Outdoors

BILLINGS – Aerial imagery collected during the Cold War to help the Army plan for the possibility of infantry mobilization and artillery siting on U.S. soil is helping scientists understand where trees have branched out across Montana’s prairie landscapes.

Sometimes, we pretend to be younger than we are and life reminds us that, despite a lack of maturity and an affinity toward cartoons, our bodies are actually aging.

Young anglers will have a good chance at taking home a few rainbow trout from Clear Lake next month.

State officials are moving ahead with planning for an expansion of Riverside State Park.

BILLINGS – The theory was exciting and quickly grabbed headlines.

Micah Ellstrom spent a good chunk of his winter chasing turkeys.

LEWISTON – The Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s latest effort to cull deer numbers in the state’s chronic wasting disease hot spot showed 10% of the removed animals suffered from the deadly ailment.

LEWISTON – The elk population in Washington’s Blue Mountains is stable but remains well below objectives, according to the latest survey by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.

BILLINGS – Fourteen Yellowstone National Park bison were shipped to slaughter this spring with another 26 killed over the winter by tribal and state hunters.

Fly fishing

In 1984, shortly after my grandmother had several of the veins in her legs relocated to her heart, my granny and her partner, Marge, moved into their retirement home on the sparsely populated edge of the Deschutes River. There, she spent the next couple of decades eating Egg Beaters and bran muffins, and befriending the few neighbors they had by trading chores or wood splitters or pie recipes.

Snow geese take flight at McNary National Wildlife Refuge in this photo by Mark Hendrickson.

A ranch property and popular boat launch in the Yakima River Canyon are now in public hands.

An investigation into what killed thousands of fish at Long Lake Dam in February ruled out some potential causes, but it was unable to definitively pinpoint the reason so many fish turned up dead.

State and federal fisheries managers want to bring bull trout into a lake in Pend Oreille County, a move they say will help recover the threatened species.

BILLINGS – A musk ox bull shot in 2023 in Canada’s Nunavut Territory has been certified a world record by judges for the Missoula-based Boone and Crockett Club.

LEWISTON – Anglers will be able to fish for spring chinook just four days per week in the Clearwater, lower Salmon and Little Salmon rivers.

SEATTLE – Reservations to visit the Sunrise and Paradise areas of Mount Rainier National Park this July open at 8 a.m. Monday.

Fly fishing