Welcome to BHA’s new website! This digital campfire is still being built—thanks for bearing with us as we get it burning bright.
21
Dec
2021
Faces of BHA is a regular column in Backcountry Journal, which spreads light on the incredible volunteers working behind the scenes to ensure the organization succeeds. This installment was published in the Fall 21 issue. CATHERINE DANAE ELSER PROSPECT, PENNSYLVANIA Pennsylvania Chapter Board What brought you to BHA? I became aware of BHA through professionals and influencers in the hunting and fishing industry. When I researched it and got to know the mission and values, I ...
Categories: Media
Tags: media, Backcountry Journal
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This article first appeared in the Fall 2021 issue of Backcountry Journal. Join BHA to get 4 issues a year right in your mailbox. BY NEIL KEOWN The Friday entering a long weekend in May 2020 saw the Alberta provincial government rescind the 1976 Coal Policy quietly, without public consultation. This policy, which had been introduced with much fanfare four decades earlier and after years of consultation with stakeholders, including hunters, anglers and outfitters, disappeared discreetly, ...
15
Categories: Media, Backcountry Journal
13
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists Echo (Living Wild with the Orions) shares the mental and physical journey of a boy learning about survival. I wouldn’t typically choose this genre but the book really captured my attention. I love the ending, but don’t worry I won’t spoil it! This book deploys a certain magnetic pull. I told my mom I would read the book after I finished the series I was reading, read the first page, and was ...
8
Sage grouse are one of the many species likely to benefit from RAWA. Photo: istock.com/gatito33 BY SEN. MARTIN HEINRICH For me, fall is a season that I look forward to all year long. It often means an elk camp with my closest friends and meals of wild game and wild mushrooms shared around a campfire underneath a blanket of New Mexico stars. It means bugles in the crisp morning air and, if I do everything right, days of work packing out and processing the meat that will sustain my family ...
Tags: media, Public Lands & Waters, Backcountry Journal, Fair Chase
3
This story was originally published in the Fall 2021 issue of Backcountry Journal. By Gary VandenLangenberg With a natural love of animals and a curiosity for all things wild, my oldest son Forest grew up like many of you. Our yard and the cattail filled ditch behind our house was his arena of exploration and discovery, he and his younger brother Lake constantly flipping over our landscape stones looking for worms, pill bugs and other creepy crawlies. When Forest was 5 years old, I ...
1
This article, produced by Orion, originally appeared in the Fall 2021 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 Corey Ellis Generally, the hunting community and wildlife managers focus on entire populations of animals and game species. Yet, we as hunters and anglers rarely make decisions that affect entire populations. But ...
Tags: media, Backcountry Journal, Fair Chase
Nov
This piece was originally featured in the spring 2021 edition of the Backcountry Journal. My father called my older brother and me into the room and told us to grab the blue notebook from the counter. He shakily clasped his glasses and opened the spiral revealing a list of the guns he owned. My brother and I both thought the conversation was going a completely different route, so we openly expressed: “What the hell, Dad? We thought this was going to be a serious conversation.” “You have to ...
Tags: media, Collegiate Clubs, Backcountry Journal
This title is part of BHA's Jim Posewitz Digital Library: Required Reading for Conservationists Backcountry hunters and anglers are no strangers to the notion that there is something restorative -- special -- about "type 2" fun, where smiles and memories are equally dispersed between scrapes, bruises, shivers and sweats. BHA member Michael Easter's Comfort Crisis brings fascinating new clarity to this notion that we gain both qualifiable and quantifiable benefits from experiencing ...
19
Oct
This piece was originally featured in the spring 2021 edition of the Backcountry Journal. I hear my wife begin recording videos for her fourth-grade class, but she is drowned out by the last of our wine deglazing the good bits from the cast iron in front of me. She has not seen her students for over a month, her heart breaking again with every email received. They ask when things will return to normal. I think of the undergraduate students’ essays I must grade after putting the browned neck ...