A Brief BHA History III: Taking The Initiative and Raisin’ Hell
“This is why BHA was built. For this opportunity. For this fight!”
Taking the initiative. That’s how Backcountry Hunters & Anglers (BHA) got started over twenty years ago.[1] It’s why the “Gang of Seven” stood around that southern Oregon campfire during March 2004 and brought our BHA tribe into existence.[2] They were anticipating (i.e., hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst) this moment, when our great public lands ...
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A Message from BHA President & CEO Patrick Berry
Public land is as American as Mom’s apple pie and the stars and stripes. It’s woven into the fabric of our history, culture, and principles of democracy. It’s the place where generations of hard-working Americans have pursued their passions for hunting and fishing, nurtured an enduring conservation ethic, and found solace from the rest of life.
The concept that our shared resources can be managed in a collaborative and cooperative manner to ...
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By Dalton Valette
To celebrate this year’s Presidents’ Day, let’s look at the long history of America’s heads of state who enjoyed the great outdoors. For us, Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, one mustachioed man may come to mind, but there have been plenty of other hunters and anglers who’ve resided in the White House.
George Washington (1st president, 1789-1797)
Throughout his illustrious career as a surveyor, farmer, soldier, and president, Washington enjoyed a great amount of time ...
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Anonym
Would removing the lower four Snake River Dams benefit hunters? Public lands under siege. BHA chapters work on wildlife crossings and science-based management, and more in the Winter 2025 issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers' Backcountry Journal.
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
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Anonym
Backcountry Journal
This article originally appeared as the President's Message column of the Summer 2024 Backcountry Journal.
By Patrick Berry
Imagine the excitement and anticipation after a long week of work as you load up the jon boat and head out to one of your favorite hunting or fishing spots. It’s going to be a glorious day, you think to yourself.
On the drive, you might ruminate about the grudge bass that you hooked a couple of times but couldn’t bring to the net, or the time you took your two young ...
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This article also appears in the Fall 2024 issue of Backcountry Journal.
By Bryan Jones
This fall the public’s right to hunt will take center stage on the ballot in Colorado with a proposed ban on hunting mountain lions, bobcats and lynx (a federally protected, non-huntable species). Not only would this hunting ban define in Colorado state statute the legal hunting of multiple wildlife species as “trophy hunting,” it would also classify “trophy hunting” as a Class 1 misdemeanor. BHA ...
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Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
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Fueled by a surplus of testosterone and a deficit of logic, a situation common to young male duck hunters, we headed out.
By M. Robbins Church
"Oh, what now? What's next?" I asked myself as I struggled late that December afternoon to line the canoe with Pete, our shotguns, and our single bird through the ice-cold rapids. The river was nearing the top of my waders, and my next steps were uncertain. It had been an eventful, frigid canoe hunt — and it wasn't done yet.
Early that ...
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By Benjamin Thomas
I grew up as a hunting kid in south-central Pennsylvania. Our small family farm felt like paradise some days, covered in wildlife from corner to corner. But it was like a walled-desert other days – no deer to be found and turkeys gobbling beyond the property line. It was home, however, and hunting and kid adventures were right beyond my backyard.
Now, in my late twenties, life and work has moved me one-and-a-half hours from my old family property. For four years I’ve ...
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News for Immediate ReleaseSept. 21, 2023Contact: Katie McKalip, 406-240-9262, mckalip@backcountryhunters.org
The newest edition of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ magazine is available today
MISSOULA, Mont. – The fall 2023 issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ quarterly magazine, Backcountry Journal, is arriving in mailboxes across North America as hunters head into the woods for our favorite time of year. Here are some of the highlights of an issue that pays tribute to the work BHA ...
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This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Dams make up a fairly significant portion of the energy and agriculture infrastructure of the United States. But as they age, this cross-country framework of dams is in dire need of multi-million-to-billion-dollar renovations and is one of the main reasons the Pacific Northwest's iconic salmon and steelhead runs are in peril of extinction.
Cracked - The Future of Dams in a Hot, Chaotic World by ...
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This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
I began my obsession with turkey hunting eight years ago. It is truly the most juxtaposed type of hunting I’ve found. Birds are everywhere in the Midwest, yet elusive. They are weary, but extremely bombastic. Ugly at first glance, yet a cornucopia of iridescent colors and textures once you look further. Combine that with longer days, spring weather and the direct communication with wildlife, ...
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By Charlie Booher
Punctuated equilibrium defines our history, and natural resource policy is no exception. Looking back at the history of public land management in this country, we’ve frequently experienced long periods of small or stepwise changes in laws, rules or regulations, separated by a short period of rapid activity that promulgates decades of results. We are lucky to have so recently experienced a punctuation in the 116th Congress.
In 2020, conservation, hunting and outdoor ...
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More than 30 million bison once roamed North America. Only about 50,000 now live in wild herds, leading ecologists to say the buffalo is “functionally extinct.” Will the nation’s mammal and a symbol of the West endure?
This story originally appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of Backcountry Journal.
By Christine Peterson
Ervin Carlson was in his 20s when he saw a bison.
The creatures were being brought back to the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in northern Montana, a place they’d lived for ...
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This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Every once in a while, I read a book that has the power to transport me somewhere else. Writing that is so vivid and emotionally compelling that I feel as though I am there. More than once, while reading Tory Taylor’s books, I have found myself deep in the backcountry, overlooking a meadow of horses or hot on the trail of an elk, only to be startled back to reality—warm in my bed, my black lab ...
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By Sen. Martin Heinrich
If you’re like me, fall is your favorite season of the year. And if you read Backcountry Journal, there’s a pretty good chance that you feel most alive when the elk begin to bugle and the aspen leaves turn golden.
Last autumn, I was lucky enough to draw a bull elk tag in one of the premier public land units in my home state of New Mexico. This unit is part of the Gila National Forest, where Aldo Leopold formed many of the ideas that guide the modern conservation ...
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An Iowa family farm provides crucial wildlife habitat and public access
By Larry Stone
One family’s love of birds, cattle, and conservation has led to partnerships that protect more than 1,000 acres of prime fish and wildlife habitat for public use in the blufflands of northeast Iowa.
In 1971, Phil Specht and three brothers bought 1,004 acres in the watershed of Bloody Run Creek, a trout stream that joins the Mississippi River.
The land was “as good as it gets” for the wildlife ...
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By Kjell Hedström
In Sweden, caribou are called reindeer. The Swedish reindeer are not considered wild. The Sami people will herd and follow the deer migration, then in the spring, the herds will be gathered, and some animals will be separated for slaughter. Some of the meat will be dried and used by the Sami or sold commercially.
Salted and dried reindeer meat, torkat kött, is a traditional delicacy from Sweden. It is simple to make and tastes amazing. While I don’t have access to ...
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By Jake Lunsford
Wind howled through the canyon like a locomotive, snapping fire-blackened aspens and leaving a graveyard of widow-makers and deadfall in its wake. When we set camp, I had been excited to use my new tipi tent – the kind with the three-hands-required-for-assembly wood stove.
Now I was going to die in this tent.
I looked over at Ronan – a friend I was deployed with twice overseas – for solidarity in our final moments before being pulverized by whatever angry mountain god ...
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By Leyton Hanneman and Matt Hanneman
’Twas the night before hunting, when all through the woods,The creatures were stirring and there the bull stood.Our packs were all readied and quivers fitted with care;As we prayed that the moose would wait for us there.The calves and the fawns were all snug in their beds,While visions of rump roast danced in our heads.We arose before dawn and crept into the woods.To call in this big moose was our goal, if we could.Setting a blind, prepared for the long ...
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News for Immediate ReleaseDec. 19, 2022Contact: Katie McKalip, 406-240-9262, mckalip@backcountryhunters.org
The newest issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ magazine is available today
MISSOULA, Mont. – The winter 2023 issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ quarterly magazine, Backcountry Journal, is arriving in mailboxes across North America. Here are some of the highlights of an issue that pairs perfectly with a cold evening, warm fire and your favorite beverage.
All the Right Words: ...
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By Michael Woods
I’ve always loved the beach. Some of my most memorable outdoor experiences as a youth involved fishing for striped bass from the sandy shores of Cape Cod. As time passed, I discovered new and intriguing shoreline pursuits for all seasons of the year. Clamming in the spring, crabbing in the summer, fishing the striper run in autumn and hunting waterfowl and whitetails in the winter are just a few of the activities that keep me coming back to New England’s shores. Easy ...
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In the summer of that year, we lived in a village near a stream in Idaho where salmon came to spawn. The Valley of the Fish was broad and flat, and high snow-covered mountains rose to the south. The stream wound like a snake through the valley marshes, and the water sparkled in the sun. There were boulders and pebbles in it, and in places, the water moved swiftly, and for these reasons, the fish liked it, and their families had lived there for a long time. There were many salmon in the ...
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BY KEVIN FRALEY
Snowdrifts piled up and buried my cabin in interior Alaska in the winter of 2019. Outside, temperatures hovered as low as minus 40 degrees. When the cold, dark months trapped me inside, I used the time to dream about Alaska’s short summer and fall seasons. Inside, I pored over online maps, planning an early fall trip. I’d stumbled onto a scientific report from the 1970s that described fish presence in rivers of Alaska’s Arctic Slope, the area of mountains, tundra and ...
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By Mike McTee and Corey Ellis
Hunters have touted the lethality of non-lead bullets for decades. Take this quote from the NRA’s American Hunter Magazine:
Every now and then a new bullet comes along that redefines what we think we know about hunting projectiles. The Barnes all-copper X-Bullet was one of those, and it has become the most imitated big-game bullet on the market. It was introduced in 1989, and ever since the Barnes X has been a favorite of serious big game hunters wherever ...
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By John Fairchild
My chukar hunts this past season had become excuses to get some exercise for me and Charlie, my 14-year-old English Setter, spend time in the hills with friends and to explore wild places. The prospects of actually running into birds always provides motivation – but, early on, it became clear that harvesting birds would be secondary to enjoying the balmy winter weather, incredible scenery and the camaraderie of hunting partners. So, with low expectations running at a ...
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News for Immediate ReleaseSept. 27, 2022Contact: Katie McKalip, 406-240-9262, mckalip@backcountryhunters.org
The newest issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ magazine is available today
MISSOULA, Mont. – The fall issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ quarterly magazine, Backcountry Journal, is arriving in mailboxes across North America. Here’s a preview of an issue dedicated to the memories we made in our favorite season and the work being done by BHA members across North America.
BHA ...
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This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Our National Forests: Stories from America’s Most Important Public Lands takes readers on a journey through arguably America's most important public lands, our National Forests. Each chapter highlights a region, issue or story involving our national forests, which are important for any hunter, angler, conservationist or outdoor-recreator to hear. The science of growing trees, the creation of the ...
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Photos: Ace Hess
“Acts of creation are ordinarily reserved for gods and poets, but humbler folk may circumvent this restriction if they know how. To plant a pine, for example, one need be neither god nor poet; one need only own a good shovel.”
– Aldo Leopold, Sand County Almanac
By Tim Brass
It is our sense of duty to reinvest in the wild places that provide the sense of awe, inspiration and renewal that drives many of us to volunteer with conservation organizations like Backcountry ...
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Above: Students from the University of Montana learn how to process a whitetail doe at a BHA Hunting for Sustainability event.
My father introduced me to hunting at an early age. I knew how to gut a deer before I could write in cursive, and I called in my first bull elk before I was 10. I was taught to hunt before I could even line my pockets with my own tags. I’m not alone in how I was recruited into hunting. Recruitment efforts during contemporary times generally were centered around ...
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On a cool evening, I sat hidden amidst a group of boulders, watching the north face of a 11,000-foot summit as over 100 elk made their way out of the timber and onto open grasses along the adjoining alpine basin. It was a sight I hope to remember for the rest of my days. And yet, as impressive as it was, this spectacle had a downside. That being … it was July … not September: no rut crazed bugling elk, no aspens draped in the colors or autumn, and no crisp morning air. There wouldn’t be a ...
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By Raven Aäe
You are a mountain athlete with a purpose, and I am a durability advisor on a mission.
My work over the last decade has been to support my clients – alpinists, special forces, polar explorers, pregnant athletes, ultra-runners and big game hunters – as they move beyond pre-existing constructs of the possible, through the mountains into themselves.
Let’s back up and, first, allow me to describe what execution of an endurance practice requires. There are three main elements: ...
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Photos: Erik Peterson
"The movement for the conservation of wildlife and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose, and method.” – Theodore Roosevelt (1916)
By Thomas Baumeister
As Americans, we intuitively understand that some things in life deserve to be protected for our collective benefit, such as the air we breathe and the water we drink. In Montana, this also includes fish and wildlife, along with the ...
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By John Simoneau
A few years ago I was hosting friends for whitetail hunting camp, and we were looking for a new place to explore. Studying the state websites and mapping apps we decide to visit the 6,000-acre Kennebec Highlands Public Reserve. I mapped out a loop with drainages, saddles, wetlands and fading skid trails. While climbing to the first saddle I thought I heard an occasional duck call. Finding the deer sign I was looking for I settled in to sit.
I could hear the sound of ...
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BY DANIEL RITZ
In February 2020, I met BHA’s chapter leaders and regional staff at the chapter's annual meeting near my home in Boise, Idaho.
That was the first time I met Ace Hess, the Idaho and Nevada BHA chapter coordinator. Shortly after meeting Hess, he asked about my current projects and interests. At that time, my pursuit of the Western Native Trout Challenge was still a lofty pipedream driven largely by my own angling inexperience, curiosity and dissatisfaction at my ...
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This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Doug Peacock’s collection of stories in his most recent book, Was It Worth It?, proves his obsession with and loyalty to a life lived on the edges of civilization. Peacock is a man who went further, deeper, and spent more nights in wild places than most. He was so exceptional that Edward Abbey modeled his infamous character George Hayduke on him: a character willing to fight and die for ...
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This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
What do we lose when we let our favorite wild places succumb to the whims of industry and development? This is the question Rick Bass explores in The Book of Yaak.
In the opening pages Bass sets out to capture the heart of the Yaak Valley, a wild, remote region in northwest Montana with immense biodiversity and a critical corridor for animals moving between the Northern Rockies and the Pacific ...
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Photo: Josh Bent
BY TREVOR HUBBS
BHA’s Armed Forces Initiative is a group of North American veterans from all branches of service who understand the power our land has. Whether it’s Coastal Carolina swamps, a logging road five miles into the Maine hardwoods or a misty mountain view in western Alberta, AFI members know there is something special to these places. They have walked across the chasm of leaving the service and through our public lands have come out the other side.
The military is ...
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Above: Women in the Woods Elk Camp in Colorado. Photos by Ryan McSparren.
By Kassi Smith
The ray of light as dawn breaks over the High Rockies. The distorted reflection of mountain giants just below the waters’ surface. A held breath as the first mallard sets for landing.
These experiences are visceral, and they are ubiquitous.
Like many, I wasn’t born into a family that recreates outdoors; but even so, my earliest memories are of escaping into wild spaces. Before the age of 10, I would ...
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Photo: Brian Schwab, SCBS
BHA’s California chapter, Armed Forces Initiative and the Marines team up to save bighorn sheep
BY EVAN NORDSTROM
While the devastating fires of the Western states have become a perennial hazard jeopardizing the lives and livelihoods of American citizens, the heat and unprecedented drought preceding these fires is the larger threat to much of the wildlife. Hundreds of species are threatened by climate change and severe weather across the West. In the Southern ...
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Lessons learned the hard way
By Garrett Golding
The temperature began to plummet as we parked at the trailhead. By the time we settled at the base of a small fir tree, the north wind was casting waves of snow over the meadow that lay before us. The setting could not have been more perfect, like a painting of what a Colorado elk hunt should look like. I fought back visions of a mature bull stomping out of the tree line ahead of us. And then that’s exactly what happened.
How did we get ...
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Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
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News for Immediate ReleaseMarch 18, 2022Contact: Katie McKalip, 406-240-9262, mckalip@backcountryhunters.org
The newest issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ magazine is available today
MISSOULA, Mont. – The spring issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ quarterly magazine, Backcountry Journal, is arriving in mailboxes across North America. Check out some highlights of an issue that will inform and engage, drive action and advocacy on critical issues, and fuel plans for public lands ...
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I love the combination of these flavors inspired by the Mediterranean and Middle East. I’ve had them in dishes with lamb and goat and found they work really well with game, too.
Feta and Mint Meatballs with a Spiced Tomato Sauce
Makes about 15 meatballs
Equipment: (2) 8- or 10-inch pans
Ingredients
Meatballs:
1 pound ground deer *
1 egg
½ cup crumbled feta cheese
1 ½ tablespoons fresh mint leaves finely chopped
½ teaspoon ground black pepper
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ cup plain bread ...
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BY JIM KIEDROWSKI
He got me hooked at a young age. My brother and I were too young to hunt, but he got us involved every chance he had: scouting, tracking deer or sitting with him in a tree stand. We lived for that time in the woods with him. We anticipated every time he came back from the woods, hoping he had shot one we could go track. The anticipation was even greater when we waited for the first phone call after he came out of the mountains. We always hoped it was a successful call ...
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Photo: Matt Hartsky, from our 2020 Public Lands and Waters Photo Contest
This article first appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA to get 4 issues a year right in your mailbox.
BY TIM BRASS
Never before have BHA chapters been so engaged at state and provincial legislatures throughout North America. While the volume and range of bills we’ve engaged on has increased dramatically, our focus has remained on advancing policy that expands public access and ...
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BY JOEL GAY
It’s not easy for resident hunters to draw an elk tag in New Mexico, even for kids. As in many states, demand for tags far outstrips supply. But that’s only part of the equation. New Mexico also has the most liberal private land elk hunting program in the U.S. In recent years, up to half – HALF! – of all available elk tags have been given to landowners to sell to the highest bidder. Whatever is left goes into the big game draw.
And even then, residents’ share of the draw is ...
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By Benjamin Polley
Every night before I go into the remote ranger station in a forgotten wild corner of northwestern Montana, I lay in bed, gripped by fear, imagining potential encounters. Giving time to these images of wild animals, as well as to poachers, outlaws and Border Patrol agents known to frequent this terrain, keeps me close with my mortality, allowing me to shape-shift from the ease and predictability of town into the wild places I value. The stillness and isolation of the ...
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Faces of BHA is a regular column in Backcountry Journal, which spreads light on the incredible volunteers working behind the scenes to ensure the organization succeeds. This installment was published in the Winter 22 issue.
RYAN BURKERT
Helena, Montana Veteran Programs Lead, Armed Forces Initiative
Photo by Josh Bent
“Our goal is to give veterans and service members a new mission, and that mission is conservation.”
What brought you to BHA?
I discovered BHA not as a hunting and ...
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Faces of BHA is a regular column in Backcountry Journal, which spreads light on the incredible volunteers working behind the scenes to ensure the organization succeeds. This installment was published in the Fall 21 issue.
CATHERINE DANAE ELSER
PROSPECT, PENNSYLVANIA Pennsylvania Chapter Board
What brought you to BHA?
I became aware of BHA through professionals and influencers in the hunting and fishing industry. When I researched it and got to know the mission and values, I ...
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This article first appeared in the Fall 2021 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA to get 4 issues a year right in your mailbox.
BY NEIL KEOWN
The Friday entering a long weekend in May 2020 saw the Alberta provincial government rescind the 1976 Coal Policy quietly, without public consultation. This policy, which had been introduced with much fanfare four decades earlier and after years of consultation with stakeholders, including hunters, anglers and outfitters, disappeared discreetly, ...
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Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
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This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Echo (Living Wild with the Orions) shares the mental and physical journey of a boy learning about survival. I wouldn’t typically choose this genre but the book really captured my attention. I love the ending, but don’t worry I won’t spoil it! This book deploys a certain magnetic pull. I told my mom I would read the book after I finished the series I was reading, read the first page, and was ...
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Sage grouse are one of the many species likely to benefit from RAWA. Photo: istock.com/gatito33
BY SEN. MARTIN HEINRICH
For me, fall is a season that I look forward to all year long. It often means an elk camp with my closest friends and meals of wild game and wild mushrooms shared around a campfire underneath a blanket of New Mexico stars. It means bugles in the crisp morning air and, if I do everything right, days of work packing out and processing the meat that will sustain my family ...
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This story was originally published in the Fall 2021 issue of Backcountry Journal.
By Gary VandenLangenberg
With a natural love of animals and a curiosity for all things wild, my oldest son Forest grew up like many of you. Our yard and the cattail filled ditch behind our house was his arena of exploration and discovery, he and his younger brother Lake constantly flipping over our landscape stones looking for worms, pill bugs and other creepy crawlies.
When Forest was 5 years old, I ...
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This article, produced by Orion, originally appeared in the Fall 2021 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA, support your public lands and waters and get four issues a year of Backcountry Journal in your mailbox, and unlimited digital access to current and back issues.
By Corey Ellis
Generally, the hunting community and wildlife managers focus on entire populations of animals and game species. Yet, we as hunters and anglers rarely make decisions that affect entire populations. But ...
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This piece was originally featured in the spring 2021 edition of the Backcountry Journal.
My father called my older brother and me into the room and told us to grab the blue notebook from the counter. He shakily clasped his glasses and opened the spiral revealing a list of the guns he owned. My brother and I both thought the conversation was going a completely different route, so we openly expressed: “What the hell, Dad? We thought this was going to be a serious conversation.”
“You have to ...
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This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Backcountry hunters and anglers are no strangers to the notion that there is something restorative -- special -- about "type 2" fun, where smiles and memories are equally dispersed between scrapes, bruises, shivers and sweats.
BHA member Michael Easter's Comfort Crisis brings fascinating new clarity to this notion that we gain both qualifiable and quantifiable benefits from experiencing ...
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This piece was originally featured in the spring 2021 edition of the Backcountry Journal.
I hear my wife begin recording videos for her fourth-grade class, but she is drowned out by the last of our wine deglazing the good bits from the cast iron in front of me. She has not seen her students for over a month, her heart breaking again with every email received. They ask when things will return to normal. I think of the undergraduate students’ essays I must grade after putting the browned neck ...
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News for Immediate ReleaseOct. 5, 2021Contact: Katie McKalip, 406-240-9262, mckalip@backcountryhunters.org
MISSOULA, Mont. – The fall issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ quarterly magazine, Backcountry Journal, is landing in mailboxes across North America. Here are some of the highlights of this action-packed celebration of our favorite season:
Into the Mystic: Ben Matthews takes us into Alaska’s Tongass National Forest on a blacktail hunt in this feature story filled with jaw-dropping ...
Media Press Releases Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal press releases
By Dominic Corsini
Ralph Waldo Emerson is often credited for saying “life is a journey, not a destination.” I cannot help but feel connected to that saying at this moment. However, this story isn’t necessarily about life itself, but more so the somewhat arduous process of planning, and then embarking on, an out-of-state backcountry hunting trip. Much like life, it’s a journey. But unlike life, this journey did have a destination. And that destination sat above 66O 30’ N. latitude (the ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal Journal Issue
This article, produced by Orion, originally appeared in the Summer 2021 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA, support your public lands and waters and get four issues a year of Backcountry Journal in your mailbox, and unlimited digital access to current and back issues.
BY TODD TANNER
I grew up hunting and fishing.
One of my earliest memories is of following my father through the autumn woods, the forest floor littered with a carpet of yellow, scarlet and burnt orange leaves. I walked ...
Media Backcountry Journal Fair Chase the campfire Backcountry Journal
MISSOULA, Mont. – The summer issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ quarterly magazine, Backcountry Journal, is landing in mailboxes across North America. Venture out on summer adventures on our public lands and waters. Learn more about trending issues impacting our fish and wildlife and hunting and fishing opportunities. Here’s a preview:
Return of the Buffalo: Beginning with a jaw-dropping piece of original art by Ed Anderson on the cover and a call to action from BHA President and CEO ...
Media Press Releases Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal press releases bison
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Tracks is a piece of art. I love the ways you can use it, as a quick facts book or a full-on tracking book.
Both kids and adults will appreciate this book. I enjoyed it very much, and as I am 11, I can safely say that many adults would find this an amazing starter book while kids can learn many new things.
The author gives a wide variety of animals that you can track. And parts, such as about a ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal required reading
Photo: NPS/Simon Weller
BY ZACH WELLER
“Hey Trav, I think I see a mountain goat. Take out your 15s and see if you can confirm.”
We were still in the canoes, just 20 minutes into our five-day trip into the Tetons, when Travis pulled up his binoculars and replied, “Yup, that looks like a goat.”
Photo: NPS/Lauren Klamm
Six weeks prior I received an email that read: “You and your team have been selected to participate in Grand Teton National Park’s non-native mountain goat cull.” I had to ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal Journal Issue
All photos by Matt Butler
How to better prepare for all your outdoor adventures.
By Matt Butler
The outdoors have become a respite for many during the challenging times of covid and exploring your backyard has now become the travel norm. But with the increase of outdoor adventurers comes the inevitable increase in mishaps and emergency rescues, many avoidable and relating to a lack of preparation.
When planning a trip into the outdoors, there are several forms of preparation that needs ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
I first read Richard Nelson’s The Island Within 20 years ago. The book is an intimate testament to a person’s sense of place, revealing the spiritual awareness imbued in all things. His paean to the island also blurs the genres of non-fiction and poetry that inspire awe and reverence for all life. The place is never named, but his words take you there nevertheless. This book immediately rewired ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Let me first be clear: This is not a book about despair or tragic endings. It is not a book of environmental alarmism or an impassioned call-to-action to save the wolves and the whales. It's a concise and carefully researched book about people.
Whether you're a fan of him and his music or not, Bob Dylan once said something none of us can really deny, "The only thing people really have in common ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
Photo: Jack Lander, from our 2020 Public Lands and Waters Photo Contest
This article first appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA to get 4 issues a year right in your mailbox.
Guiding Principles of the Wild Harvest Initiative
By Shane P. Mahoney
We, as backcountry hunters and anglers, know that recreational wild harvests in North America should be viewed as one of the most sustainable, healthy and environmentally friendly food procurement systems in ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This article, produced by Orion, originally appeared in the Spring 2021 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA, support your public lands and waters and get four issues a year of Backcountry Journal in your mailbox, and unlimited digital access to current and back issues.
BY JAN DIZARD AND PHIL T. SENG
Few topics create as much furor around the campfire or the hunt club as the use of baiting in hunting. What’s the big deal? It’s not clear exactly when humans began manipulating the ...
Media Backcountry Journal Fair Chase Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Written by Indigenous writer Yuri Rytkheu, A Dream in Polar Fog tells the story of a white man who through unfortunate circumstance finds himself forced to live among the Chukotka Native people of coastal Russia. Accepted by their people, he eventually learns their culture and ways of life.
Alongside this is the story of a people whose entire existence is tied to the natural world – an existence ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
BY LUKE FRONTCZAK
The morning had been perfect – clear skies with a long narrow blanket of fog covering the valley floor below my hillside perch, which turned pink as the sun came up. Five seconds before beginning the trek back to camp, a little motion caught my eye as I put on my backpack.
Pulling up my binos, antlers filled my vision. My butt involuntarily fell to the ground, and I felt my heart shift from fifth gear into second. After five years of hunting Washington state, this was the ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal r3
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
If you have spent any time in the landscape of the American West you understand the significance of rivers and water in the sculpting of our actions, experiences and thoughts. While this book’s tale is centered around an incredible account of one single ride down the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon, it is just an excuse to tell the epic tale of the river itself – a book of history ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Author Bjorn Dihle is, among many other things, a BHA member, Backcountry Journal contributor and an ardent defender of wild places – especially the Tongass National Forest surrounding his Southeast Alaska home.
A Shape in the Dark is a look at the long and complex relationship between humans and brown bears ranging from the journals of Lewis and Clark and accounts of Indigenous peoples all ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal Journal Issue
Authored by Levi Chandler, from the Kid's Corner of the Spring 21 issue of Backcountry Journal:
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal
Continued from the Spring 21 issue of Backcountry Journal, here are two more of Tim Mead's knots for wilderness campers. Read the spring issue for the first three! Not a member? Join now and get every issue of Backcountry Journal in your mailbox!
Bowline
The bowline (pronounced bow linn) creates a loop in the end of a rope. The loop is ideal for tying guy lines to tents or tarps, tying a painter to a canoe or kayak, or as in its incarnation tying the bow of a boat to a ...
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal spring 21
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Outwardly, Braiding Sweetgrass appears to be a book about plants, viewed through Dr. Kimmerer’s own tandem lens of her degree in botany and Anishinaabe traditional environmental knowledge. Indeed, she weaves these different ways of seeing the world together as tenderly as she describes the eponymous braiding of sweetgrass, but I’d be doing us all a disservice to imply this book is just a ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal required reading
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
In great part the appeal of public lands is that they provide a space for us to commune with the primeval. Though your HOA may frown on you shooting a Zwickey at the forkhorn browsing your hostas, the manager of your closest wildlife area likely has no such qualms.
An Archer’s Inner Life is a profound exploration of the yearning to return in some small way to life closer to the bone. Sigurslid’s ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal required reading
By Gabriela Zaldumbide
One of the reasons why I became a hunter was so I could source my own food. In the last two and a half years, I’ve had the pleasure of hosting many wild game dinners, adoring the opportunities to share my elk, venison or small game with friends.
Unsurprisingly, after attending some of these “family dinners,” my friend Anna became interested in harvesting an animal herself. She had harvested a whitetail doe with her dad before in Alabama, but that was long ago. She ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal r3 Hunting for Sustainability
This article first appeared in the Winter 2021 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA to get 4 issues a year right in your mailbox.
By Shane P. Mahoney
While acquiring food is essential to the lives of all species, humans express a unique emotional connection to what we consume. Food, for us, is memory and family; it lies at the center of ceremony, both joyous and sad; it is heritage and identity and a communal expression of connection, love, trust and understanding. Seeking it, ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
North Americans unfortunately have a long history of ecological harm. We also have the great propensity to recognize mistakes and work to fix them. Dan Egan's “The Death and Life of the Great Lakes” takes us on one such journey. The story of the Great Lakes is a rollercoaster ride of disastrous mistakes and our attempts to fix them.The Great Lakes are a resource unmatched anywhere else on ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal required reading
BY JANET GEORGE
A hunter must earn the privilege of experiencing the rugged grandeur of mountain goat country. Each rocky step makes you more appreciative of the mountain goat’s perseverance in a world of extremes. Extreme terrain, extreme wind and extreme cold all combine to make goat country one of the most spectacular and severe environments in North America.
Such extremes have molded the mountain goat, as author/biologist Douglas Chadwick dubbed “a beast the color of winter.” And ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
By Christine Peterson
Bill Andree always had a chance at an elk. It might come suddenly in thick spruce or a steep aspen grove, but it was a chance, and he killed his share. That was in the early 80s, when the elk herd roamed the hills and valleys around Vail, Colorado, in groups of a couple hundred.
By the early 2010s, he stopped hunting the area altogether. The longtime Eagle Valley biologist for Colorado Parks and Wildlife who retired in 2018 rarely saw any elk, and he didn’t feel it ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
All photos courtesy of Mike McTee, MPG Ranch
This article, produced by Orion, originally appeared in the Winter 2021 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA, support your public lands and waters and get four issues a year of Backcountry Journal in your mailbox, and unlimited digital access to current and back issues.
By Jan Dizard and Corey Ellis
For centuries lead has been a preferred material for fishing tackle, balls, shot and bullets. It is also deadly in other ways; scientists have ...
Media Backcountry Journal Fair Chase Backcountry Journal
Image by Joel Caldwell
For nearly 70 years, Tony Schoonen was above all else a bare-fisted brawler for wild country and his bone-deep conviction that “blue-collar people should be able to hunt and fish.”
BY DAN CROCKETT
Tony Schoonen cat-footed within 80 yards of his last bull, a solid six-point, four years ago. That was back when he was 85. Tony was alone on that hunt, but he did get some help packing it out. He shot his final elk two years later. When I asked him how many he’d killed ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
A reverent letter of gratitude to those who showed us the hunter’s ethic.
BY JUSTIN HANLON
Three handsome rifles affixed with meticulously zeroed Leupold scopes were held in the steady hands of skilled marksmen, rested intently on a grassy knoll as time froze: a six-point bull lay bedded down in the damp grass, lulled by a full belly and the comfortable weather. This was to be Ty’s bull, and we waited with bated breath as he prepared to squeeze the trigger.
The other day, I had the ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
BHA says goodbye and thanks to mentor,
friend and role model Jim Posewitz
By HAL HERRING
The first time I met Jim Posewitz was in the late 1990s, when I was immersed in reporting on the controversy over game farming and captive trophy shooting in Montana. Most of what was happening in this battle was playing out in small county-level sportsmen’s groups like the Ravalli County Fish and Wildlife Association, and Jim Posewitz was visiting and speaking to them all. Night after night, ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal Journal Issue
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Sen. Martin Heinrich recommended this book to the BHA staff, and it has since become one of my favorites.
In an incredibly moving memoir, Margaret “Mardy” Murie transports us back in time to the turn of the 20th century in Alaska, where the journey begins on the Tanana River and then to Fairbanks where she spent her childhood. We float along the Koyukuk River as she marries Olaus Murie, a ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This article originally appeared in the fall 2020 issue of Backcountry Journal.
BY RYAN BUSSE
As a young man I once stood on a mountain ridge so beautiful that I now find it impossible to describe. It was summer and a bird dog was at my side when I discovered the place that would change my life and come to be part of my very being. Like a military bootcamp, it broke me and then built me back up – wild, harsh and unspoiled by the hand of man and owned equally by all citizens of this ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
The Indiana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (BHA), the voice for our public lands in the Hoosier state, is excited to announce a new volunteer partnership with the U.S. Forest Service in the Hoosier National Forest. Located in southern Indiana’s hill country, the Hoosier National Forest consists of 204,000 acres of hardwood forests, streams, and backcountry trails. Known to outdoor enthusiasts as simply “the Hoosier,” this forest is Indiana’s largest public-land holding, ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal Journal Issue
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Every book's reading starts with a set of expectations and hopes. I picked up a copy of The Lochsa Story because it took place nearly in my backyard, a place I spend more time than any other; my hope was to learn a little more about my favorite wild country – the one I hope to one day have my ashes scattered in. It seemed almost required that I read it. But what I ended up gaining from the book ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
There is a time for reflection, philosophy and politics. And there is a time to lighten up.
The cure for solemn self-importance is Pat McManus. No one can wring more laughs out of a hunting, fishing or camping trip than the Idaho-born journalism professor who cranked out essays month after month for Field & Stream and Outdoor Life magazines. His essays are nostalgic and farcical. Their wry jokes, ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This article, produced by Orion, originally appeared in the Summer 2020 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA, support your public lands and waters and get four issues a year of Backcountry Journal in your mailbox, and unlimited digital access to current and back issues.
By Harley McAllister and Corey Ellis
Under what circumstances is the killing of an animal ethical when the primary motivation is not consumption? This is a tricky issue, and all the more so due to the attention it ...
Media Backcountry Journal Fair Chase Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Dan Flores is a gifted storyteller and chronicler of the history of the Great Plains and wildlife of the American West. American Serengeti describes a magnitude of life on the great plains that will send your imagination spiraling. He captures its true identity, helping the reader understand the history of the wildlife that calls it home and how we have shaped the landscape and wildlife ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
A River Runs Through It is a memoir of Maclean's adventures as a young man in the mountainous western Montana backcountry. Heralded as a classical American story, Maclean describes fly fishing on the Big Blackfoot River and working in the woods for the U.S. Forest Service. I originally read A River Runs Through It while fly fishing on an alpine backpacking trip in western Wyoming. After a day ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Approximately 10 years ago I picked up this book after a reading a magazine interview with the author, David Petersen, in which he nobly described hunters as the type of hunter we all strive to be – thoughtful, hardworking and conservation-minded. This book includes a carefully selected ensemble of personal essays that dive deep into the motivations and ethics of hunters from different walks of ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal Journal Issue
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
I’ve read both of Greenberg’s popular books: American Catch and Four Fish. What I like best about American Catch is that it deals not only with the problem of conservation but also the issue of what we eat. The book discusses everything from New York oysters and the destruction of their habitat to the topic of salmon in Alaska and the Pebble Mine and Bristol Bay debacle.
American Catch is an ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Reiger’s American Sportsmen is an expanded look into the entwined history of sportsmen, ethics and policy that shaped what we now know as conservation and sustainable management.
Many sportsmen and women, and even historians, are quick to stop at George Bird Grinnell and Theodore Roosevelt – obvious pillars in the Progressive era of the late 1800s and early 1900s – when mapping the lineage of ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
A professor assigned my class Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” the book credited with launching the modern environmental movement, my senior year of college. I hadn’t heard much about the classic then, but I was intrigued enough by Carson’s concern for the future, and the promise of a good grade. I quickly understood why it is a critical read for conservationists and how it popularized the field ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2019 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA, support your public lands and waters and get four issues a year of Backcountry Journal in your mailbox, and unlimited digital access to current and back issues.
By Zack Williams
There is something uniquely public about cutthroat trout. They reside almost entirely in wild, mountainous rivers of the West – undammed, wild, free places – the vast majority of these flowing through public land from ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
I’ve read a handful of books in the past couple years that I think should belong in the Backcountry Hunters library, but the one that stands out most and should be required reading for all conservationists and hunters is John Taliaferro’s recent biography, Grinnell: America’s Environmental Pioneer and His Restless Drive to Save the West. I really wasn’t too familiar with George Bird Grinnell ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
When I think of Desert Solitaire I remember a little riverside camp I scraped out of the grass and brush by the Colorado, not far from Moab, Utah, near the mouth of a canyon that’s since been re-named Grandstaff. I was a year out of college and living on public lands: national forests in South Dakota and Wyoming, national monuments in Arizona, BLM lands in Utah, for seasons at a time.
Edward ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
If we’ve learned anything from history, it’s that public lands will always need advocates. Since the beginning, there have been unremitting attempts to privatize our lands for the short-term benefit of a few. In order to be an effective advocate, it’s important to understand how we got where we are today, collective owners of 640 million acres of public lands.
Mark Kenyon takes us on a journey ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
By Garrett Titus
The crisp turquoise spring water ripples across the front of my canoe, with the gentle strokes of my paddle and the soothing melody of stirring songbirds the only sounds as I traverse downstream. Steam is coming from the water like a fire that has almost burned itself out, while the sunlight pierces through the sycamores, providing me a clearer path through the rapids and root wads. The river bluffs rise high above on either side almost as if to point my eyes to the ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal Missouri Chapter
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
In Bloodties, Kerasote brings the reader along with him on three journeys, and each involves hunting but from vastly different viewpoints, motivations and outcomes. His time is spent with natives on the ice edge in Greenland, Westerners in pursuit of rams in Siberia and on a journey home to hunt elk in Wyoming. Each is a story about people and how they interact with one another, the critters ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Long before he was “The Meateater,” Steven Rinella was just another hunter dreaming of a premium tag and the next adventure. One of his early works, American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon, is the story of receiving one such tag and the ensuing journey. This book is the perfect blend of hunting, adventure, conservation, science and history.
Starting with the unearthing of a bison skull by ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
Photo courtesy of Pennsylvania BHA member John Conte III
By Don Rank
Despite routinely boasting some of the largest numbers of hunters in the United States, Pennsylvania is one of the few remaining states that either restricts or completely bans hunting on Sundays. On Nov. 27, 2019, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf signed Senate Bill 147 into law allowing for three Sundays to be open to hunting. Those three days represent a major victory for hunters in the Keystone State.
Sunday hunting ...
Media Chapter News Backcountry Journal Pennsylvania Chapter Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Published posthumously in 1949, Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac is as close to a bible for conservationists as any work can be. In it he discusses things like a “land ethic,” which simply says: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
He reflects on predator control in service of better ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal
Thank you to everyone who participated in our coloring contest from the Winter 20 issue of Backcountry Journal. Everyone did a fantastic job! Choosing only two winners was an extremely difficult proposition but here they are, along with honorable mentions.
A special thank you to Rep Your Water for sponsoring this contest and providing the artwork.
Below are a few selected entries:
Winner: Gabriel Langenhan, 8 years old, Washington
Runner-up: Athena Blanco, 9 years old, ...
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal Journal Issue
Here are the answers to the Kid's Crossword, located on page 17 of the Spring 2020 issue of Backcountry Journal. Not a member yet? Subscribe HERE and get four issues of Backcountry Journal to your door!
*Note: Neve Dyer, age 12, from Alberta, informed us that the answer to 7 down, Canada's national bird, is not the Canada Goose but grey jay. We apologize for this error and will be submitting a grievance with Google! Thank you, Neve, for informing us of this error. -Zack Williams, editor.
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal spring 2020
Left to right: Tony Ruffing, Ohio BHA chair; Mike DeWine, governor of Ohio; Benton Collins, Ohio BHA wildlife and habitat restoration committee chair; Tim Rogers, Ohio BHA communications co-chair
By Jonathan Ingram
The story of Ohio’s American Electric Power ReCreation Lands is a common one east of the Mississippi. It is a story of resource extraction followed by reclamation and resurgence. In the 1960s, AEP concluded a decades long process of strip mining the rich coal deposits that ...
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal Ohio Chapter In Depth Winter 2020
We are all partakers in something that is inherently good. The backcountry awakens a pent-up wonder that is innate to our existence. As we breathe in the mountain air or witness the majesty of the river bottom, we are connected to all those who came before us.
By John Cook
I grew up hunting the Mud Creek bottom in East Texas. As early as I can remember I was following my dad through the mature hardwood bottom on the north side of our deer lease hunting squirrels. I can remember being ...
Media Backcountry Journal the campfire Backcountry Journal Texas Chapter Winter 2020
By Kylie Schumacher
It’s the shot heard around the world right now in the hunting and angling communities: Hunting and fishing participation is declining. We’re all familiar with the decline in license sales and days spent afield and know all too well the implications of these statistics. With the addition of BHA’s Recruitment, Retention and Reactivation position, BHA is actively working to reverse these numbers, primarily though our Hunting for Sustainability program.
While R3 initiatives ...
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal Collegiate Program Winter 2020
This story originally appeared in the Fall 2019 issue of Backcountry Journal
By Hal Herring
For author Matt Miller of Boise, Idaho, life is too short to be a fishing purist. His work as a writer on the environment and conservation takes him across the United States, and he fishes wherever he goes, for whatever is there, with whatever method, be it throwing carp heads under a big bobber for monster alligator gar, trying to net cisco on the freezing shores of Bear Lake in Utah, tossing ...
Media Podcasts Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal Podcast
By Rich Rosenthal
Conservationists celebrated a legal victory over captive deer breeding operations after a Texas appeals court reaffirmed the public ownership of wildlife, thanks in part to efforts from Texas BHA and other like-minded conservation organizations.
The opinion made by the Texas Court of Appeals, Third District, affirmed the trial court’s decision in Bailey, Peterson v. Texas Parks & Wildlife Department. In the case, owners of a deer-breeding operation sued the state, arguing ...
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal Texas Chapter In Depth Winter 2020
By Richard Cherepak and Todd Onsorge
Yukon Territory is vast, rugged and sparsely populated. Slightly larger than California, Yukon covers an area of 482,443 square kilometers, yet only has 4,850 kilometers of maintained roads (for comparison, Yukon’s western neighbor, Alaska, has more than 25,000 kilometers of public roads). Resident hunters can live the backcountry hunter’s dream – hiking ridges and valleys in isolated and wild terrain in pursuit of caribou, bison, thinhorn sheep, ...
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal Yukon Chapter Winter 2020
This article first appeared in the Winter 2020 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA to get 4 issues a year in your mailbox.
By Lukas Leaf
I grew up on the ice, listening to the lake thunder and crack as it constantly expands and shifts. Frankly, you either love it or hate it. Fortunately for me, it’s the former, and I’ve been pursuing everything from walleye to lake trout since I was able to fall through a tip-up hole. It’s a Midwest outdoor tradition filled with eelpout festivals, giant ...
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal boundary waters Winter 2020 BWCA
By Tristan Henry
In Oregon’s scenic Central Cascades, the undulating terrain that bisects east from misty west has drawn growing crowds of backcountry travelers, summer after summer. Here, admiration and idolization of our peaks and forests have outpaced our ability to manage them according to their land-use designation.
As trails are beaten wide and begin to braid, a subsequent slew of consequences ranging from ecological to political erupt into public discourse. Viewed within the ...
Media State Issues Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal Oregon Chapter summer 2019
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal Journal Issue Winter 2020
By Corey Ellis
One of the greatest impacts of the hunting conservation movement that is our history, all hunters’ history, did not only benefit the game species that hunters pursue. That sage flat that hunters protected not only saved pronghorns and sage grouse; it also saved long-billed curlews and gray flycatchers. A ponderosa glade that was purchased with sportsmen’s dollars and deposited in the bank of public lands not only protected wintering grounds for elk and mule deer; it also ...
Media Backcountry Journal Fair Chase Backcountry Journal Winter 2020 orion
Photo by Tim Peterson
This is the continuation of our conversation with Hal Herring, host of BHA's Podcast & Blast, from the Winter 2020 issue of Backcountry Journal. For more of this interview with Hal and loads more great content, join BHA to get the current and every new issue of Backcountry Journal in your mailbox.
Those that read your writing, or follow you on social media, know that you are extremely motivated about protecting our public lands, waters and wildlife – the BHA ...
Media Podcasts Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal Podcast Winter 2020
By Mike Clingan, Montana Outdoor Imagery
An email in my inbox from BHA caught my attention: “6 days volunteering for the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation to improve trails in the backcountry with fellow BHA members.” Exactly the type of adventure that I needed and an opportunity to contribute to a place and cause that mean so much to me.
BHA partnered with the Bob Marshall Wilderness Foundation, which was founded in 1996 when the U.S. Forest Service and a group of concerned citizens ...
Media Backcountry Journal Montana Chapter Backcountry Journal Winter 2020
BHA Hunting for Sustainability students discuss public and private land boundaries. Photo by Alex Kim
This article originally appeared in the Fall 2019 issue of Backcountry Journal.
By Gabby Zaldumbide
The Wisconsin air was bitter cold. Turkey season had unfolded, but winter refused to end. As I sat perched on the ground, shotgun in one hand and hot coffee in the other, my hunting instructor and I could hear gobbles as the turkeys left their roost before sunrise. We set up in tall grass ...
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal r3 Hunting for Sustainability
This article originally appeared in the Fall 2019 issue of Backcountry Journal.
By Justin Nelson
Earlier this year, Arizona BHA heavily engaged in a fight against two bills that had the potential to significantly change the way public lands are perceived and managed in the state of Arizona. HB 2547 and HB 2557 were the latest efforts in a drawn out and consistent focus to undermine the status of public lands in Arizona. Both of these bills were a continuation of similar legislative public ...
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South of the Brooks Range in northern Alaska there still exists intact ecosystems that remain largely unchanged except by forces of nature. This is one of the largest public land wild areas left in the U.S. Hunting and fishing here is the dream of many sportsmen and women, but to the people in remote communities of this region it is their subsistence use area as it always has been.
The subsistence use and sport hunting and fishing opportunities are on the brink of being drastically ...
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News for Immediate ReleaseSept. 26, 2019Contact: Katie McKalip, 406-240-9262, mckalip@backcountryhunters.org
The newest issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ magazine is available today
MISSOULA, Mont. – The fall issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ quarterly magazine, Backcountry ...
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Photo by Alex Kim
This article first appeared in the Fall 2019 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA and get the journal, quarterly, in your mailbox.
By Corey Ellis
While recently rereading Beyond Fair Chase by Jim Posewitz, the founder of Orion and a conservation legend and expert in hunting ethics, I was struck by a section that had not caught my attention before; the section was titled, "Physical Fitness as a Part of Preparation." Although we often think of fitness in preparation ...
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This article originally appeared in the Spring 2018 issue of Backcountry Journal.
BY Lieutenant Colonel JEFFREY M. JONES, U.S. ARMY RESERVE
I spent the morning reading “The Battle for Alabama’s Wilderness: Saving the Great Gymnasiums of Nature” by John Randolph, sent to me by a fellow member of the BHA Southeast Chapter Board, in a containerized housing unit in Baghdad, Iraq.
I was amazed at the fortitude and tenacity of the public land champions in that era – regular folks who were able ...
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Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
News for Immediate ReleaseJuly 22, 2019Contact: Katie McKalip, 406-240-9262, mckalip@backcountryhunters.org
The newest issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ magazine is available today
MISSOULA, Mont. – The summer issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ quarterly magazine, Backcountry ...
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This article first appeared in the Summer 2019 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA and get the journal, quarterly, in your mailbox.
By Patt Dorsey
There is a lot we know about chronic wasting disease and there is much to learn. We know that CWD is affecting members of the deer family, including mule deer, white-tailed deer, elk and moose. We also know that CWD is spreading. Biologists have now detected it in 26 U.S. states and in three Canadian provinces.
Scientists know that prions ...
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The Spring 2019 issue of Backcountry Journal featured an article, “Student Licenses Aid in Recruitment,” that detailed how discounted student license rates help R3 efforts across the country and called for more states to offer college students licenses at resident rates. The graphic included with the article mistakenly did not show Minnesota as offering these discounted student rates, which it does. The below article, contributed by the Minnesota DNR, details their R3 and student recruitment ...
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This article first appeared in the Spring 2019 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA to receive the quarterly Backcountry Journal, in print, direct to your mailbox.
Editor's Note: The original version of this article contained a graphic that incorrectly showed Minnesota as not offering student licenses at resident rates. This graphic has now been corrected. You can read more about Minnesota's R3 efforts and student licensing in this guest blog post, "Students: Set Your Sights on ...
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Above: The 2018 Hike to Hunt kickoff.
by Josh Mills
So you’re going to Rendezvous, huh? Get excited. You’re about to be part of the biggest public lands party you’ve ever seen. Your mind is about to be blown, you’ll meet countless likeminded people – who come from a vast array of backgrounds – united in the spirit of fair chase and public lands and waters activism. Saddle up, partners; it’s a wild ride.Advice from navigating the past three Rendezvous:
Introduce yourself to anyone and ...
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Above: In 2016 the BHA North American board passed a policy statement in support of policies which aim to prohibit new captive cervid canned hunting operations. As concerns around the spread of CWD from captive cervid operations mount throughout the country, BHA chapters are drawing on this statement to advance policies that put meaningful limits on such operations. Photo by Lynn Bystrom
by Jan Dizard
Orion and BHA share a commitment to face clearly the many ethical and related ...
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By Sam Lungren, Backcountry Journal editor
This piece was published in the Fall 2018 issue of Backcountry Journal.
Since this article was published, the Biden administration has begun their reconsideration of the previous administration’s decision to extend leases for copper mining in the Superior National Forest upstream of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. In August 2021, President Biden's Secretary of Agriculture told the public that he was waiting for a legal opinion from ...
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by Tovar Cerulli - Orion: The Hunter's Institute
The image is familiar: A hunter crouches beside a dead deer, grinning into the camera. What do we make of this picture?
We all see the hunter’s smile. We all see the beautiful animal, now dead. And we all recognize some connection between the two. From there, though, interpretations diverge wildly.
Critics of hunting are apt to see mindless brutality. The hunter has killed, appears to have enjoyed killing, and now gloats over a carcass. ...
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Photo by Barry and Cathy Beck
On an October morning a decade or so ago, I was hunting woodcock in an abandoned orchard. A flight had come in and, in less than an hour, I collected my three-bird limit. That evening I got a call from an acquaintance, a deer hunter, who hunts the same orchard. He asked how I did and if I’d seen evidence of deer. How, I asked, had he known I had been hunting there that morning? He said he saw me on the trail camera he’d placed in cover. I was amused.
It’s now ...
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Image courtesy of Don Thomas
Readers and BHA members outside of Montana may have never heard of the Crazy Mountains, although that is likely to change. One of Montana’s dozen isolated “island” ranges, the Crazies lie an hour’s drive northeast of Bozeman. They offer spectacular wilderness terrain and are home to native cutthroat trout, an over-objective elk herd, deer, mountain goats and large predators galore. Their current notoriety derives not from this natural bounty, but from a heated ...
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Photo by Daniel Wilde
For roughly two-thirds of the 20th Century, hunters and fishers were the bedrock of conservation. But beginning in the early 1970s, the ground shifted. The accomplishments of the conservation movement, to which hunters contributed mightily, began to pale in the face of new environmental issues and a new environmental movement that had priorities not centered on restoration of game and fish and the habitats on which they depend. Indeed, protection of wildlife and ...
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Published in Backcountry Journal Winter 2018 Issue. Subscribe by becoming a member here.
Photo Credit: Bill McDavid
It took me 16 days to tag a Dall sheep in Alaska last year. If it weren’t for my yoga practice, I don’t think I could have stayed mentally strong or returned home injury free. I’m 49 years old, so my yoga doesn’t look like sitting cross-legged under a tree and my goal is not to do a photo-worthy backbend. I practice a combination of meditation, yoga poses, ...
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Published in Backcountry Journal Winter 2018 Issue. Subscribe by becoming a member here.
Photo Credit: Thom Bridge
Interview by Sam Lungren
Author, biologist, ethicist, historian and legendary conservationist, Jim Posewitz is the foremost expert on conservation history and fair chase hunting. He founded Orion – The Hunter’s Institute and has penned five books: Beyond Fair Chase, Inherit the Hunt, Rifle in Hand, Taking a Bullet for Conservation and his soon-to-be-released memoir, My Best ...
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The following was written by BHA's Conservation Director Holly Endersby, after a recent fishing trip to Kelly Creek (Idaho).
Utter the words Kelly Creek to a real backcountry trout bum and she will immediately know you’re talking about an icy cold stream sparkling through a big chunk of central Idaho beginning near the Montana border. A blue ribbon, catch and release trout stream, Kelly Creek eventually mingles its water with the North Fork of the Clearwater River.
A recent University of ...
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