Scott Mackenthun is an outdoors enthusiast who has been writing about hunting and fishing since 2005. He resides in New Prague and may be contacted at scott.mackenthun@gmail.com.

Many hunting pursuits qualify as both relaxing and rewarding. However, in my book, none of them match the satisfaction gleaned when afield with friends and dogs chasing Minnesota’s ringneck pheasants.

Saturday's fishing opener in Albert Lea gave the governor, media and the rest of the state a little taste of fishing in southern Minnesota.

In the late 1980s, a pal and I frequented Laven's Archery Den's 40-acre outdoor range that wound along bluffs above the Le Sueur River. That's where we honed our shooting skills many days a week.

On my most recent trip to South Florida, I opted out of the state's ocean-side scenery and traveled inland to experience wildlife viewing on an expansive, freshwater, cypress-slough lake. This part of Florida is home to thousands of acres of shallow-water swamps, canals and lakes. It's also …

Tom Quintini has a calculated and ordered approach to his fishing.

It comes as a surprise that I grew up in a family that only fished on a couple of holidays and didn’t hunt.

Red tide.

Alone on Center Lake in South Dakota’s Custer State Park, the freshly fallen 6 inches of snow from the previous day’s storm creates a pristine, unspoiled canvas from shoreline to shoreline that swallows all sound. The silence is as beautiful as the snow covers pine trees and rock outcrops.

When February rolls around, most hunting seasons have concluded, and the ice fishing can get downright slow. The same is true for observing and photographing southern Minnesota's bird life.

One of my favorite adaptations of fantasy football was the salary cap league.

Southern Minnesota has just exited a brutal, wind-driven polar event that forced stabbing cold right through even the highest-quality winter garments.

"Summertime and the living is easy. Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high.”

Participation in outdoor activities, such as fishing and hunting, continues to dwindle as both parents and children lead busier lives, juggle schedules and are sucked into electronic worlds for work and leisure connected by screens and the wizardry of the internet.

Every winter, I try to escape our northern winter for sun and fun in South Florida.

In a matter of two weeks, the outlook of this upland hunter ranged from doubtful to hopeful and everywhere in between on the topic of getting afield for a final time to chase late season ring-necked pheasants. Nearly a foot of snow fell in parts of southwestern Minnesota and the calendar kep…

Depending on who you talk to, Minnesota's most iconic mammal is either the moose or the gray wolf.

Two recently installed electric barriers east of Mankato will help protect several thousand acres of water, including a number of popular fishing lakes, from the threat of invasive carp. The barriers are set for commissioning later this month.

You can find a lot of perspective from a seat 16 feet off the ground in the woods. There’s a lot of time for contemplation while waiting for a whitetail deer.

The end of open water waterfowl season in southern Minnesota rarely comes as a result of the 60-day season expiring. Rather, it prematurely slams closed when arctic air sinks from the north and locks up sloughs and lakes with fast-hardening ice.

Ryan Berzins and Zach Gilbert grew up near Bigfork, Minnesota (population 446). With Bigfork High School graduating classes of around 20 students, the two young men knew each other, but being a couple years apart, didn’t start hanging out until they had both graduated.

My enterprising Labrador retrievers, Cash and Luna, have accompanied me on numerous outings to chase ringneck pheasants. While we've been moderately successful at bagging birds, the season has fallen a bit short of last year's action.

The last deer I harvested fell to a well-placed arrow and traveled scant yards before falling.

There’s a knock on the cabin door, and my guest has arrived, though guest and host roles will flip quickly. Meadow Kouffeld has managed to fit a few hours in during a busy weekend of running to and fro as a regional biologist for the Ruffed Grouse Society to guide me through the north woods …

Blasting up the St. Louis River with the throttle buried at a brisk 36 mph, I’m passing downed trees and mid-channel bars, and something is apparent: Jarrid Houston has run this stretch of river before.

For hunters, the arrival of September signals the start of fall game bird seasons, the first being early goose and dove, which began on the Sept. 1. Those seasons are popular, but they pale in comparison to the regular waterfowl opener that kicks off on Saturday, September 22.

Part of the allure of fishing is that you’re always one cast away from a big fish. More often than not, anglers repeat that adage to convince themselves to keep at it when fishing slows down.

During my years as a wildlife photographer, I’ve spent an outrageous amount of time recording American pronghorn behavior. I just love the vast western prairie regions they inhabit, where the sun always seems to shine through impossibly blue skies that reflect down on swaying yellow grasses …

Some days, you’re just lucky. You get the breaks to fall your way. That’s the only way I can describe falling into an opportunity to be part of a Minnesota outdoors institution.

It’s 3 a.m. and the alarm rings. My brother-in-law Mark Escen and I sit up, not in comfortable beds but in bucket seats in Mark’s sedan. We’ve dozed for a mere two hours in a parking lot in Racine, Wisconsin, and now it’s time to change clothes, grab any last-minute provisions and see firsth…

News outlets and social media sites have been ablaze recently with reports of black bears cavorting in southern Minnesota, hundreds of miles south of the toothy critters’ primary range.

I enjoy smoked salmon, pickled pike, grilled trout, boiled eelpout or even some baked fish from time to time. But like most anglers, a fish fry is the gold standard in my book.

An avid naturalist pal of mine has jokingly dubbed the south-central area of Minnesota the "Dead Zone" for its comparatively small number of bonafide wildlife viewing habitat acres.