Mary Manning’s dog team pulls her and fellow conservation officer Tom Wahlstrom across Daniels Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on a tandem sled earlier this month. Manning is the only Minnesota conservation officer who patrols by dog team. (Steve Kuchera / skuchera@duluthnews.com) - Lake County, Minnesota 
DNR conservation officer patrols Boundary Waters on dog sled
Mary Manning has a leg up, actually many legs up, on any game law violator she approaches on the frozen surface of a Boundary Waters lake.
In fact, Manning, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources conservation officer for northern Cook County, has an edge no other conservation officer in the state has.
Her sled dog team.
Manning, who has been mushing for nearly 25 years, has put her sled dogs to work in recent years to patrol deep into the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
“It’s a lot of effort to get everything ready, and to make sure we’re prepared,’’ Manning said. “But it does work out pretty well. We can cover a lot more ground with the dog team than we could on skis or snowshoes.”
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