Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
The Indiana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters and Anglers (BHA), the voice for our public lands in the Hoosier state, is excited to announce a new volunteer partnership with the U.S. Forest Service in the Hoosier National Forest. Located in southern Indiana’s hill country, the Hoosier National Forest consists of 204,000 acres of hardwood forests, streams, and backcountry trails. Known to outdoor enthusiasts as simply “the Hoosier,” this forest is Indiana’s largest public-land holding, ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Every book's reading starts with a set of expectations and hopes. I picked up a copy of The Lochsa Story because it took place nearly in my backyard, a place I spend more time than any other; my hope was to learn a little more about my favorite wild country – the one I hope to one day have my ashes scattered in. It seemed almost required that I read it. But what I ended up gaining from the book ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
There is a time for reflection, philosophy and politics. And there is a time to lighten up.
The cure for solemn self-importance is Pat McManus. No one can wring more laughs out of a hunting, fishing or camping trip than the Idaho-born journalism professor who cranked out essays month after month for Field & Stream and Outdoor Life magazines. His essays are nostalgic and farcical. Their wry jokes, ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Dan Flores is a gifted storyteller and chronicler of the history of the Great Plains and wildlife of the American West. American Serengeti describes a magnitude of life on the great plains that will send your imagination spiraling. He captures its true identity, helping the reader understand the history of the wildlife that calls it home and how we have shaped the landscape and wildlife ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
A River Runs Through It is a memoir of Maclean's adventures as a young man in the mountainous western Montana backcountry. Heralded as a classical American story, Maclean describes fly fishing on the Big Blackfoot River and working in the woods for the U.S. Forest Service. I originally read A River Runs Through It while fly fishing on an alpine backpacking trip in western Wyoming. After a day ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Approximately 10 years ago I picked up this book after a reading a magazine interview with the author, David Petersen, in which he nobly described hunters as the type of hunter we all strive to be – thoughtful, hardworking and conservation-minded. This book includes a carefully selected ensemble of personal essays that dive deep into the motivations and ethics of hunters from different walks of ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
I’ve read both of Greenberg’s popular books: American Catch and Four Fish. What I like best about American Catch is that it deals not only with the problem of conservation but also the issue of what we eat. The book discusses everything from New York oysters and the destruction of their habitat to the topic of salmon in Alaska and the Pebble Mine and Bristol Bay debacle.
American Catch is an ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Reiger’s American Sportsmen is an expanded look into the entwined history of sportsmen, ethics and policy that shaped what we now know as conservation and sustainable management.
Many sportsmen and women, and even historians, are quick to stop at George Bird Grinnell and Theodore Roosevelt – obvious pillars in the Progressive era of the late 1800s and early 1900s – when mapping the lineage of ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
A professor assigned my class Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring,” the book credited with launching the modern environmental movement, my senior year of college. I hadn’t heard much about the classic then, but I was intrigued enough by Carson’s concern for the future, and the promise of a good grade. I quickly understood why it is a critical read for conservationists and how it popularized the field ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2019 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA, support your public lands and waters and get four issues a year of Backcountry Journal in your mailbox, and unlimited digital access to current and back issues.
By Zack Williams
There is something uniquely public about cutthroat trout. They reside almost entirely in wild, mountainous rivers of the West – undammed, wild, free places – the vast majority of these flowing through public land from ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
I’ve read a handful of books in the past couple years that I think should belong in the Backcountry Hunters library, but the one that stands out most and should be required reading for all conservationists and hunters is John Taliaferro’s recent biography, Grinnell: America’s Environmental Pioneer and His Restless Drive to Save the West. I really wasn’t too familiar with George Bird Grinnell ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
When I think of Desert Solitaire I remember a little riverside camp I scraped out of the grass and brush by the Colorado, not far from Moab, Utah, near the mouth of a canyon that’s since been re-named Grandstaff. I was a year out of college and living on public lands: national forests in South Dakota and Wyoming, national monuments in Arizona, BLM lands in Utah, for seasons at a time.
Edward ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
If we’ve learned anything from history, it’s that public lands will always need advocates. Since the beginning, there have been unremitting attempts to privatize our lands for the short-term benefit of a few. In order to be an effective advocate, it’s important to understand how we got where we are today, collective owners of 640 million acres of public lands.
Mark Kenyon takes us on a journey ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
In Bloodties, Kerasote brings the reader along with him on three journeys, and each involves hunting but from vastly different viewpoints, motivations and outcomes. His time is spent with natives on the ice edge in Greenland, Westerners in pursuit of rams in Siberia and on a journey home to hunt elk in Wyoming. Each is a story about people and how they interact with one another, the critters ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Long before he was “The Meateater,” Steven Rinella was just another hunter dreaming of a premium tag and the next adventure. One of his early works, American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon, is the story of receiving one such tag and the ensuing journey. This book is the perfect blend of hunting, adventure, conservation, science and history.
Starting with the unearthing of a bison skull by ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists
Published posthumously in 1949, Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac is as close to a bible for conservationists as any work can be. In it he discusses things like a “land ethic,” which simply says: “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
He reflects on predator control in service of better ...
Media Backcountry Journal media Backcountry Journal
Thank you to everyone who participated in our coloring contest from the Winter 20 issue of Backcountry Journal. Everyone did a fantastic job! Choosing only two winners was an extremely difficult proposition but here they are, along with honorable mentions.
A special thank you to Rep Your Water for sponsoring this contest and providing the artwork.
Below are a few selected entries:
Winner: Gabriel Langenhan, 8 years old, Washington
Runner-up: Athena Blanco, 9 years old, ...
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal
Here are the answers to the Kid's Crossword, located on page 17 of the Spring 2020 issue of Backcountry Journal. Not a member yet? Subscribe HERE and get four issues of Backcountry Journal to your door!
*Note: Neve Dyer, age 12, from Alberta, informed us that the answer to 7 down, Canada's national bird, is not the Canada Goose but grey jay. We apologize for this error and will be submitting a grievance with Google! Thank you, Neve, for informing us of this error. -Zack Williams, editor.
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal
This story originally appeared in the Fall 2019 issue of Backcountry Journal
By Hal Herring
For author Matt Miller of Boise, Idaho, life is too short to be a fishing purist. His work as a writer on the environment and conservation takes him across the United States, and he fishes wherever he goes, for whatever is there, with whatever method, be it throwing carp heads under a big bobber for monster alligator gar, trying to net cisco on the freezing shores of Bear Lake in Utah, tossing ...
Media Podcasts Backcountry Journal Podcast Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal
Photo by Tim Peterson
This is the continuation of our conversation with Hal Herring, host of BHA's Podcast & Blast, from the Winter 2020 issue of Backcountry Journal. For more of this interview with Hal and loads more great content, join BHA to get the current and every new issue of Backcountry Journal in your mailbox.
Those that read your writing, or follow you on social media, know that you are extremely motivated about protecting our public lands, waters and wildlife – the BHA ...
Media Podcasts Backcountry Journal Podcast Backcountry Journal
Full digital issues of the Backcountry Journal are available to BHA members. Check out a preview below, or click here to join BHA. Already a member? Click here to log in.
News for Immediate ReleaseSept. 26, 2019Contact: Katie McKalip, 406-240-9262, mckalip@backcountryhunters.org
The newest issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ magazine is available today
MISSOULA, Mont. – The fall issue of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers’ quarterly magazine, Backcountry ...
Media Press Releases Backcountry Journal media Press Releases Backcountry Journal
Above: The 2018 Hike to Hunt kickoff.
by Josh Mills
So you’re going to Rendezvous, huh? Get excited. You’re about to be part of the biggest public lands party you’ve ever seen. Your mind is about to be blown, you’ll meet countless likeminded people – who come from a vast array of backgrounds – united in the spirit of fair chase and public lands and waters activism. Saddle up, partners; it’s a wild ride.Advice from navigating the past three Rendezvous:
Introduce yourself to anyone and ...
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal
Above: In 2016 the BHA North American board passed a policy statement in support of policies which aim to prohibit new captive cervid canned hunting operations. As concerns around the spread of CWD from captive cervid operations mount throughout the country, BHA chapters are drawing on this statement to advance policies that put meaningful limits on such operations. Photo by Lynn Bystrom
by Jan Dizard
Orion and BHA share a commitment to face clearly the many ethical and related ...
Media Backcountry Journal Backcountry Journal Fair Chase