If you want to find out where you stand physically, try following two enthusiastic English Springer Spaniels through dense, wet, tangled cover for the first few days of the pheasant season. It’ll put you in you place fast if you’ve made your living sitting behind a desk for any length of time. So I guess […]

The joy of bird hunting —free-wheeling through dense, wet, thorny cover behind an enthusiastic dog or dogs — is often preceded by the drudgery of preparation, something no hunter looks forward to. But a man is only good as his gear, which, unfortunately, requires consistent maintenance. Boots and bibs need regular cleaning and dressing, shotguns […]

Head to the barber shop, newsstand or corner greasy-spoon and you’re bound to hear discussion about coyotes — a hybrid wild canine that appeared on the local scene some 40 years ago, when loggers, hunters and farmers occasionally encountered what was then referred to as “wild dogs,” believing German shepherd-mix strays had adapted to the […]

May 2006 An alarming news release arrived in my Inbox. The headline read: “New Data Shows Brook Trout Imperiled Throughout Entire Eastern Range: Massachusetts Brook Trout Populations Threatened by Dams and Roads.” Troubling. We’re not talking here about the stocked hatchery brookies anglers have been catching in small streams this spring. No. We’re talking about […]

There’s an undercurrent among longtime hunters and trained observers here in Massachusetts’ upper Connecticut Valley that the deer herd is not what it’s cracked up to be. So let’s examine the issue briefly. If you believe MassWildlife’s deer-management team, the local deer herd has never been better. But talk to witnesses who’ve hunted the same […]

Interesting how, now that my hunting gear is squirreled away till next year, my sparse venison supply long ago consumed, Mother Nature has dropped two perfect snowstorms for deer hunting in less than a week. The old hag must be looking out for the deer in my neighborhood; at least that’s how it appears on […]

What to make of the recent bear problems in Deerfield? Well, we better get used to it and take precautions to eliminate artificial food sources that encourage bears into residential neighborhoods before natural foods become abundant. Bears come out of their spring dens famished, and there isn’t a lot of natural food available for months. […]

Sometimes with deadline approaching I sit at my desk, sheer-softened sunlight illuminating the room through the south windows, e-mail in the rearview, wondering how to fill this space. Then it just comes to me in any number of ways, this time during a telephone conversation sweetened by procrastination. I was chatting with a friend and […]

I caught it too late, a missed telephone message responding to a short narrative about a deer that had been killed by coyotes up the road from my home a month ago, one that dovetails nicely with fresher news about deer mortality north of here, in Vermont, where experts are concerned about the effects this […]

When my Recorder phone, I picked it up, put it to my right ear and glanced at the clock hanging high on the north wall. Half-past eight, Peter Mallett calling. The affable Mallett — card-carrying union pipe-fitter, conservation gadfly, Millers River Fishermen’s Association founder, and world-class gabaholic –sounded pleased to hear the, “Sports, Gary Sanderson,” […]