During the early 1800s, Ohio was the western edge of America’s frontier. A few Native American tribes still remained in the state, but the Indian Removal Act numbered their days. Passed by the U.S. Congress in 1830, the Act required all Indians living on reservations to move west of the Mississippi. The last to leave the Buckeye State were the Wyandot, and the man tasked with making that happen was John Johnston (1774–1861).
Some of the best birding in all of North America takes place in the marshes, seasonal wetlands, and swamp forests bordering western Lake Erie. At the heart of that region sits Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge (ONWR), home to everything from huge trumpeter swans with 8-foot wingspans to tiny, colorful wood warblers weighing mere ounces.
I admit it: I’m hooked on fishing. Like most addicts, I like to believe I can quit at any time — just walk away. But deep down I know that’s not true. We fishermen even have an expression to explain our illness: “The tug is the drug.”
Last April, for instance, I was fishing the Detroit River, which is always cold in early spring. Even though the air temperature was in the low 50s that morning, high winds had 2-foot waves white-capping the 42-degree water, and it felt like winter.
Kelleys Island residents welcome the return each spring of their “feathered tourists” — songbirds, waterfowl, and raptors that pass through on their way to Canada.
So it was a rather obvious decision for the island’s innkeepers to band together to create an event around it. “Nest with the Birds” began in the 1980s as a way to drum up some early-season bookings by offering guided hikes and migration-related programs for birdwatchers.
By far, the question Kevin and Debbie Kleer hear most this time of year is, “Can reindeer really fly?”
The Kleers run Kleerview Farm near Bellville, Ohio, in southern Richland County, and kids are there with their parents mostly to pick out a Christmas tree and see Santa. The real attraction, however, is the Kleers’ small herd of nine live reindeer — Blitzen, Noel, Belle, Nicholas, Crystal, Jingles, Clarice, Felice, and Cherry — which obviously prompts lots of questions, from both kids and adults.
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.
According to an old Pima Indian legend, a flock of very ordinary gray birds became concerned about how unattractive they looked. They began bathing in a sparkling blue mountain lake every morning hoping to make themselves more beautiful. After bathing in the lake for four days, their feathers fell off, and all that remained was gray skin that was even uglier than their plain-looking gray feathers. On the fifth day the feathers grew back in, but this time they were the brilliant blue color of the mountain lake.
