IT’S THE BUSIEST INTERSECTION IN WYOMING, A CROSSING I MAKE, AT some risk of life and limb, nearly every morning on my way back from running my Brittanies. As I wait for the light to change, my gaze settles on the ground at the curb. Heaven only knows how many times this dirt has been . . . → Read More: Blue grama
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FOR MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS, MY WIFE WAS ONE OF THE LONG-SUFFERING PEOPLE WHO WENT OUT on an elementary school playground to enforce the house rules on an unruly mob of first through sixth graders. This time of year was particularly challenging. After a summer of more or less feral recreation, the young kids had . . . → Read More: Lessons from the playground GUILT, THE PSYCHOLOGISTS SAY, IS A CORROSIVE EMOTION. SO IS REGRET, THEY SAY. AND I SUPPOSE they’re right. Obsessing over mistakes that have already been made may not be a good recipe for maintaining mental health, let alone finding constructive solutions for intransigent problems. It’s possible that such emotions are best left to old people . . . → Read More: The sins of the fathers . . . Dust storm in northwestern Kansas, April 2016 IT MAY BE MY FAVORITE TROUT STREAM, PARTLY BECAUSE, AS SMALL AS IT IS, IT REGULARLY yields browns and cutthroats over five pounds, and in large measure because it isn’t anything like what most people imagine when they think of trout water. It’s a sun-baked, sand-bottomed . . . → Read More: The price of procrastination Aldo Leopold (right) and his last graduate student, Robert McCabe in the field during McCabe’s research. In 2014, I was invited to give the keynote address for the annual meeting of the Mountain and Plains Chapter of The Wildlife Society, the organization of professional wildlife biologists. The situation on the conservation front was . . . → Read More: The code Hen sage grouse visit dominant male on a spring breeding ground. copyright 2016 by Chris Madson, all rights reserved. ON MARCH 1, THE WYOMING LEGISLATURE PASSED A LAW ALLOWING GAME BIRD FARMS TO take sage grouse and their eggs from the wild in order to produce birds in captivity. Professional wildlife biologists were . . . → Read More: Wyoming lawmakers lay an egg THANK YOU, MR. PRESIDENT AND LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE COMMISSION FOR THE OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK TO YOU TODAY. My name is Chris Madson. I hold a master’s degree in wildlife ecology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I served six years with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, where I was exposed to . . . → Read More: Testimony on sage grouse captive breeding before the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission
FLICK THE BRITTANY AND I TAKE A WALK EVERY MORNING. IT’S ABOUT three miles for me and somewhere between nine and fifteen miles for him, I’d guess. Keeps us both in shape for the bird seasons. The usual route leads around the outside of a small golf course, past the local high . . . → Read More: A rose by any other name . . . THE FIRST SET OF TRACKS LED TO A SECOND, THEN FOUR OTHERS, THEN EVEN MORE— a herd of elk weaving through the timber. The prints weren’t all that fresh, probably made the previous evening, but the herd didn’t seem to be in a hurry, and, against all the hard experience I’ve had trying to catch . . . → Read More: The discipline I SAW THE YELLOW FLANK AND THE BRANCHED ANTLERS AS HE stepped through a thin place in the second-growth timber, maybe seventy yards away. He was gone before I could even slip the rifle sling off my shoulder, let alone shoot, but the wind was in my favor, so I went to the right as . . . → Read More: Ethics and the meat hunter |
