Blake Richard
Recent Stories
Hardwoood Hearings
The bending banks in rivers wild brought me my first Badger State fish on a late summer day over a decade ago. Archaic branches of a fallen tree bent upward out of the water, but the structure beneath felt the freelance fins that tightened my line.
Cameras capture auxiliary marker resight information
Prior to the sentences that follow, take a look at your pinky fingernail and imagine there are two or three letters or numbers engraved on it. It could be 859, LH, 3XJ, OHH, 6XH, JN, 5NV, or some other combination of alphanumerics.
Hardwoood Hearings
One of the more impassable objects in a duck hunter’s world are cattails. A flimsy little green thing, when laced, looped, twisted, turned, and knotted together provides a near impenetrable barrier.
MKLPA appoints Steve Beckwith as new president
The Minocqua/Kawaguesaga Lakes Protection Association (Lake Association) has appointed a new president in Steve Beckwith. Recently retired from a career in corporate America, Beckwith replaces Sally Murwin, who served for close to 30 years as the Lake Association’s president and retired this past year. Beckwith said this is a great way for him to give back.
Train ride turned fishing guide
“I guess you could say I was born in the wrong place,” George Metrich told The Lakeland Times as he remembered his youth on the South Side of Chicago. Metrich, a Marine Corps Vietnam War vet, said he first absorbed the Northwoods on a bow hunt soon after he got out of combat. After that, he knew he wanted his line to be strung to the land of lakes.
Donated tag sparks youth bear hunting opportunity
After having at least one tag donated for the third consecutive year, The Northwoods Youth Deer Hunt Challenge (NWYDHC) held its bear tag and guided hunt drawing at The Lakeland Times office in Minocqua on July 31. Jase Kutschenreuter, an incoming eighth grader, was the lucky contestant whose name was drawn out of 46 total entries, and will now be preparing to go bear hunting this September. The first day of the season is Sept. 9.
‘A battery for hire with a guitar fire’
I spent a good portion of an equalized charge wracking six strings around how to combine an Australian AC/DC with my Northwoods pen, and then it hit me like a bolt of lightning: a thunderstorm.
The culmination of connection
At the intersection of conversation and dead end roads, there are connections. Connections are what can build trust, and some may say they’re what brings dawn to the duck blind. Long-time Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) warden, Tim Otto, has driven down countless roads in nearly 27 years with the department, but one sticky memory boiled to his attention as he underlined the importance of community relationships and connections.
Hardwood Hearings
Sometimes the best photographic opportunities flutter into existence on made up words as I’m walking in my crocs smelling the scuzzy scum of the Rock River. I’m a fan of made up words (and nature’s bountiful scuzzy scum), mostly because it seems like pretty much all words were made up at some point in time. I guess it comes because made up words push literary boundaries and open a closed (and locked one even) mind.
