 attendees; followed b

My late friend Tom Heberlein liked contemplating whether odd occurrences were spiritual signs sent by deceased friends or beloved family. For instance, he shared stories about a friend — let’s call him Bill — who died unexpectedly one autumn. A week or so later, Heberlein saw a rooster pheasant while hunting a marshy island where he had never before seen anything except ducks and other waterfowl. Soon after, on a mild, mid-October afternoon, two pretty women in bikinis

A 34-year-old hunter mentoring a 3-year-old child Sunday afternoon (April 12) during Wisconsin’s two-day youth-only turkey season helped the youngster aim at and shoot another man and a 7-year-old child after mistaking their movements for a turkey in western Racine County. Pellets from the 12-gauge shotgun struck the 7-year-old’s head, and the man’s left hand, shoulder and backside as they hunted turkeys on state forest lands in the Rochester township. Lt. Renee Thok, the

We hear often how Wisconsin’s hunting population keeps dwindling as baby-boomers grow older, and leave the woods and fields forever. Wisconsin’s hunter-education program faces similar challenges as senior instructors step aside, hoping and trusting younger folks to step forward to teach firearms safety and hunting ethics to beginners. To help recruit this year’s class of new instructors, the Department of Natural Resources put out the call for volunteers to teach its fo

Even as sales of most fishing and hunting licenses decline in Wisconsin, the all-inclusive conservation patron license has grown nearly 50% in popularity after bottoming out in 2012. Sales of the $165 CPL hit 65,803 in 2025, up from 44,049 at the same price 14 years ago. As with all other resident hunting, fishing and trapping fees, the patron license’s price hasn’t increased since 2005, when it cost $140. The record sales year for CPLs was 2002, when 81,896 sold for $110

Whenever folks badmouth public servants who work for schools, agencies or simply “the government,” you’d like to stand them before a crowded auditorium to meet guys like Neil Payne, Keith McCaffery or the late William Lunney. Once you whistled everyone to attention, you’d invite the critics to explain how and why these three public employees didn’t do enough for Wisconsin during their long careers at UW-Stevens Point, the Department of Natural Resources, and our state cour

“Thundering herd problem.” That’s how IT (information technology) folks diagnose uncommon, but not rare, calamities when computer systems collapse as people stampede websites to buy coveted tickets for concerts, playoff games or hunting licenses. Wisconsin’s turkey hunters recorded their third such meltdown in 18 years on March 16 shortly after 10 a.m. That’s when the Department of Natural Resources began selling leftover $10 “bonus” tags for the spring hunt, which begi

Wisconsin’s hunters, anglers and trappers will be asked 13 ways whether they support higher license fees, sales taxes or other revenue-generating alternatives April 13-15 when they vote in the annual statewide spring hearings. The hearings are held by the Department of Natural Resources and Wisconsin Conservation Congress. The WCC is a 360-person citizens group that’s legislatively sanctioned to advise Wisconsin’s seven-citizen Natural Resources Board, which sets DNR polic

Whenever politicians try to roll back rules on sulfide mining for metals like gold, nickel or copper, I flash back to June 2005 when my wife and I toured Ireland with my parents. About 40 miles south of Dublin, we pulled into Avoca, a small town in County Wicklow, to visit Fitzgerald’s Pub. Mom and Dad wanted to see the pub because it was featured in a 1990s BBC TV show called “Ballykissangel,” the show’s fictional name for Avoca. If you ever watched “Ballykissangel,”

Some lucky deer hunter will eventually shoot a whitetail with antlers bigger than those atop the buck that Milo Hanson killed Nov. 23, 1993, near his Saskatchewan farm. With a certified score of 213-5/8 inches, Hanson’s 14-point buck became the world-record “typical” whitetail during the Boone and Crockett Club’s 1995 awards ceremony. It bumped a 10-point Wisconsin buck from the top spot it held since 1971. That buck scored 206-1/8 inches, and was shot by Jim Jordan in 191

If a red fox tunnels under your toolshed or burrows beneath putting greens on nearby golf courses, you won’t guarantee it a long, healthy life by hiring a trapper to move it to a suburban woodlot or even a rural wetland. That’s what researcher David Drake concluded in a talk Feb. 12 at the annual winter meeting of Wisconsin’s Wildlife Society in Stevens Point. Drake, a professor at UW-Madison, put it bluntly in the conference’s three-day seminar schedule: “Urban red fox tr

Wisconsin lawmakers have bickered about funding the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship program since 1989, when Rep. Spencer Black, a Democrat, crafted it and Gov. Tommy Thompson, a Republican, signed it into law. Until recently, state lawmakers always wore each other down for conservation. Eventually, they’d always pause, tug up their mom- or dad-pants, and settle on budgets neither loved but could stomach. That’s just how they did the hard things inside Wisconsin’s capitol, give

In his 1948 foreword to “A Sand County Almanac,” Aldo Leopold observed that some people can live without wild things and some cannot. And then he defined the contents of his book: “These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.” Roughly 15 years earlier, those credentials qualified Leopold to create and lead the nation’s first wildlife-management program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. No one else could match Leopold’s ability to wield the pen j

Alice Roosevelt, the sharp-tongued eldest daughter of Theodore Roosevelt, famously said, “If you can’t say something good about someone, sit right here by me.” Would Alice have invited us to sit beside her to badmouth chronic wasting disease? Probably not. Few people do. Even so, Wisconsin’s 2025 deer seasons proved we still can’t wish away CWD. The Department of Natural Resources found a record 2,022 CWD cases in a record 41 counties for a record detection rate of 11.2

Roger Maes knows he’ll recognize his grandfather’s nearly century-old trophy buck whether it’s in online photo galleries, hanging in a Northwoods tavern, or fully restored and displayed at a giant hunting/fishing store. But the Madison resident hasn't seen the buck for over 30 years, not since his grandfather sold it shortly before dying in 1993. Maes is just going off childhood memories and an old photograph whose top-left corner is peppered with thumb-tack holes. The pho

As we work deeper into January, I’m reminded of past deer hunts this time of year in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi. Photos and keepsakes from those hunts remind me how much the South’s culture differs from my own. Southerners seem more fascinated with death, superstitions and the afterlife than do most folks of the Upper Great Lakes. For example, when I arrived at the Long family’s camp in Louisiana’s Atchafalaya Bayou in 2012, Mr. Raymond Long said I couldn’t hunt

Vern Hacker has been dead since March 1989, but I recall his smiling face and respect for rough fish whenever someone makes news for catching a huge gar, burbot, sheepshead or another piscatorial pariah. That’s because Hacker was the Don Quixote of fisheries biologists during his career with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Hacker always encouraged people to eat rough fish instead of burying them to fertilize their gardens or flowers. And he especially despis

Of all the many whitetails roaming and browsing Wisconsin’s forests, farmlands and lowlands, which deer do hunters most cherish and protect? Some would say it’s the mature adult doe, the species’ noble matriarch. Some gentle-souled hunters still consider it an act of sainthood to never shoot and eat “Mama Doe.” But if they sin, they’ll claim they fired only after verifying the doe was traveling alone, with no fawns depending on her for guidance and nourishment. Some hun