There are a lot of good reasons to visit Iowa’s winter woodlands.  Listening to the eerie, nighttime serenades of resident owls ranks high on my list of favorites. As is the case with any outdoor adventure, being prepared is key to success.  It is, after all, the dead of winter.  Dress too lightly and you’ll freeze.  Wear too much and
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Sub-zero temperatures.  Drifting snow.  Winds gusting to forty-five.  Near zero visibility.  How’s that for a chilling winter combo?  But those were the exact conditions we endured last weekend when a major winter storm system bulldozed its way across the continent’s midsection.  I’m guessin’ there were a lot of Iowans who were wishing they were someplace else. A female
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PHOTO:  Ready To Fly – Like all peregrines, Aurora loves to hunt and will chase just about anything she sees.  Photo by: Carol Washburn If Jack Vooge had lost one more drop of blood; I should have called for a Medivac.  I was springing a leak or two myself, but my injuries were nothing
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The scene is timeless.  At the edge of a shallow marsh, two hunters crouch in the cattails.  The sunrise is fast approaching and a rising breeze is providing lifelike movement to the group of eleven canvasback duck decoys swimming out front.  Anticipation is growing as the hunters anxiously await the arrival the day’s first flock. An ancient canvasback duck decoy constructed
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North Iowans Pay A Unique Tribute to America’s Veterans Honkers for Heroes organizers, Zane Kantaris [front left] and Jason Hahn [front right] admire a Canada goose bagged by Vietnam veteran Gene Hockenson [right rear] of Plymouth while Iraq and Afghanistan veteran and two-time Purple Heart recipient, Matt Macke [left rear] looks on.  Staged last
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After catching his breath, the victor seeming none the worse for wear. While pondering my next move, the deer suddenly turned and began moving up the trail, leading directly to my stand. For Iowa’s 70,000 archery deer hunters, November is the grandest month of the year.  By now, the annual rut is slamming into overdrive.  Restless, edgy, and
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I heard the ducks before I actually saw them.  Not the familiar quacking normally associated with waterfowl, but rather the screeching “Who-week, Who-week” that is the signature greeting of a female wood duck.  Sitting atop a downed log, I was huddled within the tangled confines of a shallow wooded swamp where the birds -- eight or nine of them
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I wasn’t until I was in high school that I saw my first peregrine falcons.  Well, sort of.  The birds were actually a pair of mounted specimens perched atop a fake, papier-Mache cliff ledge behind the glass window of a wildlife diorama in St. Paul, Minnesota’s Bell Museum.  Although the work was flawless, the taxidermied birds lacked spirit –
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DULUTH, MN. --- In the dense evergreen forests of America’s North Country, the fall raptor migration is gathering a full head of steam.  Pouring down from Canada, the flight includes birds of prey of all shapes and sizes from tiny kestrels to gargantuan twelve-pound golden eagles.  Although the grand passage can be viewed from a variety of locations, there
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Iowa’s September teal season is the best thing that’s happened to duck hunting in the past half century.  Timed to take advantage of early migrating blue-winged teal, the season is offered to Mississippi Flyway states by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service as a sixteen-day, teal only bonus hunt.  The special season is referred to as a bonus because the
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