When he was four, when Eric Orff and his family lived in Oklahoma he spent as much time as he could outdoors – catching horned toads and tarantulas. “I knew that someday I would work with animals and become a biologist.”

Later the Orffs moved to Londonderry, New Hampshire, where Eric attended school, met Rick Hamlett, who became a lifelong friend and fishing partner, and pursued what he loved – being outdoors and learning all he could about the critters that lived there. He reveled in tromping the half mile through the woods and fields behind his house to the Little Cohas Marsh to fish, or note tracks in the mud, or listen to birds.

He graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a degree in wildlife biology. In 1976, he snared a job as a fisheries technician with the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department. Over the years, Eric held several positions with N.H. Fish and Game including as the department’s first bear specialist.

Throughout his career, Eric has been a spokesperson for wildlife and their habitats through columns, press releases, and presentations. During COVID, he expanded to Facebook posts and his blog – NH Nature Notes.

“What’s Wild: A Half Century of Wisdom from the Woods and Rivers of New England” is a compendium of Eric’s columns, some published in the early 1980s through 2023. The result is a delicious buffet of his experiences and opinions. Packed with facts, these essays provide snapshots of how, through careful management, populations of various species increased and expanded throughout New Hampshire.

Eric’s keen observations and lively writing make you feel like you’re with him when he’s herding geese to be banded, flying over the Great Bay counting waterfowl, or saving young fish from being chopped by hydroelectric turbines. His passion for the outdoors and the mammals, birds, and fish that inhabit it is omnipresent in his essays. He writes about his experiences as only a person with a life-long connection to their subject can.

In “The Slippery Slimy Scary American Eel,” Eric clearly describes his wife’s aversion to these creatures. While at UNH, Eric and his fishing buddy checked out a pond near Durham, New Hampshire. The pond was brimming with three- and four-inch eels – irresistible bait for bass. They scooped up a bunch in a T-shirt, toted them to Eric’s apartment, and put them in a fish tank.

“When my young bride woke up and got ready to walk to work, she was somewhat startled by the caldron of eels I had left in our living room. She was even more startled by their absence in the aquarium when she returned for lunch four hours later. … they had all crawled out! Our lovely apartment had been transformed into a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock movie.”

As a young lad, Eric brought injured or orphaned animals home. In “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” he shares several amusing accounts of running a B&B for wildlife. When a person brought an emaciated cock pheasant to Fish and Game’s HQ in Concord, N.H. Eric took the bird home and nursed it. When it had regained its strength, he let it go. It came back.

“Not only did he not leave but he moved right back into the yard and claimed it as his territory. He became very belligerent – especially to my three-year-old son. … For over a week he intimidated my two kids and at one point chased my son right into the house.”

In “It’s Duck Season in New Hampshire,” Eric notes that he has been having a love affair with wood ducks for more than fifty years. “From the gleaming iridescent head of the drakes to the high-pitched squeal of a hen taking flight, there is just something about wood ducks that stirs my soul.”

If you enjoy the outdoors, chances are What’s Wild will inform and entertain you – while stirring your soul.

“What’s Wild: A Half Century of Wisdom from the Woods and Rivers of New England,” by Eric Orff. Peter E. Randall Publisher, 2024