DayBreak

About a decade ago, North Dakota hunters, upset with increasing numbers of out-of-state duck hunters, urged the state legislature to pass new restrictions on nonresidents. Many believed they were seeing too many vehicles with Minnesota or Wisconsin license plates at their favorite hunting spots. Out on the wide-open prairie, even a few hunters can seem like a crowd.
 
While the ire of resident hunters was directed at out-of-staters, North Dakota’s demographics were changing, too.  Growth of Fargo and, to a lesser extent, Bismarck, meant that a once-predominantly rural state was now mostly populated with city-dwellers, many of whom were not born and raised in North Dakota. Unbeknownst at the time, even bigger demographic changes loomed on the prairie horizon.
 
In 2009, we drove across North Dakota on U.S. Hwy 2 en route to the Rockies. We camped for the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Williston, just a few miles from the Montana border, because nothing else was available. The community was in the midst of an oil boom and newly arrived workers filled the campgrounds and other places to stay. Two years later, we passed through Williston again and were amazed at how much the community had changed. Temporary man camps and oil company operations sprawled across former wheat fields. Heavy truck traffic hummed along the highway. Williston’s atmosphere could be summed up in one word: grimy.
 
The oil boom has brought new prosperity to the northern prairie, but at a great cost to North Dakota’s landscape and way of life. Dakota Country magazine, to which I subscribe, does an excellent job of chronicling the damage to the land, water and wildlife occurring in the Oil Patch. Letters to the magazine describe the angst many longtime North Dakotans feel as they watch the western third of their state experience irrevocable change.
 
Perhaps it’s better late than never, but North Dakotans appear to be waking up to how much their state will continue changing as it becomes Ground Zero for domestic energy development. Among the big losers are hunters, because energy development is gobbling up land and displacing wildlife. Even larger than the Oil Patch is the Corn Patch, a monoculture spreading like cancer as cropland and grassland is converted to corn to meet the demands of the ethanol industry. In many cases, the conversion of prairie to row crops is permanent, because the land is being underlaid with drain tile to rush the water into ditches. Lost down the drain are the sloughs and prairie potholes--Mother Nature’s infrastructure for North America’s duck factory.
 
A story in the current issue of Dakota Country reports North Dakota has lost about one-half of the land enrolled in the Conservation Reserve Program, which pays farmers to retire erodible land from crop production. At its peak in 2007, North Dakota had 3.4 million acres of CRP grassland, which has since dwindled to 1.6 million acres and continues to decline.  Another name for CRP, by the way, is wildlife habitat.
 
Out in the Oil Patch, perhaps the biggest change is in people—as in lots more people.  Another Dakota Country story reports there are presently 7,000 oil wells in North Dakota with some experts predicting the number of wells may eventually reach 40,000. A much larger workforce will be needed to keep those wells pumping.  North Dakotans already know what more workers means. Dakota Country editor Bill Mitzel writes: “Cities in western North Dakota like Dickinson, formerly a nice, quiet, clean community of 7,000 good folks, will see population increases approaching 50,000 in the near future…"

In Minot recently, I was told there are presently nine large motels under construction in the city, along with 4,000 homes. Tiny Burlington to the west is expanding at an amazing rate, while Surrey, 10 miles to the east with 800 residents, is currently building 1,200 homes…Other cities, including Watford City, Williston, Stanley, Killdeer and Belfield, are already under siege from choking dust created by unstoppable trucks, unimaginable garbage along the roadside, strangers whose motives are unknown and a general downfall in their overall, previously healthy way of life. Most people don’t like it. Not all, but most. Thousands of ‘lifers’ in western North Dakota have already left their homes. More would like to, but various reasons,
cannot.”
 
It’s a sad state of affairs when our demand for energy so alters a place that the people who lived there previously must move away. It’s sadder still when better planning and regulations, as well as a greater respect for the natural environment, could have mitigated some of the most damaging effects of change. In this respect, North Dakotans are reaping what they’ve sowed. For years, the state  has taken a “we don’t need no stinkin’ rules” approach to environmental protection. Now, from the tiled and drained eastern Corn Patch to the grimy western Oil Patch, North Dakota is paying the price for its anti-regulatory arrogance--and ignorance.
 
For hunters, North Dakota seems well on its way to becoming yet another paradise lost. Already hunters worry populations of mule deer, bighorn sheep and other game are dwindling due to oil development. Bird hunters are resigned to finding fewer ducks and pheasants than they did during the “good old days,” just a couple of years ago.  The population explosion and landscape alterations occurring in the name of energy development will prove major obstacles to future conservation efforts. And to think that just 10 years ago, North Dakota hunters’  biggest concern had was that there were too many duck hunters from Minnesota.
Those were the days.

Airdate: September 14, 2012

This summer, Minnesota lost the Verso paper mill in Sartell and the Georgia-Pacific hardboard plant in Duluth. Both appear to be permanent losses. The Sartell mill was destroyed by fire and the Duluth plant is being dismantled. They are not the first to go.
 
Minnesota Public Radio recently reported the state's forest industry has lost six mills in the last five years--a stunning swing of the timber harvest pendulum. Just five years ago the state was faced with an aspen shortage as industrial demand exceeded the available supply of this common tree. Stumpage prices for logging sales soared as competing companies outbid one another to secure the raw material for their operations.
 
Then the housing market collapsed. Demand for Minnesota-made building products dried up. Plants first cut back production and then started closing their doors. Across the northern forest, timber that was fetching record prices just a couple of years before now went begging for buyers.
 
The effect of the forest industry downturn rippled through the northwoods economy. The plant closures were hard blows for the communities that depended upon them for employment and economic stability. People lost jobs. Main street businesses shut their doors. The pendulum completed its swing.
 
Out in the woods, trees continue to grow. Northern Minnesota's forest is relentless. Vigorous saplings pop up in any cleared area, quickly starting a new forest. This cycle of renewal is the forest's response to disturbances ranging from natural events such as wildfire and wind throw to human activities such as timber harvest. As most hunters know, the various stages of forest regeneration provide changing habitat for wildlife.
 
Most game species prefer a young forest. Ruffed grouse are associated with 10- to 20-year-old aspen stands. White-tailed deer thrive in the dense, brushy growth of young forests. Along waterways, regenerating aspen provides beavers with a wealth of good eats. Moose are attracted to large openings created by fresh disturbance. As the forest ages, trees grow larger and their canopy shades out the undergrowth. Less food and cover is available for game species.
 
Not so many years ago, during a prior pendulum swing, mature forests covered much of northern Minnesota, creating a conundrum for wildlife managers who wanted to increase the abundance of game species. In the late 1970s, there was little market for aspen, so wildlife managers hired contractors to bulldoze mature aspens to create wildlife openings. The deer population was so low many hunting units were restricted to bucks-only hunting in hopes of protecting does to bolster the herd.
 
During the 1980s the pendulum swung again. The forest products industry began to utilize aspen and ramped up production capacity to make use of the abundant resource. By the end of the decade, clear-cutting was so widespread some began to wonder if we were overharvesting the forest. During the early 1990s, the state completed a Generic Environmental Impact Statement on the cumulative impacts of timber harvest and forest management, which led to harvesting guidelines and better forest management.
 
Timber harvest and the industry stayed strong through the 1990s and into the 2000s. It isn't coincidence that this was a period marked by a record abundance of beaver, deer and wolves in northern Minnesota. The present decline in deer abundance may be related to the swing in the harvest pendulum as well.
 
What the future holds for northern forests and wildlife is uncertain. The harvest pendulum is bound to swing again, but exactly how or when the timber industry will recover is uncertain. Experts quoted in the MPR story said pulp and paper production will likely continue to be an industry mainstay. New uses are being found for pulp, including making cellulose to produce rayon. It may be years before the demand for building products returns.
 
Declining timber harvests will lead to less young forest habitat in the foreseeable future, and thus likely somewhat diminished abundance of forest game species. For hunters, this may mean more restrictive bag limits for deer in some hunting units, especially following hard winters. A reduction in beaver numbers would be welcome by the many Minnesotans who contend with nuisance problems, since their present abundance far exceeds the number of trappers available to control them.
 
While we are growing trees much faster than we are cutting them down, a harvest downturn doesn't mean we are returning to the forest primeval. While the original forest consisted of vast pine stands and conifers, the forest has changed so much since then that we are unlikely to ever return to that original condition. In fact, as the climate changes, so will the forest.
 
A bigger concern is that less demand for forest products may mean we pay less attention to forest management. We are already seeing staffing and budget reductions in state and federal forestry agencies. Fewer loggers in the woods means we have less capacity to actively manage forests, leaving the woods more vulnerable to insects and disease or unwanted wildfire.
 
Someone wiser than me once remarked that you need a healthy forest industry to have a healthy forest. But what sounds like unabashed industry propaganda is very true. A healthy industry creates a demand for a sustainable supply of trees, thus encouraging sound forest management. A healthy industry also attracts political attention, leading to greater public investment in forest management and research. Crazy as it sounds, a healthy industry even creates a healthy climate for conservationists, allowing them to work with industry for the betterment of the forest as well as play a counterpoint on controversial issues.
 
The MPR story mentioned that with the closure of the Sartell mill, loggers in the Bemidji area no longer have a market for balsam fir. A logger quoted in the story says his company has some balsam timber sales they likely won't harvest because they have no place to sell the wood. Balsams are a short-lived tree species prone to die-offs during periodic outbreaks of spruce budworm. Dead balsam burns like gasoline. To say the loss of the Sartell mill will lead to increased fire danger in the Bemidji area is a vast overstatement, but you get the drift. Regardless of timber harvest, the forest's cycle of renewal continues. And Mother Nature never takes humans into account when she goes to work in the woods.

Airdate: September 7, 2012

Some say fishing is just luck. My friend Kate Watson would agree, pointing out that all of hers is bad. Twice this summer the Grand Marais woman has gone fishing with yours truly. She has yet to catch a fish she could bring home to eat.

Actually, Kate's been fishing three times, but one doesn't count. She made a couple of casts in a commercial trout pond we visited during a writers' trip to Canada this spring, promptly landing a chunky rainbow trout. But she didn't consider the pellet-fed trout a "real" fish.

"It was like fishing at the zoo," she said afterward.

A couple of days later, she had the opportunity to go after the real thing. We spent a morning fishing with a guide on the famed Nipigon River. Everyone but Kate caught a fish. This exasperated our poor guide, but not her. She thought fishing was fun and shrugged off being skunked.

"I just have bad luck," she said.

I asked her if she wanted to try fishing again. Sure, she said, provided we didn't have to contend with biting bugs, a fair request. We agreed to find time in our equally busy schedules to go fishing. We finally got out last week for an evening fish. Kate stopped by my office when she got off work, because she wanted to make sure we were still going fishing before heading to the sandwich shop for a couple of subs.

"I wasn't going to buy you a free dinner if we weren't going fishing," she explained.

When she returned, we headed to the hardware store for a fishing license. She decided to get a full season license rather than a day permit, just in case she got another chance to go fishing. I took this as a positive sign.

Our destination was Devil Track Lake, where walleyes make up with reliability whatever they may lack in size. I figured jigging with live bait was a good starting point for a novice angler, because the cast and retrieve routine allows you to become proficient with spinning tackle. You also acquire the ability to concentrate, which is the foundation of all fishing.

Since Kate learned how to cast with a spinning rod on the Nipigon, we had a brief refresher before moving on to bait. I had nightcrawlers and leeches. She was ok with the worms, but not the leeches. Definitely not the leeches. I baited her hook with a worm. She made a cast while I readied my tackle.

"I've got one," she said immediately. "It's not very big."

Up came a six-inch smallmouth bass. I showed her how to hold a bass by its lower bottom lip and snapped a picture so she had proof of her first fish. Then we let it go. I kept my superstitions to myself, but I worried that catching a fish on her first cast was bad juju. Kate, on the other hand, thought her luck was starting to improve.

We fished around some sunken humps where a friend and I had decent luck the previous week. We had plenty of bait-stealing nibbles from fish, but they were tough to hook. I caught a couple of runt bass and an equally tiny walleye. Kate didn't connect with any of the tiny fish, but kept on fishing.

It was a warm evening. A light breeze died down as the sun dropped toward the island. While we waited for the walleye bite to begin, we told stories. Kate had seen a wolf earlier in the day while out for a run with her dog. They passed within 30 feet as the wolf trotted up someone's rural driveway. I was a little surprised when Kate said she picked up a big stick and continued her run, stick in hand.

"I wasn't afraid of the wolf," she said. "But I didn't want it coming after my dog."

Finally, I caught a tiny walleye. Maybe, just maybe, the bite was about to begin. I explain that often the walleyes bite best at sunset. Kate kept fishing. Migrating nighthawks appeared in the dusky sky, flying crazy patterns as they pursued insects. I explained nighthawks aren't really hawks, but are close relatives of whip-poor-wills and are among the first birds to head south. I caught another walleye, slightly larger than the first, but by no means a keeper. Then it happened.

"I've got one," Kate said.

It would be great to write that a lengthy battle then ensued, but the fish barely put a bend in her rod. Still, the 10-inch cigar Kate landed was her first walleye. I showed her how to grasp it by the gill covers and avoid the sharp spines on its dorsal fin. Unlike a bass, I explained, a walleye has a mouth filled with sharp teeth.

"What's wrong with its eye?" she asked.

I explained walleyes are so named because they have large eyes adapted to low light conditions. That's why they are most active early and late in the day or even at night.

"It's too small to keep, isn't it?" she asked.

The answer was yes. We took pictures of her with the fish, then she placed the walleye back into the water and watched it swim away. We kept fishing, but the keeper-sized walleyes eluded us. When Kate mentioned she was starting to be bothered by mosquitoes, I knew it was time to go. Back at the landing, unseen mallards were softly quacking in the twilight.

"I hoped we'd catch enough walleyes for a meal, but at least you caught a couple of fish this time," I said.

"Baby steps," she answered. "I just have bad luck, but fishing is really fun."

It was good to hear her say that. If  Kate can have fun fishing even when the fish aren't biting, she may be an angler-in-the-making. After all, fishing's just luck. And there's always next time.

Airdate: August 31, 2012

The introduction of Pacific salmon to the Great Lakes in the 1960s is perhaps the best example of a government invasive species program that worked.

Following a century of destruction from overfishing, industrialization, deforestation, unregulated air and water pollution and a host of other environmental ills, the Great Lakes fisheries were in tough shape. Native fish species--lake trout, Michigan grayling, lake sturgeon, blue pike, lake whitefish, brook trout and others--were either extirpated or existed in remnant populations. Filling the ecological void were booming populations small, nonnative fish--the alewife and the rainbow smelt. Another nonnative, the predatory sea lamprey, led to the demise of lake trout and thwarted their recovery.

Introducing coho salmon to Lake Michigan was somewhat of a Hail Mary strategy. Biologists knew these ocean fish could survive in a freshwater environment and hoped they would eat the abundant alewives. What the biologists couldn't have known was how successful salmon would become and how much excitement the new fishery would generate with the public. Salmon fever swept throughout the Great Lakes during the 1970s and 80s, transforming lakeside tourism and edging the lakes away from their industrial past.

Today, few would argue that Great Lakes salmon stocking was a conservation triumph, which is ironic. Now fisheries biologists are reluctant to introduce non native fish into new environments. Instead we worry about the real and imagined consequences of new invasive species entering our waters.

Nearly 50 years later, maintaining salmon in the Great Lakes remains a largely artificial endeavor requiring hatcheries to propagate fish for annual stockings. Lake Superior is an exception, because it is blessed with an abundance of cold tributary streams where salmon can spawn. Superior is also the only lake where native lake trout have recovered as a self-sustaining population. In the other four lakes, lake trout, like salmon, are largely supported through stocking.

Perhaps there is a lesson here. Even though the salmon introduction was successful, we still haven't found a way to fix what was broken with the Great Lakes native fishery. If the hatcheries closed tomorrow, lakes other than Superior would slowly revert to their pre-salmon condition as the large predator fish disappeared and less desirable species became more abundant to fill the void. In yet another irony, we need artificial salmon and trout stockings to maintain some semblance of a natural balance.

This situation is not unique to the Great Lakes. Wherever the heavy hand of human use has significantly altered the landscape, native fish and wildlife have either adapted to habitat changes or disappeared. As populations of native species diminish, very often non native species take their place. An example is the ring-necked pheasant, an Asian bird adapted to an agricultural environment. Pheasants were introduced to the American West over 100 years ago, at the same time the endless prairie grasslands were broken by the plow. As farming dominated the landscape, the pheasant gained dominance over native prairie grouse. Without vast grasslands, those native grouse can't survive. It is not an accident the pheasant is the state bird of South Dakota, a state also known for its iconic Corn Palace.

Many of the creatures we take for granted came from somewhere else and thrive here because human activity created a habitat niche for them. A recent arrival is the wild turkey, which artificial introductions have allowed to quickly spread throughout suitable habitat in the state. Although native to North America, there are scant historical records of their existence in Minnesota. In contrast, the Canada goose is a native bird that recovered from overhunting in the pioneer era and adapted to an altered landscape that includes lakeside lawns well suited to grazing geese.

Non natives in our waters even include the walleye, our state fish. Both walleyes and smallmouth bass were introduced to many lakes to provide fishing opportunities. While fish managers have saturated the state's waters with those species, they continue introducing muskies to new waters. Brown and rainbow trout also were widely introduced to suitable lakes and streams.

Most of our introduced fish and game species have been around so long that few but the oldest Minnesotans can remember what it was like before they arrived. The same is true of our most pervasive nuisance species, such as the common carp, the English sparrow, the sea lamprey or the starling. Like the Great Lakes salmon, all of them found a niche in an altered natural environment. Some introduced species, like the carp and sea lamprey, continue to wreak havoc on the environment and require ongoing population and damage control efforts. Again, human intervention is necessary to strike a semblance of natural balance.

While we've made strides at reducing air and water pollution, we generally protect fish and wildlife habitat only when it is convenient or profitable to do so. Profound alterations to the landscape continue to occur, from plowing up millions of acres of grass to grow more grain to bulldozing natural shorelines to build lakeshore homes. While we take these human endeavors for granted, few of us seem to consider the obvious-whatever critters existed previously on that land no longer have a home. Since Nature abhors a vacuum, it's inevitable other creatures, perhaps less desirable ones, will take their place.

As long as we continue to use the landscape primarily for human benefit, we will be faced with an ever-changing natural world where new species appear to take the place of those unable to adapt to altered habitat. And by doing so, we will continue opening the door to new invasive species. Perhaps, in our increasing strident attempts to control invasive species, we should come to terms with fact that an altered ecosystem is like a person with a compromised immune system-it's natural defenses are weakened or eliminated. Our failure to do so is perhaps the greatest of invasive ironies.

Airdate: August 24, 2012

Every August I have a powerful urge to head West and get lost somewhere with mountains and trout streams. My westward wanderlust is mostly a day dream, because I find it so hard to get away from my North Shore baliwick at this time of year. Why leave on vacation when you can have so much fun at home?

It's harvest time. In the past week, I've spent several mornings and evenings on the water, coming home from each outing with a mess of fish ranging from Chinook salmon and lake trout to walleyes and smallmouth bass. On my daily dog walks, I've picked a supply of wild raspberries. The garden is providing its annual bounty of produce, too. As frosting on the cake, I even had a productive work week. All told, it was better than being on vacation.

When you consider the current price of gasoline, my backyard vacation beat a Rocky Mountain adventure hands down. In fact, I can fuel a year's worth of close-to-home fishing trips for the petrol costs of one western trip. As someone who enjoys fishing, I'd rather hit the water frequently than save my money and free time for a once-a-year vacation fling.

While I've wet a line in many waters from coast to coast, very often such trips have been squeezed into my outdoor "down time" around home. Not long ago, I had dinner with two writer friends who were talking about trips they've made and would like to make to far-flung locations. My life seemed less traveled by comparison. Then I realized just a few months of my near-home excursions would tally up more outdoor adventure time than they'll ever achieve in annual long-distance vacations.

When you spend a lot of time outdoors, you develop a repertoire of things you do throughout the seasons. My seasonal schedule is simple. Spring and early summer are for trout fishing here and in Ontario. In summer, I fly-fish for trout, chase walleyes and go trolling on Lake Superior. Then comes autumn bird hunting, including a South Dakota pheasant fling. November is reserved for deer hunting. During winter, I catch up on all the projects that fell by the wayside the rest of the year.

Enjoying seasonal outdoor activities means there always something new to anticipate and tempers the urge to roam. I'm very unlikely to give up my precious trout fishing or deer hunting time to head off somewhere and try something else. These activities are part of my very fiber and my annual participation in them mark waypoints in the passage of life.

Granted, I live in a place people from around the world visit on their vacations. Were I stuck in a city, my lifestyle would be different. But were it at all possible, I'd still seek out close-to-home outdoor experiences.

Grasslands: Going, Going, Nearly Gone

A new report from the Environmental Working Group and Defenders of Wildlife shows the United States lost 23 million acres of grasslands, shrub lands and wetlands between 2008 and 2011. Of the total, over 19 million acres of grassland habitat were converted to just three crops-corn, soybeans and winter wheat. Some of the greatest habitat losses occurred in Minnesota and the Dakotas.

Most pheasant hunters know grassland habitat losses are soon manifested in less abundant birds of all species. But the environmental costs of converting grass to black dirt also can be measured in more fertilizer-polluted run-off, more disastrous flooding and more soil erosion. An unseen cost is the ramped up energy use involved in farming and fertilizing the converted lands.

Many folks find it difficult to envision how farming affects the environment, but growing numbers of Americans are becoming aware of how farm subsidies affect their taxes. In this case, taxpayers-thanks to a farmer-friendly Congress-are footing most of the bill. Driving much of the land conversion are federal subsidies to produce ethanol from corn and very generous crop insurance subsidies. According to the report, the federal government pays an average of 62 percent of farmer's crop insurance premiums and makes annual payments of $1.3 billion to insurance companies and their sales agents.

Crop insurance makes it less risky to plant marginal ground and has no doubt been a driving force behind the land conversion. The bitter irony is much of this land was taken out of production during the last 25 years through the Conservation Reserve Program, another federal subsidy program intended to reduce farming's environmental effects by idling land that shouldn't have been farmed in the first place. CRP successfully reduced erosion and polluted run-off and was a tremendous boon to farmland wildlife. In the past, farm subsidies were often linked to payment limits, means testing and conservation requirements. This is not the case with crop insurance.

An Environmental Working Group analysis showed 26 unidentified policy holders received over $1 million in premium subsidies and over 10,000 growers who received over $100,000 in premium subsidies. According to the report, crop insurance premiums cost taxpayers $7.4 billion in 2011. At current rates, taxpayers will spend $90 billion in crop insurance subsidies over the next 10 years. It's possible crop insurance payments will undergo reform in the pending Farm Bill, but don't hold your breath for that to occur. For politicians of both parties, the real bottom line is this: Generous farm subsidies buy votes in the Heartland.

Airdate: August 17, 2012

Many Minnesota state parks are open to deer hunting during the November firearm season, which begs a question: Will wolf hunting be allowed in Minnesota state parks? The answer is yes and no.
 
When I asked the question of DNR Wildlife's Steve Merchant, he directed me to pages 113-115 in the 2012 Minnesota Hunting and Trapping Regulations Handbook, which lists the state parks, state recreation areas and scientific and natural areas open to hunting and trapping. The rules governing these activities vary from unit to unit and may even vary within an individual state park. As a result, wolf hunting will be allowed in some parks, or portions of parks, and not in others.
 
Consider the North Shore's 2,200-acre Split Rock Lighthouse State Park. On Page 115 the rules say, "approximately 50 acres in the far northern part of the park is open to public hunting but closed to trapping. See map for location."  The rest of the park is closed to wolf hunting, but will be open for a special firearms deer hunt. On page 86 of the handbook, I found the special deer hunt regulations for Split Rock Lighthouse State Park, where either-sex hunting permits are available. The only portion of the park closed to deer hunting is "south and east of Highway 61," which is the vicinity of the lighthouse, campgrounds and other park amenities.
 
Special firearm deer hunts will occur in five North Shore state parks. Wolf hunting will be allowed in portions of four parks-George H. Crosby Manitou, Split Rock Lighthouse, Temperance River and Tettegouche-where public hunting is allowed for all game. The same is true for other state parks and recreation areas within the wolf hunting zone.
 
State Scientific and Natural Areas, which are lands set aside to protect natural features, are also governed by a patchwork of rules related to hunting. You must consult the regulations handbook to determine where and what kind of hunting is allowed in various units. Trapping is also permitted on some SNAs.
 
Figuring out the details for wolf hunting in state parks, recreation areas and SNAs will likely be easier for hunters than it will be for the general public, many of whom may view these areas as de facto wildlife refuges. While the question of to hunt or not to hunt on these public lands was addressed prior to the state establishing a wolf hunting and trapping season, the inconsistencies in the related rules and policies are confusing at the very least.
 
The 2012 regulations handbook contains no information about the coming wolf hunting and trapping season other than a short note on Page 2 that further details about the season will be released this month. One detail we do know is hunters will be able to apply in groups of up to four individuals for wolf hunting tags. Unlike the moose hunt, where a group of hunters is allowed to kill one moose, each member of a wolf hunting group will be issued a license to kill a wolf. Merchant says this means if a group is picked, they can hunt together and each kill a wolf.
 
If one person in a deer hunting camp has a wolf tag, other hunters may assist the licensed wolf hunter, but only the licensed hunter may kill a wolf. This differs from the state's long-standing deer hunting rule, where any member of the group who is afield may kill a deer and use the harvest tag of another group member. Hunters know this as party hunting. In order to shoot a wolf, you'll need a valid wolf hunting license in your pocket.
 
Minnesota's new wolf season is a work in progress, driven at this point more by a legislative mandate to start killing wolves as soon as possible rather than a wildlife management plan intended to make the best use of a limited and valuable natural resource. Very likely, it will take a few years before the dust settles and we figure out how best to manage wolves.
 
In the meantime, the details of the season will matter more to people than to the wolves, which have long survived in Minnesota in spite of human activities. For now, we are stuck with a harvest plan that continues the failed strategy begun in the western states of selling wolf tags to big game hunters. It's a strategy intended to buy a few votes for northern lawmakers and placate those deer hunters who blame the big bad wolf when they don't shoot a deer.
 
Unfortunately, if the deer season wolf hunt fails to satisfy participants-namely through a failure to kill what they regard as enough wolves-we may start down a slippery slope. Already some are clamoring to have more and cheaper wolf tags available for deer hunters, which is how the western states are coping with their failed hunting strategy. Even with more tags and longer seasons, western states are not killing enough wolves to satisfy politicians or their anti-wolf constituents.
 
While neither wolf advocates nor prospective wolf hunters want to hear it, trapping is the most effective and responsible way to harvest wolves in Minnesota. Trappers could target areas where wolves are causing problems and would be more likely to achieve sustainable harvest goals. Equally important, trappers would process and sell wolf pelts, thus ensuring the harvested animals are put to use. A trapping-based harvest strategy would likely please livestock owners and others who experience problems with wolves, but it might not buy many anti-wolf votes up north or pro-wolf votes in the metro. Unfortunately, those votes may matter more than a sound wolf management strategy, because the Minnesota wolf is a political animal.

Airdate: August 10, 2012

Last Sunday morning I got up early and really wasn't sure what to do with myself. Mechanical issues with my primary outboard motor dry-docked my Lake Superior fishing plans. My fishing itch needed to be scratched, but I wasn't sure how to do so. The walleyes in a favorite lake were in a nonbiting funk and it was too hot to don a pair of chest waders to fly-fish for brook trout. Plus, I knew the fish were biting on Lake Superior.

Instead of fishing, I went mushroom hunting. It wasn't a bad trade-off, if for no other reason than I don't often spend a summer morning in the woods. It was cool in the shade of the forest. Mosquitoes were barely noticeable. And the birds were singing. All of the tunes were familiar, but sadly I can't identify birds by their songs. Walking home with enough chanterelles for dinner, a coyote crossed the road just a stone's throw ahead of me, capping off an enjoyable morning.

Still, I kept thinking about fishing. It was interesting to me that, in the middle of summer, I was hard-pressed to come up with an alternative fishing plan. Lake Superior has been my midsummer fishing hole for so long I've pretty well forgotten about everything else. My fishing routine is pretty simple. I fish for walleyes during June, switch over to fly-fishing for trout in lakes when the mayfly hatch begins and then head out on Lake Superior when the hatch winds down in early July. Around mid-August I start fishing for walleyes again.

While trolling for trout and salmon isn't everyone's cup of tea, I find it fun. Some of my snootier fly-fishing friends ask me how I can find trolling interesting. I always reply that all trout fishing offers the same challenge. Whether you are casting a Royal Coachman or pulling a flutter spoon, trout behavior is the same. Triggering trout to strike is usually a matter of skill, alchemy and luck, no matter where or how you fish for them. Some days it's easy. Most often, it's not.

So far this summer, either luck or alchemy hasn't been with me, because whatever skill I possess isn't likely to change much from one year to the next. For many anglers, this has been a salmon summer--a rare year when both Coho and Chinook salmon are abundant. A friend of mine caught so many salmon by the middle of July he declared he was tired of eating them. Reports from other trollers along the North Shore verify the salmon fishing is as good as it gets. Unfortunately, salmon fishing seems to be good everywhere but in my boat. Although my first fish of the season was a fat Coho, as of this writing it's my only salmon.

I went out several times with Vikki's grandson Joe, who stayed with us through most of July. This is the first year that Joe, now 15, showed much enthusiasm for fishing. He got up early so we could get out for a couple of hours before I went to work in the morning. He also learned enough about launching and operating the boat that we began working together as a team. We caught a lake trout here and a steelhead there--enough fish to keep him interested in the fishing, but not enough to say we had them dialed in.

Last Saturday was my first time out since Joe went home. Hoping to change my luck, I headed for a stretch of shoreline where I rarely see other trollers, but often catch fish. I dropped one line to 60 feet with a downrigger and then ran a lead core line at about 30 feet, using a planing device to pull the line away from the boat. Often, the lead core line is deadly on salmon, but this year the surface water seems to be too warm for them. For weeks, the surface water temperature has been about 66 degrees, which is 10 to 15 degrees warmer than the fish prefer. While I have no way of checking the temperatures beneath the surface, on Lake Superior the sun-warmed water floats like a plate over much colder depths. I hoped the spoon trailing the downrigger was in the chill.

Apparently it was, because I soon caught a three-pound lake trout. Hardly a trophy, but a small lean lake trout is as tasty as any salmon. Hopeful there were more lakers where the first one came from, I again lowered the spoon to 60 feet. It didn't take long to catch a three lake trout limit. I quit then, even though I could have continued fishing for salmon. Tomorrow would be another day.

Or so I thought. The motor was sluggish on the run back to the launch. The repair, while simple, required buying sparkplugs I couldn't find on a Saturday afternoon. So I spent Sunday morning's fishing time picking mushrooms. Hopefully, only a day or two will pass before I'm back on the water again.

After all, when it comes to salmon, I'm still down on my luck. While lake trout are always welcome in my boat, they are much easier to catch than their silvery kin. Beyond that, there's something about salmon that attracts me. Even though they are not native to the Great Lakes, salmon have found a niche in Superior, where they successfully spawn in many tributary streams. Although they do not grow as large in Superior's icy waters, the Cohoes and Chinooks here are every bit as wild as the ones I've caught in their native Pacific Ocean.

Out there, fishing with excellent charter captains, I've learned catching salmon isn't a sure thing. Once again, you need that mix of skill, alchemy and luck to make it happen. Always, it seems, you have to figure out a puzzle in order to catch fish. And right now, Lake Superior has me puzzled. The only way I can solve the puzzle is to go fishing.

Airdate: August 3, 2012

Photo courtesy of USFWS Pacific via Flickr.

News from the Minnesota DNR last week included the revelation that some deer hunters will be able to use bait while they are hunting in November. Wolf bait, that is. Hunters participating in the state’s new wolf hunts can use baits to entice the elusive animals into shooting range. Hopefully, wolf baits won’t be attractive to deer.

“You can’t take deer over bait intended for deer,” said DNR enforcement spokesman Rodman Smith in a teleconference last week. “You have to use something (as wolf bait) not intended to entice deer.”

The distinction is important, because while it is legal to bait wolves, baiting for deer in Minnesota is very much against the law. That said, in recent years, baiting for deer has been one of the most common hunting violations in Minnesota’s wolf country.

So what kind of bait will deer hunters possessing a wolf license be able to use? Smith didn’t elaborate, saying “all of the baiting stuff will be spelled out” in the new wolf hunting rules. He was emphatic that wolf hunters can’t use corn, a popular deer bait. However, Dan Stark, DNR large carnivore specialist, said the bait options are unlimited, because wolves have a widely varied diet. He suggested rotten deer and beaver carcasses.

Whatever bait wolf hunters choose has to comply with existing rules for using bait and animal parts, Smith said. A quick perusal of the hunting regulations synopsis reveals a tangled web of applicable rules, including those related to the sale of animal parts, the disposal of deer carcasses, bear baiting restrictions and trapping-related restrictions to using bait. Pity the conservation officers who must negotiate this maze of regulations and their application to baiting wolves, especially during the deer season.

Why bait wolves? The short answer is that it may prove to be the only consistent way for hunters to kill Minnesota wolves. In dense forest cover, the chance of seeing a wolf is happenstance at best. Drawing in wolves to a pile of road-killed deer, or some other bait, is one of the very few ways to better your odds of seeing the wary animals. We know baiting works, because wildlife photographers use bait to take pictures of wolves.

Most likely hunters or wolf hunting guides will set up their baits on the upwind edge of an open area, such as a clearcut, field or frozen waterway. The hunter’s stand will be located where it can be quietly approached without disturbing the bait. Once in position, all the hunter has to do is watch and wait.

It is possible Minnesota wolf hunting will soon acquire all the charm and ambiance of shooting your neighbor’s dog out the kitchen window. In other words, it will differ little from modern Minnesota deer hunting. Last week I talked with Bob Kreps, the St. Louis County land commissioner, about the problems he has with supposed deer hunters on the county’s public forest lands. I say supposed, because what is going on out there in the woods pretty much removes the hunt out of hunting.

Kreps is trying to address the problems associated with the increasing prevalence of what he calls “elaborate, overbuilt deer stands” foresters are finding on county lands. Not so long ago, deer stands were simple platforms built in trees. Today, those platforms, even on public lands, have walls and roofs.

“If you are going out with a few 2x4s to build a platform, that’s one thing,” Kreps told me. “When you put up a deer shack on stilts, that’s something else entirely.”

This spring, county foresters found a deer stand with pine planking on the outside, tongue and groove paneling on insulated interior walls and shutters on the windows. Another shack on stilts was accessed via three flights of stairs. Not surprisingly, some of these shacks have locks on the doors.

“The locks send a message that public land is being treated as private property,” Kreps said.

Very often, these popple palaces are accompanied by landscaping. Hunters cut down trees and brush to create long shooting lanes branching out like spokes on a wheel from the stand. In one instance, a hunting party built eight stands, each with shooting lanes 18 to 30 feet in width and up to 700 feet in length. While foresters tolerate a little brush clearing to improve hunting visibility, they frown on wide shooting lanes that take land out of timber production.

Recently, some hunters have begun taking landscaping to a new level. They till up ground in recently harvested areas and plant food plots to attract deer. In one location, someone picked all of the rocks out of a road through a cutting for 150 yards to create what foresters assume will be a massive food plot, though it has yet to be planted.

Surprisingly, St. Louis County doesn’t have policies in place to address the popple palace problems. Kreps said county commissioners have been reluctant to address the issues, not only in St. Louis County, but in other northern counties, too. He hopes to have policies crafted this year to address the more egregious cases of food plots and shooting lanes. He wants to penalize hunters for lost timber and require them to replant their clearings with trees. Food plots discovered by foresters will be treated with herbicides, just the same as any invasive plants.

Believe it or not, Kreps may have a more difficult time coming up with a policy to address the popple palaces. Ironically, if you were caught dumping building materials on county lands, you’d be fined for illegal dumping. Get caught using the same material to build an unauthorized shack in the woods and you’ll simply be asked to remove it. Even if the county comes up with a better policy, Kreps says it is possible northern Minnesota legislators will attempt to overrule it in the next legislative session.

This leaves us with a sad but likely scenario. When the state’s first wolf season opens on November 3, someone will be savoring a cup of coffee in a warm popple palace, gazing down a long shooting lane toward a pile of wolf bait and waiting in comfort for a wolf to appear. Call it a travesty. Call it another example of poor political leadership. Unfortunately, an ugly truth remains. In Minnesota, we call it hunting.

Airdate: July 20, 2012

Photo courtesy of cljo via Flickr.

North America currently has more ducks than at any time since 1955. So says the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which counts 48.6 million ducks of various species in the newly released 2012 “Trends in Duck Breeding Populations.” The annual report summarizes spring survey information about ducks and wetlands collected by wildlife biologists from more than two million square miles of waterfowl habitat across the U.S. and Canada.

The present abundance of ducks is a temporary uptick due to soaking wet conditions across the northern nesting grounds in 2011. Duck populations rise and fall in response to wet and dry precipitation cycles on the prairies. In the simplest terms, if you want more ducks, just add water.

But nothing is ever that simple.

News of a record duck population won’t mean much to hunters in Minnesota and many points elsewhere. The era when high duck numbers meant good hunting is long past. These days, the autumn migration is often delayed by weeks of mild weather. When the ducks do fly, they pause briefly at an ever-shrinking list of marshes and waterways where they find food and refuge from human disturbance. In Minnesota, once the top duck hunting state in the nation, that’s become a pretty short list.

Ironically, the news of record duck numbers comes at a time when land and water conservation efforts are on the ropes. The present crop of politicians is at best indifferent and too often hostile to basic fish and wildlife conservation programs. Whenever they can, anti-conservation politicians hide behind political cover. Budgets are slashed in the name of deficit reduction. Long-standing regulations intended to protect land, water and wildlife are attacked as “job killers.”

It’s easy to blame Republicans for this assault on conservation. Heck, even my own congressman, Chip Cravaack, whose district includes Lake Superior and the Boundary Waters, as well as the upper reaches of the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers, issues press releases crowing about his efforts to dismantle clean water rules. But the problem is, the blame goes two ways. Few Democrats provide a counterbalance to Republicans’ anti-conservation rhetoric. After all, politicians from both parties pocket checks from the same special interests.

If the future of conservation appears bleak in Washington, it looks even worse in duck country. Not long ago I talked with a photographer friend who’d just returned from a photo expedition to the prairie pothole region of North Dakota, possibly the best duck nesting grounds remaining in North America. There he watched wildlife habitat disappear as farmers, in a mad, taxpayer-subsidized rush to take advantage of high commodity prices, plowed up grasslands to grow more corn and soybeans.

“Some days, I just felt like going back to the hotel for a good stiff drink, then calling it quits and heading for home,” my friend said.

Most of the grassland was withdrawn from the Conservation Reserve Program, where the federal government pays landowners not to farm erodible or unproductive land. Now, apparently, the government provides better taxpayer-funded incentives to plow and plant the poor ground. This situation is almost certain to be exacerbated by the new federal Farm Bill, which replaces current subsidies with a taxpayer-funded crop insurance program and removes disincentives intended to prevent wetland drainage by farmers who are receiving federal farm funding.

A cynic might say it’s as if the farm lobby wrote the Farm Bill. A cynic might be right.

Current habitat losses are especially distressing when you consider how much waterfowl habitat is already gone. The great salt marshes of the Eastern Seaboard were lost to industrialization and development. The delta marshes of the Gulf Coast are greatly diminished due to erosion and energy development. Across the Corn Belt, nearly all wetlands were drained and the original prairie eliminated. Prairie Canada, once the continent’s great duck factory, has been drained and plowed, too.

So much North American waterfowl habitat has disappeared that it is hard to believe we currently have more ducks than ever. Old-time hunters talk about seeing ducks in unimaginable abundance in places where few, if any, ducks are seen today. Duck hunting was once a mainstream activity for American males. Everyone from celebrities and community leaders to firemen and janitors spent time in the duck blind. By contrast, duck hunting today is a niche activity, pursued primarily by hunters with the good fortune to live near the remaining hunting areas or with the financial wherewithal to gain access to private clubs and commercial operations.

Enough duck hunters exist to support a sizable industry based on supplying them with guns, decoys, dogs, guides and private hunting grounds. But the future of the duck hunting business may be less rosy than the present. The current duck abundance will only last as long as the wet conditions on the nesting grounds. When the drought returns, duck numbers will begin an inevitable decline. If federal farm policies continue encouraging habitat destruction, duck numbers are unlikely to recover to present levels.

Does this mean the end of duck hunting as we know it? Maybe not, but most of the older hunters who I know would say duck hunting as they knew it is already gone. More likely we are at the beginning of a long decline in duck numbers. Twenty years from now, today’s hunters may look back wistfully at 2012 and say, “Remember when?”

For nearly a century, ducks have been the focus of international conservation efforts. Along the way, conservationists have accomplished much, notably the creation of public wildlife areas, the rise of conservation nonprofits such as Ducks Unlimited and raising public awareness of the importance of wetland protection. Those accomplishments didn’t come easy. Even in the best of times, conservationists are pushing a rock uphill in a market-driven world that places little value on Nature. Today, we’re pushing a bigger rock up a steeper hill. Let’s hope it doesn’t roll right over us.

Airdate: July 13 2012

FEMA has been to the Arrowhead a couple of times to assess the June flood damage. Now they’re looking at helping individual property owners. WTIP’s Jay Andersen spoke with Sen. Al Franken on “Daybreak.”