Ross Bielema 23 June 2024

Courts reject bans on arm braces, bump stocks

It’s easy to look the other way when someone else loses something you have no use or need for. It’s easy to suggest we all drive electric cars or ban V-8 motors if you don’t already own three or four gas-powered vehicles and don’t appreciate muscle cars or the pure fun of a drag race. It’s easy to oppose protests, speech or books that disagree with our own viewpoints, especially if they are extreme to us. If you don’t own any guns or even underst
Ross Bielema 17 August 2023
Off-roaders go civilized as more roads open
The simple $6,500 all-terrain vehicle with a motorcycle seat, a couple storage racks and a winch is being left in the dust by sophisticated utility terrain vehicles that include heat, air conditioning, stereos, seat belts, up to six seats and $35,000 price tags. As more counties and cities legalize both ATVs and their luxury UTV cousins on paved roads, Wisconsin residents are embracing the sight of these vehicles in towns and at restaurants, bars
Ross Bielema 19 June 2023
Sharks, mackerel provide Carolinas fishing action
I was waiting all morning to use the classic line from “Jaws”: “We’re gonna need a bigger boat.” When I finally started reeling in my first Atlantic sharp nose shark, I used it, although I’m not sure the 18-year-old first mate on board the Fish Hook I got the connection. Although Fish Hook Charters is based in North Myrtle Beach, we were actually fishing off the shore of North Carolina near Sunset Beach.
Ross Bielema 7 June 2023
Explosion spurs questions of pistol durability
For hundreds of years, firearms were made of two materials: steel and wood. Although Glock wasn’t the first pistol maker to use plastics in the construction of their firearms, they were one of the first to use them for the entire frame. To say that Glock started a trend in the mid-1980s with its striker-fired polymer pistols is like saying Apple started a trend with personal computers. Both were more like revolutions.
Ross Bielema 24 May 2023
Season 4 brings plenty of turkeys but few shots
If there was an action-packed video trailer of this column, it would show plenty of hens, jakes and tom turkeys running around plowed cornfields, sandhill cranes dancing, shots at a big tom on the ground and in the air, and me falling out of a folding stool (performed by my stunt double, of course) and rolling into the side of world’s smallest ground blind. I don’t have a name for this blockbuster movie yet, but the working title is “Season 4: Mo
Ross Bielema 10 May 2023
Spring exciting time for wildlife lovers, animals
As the brown, dry landscape recently freckled with snow yields to the ever-spreading greenery, hope for life and renewal swells in all of us. After my recent column on hunting turkeys in the snow, I was surprised (as we all were) to see a few days in the 80s! That’s one of the dangers of a two-week lag time on columns. But it wasn’t too many days later that snow returned to Shawano County and areas north.
Ross Bielema 24 April 2023
Rough waters may be ahead for wake boat users
Balancing the interests of the state’s lakes and rivers users is a never-ending challenge, but the state’s wake boat users hit an unseen obstacle earlier this month when the public weighed in on these specialized watercraft. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources held its usual spring hearings on a variety of conservation-related topics, with more than 11,000 residents and non-residents voting online April 10-13 on 76 questions.
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