As usual I’ve followed late. My buddies kept reporting fish: Jake, a few steelhead and salmon; Mike, a big buck steelhead; Bob, eight steelhead and two big coaster brook trout. Finally last week I caught an aggressive, jumping, turning, flopping 25-incher, then the next day a lazy, rolling, pulling 20-incher. Much smaller than Mike’s 32-incher. But mine were a long... READ MORE >
In early spring when the ice breaks up in the watershed and recedes from the banks and beaver lodges, when the snow evaporates on the rocky shorelines and melts into the cattails and carex and cutgrass, the muskrats come out of their homes bursting with life and blinking. Lone muskrats leave their home waters and make a wandering exodus, across... READ MORE >
April will fool us with more snow and more cold, but after the Ides of March, the sun climbs high in the blue sky and the warmer south winds come. Depending on the proximity to the big lake, maple syrup season may still have nearly insurmountable depths of impossible snow – crusted, slushy, or fresh – or the snow may... READ MORE >
We walk out today into a magical winter day, like when you step into The Wardrobe and part the soft fur coats and pass through the prickly firs into the evergreens dusted with snow. The only “sound’s the sweep / Of easy wind and downy flake” (Frost), and my bird dogs panting as they crisscross the road, quartering in and... READ MORE >
Daphne is a year old now. She is a true bird dog, I think. She is an English cocker spaniel from Schaller’s English Cockers down beyond Chippewa Falls. Where they grow bird dogs. Where they grow pheasant dogs. Flushers. Today we were in downtown Duluth along Michigan Avenue which turns into Bob Dylan Way. I drive us up to the... READ MORE >
“Small is beautiful,” preached E. F. Schumacher. And we, my father and I, followed this idea and have continued to follow it for many years, from my grade school years to our older ages together. My neighbor, a quarter mile down the county road, is from the “old world.” We got to talking about snowshoe hares and rabbits and how... READ MORE >
Editor’s note: James Egan has lived in Hovland the last seven years. He works as a fishing guide in the summer and is an amateur naturalist who hunts ducks, deer and partridge. He is the new outdoor writer for the Cook County News Herald. His column will appear every other week in the newspaper. The wolves have killed a deer,... READ MORE >
