Baiting for deer, CWD, fishing tourneys and elk all made news in 2023
Dec. 29—There was plenty of news from the great outdoors in 2023, including a proposal in the North Dakota Legislature that would have prohibited the Game and Fish Department from banning the practice of baiting for deer in hunting units known to have chronic wasting disease. The bill, which had widespread support, was eventually defeated, but not before considerable debate among people on both sides of the issue.
Other stories of note included the death of an iconic elk that turned heads in Warroad, Minnesota, for nearly two decades; the "3 Old Guys" who snowmobiled from Grand Rapids, Minnesota, to Fairbanks, Alaska; hunters shooting big elk in northwest Minnesota; and the last of eight low-head dams on the Red River being removed and replaced with a rock rapids structure that accommodates fish passage and improves human safety while still holding back water.
Here's a closer look at some of the outdoors stories that made headlines in 2023.
Shane Johnson of Minot landed a 19-pound, 8-ounce ling — also known as burbot, eelpout and lawyer, among others — that was later
confirmed as the new North Dakota state record
for the species. Johnson caught the massive fish — a member of the cod family — Jan. 4 while fishing the Garrison Dam Tailrace.
A bill was introduced in the North Dakota Legislature to prevent the Game and Fish Department from
issuing rules to prohibit baiting for deer
in hunting units known to have chronic wasting disease. Rep. Paul Thomas, R-Velva, was the main author of HB 1151.
The bill eventually was defeated,
despite broad support among legislators.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources was gearing up to fly its annual winter aerial elk surveys in Kittson County and near Grygla.
Marc Bacigalupi started his position
as new fisheries manager for the DNR's Northwest Region, headquartered in Bemidji. Previously area DNR fisheries supervisor in Brainerd, Bacigalupi replaced Henry Drewes, who retired in 2021.
Midwinter waterfowl counts in North Dakota — at 29,000 Canada geese and 5,900 mallards — were down from long-term averages, as expected, because of extreme cold and severe conditions that had dumped as much as 50 inches of snow along parts of the Missouri River.
A Grand Forks business, Blackwater Customs,
was making a splash in the custom-painted fishing lure market.
Friends and colleagues paid tribute to
"Aulneau Jack" Wollack, a Northwest Angle personality
and former director of Laketrails Base Camp on Oak Island, who died Jan. 8 at the age of 79.
The Fargo Moorhead-based
F-M Walleyes Unlimited Fishing Club
was selected for induction into the Fishing Hall of Fame of Minnesota.
An April jury trial
was set for a Bismarck man, Jeffrey Erman, charged in connection with an October 2022 duck hunting incident that was recorded in a video that later went viral. Erman had pleaded not guilty in November 2022 to charges of trading in special influence, disorderly conduct-obscenity and interfering with the rights of hunters and trappers. As part of a plea agreement,
Erman later was sentenced
to pay $675 in fines and court costs and ordered to successfully complete a hunter safety course.
Wildlife in North Dakota and northwest Minnesota was generally faring OK, managers said, but heavy snow was increasing winterkill concerns on several lakes across North Dakota.
A multi-year study launched through a partnership between UND and the North Dakota Game and Fish Department aimed to
learn more about what happens to nuisance wild turkeys
after they're moved to new areas.
The "3 Old guys" — Paul Dick, Rob Hallstrom and Rex Hibbert — were gearing up
to embark on a 4,000-plus-mile snowmobile trek from Dick's home in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, to Fairbanks, Alaska. The trio in March 2019 made a 2,950-mile snowmobile trip from Grand Rapids to Churchill, Manitoba.
Hunters in Minnesota shot about 170,000 deer during the 2022 season, down 7% from 2021 and 10% below the five-year average, the DNR reported.
Heavy equipment began breaching the Drayton Dam
on the Red River near Drayton, North Dakota, as part of a project to remove the low-head dam and replace it with an "arched rock rapids" structure that retains water holding function while accommodating fish passage and improving human safety. HSG Park Joint Venture LLC was overseeing work on the project, the last of eight low-head dams on the Red River to be modified.
Matt Skoog was named new area fisheries supervisor for the DNR in Baudette, Minnesota. Skoog, who previously was assistant area fisheries supervisor in Baudette, replaced Phil Talmage, who transferred to become area fisheries supervisor in International Falls.
A bill to eliminate the 10% conservation project fee
the North Dakota Game and Fish Department charges for fishing tournaments and replace it with a permit fee not to exceed $2,500 — or $75 for nonprofit groups — was among the most prominent outdoors bills in the North Dakota Legislature. The bill's original language was later amended to an application fee of $75, a conservation fee of an amount to be determined between the tournament sponsor and a tournament representative (except for nonprofits) and a $5 surcharge on each nonresident fishing license.
The "Warroad Elk" — a local icon for 20 years — was found dead
in the same area where it had spent the past 13 years. Staff from the DNR picked up the elk, and it was taken to the Veterinary Diagnostic Lab at the University of Minnesota to determine how the animal died.
The North Dakota Game and Fish Department confirmed 24 new cases of CWD,
following testing efforts conducted during the 2022 deer hunting season. That brought the total of confirmed cases in the state to 94 since 2009, when the disease was first detected in unit 3F2 in southwestern North Dakota.
Results from a
summer creel survey
the North Dakota Game and Fish Department conducted in 2022 on the Red River showed a decline in fishing pressure. Anglers logged an estimated 63,057 hours of fishing pressure on the U.S. portion of the river, down from 88,860 in 2015. Extended spring flooding likely was the biggest factor in the decline.
The Minnesota Prairie Chicken Society
was preparing to mark its 50th anniversary.
Marilyn Vetter, the new president and CEO of Pheasants Forever and Quail Forever,
was scheduled to speak at UND. Vetter grew up near Anamoose, North Dakota, and graduated from UND in 1988 with a communications degree.
Test results confirmed the iconic "Warroad Elk," found dead in March,
didn't die from chronic wasting disease.
Age tests later confirmed the elk was 20 years old.
The "3 Old Guys" completed their snowmobile trek
to Fairbanks, Alaska, more than five weeks and 5,000 miles after leaving Grand Rapids, Minnesota, on March 6.
The North Dakota Game and Fish Department reported
a record 337 bighorn sheep in the grasslands of western North Dakota,
surpassing the previous record of 335 in 2021. The tally didn't include about 40 sheep from the North Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park or bighorns from the Fort Berthold Indian Reservation.
The North Dakota Game and Fish Department reported that winter aerial surveys showed declining white-tailed deer numbers just about everywhere in the state, the result of extreme winter conditions. In Unit 2C north of Grand Forks, counts were down 29.3% from 2022, while counts in 2B south of Grand Forks were down 47.5%.
Mule deer numbers in western North Dakota were down 29%
from 2022 and 5% below the long-term average, the Game and Fish Department reported. An extreme winter and historic blizzards in the spring of 2022 were major contributing factors, the department said.
Game and Fish Department fisheries crews were
assessing the extent of winter fish die-offs
in lakes across the state. In the Northeast Fisheries District, winterkill was confirmed in about 10 lakes, including North Golden Lake, Harvey Dam, Goose Lake and Juanita Lake.
Dawson Erickson, a Thief River Falls teen-ager, landed a 70-inch sturgeon while fishing off a dock on the Rainy River.
The North Dakota Game and Fish Department was offering
53,400 deer gun licenses for 2023,
a decline of 10,800 from 2022.
The Minnesota DNR was offering
17 elk licenses in Kittson County
, down from 30 in 2022. The decline was based on several factors, including the Red Lake Nation's plans to increase tags for their tribal hunt.
A multi-partner
international telemetry study in its eighth season
was beginning to shed light on the movement of several fish species in the Red River Basin, including lake sturgeon, channel catfish, freshwater drum and bigmouth buffalo.
North Dakota breeding duck numbers,
at about 3.4 million, were up slightly from 2022, while wetland abundance was down 26%, the Game and Fish Department reported.
North Dakota upland game hunters
shot more pheasants, sharptails and Hungarian partridges in 2022 than the previous year, the Game and Fish Department reported. As an example, 51,270 pheasant hunters shot 286,970 roosters, up 9% and 10%, respectively, from the previous year.
North Dakota pheasant crowing counts
were up 30% statewide from 2022, the Game and Fish Department said.
Michael Lant, a UND graduate student, was mining electronic data from the North Dakota Game and Fish Department as part of a
project to learn more about why fewer resident anglers are buying licenses
at a time when fishing in the state has never been better.
Three women from Iowa and southern Minnesota, who paddled from the Red River at the Canadian border to the north end of Lake Winnipeg on the second leg of a multi-year trek to Hudson Bay,
reached their destination at Norway House, Manitoba.
They plan to finish the trip from Norway House to Hudson Bay in 2024.
Minnesota ruffed grouse drumming counts were up from the previous year, with the biggest increases in northeastern forests, the DNR said.
The North Dakota Game and Fish Department was offering 420 pronghorn tags,
down from 1,970 in 2022, in response to a 40% population decline after a severe winter.
Gary and Bonnie Mounce of Nebraska City, Nebraska,
who have fished every Cats Incredible Catfish Tournament except the very first one, won the 2023 Cats Incredible tourney with a two-day weight of 74.39 pounds. The popular husband-wife team is widely considered
"the first couple" of Cats Incredible.
The Minnesota DNR announced it was cutting doe permits across much of northern Minnesota after a tough winter hammered deer numbers in some areas, especially in the northeast.
Devils Lake was gearing up to host the Bass Pro Shops/Cabela's National Walleye Tour Championship in early September.
A study between the North Dakota Game and Fish Department and UND was exploring whether introducing
channel catfish could help reduce bullhead numbers
in lakes where the undesirable species is too abundant.
The North Dakota Game and Fish Department released its 2023 CWD proclamation, which included a
roadmap for lifting deer baiting restrictions
in hunting units where CWD has been found.
The North Dakota Game and Fish Department said the number of
duck broods observed during its July brood survey was up 79%
from 2022 and was 88% above the 1965-2022 average index.
The Drayton Dam fish passageway project was nearly complete, and the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hosted an event for project partners,
including the North Dakota Game and Fish Department and Minnesota DNR, to see the $7.7 million project.
Anglers during the winter of 2022-23 logged just shy of 3.2 million hours
of fishing pressure on Lake of the Woods, the DNR said in sharing results from its winter creel survey. The uptick in pressure didn't translate into more fish harvested, as anglers kept 94,200 pounds of walleyes and 121,094 pounds of saugers. That was down from 160,000 pounds of walleyes and 260,000 pounds of saugers during the winter of 2021-22.
Walleye populations in Devils Lake remain near record levels,
and perch and white bass also are doing well, based on results from the Game and Fish Department's annual summer survey. The average walleye catch of 32.4 fish per net was down only slightly from the 2022 record of 35.3 walleyes per net. On the downside, pike numbers continue to be below average.
Walleye pro John Hoyer of Wayzata, Minnesota, won the Bass Pro Shops/Cabela's National Walleye Tour Championship
on Devils Lake with a three-day weight of 93 pounds, 6 ounces. Hoyer also won the 2019 NWT Championship on Devils Lake.
The North Dakota Game and Fish Department
stocked 1,000 lake sturgeon fingerlings into the Pembina River
as part of ongoing efforts to restore the species to the Red River watershed. Game and Fish worked with the Minnesota DNR to secure sturgeon eggs from the Rainy River for the stocking effort, the first of its kind in the North Dakota portion of the watershed.
Roseau, Minnesota, siblings Sharlene Peterson and Gary Przekwas
made the best of their once-in-a-lifetime Minnesota elk tags to both shoot trophy bulls in the Caribou Township area of Kittson County. A few days later,
13-year-old Ryker Copp of Warren, Minnesota, also shot a trophy bull elk
in the same general area.
Wildlife artist Charles Black, a UND graduate who now lives in Belgrade, Montana,
won the 2023 Federal Duck Stamp Art Contest.
The Minnesota DNR said small game hunter numbers and harvests dropped again in 2022. The DNR sold 228,143 small game licenses for the 2022-23 hunting season, down from 233,901 the previous year. The estimated ruffed grouse harvest of 237,700 was 10% below the 10-year average.
The Minnesota DNR
stocked 1,548 lake sturgeon fingerlings into the Red Lake River
in Crookston.
An abundance of natural foods, combined with unseasonably warm temperatures to start the season in early September, was holding down the Minnesota bear harvest. The preliminary 2023 harvest of 1,802 was down 22% from 2022 and 19% from the five-year average, the Duluth News Tribune reported.
A new multi-use trail
was featured as providing access from the city of Warroad to Beltrami Island State Forest.
A yearling doe shot during the opening weekend of Minnesota's firearms deer season near Climax, Minnesota,
tested positive for CWD,
and a
whitetail buck later tested positive
in the same general area. With the two positive cases, three deer have now tested positive for CWD in the Climax area. The first was a buck shot near Climax that tested positive in the fall of 2021.
The four students who attend Angle Inlet Elementary School on Minnesota's Northwest Angle got a
hands-on lesson in outdoors education
when they spent a day of school learning to process a deer. Their teacher, Allen Edman, had shot the deer the previous afternoon.
Results from an annual
fall netting assessment showed an uptick in walleye and sauger numbers
on the Minnesota side of Lake of the Woods. The survey tallied an average of 21.1 walleyes and 17.5 saugers per net, the DNR said, up from 12.8 walleyes and 16 saugers per net in 2022. The increase largely resulted from higher catch rates of 0- to 2-year-old walleyes hatched between 2021 and 2023. Saugers in the 13- to 16-inch range were above historic averages, with 8- to 9-inch saugers also abundant.
The North Dakota Game and Fish Department said it is exploring the possibility of opening an area
north of U.S. Highway 2 in Grand Forks County to sharp-tailed grouse hunting.
The area has traditionally been closed to avoid the accidental shooting of prairie chickens, a species whose numbers are dwindling as sharptails and sharptail-prairie chicken hybrids become more prevalent.
A new Minnesota group, Hunters for Hunters, began holding meetings across the northern part of the state to discuss what they see as the need for better wolf management in the face of declining deer populations. As the Duluth News Tribune reported, more than 200 people attended a meeting Wednesday, Dec. 6, in Carlton, Minnesota.
The North Dakota Game and Fish Department was analyzing results from a survey of more than 4,000 resident deer hunters to gather input on the issue of
increasing deer hunting pressure,
especially among nonresident archery hunters, in the North Dakota Badlands.
In what has become almost an annual occurrence,
35 anglers were rescued from Upper Red Lake
after a sheet of ice broke away from shore in high winds, leaving them stranded on the wrong side of a crack that grew to nearly 200 feet wide. Two days later, a small plane broke through thin ice on Upper Red. No injuries were reported in either occurrence.
