PATRICK DURKIN OUTDOORS

SODA SPRINGS, Idaho — When last I saw “Dreadlocks Dave” he was heading up the mountainside behind me Sept. 14, pausing once to pick his path, and then disapp...

SODA SPRINGS, Idaho – After bowhunting elk in Idaho’s Caribou-Targhee National Forest for 13 years, I often felt spoiled when realizing I hadn’t encountered ...

I know what Wisconsin deer hunters are thinking: We don’t need March Madness, Major League baseball, or the National Basketball Association to distract us wh...

Until COVID-19 triggered advisories to claim 6 feet of personal space whenever leaving home, I just assumed closer versions of “social-distancing” were secon...

After tossing pruned cherry limbs and winter’s snow-felled pine boughs onto our burn pile, I paused to inspect the bowhunting targets on my backyard practice...

Overheard in the men’s room while attending the 43rd annual Southeast Deer Study Group meeting in late February at Alabama’s Auburn University: “I’m done lis...

My good friend Karl Malcolm knows how to inflict pain to make a permanent point. Seconds after I tasted fried perch eggs for the first time Jan. 25 and rende...

Given a choice between ice-fishing for panfish, trout or walleyes, I’ll take panfish without a pause. My preference might be linked to my teen-age years when...

STURGEON BAY, Wisconsin — Snow churning and whirling across Green Bay’s ice cap made me think of arctic explorers long lost in a white oblivion at the Earth’...

CLAM LAKE, Wisconsin – Few things move easily through snow 30 inches deep, but cow elk No. 631 handled those depths far better than I had earlier the same da...

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico – Most resident anglers in the “Land of Enchantment” dismiss yellow perch and ice-fishing the way Wisconsinites scorn common carp and...

For roughly 57 years after its creation in 1967, the Department of Natural Resources took its orders from a seven-citizen governing board that boasted some o...

A blue jay landed atop our largest birdfeeder 20 feet past our kitchen window, settling 8 inches from a red-bellied woodpecker eating a sunflower seed. The w...

When most folks say they like being where “things are happening,” they usually mean a place buzzing with human activity. Eric Christensen of Stoughton, Wisco...

(Reprinted from Jan. 5, 2010) CAZENOVIA, Wisconsin – Tyson Hall’s pained smile discouraged all but the heartless from teasing him. He had shot three times, b...

CAZENOVIA – Doug Duren built a thinking man’s buckpole outside the milkhouse on his family’s farm last summer, as if to concede the end of dairy farming on t...

Mitch Petrie of Plymouth, Minnesota, glanced at a text message on his smartphone while watching a basketball game last winter, and learned that a photo had j...

BLACK EARTH, Wisconsin — Deer heads arrive in individual black plastic bags at Wisconsin’s CWD processing station just south of town each fall, and depart in...

No one should be shocked that Wisconsin’s nine-day gun season generated a statewide deer kill – 167,693, including 76,760 bucks – that resembled harvests fro...

STURGEON BAY, Wisconsin — Nearly 30 years have passed since Wisconsin whiffed on its chance to let Peter Peshek lead the Department of Natural Resources into...