Outdoors

You have to be smart to hunt with a muzzle-loader! If you aren’t giving some thought to what you are doing and you nonchalantly ram a bullet down the barrel before you pour the powder in, you have a problem. The powder absolutely has to go in first! Hunting with a ‘smoke-pole’ causes you to

Give fish a gift this year by recycling your live Christmas tree. Cuivre River State Park will accept live Christmas trees for fish habitat until Jan. 15, 2023. Team members from Cuivre River State Park will join fisheries biologists from the Missouri Department of Conservation to sink the donated trees in Lake Lincoln in an

There won’t be any New Year’s Eve party here on Lightnin’ Ridge. Things will be about like they are almost every night during the winter. Before midnight, a pair of raccoons will be ambling along the small creek that leads down to the river, looking for food that is becoming harder to find because the

Kick off the new year with a First Day Bison Saunter at Prairie State Park. Join park team members at 1 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 1, for a guided saunter. Participants will brave the conditions and take a 2-mile hike over uneven terrain to see the bison. Since the location of the bison is unknown until

The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) reports that Missouri hunters harvested one bull elk during the archery portion of the 2022 elk-hunting season, Oct. 15-23, and two bull elk during the firearms portion, Dec. 10-18. The three Missouri hunters were each selected for one of five elk permits issued in 2022 through a random drawing

As much as I loved my two little grandsons, I didn’t get either of them a Christmas present when they were young. That’s because they had toys stacked so high in their home that you couldn’t see any corners. I think back on those great Christmases when I was a kid, when there was common

There is misinformation about deer rubs on trees that you see in the fall and winter. No, the story that those rubs you see are made by bucks whose velvet antlers are itching and they need to get rid of drying velvet, the blood-filled covering of young, forming antlers, isn’t completely accurate. That is the

Archery season continues through Jan. 15. Alternative methods portion runs Dec. 24 – Jan. 3. Preliminary data from the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) shows that deer hunters in Missouri harvested 16,032 deer during the antlerless portion of the firearms deer season, Dec. 3-11. Top harvest counties were Callaway with 451 deer harvested, Pike with

Some counties will have two new firearms deer-season portions and additional antlerless permits. The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) recently set turkey and deer hunting dates for the 2023-2024 seasons along with regulation changes for the 2023-2024 deer-hunting season. The regulation changes include a new firearms early antlerless portion, a new firearms CWD portion, and

Public can submit comments through Dec. 31. In partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) is seeking public comment on a draft Generic Environmental Assessment (EA) regarding the public lake and stream access program in Missouri. MDC strives to construct new, renovate, or relocate existing boating access