Rangifer tarandus var. rudolphus, also known as the aerial caribou (or aerial reindeer in Europe) lives most of the year in more northern latitudes. However, its appearance in the United…
Blog and News
Lessons in Butchering Venison
We hung a grizzled old deer in camp this year who was in less than ideal condition, meat-wise. He was sort of randy smelling in general – just all rutted up and glandular. That a shot…
Charged-Up Chainsaws
Earlier this year I had a chance to try out some electric (battery-powered) chainsaws. My expectations going in were pretty low: I figured that they would either be laughingly toy-like in…
The Midnight Stoker
Consider the givens in life, those moments of predictability that stand out in a constantly changing world. The sun rises in the east, for instance. The sky is blue. Or how about this one:…
Pre-Season Stand-Off
By now, hunters around the Northeast are counting the days until (deer hunting) rifle season. In the spirit of the season, we thought we’d share this series of pictures that we took on…
Writers & Readers Conference A Success
We’re still recovering from our big annual Writers & Readers Conference, while also putting the final touches on the winter issue of the magazine. So this week, in lieu of an…
An Old Journal
A couple weeks back our friend Mike Batten, a logger who lives down the road from our office, dropped off a century-old journal he thought we might find interesting. It was kept by Ernest…
Envisioning Vermont in 2065
I went to a group-think exercise the other day where participants were asked to envision what the landscape in Vermont would look like 40 years from now under various scenarios. It was my…
Otter’s Big Debut
We see a lot of game camera pictures of deer, bear, moose – the big charismatic animals that people love. And so to be different we wanted to camera trap an otter, an animal that’s…
Fascinating and Wicked Gross
Like a lot of kids who grew up rural, I was introduced to many of the wonders of nature through hunting. Specifically squirrel hunting, which is how most kids get their start. I don’t do…
Making the Switch to Lead-Free Bullets
Mr. Trefry was my seventh grade industrial arts teacher and an avid fisherman. He showed me how to cast lead jigs, which I used over the years to catch a pile of perch. Trefry was paranoid…
Game Cameras for Northern Woodlands
Welcome to the new Northern Woodlands Game Camera blog! We were inspired by all the great game camera pictures readers have sent us over the years, so we got two game cameras of our own and…
Breaking Down Technological Barriers in Maine
Spend time in northern Maine, and you’ll likely get an earful of two seemingly incompatible complaints. The first is the scarcity of jobs. The shuttering of the Verso mill in Bucksport…
Summer Sky
G and I were out for a walk the other night, talking about and wondering why the sky has been so beautiful for the last month. Evening after evening of just impossible grandeur. Every night…
White Pine Then and Now
We’re doing a big story on white pine blister rust in the Autumn issue, and in tracking down art for the piece came across a cool old type-written report on eastern white pine that was…
Birch Peelers
The birch bark peelers arrived in a pickup pulling a covered trailer. There was a 4-wheeler in it, a smaller trailer, and sheets of cardboard and stickers for the bark. They unloaded the…
On The Coast
I went on vacation this past week down to southern Massachusetts, a place that’s really a different world to a guy from Vermont: the land flat or gently rolling towards the sea; the…
On Sawmilling
I’ve been trying to line things up to build a house for a few years now, and am getting nowhere fast. I’ve made some recent progress milling hardwood, though, that I’ll…
No Way to Say What’s in the Heart. Never.
It’s often implied, if it’s not said outright, that nature is a cruel, cold place. We’ve all seen trees wrapped around each other fighting for light; late frosts that leave…
Tick Talk
I went to a tick talk last night in southwestern Vermont that was sponsored by Bennington College and the Bennington County Sustainable Forestry Consortium. Kathleen LoGiudice, a researcher…