Washburn’s Outdoor Journal

Photography courtesy of Lowell Washburn, all rights reserved.   With the November rut long past, Iowa white-tails have no further need of their magnificent antlers. So what do deer do with something they don’t need anymore?  The same thing we […]

Photography courtesy of Lowell Washburn, all rights reserved.   My first encounter with the Gray Faced Buck occurred on November 1st, 2014.  It was during my first bow hunt of the season, and the annual rut was in full swing.

Photography courtesy of Lowell Washburn, all rights reserved.   At first glance, the blue jay-sized northern shrike looks pretty harmless. But for resident mice, shrews, and juncos this slate colored songbird is anything but harmless.  In reality, the shrike is

Photography courtesy of Lowell Washburn, all rights reserved.   Overcast skies, chill winter wind, rural landscapes cloaked in nine inches of new snow. Absolute perfect conditions for an end of December goose hunt.  But for hunting companion Curt Stille and

Photography courtesy of Lowell Washburn, all rights reserved. Today’s magnificent snowstorm delivered the kind of weather I wait all year for.  The noisy crusted over snow was quickly buried, the woods became completely silent again, and the landscape soon resembled

Photography courtesy of Lowell Washburn, all rights reserved.   It’s rumored that when throwing important dinner parties, some of our local high rollers like to impress their guests by having live lobsters flown in from Maine or gallons of jumbo

Photography courtesy of Lowell Washburn, all rights reserved.   Across Iowa’s northern tier, the signals are clear.  This year’s duck season is rapidly winding down.  Smaller ponds and sloughs – even the larger marshes — are completely iced over –

Photography courtesy of Lowell Washburn, all rights reserved.   Monday morning, the final day of November.  A significant winter storm was brewing and you could feel it in the air.  A light skiff of snow had already fallen during the

Photography courtesy of Lowell Washburn, all rights reserved.   Migrators:  Boring into the teeth of a 30 knot NW wind at sunrise; arriving flaps down over the decoys at seven; into the apple wood stoked Weber by 5:30 and onto

Photography courtesy of Lowell Washburn, all rights reserved.    Home Wrecker. That’s how my friend Brandon Stark has labeled the monstrous white-tailed buck currently haunting our local woodlands.  The handle stuck, and now it’s the name everyone is using when