Conservation
The Water Nobody Wants to Touch Kept Dinner Under It
The Water Nobody Wants to Touch Kept Dinner Under It For thirty years I walked past the same slough on the way to the…
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24 published stories
Conservation
Stories and practical context about habitat, access, wildlife science, stewardship, and what disappears when outdoorsmen stop paying attention.
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Conservation
Killing Is the Easy Part of Hunting
The Question at the Dinner Table A woman I have known for twenty years put…
Conservation
I Called Myself a Conservationist for Twenty Years Because I Threw the Stocked Trout Back
For twenty years I told myself I was a conservationist because I put the fish…
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Conservation
I Almost Shot an Injured Coyote Over a Dozen Chickens the Raccoons Were Killing
The Coyote I Was Sure Did It When my neighbor Marge called me across the street and said her hens…
Conservation
The State Cut My Favorite Timber, and I Was Furious Until I Saw What Grew Back
I spent a decade telling anybody who would listen that the timber company was the enemy. They owned the thousand…
Conservation
We Dont Shoot Does: The Buck Only Rule That Starved a Herd for Ten Years
My granddad said it so many times it might as well have been chiseled on the mantle. “We don’t shoot…
Conservation
The Lead I Left in the Gut Pile and the Bald Eagle That Ate It
I gutted my first deer when I was seventeen and I have told the same joke about it ever since.…
Conservation
The Doe I Passed for Fifteen Years, and the Herd That Paid for It
I was thirty-one before I shot a doe on purpose, and I stood over her for a long time wondering…
Conservation
The Deer He Shot and Never Ate, and the Old Man Who Said the One Thing That Rewired Him
I was twenty-three the first time I shot a deer I didn’t eat. Not because I couldn’t. Because I didn’t…
Conservation
A Blood Trail That Stopped at Three Hundred Yards, and the Search a Lost Bear Is Owed
The bear didn’t drop. That’s the sentence I keep coming back to, even though it’s been a full year. I…
Conservation
The Lost Bear and the Search That Taught Me What a Recovery Owes an Animal
The bear did not die where I shot it. That was the first thing I got wrong, and I got…
Conservation
The Line a Man Draws When Nobody Is Watching
My buddy Travis and I were splitting a case of beer on his tailgate last spring, talking about where we’d…