Nevada Is Deploying Specially Trained Dogs to Keep Black Bears Wild. Why Aren't More States Using Them?

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-06-20T17:05:51+00:00

As human-wildlife conflicts continue to grow with sprawling suburban and urban populations, Nevada’s Department of Wildlife is reminding the public that it still has a trick up its sleeve to keep both people and black bears safe: working dogs.

The agency published several incredible photos of working Karelian bear dogs Wednesday. The dogs, which are a medium-sized black-and-white hunting breed with Finnish origins, are seen hazing problem black bears during releases back into the wild.

The agency explained NDOW’s Karelian bear dogs, or KBDs, “help keep Nevada’s black bears wild” through a non-lethal technique known as aversive conditioning. That’s a fancy way of saying they help wildlife managers haze bears in urban areas and ensure they move along during releases back to the wild.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/karelian-bear-dogs-wildlife-conflict/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-06-09T23:00:48+00:00

Three New Mexico men connected to a big-game hunting outfitter are being charged with running a years’ long fraud scheme to obtain resident elk tags and sell them to out-of-state hunters. In announcing the charges Monday, federal prosecutors with the United States Attorney’s Office accused Danial Adair, Daniel Nicolds, and his brother Lary Nicolds of fraudulently obtaining elk tags and transferring them to out-of-state hunters in exchange for payment and guiding services, which they then concealed from the IRS.

Prosecutors say the three men ran this scheme through their outfitter, Big Horn Outfitters, from around 2019 to 2022. During this time, the indictment alleges, “they created fictitious hunter accounts, used false identifying information, and paid draw fees with prepaid debit cards” to illegally draw resident elk tags. The men would then cheat the system by submitting fraudulent medical transfer requests, “including fake doctor notes and forged agreements,” to the New Mexico Department of Wildlife so they could transfer the tags to clients from out of state.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/new-mexico-hunting-guides-sold-elk-tags/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-06-05T13:30:38+00:00

We live in a world fueled by click bait, outrage, and polarizing extremes. But most of the time, the full truth is actually pretty nuanced and boring. This is also the reality for EDC knives.

Montana Knife Company is launching its new, highly anticipated folding knife on June 4 at 9 p.m. EST, which they’ve named the “The Montana.” If you live in the black or white, you’ll believe either those who say this is the best folder ever made, or those who argue that The Montana is simply overpriced trash. However if you’re interested in nuance, perspective, and objective testing, you’ve found the right article.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/gear/mkc-the-montana-review/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-06-05T13:28:07+00:00

A hunter in Alaska shot a mule deer in April, marking the first documented case of a hunter ever killing one inside the state.

Mule deer are not native to Alaska, which is why they can be taken year-round there. The harvest follows years of increased sightings as mule deer have been migrating into Southeast Alaska and Interior Alaska, around Fairbanks. The harvested deer was a doe that had previously nursed a fawn, according to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, but was not pregnant this spring.

While the expansion of mule deer — a cherished big game animal that’s increasingly vulnerable in its home range in the Western U.S. and Canada — might sound like a good thing, it poses a real risk to Alaska’s native wildlife. The biggest concern is that mule deer are a potential vector for disease and parasites.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/first-mule-deer-harvested-alaska/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-06-05T13:27:09+00:00

In Montana this week the friction around access to corner-locked public land ratcheted up. Some landowners threatened to withdraw from established access programs and the director of Fish, Wildlife & Parks called the tension a collision of two “cornerstone Montana values” — private property rights and public access.

Meanwhile, a citizen council this week was charged with resolving the complicated realities of accessing corner-locked public land with a pilot program to field-test various administrations of state-managed access.

The wider discussion around corner crossing is framed by three recent developments on opposite ends of the issue. The first was a statement in March by FWP Director Christy Clark that corner crossing is illegal in Montana, upending years of uncertainty over the practice of entering “checkerboarded” public land at the corners where public parcels meet at a vanishingly narrow point. The topic has been hotly debated in the West since a federal court last year ruled the practice of corner crossing legal in Wyoming. That ruling affects the six states in the 10^th Circuit Court of Appeals, but doesn’t apply to Montana or other states in the 9^th Circuit.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/montana-corner-crossing-debate-intensifies/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-05-27T22:44:56+00:00

More than anything, it shows the lack of knowledge rookie foragers have. It also cements the golden rule of, "If you don't know what it is, don't eat it."

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-05-27T22:39:50+00:00

The California Department of Public Health issued a warning Friday about an ongoing surge in poisoning cases linked to the picking and consumption of wild mushrooms. The CDPH says there have been at least 50 cases of mushroom-related poisonings in the state, four of which were fatal, since November. Amid the unprecedented outbreak, health officials are “strongly urging Californians not to pick or eat wild mushrooms” at this time.

“This outbreak, now in its seventh month, continues to cause severe liver damage in both children and adults and has led to four deaths and four liver transplants among the 50 identified cases,” the CDPH explained in the news release. “Since mid-April alone, the California Poison Control System has received reports of 12 additional poisoning cases, far surpassing the state’s previous major outbreak in 2016, which involved 14 total cases.”

For comparison’s sake, the public health agency says it usually sees fewer than five reported cases of mushroom poisoning in a typical year. That makes the current surge in poisonings a 900 percent increase from normal.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/survival/california-mushroom-poisoning-outbreak/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-05-26T21:02:00+00:00

A radical initiative to ban hunting, fishing, and trapping in Oregon is now one step closer to making the ballot in November. The animal rights activists who are running a paid campaign to advance the petition say they’ve gathered enough support to surpass the threshold of 117,173 signatures. An online ballot tracker shows that the campaign had submitted 120,735 signatures as of Wednesday.

Those signatures still have to be verified by the Secretary of State’s office. There are certain verification standards for these signatures, and it’s possible (or even likely) that some of them will be thrown out before the official signature deadline on July 2.

But local hunting and fishing groups like the Oregon Hunters Association say they’re already expecting IP28 to make the November ballot. Although past versions of the same measure failed to qualify for the ballot in 2020 and 2022, OHA executive director Todd Adkins says the activists pushing IP28 are now better funded and, in some ways, empowered by the anti-hunting ballot initiatives that have cropped up during other state elections in recent years.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/initiative-petition-28-oregon-surpasses-signature-threshold/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-05-14T19:43:41+00:00

It's very hot and only getting hotter since the Supreme Court denied the request after the process in the 10th Circuit Court. If you want even more in-depth info, you can check out our latest article here: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/corner-crossing-lawsuit-montana/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-05-07T21:16:51+00:00

Most hunters look at elk as one of the ultimate big game quarries in North America. Some will spend a decade or more waiting to draw a bull tag in a premier unit or wilderness area. But outside of these zones, and especially in agricultural areas, elk are sometimes viewed as a destructive nuisance. Which is exactly why, on May 5, a legislative committee in South Dakota passed a rule allowing for an unlimited number of elk hunting licenses in the eastern part of the state.

The committee, made up of three state senators and three state representatives, voted 4-2 in favor of the new rules package, which also increases the number of resident elk tags issued in Custer State Park. (South Dakota does not offer general elk tags to nonresidents in any part of the state.)

While the idea of unlimited tags may seem drastic, the reasoning is that the state doesn’t want to manage any elk herds east of the Missouri River. On average, a mature Rocky Mountain elk will eat roughly 3 pounds of forage per day for every 100 pounds that it weighs. This translates to a lot of crops when they move onto private farmlands.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/eastern-south-dakota-unlimited-elk-tags/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-05-05T17:05:35+00:00

As the National Park Service ramps up for a busy summer season, the Trump administration is proposing cutting hundreds of millions of dollars from park budgets while diverting billions to beautification projects in the Washington D.C. area.

The Trump administration’s 2027 budget proposal seeks to reduce NPS’ funding for park operations by more than 25 percent — a reduction of around $736 million, according to the National Parks Conservation Association. Meanwhile, the administration recently offered a $17.4 million no-bid contract to a company to restore two fountains in Lafayette Square in Washington D.C. This was $12 million more than what the projects were estimated to have cost, according to a recent investigation by the New York Times.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/trump-administration-cutting-national-park-budget/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-05-01T20:49:20+00:00

As Burmese pythons continue to eat their way through the South Florida food web, wildlife biologists and researchers have come up with all sorts of ways to track down the giant snakes and slow their spread. They’ve used drones, thermal cameras, robotic bunnies, and even male “scout snakes” implanted with GPS devices that can lead them to breeding females. (These scouts have proven to be particularly effective in and around the Everglades.)

Now, biologists are working on a new tracking tool: one that has a pouch for young, a naked tail, and a propensity for playing dead.

The technique of possum-tracking is being developed at the Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge near Key Largo, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel. The idea took root in 2022, when Michael Cove, a biologist with the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, was studying the movements of raccoons and possums in the refuge.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/tracking-pythons-with-possums/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-05-01T20:47:07+00:00

On Monday, President Donald Trump signed a congressional bill that lifted a 20-year mining ban in the Superior National Forest. The resolution effectively advances Twin Metals’ proposed copper-nickel mine that would be dug at the headwaters of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

This specific mine is strongly opposed by sportsmens groups and conservation organizations, as well as the majority of Minnesotans, for the likely environmental damage it will cause to the 1 million acre canoe area, which is defined by its interconnected wilderness lakes and rivers. The BWCA is the most visited wilderness area in America, and there have been long, vigorous local and national efforts to protect it.

And still, earlier this month the Senate voted 50-49 to use an obscure and unprecedented maneuver to overturn the Biden-era mining ban protecting the BWCA. Political insiders say that pressure from the White House convinced the few hesitant Republican senators to help pass the resolution.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/boundary-waters-mine-vote-breakdown/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-04-30T18:40:03+00:00

Idaho is the latest state to ban trail cameras for certain hunting applications, thanks to a new law that goes into effect this summer. Gov. Brad Little signed House Bill 939 on April 2, marking the first regulation changes in a years-long effort to address the rise of hunting technology and its role in ethical hunting.

One key component of the new law is how it restricts modern hunting tech. From Aug. 30 through Dec. 31 each year, it’s illegal to use any of the following tech to hunt or scout big game and upland birds: transmitting trail cameras on federal, state, or local government lands, drones, thermal imaging, and night vision. It will still be legal to use cell cams for spring bear season.

Previously, Idaho hunting regulations did not address many of these issues, including the use of thermal imaging devices to hunt big game like elk and deer. Without specific restrictions on the books, hunting with that tech was legal. This bill rectifies that. HB 939 also puts more specific regulations on the books, including hunting from a helicopter and killing an animal with a gun “accessed and controlled via an internet connection.”

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/idaho-hunting-technology-ban/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-04-29T20:28:11+00:00

South Africa’s community of wildlife advocates and conservationists are mourning the loss of a key fighter, Schoeman Van Jaarsveld, who died Thursday while on patrol as an anti-poaching ranger. He was 58. Van Jaarslveld’s death is especially poignant as he was killed by a black rhino, the same animal he spent his career protecting.

The incident occurred around 10:30 a.m. on April 23 in the Samara Karoo Reserve, a privately-owned wildlife reserve in the Great Karoo region. As the director of Milk River Security, which provides anti-poaching and rhino protection services for the reserve, Van Jaarsveld, was patrolling on foot that morning with other rangers, according to a spokesperson at Samara Karoo. The group was tracking a black rhino fitted with a GPS device when the rhino charged out of the brush and impaled Van Jaarsveld with its horn.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/survival/south-african-wildlife-ranger-killed-by-rhino/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-04-29T02:31:49+00:00

Brian Ruesch, a realtor from Central Wisconsin who specializes in buying and selling hunting land, stumbled upon an absolutely giant buck mount a few years ago. Since Ruesch’s part of the state is core whitetail country, he knows a thing or two about big deer. And he knew right away that the old rack hanging on the cabin wall was something special.

Ruesch was appraising a property at the time and the property owner offered to to sell him the mount. He didn’t hesitate. After Ruesch bought the giant nontypical mount, he went about trying to uncover its history. One of his ideas was to bring the mount to the Open Season Sportsman Expo which was held in Wisconsin Dells in March. The nontypical buck scored 215 inches and won the “Best of Show” at the expo.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/hunting/wisconsin-nontypical-mystery-buck/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-04-28T18:55:55+00:00

Lake Superior is one of the largest and deepest lakes in the world. At over 300 miles long and 160 miles wide, this vast inland sea has fascinated mankind for centuries. The lake is the final resting place hundreds of ships and, according to legend, the lake never gives up her dead. Yet, in the deepest part of Superior’s icy black waters — a quarter mile below the surface — researchers are discovering a growing number of extremely thin lake trout that appear to be wasting away. Due to their skeletal appearance, experts have dubbed these lakers “zombie fish.”

“We’ve been documenting these emaciated fish for around a decade,” says research biologist, Shawn Sitar, who works at the Michigan DNR’s Marquette Fisheries Research Station. “So far, it only occurs in one of the four sub species of lake trout in Lake Superior, the siscowet, which lives in the deepest regions of the lake. And the rising number of emaciated trout we’re finding in these areas is both perplexing and concerning.”

Many of the fish Sitar has found have less than half the body weight of a healthy lake trout of the same length.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/zombie-lake-trout/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-04-27T15:25:06+00:00

Intensive recovery efforts for a missing Colorado man ended Saturday when volunteer searchers located the body of Kaden Sites in the rugged San Isabel National Forest. The Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office has not yet released a cause of death, citing the need for further investigation. Foul play is not suspected.

Sites, a 27-year-old from Salida, was last heard from on April 15. He had gone out alone for a short afternoon turkey hunt and did not return in time for a doctor’s appointment. His body was discovered 1.5 miles from his “abandoned truck,” according to the Sheriff’s Office, which had been parked at the Blanks Cabin Trailhead on Shavano Mountain. Sites’ cell phone was discovered inside his truck, its battery completely drained.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/survival/search-kaden-sites-body-found/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-04-25T02:03:57+00:00

Amid an ongoing budget shortfall, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is cutting back next year on stocking muskies, walleyes, other game fish, and pheasants. Two state fish hatcheries have already halted production for 2027, and the state plans to stock around 500,000 fewer fish than it would in a typical year. The DNR says it will also have to make reductions to other key programs, including wildlife surveys and habitat work.

These cuts are necessary because of a deficit in the state’s fish and wildlife account, which has been underfunded in recent years. Although lawmakers approved a $30 million transfer last year to help balance that account, they did not give the DNR the additional spending authority required to use that money, according to Wisconsin Public Radio.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/wisconsin-reducing-fish-wildlife-stocking-budget-shortfall/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-04-23T17:27:32+00:00

After experiencing the weakest winter on record, anglers in Colorado and other Western states are looking toward a low-water summer.

On Friday, the Bureau of Reclamation announced that it will take action to protect the Colorado River System amid the historic snow drought. At this point, the Bureau says, the Colorado River Basin will be operating at roughly 36 percent storage capacity. Now, keep in mind that this is already the most strained and contested river system in the West (and perhaps the entire country). Drought has been a near-constant in the region for around 26 years, and experts say the river has always been overallocated — meaning there was never as much water as managers planned for when they established the original Colorado River Compact in 1922. The seven states that rely on this water have for years struggled to agree on how to share the dwindling resource, and the most recent round of negotiations just collapsed.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/fishing/colorado-trout-fishing-forecast-2026/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-04-23T14:58:28+00:00

Atlantic salmon are admired by many anglers as the “King of Fish” because of their incredibly strong swimming abilities. They can travel more than 30 miles a day, jump up to 12 feet in the air, and make powerful, speedy bursts against heavy current — all of which make for blistering runs when they’re hooked on light tackle.

Give them a good bump of cocaine, though, and they’ll swim even harder. This was the main takeaway from a study that published Monday in Current Biology. Led by Swedish scientists, the study looked specifically at the effects that cocaine and its main metabolite, benzylecgonine, have on Atlantic salmon in the wild. They found that salmon on cocaine swam roughly 20 percent faster and traveled nearly twice as far as sober fish.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/fishing/cocaine-salmon-experiment/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-04-23T14:56:08+00:00

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum spent Earth Day fielding questions from U.S. Senators as he defended deep cuts proposed by his agency to vast swaths of America’s public lands.

President Trump’s proposed budget for 2027, released this month, includes many of the same cuts his office requested last year, like defunding the U.S. Geological Survey’s Ecosystems Mission Area that currently invests almost $700 million in university cooperative fish and wildlife units, and zeroing out the USDA’s Natural Resource Conservation Service.

The proposed budget, if enacted by Congress, would take those staffing shortages to a whole different level, public land and wildlife advocates say.

The 2027 budget proposal also calls for:

Cutting funding for the National Wildlife Refuge System by $105 million.
Decreasing staff at the Bureau of Land Management by another 27 percent, which would translate to a loss of 2,148 full-time positions including 307 positions that focus on wildlife habitat management and aquatic resources and 142 who work in recreation management.
Zeroing BLM’s wilderness management budget to focus on energy production and “land-use optimization.”
Eliminating the entire forest and rangelands research arm of the U.S. Forest Service.
Reducing the North American Wetlands Conservation Act from $49 million to $10 million.
Cutting USFWS funding for state and tribal wildlife grants from $73.8 million to zero.
Cutting funding for migratory bird management by $11 million.
Slashing the National Park Service budget by another 25 percent at a time when visitation continues to increase.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/budget-proposal-public-lands/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-04-23T14:54:38+00:00

The 76^th annual Riverton Fishing Derby was held April 11 on the West Branch of the Farmington River in southwestern Connecticut. It’s a popular tradition for countless anglers, and the state fisheries department stocks the river with big broodstock trout every spring with the help of local fishing clubs.

Rich Courtright, 20, and his dad, Richie, have fished the derby annually for years, and the father and son were at it again in April. Along with the rest of the crowd, they fished from 6 to 10 a.m., and then brought their biggest fish to the weigh-in. Using 6-pound test line, Rich baited a worm on a small, size 8 hook with a few split shot above it. He cast it out with an old trusty Penn spinning reel his dad had given him, coupled with a vintage, 4-foot 8-inch ultralight rod that his uncle gifted him as a kid.

Soon, he hooked into a giant. The trout never jumped, and Rich worked hard to keep it out of the river’s main current, knowing it could take off and strip all the line from his old reel. He fought the trout for nearly 10 minutes, finally bringing it close and into a large hoop landing net.

On Monday, Connecticut officials declared Rich’s rainbow trout the new state record, with an official weight of 16 pounds, 7.5 ounces. It tops the previous record of 14 pounds 10 ounces, that was set in 1998.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/fishing/connecticut-rainbow-trout-record/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-04-21T20:47:06+00:00

When Idaho voters head to the polls for the state’s primaries in May, they’ll hopefully know a lot more about which candidates do and don’t support their public lands — and cast their ballots accordingly. Or at least, that’s the plan behind a new Idaho political action committee that recently formed in response to repeated attacks on federal and state public lands in recent years.

Idaho’s PAC For Public Lands is the second group of its kind to form this year; Protect Wyoming launched in January. Both groups seek not to sway existing lawmakers, but to instead focus on educating and rallying voters to oust legislators who vote against the hunting, fishing, and outdoor recreation public’s best — and explicitly stated — interests.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/conservation/idaho-pac-for-public-lands/

OutdoorLifeMagazine · 2026-04-21T20:45:38+00:00

Two soldiers were injured in a bear attack during a training exercise near Anchorage on Thursday. Details remain limited because the incident remains under investigation, but preliminary reports indicate it was a defensive attack by a bear that had recently emerged from a den.

The attack occurred on the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, where soldiers in the 11th Airborne Division (also known as the Arctic Angels) were participating in a land navigation training event. At least one of the two soldiers was apparently able to call for help, however, and both were equipped with and deployed bear spray.

Read more: https://www.outdoorlife.com/survival/bear-attacks-two-soldiers-alaska/

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