Pet Talk with Vicki Davis

I drop the truck into four wheel drive and start to tip toe off the county road and follow an ancient logging trail. Last fall, when I was here, I don’t recall the logging trail so rough. I meander about and come to the sharp corner and here is a brand new county forest gate with a lock that’s locked tight. Oh for the love of progress. Man whose going to steal trees back here. Stupid gate...

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When I load the over under I think to myself that the shell prices have gone sky high. Every time I pull the trigger today it’s gonna be a bill, for a bill. A dollar a duck if I connect. It’s still worth it, but shells are almost hunting pockets full of steel currency. If I add in the federal stamp and state license fees I yearn for days of old...

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In recent years, the snow goose harvest has been closer to 30,000. What has happened is the bulk of the snow goose migration is sticking in southern Canada, which has suitable food supplies, but lower hunting pressure...

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So Santa gets my Christmas letter and really appreciated that I had mailed it in July. He took special note of my thinking of him, and how busy he might be Christmas Eve. So I was surprised when...

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I don’t think of myself as a veteran hunter. But when I put pen to paper and add up the years, I realize it's been nearly 25 of them since I took hunter education in LaMoure in 1984. During that time, I've already experienced some significant changes in our hunting landscape...

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Football previews with prognostications and predictions for the upcoming season are starting in earnest. Based on drafts and off-season transactions, “experts” are predicting which teams will flourish or fail...

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Much of spring snow goose hunting is time and weather dependent. The same is generally true in the fall, except then it’s cold weather systems that drive birds south. In spring, warm weather systems melt snow and ice and allow birds to advance north...

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You ever catch yourself sniffing empty shotgun shells? In the heat of battle most of my spent twelve gauges hit the bottom of the duck boat. Exceptions to the rule occur, and those are the three inch mags that I tuck in my pocket after poking at Canadian honkers...

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About 15 years ago I attended my first Game and Fish Department advisory board meeting. I was a fisheries and wildlife management student at North Dakota State University, and had a goal of one day working in the natural resource field. I decided it might be a positive learning experience to attend this open public meeting, and it sounded like more fun than studying for a statistics exam...

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The U.S. Department of Agriculture recently announced a new program called Conservation Practice 37, or CP 37 for short, designed to enhance waterfowl habitat in the prairie pothole states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Minnesota and Montana...

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Even if you’re not a duck hunter, I think you’ll appreciate what thousands of duck hunters across the prairie are doing this fall. It’s about as simple a task as you can make it, and much of the time they don’t get enough credit for how they’ve contributed to the good of the cause...

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I can’t get the wind to my back, so a long line of decoys angles towards shore like a funnel.  What I call the “baby duck” is flying somewhere around mock two coming into line and dropping. The number four previously installed in the upper tube woompfs and I...

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Benjamin Franklin, apparently, did not have duck hunters in mind when he penned this statement. "Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed."...

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Hunters and bird watchers are wondering what is happening to duck populations. There appears to be fewer ducks nesting in the local area and fewer migrating ducks stopping over...

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The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) cautions hunters not to mistake a trumpeter swan for a goose during the waterfowl hunting season that begins on Oct. 1. The cost is high for people who shoot swans in Minnesota, with stiff fines up to $700, possible confiscation of their shotguns, and restitution charges of $1,000 for a trumpeter swan...

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