Diversity and Change

How I loved the old days. A little country church in the Ozarks filled with people who were the salt of the earth, a river that was clean enough to drink from, a time when things couldn’t get better than they were. We were kids being raised by parents who wanted us to have it better than they did, and never thought about how quantity doesn’t always equal quality. They are nearly gone now, that generation which stood up against an evil force in a terrible World War, and could not be defeated. They were strong people who grew up close to the earth, without much luxury, grounded in faith and values and an ability to take so little and make so much out of it.

Before them generations had come and gone without changing much. My grandfather lived with so little that he threw away nothing, wasted nothing. While he lived in fear of the earth destroying him, our grandchildren will be able to destroy the earth! My grandfather’s generation was the last to live something like their ancestors. His was the last age when men talked the same language as those who lived a hundred years before them.

My grandchildren speak a different language entirely, than I do. I don’t believe they can understand what I mean when I tell them that their children or grandchildren may need to be more like my grandfathers were to survive. Men of tomorrow may need to change back a little, but right now no one is buying that.

Men of today, especially those who lives are engulfed by society and politics, are always clamoring for change. But is change always good? In nature, no species maintains skyrocketing populations for long. High numbers will cause that species to suffer and a natural control such as starvation and disease will drop those numbers drastically. The earth will also not support a constant increase in human numbers. Water will be a problem, food will be a problem, and in some places air to breath will be a problem. What the earth can provide to us isn’t limitless. Timber, food, oil, even water, is limited. We will have to devastate the earth to support ever-increasing numbers of people. And it isn’t always what we have to have, but what we WANT.

Most of today’s men have one problem; nothing is ever enough. I don’t remember that being the way it was when I was young. Seems my grandfather’s generation was far less greedy. We aren’t so much like that today. We never have enough money, a new enough car, a big enough, or fast enough boat. On a smaller scale, we don’t have fishing lures or fishing equipment that is ‘good enough’. Have you ever noticed that about all of us? What came out last year isn’t good enough this year.

My computer is only a few years old, but the world is telling me that it isn’t good enough any more. If I get a new one, it won’t be good enough in a year or so either. We had grandfathers here in the Ozarks who lived with one pair of overalls for twenty years, and a whole lifetime with one shaving razor.

Could our grand children survive if they were to have to live as those people did almost 100 years ago? Up here on this wooded ridgetop where I live I could survive without any modern technology if we had to go back in time. It would involve working a lot harder, but it feels good to know that I still have some of my dad and grandfather in me. I couldn’t make it in New York or Chicago or Los Angeles.

In the midst of those wonderful places men have made, we have insured that the masses cannot survive a catastrophe which removes our technology. If those cities had no gasoline and no electricity for a few weeks, men would be killing each other in an attempt to survive. Just think about that! We are living with the assumption that we will not ever have to live without electricity or gasoline!

If we get to a point where computers control us enough, we are way out on a big long limb that can too easily be broken. And truthfully, I don’t think anyone knows how fragile that limb might be. We climb out on the end of it and forget what is behind us. It seems to me as if, while we clamor for change, no one can see the value in some never-changing things. As rivers shrink, as forests decline, and tornadoes and earthquakes and droughts and natural disasters increase and climates change, we just can’t figure it out. You keep hearing, “I wonder what is happening all of a sudden”. It hasn’t happened ‘all of a sudden’. And some of us know exactly what has happened, you just don’t dare say it in this modern world.

I know that my grandsons will learn more than I can ever know, but I know too that they need to retain what my grandfathers once knew, things like growing our own food, and knowing how to live without oil and electricity and water which comes from a faucet. I hope it isn’t too late to teach them to live from the land, to go back to a way of life and values that ensured our survival.

I still believe the key to man’s survival in the future is not intelligence, but wisdom. I don’t remember if there were many really intelligent men out in the rural Ozarks where I was as a boy, raised so far from the changing world. But I knew about wisdom. I saw it in them. I don’t see much of that today. It doesn’t take wisdom to run a computer. Still, I don’t think the computer will be here forever, as everyone else seems to think it will be.

Man will be here, I think, in some form or another, as long as the earth survives, as long as God wills it. But to tell you the truth, I am not at all sure that some generation centuries from now will not be made up of people who are living more like our grandfathers than our grandchildren. When I was very young, I watched a sidewalk being poured, and an old man told me, “Son, you don’t know it now, but when you are my age, that sidewalk will be crumbling… broken apart by little soft blades of grass.”
It sounded crazy to me at the time, but thirty years later there were weeds growing out of the cracks in that sidewalk.

I know there are those people reading this column saying, “This guy is crazy.” But what I hope this column might do is to cause a few people to turn off the computer and go out into the woods somewhere far from civilization, looking at things around them just like it was when their great grandfather was their age… realizing how important it is that some things do not change.

If you have kids or grandkids, teach them to catch sunfish this summer. Teach them to hunt squirrels, how to skin one, clean it, then fry it and eat it. Show them how to plant a little garden with tomatoes and green beans. Hunt mushrooms and arrowheads, explore caves and pick blackberries. Keep them outside and maybe you can keep away from the computer and television for awhile. It’s called diversity… and change!

My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or e-mail lightninridge@windstream.net

NEVER INNOCENT ENOUGH

Note that the charge written on the ticket was 'failure to label deer meat when not personally attended'. And 'failure to identify' Each package was indeed labeled, and meat inside a freezer is as well attended as it can get.



The Kastnings and their deer tags, notched, numbered and kept with the deer meat until it went into their freezer.
Steve and Laurie Kastning own 40 acres of land near Seymour Missouri, where they each killed a doe deer on opening weekend of the deer season using their landowner tags. Steve Kastning also bought two deer tags so he could hunt on his neighbor’s land, where he killed a button buck and checked it on his purchased antlerless tag, as you are permitted to do with a buck which has no antlers.

As you are supposed to do, they notched their tags and promptly called in each deer, and wrote the confirmation numbers on their tags. At noon Sunday they took their deboned deer meat in coolers, with the tags, to a deer processing business in Seymour, and the lady in charge said she would do the meat immediately. Steve left the three tags on the counter and went back to his home to get his checkbook. Returning, he wrote a check for $48.10, and he and his wife took the 70 one-pound packages of ground deer meat and their three tags and returned home, where they put the meat in their freezer. You couldn’t do things any more legally than they did it.

That Sunday afternoon a Missouri Department of Conservation enforcement agent came to their home with another man in plain clothing, and said he was doing a routine spot check. The Kastnings let both of them in their home, and said the agent was very friendly to begin with, but his demeanor changed as he quickly found something wrong. He said the tags had not been punched on the day and month the deer were killed! Mrs. Kastning patiently showed him where they had indeed been punched, just as they were suppose to be. His mistake seemed to anger him, then he complained that Steve should have checked his button buck as a buck, and said he was getting tired of hunters checking them as antlerless deer. Of course, a button buck IS an antlerless deer, so he couldn’t write a ticket for that. So then he left and went to the processing plant, and returned to say the plant indicated they hadn’t processed any meat for the Kastnings. Of course, that processed check proved they did, and the packaged meat was marked in packages, as the processing plant marked it. Personally, I think the agent knew that all along.

“I work at the department of corrections on Sunday afternoon,” Steve Kastning said, “so I went to work and when he returned, I was gone. My wife took him to the basement and showed him the meat in the freezer and he called me and wanted to know where the hides and heads were. I told him I had dumped them at the back of my place. That seemed to make him mad, and he wanted to know if he could find them. I told him I would take him and show them to him when I was off work. He really was belligerent over the phone, and told me that if he could find a reason to write me a citation, he would. All that, knowing we had done nothing wrong, and I told him that.”

One week later, the agent returned on a Sunday afternoon and gave Steve Kastning two citations, for not having his tags with the deer meat which he referred to as ‘unidentifiable’ which was packaged in the freezer. He gave Laurie Kastning one. And then he proceeded to tell them how to pay the $475 in fines. All this time, the tags were there, they just weren’t in the freezer with those 70 packages of meat. How in the world, one might ask, would any hunter be able to identify which deer was in which packages after it came back ground up by a processor? What deer hunter with meat in his freezer would not be subject to some kind of petty and malicious charge as this agent came up with.

Mrs. Kastning made a mistake by graciously taking the agent down to her basement to show him the processed meat, the only way she knew how to prove to him they had indeed taken it to the processor. To legally look in that freezer and go into her basement he would have had to have a search warrant had she not voluntarily taken him to prove they had done nothing wrong.

If there was ever a case where completely innocent people have been targeted by an M.D.C. agent, this is it. Mrs. Kastning has an appointment to see a specialist physician on January 30, a long standing and necessary medical appointment. That’s when they are to appear in court. The prosecuting attorney wouldn’t talk with them, they had to hire a lawyer to go to court on the 30th, and he will only enter a plea of not guilty, so that a court date can be set. It is likely that the Kastnings will be in court a short time, be found guilty and have more than a thousand dollars in costs and fines, just because that agent was looking for an easy way to do his job without actually getting out in the woods. He targeted people who were innocent, and I seriously doubt they have a chance in court, even though a jury would doubtless find them innocent. It will be a single judge who hears them, not a jury.

A year or so ago, MDC enforcement chief Larry Yamnitz told me in his office that when this type of thing happens, and innocent people are targeted with petty offenses, he would act to have the situation corrected. We will see if that can be the case here. If this one can’t be overturned, what could be? These people are only one of many such injustices which involve MDC conservation agents. That badge gives them so much power, that some of them freely abuse it.

I am absolutely and completely convinced that the Kastinings tried their very best to do what was right. How ridiculous it is to come back a week later and target them because their meat in their freezer can technically be found stacked in the wrong place or the wrong way! With the standards he used, all deer hunters with meat in their freezer are guilty of something. The MDC ought to be ashamed of this, and that agent should be fired. Any judge and prosecutor should be ashamed to see this situation come to their court. I intend to be there when the case is heard and I will follow up on this and let readers know the outcome.

Several hog hunters were similarly targeted last year when their dogs strayed on to private land. Leaving their guns on land they had permission to hunt, they went on the adjacent land to retrieve their dogs. The caretaker of the land, who later boasted he was paid handsomely when a trespasser was prosecuted, called three MDC agents who came in and found the feral hog bayed by the dogs. The agents instructed the hunters to take the dogs and tie up the hog and take it to where they could kill it and butcher it. They complied, and FOUR MONTHS LATER they were charged with transporting a live feral hog. Of course feral hogs are unwanted, and hunters are urged to kill them. The MDC traps and slaughters all they can catch. But in this case, Larry Yamnitz, Chief of Enforcement told me on the phone that the agents just didn’t know the law when they told the hunters to take the hog away alive. Even though it was butchered and eaten, the agents were told by the local prosecutor, he says, to write the men up for the violation. Each paid 780 dollars in a court without a jury, plus the cost of a lawyer who basically did little more than offer a guilty plea for them. Again, the agents weren’t familiar with the laws, the hunters followed their instructions, and paid dearly for it. The MDC should be proud of such a thing, and if this doesn’t amount to persecution of innocent people, I don’t know what does. There seems to be no end to it until the people of Missouri stand up in mass against it.

My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com and my e-mail address is lightninridge@windstream.net. Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613

Upcoming Swap Meet and Dinners

Folks have been asking me lately about the next Grizzled Old Outdoorsman's swap meet which has taken place the last few years, sponsored by my magazine, The Lightnin' Ridge Outdoor Journal. It began six or seven years ago when we had a big fish fry with it at a country church gymnasium here near Bolivar. The church wasn't really large enough to take care of the crowd that showed up, and we almost didn't have enough fish.

So then we held another one in the Community building at Nixa, Mo, without the fish fry, but the building rental was a little more than we could afford, and other activities there made it hard to find a suitable date. Three years ago, we found a perfect place for our swap meet, and we have held it there ever since, due to the generosity and cooperation from a country church congregation with a big gymnasium at Brighton, Mo.

The Brighton Assembly of God church is something of a historical site, because it is built around a small rock church originally constructed way back there. A few years ago they added on a gymnasium to be used for such events as ours, and they ask nothing in return, other than that such an event be held for the glory of God and that money raised be put to good use to help others.

In the past couple of years, the vendors and visitors to our swap meet have donated quite an amount of money. Last year, it was 526 dollars, with nearly 400 dollars added from sales of my magazines and books. The year before, that total exceeded a thousand dollars. We used the money with a half dozen local schools to buy shoes and coats for needy children, and many other causes. Some of it was spent only recently to buy Christmas gifts, mostly clothing, for children whose folks were having a hard time just buying groceries. We avoid giving the money to situations where there are 'administrative costs' and try to see to it that it goes directly to needy children or families.

When you get right down to it, a few hundred dollars which we are able to raise isn't much, but it does some good for some kids who need the help the most. This year we will try to do the same thing again.

And best of all, there are no charges for anyone, all this is free to the public, and the tables are free for the vendors who come.

Tables at our swap meet are filled with fishing and hunting gear, some new, some used, some antiques. There will be wildlife art, carvings, turkey calls, furs, and all kinds of paraphernalia for camping, boating, etc. Last year we had a table full of homemade jams and relishes and another table filled with baked goods. The Lightnin’ Ridge table will be filled with old magazines to give away and I will be signing my books for anyone who might want one at a cheaper price than you can find them in any bookstore. We'll have caps and art and whatever else we can come up with between now and then.

Hopefully, there will be some boats and motors and canoes for sale outside and I'll bet there will be some antique guns and hand-made fishing lures and that kind of thing. Two years ago a fellow bought a fishing lure for five dollars that he learned later was worth ten times that amount. In the last couple of years we have had an authority on old fishing gear there, giving free appraisals to anyone bringing their own old lures, reels, rods, etc.

Best of all, there will be valuable items to be given away by drawings, lots of them, so you might go home with something valuable without spending a penny. I don't know what food will be available, but last year there was plenty of coffee and soft drinks. There were biscuits and gravy for breakfast and barbecued pork with trimmings for dinner. All this is prepared by the youth of the Brighton Assembly of God.

We are hoping that Canadian outfitter Tinker Helseth will be back again this year. Last year he gave away a week-long Canadian fishing trip at his lodge in Ontario, won by two Brighton, Missouri residents who had never been to Canada. When they returned they told me it was the greatest trip of their lives. There will be other activities scheduled which I will let you know about later. The whole thing will take place on Saturday, March 17, at the Brighton Assembly of God gymnasium just off highway 13, about seventeen miles north of Springfield. Vendors who want a table at this event need to contact me as soon as possible. We only have about 40 tables and I anticipate them being filled quickly.

I have a number of inquires each year about wild game dinners and events where I will be speaking, and there are three such occasions in the next month or so. I will be speaking at a big wild game feast at the Meramec Baptist Retreat Center on Highway AA, near Steelville Mo. This is a church-sponsored dinner for men and boys, beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Friday evening, January 27. There is no charge.

On Saturday evening, January 28th I will be speaking at the Community Building in Garden City, Mo. This dinner is hosted by the Freedom Point Church, also for men and boys, and seating is limited. There is a fee for the dinner, but there will be door prizes and gifts after the meal. For more information, contact Scott Smith via e-mail ...smith77@fairpoint.net, or call 816-738-0587.

On Sunday evening, February 19, I will be speaking at a wild game dinner at the Community Christian Church at Camdenton. There is a charge for the dinner, and it begins at five p.m. That event is a fundraiser for "Share the Harvest Food Pantry".

All that pretty much takes up the space for this week's column, but I hope some of our readers find an opportunity to attend one of the dinners I have mentioned. The swap meet date is something you need write down on your calendar. Even if the fishing is good, and it should be by then, find an hour or so to come by and see us. I like it because it gives me the best opportunity to meet and talk with readers of this column. Most of my family will be there helping, and the editor of the Lightnin' Ridge outdoor magazine, Sondra Gray and some of her family will be there as well.

I should have a good story or two for this column in the next few weeks, as I will spend some time this week hunting ducks and fishing in Louisiana. I have hunted and fished in about 15 different states and two provinces in Canada, but never before in Louisiana. Up to now, I have always been afraid of alligators! And I have been told Louisiana harbors wild-eyed creatures which lurk in the swamps and will eat darn near anything. I think they call them Cajuns. I will try to get a picture of one this week, as I have been told we have the same ancestry.

E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

NEWS ABOUT UNCLE NORTEN

Norten shown with a big bass he caught during his last fishing trip in fall of 2009.

My Uncle Norten turned 88 years old last October. He began suffering from dementia earlier in the year, but it wasn’t severe. He continued to be physically active and had no trouble getting around. In September of 2011, his wife sold their home and all his hunting and fishing equipment. In the next forty days he slept in six different beds in various nursing homes as she and his brother attempted to find a way to have him committed.

It began a year ago when Norten called me and told me he was having some blood in his urine. I took him to a local hospital. He had a urinary tract infection and they kept him there for a few days. While he was there his wife brought papers to him which she told him was insurance papers, according to Norten. They were not! She had him sign over “Power of Attorney” papers naming his brother Vaughn as the person who made all decisions for him. Norten, with only a minimal education, couldn’t read the papers, and yet social services personnel in the hospital followed his wife’s request and had them notarized. I took my Uncle aside and tried to explain what those papers might allow his brother and wife to have done to him and Norten refused to believe it. He said there was no way they could get him to do anything he didn’t want to do. He never did understand those papers.

A neighbor told me what was happening. Vaughn had convinced Norten’s wife Velma that if they moved him to Arkansas, that state would pay them $4000 per month to take care of him in Vaughn’s home. The two of them had actually been planning it all. When they finally pulled it off, Norten and Vaughn didn’t get along, and so Vaughn and Velma tried to have him put in a home for veterans. The facility where they took him, kept him a short time, medicated him to calm him down, and deemed him sound enough of mind to not be committed. They then sent him to a Bentonville, Arkansas nursing home. Very soon, Velma deemed it too expensive, so they moved back to Vaughn’s home. Now with Vaughn’s name on their bank accounts and CD’s, (nearly $200,000 in all) Vaughn had decided he wasn’t going to be able to get the government money he wanted for Norten to receive, and Velma had to call someone to move them back to Missouri. She paid $1000 for the move, without Vaughn’s help.

Back at Bolivar, Mo. Velma arranged to move both of them into a health care facility for a week or so, then had Norten moved into another local nursing home, where he is today. His dementia has worsened, but he still knows everyone, and remembers everything pertaining to his family and friends from years back. He does little but lie in a bed all day, getting up only when I come to see him. Apparently he can indeed leave for short periods, as nurses told me he was perfectly capable of going with me to my home, going for car rides, or to the local river to go fishing on warm days. The problem is, his wife and brother have instructed the nursing home administration to not let him go anywhere with me. He can do nothing but stay in that little room, without anyone visiting him but me. My visits are one thing they cannot forbid, Almost every day I try to have a meal with him, play checkers with him or have him sign some of his books.

I have contacted various government offices and social services on many occasions, and if there is anyone who cares enough to help him, I haven’t found them. After hours on the phone with different agencies, no one will come to talk to me or Norten about what is happening. It is as if he has no value. I have no idea if his money can be used to help him with a hearing aid, or dental care which he needs. Vaughn controls all that, helping Velma to hide much of it apparently, and to keep it from eventually going to Norten’s daughter or grandchildren, whom she has always despised. As far as I know they haven’t even been contacted.

Most of Norten’s problems result from his brother’s willingness to help Velma control the money which has always meant so much to her, and completely overlook the any wishes my uncle may have had. Neither his wife nor his brother have an education past the fifth grade. Velma began selling Norten’s personal items a couple of years ago while he would be out on fishing trips with me. She sold his Browning Beretta shotgun which he owned for fifty years, valued at 1500 dollars for 300 dollars. A few years ago Norten learned she had removed his name from all of their CD’s in the local bank, putting them in her and her brother’s name. He was furious at the time, and had to go have it corrected or he would have been penniless. During the past summer, Vaughn sold Norten’s boat and motor, and kept much of his fishing gear. He took Norten’s treasured Grumman canoe, which he had used since the 1950’s and gave it to one of his friends in Arkansas.

The two of them have made life miserable for my uncle for the past few months, and I have been told that there is nothing anyone can do. When they deceived him into signing those papers giving Vaughn the “Power of Attorney” status, it was basically all over for my uncle. Norten had no idea what it all meant.

A couple of years ago, Norten and I were fishing on an Ozark river when he told me what he wanted when his life is over. “Velma owns burial plots up near St. Louis,” he said, “but I don’t want to go there. Promise me that when I die, you will see to it I am buried in that little cemetery where my mom and pop are buried, close the Big Piney River where I was born.” I told him I would see to it, but I know now I can’t do anything about it. Thankfully, Norten gave me the things that meant most to him back then, knowing, I think, what Velma and Vaughn had planned. His old treasures from his past have no great value, but knowing what they meant to him, they mean a great deal to me.

If anyone knows how to find a legal way to do something about what has happened to him at the hands of his wife and brother, I would like to know about it. I would like to see some of his money used to help make life better for him now, and to go to his grandchildren, as Velma has no descendants. And I would like to find a way to take him out of that nursing home on occasion to let him have a little happiness in the last of his life. He is a World War ll veteran who deserves better than what he is getting.

In the Woods With Daniel

"The young deer looked hard at me, cautiously lifting her small hooves to ease a little closer, nearly trembling with apprehension as she did so, her big ears extended with curiosity."



















"Too far, 85 yards at least, maybe more.A muzzle-loader will kill at 90 to 100 yards, but that is too far for me."



















In his day, Daniel Boone had more bucks to hunt, and they weren't as wild, I am sure.

The afternoon was chilly… cloudy and dark, one of those bleak December days when it looked like it might snow a little. The woodland floor was wet from a rain the day before, and I could move slowly into a slight breeze without much of a sound at all. My muzzle-loading .50- caliber Hawken rifle lay heavy across the crook of my arm, ready to be brought to my shoulder at the blink of an eyelash. Well, actually, with me it never happens that quickly, my imagination makes me faster than I really am. Alone and deep in the woods, I feel a little like Daniel Boone must have felt, hunting the Kentucky backwoods.

It brought memories of the time years ago when I walked through these very same woods and came upon a nice buck lying in a brushpile, watching me intently, thinking he was hidden completely. He would have been had I not seen his antlers. Then another time there was the buck which came running right at me and nearly ran over me; fleeing something… who knows what.

It was this same Hawken rifle, on its very first hunt about 20 years ago, that I fired at a doe leading a group of deer. She dropped in her tracks, and so did another doe behind her. The slug went through the hearts of both animals, and I found it on a hillside just past the two of them. I still have it on my office shelf, the .50 caliber maxi ball that killed two deer. There are those who never believed the story, but it really happened. My daughter was with me that day, and saw it all.

I love to hunt deer during the special December season with my muzzle-loader. There was a time when only the best of the outdoorsmen did so, when it truly was a primitive weapons season. Today it is much less so because of the modern in-line weapons which make a mockery of it all, permitted because so many hunters want an easier way to do things. Always, the easy way appeals to a modern group of hunters. But still, by and large, the woods during the middle of the week is empty of the red-clad crowd who descends upon us from the suburbs during the regular deer season, for most their only venture into the woods during the course of the year.

It was still and damp and bleak that day last week, when I came across a log that made a perfect seat. It was a little too comfortable I suppose. I should have moved thirty yards farther. From my left and behind me, I heard the slightest rustling, and caught a movement. There were four young does, all born last spring, coming out of heavy cover and moving across the woodland swale, crossing the creek before me. Too far, 85 yards at least, maybe more. And they were moving at a good gait. A muzzle-loader will kill at 90 to 100 yards, but it is too far for me. I take shots under 75 yards, because I have too little faith in my marksmanship at greater distances. Daniel was a better shot than me I am sure.

Slower afoot, five more does followed in only a few minutes, and two of them were mature deer, maybe two or three years old. A little half grown young-of-the-year doe came to within 60 yards, her nose up, somehow catching a glimpse or a scent which made her curious, careful. The others ignored her, and she could have been venison on the table that night, but she was so small I don’t believe she would have made more than a couple of pots of chili. If only the older deer would follow. They calmly fed before me eating a few remaining red oak acorns, moving down toward the small creek, a good 90 yards away and never closer.

The yearling looked hard at me, cautiously lifting her small hooves to ease a little closer, trembling with apprehension as she did so, her big ears extended with curiosity. In a while, she gave in to the fear of the unknown, and trotted away to join the others, with her tail lifted about halfway to a full flag. It took twenty minutes or so for them to all move away, but they did.

I moved on, to a little wooded knoll where trails crossed, and sat against a big oak tree. It was about four p.m. and I had only been there a few minutes when a wild turkey gobbled about 150 yards before me, down in the low ground where the creek trickled away. It was a poor gobble, but it was a gobble, loud and clear, likely a young jake. I called to him by mouth, imitating a hen in the fall assembling a brood before roost time, and he gobbled again. I waited a while, called again and he gobbled a third time… followed by the yelps and purring and cackling of several other turkeys with him. I waited, expecting them to perhaps come my way. About 4:15 I heard a loud clear gobble much closer, followed by two others in quick succession. Quite a group of them, obviously.

I called again a few times and all was quiet, so I stood and walked the opposite direction, wanting to check another deer crossing before dark. From there, about a quarter ‘til five, I heard a strong hard gobble from the little knoll where I had been calling before, and the turkeys began to fly up to roost. Oh well, it was too dark for good photos anyway.

As I headed for home, a couple of miles away, I caught a glimpse of a white flag bouncing through the woods in the very last faint light of day. A big buck, I’d bet. Or maybe a little one. I thought to myself how much easier it must have been for old Daniel Boone. His rifle surely was more accurate than mine. Lots more big bucks back then, much less skittish. Down right tame I’ll bet, in old Kentucky 200 years ago. Off in the distance I could see the glimmer of a candle shining through the window of my old cabin, and heard geese passing overhead. “It has been a good day Daniel”, I said. Behind me, I could sense him nodding his head.


Many of Uncle Norten’s old friends have asked about him recently, and I am sorry to report he is not doing very well, though when I talk to him, he longs to be outdoors as he has always been. The old World War II veteran and fishing guide turned 88 last year, and has been victimized by his very family members, and a social services system which failed to protect him and now seems incapable of helping him, and completely unwilling to help him.

You can read more about him on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.net. Maybe someone out there can offer advice on how to help him.

I have also been asked about places I will be speaking this month, and there are two wild game dinners where I will be in late January. One is at Steelville, Mo on January 27, and the other is January 28 at Garden City. I will also put details of those events on my website.

E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, MO. 65613

A Growing Voice of Common People

Sources within the Jefferson City office of the MDC have reported to me that in recent years nine million dollars has been spent and budgeted for bringing back a token population of prairie
chicken in a tiny percentage of west Missouri land deemed suitable for their survival. One million dollars has been budgeted to determine the number of black bears within the state. Where do these millions end up... In whose pockets? With no independent auditing possible, the answer can never be known.
A million dollars has been budgeted to determine black bear numbers. Can a million dollars tell us how many bears we have? Who gets the money?



A new year is upon us, and if you have heard of small but growing groups of outdoorsmen in different areas of the Ozarks forming what is known as Common Sense Conservationists, you might want to know more and become involved. If so contact me and I will tell you all about it. There are many outdoorsmen in the Ozarks who sincerely try to follow game laws who are charged with silly technical things involving hunting and fishing, who have no recourse but to pay several hundred dollars in fines because they cannot pay the higher cost of going to court to prove their innocence.

Next month I will tell the story of several of these people in this column. The Missouri Department of Conservation is the only state agency which cannot be audited, and there are no controls over what they do. I too once believed strongly in our state conservation agency, but things have changed in recent years, because of the tremendous amounts of money the agency now receives and the tremendous power they have, unprecedented in our state. Some of their agents… and I said SOME… have become little more than thugs. There is one working for them today who was proven to have broken the law in the exercise of his official duties, violating the rights of an innocent man he was trying to convict.

I don’t ask anyone to believe what I tell them about what is going on without looking at the situation and deciding for themselves. But few people ever see what is happening, because it is kept hidden from the public. The MDC has a great deal of control over much of the news media, which refuses to write or broadcast what is being done.

The “management” of our public lands often involves widescale timber cutting for enormous profit, which has nothing to do with conservation; clearing, burning, and converting wildlife cover to leveled land which they rent to farmers in return for a percentage of the cash crop. None of us have any say in that “management”. It is there for anyone to look at if they choose to do so.

There is little way anyone can defend millions upon millions of dollars in spending which involves downright corruption, and that too is there for anyone to look at if they just will. The stories about conservation agents breaking the law, about politically involved people getting their property taxes paid for them, about attempts to take folks land from them… all of that is there for those who will just look at what is happening.

The only way Missourians can have a voice in what the conservation department is doing, the only way we can have a voice saving our streams, our forests, and our wildlife is to form groups whose numbers have to be listened to. If you are tired of seeing innocent people run over, and your tax and license monies wasted, if you want to form such a group in your area, contact me and I will help you do so.

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Change is inevitable, but I don’t know if it is always good. Sometimes, change just doesn’t make sense. Thirty-five years ago I was a young writer living in north Arkansas close to Bull Shoals Lake, which I still consider the greatest lake ever, with Truman Lake a close second. The Kings River, the War Eagle and Crooked Creek were all close, and they were magnificent streams back then. Today they are only a shell of what they were; progress and change have nearly destroyed what they were then.

In the 1980’s I took my kids to a McDonald's restaurant in Harrison, Arkansas not long after it opened, and a young girl named Robin was the manager there. A few days ago I drove through and stopped, and she is still the manager there. McDonald's probably doesn’t know what a treasure they have in her. They should send young employees to watch her in action.

It use to be, way back then, that old timers came in and drank coffee and talked about hunting and fishing, and sports, which was mostly the Razorbacks. Every day there were copies there, of the state’s two largest newspapers, the Arkansas Democrat and the Arkansas Gazette. Because of the competition, they were exceptional newspapers. I wrote a weekly outdoor column back then for the Gazette, but no one recognized me from the mugshot. I would go in most mornings and have a cup of coffee and read the sports pages, always interested in what was going on with the St. Louis Cardinals… baseball and football teams.

Those two newspapers combined about 15 years ago, and when I was there last week, there were two or three copies of what is now the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, and some old timers were sitting there reading them.

When I moved to Bolivar, Missouri 20 years ago, I found a daily Springfield newspaper there to read when I drank coffee in the morning, and I even wrote an outdoor column for them for 10 years or so, when they were locally owned and before a giant company from the east bought them out. In time, even if there was little else, you could read the sports page and find the standings of different teams, who was pitching that day and in the winter, what basketball or football teams were playing and where. Of course back then, McDonald's only had to pay about a quarter for that paper. The local restaurant had a big round table where a group of 7 or 8 local old timers could sit and read the sports page and talk about whatever was going on at the time. Later in the morning that big table was taken over by a group of elderly ladies who basically did the same thing, except for different topics of conversation.

Last month they tore the old McDonald's down and built a new one, not so much bigger but really fancy. They got rid of the big table, and there isn’t much of a place now for the old-timers to gather and talk. They don’t have a newspaper to read any more, and when I called and talked to the owner, he said they were trying to cut costs by eliminating it. The newspaper isn’t as good as it once was and it costs 50 cents or so more now. But what the new McDonald's has with their little bitty cramped together tables and chairs is several big-screen TV’s which no one ever seems to watch. I guess the young crowd they wish to cater to doesn’t read anymore, and doesn’t need a place to talk and gather. Younger folks are in too big a hurry for that.

Actually, I suppose that older folks aren’t of much importance to McDonald's any more, but they forget they got where they are today because so many of us older folks brought our kids there when we were much younger. We gave them a lot of money for lots of years.

Around the Ozarks, you will find McDonald's restaurants like the one in Harrison, Arkansas where there are still newspaper racks near the front counter, where you can read the sports page and see who’s in first place and who is pitching today and that kind of thing, if nothing more. But not here at this new one… They are trying to cut costs, so the newspapers had to go, and those big tables took up too much room. Actually, for the money we spend, I imagine us folks over fifty probably take up too much room too, and stay too long for what we are worth.

Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

Gifts That Last

As joyous as the Christmas season is, there is a great deal of sadness to it when you look beyond your own family and see the difficulties others have. In the Ozarks, I think folks do a very good job of helping others during this time we set aside to celebrate the birth of Christ. There aren’t many who do not remember what Christmas is all about and make an attempt to help others less fortunate. In the town nearby, there were many businesses and banks and restaurants where the first names of children hung from Christmas trees, with a short list of simple things they would like for Christmas. Trouble is, there are so many of them, and most of us have too little set aside to help. That’s what bothers you… there are so many in need, and our resources to help are so limited. If only more of us could be rich. But then you think about that meal told about in the Bible, when a limited amount of bread and fish fed a multitude.

Really, the greatest amount of help comes from ordinary people who are not rich, but just working from week to week to pay the bills and get by. If everyone gives a little, if a small bit of help comes from all of us ordinary people, there are so many of us it does a tremendous amount of good. Last year in March, we held a ‘grizzled old outdoorsman’s swap meet’ with the help of a big church at Brighton, Mo which allowed us to use their gymnasium. We had a grand time, and hundreds of people showed up. We put out a jar for donations and the vendors and visitors together filled it with money, a total of $526. When you added in a percentage of books and magazines that we sold that day, the total neared a thousand dollars.

Part of that was used to buy some little gifts for needy kids at Christmas, and some of it remains to be used for helping needy children in some local schools. By March it will all be gone, and we will start over with another swap meet and raise some more money for such causes. If you were there last March, be aware that you helped. I know it isn’t much money when you consider the need, but it does a great deal more than the dollar amount looks to be when it is written down on paper.

It is the result of believing in the things the baby born in Bethlehem 2000 years ago taught us, as he became a man, in three years of teaching mankind that life is better when it is lived for others. I have often told God that he made a mistake in not making me a millionaire, so that I could do so much more than I can do. But if I had indeed become a millionaire, I might have succumbed to the greed you see in those who can never quite accumulate enough wealth. In reality, I do not believe the happiest men are the richest. It may be just the opposite. Great things are done more often by the masses who are not at all wealthy, but work together with what little they have to create an ocean with just a few glasses of water from each. Trouble is, we too often forget that the Christ whose birthdate is called Christmas, intended for us to never stop celebrating that season of sacrifice and giving.

We need to keep on finding the places where our small gifts can make big differences in the lives of the few we can help. Our bank accounts should mean less to us than those around us who need help. As easy as it is for me to say that, it is hard for me to do. For some strange reason, as a younger man, I was always too worried about making ends meet to help others much. As I grow older it dawns on me that the more I can do for others, the less I have to worry about what I need to take care of myself. If you don’t understand what I am saying, don’t worry; you may not be old enough yet. You will understand it eventually.

And I am not saying that it is always money that is most important. All year long we can celebrate Christmas in little ways, as my uncle used to do by giving away much of his garden produce to neighbors in need. Hundreds of other Ozark gardeners do the same thing each summer. In the spring when you are catching fish, celebrate Christmas by finding those who seldom get to eat fresh fish, and giving away half of what you catch. When April’s blossoms are fresh and October’s foliage is bright, find those who like to eat wild turkey and deer, and see to it that much of what you put in your freezer finds its way onto the table of those who are less fortunate.

I will celebrate Christmas when morel mushrooms are popping up, by eating fewer of them I find and giving away more. I will celebrate Christmas by cleaning a big catfish in August and giving it to some elderly folks who do not get to have it at all, but remember how good it tasted when they shared their catch years and years ago. I’ll celebrate Christmas by sharing not what I do not want, but what I treasure. You get the picture. If you aren’t rich, like I am not, help me celebrate Christmas in other ways right through the year, ‘til it comes again as the new year ahead comes to it’s end. There’s a million ways to give, and that makes all of us ordinary people potentially, “millionaires”.

As a postscript to this, I am hunting deer this week with my muzzle-loader, with a message in mind that I received from a lady a few weeks ago that read …
“I figured you might know someone that would like to donate some deer meat. I would greatly appreciate you considering me, if this opportunity arises. I am disabled (but can get around) and the mother of 3 boys, still at home. My twins are disabled, and their brother has a different disorder. We all love deer meat. I don't get food stamps or housing stuff though we do get social security and Medicaid. I try to get us through as best I can because I think others could use that assistance more. We are still warm, covered, and fed. But we haven't had much meat to eat, except chicken, this year. Deer meat would be a grateful and much-needed addition. So, I just thought I would write you, just in case you run into someone that has extra. If someone has deer from last year that they'd be throwing out to make room for this year's meat, we can use the older meat. We don't mind. I can make even freezer burned meat taste great. Haha I can,truly. I know this is a strange request but I just thought I'd ask that you might at least consider us, if you hear of something.”

I will be glad to pass along the lady’s address to anyone who might like to donate some deer meat to her along with me.

Merry Christmas… and don’t be surprised if I wish you Merry Christmas in the spring and summer and fall, just to remind you… there are lots of gifts to give when you are an outdoorsman, hunter and fisherman, even if you aren’t rich. But really I never knew someone blessed with a life close to the outdoors and God’s greatest creations, who didn’t feel as if they were.

My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com, and the e-mail address is lightninridge@windstream.net. My mailing address is Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613.