Make Thousands With This Example

 

       The Missouri Department of Conservation may not accomplish much, but you have to hand it to them…they know how to make money.  In talking with a retired MDC employee I learned more about that. Take the great black bear and elk fiasco. They inflated the number of bears in Missouri to 1200 or so.  

       “In reality” my friend told me, “there are between 6 and 8 hundred.  But  if you want to make some  big money out of bears through deceiving some really gullible hunters, you tell them that there are oodles of them  out there!”

        Then you tell those gullible hunters that they can apply for a bear tag by sending in 10 dollars that is non-refundable.  When  they first offered this, 7800 of those would-be bear hunters  sent in their ten bucks…  and bingo, the MDC has pocketed 78,000 dollars.   Next came the big drawing for a tag.  They decide to draw,  from those 7800  applicants some of whom might not know a bear from a ground hog, 400 tags.  Each  of those tags would cost 25-dollars. Hose tag -holders consist of hunters who do not  know that you only even see a bear by baiting them… which is made illegal before the hunting  begins.  

       So now the MDC has made another 10 thousand from those tags issued to 400  ‘bear-hunters’.  Now they have pocketed 88 thousand dollars by flim-flamming 7800 people who  think this is all on the level.  That first year, there are eight hunters who know how to bait bears… thus eight bears killed over popcorn or day-old donuts.  So eight black bears bite the dust.  

All of a sudden they  have made  11 thousand dollars per each dead bear.  And they found out that one of those bear killers was a twelve-year-old boy.  They confiscate that big male bear and charge his dad with creating some illegal opportunity. 

        This year hunters wised up some.  The applications drop from 7800 to 6000  and more hunters find out how easy it is to bait bears and get away with it.  Fifteen are killed, but the MDC profit has dropped some but it is still 70 thousand dollars.  That  comes to $4,666 dollars per bear.

 I have shot several black bear in Canada… with my trusty 35 mm Nikon over bait. Shot one in Arkansas the same way I would be ashamed to shoot one with a gun.

       The MDC does the same thing with elk.   They gain about 100 thousand dollars with the  same scheme.  Then they give out five tags.  One of those five is given to an adjacent landowner at the ‘conservation’ area who is always the owner of Bass Pro shops.  He can then sell his tag or give it away to one of his friends.

If  you own a lot of land, say 200 to 1,000 acres, you can get very wealthy by doing the same scheme.  Build a herd of buffalo, maybe 15 or 20!  Do that before the MDC thinks of it! Charge 10 non-refundable dollars to get in the drawing and 100 dollars to get a tag.  Then guide the hunter yourself, so he or she can get a chance to shoot a wild buffalo.  You can even lie all you want here, like the MDC does by telling folks we have 1200 black bear.

          Here is a sample of your public deception…

--- “Come hunt wild buffalo in the Ozarks…  we have determined that there are a few bull bison on our land with the DNA of the original wild ‘woods-bison’ known to have roamed the Ozarks 250 years ago.  Outdoorsman Larry Dablemont will guide you on your  hunt.   Caution… these bull  buffalo are very dangerous.  While only 100 applicants for tags will be accepted,  if you are one of the hunters accepted you  can get a wild buffalo bull to have its head mounted and great-tasting buffalo meat for your freezer!”

       Well it might work.  I know a  lady who has more than a hundred buffalo on 3000 acres.  Heck she could be a millionaire too, kinda like the MDC has done it… by making it the greatest goal of her existence.

       I don’t have  that many acres but you know…I  think I have a white turkey roosting in the back of it with 3-inch spurs and a 15-inch beard! If you’d like to hunt him send me ten dollars…

       Contact me on lightninridge47@gmail.com

A Fall Fishing Excursion

 

                 Canada in early October 2024

A Fall Excursion

         When we pulled into Canada’s Lake of the Woods country in early October, it was 70 degrees under a bright sun. Five days later it was still that way and it hadn’t changed much in the entire week we were there. In all the Octobers I have fished in northwest Ontario, I have never seen that kind of weather. Normally you can count on some temperatures in the 30’s and 40’s, some strong cold winds, and some rain at least part of the week. It is in most areas a wilderness, and beautiful with fall color and migrating waterfowl.

          It has never bothered me to go up to Canada and fish alone because those conditions have never concerned me.  My ancestry is from French Canadian trappers and Canadian Cree Indians so maybe that has something to do with it.  In bad weather, you find a place out of the wind and concentrate on fishing those areas. And, in the fall, you don’t do much lure-casting unless you are fishing for northerns or bass or muskies.  If it is walleye you are after, you fish in 25 to 30 feet of water jigging bait or quarter ounce jigs up and down off the bottom. You catch yellow perch that way and occasionally a bass, crappie or northern as well.  

         This year I didn’t go alone as I usually do.  I took with me an old friend from college days who is a river guide in the Ozarks.  Dennis Whiteside grew up on the Current River, and we began hunting and fishing together when we were 18.  He is a very good fisherman who often contests my assertion that I am a better one, and a better boat paddler as well!  

         We spent the first day or so trying to keep up with who caught the most and the biggest. No doubt Dennis caught the biggest fish, a six- or seven-pound northern, but I got a bigger bass, a close-to four-pound smallmouth whose size my fishing partner questions to this day.  The thing about Canadian smallmouth is, they often have a 15- or 16-inch girth when their length doesn’t reach 20 inches.  But do they fight! On the light gear we were using they made it a tussle in 26 feet of water.  As for the walleye in Lake of the Woods today, they are a fish made for light action gear because most of them are 14- to 15-inch fish, caught deep beneath the boat on sand or small-rock substrates. 

         Every day we fished different areas, most that I found years ago, and caught dozens of walleye, plus some 12- to 13-inch yellow perch and a few 15-inch smallmouth. I also caught a15-inch black crappie.  Dennis caught that northern pike while fishing for walleye and I hooked another big one minutes later that bit off my 6-pound line pretty quickly. It is the perch you would like to catch because you can bring home thirty of them and the filets are just like those of the walleye when it comes to eating. They are usually as large as those of an Ozark crappie.          

         On two different days I caught 17-inch walleyes. This year Ontario biologists, worried about the ever increasing fishing pressure on that giant lake, set a regulation requiring that no walleye above 16.9 inches can be kept. But who cares? We ate a bunch of 15- to 16- inchers at our cabin.  If you should catch a walleye above 29 inches you can keep it according to the new rules.  Twenty or thirty years ago there were no more walleye than there are now, but most were larger. I remember catching some 20- to 25-inch fish on each trip, sometimes 2 or 3 per day.  Those days are over, but I make the most of it.   On my light outfit a 12-inch yellow perch or 15-inch walleye fights like a slab-sided lunker.  

  

       Last year on my birthday in mid-October I landed only two walleye above 17-inches in three days, a 19-incher and a hefty 23- incher.  But I also boated the only genuine 6-pound smallmouth I have ever caught. He weighed two ounces more than that on a Nestor Falls grocery store scale and later swam off to find the underwater haunts he likely still rules.

         Each day the 70-degree temperature with light winds gave us the opportunity to fish in shirt-sleeves and we caught so many fish it was hard to complain about anything.  We headed home one morning at 4:30 and got to Lightnin’ Ridge at 10:00 that night with a cooler full of walleye and perch filets.

         Anyone can go to Canada and fish on a budget if you contact my old friend and bush pilot-guide, Tinker Helseth.  I can put you in touch with him if you’d like, and tell you how to make a trip in the spring, summer or fall affordable.  I have some numbered copies of Tinkers book, “Tinkers Canada… memoirs of a bush pilot”. You can get a copy for $12.99 by contacting me at 417-777-5227.

 

Our address is Box 22, Bolivar, MO 65613…and our email is lightninridge47@gmail.com.  You  can read most everything I write on the computer at larrydablemontoutdoors.

         

A Lure Full of Memories

 

       There are two Little Piney Rivers in Missouri, one flowing into the Gasconade River near Arlington and the other flowing into the Big Piney west of Houston Missouri.  Because of declining water levels and the drying up of Ozark springs you would never believe we once floated and fished the latter.  Today that Little Piney is more of a creek, than a river but once it was quite a float fishing stream, at least the lower half of it, which flows in the Big Piney near the Dogs Bluff bridge on Highway 17.   

       What memories I have of that stream!  I actually guided a few of my float fishing clients on that little river in a 14-foot wooden johnboat when I was a boy.  It was a super smallmouth stream and my dad’s biggest brown bass came from one of its eddies when I was about fourteen or fifteen years old.  But he didn’t land it… it jumped out of water only a few feet from the boat and threw the lure.  

       It is the lure I want to write about today.  That lure was a four inch long ‘Cisco Kid’,  brown and white, jointed and with a metal bill that made it run about three feet deep.  I still have it and can’t catch anything on it today, but you can understand why I keep it in my office.  Of course there are many lures in my office, not kept there because of their value but because of the memories that go with them.  There is that wiggle wart that we used on a teal-hunting  float-trip one September day years ago when we  put  one fishing rod and one lure in the boat not expecting fishing to be much good.  Were we wrong about that.  All day long that little brown and orange wiggle wart caught  bass to the  point we forgot about the teal ducks.   It is worth five times what I paid for it.  

       If you have wiggle warts, I  have seen them selling from ten to fifteen dollars at  lure shows.  I have an old rapala lure that was made in the fifties which has the name “rapala-finland’ across the bottom.  It is worth some money because it is in the box it came  in.  Old lures do have value  but those in the box they were sold in are worth even more.  Also, any of the old 1920’s and 30’s wooden lures with glass eyes that are in good condition will bring some money.   Some of those have four trebles, which was eventually outlawed. I saw one of them sell for 250 dollars.

       This sounds preposterous and I wouldn’t have believed it either, but I have seen  lures sell for hundreds of dollars when lure collectors get together. There are some which bring thousands.  Old friend Dennis Whiteside sold hundreds of old lures to collectors from Japan and made a small fortune doing it. He can tell you about that if you come to my big swapmeet at my newly finished nature center-museum near Houston, Mo.  But there is a bigtime lure collector who will be there too… Jerry McCoy of Bull Shoals, Arkansas.  I have fished with him on occasion and I have never known a man who has his knowledge of antique fishing and hunting gear.  One of the most knowledgeable and colorful of fishermen, Jerry will be selling antique items and lures and also buying some.         

        If you have old lures or outdoor items, bring them by and tempt Jerry with them.  He purchases a lot of antique outdoor gear for a shop he has a mile west of Bull Shoals dam. That Opening Day precedes the bringing in of exhibits. We have antique johnboats in place already and a 1920 pool table.  It is this Saturday, Oct 26 from 9 to 3.  In addition to Jerry, there will be Duane Hada, on of the best wildlife artists in the nation.  He will paint a picture of the Big Piney and we will raffle it off.  Some of  his original paintings sell  for  thousands so if you go home with it you  will have some valuable art.  I  will be there  selling off some of my office collections and my books and magazines, and  I think I will have 200 old lures for sale.  If you want to bring your own outdoor gear to sell, just bring it.  I think it is going to be a good day and I am anxious to show off our new building.  There is no charge for admission.

     For  more information call me at 417 777 5227  or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com     See Duane Hada’s website too.

 

Interviewing the Director

       

 

       I took a recent trip to Jefferson City to interview the new director of the Department of Conservation and it turned out to be the disappointment I expected. I was trying to get him to come to some venue in the Ozarks to meet with hunters, fishermen and outdoorsmen.  It would be an event where he could answer written questions they would submit. It would give him the opportunity to debate me over topics like CWD and its danger to hunters, and the wild turkey decline.  You can bet he would be informed about some questionable tactics of conservation agents, many accused of breaking the law and violating the MDC’s own set of rules for personnel.

           He gave a good answer, “We’ll think about it.” He won’t of course.  He’d have to answer questions they never will answer, like, “Why does the MDC pay tens of thousands of dollars to state newspapers, television and radio stations to keep any criticism of what they do out of the public eye?” No one knows they do that, and the director and his staff want to keep it that way.

           I asked him about the drastic decline in wild turkey and their decision to do nothing about it.  He still clings to the ridiculous assertion that it is all due to habitat change, which is baloney, and I told him that.  In the Ozarks where thousands of acres of timbered habitat have not changed for thirty years, wild turkey have declined as much as 75 percent.  He also declined to come and spend a day with me where I could show him the results of way too much hunting pressure and too many hunters who have learned easy ways to kill gobblers.  The director could learn so much from meeting with landowners and hunters and spending a day in the woods with me, and he could learn a lot from a meeting this fall with the Missourians who put out the millions of    dollars to make the MDC rich enough to waste   hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time.

        As long as they control the media with money, real truths will never be known.  Like why the MDC is giving 18 million dollars to a private firm to rebuild the Schell Osage waterfowl marsh when that company had no other bids to compete with.  The MDC owns millions of dollars worth of equipment to do such a job, and much of it will set idle for months at a time.  Investigations need to be made and answers need to be asked, but they cannot be because the MDC owns the media, large and small.  Think about this… When have you seen a television or newspaper report on something the MDC   did not approve of?

        I asked the director too, why the Conservation Department, with almost 200 million a year for a budget, (amongst the top three state conservation agencies in the nation) will not help landowners along the major Ozark rivers use federal monies to keep cattle out of the rivers.  The MDC could do this without losing a penny, but they will not. Our rivers continue to silt-in and carry loads of mud and manure and coliform bacteria because of it.

       I was pleased to meet and interview the Chief of Enforcement for the MDC, Randy Doman, who worked for many years as a conservation agent in the     field.  I liked him enough to invite him to come to the Ozarks and spend a day with me looking at some problems he needs to see.  I think he will do it.  I will devote a complete future column to my interview with him, which left me with some hope for a way for innocent folks victimized by agents to get help. If you feel you are one of   those people, call me at 417-777-5227    and I will relay your   experience to him.

       Talk with me in person on Saturday October 26 at my new Big Piney Nature Center a mile south of Houston Mo. when I am hosting an Arkansas artist, Duane Hada, who paints river scenes and fish and wildlife like no artist I have ever known.  Join us and you may win one of    his paintings.

 

Get more information at my website, larrydablemontoutdoors, or by emailing me at lightninridge47@gmail.com

Long Beaks and Big Eyes

 

Woodcock

        In Canada this week I will take time from fishing to hunt ruffed grouse.  Usually when I hunt grouse I find a few woodcock, but there are fewer each year.  The odd little birds are migrators because they are primarily earthworm eaters, and of course they feed on other grubs and insect larvae under the leaf litter.  So when the ground freezes hard up north, they have to move south.  With a small shotgun and light loads and a close ranging little bird-dog, I would have been elated to find a good flight of fall woodcock in another time, when I was younger. But they, like grouse, are birds of fairly thick cover or timber where they can find the worms in soft ground.

I haven’t often taken a full limit of woodcocks, never ever went out just to hunt them alone.  The taking of woodcock usually comes on quail or grouse hunts.  But northern friends often spend a day just hunting the heavy north-woods cover for a bird they sometimes refer to as a “timber-doodle”.  Woodcock hunters are dog-enthusiasts who once smoked pipes, wore tweed hats and carried 28 gauge doubles, which sold for more than my whole collection of shotguns would bring.  In   those days, years and years back, there were 3 or 4 times more woodcock than today.

Forty years ago in Arkansas, I dropped a limit of eight woodcock in an afternoon of quail hunting along the Buffalo River in early December.  That’s fairly late in the year for these little brown long-billed birds in the Ozarks. Brother are they different to hunt than quail! You find one or two together, but not in a covey. Should a hunter and a good dog have plied those woodlands along a half-mile or so of the river bottom, for a few afternoon hours, chances are there would have been several dozen to be found.  Those numbers are not to be found today. But a hunter who goes after woodcock has to get into the heavy cover, not typically the kind of place you’d look for quail until they are flushed and scattered.

       Woodcock are not much like a quail; they do not exhibit strong swift flight.  They just sort of flutter up from beneath your feet and away, but there’s usually so much heavy growth that they are not easy to hit.  They very often sit back down within 40 or 50 yards of the place they are flushed, but the flight gets longer and stronger when they have been shot at a time or two.

       And they aren’t bad eating; the meat is dark, like that of a dove, but not as dry.  You’d like it perhaps, if you could forget they eat grubs and worms.  That’s not a problem for us grizzled old outdoor veterans.

       Woodcock are beautiful birds, but without any bright color whatsoever.  Their feathers are brown and buff and tan and black with a little white.  They blend into a forest floor’s leaf litter carpet like a green caterpillar in a suburban lawn.  You can’t see one unless it moves. Thirty years ago they nested in the spring near a little wet woodland spot on my land, where worms were plentiful.  But I haven’t seen any here in 20 years. The woodcock I flushed in the spring and fall on my place were easily seen though when they moved, bobbing along looking for worms before they flew.   

       They are about the size of a quail…. heavy, chunky little birds, but with big eyes set toward the back of the head, and bills longer than their legs, for reaching way down into the soil for worms.  The last half-inch or so of the three inch beak is hinged, so that the tip of the bill can probe, search, feel for and grasp any retreating earthworms.  Their mating flight is something to see, with male birds flying high into the sky in a spiral, then gliding   back to the ground to strut before a female.

       I hope to see a woodcock while hunting grouse in Canada.  But I will never shoot another one. Those which come to the Ozarks come from Canada or Minnesota or somewhere up north in the advancing fall, then go on to the south when the ground freezes   Then we’ll have a few woodcock return during the spring, coming back from the deep south, to raise young and spend the early summer. But most go farther north to nest.  In the early spring, if you are lucky and spend a lot of time outdoors, maybe searching the woods for wildflowers or mushrooms, you may come across mating woodcocks flying straight up into the woodland sky in that high spiraling courtship flight.  And then in early summer you may come across a mother woodcock, leading her chicks through the woods, helping them to learn what a tasty morsel an earthworm can be.

 

If you want to learn more about our October 26 swap meet email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com or call 417 777 5227.  Read more about the event by reading the details at larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

       

A Great Day at a Great Place

  

         I have been letting people know through this column of the outdoorsman’s swap meet I am holding at our now-finished ‘nature center-museum’ building a mile south of Houston MO on Hwy 63, come Saturday, October 26. We have spaces for a half dozen more “vendors”.  Vendors, being someone who brings a table and sells outdoor gear… old fishing lures, old guns, etc.  There is no cost so if you want to come join us, please let me know so I can save you one of those spaces.  If you have an old gun or two, or only a few fishing items, or any kind of antiques (old tools, old paddles, etc), bring them and I will try to sell them for you at my table.

         If you just want to come and see what we have, show up between 9 and 3 and you might win a valuable painting of the Big Piney River, done by nationally known Duane Hada, an Arkansas wildlife artist and river ecologist who has no equal in painting the Ozarks. He intends to do a painting that morning which we will raffle off. 

         Jerry McCoy, the Ozarks historian and antique fishing gear guru will be there to tell folks stories about the rivers he has been a part of and the experiences he has had.   I also believe there will be several old shotguns and rifles on sale, and perhaps 500 fishing lures for sale, many of them antiques.  You can’t miss the place, because we will have signs up and a big banner out front along south highway 63. 

         After the swap meet event we will begin putting in displays relating to old times on the Big Piney River.  We are looking for a large aquarium, four feet long or better. We already have a big antique pool table which was made in 1920 called a Victory Table and was made by the St. Louis A.E. Schmidt Company and brought to Houston when it was new.  It sat inside the pool hall where I worked as a kid until it was sold in the 1980’s.  I bought it a few years later and in December of this year we will use it to have a pool tournament.  There will also be a 15-foot johnboat on one wall, built by my dad and I and was used on the Big Piney many years ago.  The real antique boat is the 22-foot aluminum johnboat that was the first one built in Missouri in 1951. It has a serial number of 0001 and was built for the old Missouri Conservation Commission to use on the Big Piney and Gasconade Rivers. It was said to have carried some of the most famous Missourians down the river, including Thomas Hart Benton, Harry Truman, Charley Schwartz and Stan Musial.  I discovered it sitting in an old barn. 

         There will also be displays of many artifacts made by the early bluff dwellers from hundreds and even thousands of years ago, who lived in the many caves along the Big Piney River.  That includes a 4-inch-round ivory disc pendant said to be the only ivory artifact ever found in the Ozarks.  Radiocarbon testing proves it to be 8,000 years old, likely from a tusk of a mastodon.  There will be lots of other things, from the history of the people, the fish, mammals and birds of the Big Piney River. And it is free for all who want to visit, even as we go about putting up the displays.  

         Anyone who wants to help can do so.  We will put up a donation box so that those who want to donate can help pay the electric and water bills.  We will have no cash register and our nature center will be manned by volunteers, free to all who come. It will be a place where old-time rivermen and  float fishing guides like Charlie Curran, Dennis Whiteside, and me can tell about our river experiences. Charlie floated the Piney in the 1940’s. and Dennis once the Chief Naturalist for Arkansas, can tell you about his experiences as a river guide and fish and wild creatures in the Big Piney as well.  In the winter we will have a big fire going in the fireplace, coffee and donuts, checker boards and domino and card tables for visitors and old-time Ozarkians who might tell a few good stories about the old days. 

          This place has been a dream of mine for many years and the Great Creator has allowed it to happen thru a series of miracles and some special people. From this article I am sure you can feel how excited I am about this Nature Center and Museum and I hope many of you can be with me to celebrate the beginning of many great days to come there. Contact me at email, lightninridge47@gmail.com or call me, 417 777 5227 to reserve a space at our swapmeet.

Who Wants a Used Mower?

 

         Dad and I closed up the pool hall one late summer night, noting that we had only accumulated a total of 16 dollars as a result of the entire day’s business. That wasn’t a good day, but it was a good day to float the Piney rather than play pool.

         Today there are few 13-year-old kids worrying about family finances, but I really stressed over those hard times when Dad was worried about paying the pool hall’s electric bill. I offered my ideas on saving money. One was the elimination of my regular haircuts. About every month Dad would come to the pool hall before Main Street businesses closed and send me across the street to the barber shop, in a day when Mr. Holder, the barber, thought that if there was any hair within 3 inches of your ear, it ought to be whacked off. If I had had the nerve to be rebellious, I would have had a fit about that.

         I’d go back to the pool hall after a hair cut and the old men would all have some kind of smart-aleck remark about how much lower my ears were growing all of a sudden, or how good I smelled. So I told Dad that I figured he was spending about 20 dollars a year on my haircuts, and that was one whole good day’s profit in the pool hall, and an absolute waste of money. He thought I was on to something there, and proposed perhaps having Uncle Roy cut my hair. 

         Uncle Roy had three sons and if he had taken all three of them to a barber shop, the annual outlay on haircuts for him would have been about 60 dollars. His sons, Butch, Dave and Darb, always looked a little scalped, like me and most boys back then, so none us relished a haircut delivered on the back porch by Uncle Roy. I wonder to this day if I would have had more success with girls if I had ever had hair long enough to see if it curled or not.

         Eventually I convinced Mr. Holder, who liked to play golf, that if he would cut my hair free, I would keep him supplied with almost new golf balls I found scouring the weeds around the golf course, which sat up above the river next to the McKinney Hole only a little ways from our home. Other golfer-pool players, like Shorty Evans, found out about that and I began to make some pretty good money finding and selling lost golf balls for a quarter. When you combine that with the money I made in the summer guiding fishermen on the Piney River, you can understand how I could sometimes accumulate a pretty good sockful of money in my secret hiding place. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust Dad, but you can see how a man hard-pressed to raise a family in that time might be tempted to borrow a little if he knew where I kept that sock. And I never did think that float trip arrangement was fair. I paddled the old wooden johnboat all day for three or four dollars and Dad got three dollars for renting the boat! 

         One of those old timers at the pool hall said that when he was a kid, his dad gave him a nickel to go without supper, then snuck in a stole it out of his overalls pocket while he was asleep, and wouldn’t let him have any breakfast because he had lost the nickel!

That kind of childhood didn’t seem to have any lasting affect on him though, as he was fairly rotund and happy. But you could make an argument that he suffered psychologically, since he showed up at every church picnic and ate some or all of everything. He would dang near empty our penny peanut machine every time he came in and would put a handful of peanuts in his soda pop. You could argue he was trying to hide them from someone, going back to his boyhood and those stolen nickels.

         It might be good to go back to a time when we could trade used golf balls for a haircut. Bartering worked really well once, in a time when Grandpa McNew traded a shoat for a 1949 Chevrolet pickup, then traded a bushel of potatoes and a dozen eggs to have some neighbor fix it so it would run. Maybe that kind of thing wouldn’t work today in the city, but it would here in the country.  I have a lawn mower that I would trade for a good fishing reel or a box of .22 shells. 

         I never have wanted a lawn mower.  Do you realize the futility of mowing a lawn when you live out in the country? Mowing a patch of weeds like the ones that make up my lawn might kill a baby rabbit or two, or mash some whippoorwill eggs or ruin a patch of wild flowers about to bloom. And what good will it do? The whole thing grows back in a couple of weeks just like it was.  I’d druther fish than mow.  Let winter take care of the weeds!

         

 

The above story is a shortened excerpt from my new book, “The Buck That Kilt the Widow Jones.”   To get a copy, call my office, 417 777 5227. And read other articles and the story about how the local sheriff’s office tried to charge me with trespassing at a local place on a day when I was 50 miles away! That’s on… www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

The Evils of Gambling

 

                 Bill and Joe estimating size of a bass
 

 I have a few long-time friends, but not many!  There are a lot of differences in them. Take Joe for instance.  He is apt to underestimate the weight of my fish, the distance of a good shot, the length of a turkey beard, that kind of thing. Bill, on the other hand is bad to exaggerate. I have seen him declare that a fish he caught would weigh six pounds and turn it loose before anyone could argue. As an outdoor writer, I have to strictly adhere to the facts. If I fold a flying mallard at 50 yards I just can’t report that it was 60. When I catch a six-pound bass, you can pretty much figure him to be right there, give or take a few ounces due to climatological factors.

       On a recent summer float trip, we all agreed to put a quarter on the biggest smallmouth, a quarter on the biggest largemouth, a quarter on the first fish and a quarter on the most fish. Since we turn them loose anyway, it isn’t necessary to pull one in the boat and put him to all that stress. If a bass gets loose on his own and we get a good look at him, that counts. It’s a situation where a fisherman can make a couple of dollars if he does well, and he can lose a dollar if he don’t. I don’t like to brag, but one summer I came out two and a half dollars ahead.

       We headed down the river one late summer morning in my 19-foot square-sterned canoe, which is the way folks ought to fish. Two of my daughters own kayaks, and I feel awful about that. It is very disturbing how kids nowadays often forsake the solid upbringing of their parents. Grizzled old veteran outdoorsmen will not be seen in a red or yellow kayak. Heck, I’ve caught fish big enough to sink one of those dinky little ol’ sorry excuses for a boat!

       Anyway, I started out paddling that day, with Bill in the middle and Joe in the bow. Joe catches a legitimate four-pound largemouth on a buzz-spin, and the fish jumps out of the water and throws the hook. But it counts, because we get to see the fish well. By the time it is Bills turn to paddle, Joe is way ahead in all categories, but there is still hope because no one has hooked a big smallmouth yet. That’s when it happens! I was about to cast into a perfect spot ahead of the canoe where a log lay submerged just off the edge of the current. Joe, quick to see that I had focused on that very spot, cast there just before my lure landed. A big bass sucked it under and fought hard, staying deep enough to where we couldn’t see him. Joe played him toward the bow of the canoe, and he jumped up and threw the hook about three feet in front of us. That’s when he started yelling about the fish being a big smallmouth.

       Neither Bill nor and I could see the fish because of the bow of the canoe, and so we maintain we shouldn’t have to give Joe a quarter apiece for what might have been a carp, for all we knew. The debate raged for quite awhile. It calmed a little when we stopped late in the afternoon to drink a soda pop and rest on a sandy gravel bar. Some storm clouds blew in about the time we got relaxed, so we headed for the take-out point in a hurry. Joe never did get his turn at paddling, but truthfully he can’t paddle worth a dang anyway. Bill and I both maintain that we might have caught a bigger fish by dusk, but Joe carried on about how big that last fish was, and declared there wasn’t any chance of topping it. Anyway, the trip caused so much dissention that Bill thinks we ought to give up such gambling all together. We each gave Joe a dollar, which caused me to have to go without coffee one morning at McDonalds As you may have figured out already, those are not my old friend’s real names; cause if you figured out who they really are you might wonder why a well-known, distinguished and sometimes reliable outdoor writer of note like me would be fishing with the two of them anyhow.  I only did it for the money I figured I’d make, being considerably the better fisherman!  

       Last week I wrote about some big doings we are going to have at my finally-finished Big Piney Nature Center, just south of Houston Mo, with wildlife artist Duane Hada and antique lure and fishing gear expert Jerry McCoy coming up from Arkansas. It is a big building and there will be room for about 10 or 12 tables there where any of you outdoorsmen can set up and sell items pertaining to hunting and fishing and the outdoors.  You do not have to pay anything to join us, but just let me know as much in advance as you can.  Call my office at 417-777-5227 or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com and I will save an eight-foot space for you.  The event is free to all and some valuable items will be raffled off including a Duane Hada painting.   It is to be held on Saturday October the 26^th.

 

        

 

Opening Date for Big Piney Nature Center

 

Although not the Piney, Duane Had, world renown artist, is known for his river and wildlife art.

         As to a date for opening my Big Piney River Nature Center, a mile south of Houston, Mo. put the date of Saturday, October 16 on your calendar.  That day we will begin putting in the first displays and we will have a couple of real attractions.  Jerry McCoy, who owns a big outdoor antique store at Bull Shoals, will be there with all kinds of antique lures and fishing gear to display and lures to sell as well.     

         He is making a donation to the center and will evaluate any outdoor oriented antiques you wish to bring, lures, reels, whatever.  If you have outdoor gear to sell, Jerry may buy it from you for display in his store. I think Jerry is the foremost expert in the Arkansas-Missouri Ozarks in regard to vintage fishing gear.  You may have a valuable lure or reel that you don’t know about.

          That day I will bring about 200 of my own fishing lures for sale and many of them are new while others are antiques.  I will also be selling and autographing my books and selling antique outdoor magazines.

 

        But the biggest attraction will be another outstanding guest that day, artist Duane Hada, from North Arkansas who is a riparian naturalist without equal, in other words, an expert on rivers and river ecology. He has found a trout species in the Ozarks which were never known to be here.  Duane is an unbelievable fish and wildlife artist and on October 26 he will bring dozens of his paintings which will be for sale. There will be original paintings and prints and you can get his autograph on those. From 10 to 2 he will set up a canvas and do a painting from start to finish which will be raffled off that afternoon to help pay for expenses of our nature center. I have seen Duane do this before and if there are young aspiring artists out there who wish to see him work that would be invaluable to them. If you want to see some of his paintings get on your computer and type in his name.  I will also put some photos on my website this week.  You won’t believe how great an artist this man is.  I am hoping he might do a painting that day of the Big Piney or a smallmouth bass.  Whatever it is, if you win it you will have a very valuable original painting.

         We will have an old wooden johnboat on display and the very first aluminum boat ever made in the Ozarks, a 22 footer built for the   Big Piney and Gasconade rivers by a man named Appleby, who became the founder of Lowe boats, now known as   Generation 3 boats out of Lebanon. There will be some other vendors there who will be selling old guns and gear.  All proceeds will go toward electric and water bills and other expenses. The address of our center is 6401 South Hwy 63. Right now we need someone with a big truck to bring in some gravel and fill dirt to get out parking lot ready for that day.  If you own such a truck, I will be glad to pay you for such a service.  You will need to call me at 417 777 5227 or email lightninridge47@gmail.com

 

         I don’t know how many of you folks have ever gone to my website but I hope you will this week.  As well as photos of Duane and his artwork, I have an account of a sheriff’s deputy coming to my home a month ago to arrest me for trespassing at a Bolivar boat shop.  I hope you will read about that on my website.  I was in another city the day it was to have happened, so the deputy told me he would leave and do an investigation. After three calls to the Polk County Sheriff I have finally figured out that he will not talk to me about it. Whatever was done was never reported back to me.  The sheriff’s office tells me there are no consequences to the boat shop for filing a false report against me. It is the second time this has happened to me. Last time it was the local Wal-Mart store.  That was eventually dismissed with not consequence to Wal-Mart for falsely reporting me as a trespasser.  So I am thinking about reporting a man down the road for stealing a hog from me. He didn’t but since it is not illegal to do so in Polk County I might as well have some fun with my neighbor.  You might try it too, but be sure that filing a false report against someone you are mad at is not illegal in your county too.  Read it all on    www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

Dove Feathers

 

 

 

Before you read this, the dove season will have opened. Dove hunting is fairly easy, and it isn’t high on my list of things to do, but I will do it anyway, because I am a grizzled old veteran outdoor writer and that kind of thing is expected of me.  I know you hear young inexperienced outdoor writers talk about how hard doves are to hit, but not for me.  I got to where I can sneak up on a bunch of them and get four or five before they fly with only one or two shells.

I got to be such a good shot by practicing when I was young.  In the fall I’d go out and throw darts at butterflies.  When you get to where you can hit a butterfly with a dart or a B.B. gun, you won’t have any trouble hitting doves with a twellve-gauge shotgun about half the time.

      I won’t go dove hunting in September though.  I will wait until October and hunt at a waterhole somewhere. I am going dove hunting mostly because intend to take a young Labrador out and see if he will retrieve one.  If my Lab takes to dove hunting, it will likely be a great retriever by the time duck season gets here.  Most all the dove hunters will be out on opening day and within a week there won’t be hardly any of them left… hunters that is.  Many doves won’t migrate in until late September.  Some hunters can’t afford the shells it takes to go on three or four hunts, me included.

You need harvested grain fields for good dove hunting, or a small pond used as a water hole where they come to water in the evening before they go to roost.  I like hunting those water holes because if you have a young retriever and if you can drop a dove or two in the water, it is really good experience for his future as a waterfowl dog.  

Early season dove hunting is sometimes hard on dogs because of the heat and humidity, and dove feathers come off in their mouths and they don’t like that.  A Lab doesn’t mind a duck feather or two, but they hate dove feathers.  You can see why if you ever put a freshly shot dove in your mouth.  You can’t hardly get those feathers out of your throat. 

Teal season will open in a week or so, and they too are hard to hit.  But because I am an old time duck hunter, I look forward to that more than dove hunting.  You’d probably be better off not doing either one because in September, if your time is limited, you will catch a lot more fish on top-water lures than you will in the spring.  Of course you have to know what you are doing there too.  A blue winged teal is small a flying biscuit, fast and erratic in flight.  Many times I have shot more at where one was than where one is!

 When I was young, dad and I use to float the Piney in mid September with a blind on our wooden johnboat, hunting blue winged teal.  One September after a good rain the river was up a few inches and we took along one rod and reel and a wiggle wart lure and began to catch some nice smallmouth, one after another. Dad would catch two or three from the front of the boat while I paddled and then we would switch places and I would catch some, all the while watching for teal.  We killed a few teal that day, but caught more than twenty hard fighting smallmouth in between the flocks we flushed.  What a day that was!

 I   have a picture of dad fighting a fish that day with a shell belt around his waist with shotgun shells in it, causing all who see it to question why he would have those shells on a fishing trip. That was in 1965, and you can see some of those photos on my blogspot page, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

My Big Piney Nature Center and Museum a mile south of Houston, Mo, will be pretty much finished in October and I have an unusual plan to open the finished building, minus the exhibits, sometime during that month to hold a big ‘fishing gear and antique gun’ swap meet.

Anyone who wants to bring guns made before 1965 and fishing gear of any kind is welcome.  I intend to bring several hundred fishing lures, myself, and some are antiques I used when I was young.  That wiggle wart dad and I used back in September of ’65, which we used to catch those smallmouth on, will be there for sale to the highest bidder.  I hope that some folks who have old shotguns or .22 rifles will bring them to sell. To reserve a spot just call me, 417 777 5227. I will announce the date of that event soon.

You   can also contact me via email… lightninridge47@gmail.com or at P.O. Box 22 Bolivar, Mo 65613

            

       

 

Maybe They Ate Sheep - Cruetzfeldt-Jacobs Disease

 

Sick Buck

       Two hunters who were members of a hunting lodge in a western state have died from Cruetzfeldt-Jacobs disease, which they apparently got from eating venison from a CWD prion-infested deer.   But you can’t prove it because the disease, known as TSE, (Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy) is found in cattle, goats, sheep and elk.  Maybe they ate a goat together? Can’t have a panic about this when it can cause hunters to stop buying deer tags.

         A few years ago, Carol Schroeder, from Camdenton, told me that her husband had died from the disease known as Cruetzfeldt-Jacobs disease in a St.Louis hospital in a quarantined room. After his death the Center for Disease Control took control of his body it was taken to the crematory by a highway patrol escort to be sure that if any accident occurred on the way his body would not be handled by unknowing first- responders. Mrs. Schroeder confirmed that he had eaten venison during the months before his death.

              “I never believed in assisted suicide,” she told me, “but I would have given anything if it could have happened for my poor husband.  It took him two months to die and what he went through, what I saw as his brain deteriorated, I cannot even talk about it to this day.”

         She isn’t the only one who has had a relative die of the disease in Missouri. There have been many.  But you will never hear about any of them. None of the deaths has been mentioned by the media, not anywhere!

              Bill Zippro, a resident of Joplin, will tell you that his brother died a young man with prions in his brain because he killed and ate a huge buck which was not acting right. His brother told him the buck didn’t make any attempt to escape and he told Bill he thought the deer had been turned loose from a nearby deer farm across the border in Kansas where they feed deer meat and bone by-products to make bigger antlers. He said his brother was shown to have the prions in his brain and spinal fluid, and the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta Georgia verified it.

         In Italy, two workers studying CWD (chronic wasting disease) in deer died from the Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy disease.  Now the big cover-up is about those two men in that western state where CWD is prevalent in deer and elk, have died from that same disease. Look for their deaths on the Internet. Make no mistake about it, Chronic Wasting disease in deer, Cruetzfeldt-Jacobs disease in humans and ‘Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy’ disease are all the same disease, like rabies and hydrophobia are the same disease with different names.

         Look it up on the Internet and notice that it says humans can get the disease through eating “contaminated foodstuff” which just might include venison, contaminated with prions. You reckon? You won’t be able to find the name of the hunting lodge or the state or the names of the two men but it will never be admitted that they ate elk and deer meat from the same animal.

         When it has the potential to make conservation departments lose a lot of money through the loss of deer tag sales, you keep the facts obscured.  Therefore, the Missouri Department of Conservation will tell you humans can’t get the disease from deer.  After all the people who died could have died from eating sheep or goat meat, right? But you cannot deny humans are getting the disease from handling or eating the meat from deer. In fact it is known that among the seven people who died of Cruetzfeld Jacobs disease in Arkansas, one was a taxidermist who mounted deer heads.

         Now in Oklahoma they have passed a law that CWD-diseased deer in deer-farm structures can be sold or legally released into the wild.  Some of Oklahoma’s wisest people in the legislature agree that exposing them to the disease may create immunity in wild deer.  Would it surprise anyone to know that one of the legislators who has caused the law to be accepted is a man who owns a deer farm?

 

         One  tip for you deer hunters… prions are found in the brain.  ‘Spongiform Encephalopathy refers to the holes in the brain the abnormal proteins cause.  The protein has not been found in the meat but rather brain fluid and spinal fluid and    perhaps bone marrow.  To avoid ingesting prions, first have your deer tested, then do not cut the spine or any bones.  If you put a bullet into the head or spine, you are risking having prions in the meat.  Another piece of advice.. do not eat any venison that you have not taken care of… don’t have anyone else butcher your deer and do not eat venison from the well-advertised “Share the Harvest” program.  That was created so that trophy hunters would not have to utilize the meat, but give it away instead.  None of those trophy bucks get tested.  And where are 75 percent of CWD cases found?… Older bucks!

 

Hot Summer, Cool Stream

 

            A cool, lazy river float during the summer heat

       If you have the ambition to get away from the air conditioning and get your body acclimated to summer, find an isolated section of Ozark river where canoe rental people do not operate, and plan a two- or three-day trip in the middle of the week with a friend who is inclined not to complain much about sleeping in a tent and having wet feet. 

By doing so, you can actually get off away from the world’s problems. Float downstream and find a gravel bar or sand bar to camp on, where there is some shade of course.  In the cool of the evening, find a deep shoal and wade out up to your waist above it or below it and cast a topwater minnow or a little popper of some kind with a spin-casting outfit or maybe even a fly-rod. There will be bass waiting to jump all over that lure, I’ve seen it happen! I have been there and done that, often. 

When it gets dark, push your boat or canoe out into a big eddy fed by that river current, where there’s some deep water and rocks, and fish without lights, letting your eyes become accustom to the night.  Cast a jitterbug toward the bank with a casting reel and a stronger line, and work it steadily across the surface.  If there’s a big bass anywhere close, he will jump all over that jitterbug.  This time of year, the rock bank towards the upper end of the eddy where the current feeds it will hold the smallmouth, but the lower sections of a big deep hole, on the opposite bank where there might be logs and limbs, are where you will find river largemouth, and they can’t pass up a jitterbug either.

       If a nearby eddy is good and deep and has a bluff, chances are there’s a big flathead catfish there, or several, maybe up to 25 or 35 pounds.  I have caught a few catfish from small Ozark rivers that exceeded 40 pounds. Flatheads can be caught on trotlines set deep, across the eddy and baited with LIVE bait, like chubs or sunfish, or even small suckers. There are channel catfish in many streams too, and they will take nightcrawlers or dead bait, minnows or even chicken livers. 

       It takes a lot of work to set and bait a trotline, and it involves some danger, as you can get entangled or hooked and pulled under by a weighted line.  Have two sheathed knives on your belt to cut yourself free if you need to.  If you set trotlines and run them in that deep water, DO NOT DO IT FROM A KAYAK OR SMALL CANOE.  I would never ever trotline from a seventeen-foot double end canoe!  Actually, I wouldn’t even float the river in one.

       I know it is hot, but I am tired of staying inside.  I have fishing to do, and I have missed it. I don’t know that it was as hot when I was a youngster, fishing up and down the Big Piney River in July and August.  There was no reason to hole up in the house, because we didn’t have air conditioning, and maybe everyone could stand the heat better because of that fact. 

Maybe air conditioning has us in a destructive grip as much as anything else.  None of us would choose to live without it, but I know that another generation of men who lived without it stayed outside more and could take the summer much, much better.  Of course our ancestors were tougher… they had to be.  Thank goodness they were when the world war came along.

       I have fished all through July and August with good  results and as a teen-ager guiding float fishermen on the Big Piney and Gasconade, I never let a 95-degree day never stop a daylong fishing trip.  My clients would show up and we would start very early in the morning, when it was cooler.  But we would float the river all day at times, always catching fish, even in the middle of the day.   Of course, the river was more shaded then, because landowners hadn’t started clearing the banks of shade trees as much back then.  There were a lot fewer cattle too.  The river had much more water in those times, and it was much cleaner.  Shady gravel bars offered great places to stop and relax, and swim in a cool river current for a little while. Then it was back to fishing, casting to whatever shaded bank there was, where the water had a little current and a little depth.

       I am dreaming now, as this may be the first summer ever that I have not camped on a gravel bar.  I can’t hardly walk right now, as a surgeon who was suppose to fix a torn meniscus botched the operation and made my knee worse than it was before.  But I have hopes that a new operation soon will get me capable of taking to the river by duck season.

       

       My website is www.larrydablemont.com, and you can e-mail me at lightninridge47@gmail.com.  Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, MO. 65613 and if you want to get a copy of my new book or my summer magazine, just call me at 417 777 5227.