About Outdoor Indiana
Outdoor Indiana, the state's premier magazine, delivers the wonders of the Hoosier outdoors to subscribers' homes and offices in 48 pages of vibrant color. For the best of state parks, lakes, wildlife, forests, trails, hunting, fishing, wildflowers and outdoorsy people, plus inside information from DNR experts, subscribe for $15 per year or $28 for two years. Follow the magazine staff on Facebook.
A yellow morel and Virginia bluebells in Harrison County.
Photo by John Maxwell.
Featured Stories
- From the Director
‘GREEN’ TEAM WORKS FOR YOU
DNR Director
Alan MorrisonOn the first day of deer firearms season last year, I rode with Conservation Officer Dustin Cary to see the field work he and others who wear the green uniform do to promote safety and uphold conservation laws.
We interacted with a few hunters, and I witnessed successful searches helped by use of a drone and K-9 Officer Murphy, who even helped catch someone hunting without a license—such a good boy!
Such patrols are a vital part of the work of Indiana’s more than 200 conservation officers, who also lead important programs promoting their mission.
That included teaching more than 18,000 people hunting, trapping, boating, and snowmobile classes in 2025. They also support hunters and anglers through the Turn in a Poacher (TIP) program, through which they received more than 1,000 reports of fish and wildlife violations in 2025. Since 2008, their newly renamed Hunt for Hunger program has paid for the processing of more than 500,000 pounds of hunter-donated venison to be given to Indiana food banks.
Conservation officers also run the nationally recognized K-9 Resource Protection Program that trains dogs in natural resource searches. Our officers also train as teams that are experts in water-based search and rescue.
DNR’s Law Enforcement team even helps the next generation experience outdoor recreation through multiple youth camps and the Indiana National Archery in the Schools Program, which is featured starting on page 14.
Learn more at dnrlaw.IN.gov.
- FORAGING FOR FUN(GI)
Mushroom hunters scour Indiana every spring
By Scott Roberts, OI staff
Patoka Lake yellow morels. Photo by John Maxwell.
Tuesday, March 30, 2012, started as a typical spring day for Lexi Zeigler.
But it soon became one of her most memorable. Even now, it still plays constantly in the Edinburgh resident’s mind.
She’d been tracking the coming of her favorite season all that month. The reason it’s her favorite time of year isn’t the warmer temperatures and brilliant-colored flowers. It’s because of the morel mushrooms it brings.
As she, her aunt, son, and daughter walked the Johnson County woods that day, they passed one of her honey holes, her term for places where she can usually find morels. Zeigler wasn’t expecting to find many that early in the season, but winter had been unseasonably warm, so she thought they might come across a few.
The group went down a small hill to a ditch, and Zeigler said her eyes got wide at what she saw. Giant yellow morels surrounded them.
“There must have been hundreds there,” she said, “and we didn’t have much to carry them in.”
They stuffed them in their pockets at first, trying to figure out what else to do.
“Finally, my son took his shirt off, and we piled as many of them in it as we could,” Zeigler said.
The foursome collected 16 pounds that day, still her personal record.
“I was so surprised, I still can’t believe it,” she said. “It was one of the happiest days I’ve ever had. Of course, a lot of my happiest days are mushroom hunting.”
Zeigler and her family are just a few of the many Hoosiers who take to Indiana’s forests and fields each spring searching for this delicacy.
To read the rest of this article subscribe to Outdoor Indiana or pick up a copy at one of our state park inns. To subscribe, click here or call (317) 233-3046.
- APPRECIATING SUCKERS
Why they suck ... and don’t
By Marty Benson, OI staff
A river carpsucker feeds. Photo by John Maxwell.
Being called a sucker is rarely a good thing.
A common definition is one who’s easily cheated or deceived. Another is something or someone who “sucks,” a term many know as slang for being contemptable. It’s also another word for lollipop.
But what about the family of fish scientifically known as members of the family Catostomidae, commonly called suckers? Do they suck?
Before answering, let’s look at what constitutes being in that family, which isn’t always clear.Per Brant Fisher, DNR’s nongame aquatic biologist, being a member requires lacking spines in fins, having a single dorsal fin with almost always 10 or more rays, lacking an axillary process, having a forked tail (caudal) fin, lacking an adipose fin, having scales on the body but not the head, and a few other even more obscure and scientific sounding things that even a layman with some advanced fish ID knowledge might have trouble recognizing without some effort.
But most anyone would recognize one feature all Catostomidae possess, their distinctive mouth, which is toothless, and which they use to suck up invertebrates from the bottom of the body of water they live in.
So yes, Catostomidae do suck, literally, almost aways from the bottom.
To read the rest of this article subscribe to Outdoor Indiana or pick up a copy at one of our state park inns. To subscribe, click here or call (317) 233-3046.
Reader Photos
Each issue, Outdoor Indiana staff will select reader submitted photos to feature in the magazine. If you would like the chance to be featured, please submit your photo, along with your name and phone number to:
Please, only submit original photography that you have taken. Do not send files over 9 MB in size. JPG format is preferred.
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