MINNEAPOLIS — Minnesota’s earliest hunting seasons open on a Sunday this year, and the state’s annual harvest of wild game will be subject to an assortment of new regulations.

Spelled out by the Department of Natural Resources in the hunting and trapping rules handbook, here’s a breakdown of notable changes.

On Sept. 1, bear season ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Darren Dorn was 18 years old and driving his pickup to his home just north of Minneapolis when he swerved to avoid hitting a deer.

That was the end of the first part of his life, and the beginning of the second.

Now 40 years old, Dorn, who works in sales for a lumber company, was at Game Fair in Ramsey.

In a wheelchair since ...Read more

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — When longtime environmentalist Chuck O’Neal first bought a wildlife conservation license plate, he thought the extra $25 he paid yearly was going to an organization dedicated to preserving Florida wildlife, especially its dwindling black bear population.

So it seemed like a betrayal to O’Neal when he discovered that ...Read more

MINNEAPOLIS — Long before Gov. Tim Walz was introduced to national audiences as a hunter and outdoorsman, he broke through in Washington as an up-and-coming trap shooter in a small circle of his congressional colleagues who could handle a shotgun.

Former House Agriculture Committee Chair Collin Peterson, who represented Minnesota’s Seventh ...Read more

WRANGELL, Alaska — The nation’s largest national forest, the Tongass, blankets 17 million acres of southeast Alaska, in which everything is connected to everything else, with salmon the centerpiece.

This was apparent on a recent day as four of us motored up a bay of Alaska’s Inside Passage, watching bald eagles carve circles in a cobalt ...Read more