I’ve always preferred games that mix luck with skill in a way that gives both nearly the same importance. Because of this, I love to play cribbage, but I barely know the rules of chess. Cribbage—like fishing—is a game of chance, but much like the guy who taught us to pasteurize our milk advised us, chance tends to favor the prepared mind. If we are skilled at cribbage, we’ll beat a lesser player more times than not, but we won’t win if we consistently get cards that smell like the inside of a guide’s waders in October.

“Until they reach the gizzard where the wildfowl grinds his food, these [lead] pellets do no harm, but, when reduced to powder…they become a violent poison.” That timely warning issued from Forest and Stream editor George Bird Grinnell 129 years ago.

In Alaska, 28 million acres encompassing some of the state’s wildest and most remote swaths of public lands are at risk of losing protections which have kept them safe from extractive development for over half a century.