George Washington Sears was born in 1821 in Massachusetts and was the eldest of 10 children. While still a child, Sears had to work in a factory, and due to that experience, he enjoyed reading Charles Dickens novels, and grew to not care much for the urban experience. Somewhere along the line he was befriended by a Native American named Nessmuk who tutored him about the outdoors. At age twelve, he went to work for commercial fishermen on Cape Cod, and in 1841 signed up for a three-year whaling voyage to the South Pacific. When … Read More
Doubling Down On Turkeys
What have you been doing since the close of the last deer season? Maybe you’ve been doing a little rabbit or coyote hunting? Maybe you’ve hunkered down in your nice warm house for the winter. Well a spring turkey hunt is a great reason to head back to the woods and get that blood flowing again and of course being in the woods again is good for the soul. As we approach turkey season each spring, my thoughts always seem to drift towards the fond memories of turkey hunting with my good friend, Andy. Of … Read More
The Anomaly Grouse
Sometimes hunters and fishermen have a tendency to embellish their stories, or at least the stories grow bigger as time goes by. Who knows that the passage of time may cloud the memory which causes such delusions. More often than not we add to or take away from our experiences to make the stories more entertaining than anything malicious. With this in mind I am putting to paper the story about the “Anomaly Grouse”, as best I can recall it! Wink, wink! The word, anomaly means, abnormal, peculiar, something different; you get the idea. When … Read More
A Michigan Bear – one of the biggest!
Samuel Wiltzius from Marquette bagged one of the heaviest black bears bagged in the state during 2022 seasons while hunting over bait in the Carney Bear Management Unit in the southern UP. The bear he shot certainly was the biggest entered in the annual Big Bear Award Contest sponsored by the Michigan Bear Hunters Association for its members. The bruin Wiltzius tagged in Dickinson County on September 16 had a live weight of 578 pounds and dressed weight of 503 pounds. The skull from the bear scored 20 12/16, qualifying for a spot in Boone … Read More
Wyoming Adventures Long Remembered
The late Bob Brislawn is known by the USDA as being the founder of the Spanish Mustang as an American horse breed. I can remember a large picture of him in Life magazine in January 1969, in which he was wearing his trademark large Stetson with a small American flag protruding up out of the hatband. The Life magazine article about wild mustangs featured a bit of Bob’s history and his dedicated efforts to save the Spanish mustang as a breed. He had worked for the U.S. Geological Survey during the early 20th Century as … Read More
Playing By Ear
The walk through the darkness and silence was eerily exciting, like when you step into a lake and something unseen brushes past your leg. The cool rain wasn’t falling hard enough to discourage the adventure but just hard enough to make zipping up the jacket a good idea. In so many ways it was the same. Yet in several ways it was different. About 20 years had elapsed since my previous wild turkey hunting in northern Michigan. For a couple of reasons I stopped, mainly the nuisance of interlopers sneaking in hours after I had … Read More
Nothing beats a day spent in good “rabbitat”
Growing up on a Thumb area farm, I have a long association with the cottontail rabbit, a wild, carefree critter which I much admire, and it was the first game animal I ever harvested. This occurred when I was a kid and had just finished my morning chores at the barn and was returning to our farmhouse. When I walked past the corncrib, a cottontail flushed from near it and headed lickety-split to our orchard nearby. I went to the house and grabbed up my single-shot .410 shotgun, and a couple shells. A fresh, fluffy … Read More
A Father And Son Double
The Michigan DNR sent out emails to thousands of Michigan deer hunters this year asking us all to take a doe if we had the opportunity. My son, Jacob and I were both sitting on our second combo tag and I still had a doe tag going into Christmas weekend, so I figured we should try our luck in the woods one last time for the year. It was a bit warmer than I like it this time of year but the weather was kind of rainy so I figured that might get the deer … Read More
Hail To Thee Ole Michigan Grouse
By: Jeff Horn. The elusive one that causes the hunter to miss their shots, and say ugly words. The Historian and Geographer Herodotus called Egypt “Gift of the Nile”. Perhaps if old Herodotus had ever hunted grouse in the U. P. of Michigan he would have dubbed Michigan and the great lakes region “the gift of the grouse”. In a Grouse season so dry, that even the grouse packed water, I found myself ready to call the DNR and ask, where have all the grouse gone? My hunting party didn’t find the grouse in the … Read More
2023 Turkey Season; More Great Memories With Dad
By: Keith Kinyon. I have hunted and fished with my dad since I was 12 years old. Some of my very best memories are experiences afield and on the water with my dad there to share the moment. This year, with my dad approaching his 84th birthday in a month, we were able to share a turkey hunt that unfolded quickly and had all the components of an exciting hunt. This story started back in December when I had a group of 14 Toms and Jakes that made their way through my property every day. … Read More
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