NEBRASKAland Articles

I won’t lie; the fishing has been real hit-and-miss as of late. There are lots and lots of shad everywhere you look, which naturally makes things difficult to begin with. Add in the cool weather and several inches of rain we’ve gotten, and conditions have gotten a bit tougher. Traditional patterns like live-baiting shad and trolling crankbaits are not producing the fish we are used to this time of year, and success has been spotty. The nice thing about this …

I like to hunt. I really like to hunt. A lot. You could say it’s who I am. Why? The normal clichéd answers might be that I enjoy the recreation, exercise, spending time with friends and family, the taste of game meat, or even that I’m satisfying primordial urges. All of these are important, but what I enjoy most is that hunting melts the stress of everyday life from my body. When I hunt, whether I’m sitting in the whitetail …

September is Nebraska Archaeology Month and staff of the Nebraska State Historical Society will lead tours of the archaeological sites at Fort Atkinson State Historical Park (SHP), to be held concurrently with the Fort’s Living History weekend on September 6 and 7. At 2 p.m. on Saturday and 12:30 p.m. on Sunday, archaeologist Nolan Johnson will lead tours of the numerous structures and facilities located on the grounds of this National Historical Landmark. On Saturday at 12:30 p.m., Rob Bozell …

After visiting with a Chadron community service organization last week, I wrapped up the presentation with a slideshow of wildlife photos from western Nebraska and moved on to questions. One question kind of caught me off-guard. A friend in the audience asked why I hadn’t included any photos of snakes. I didn’t even realize that I had not given any time to reptiles, but he was right. I was certainly guilty of favoring other classes above reptiles. Mammals, birds, amphibians …

The public is invited to get up-close and personal with bird populations at two parks in the Nebraska Panhandle this fall. During the coming month, banding stations will be operating at Wildcat Hills State Recreation Area near Gering and Chadron State Park near Chadron. The public is invited to join the bird-banders during two special sessions, Saturday, Aug. 30, at Chadron and Saturday, Sept. 13, at Wildcat Hills. Attendees of the informational sessions will watch as biologists retrieve birds from …

This summer, Lexi Christensen, a student at John Brown University in northwest Arkansas, became NEBRASKAland Magazine’s first summer photography resident. During this time, she continued her development as a photographer by shooting various assignments for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, receiving critiques of her work throughout, researching story topics, and uploading her files into NEBRASKAland’s cloud-based storage system. You can see some of her work below. NEBRASKAland is already planning next summer’s residency. If you know any college students …

Every year I hear and read accounts of anglers who think that August is a slow time for fishing. It’s hot, the dog days of summer are upon us, and in most cases, there are more than enough groceries for fish to help themselves too. Fish can be lethargic, seem to disappear, and not be interested in being caught at all. While part of that is true, not all of it is. It’s true, in lots of cases this year, that …

A lot of people can tell you about the beauty of the Sandhills from the road, the forever green dunes rolling by at sixty five miles an hour. Or they can wax poetic from the seat of a canoe or tube—the slow meander of sandy bluffs and horizontal cedar trees. To many Nebraskans, the Sandhills are its scenic secret, an entire ecology different from anything else in the world.  But the very thing that makes them so beautiful also makes …

An extraordinary aspect to wildlife management these days is the extent to which technology is being used to learn more about animals. It seems telemetry, the process of using tracking devices attached to the animals to collect data, is increasingly being used to monitor a variety of species. In my time with the Game and Parks Commission, I’ve photographed researchers putting collars on animals as big as elk and as small as burrowing owls. I even read an article not …

When I was a kid, my uncle Bill once picked a pail of wild gooseberries from woods in Pawnee County. Clueless what to do with them, he gave them to my mother. She baked them into what was probably a very good gooseberry pie, but I did not care for it. It was too tart for my tastes. Of all the possible gifts our candy store-owning uncle might furnish – he brought bitter fruit.  My next encounter with gooseberry pie …