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It
was perhaps the worst turkey season I ever saw or seen or heard about! I won’t venture a guess as to
why, but the late morning gobbling which I have enjoyed so much in past years
just was non-existent. I usually
kill gobblers that gobble a lot after ten o’clock, and there are always plenty
of them. That way, as I get older I don’t have to get up before dark anymore.
Not this year. I should have got
up before daylight and shot one off the roost. They deserved that kind of treatment!
In
my region of the northern Ozarks, the gobbling was poor, the gobblers seemed
fewer and I actually missed one. I
know that is hard for some folks to believe, seeing as how I am a grizzled old
veteran outdoorsman and professional turkey hunter and champeen turkey caller. I couldn’t believe it myself!
I
did have lots of excitement however.
Late one morning I pulled my boat over to the bank of the Sac River to
tie it to a log on a small sand bar.
Wild turkey lived in the woods beyond and though it was getting up late
in the morning, I had fished enough in a tributary to the river, and it was
high and colored in the wake of a good rain the day before. I didn’t catch nothin’! Likewise with the turkey hunting… I
hadn’t kilt nothin’!
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I have seen several
really big cottonmouths…. this is one of them.
About
to step from the bow of the boat with my shotgun and turkey call I looked into
a crevice in the log and there was a terrifying sight… one of the biggest
cottonmouth snakes I have ever seen.
My foot was right above him!
My balance was just about to shift forward! I was close to limping around for weeks and being able to
write about being bitten by a cottonmouth!
Due
to extraordinary reflexes and sheer panic, I stayed in the boat. I only had two high-powered turkey
loads or I would have killed him deader than Uncle Jake’s mule. As it is, he or she, whichever, still
lives. But someday I will go by
that log again with more shells.
I
have seen cottonmouths all over… in Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Louisiana. The biggest
one I have ever seen was on Truman Lake a few miles west of Warsaw. He was a monster in girth, but no
cottonmouth gets very long. When
people tell me they saw a four or five-foot cottonmouth, I know they have seen
a non-poisonous water snake. There are places to the south where common water
snakes are huge. They bite too, if
you are dumb enough to fiddle with them up close and personal, but they don’t
have the fangs nor the venom.
This
cottonmouth was in the top five of any I have ever seen, about two feet long
and as big around as a mink! Fatter than a bullfrog! The Sac River, which I
have traversed often from one end to the other, has more cottonmouths than I
have seen on any Ozark river.
Their venom is as deadly as a similar sized rattler, and they are often
more aggressive than any rattler or copperhead you have ever seen, especially
during that late summer molt. For
me it was a close call, the nearest hospital would have been an hour or so
away. And remember that last year
a man in good health died from cottonmouth bite here in the Ozarks.
But
I saw more pleasant things while turkey hunting. There was a nighthawk on the branch of a small tree that
flew as I walked by and landed on the limb of a big oak, so I could get a good
look at him. As he flew or maybe I
should say ‘fluttered’ away, those bright white bars on his wings looked like
white pinwheels. Nighthawks are
much like whippoorwills and chuck-wills-widows in that they lay a couple of
eggs on the ground with no nest whatsoever and all three species are declining
because of the number of egg- eaters roaming the woods; ‘coons, skunks, possums
and worst of all… armadillos.
They
all feed in flight, on insects.
Nighthawks do not sit on tree limbs very often. The little short-billed, long-winged
bird sat still and watched me watching him, and it was something special that
morning, as the three old gobblers I was trying to call had ignored me. I
should have left the shotgun at home and brought the camera. Nighthawks range all over North
America, all the provinces in Canada, down into Mexico.
Whippoorwills
and chuck-wills-widows overlap in Missouri and Arkansas, but the former lives
and nests to the north and east of the Ozarks primarily while the latter dwells
to the south and east. Lordy I
love to hear them on a summer night, as it brings back so many memories from my
youth, camping on river gravel bars, and just living amongst them in the
woods. There are fewer and fewer
to hear.
Along
my place on Panther Creek, there’s a nest of fish crows… and they don’t sound
anything like a regular common crow.
They are about twenty percent smaller, and they warble and squawk and make
sounds that really puzzle lots of folks.
If you look in the bird books, the range maps show they come as far
north as the Oklahoma-Kansas border and up the Mississippi to about St. Louis,
but they aren’t suppose to be in the Ozarks at all. They weren’t when I was younger. They just began to show up about ten years ago up in the
northern Ozarks, maybe 15 years ago down in north Arkansas.
They
do indeed eat fish, and they DO NOT nest on ridges… they nest along the
waterways, small creeks and rivers and marshes. Here on Lightnin’ Ridge, I don’t think I have ever heard a
fish crow, but on Ozark streams, I have heard plenty of them. The sight of them won’t give you a clue
to what they are, as they look so much like a common crow, but when you hear one
you will know it. That’s all
we need… something else moving in that likes to eat fish!
Fish
crows make some of the strange sounds that Canadian ravens make but the raven
doesn’t get down this far to the south, preferring to stay in the northern reaches
of northern states, Canada and well down into the mountain states west of us.
If
you would like to come and visit our place on Panther Creek and hike our trails
and see the fish crows, don’t forget our fish fry on May 21. If you come, bring
water containers to fill from our artesian well, flowing out from nearly 500
feet below the ground. The water
has been tested and it is cold and clear and full of healthful minerals. Actually I don’t even know if it has
any minerals but I have been drinking it and it has made me look handsomelier
and younger day by day. I know it
is the water, as nothing ever worked before.
But
we need to know who is coming to our fish fry and dinner, so just call my
executive secretary, Ms. Wiggins, located in our executive offices here on
Lightnin’ Ridge… 417 777 5227. Ms
Wiggins doesn’t drink enough of my spring water, as she is perhaps homelier
than she has ever been, and crankier.
She constantly complains about my Labradors having the run of the office
and my big chocolate male, Bolt, sometimes growls at her. She says that he bit her once, but Bolt
says that she bit him first! I
believe him because he has never lied to me and Ms. Wiggins has!
You
can email me at lightninridge@windstream.net or write to me at
Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613
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