Top field picks, hunting tips, fishing reports, and gear deals in your inbox.
Unsubscribe anytime.
✓ You're in! Check your inbox to confirm.
Refuge hunting access just hit a record 92 million acres under the 2026 final rule. See what changed and how to check your station before opening day.
Read More →Wildlife, habitat and access. Agency rule changes, disease management, funding and land decisions, covered for what they mean to the people who hunt and fish.
“Poop sniffing dogs, who knew?” America’s wild sheep are an important public resource, but they’re susceptible to diseases caught from domestic livestock and other wild animals. The latest tool in the conservationist’s toolbox turns out to be that puppy who wants walkies … and when you think about it, it makes perfect sense (of smell)….
Some encouraging news today from the U.S. House of Representatives … Whether or not you think this legislation we’re discussing today is the right thing for America’s wildlife conservation efforts, the word “bipartisan” has become rare in our discourse of late, and today’s biggest news is possibly the fact that we’re getting to deploy it….
Over the last few months, a virus called HPAI has been killing wild birds. It is now killing mammals. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources recently confirmed that three red fox kits died from highly pathogenic avian influenza – the state’s first such confirmation of the HPAI virus in wild mammals. The fox kits, collected…
Just about a year ago, Utahns spotted a wolverine in their state–and, remarkably, the Utah DWR didn’t try to deny that what they were seeing was in fact a member of the species Gulo gulo. As we noted at the time, it’s standard operating procedure for most fish and game services to hotly deny that…
Is poaching is the “gateway drug” to antisocial behavior? A few months ago, we here at Popular Outdoorsman noted that there are very good reasons why you ought to suspect poachers of doing worse things, too. Poaching is the polar opposite of the way ethical hunters think and behave. It also seems to be a…
Scientifically managed predator conservation–and our elk populations–just took a major blow. Recently, a federal judge in California ruled to restore federal protections to gray wolf populations in the Lower 48. This flies in the face of scientifically sound predator management, and America’s conservationists are outraged. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF) has been monitoring the…
COVID-19 sent millions of new hunters into the woods, and conservation benefited. Deer hunters in the United States harvested an estimated 6.3 million white-tailed deer in the 2020-21 hunting season, the most since 2001, according to the National Deer Association’s latest Deer Report released this week. Harvests of both antlered bucks and antlerless deer were…
The year 2021 has been tough on Florida’s manatees, with approximately 1,000 mortalities. One thousand manatee mortalities may not sound like all that much, but the “sea cow” is endangered and these losses are bitter. It’s enough, in fact, to refer to what’s happened to Florida’s manatees this year as an Unusual Mortality Event, or…
Today, a conservation victory with a surprise hero…a multilevel-marketing company! The Utah Division of Natural Resources (DWR) had a problem: They wanted to introduce what’s called a “nursery herd” for wild desert sheep, but they needed acreage and support. That support came from the Gary and Mary Young Family, founders of Young Living. Young Living…
Release the hounds, Smithers… The use of tracking dogs to recover a game animal is as old as the partnership between Man and Dog itself. However, the line between using a scent hound to find a dead animal and using a scent hound to pursue a live one is exquisitely fine. Most people agree that…
America’s public-land hunters have an angel who has requested privacy, and we thank him or her. Here at Popular Outdoorsman, we often spend time sadly discussing the people who abuse our public lands and the animals that make their home there. So it’s a lovely day when we can happily discuss the people who cherish…
Back in 1937, in the heart of the Depression and the Dust Bowl, America looked around itself and realized that our wild spaces were in serious trouble. Nobody had much money back then, but everyone agreed that we needed to do a better job of conserving America’s natural resources. The Wildlife Restoration Trust Fund, which…
