A series of blasts shocked residents of a rural area north of Deer River, Minnesota, roughly six weeks ago. The source? State foresters with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources using dynamite to decimate two enclosed deer stands built illegally on trees in Bowstring State Forest. The explosions were strong enough to knock the drink off resident Jim Fena’s countertop, he tells Outdoor Life.  “I live less than a mile from there,” Fena says. “It was late morning or early afternoon, and I thought it was a jet breaking a sound barrier. I didn’t really know what it was. But the window ..read more

Living in a gateway town to Yellowstone National Park comes with the usual perks and challenges, from abundant wildlife to summers flooded with tourists. But a new spectacle arose on April 12 for Gardiner Public School students and faculty when they discovered that a pack of wolves had killed a cow elk, dragged the carcass onto the GHS football field, and eaten part of it right there — leaving behind a mess of blood, meat, and hide. Superintendent Jim Baldwin posted a photo of the discovery to Facebook, where it caught folks’ attention and was reposted by friends.  A Yellowstone National ..read more

On Friday the Bureau of Land Management released the final Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Ambler Industrial Road that would have stretched 211 miles through the Brooks Range of Alaska to access a copper deposit worth an estimated $7.5 billion. The BLM’s decision of “No Action” indicates the agency’s intent to deny the permit for the Ambler Road, according to the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership. “Today’s news is exactly what hunters and anglers have been hoping for in terms of being one step closer to preventing the Ambler Road from being built,” TRCP’s ..read more

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn More › Northern pike, chain pickerel, and muskies are all members of the same family. And if we were comparing them to the porridge in “Goldilocks and the Three Bears,” pike fishing would be “just right.” More Americans have access to pickerel, but a 25-incher would be a giant. Muskies, conversely, aren’t called the “fish of 10,000 casts” for nothing. They require specialty tackle and a lot of time and dedication. Then you have the northern pike, which hits a toothy-fish sweet spot. Pike f ..read more

The hunting community is experiencing whiplash after several articles appeared on mainstream news sites this week announcing that two hunters have died after eating venison from deer with chronic wasting disease. Wildlife experts say there is no evidence to support these claims. Viral news website The Daily Mail published a story on Thursday titled “Two hunters ‘become first Americans to die from ZOMBIE DEER disease’ after eating infected venison.” The coverage is based on a research abstract published in Neurology on April 9 titled “Two Hunters from the Same Lodge Afflicted with Sporadic CJD ..read more

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn More › Humminbird has long been one of the top players in the marine electronics game, and rather than resting on those laurels they continue to innovate with new technologies like Mega 360. However, choosing the best Humminbird fish finder for your own personal needs is not as easy as just plunking down your cash on the most expensive unit or units they make. Depending on your budget, where you fish, and how you’re likely to grow as an angler, there’s a unit that’s best for your situation ..read more

Shortly after daylight on April Capt. Kyle Johnson and his crew of three anglers left Gulfport, Mississippi, for a two-hour run across the Gulf of Mexico to the famed fishing waters of Louisiana’s Chandeleur Islands. Little did they know they were about to witness four fellow fishermen crash during an offshore landing in rough saltwater. “It was about 8 a.m., and a 20 mile-per-hour wind was gusting and the waves were bumpy when we got to the Chandeleurs,” Johnson tells Outdoor Life. “We anchored and were getting out of my 28-foot Blue Wave boat to wade fish for trout and reds when we heard an ..read more

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn More › I winced when I realized another giant black drum had my rod doubled over. Not that I have anything against catching these lumbering bottom feeders, but I was justifiably concerned that my light inshore spinning rod might not survive its encounter with this swimming bag of mulch. They average 20 to 40 pounds in this area, and the weight of the fish alone is enough to snap the rod.  To my pleasant surprise, not only did the rod handle the fish well during the fight, but it also ..read more

We may earn revenue from the products available on this page and participate in affiliate programs. Learn More › There are four solid ballistics reasons why I’m an evangelist for the .280 Ackley Improved, and I’ll detail them below, but the cartridge has had its hooks in me since 2015 — a hunting season for the ages. My twin boys were 14 years old that October, and together they weighed barely 200 pounds. Merlin had drawn a cow elk tag for the Missouri River Breaks near our home, and both were leaning into deer season, hoping to kill the biggest bucks of their young hunting careers. Merlin’s g ..read more

Spring waterfowl migrations are in full swing as millions of ducks, geese, and other species depart the southern U.S. and Central America and head toward Canada to live out the warm months. One drake mallard fitted with a GPS tracker from the Cohen Wildlife Ecology Lab at Tennessee Tech broke a lab record on April 6 by reaching a top speed of 99.3 miles per hour somewhere between southern Minnesota and the Canadian border. For context, that means the duck was flying as fast as Hall-of-Famer Aroldis Chapman’s fastball and twice as fast as the world’s fastest land mammal, the cheetah, can run. T ..read more