The Cedar Tree and Me

 

How strong is the cedar tree? This one is growing from the fork of a giant  maple, 5 feet above the ground

The most perfect Christmas trees I have ever seen are found along the highway between Springfield Missouri and Branson. They are perfectly formed, many not much wider than a lampshade and five or six feet tall.  There they are there for the taking, small, medium and large; all perfectly formed due to their environment, which gives them no plant competition and full sunlight, plenty of rain and ideal soil.  

The Highway Department apparently has no idea what they are worth.  If they would put ordinary entrepreneurs in charge of harvesting and selling them, I think they could make a hundred thousand dollars from those cedars each December.  But, they aren’t so interested in ‘making’ money as they are in increasing taxes! 

Common sense often is rare outside the Ozarks.  City folks buy bottled water that tastes awful! However, if you see one of those perfect Christmas trees along the highway, mark it. Then at night you can have pickup trouble right where it is.  It don’t take no time to cut a cedar tree off a hillside where you had to stop for whatever legitimate reason. I might try that! If I get caught, I suspect I will have to pay a fine nearly equal to that which city suburbanites pay for their Christmas trees legally.

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. ‘Eastern 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 tree branches where bucks prepare scent posts, and scrape away leaves and vegetation on each visit before peeing in the spot.  

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 November and December, by looking along trails and field borders. 

But this big cedar tree I found was about eight inches in diameter, and a buck had been using the trunk of the cedar as a ‘rub’… a place of a mock fight, skinning up the bark. Bucks love cedars and pines for such fighting and rubbing posts, and it is true that in general, bigger sets of antlers are 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.  

        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.

       So my advice…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!” I made that one up. Come muzzle-loader season… that may be my aim, saving cedar trees from some old scraggly-horned buck.

 

       Don’t forget folks, I will be at my Big Piney Nature Center, 6410 Hwy 63 to the south of Houston Missouri from 1 to 4  this coming Friday afternoon and 1 to 4 on Saturday, the 14^th.  The purpose will be giving away a special book I have written for youngsters who like to read and the selling of books and magazines for Christmas gifts and.  But on the 14^th I will be in Houston at the Health Food Center doing the same thing from 10 a.m. to noon.  If you know a kid who needs a good book of short stories for Christmas, come by and see me.

 

       More info at www.larrydablemont.com or on www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com or E-mail me at lightninridge47@gmail.com

 

Chest Waders and Quackers

 

       I would rather hunt ducks than do anything else pertaining to the outdoors.  I remember when I was laughed at for doing so.  It was in the early 70’s in December when I lived on a mountaintop out west of Harrison Arkansas.  I had been hunting on Bull Shoals Lake for much of the day and stopped into a little country store and filling station just outside of town.  I still had my chest waders on and my duck calls around my neck.  An old-timer sitting by the stove couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of me. 

       He said, “Dablemont, is that yore quacker tied around yore neck or are you fixin’ to strangle yoreself?” I told them I had sure enough been duck hunting.

        I let my Labrador get out to pee and when I did, 3 or 4 of the men came out to look at him. When I explained what his job was, one of them said that if his dog ever got his jaws around a whole duck he’d not be inclined to come back for a day or so…  Then they saw the four mallards and a gadwall lying across my boat seat and they could hardly believe they came from Bull Shoals.

       There was no one back in that day hunting ducks on Bull Shoals.  It was a great year because the lake was up fifteen feet or so and the ducks were finding lots of food in the back end of coves and creeks that few fishermen ever went into in the winter. I had it all to myself and it was a duck hunter’s haven.   The water had backed up into the vegetation and there was a lot of food floating in the water.  My dog Rambunctious and I motored into the end of a long cove and ducks went everywhere in flight, maybe a couple hundred of them.  I covered the boat with camouflage beneath a flooded tree and threw out a dozen decoys.   Of course they would come back… all that food amongst the floating debris.  

       As they returned over the next hour in small flocks I picked out the drakes and downed a limit in short order. Some of those hunts, where I had the whole lake to myself, were the best days I have ever spent out with my dog and quacker, chest waders and shotgun, and I have done the same thing on other Ozark lakes. The water conditions have to be right, but when the water rises into the vegetation you can bet the ducks will come, especially in December and January.

       I will never forget something that happened that winter on Bull Shoals.  My Lab brought me a mallard drake that had earthworms crawling out of its beak. I got to looking and all I killed had earthworms in their beaks, throats and crops. Back in one of those coves I guess worms had been floating to the surface too, and the mallards had been eating them. Never seen anything like that before or since.   That would make those particular ducks omnivorous!  To see photos from that day 50-some years ago, including one with old Rambunctious, the chocolate Labrador, find www.larrydablemontoutdoors.com on the Internet. 

       Even though there's such low water conditions on lakes like Bull Shoals and Stockton and Truman, all of which can provide great waterfowling in good years, when ducks come through ahead of a front, fleeing a blizzard up north or an intense ice-up in the prairie wetlands, the hunting can be good for awhile.  It just doesn't stay that way, because to hold ducks, you need water in the vegetation.  Without it, they just won't stay long.

       A few inches of rain could do the trick this winter, because late in the summer, smartweed, nut-sedge and sesbania and other green growth which attract ducks were growing along tributaries and flats on area lakes.  You hope to see the lakes rise into that green growth before the waterfowl migration is in full swing. If our lakes get enough rain to come up just four or five feet, we are going to have some great habitat for ducks.

       

       

       I wrote a book about duck hunting entitled “Memories from a Misty Morning Marsh” which might make a good Christmas gift for a duck hunter.  You can see it on www.larrydablemont.com or come visit me at my nature center on December 14.

 

       This sort of goes along with the way the world is becoming.  A few years ago I went to the county library in Houston Missouri just before Christmas and gave away a book of short stories I wrote for young people entitled, Dogs, Ducks and Bucks. Quite a few parents brought kids to get a book inscribed and autographed. Some just came to get a book for Christmas gifts for kids and didn’t bring the kids with them.   I gave away about 30 or so that day and it made me happier than anyone else. I wanted to do that again but the new librarian there said they were too busy for such an event.  

       So I will do it again, this time at my Big Piney nature center-project a mile south of Houston on Saturday, December 14 from noon to 3 p.m.  If you know a child who likes to read and isn’t getting a lot of presents, come by and get a book for him or her. My other books will be available too and if you already have one bring it by and I will sign and inscribe if for you.  The address of the place is 1640 South Hwy 63.

Squirrels for Thanksgiving? -- MDC

 

I shot this buck several times and left him there

       You can have the traditional thanksgiving dinner.  I guess you likely will.  I never did like store-bought turkey; it is tasteless and dry and if you have a slice of one when you are young you can bet it never is going to get better as many years of Thanksgiving pass.  Maybe it should be prepared as I do wild gobblers.  I slice the breast thin as possible and then fry the razor-thin meat slabs with a good coating of various types of seasoning and flour to give it taste.  I did that back when I use to shoot turkeys with a shotgun.  I roam the woods now with a camera, and as scarce as wild turkey are becoming I would be ashamed of myself if I killed another one.

       In Missouri, the conservation department has figured out a way to make more money out of dwindling numbers of turkeys.  It use to be that if you bought an archery tag you could hunt both deer and turkey with a bow.  Not now.  They got together and figured that they could double the income from bow-hunters by requiring different tags for each, therefore twice as much money.  I don’t know if that will work so good, because if a game warden got real ambitious and left his pickup to walk back into the woods and catch some smart fellow in a tree stand with a bow, the hunter could just claim he was hunting coyotes, or bobcats, or weasels and produce a predator call to prove it.  Or he could say he was hunting squirrels maybe, and then bark like a squirrel.  

       To make more money the MDC will have to make a new law saying that during the bow season for deer or turkey, a hunter may not hunt anything else with a bow.  Of course they could charge fifteen more dollars for permission to bow-hunt anything from squirrels, ducks and groundhogs to coyotes and bobcats.  That would work! And more money!

       The MDC has a lot of additional regulations.  For instance, you cannot shoot a deer or turkey with a firearm within 450 feet of a residence, barn, shed, etc -- in some areas of the state, nor hunt with a bow within 200 feet of those buildings-- in some areas of the state.  It is not clear whether or not you can hunt turkey with a bow in November with a gun turkey tag for October.  In October you can hunt turkey with gun or bow or atlatl or slingshot without a new tag after October. But in November thru January if you use a bow, atlatl or slingshot to hunt turkeys you need a new tag. Understand?   

       Some agents do not know for sure about all this neither. If you want to hunt deer and/or turkey with a bow you have to buy a turkey and deer tag separately.  Figure that what you have to do to hunt anything in the fall with gun or bow now costs more money.  If you buy deer tags for archery, turkey tags for archery, gun tags for turkey, and gun tags for deer, and then new spring tags for turkey you will spend well over 100 dollars.  You will have to spend a little more for getting a youth tag I think, but that enables a hunter who can drag a kid out in the woods to get one more turkey than it is legal for him to kill with his own tag.

       I hope I have not confused anyone here.  It is best that when you go bow hunting you call a game warden to straighten it all out and tape record the conversation so he can’t change anything if he comes after you.  Also, if you hunt coyotes, groundhogs, bobcats, or wolves with a bow, have a predator call with you.  And oh yes, there are some additional requirements for hunting bobcats, which I do not understand.  On the Internet it said there are also additional regulations involved for hunting squirrels, rabbit, rails, snipe, bobcats, coyotes, pheasants, coots, and several more species.  Thankfully that list on the computer does not involve ducks and geese.  That’s all I am concerned with.  If you hunt ducks with a bow, you do not need any special license, you need to have lots and lots of arrows and your head examined!

       I did shoot a nice buck this year with my trusty 35 millimeter Nikon single barrel. I just left him there! Last summer I shot several strutting gobblers! Called them to within a few yards. I never bought deer or turkey tags to do that and I recommend you follow my example! With all the regulations and efforts to make more money the MDC has agents that don’t understand all of it either.  

       I interviewed the Chief of Enforcement a month or so back and was surprised by an attitude I admire.  He said that if any hunter or fisherman receives a citation he feels is unwarranted, or if any agent treats someone disrespectfully or illegally according to that citizens rights, that he should be notified.   His name is Randy Doman and his phone number is 573-751-4115.  You will have to go through a lady at the desk, but just ask for him and then leave a message.  

His email is Randy.Doman@mdc.mo.gov if you need help getting through to him, call me at 417-777-5227 and I will put him in touch with you. He has assured me no one will be ignored. This opportunity has not been available before and I applaud him for making it happen.  Trouble is he gets told what he can do by some very uncaring higher-ups.   I like Doman and I intend to try to work with him.

 

       I have written lots of books and put together more than 100 outdoor and Ozark magazines.  Some might make good Christmas gifts.  See them on your computer at   www.larrydablemont.com.  

There One Went…A Road-Runner

 

       Once a fellow called me to report seeing a hen pheasant down on the Arkansas-Missouri border. I knew exactly what he had seen. I had just seen something similar… a road-runner.

       About twenty years ago I saw a road-runner up here on Lightnin’ Ridge about forty yards from my back door.  The bird, which is  about the  size of a hen pheasant, was running as if the cartoon coyotee was after him, but I  never heard him beep.  Last week I saw him or one like him again.  For this part of the northern Ozarks, he is a rare bird. They are not suppose to be here, and my wooded ridge top is possibly the farthest north they have ever been seen. 

        But he is not a bird of woodlands.  He is a desert bird found in Mexico, Texas, Arizona and western Oklahoma. I guess mine has moved up here from northern Oklahoma  or maybe Arkansas.  If you want to see one, there is a gravel road west of the Big Creek resort on the north side of Bull Shoals where road-runners are thick in the summer.  On one day I have seen three or four crossing that road.  

       There isn’t a lot known about road-runners. They seldom fly and don’t get but a few feet off the ground, seldom going more than 20 yards at a time in flight.  But that is  how they avoid predators that are faster runners.  They can’t outrun a coyote but they can elude him.  The bird usually runs about 15 miles per hour but if necessary they can run 25 miles per hour.  You never see one pecking around in one spot like a dove or quail.

       They almost never get off the ground, except when they nest. They nest a few feet off the ground in bushes or small trees.  Some nests have as few as two or three eggs, and some have up to eight. Some ornithologists say they mate for life, but I think  that is unlikely. I have never seen two together.  

       They  have a cousin, in that same cuckoo family, that we in the Ozarks call a rain-crow, or  ‘yellow-billed cuckoo’.  The two birds seem to have little in common, but their four toes have two pointing forward and two pointing backwards.  Their track makes an X. The rain crow is common here, and is elusive in high branches of tall oaks. They stay off the ground while their cousin, the road-runner seldom leaves it.

       In the desert states, road-runners have been seen killing large rattlesnakes by pecking at the head and avoiding strikes until the snake is dead.  Usually that is seen involving two of the birds.  

       What will he eat up here on Lightnin’ Ridge in the  winter?  Anything he wants.  There are lizards  out on warm days, small mammals like field mice, and they also eat a small percentage of plant and seed matter.  As a photographer, I would give a good portion of my left little toe to get a picture of a road-runner up here on this ridge-top. Wouldn’t it be something to get him running through my woods in a skiff of snow? He  can live through an Ozarks winter because he never has to drink water, and doesn’t, ever.  He gets all the moisture needed from his food, like many other desert small animals.  He  doesn’t have to eat a great deal and his body temperature drops to surprisingly low levels much like a reptile, when it gets real cold. 

       He can thrive if it stays above 40 degrees, but I suspect that he would be in a sort of suspended animation for periods of time under cover somewhere  when freezing temperatures approach. I know darn well he and his kind do not migrate.  I tried walking to Arkansas once and gave up after the first ten miles.

       I  wish I  could help that  road-runner with a feeding station of some kind, or just see him more often.  A more fascinating bird I have never seen anywhere. 

 

       One last thing… deer hunters beware.  If you kill a big-antlered buck, DO NOT take a game warden,  who shows up later, anywhere you hunt. He will suddenly appear at your home, wanting you to take him and  show him where you killed your deer and cleaned it.  He’ll mysteriously find corn there or in the deer’s stomach (which  comes from his pocket) and therefore charge you and confiscate your antlers, which likely are worth a good deal of money.

       Not all conservation officers are crooked enough to do  that, but some are.  Don’t be their victim!  Any time and agent shows up WITHOUT A WARRANT, tell them to leave and close the door. They have no right to your cooperation without a legal warrant, and if they get your antlers you will never see them again.. EVEN IF YOU GET A LAWYER AND ARE FOUND INNOCENT OF THE CHARGE!.

       One agent in Stone County has a shed full of antlers he calls his ‘Retirement Account.’ Almost none were legally obtained! Don’t let them get yours.

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.