W.H. Chip Gross

Twenty years ago this fall, Rick Wilson was driving along a Virginia highway when he spotted a woman standing beside a car with the trunk open. “From the way she was dressed and by the appearance of the car, it looked like she was not doing too well financially,” Wilson says. “When I stopped and asked if her car was broken down, she said, ‘No, but could you please help me load a deer into the trunk?’”

For some 25 years, I raised beagles for hunting cottontail rabbits. Reluctantly, I gave it up about a decade ago when my oldest dog died. What I miss most about the sport is the sound of the chase.

Hunters call it hound music.

My longtime friend and fellow outdoors writer Mike Tontimonia is another who knows the sound well. A member of Carroll Electric Cooperative in eastern Ohio, Tontimonia estimates he’s owned 150 beagles during his lifetime — both hunters and field-trialers — with as many as 20 dogs in his kennel at any one time.

As Ohio Cooperative Living’s outdoors editor, I hear some pretty humorous tales about wildlife in the Buckeye State. For instance, take a look at the photo above. At first glance it looks like a typical possum-at-the-birdfeeder shot. But Steve Seitz assures me there’s more to the story.

Chilled, it was President George Washington’s favorite dessert. Today, rural folk throughout the eastern U.S. hunt this delectable wild fruit each fall, keeping their favorite pawpaw patch as secret as they would their best spring morel mushroom woods.

Chris Chmiel first became interested in pawpaws while in college at Ohio University. “I like to hike, and I began noticing pawpaws on the ground in the woods, just rotting, going to waste,” he says.

If a leisurely, relaxing train ride, combined with watching wildlife — particularly bald eagles — sounds like fun, you might want to head east to Romney, West Virginia, where, in the spring, summer and fall each year, the trains of the Potomac Eagle Scenic Railroad leave Wappocomo Station for a three-hour, 35-mile round-trip deep into the mountains.

The tracks parallel the south fork of the Potomac River, and the highlight of the trip is a wild stretch of stream where eagles soar.

For once, I was there “yesterday.” If you’re an angler, you know what I mean. How many times have you heard, “Well, the fish aren’t biting today, but had you been here yesterday (or last week, or last month), well…”

Putting me on the fish that magical late-summer morning a few years ago was veteran fishing guide Dave Rose. We were fishing a small river in northwest Michigan from a drift boat, casting minnow-imitation lures for king salmon (also known as Chinooks) that were migrating upstream from Lake Michigan to spawn.

Over the past decade, it has steadily grown to become the largest privately owned recreational shooting facility in the country. The numbers alone are impressive: Fifty-two trapshooting fields sit side by side, stretching a full mile, alongside 14 skeet fields, 14 pistol and rifle ranges, two sporting clays ranges, and an archery range.

Buckeye Chuck, Ohio’s official weather-prognosticating groundhog, does not live what anyone would consider a tough life; after all, he’s called upon to work only one day a year.

But oh, that one day: Groundhog Day, February 2 — the day the entire world watches with bated breath to see what he sees when he comes out of his den.

Suddenly, The Cider Didn’