Roger Wiltz

Some readers might remember Maggie Warren. She was from the Rapid City area, and she was obsessed with preventing our proposed mourning dove season. She went so far as to circulate a petition, collect the necessary signatures and get the mourning dove issue on the fall ballot. Fortunately...

How about coming along on my East River Charles Mix County deer hunt. I've been perched on a slope for about three hours, waiting for a mature whitetail buck to wander within my shooting comfort zone. I'm on a south slope facing north. Though a strong wind is gusting out of the south,...

During my 21 years as Wagner's 7-12 school principal (1976-1997), truancy was my greatest challenge. When all efforts failed, I signed an official complaint. The child, guardian and I ultimately wound up in front of Judge Paul Kern in the Lake Andes courthouse. A stern lecture and...

Baseball, apple pie, the Mitchell Gun Show — as American as it gets! Rob Moore and his staff did a great job putting the show together, and Betsy and I had a fine time visiting with column readers and old friends. And yes, the 4-H concession team should open a soup kitchen —...

On Thursday morning, Oct. 19, I received a phone call from a man who said he called me because I seemed to have a sense of what's going on with our pheasants. After mentioning that he had a degree in wildlife management, he said he realized that habitat was of paramount importance,...

Back in the early nineties, my father made me a great proposition. He offered to take me on a fishing trip anywhere I wanted to go. He left it to me to work out all the details. My mind raced with possibilities. Dad was in his eighties, and I had to consider his comfort. He, like...

When Betsy and I have embarked on adventures in the past, friends have asked, "How can you go to Africa? What if the plane crashes? What about terrorists? Aren't you afraid?" One of the great things about growing older is enjoying books you read 20 years ago. It's like you never read...

Something I read, and something I saw on television, really touched me this past week. "Two Degrees Centigrade," the global warming program on the History Channel, led to my losing some sleep the night I watched it. According to the program, we are doomed unless our technology solves...

One of the key outdoors issues in Washington D.C., — lead — pales in comparison to immigration, North Korea, jobs and health care, but it is important to hunters and fishermen.

Remember the weather on Labor Day Monday? Temperatures reached 90 by midafternoon. Tuesday morning was flat out cold by comparison. Prior to that cold Tuesday morning, I had invited a pair of Mitchell buddies and their boat to fish that day with me for catfish beneath the dam at Pickstown....

I recently dropped in at the Burke Coffee Haus, and joined a few friends where the topic of conversation was catfish. Though they enjoyed catching and eating walleyes, I just couldn't fathom why anyone would prefer walleyes to catfish. Their enthusiasm made me want to go home and...

As usual, Betsy was messing with her iPhone when she broke the silence: "I have a question for you. What's the most dangerous thing a hunter on foreign soil faces?" Fortunately for me, I had just read a gripping article in my latest hunting magazine. "I'll take a wild guess and say...

The following list of the world's 10 greatest bird hunts with No. 1 being the greatest of all was proposed a while back by an outdoor TV program. While the list is reasonably well done, I would omit No. 9, as it is contained in Nos. 7 and 8 and substitute a North Country ptarmigan...

What I'm going to suggest today isn't for weenies, but it is for healthy families that relish the outdoors and possess a sense of adventure. I'm talking about Lake Superior's Isle Royale National Park. Tom, my son-in-law, and Sam, Grace and Gaby, three of my Wisconsin grandchildren,...

"To err is human....." As you know, Alexander Pope completed his above quote with the words, "To forgive divine." Like everything else, the world of hunters and fishermen is not without its errs. Some of these errs can be laughed at as time passes, and some end in tragedy. I've had...