High on my list of the most fascinating Ozark creatures, the bobcat is fairly common, but seldom seen in daylight hours. A large mature bobcat can and does kill small mature deer, but that usually only happens during the lean months of winter. I have only seen it happen once, in deep snow during January. But they can be deadly on young wild hogs, and wild turkeys.
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I
guess I am just getting too old to continue the things I like to do. I have quit my morning jogging
altogether because I keep spilling my coffee and I am afraid that if I continue
to hunt and take pictures from my old tree stand this fall I will have to nail
steps to the tree! People my age
just aren’t good at shinnying anymore!
The
other day I was watching a red-tail hawk in flight when some kind of little
bird a bit smaller than a robin dived down on him and actually clung to the
hawks back, pecking away at his head. He wasn’t flying, he was just sitting
there on that hawks back letting him have it. It reminded me of the time I saw a bobcat riding a pig. I know that sounds like something you
might hear from someone who is returning from their moonshine still, but I was
stone cold sober.
It
was in November or December, I was hunting deer, sitting against a big oak deep
in the woods late in the evening or real early in the morning and I can’t
remember which. Anyhow, I heard a
ruckus back on the other side of a cedar thicket and I thought I was about to
see some deer when I heard a gosh-awful squealing. Having grown up in the rural Ozarks, I knew the sound was a
distressed wild pig. Sure enough,
here he came, a young shoat maybe 30 inches high at the shoulder. He was moving on, and on his back was a
bobcat with its teeth sunk in the top of that pig’s neck and his feet dug into
its side, straddling the poor pig like a jockey on a racehorse.
That
of course reminds me of a good story about the time when I was in the first
grade and had some little workbook sheet that asked silly questions that any
normal kid could answer like, “what can fly farther, a bird or a billy
goat?” One of the questions
asked which I thought about for a long time was, “What can run faster, a pig or
a horse?”
The
reason I circled the pig was that the weekend before, my dad and his friend
Charlie Hartman and my Uncle Norten were chasing some young pigs in a barn
trying to catch them, and either Charlie or Uncle Norten made the comment that
those pigs could run faster than a horse! Of course, I thought the two of them were the smartest
men in the world, so what would you expect me to choose when some schoolbook
wants to know which is the fastest?
At
any rate, no horse in the world could have kept up with that young pig with the
bobcat on its back, running through that brush. I’d sure like to point that out to my first grade teacher! I have several other good bobcat stories
that I will relate sometime, but few people will believe any of them. You had to be there!
It
might be easier to believe that there will be some outstanding fishing on Ozark
streams when the water recedes. I
am not speaking here of the big streams which carry the ‘chaos and capsize’
canoe crowd but the smaller headwater creeks and rivers which might be too low
for most folks to float in July and August during normal years. When the floodwaters recede first
in those small streams, they will be well stocked with bass, and if you can
stand the heat, they’ll be suckers for topwater lures and buzz-baits. I don’t mean that you can catch suckers
of course on topwater lures, just bass that are gullible, like a… well you know
what I mean.
It
is time I guess for me to urge all fishermen who fish the rivers to release
each and every smallmouth they catch, because our rivers, annually degraded by
poorer water quality and eddies continuing to fill in with gravel and silt,
have fewer and fewer of them of any size.
Smallmouth are hosts to those little yellow grubs that infest the meat
in good numbers, so why would anyone choose to eat a smallmouth. Keep the Kentuckies, also known
as spotted bass, and the largemouth, if you want to eat fish, but release
smallmouth, so that those who fish the rivers may continue to see a few good-sized
ones on occasion.
Those
who remember that as a boy I grew up guiding fishermen on the Big Piney river
in my grandpa’s wooden johnboats will appreciate the fact that I treasure more
the memories of guiding hunters and fishermen over the last fifty-some years
than anything else.
I
was born to be a guide, which is what I was basically, during my years working
as a National Park Service naturalist on the Buffalo River and years that
followed, guiding fishermen and hunters all over Arkansas and Missouri with my
Uncle Norten. Teaching others about the outdoors as a guide, seeing their face
light up as they catch a good fish or see an eagle or a mink, remains in my
blood, and I will continue to do it until I can’t use a sassafras paddle any
longer.
In
September and October, I hope to take a few fishermen with me to Lake of the
Woods in Canada, hopefully those who have never been there. It is a different world. Fall on Lake
of the Woods one of the few times and places where you can catch anything… smallmouth
and largemouth, northerns and muskies, and walleye and lake trout and crappie
on the same day.
In
late September Lake of the Woods is spectacular with fall color and a special
beauty not to be found anywhere else I have ever been. You know why most fishermen from the
U.S. don’t fish it much as October comes on? Because you can be there and be caught in a weather front with
rain and gale winds which keep you in the cabin for two days, or trying to fish
some sheltered bay while trying to stay warm and dry.
But
when the skies are blue and air is so crisp and cool and clear you can see
across green waters for miles to distant shores of yellow, orange, red and
green, you hate to leave. At such
times I am a fishing guide again, as I will be this September on Lake of the
Woods, delighting in seeing someone who has never been to Canada land a walleye
big enough to swallow a muskrat, or a smallmouth as wide as a paddle blade.
My
August-September issue of the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor magazine, which came out
last week, has a story in it about a little Ontario lake where you can catch a
boatload of muskies, and there are some color photos that show you a little of
what I am talking about.
E-Mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net
or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613
In September, it is relatively easy to catch a good-sized muskie in Canada in some of the smaller fly-in lakes.
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