The Cedar Tree and Me.

Every Ozark home ought to have a real cedar tree for a Christmas tree, Christmas tradition requires the smell of cedar, cookies baking and a wet beagle!

Sometimes a big antlered buck chooses a smaller sapling to polish his antlers, and sometimes a small-antlered buck will rub a large tree. But as a rule of thumb, a big based tree chosen for a rub indicates a good sized set of antlers. And bucks love cedars and pines for such a purpose.

The cedar trees we put to such good use for Christmas trees in my youth are not really cedars, they are junipers …technically speaking of course. ‘Red cedar’ is a common name for those trees, and that sounds a lot better than juniper. This week as I rambled through the woods, exploring a place I had never seen before, I found a 15-foot cedar tree that had two big scrapes under it’s outer branches where a buck had been leaving his scent, and checking for doe scent. These scrapes are just places underneath overhanging branches where bucks prepare scent posts, and scrape away leaves and vegetation on each visit.

They bite at the overhanging branches, and break the tips of them, and rub glands just below the eye against those branches. I have watched them do it, and it is a fascinating thing. They make scrapes underneath large cedars, and hardwoods alike, and any novice hunter can find them in October, November and December, by looking along trails and field borders. It gives you an idea of a place bucks will be visiting. They create sort of a rambling circle of these ‘scrapes’, which they revisit again and again and it is a big part of the mating of whitetail deer.

But this big cedar tree I found was about ten inches in diameter, and a buck had been using the trunk of the cedar as a ‘rub’… a place to polish his antlers. Those rubs originally are places where bucks with velvet-covered antlers in September rub shreds of the velvet coating off hardening racks. Bucks love small cedars and pines for such rubbing posts, and it is true that in general, a big set of antlers is used on bigger trunks, up to five or six inches in diameter. And the bucks with smaller antlers usually pick out a smaller sapling only an inch or two thick. But that isn’t always the case, because I have seen bucks with big antlers attacking a small tree like they were fighting with it, and I have also seen a little forkhorn scraping velvet from his antlers on a pine tree as big around as my arm.

Nothing is ever absolutely one way or another in nature, despite the general rules. But I am betting the buck that is using that big cedar as a scraping area and an attack post is a big one. I think I will hunt there in the muzzle-loader season, even though I don’t need any more big antlers. Some of the ones I have in the shed are being chewed on by mice, and adding another set seems pointless.

You have to understand, I just have an affinity for magnificent cedar trees, and it makes me mad to see some big old swollen-necked buck come in and whack up the bark like that, maybe keeping it from growing any larger! I am sure disappointed knowing that if I get that obnoxious old rascal, his steaks will be tough and strong tasting and I will have to make hamburger out of most of him and eat venison chili all winter long. But I will probably shoot him anyway, should I get the opportunity.

It is hard for me to accept that a whole generation of people now go onto city lots and buy Christmas trees, a large number of them spruce or pine instead of cedar. And they pay for them! They will spend enough on some trucked-in, bound up tree to buy two or three boxes of shotgun shells, and then throw it away in less than a month. What the heck has this world come to?!! Dad and I always went out to neighboring farms in early December, hunting rabbits and quail and farm-pond ducks and at the end of the day, we’d find a perfect cedar Christmas tree which we brought home to set up in the corner in a bucket and decorate. In doing so, the whole house smelled like Christmas. That’s because cedar trees smell like Christmas more than anything else, and if it isn’t that way at your place, you are not keeping up with tradition. Cedar trees, baked cookies and a wet beagle… those are the smells of Christmas.

The most beautifully shaped cedar Christmas trees in the whole state are found along our highways, millions of them from 3 feet to 8 feet tall, so perfectly shaped that it looks like they were grown just for that purpose. Gosh I would like to have one of them! If the state highway department would just start cutting some of them and putting them in strategic locations where those city folks who pay big money for Christmas trees could get them, we could pay to fill in all the chuck-holes and solve the states financial deficits at the same time.

I have had my eye on several, but of course, I can’t park along a busy highway and take my grandsons up a steep bank to cut a beautiful cedar tree and violate whatever law it is we would be violating. As tempting as it is to try it, their mother would kill me if she found out. I may have to hike through someone’s woods in the middle of the night, cross his fence onto the state property, and cut a perfect Christmas tree with my belt axe. If I get caught, I suspect I will have to pay a fine nearly equal to that which Kansas City suburbanites pay for their Christmas trees legally.

Or, I can go out into my woods and cut some little straggly cedar that grows all thin and unsymmetrical because over the years some buck deer has been deforming it with his antlers. Whatever; my advice is… take an axe and go get a cedar tree with your kids or grandkids, somewhere where you have permission to be, and keep the tradition growing. And just remember, that old Ozark adage…“shoot a buck, save a tree!”

Some people call on occasion to see about getting a subscription to my Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Magazine for a Christmas gift for someone. Occasionally, someone wants one of my seven outdoor books for a Christmas gift and I inscribe and sign them. My executive secretary, Ms. Wiggins, who for much of the year isn’t worth much, does a good job directing people to stores or locations in their area where my books can be found. You can call her and ask about getting them from a store close to you or ordering them in the mail. This year Ms. Wiggins gets a bonus of a quarter per book every time she doesn’t goof anything up, and she is doing better than ever before.

So many readers have never seen the magazine it is surprising, so we send out free sample copies to those who will pay the postage. And we have about 50 or so of the special Christmas issues we put out last year, which has nothing, but 80 pages of Christmas oriented outdoor stories. If you’d like to get one of those they are four dollars each, and most of that goes into postage and envelopes to mail them. At any rate, should you like information about the books I have written, or ordering information, or a place near you where you can see them, just call Ms. Wiggins at 417-777-5227 and speak clearly and slowly. Repeat your request several times as she is a little bit slow at times. I intend to fire her someday, but not at Christmas. I am so soft-hearted I’ll probably give her a Christmas bonus of ten dollars or so. This time of year just does that kind of thing to me!

See my website, where you can make comments on this column or any outdoor subject, and see color outdoor photos. www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net