MINNEAPOLIS — From small Munsterlanders to English setters and Labrador retrievers, a veritable kennel’s worth of dogs scampered across southern Minnesota Saturday, the opening day of the state’s pheasant season.

Proud and always hopeful that a bird or two might be put to wing by the canines, the animals’ human partners followed in tow....Read more

HOVLAND, Minn. — They slipped the boat into Lake Superior just before first light. The lake lapped in quiet rhythm on the shore. The sky was clear and the air finally had a bit of a chill. It looked like a promising morning for Eric Brisson and Tyler Smith.

Two of Minnesota’s last commercial fishermen, Brisson and Smith are in their mid-30s...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Deer hunters in western Big Stone County know they’ll be restricted this fall to harvesting a single buck. To bag a second deer, they’d have to win a lottery that offers 38% fewer antlerless tags than a year ago.

So, avid hunters like Ed Vollmer and Bruce Nelson, of Ortonville, were incensed when they learned a number of gut...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Cory Netland is a Department of Natural Resources area wildlife supervisor working out of New London, Minn. — not too far from where he grew up.

Like the state’s other 80,000 or so pheasant hunters, Netland is eagerly anticipating the Oct. 12 opening of the 2024 ringneck season.

And while Netland knows that wingshooters and...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — One year after Minnesota grouse hunters enjoyed a phenomenal harvest, they’re settling in for a season that they can only hope will be fair to good.

“It seems like there are patches that are good, but there’s also patches that are as bad as we have seen in a while,” said Nate Huck, resident game bird consultant for the ...Read more

PITTSBURGH — Anglers in Pennsylvania's portion of Lake Erie reported the second-highest walleye catch rates since 1993 for July and landed in the top five highest rates for August.

"This has been one of our better seasons," said Mark Haffley, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission's leader for Lake Erie's research unit.

"These last seven ...Read more

BALTIMORE — Somewhere in the vast Chesapeake Bay, there’s a fishing spot known as Ed’s Lump. It is believed to be the remnants of a giant oyster reef, rising from deep water to within 24 feet of the surface. It’s where Ed Darwin, longtime charter boat captain and one of the bay’s greatest lovers, believed his customers would catch fish...Read more

PITTSBURGH — As millions of people braced for destruction in the path of Hurricane Helene in Florida and other southeastern states, half a billion migrating birds capitalized on the strong storms.

Using radar and weather data, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's BirdCast bird migration map documented more than half a billion birds migrating last...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — There were fishing poles, cinder blocks, liquor bottles and golf balls in the tiny portion of Lake Mille Lacs that a scuba dive team sampled last week, but it was far less rubbish than they expected to find, the team’s leader said.

The preliminary and brief probe of the lake’s subsurface, paid for by a $67,000 grant from ...Read more

PITTSBURGH — With recent gold standard accreditation, the Pittsburgh Zoo & Aquarium is poised to lead in saving the endangered red panda and reintroducing the American bison.

The Zoo announced last Thursday that it regained accreditation from the Association of Zoos & Aquariums at the AZA convention in Calgary, Canada.

More than nine years ...Read more

PITTSBURGH — Talk about your precious cargo.

Transporting three chicks of an extinct bird species, the Guam kingfisher, was not a standard procedure, but was doable for Pittsburgh's National Aviary.

Three chicks hand-raised at the Aviary this summer were among nine young kingfishers that in late August became the first to be released since ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — When Kevin Schleif was a kid, on the nights before the duck opener, he was sleepless in Owatonna, Minn.

His favorite place in the world was the duck camp his dad and a buddy had leased for a song years earlier. The waterfowling outpost on Buffalo Lake in southern Minnesota wasn’t fancy, just a couple of shacks with no indoor ...Read more

BALTIMORE — The Owl Moon Raptor Center in Boyds in Montgomery County usually takes in about 50 ospreys a year for a mix of reasons, such as fishing line entanglements. But this year more than 80 of the birds were admitted, most of them young and battling starvation.

Many of the chicks and juvenile birds died shortly thereafter, said Suzanne ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Last year the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources sold 230,000 resident small-game licenses, fewer than 10% of which were issued to women.

Only a small minority of Minnesota women chase ducks, pheasants, grouse and woodcock, in part because deer hunting has replaced small game hunting as the state’s entry-level field ...Read more