Recently, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIF&W) released a summary of last fall’s moose harvest. Of the 3,025 hunting applicants who were issued a moose tag, almost a third — 2,022 — brought home a moose. If you crunch the numbers, 65 percent of last fall’s moose hunters were successful. This is […]

If splake are viewed by Maine sportsmen as the Rodney Dangerfield of Maine’s sport fishery, then brown trout might be deemed the Willie Loman of the Maine sport fish family. (Liked, but not well liked). Not in my mind, though. Brown trout have always held a fascination for me, even though I have not caught […]

With respect to Maine’s federally protected Canada lynx, there is suddenly good news and bad news. The good news is — or was — that the feds finally, after 6 years of outlandish dithering, recently granted the state an Incidental Take Permit (ITP) on lynx. Basically, the ITP is a binding agreement between the state […]

The New Year is almost always a welcomed event. The slate is clean. As we look ahead, it’s a lot like a field of virgin snow. As we move on, the tracks we leave will take us to unseen ground. This is especially sweet for outdoor people who have an affinity for exploration, for finding […]

The more I hunt deer the more I understand one thing: Most of the time in the deer woods, a hunter who practices the three “Ps” will, over the years, bag the most deer. Patience, perseverance and persistence, these makeup the deer hunter’s critical triad. Without these, any successes that you have will be mostly […]

Sportsmen love their toys. Of course, they prefer to consider these toys as indispensable tools for the outdoors. Sometimes the best gift one can give an outdoorsman is a tool or device that he might not either think to buy for himself or feel comfortable buying. For example, my mother-in-law always had an uncanny knack […]