Summer days make for great range days, and hunting seasons aren't as far away as you think
If there’s one thing learned during this past year, it’s that people’s appetite for outdoor recreation has gone crazy.
Grand Teton National Park will allow already-selected hunters and shooters to again kill non-native mountain goats starting in September. The move is part of an effort to preserve a small population of native bighorn sheep.
Idaho Fish and Game announced last week that in-person hunter education classes are back in full swing and ready for new hunters to complete before fall seasons begin.
Yellowstone National Park announced that it will launch a lottery for permits to snowmobile into the park without a commercial guide starting Sunday (Aug. 1).
Anglers fishing along the Snake River south of Shelley are being asked to help with a study by nipping a chunk of fin from every rainbow trout they catch, slipping it in an envelope and leaving it at a kiosk.
More than 38,000 catchable rainbow trout are scheduled to be stocked in eastern Idaho and Salmon area waters during August.
The City of Rocks National Reserve near Almo grew by a few acres last week when the park purchased another private inholding.
Tex Creek Wildlife Management Area could grow by as much as 2,100 acres if pending deals go through in the near future.
EDITOR’S NOTE: Gremlins got into the system last week and a large portion of this column failed to make the newspaper. Here is the column in its entirety.
In the first photo I saw of him, his antlers were small and matched his coat in color, which was the rich brown of a summertime bull elk. Over the course of the last month or so, my trail camera has repeatedly caught images of him and several friends. Most of the images were during the dark …
About 15 feet off the ground clinging to a mostly smooth wall of limestone rock, I realized I had been duped.
Getting the film footage documenting the 850-mile migration of salmon from the Oregon coast to central Idaho looked to be in serious jeopardy after Kris Millgate nearly destroyed her main camera 200 miles into the trip.
A spate of wildlife sightings – a treed bear, a bathing bear and more – has two things in common.
There’s a difference of opinion between fish managers and anglers in Idaho and Montana on how to handle the effects of a record-breaking dry spell on trout.
JACKSON, Wyo. (AP) — Rangers equipped with rubber bullets, beanbags, paintballs and noisemakers recently descended upon a popular grizzly’s favorite roadside hangout and created an uproar. The action, intended to keep the bear and the public safe, sparked criticism from wildlife advocates, p…
I was looking at the photo accompanying this column when my granddaughter, Olivia, came in to say goodnight. “That’s a pretty picture!” she exclaimed. “That looks like a butterfly, it is so pretty. Moths are usually gray or brown. But that is a moth because it rests with its wings open and h…
Summer is in full swing and garden flowers and wildflowers are alive with colorful blossoms. The air is filled with the scent of flowers and is literally buzzing with activity. The buzzing comes from a wide spectrum of insects that appreciate the nectar and pollen flowers produce, but arguab…
A friend had the suggestion that it would be fun to get up early and ride our bikes down to the flag ceremony and breakfast at the Taylor community park on July 3.
Mosquito Flat Reservoir near Challis got a special treat for anglers after 250 jack Chinook salmon were released into the reservoir on Thursday.
While it is exciting to see a bear in the wild, it isn’t so wonderful to have one in your campsite at midnight.
HELENA Mont. — A grizzly bear that pulled a California woman from her tent and killed her earlier this week was fatally shot early Friday by wildlife officials, who used night vision goggles to stake out a chicken coop that the bear raided near the town where the woman was attacked.
There are certain things that I have accepted as unchanging, especially when it comes to the physical source of life on this planet, the sun. However, I have been realizing that although a person may not witness much change in our relation to the sun during a lifetime, over longer periods, t…
While last year’s toilet paper panic during the grip of the pandemic was disturbing, at least it was brief. Meanwhile, a nationwide ammunition shortage continues to impact shooting facilities, hunting trips and even law enforcement agencies – with no end in sight.
When we weren’t rock climbing, cycling or eating New Mexican food, during our recent trip to Albuquerque to visit in-laws, we would get up at dawn to beat the heat and hike in the nearby canyons of the Sandia Mountains.
One of eastern Idaho’s favorite trout fisheries got its annual health checkup and came out feeling like a champ.
The view from my front deck affords me a perfect opportunity to observe the track of the sun as it moves south to north. It begins its march north on the winter solstice, and that journey ended one week ago as it reached its northern extreme. For a day or two, it seemed to hang in one spot, …
“After you have finished your true stories sometime, why don’t you make up a story and the people to go with it? Only then will you understand what happened and why. It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.” — “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories,” by Norman Maclean
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — A drought is forcing Oregon to consider major changes this summer to everything from how it stocks trout in lakes and reservoirs across the state to when it will release some species of fish from hatcheries.
Yellowstone National Park may feel like a remote location, far from the problems of industrialized society. However, a recent study of Yellowstone Lake shows microplastics have infiltrated the aquatic food web, showing up in the stomachs of lake trout, cutthroat trout and tiny crustaceans on…
Because of the crowding, Yellowstone is no longer a place for us in the summer, even in the early part of the season with a very prompt start on the day. When we decided on some place to go last week, we went in the opposite direction, west to Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Monta…
The past year has been a good one for anglers in Montana.
One of the most dramatic regional cases of an abandoned campfire going ballistic was the Roosevelt Fire south of Hoback Junction in 2018.
For his birthday, our grandson, Tucker, wanted to go fishing on a small stream. With a few choices in Island Park, we settled on Moose Creek, a meandering, log choked, jumpable stream that pours off the Fish Creek Plateau adjacent to the western edge of Yellowstone.
SANTA FE, N.M. — Overnight summer camps will be allowed in all 50 states this season, but COVID-19 rules and a pandemic labor crunch mean that many fewer young campers will attend, and those who do will have to observe coronavirus precautions for the second consecutive year.
In 149 years, Yellowstone National Park has moved from horse-based transportation for visitors to the first testing of an electric shuttle capable of operating without a driver.
If you go camping at the Warm River Campground near Ashton this summer, chances are you will meet Becky Lewis.
There are some birds that are a joy to watch because they are easy to find. There are others that mesmerize with their beauty. Still others enthrall us with curious behaviors. I like the grebes, as a group, because between them, they do all three.
Last weekend, at the end of our ride, we had loaded the bikes in the back of my small pickup at Ruby Carson Memorial Park in Tetonia and were slowly driving away when my friend rolled down her window and shouted to strangers hanging out in the park:
I barely had a year and a half under my belt as an employee of Idaho Department of Fish and Game when the Department celebrated its 50-year anniversary. In 1938, the citizens of Idaho overwhelmingly voted for the creation of a wildlife agency staffed with professional biologists and working …
Digging up outhouses because Forrest Fenn’s treasure poem included a hint about the “house of Brown” may be one of the most unusual solves author Daniel Barbarisi uncovered while researching his new book.
Henrys Lake recently completed its annual trout checkup with Idaho Fish and Game just before the big Memorial Day weekend fishing opener, and things are looking close to management goals.
It started out as a single guttural low call, one that immediately had us reaching for our phones to identify it. We were birding at Patagonia Lake in southeast Arizona last week, and since we were birding, we assumed the strange noise was a bird. But as we tested bird after bird, none of th…
Change likely is coming to the Clearwater River after nearly four decades under the same general steelhead fishing season regime.
LOS ANGELES — Climbing El Capitan and the famous big walls of Yosemite National Park got a bit harder Friday.
Yellowstone National Park is holding an online meeting and inviting the public to talk about all things fish.
It’s an idea that grew up in small-town Wyoming and now is going global.
I was on the edge of Yellowstone Park years ago when a group of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep began feeding toward me. I ate my lunch, and they ate theirs, gradually getting closer and closer until I could almost touch them. I had heard that bighorns sometimes behave this way, but it was the …
The seasons are turning a corner and that means more trails and outdoor venues are ready to go, or close to it.
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — A Swiss climber and an American have died on Mount Everest in the season's first casualties on the world's highest mountain, expedition organizers said Thursday.
The man who transformed the Vermont-based Orvis company from a niche fly-fishing supply company into a global retailer of outdoor supplies, apparel and protector of the environment has died. Leigh H. Perkins was 93.
We were looking at a dove in my dad’s backyard near Yuma, Arizona. At first, I thought it was a mourning dove, then deciding it wasn’t, I looked for a collar on the back of the neck that would make it a Eurasian collared-dove. Then I finally saw the white edges of the wings and recalled anot…
BILLINGS, Mont. — A shared interest in bison migrating into the Gardiner Basin has created a unique partnership.
This conversation happens just about every time we see a black and white bird on water:
This whole thing about getting old has some interesting generational communication consequences.
