You know what I love about this snow and cold?…
Not a doggone thing! But remember this, every cold
night that passes makes us one day closer to spring peepers and redbuds.
Folks in the cities have
really suffered with the weather problems over the past few years, but ‘they
ain’t seen nothin’ yet’. If people could see into the future there would be a
panic in places like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and New Orleans, and big
traffic jams as folks tried to get away. But no one can see what’s coming, and
I can’t either.
While those people who talk
about global warming may not have the slightest idea what they are talking
about, the earth is like a lifeboat. It will only hold so much. Anyone who
doesn’t think mankind is altering the conditions of our climate and the earth
itself has their head in the sand.
I think it is pretty much a
foregone conclusion that our country in 100 years will have no clean waters and
maybe a loss of hundreds of species of birds, fish and mammals, and the only
forests and wild places will be found in crowded parks and preserves. Big trees
won’t exist anywhere else. But I also think that in 100 years, folks won’t care
at all about what is lost.
There will be enough
entertainment in the world that no one will miss what so many of us today
cannot live without. I see it today in my own grandkids. They live their life
with little boxes in their hands, pushing buttons, and the outdoors has little
attraction. Still, they are very happy. I live in one world and they live in
another. Well, actually, today almost everyone lives in a different world than
I do. I was born much later than I should have been.
But I do love meeting good
people, and because of that, a friend and I have decided to do some guiding
again this year for beginning turkey hunters. I figure I have killed enough
gobblers in my life and would like to enjoy again seeing a beginner learn how
to do it, to help them get a turkey and learn about the outdoors, in a day or so
of hunting.
I guided turkey hunters in
the seventies and eighties because I needed the money. Living in Arkansas I was
a free-lance writer at the time, raising a family. Guiding float fishermen with
my uncle, and turkey hunters in the National Forestland in Arkansas gave me a
chance to flee the typewriter and spend more time outdoors. There weren’t
nearly as many turkey gobblers then as there are in Missouri today. Bagging a
gobbler now is fairly easy if you have any idea of what you are doing.
I had nothing in common
with the men I guided. They were rich and money meant little. I took
Neurosurgeons and Ophthalmic Surgeons, Lawyers… those kinds of people. In the
early eighties, I took one of them from Oklahoma on a hunt and called up a
gobbler that he killed about two hours after we left camp. It was his first one
and he was elated.
When he got back he packed
up his stuff and headed home, handing me 500 dollars and telling me it was the
greatest morning he ever had. I told him he didn’t owe me that much, we had
only camped one night and hunted two hours. He laughed and told me he made more
than that in one hour.
I intend to start guiding
again because today I don’t need so much money and I like to teach ordinary
people about the outdoors. When I was young, I worked with people for many
years in the state parks of Arkansas and on the Buffalo National River as an
interpretive naturalist, and I loved it, maybe more than the park visitors who
came from all points of the country. It was something I felt I was born to do.
My Uncle Norten was the
best guide I have ever seen on the rivers, much because he loved those streams
so much, and liked people. He once told me, when we were guiding four fishermen
on the Kings River on a three day trip, “You know, I am having more fun with
these fellows than they are,” he said, “But if you were to know them in the
city, where they live and work, we likely wouldn’t get along at all!”
Uncle Norten, who guided
fishermen all over the Ozarks, took his first float trip in 1933 and his last
one in 2010. The only two years he didn’t guide fishermen was the two years he
spent fighting in World War II with the 101st Airborne in Europe. I
got a kick out of him when we guided fishermen together in 2008 and I took care
of all the charges. He couldn’t believe that he was going to get 200 dollars
for taking two men on a daylong fishing trip on the Niangua.
He told me that was just
too much. “Just get me 75 dollars in the future,” he said, “I feel like I am
cheatin’ folks if I get this kind of money.”
Our guided hike coming up
in March, in a semi-wilderness area, is something my uncle used to join us
with. I can still hear him and see him, telling folks about the woods and the
creatures in it, telling jokes and entertaining everyone, then frying the fish
at noon. He was one of the best naturalists I ever knew and he didn’t know it.
This coming trip we will
take this year will be a memorial to him. It will be some Saturday in March
when we know we have a good day to go. The mushroom hunting trip in April will
be something we have never done before, but it should be lots of fun. We are
going to split up all the mushrooms we find. If you want to be on the list to
go on either trip, let us know soon. We can’t take a lot of people, and we need
to figure out how many fish to catch for the fish fry at midday.
As much as I like writing
about the outdoors, I spend a lot of time by myself, and I really enjoy taking
good people out into the woods for a day, or speaking to groups about the
outdoors at churches or wild game dinners or schools, etc.
I found a really amusing
description of me on something called Wikipedia on the Internet not long ago. I
couldn’t help but laugh. It read…
Larry
Dablemont
(born Larry Fitzgerald Dablemont September 22, 1961 in Bolivar, Missouri, U.S.) is a famous author, journalist, cobbler, Civil War reenactor, referee, fisherman, and hunter, He is married
to Tonya Harding. Among his many claims to fame as a journalist, Dablemont
interviewed OJ Simpson and has
bragged in several columns about beating Ted Nugent in a
footrace during a hunting expedition in Jackson Hole, WY.
Dablemont was the last referee to ever throw Bobby Knight out of a
basketball game, leading Knight to throw a chair. Later Knight commented,
"Dabs is one tough ****, but God if I don’t respect him." Dablemont
is a notoriously peculiar figure who, among other eccentricities is known to
wear an unnecessary eye patch, rarely wears
socks, and claims to
have wore the same pair of jeans for 19 months
consecutively.
The writer claims to be
University of Arkansas professor William Thomas, and though he meant it to be
some kind of insult, you can’t help but laugh at it. There isn’t any truth in
it, but I may have worn the same pair of jeans for 19 months when I was eight
or nine years old. I only had one pair! My middle name is Arthur and I will bet
a dollar I can outrun Ted Nugent, whoever he is.
Email me at lightninridge@windstream.net,
or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. My website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com
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