Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
Official Newspaper of Eddy County since 1883
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Perhaps the most amazing number included in the North Dakota Game & Fish Department's (NDG&F) recent release of upland tallies from the fall of 2020 was the jump of more than 52,000 estimated sharptailed grouse harvested over the previous season. Coming on improved nesting and recruitment of broods into the population, last autumn's grouse harvest was also buoyed by a 43 percent increase in hunters pursuing the birds which can be found throughout much of the state. In total, an estimated 19,971...
As I waded through the recently cut wheat fields and grassy stretches around them on the way to check my trail camera this weekend, I watched the grasshoppers flee before my boots in waves like those made by the wakeboarders back at the cabin. As they did, I recalled just how fun those summers of more than two decades ago, along that same lakeshore were, thanks to some of my first - and certainly most consistent - topwater success. I can’t remember now if my dad had purchased a Rebel Crickhopper...
A strong, snow-filled winter not only challenged deer in the northeastern corner of the state, but also hindered survey tactics employed by the North Dakota Game & Fish Department at the start of the year. Unable to fly any aerial surveys, the department leaned heavily on the reports of staff, landowners and the general public, along with hunter surveys from 2019 to set the tone and the tag numbers for the 2020 firearms deer season. Despite not flying the annual surveys, the department isn't...
Rocked by the waves generated from the wake board boats closing out their weekends on the water, my brother and I drifted around the patches of weeds on the long point extending into the lake. Here and there, loons would cluster and then spread out as jet skis and pontoons wove their way around the main basin and back across it. On the otherwise still day, the motion of the water would linger with me well after the trip, and I’d feel the slight rocking as I settled in, back at the cabin. A...
Despite last year showcasing one of the worst outbreaks of epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) – a midge-borne illness that impacts primarily whitetailed deer, but did infect and kill mule deer, a few pronghorn and even an elk in southwestern North Dakota late last summer and fall – the region's deer herds remain relatively stable headed into the fall hunting seasons according to North Dakota Game & Fish Department (NDG&F) Big Game Supervisor Bruce Stillings. "The populations are generally loo...
Early last fall, as I rolled up over the hill with my buddy behind me, closing out the two-truck caravan in our grouse hunt, I was a bit dismayed to see the stretch of public-access grass from yellow sign to yellow sign completely hayed. While it wasn’t a big blow to our day, as we each had a couple sharpies in our bags, it did come as a bit of a surprise. We walked a small swale, which had been spared the baler, but put up no more birds as the onset of early afternoon heat ended our late S...
With a mild winter, dry spring and a warm summer, whitetail deer populations in southeastern North Dakota are doing well. More than that, according to Jason Smith, Big Game Biologist with the North Dakota Game & Fish Department (NDG&F) office in Jamestown, the relatively easy conditions have also helped improve the age structure of the region's deer. "With the lack of a real winter and obviously mild spring conditions the deer population is holding its own," Smith comments in relation to the...
The continued drought and dry conditions have lowered flows from western North Dakota to eastern Minnesota during this long, hot summer. Since early spring, I've walked the shores of a number of rivers and streams and driven over hundreds of others in my travels and their conditions have at times made my jaw drop. I can never remember seeing no water flowing into the Sheyenne River from the Baldhill Dam, but that was exactly the case as I visited my home flow in April. It was a portent of...
The haze of a hundred wildfires dimmed the light of the mid-July sun overhead, on the afternoon fishing trip, as I drifted along the breaks of a favorite rocky lake. The orb’s all-day orange glow made me uncomfortable as the effects of yet another heatwave crashing on the west drifted slowly across the plains, like the foam at the edge of a breaker trying to extend its reach up the beach. I looked to overcome the uneasiness in the places I usually encountered the smallmouth bass on the clear w...
It was 20 years ago this summer that I took a job in between college and law school as a part-time reporter for my hometown newspaper, the Valley City Times-Record. In fact, it's a publication for which I still proudly write today, and I am happy and sometimes amazed that they've kept me on this long and through so many moves. Between reporting on developing technology in the community, looking over the police blotter, and covering the occasional Legion baseball game that summer, I was also...
It was a long trip to Lake Hartwell near Anderson, S.C. for brothers Brandon and Logan Bullinger of Century High School in Bismarck, N.D., but the time and effort put in competitively fishing bass in the Student Angler Federation's High School Fishing league (highschoolfishing.org) and a North Dakota state title earned them a berth in the event held from June 30 to July 3 on the 56,000 acre impoundment. While Brandon, a graduating senior, and Logan, just completing his sophomore year, came up on...
The rising sun heated the morning air like a fuse on the fireworks launched the night before, and as it came up over the slightly rippled waters of the northern lake on Independence Day, the fishing exploded in the same fashion. Along the inside turns of the reed beds, under the mats of lily pads, and off the small rocky points of the water, the smallmouth and largemouth bass took to my tubes with reckless abandon, and by nine o'clock I had brought a dozen or so up to the boat that were 15...
The first thing I look at when inspecting a young angler's reel is the type of line coming off of the spool. Over the holiday, I had the opportunity to connect with my wife's cousin's kids and introduce them to my style of bass fishing. While we had angled together a number of times in the past, it was never specifically for bass and would allow me the chance to explain the finer points to a 13- and 9-year old who were getting the feel for various niches of fishing. In looking over their reels,...
There are many options when it comes to catching crappies, most involving a small minnow. Whether under a slip float or on a jig, live bait is king when summer slabs are feeding, but on some lakes, baitfish are prohibited, and in many cases, light tackle anglers enjoy the challenge of fishing crappies without it. With today's selection of plastics, however, not having live bait or not being able to use it provides a chance to explore various plastic bodies from classic options to newer models...
I can’t help it. My mindset has already shifted toward hunting, despite only being one week removed from the summer solstice, the July 4 holiday not here yet, and there being nearly three full months of the summer season remaining. It happens every year about this time. I know it shouldn’t, but it does, and like the dinner bell for Pavlov’s dog, the signs that trigger thoughts of fall are everywhere. The first batch of pheasant chicks skitter with all the haste their tiny legs, below their...
While drought conditions persist across much of North Dakota, with severe levels in the west-central portion of the state around Lake Sakakawea, much of the state has received some badly needed rain which is not only good for foliage and farming, but hopefully this year's crop of pheasant chicks as well. While some downpours - like a mid-June storm near Steele, N.D. that dropped more than 5 inches of rain in a localized area - may have hampered nesting efforts, gentler rains have helped hedge a...
Could there be a fish more American than a bluegill? From sea to shining sea, these panfish span the width of the country, from the lakes of California to the backwaters along the Gulf Coast to the impoundments of Maine and those within the upper Midwest's amber waves of grain. Their readiness to get down to business and hard charging demeanor whether chasing after what they want or while on the line, reflect the mindset of the anglers that pursue them. Certainly, this time of year, photos of a...
In the grasses, along the ditch that drains to the small trout creek down the road from the family cabin, grows a reminder of the summer solstice. While I'm not always there to see them in full bloom, and sometimes they're not yet at that stage due to seasonal timings and conditions, I often look back on the find I made one chilly and damp summer, while moving some shoreline weeds out to the pickup area along the road. Amidst the curls of green swamp grass, the purple-and-white bulbs of a patch...
To Do Today Jack to Baseball 5:30 Jack to Golf Course 6:30 MR CTL Mtg 6:45 Summertime means an uptick in fish activity, and it also means fish are looking up for food. Frogs, small mammals, insects and even ducklings find themselves on the surface this time of year along with growing young of the year fish, providing easy targets for both largemouth and smallmouth bass. The warmth of the season and the abundance of prey offers up an opportunity to connect with one of the most exciting moments an...
Through the valleys and hills of the sporting clays course east of town, we tracked the movements of our five high school shooters, who were logging their final rounds of the season. Sunday’s rounds were different, in that they comprised the last 100 targets of the year, and the first to be entered into the tournament scoring system for the USA High School Clay Target League (USA CTL), with the inaugural season nearing its completion. Five participants from two schools put on a shooting c...
Long before I owned a boat, I spent much of my summers in high school, college and law school at my grandparents' cabin on the shores of Detroit Lakes. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day in those later years, as graduations loomed and then passed, and the liberty of post-secondary education waned and reality could only be prolonged by a final summer at the lake ahead of the bar exam, I spent many evenings wandering the shoreline to the east and west of the old green cabin, spinning rod in hand...
On the final day of vacation in the Black Hills, I knew it was possible. Having landed my first brook trout, along with many more, and having discovered swarms of willing and readily-biting large rainbow trout in the same lake-and-stream complex near our cabin over the week; and having staked out a small tributary of Spearfish Creek with browns seemingly tucked under every bank and fallen log, all three targets were in sight. Sure, I’d caught them all over the week we had spent under perfect c...
The North Dakota State High School Clay Target League (ND CTL) will be holding its annual state tournament at the Shooting Park in Horace, N.D., June 18-20, playing host to approximately 1,000 shooters from 60 high schools and showcasing some of the best shotgunning talent in the state over those three days in both trap and skeet competitions. Coming off the pandemic which cancelled the event in 2020, ND CTL Director Joe Courneya is excited to see how this spring's expansion in the number of...
My first experience with wild trout came in Montana, just before my senior year of high school. There, alongside a ditch that we were told was a trout stream by the man at the shop in the nearby town, I wandered out toward the bank and looked down to see a dark, missile-shaped body holding at the bottom of a blue-green run of water. With my flyfishing days far ahead of me, I slashed at the fish deep in the pocket. It barely flinched as my Mepps spinner burned back, time and again, to my...
In the pool before me, on Spearfish Creek, sat so many trout I could hardly contain myself. Having scouted the run the day before, my jaw dropped as brookies, browns and rainbows all sat lazily within a foot of each other, rising and picking off the unseen midges in the surface film or nibbling on the insects that bounced along the bottom. Sleep had been hard to come by, and not just because of the ten family members packed into the cabin deep in the Black Hills of South Dakota, and I had...
