Not long ago I was invited by a shooting club in my hometown to give a talk on shooting safety to a group of young people who were being trained in target shooting. What these kids had learned about shooting consisted entirely of the basic fundamentals of sighting, gun stance, holding and squeezing the trigger, and the typical gun safety routine. It was all good and essential for a novice. In fact, after watching their maneuvers and different shooting positions, I told the instructor frankly that there remained little that I could tell the students that would benefit them … Read More

The red squirrel is a furbearer that has already made its own introduction if you’re one who can justly claim woods experience anywhere in the woods from Colorado to Alaska, from Florida to California. That could hardly be said of any other native mammal. Weasel, deer, fox, and rabbit try to escape being noticed and may succeeding doing so for weeks, even where they are fairly popular. Even the omnipresent little white-footed mouse prefers to hide whenever possible. Not so, the Chickaree, as Red is also known. They are quite apt to court attention and will actually scold till … Read More

The sun, barely peeking over the contour of the forest, found me and my friend already uploading the pontoon with sandwiches and fishing tackle and clamping on the outboard motor. My buddy started at a slow pace but opened throttle after he was convinced of the boat’s stability. We were going to Nestor Falls for more provisions. The trip between our outpost camp at Kishkutena Lake, Ontario, and Nestor Falls is about twenty-five miles, and because five small portages interrupt the waterway, we decided to use a pontoon and out the five-horsepower motor. The pontoon would be much easier … Read More

Probably one of the least known but very interesting animals in the US is the Cacomixtle or Bassasisk as it is called by the Aztec Indians of Mexico. It is recognized by trappers from California and Oregon across the southern states to Texas and Louisiana as plain old Ring-tail. Although related to the raccoon, the rather rare little ringtailed cat is smaller. With its long slim body, it resembles the marten but is easily identified by the seven white bands along its black and brown tail. The ring-tail averages about thirty inches in length, with the tail being about … Read More

If you’re an avid angler, you’ve probably fished one of the famous Ozarks lakes or streams one day in the past. You might’ve come away disappointed because you failed to catch your limit. That’s the thing Oklahoma, Missouri, and Arkansas are trying to avoid. And if you’d like to revisit your old spot, nine times out of ten you wouldn’t go away disappointed a second time. What’s happening to fishing in the Ozarks shows the tremendous interest shown in this natural, scenic, fisherman’s paradise. Make sure you’ve got solid equipment for your trip. Here’s what I’m using: Missouri has … Read More

This white-spotted great northern pike is apparently the identical fish that inhabits freshwater lakes and streams all over Europe and Asia as well as here. At least no success has crowned any attempt to find a line of demarcation between them. This is a fish that lives in our northern waters from the Ohio River region to as far north as freshwater is found. Unless it has been transplanted there it does not live in the Pacific watershed with the exception of Alaska. In Canada, it grows to a large size, but it is said to reach even larger … Read More