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

PITTSBURGH — Lurking in the steel blue waters of Lake Erie and its marshes, a green mat of vegetation suffocates native plants with its fast-growing layers of tangled fiber.

Some fish swim the other way.

The more than 4 million annual visitors to Presque Isle State Park don't see the underwater battle waged against starry stonewort, an ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — The hens aren’t coming home to roost, and something’s going to have to change.

Beginning in Minnesota.

The hens in this case are mallards, specifically adult hen mallards, and their absence on the breeding grounds, including in Minnesota, the Dakotas and prairie Canada, means trouble for duck hunters and duck hunting.

It�...Read more

ISLE, Minn. — Two weeks after the state Department of Natural Resources loosened walleye regulations on Mille Lacs Lake to establish a welcomed two-fish bag limit, anglers are struggling to take advantage.

The trick is this: When the bag limit was zero, the fishing was pretty good. Now that it’s legal to catch and keep two of the fish, the ...Read more