Chris Dombrowski is a professional fishing guide of over two decades on the rivers of Montana, an acclaimed poet and the author of Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World’s Most Alluring Fish, which is about, among many other things, the pursuit of bonefish in the Bahamas. Chris’ latest book is The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water, which manages to be a deeply honest memoir, a celebration of the joys and terrors of family, and a love letter to the landscape and rivers of ...

“I have never yet found a place that equaled the Kankakee swamps for the variety of game to be found there.” – J. Lorenzo Werich, 1920. Few know the history now. None who experienced it are still alive to tell us the tale. But it was once known as The Everglades of the North, a million acres of marsh and swamp in Indiana and Illinois, with thousands of people living on the wealth of its fish and game, flocks of waterfowl darkening the skies, passenger pigeons, deer and black bear, beaver and ...

Retired Helena-Lewis and Clark National Forest Supervisor Bill Avey is here to give us a clear view into the workings of the U.S. Forest Service – and what is arguably, for a public lands hunter or angler, the most important agency in America. Hal and Bill became friends on a snow survey ski trip through the Bob Marshall Wilderness in 2015, lost touch, then met again on a jury duty call-up last summer. It was a lucky meeting for Hal and for this podcast: Bill Avey has given his life to ...

Almost 60 years ago, the U.S. government, blinded by hubris, began work on the Cross Florida Barge Canal. Never heard of it? That’s because President Richard Nixon, seeing it for the financial and ecological monstrosity that it was, halted the project in 1971 before it was halfway completed. All that remains of the bad idea is Rodman Dam, completed in 1968 to raise water levels enough to make the canal usable. The Rodman Dam blocked the free flow of the incredible Ocklawaha River, inundated ...

As a wise man once said, You may not be interested in war, but when the times comes, war will certainly be interested in you. The same can be said about Congress. This week's episode with BHA's John Gale and Kaden McArthur takes us to Washington, D.C., with an exploration of the 118th Congress, where the hottest issues pertaining to our hunting and fishing and the conservation that makes it possible will be on the floor, in the offices, buried in reams of obscure paperwork and clouded by ...

Podcasts are one of the dominant forms of storytelling today, but it's something we can forget in the hurly burly of our daily lives: Stories are meant for telling, and we crave to listen to them. With Hal Herring, host of BHA's Podcast & Blast, those stories get aired every two weeks as Hal dives into tales of conservation, hunting and fishing - and the people who make that world tick and bugle and who huff up the hills of this changing place we call home. Here are 10 great stories from ...

Dr. Susan Leopold is an ethnobotanist who spent the early years of her career in the jungles of the Peruvian Amazon and Central America. An epiphany led her home, to Virginia and to the American heartland of the Ohio River, to study native plants, medicinal herbs and the natural and human history of this wild, diverse and beleaguered corner of our world. Leopold is the executive director of the United Plant Savers, a group dedicated to protecting imperiled native plants like ginseng and ...

More than 82,000 feral horses roam U.S. public lands, about four times as many as the land and water can sustain. Almost all of them live in Nevada, the most arid state in the union, where their impacts are almost unimaginable: desertification and massive loss of wildlife, ranging from pollinators and other insects to sage grouse, elk, mule deer and pronghorn. The Bureau of Land Management is doing what it can to address this crisis, but the agency finds itself in an impossible position ...

Kyle Lybarger, a 29-year-old consulting forester, father, deer-hunter, small creek addict and self-proclaimed “native plant nerd” of Hartselle, Alabama, is a major part of a new and wonderful current sweeping America. Kyle’s Native Habitat Project videos – simple, one-minute vignettes of obscure native plants, remnant grasslands and wildlife-vibrant native plant landscapes – have been downloaded millions of times. The Native Habitat Project is bizarre insects and forgotten plants, science ...

Come with Hal to southern Mississippi to talk with Alex Harvey, a registered professional forester in Mississippi and Alabama and a land management consultant, wildlife biologist and multi-generational conservationist, hunter and fisherman. Harvey is carrying on the outdoor traditions passed on to him from generations of his family, ranging from herbalism and foraging to rabbit, squirrel and deer hunting, cattle ranching, gardening, cooking and living a full and thriving life in the Southern ...