The bow season has begun, and while I once took part in it, I won’t bow hunt this year. When you are young you can sit in a tree stand and spend hours enjoying yourself even if you don’t see a thing. At my age, you never have four hours to sit and do nothing. You realize as you get older that hours are precious, and you have options of catching fish, shooting squirrels, hunting teal and working on things around the house. Well, skip that last option.
But really, since I will kill a deer for my freezer when the muzzle-loader season gets here, and that is all I can eat in a year, why hunt deer in September with anything? Bow hunting should not be very high on any outdoorsman’s list in September unless he doesn’t fish at all or do anything else but deer hunt. It is a poor time to skin and hang a deer, because it is always too warm. The dead of winter is bow-hunting time.
I have caught a couple of big bass in late September and early October. It isn’t something I do in a short time. I caught another 22-inch largemouth bass this past week, and I fished for three hours with a topwater lure with no results before he hit. When he did, it was some fight.
You can’t catch a bass that size in a tree stand, watching for a deer, so that is one reason I won’t bow hunt this year. Another of the reason’s I won’t bow hunt is I also am determined not to give the Missouri Department of Conservation any more money than I have to. By the time you pay for waterfowl stamps, turkey tags, deer tags and all the other special tags you have to buy, then add on the 1/8 th cent sales tax we ALL pay them, it costs more to hunt and fish in Missouri than any other state in the United States. This year you are required to spend more to bowhunt if turkeys are involved and next year even more and on and on and on. They waste millions of dollars each year and ask our Missouri citizens to fund the waste. Eighteen million is being spent on a waterfowl marsh, and in five years after dishing out the money nothing has been done that amounts to good news for waterfowl hunters. Bulldozers sit where wildlife species by the dozens once thrived.
I urge hunters to not hunt wild turkeys this fall. Turkeys are at an all time low right now going back to the 1960’s. Do like I do and hunt them with a camera. Then if you want to eat a turkey, buy one at the grocery store. It is cheaper than a fall tag. My camera shoots wild turkeys several times a year and yet it lets them propagate next spring. We only have a fall turkey season to bring in more money for the MDC. Don’t help them trade wild turkeys for money in their bank account.
The Chief of Enforcement for the Department of Conservation is Travis McLain. I’ve been talking to him about some of the times that I believe conservation agents have violated laws and the rights of hunters and fishermen. He sent me a form for people who have a complaint against an MDC agent to fill out and send back to his attention. So now you can actually be heard. I don’t know what good it will do but it is at least an attempt by Mr. McLain to listen and take some kind of action.
I encourage those who are being or have been victimized unlawfully by agents to use this form and send it in. Until now I didn’t know it existed and it may be something new. If you want my help in getting the form and getting it filled out, contact me… P.O. Box 22, Bolivar, Mo 65613. I have copies of the form I can send by regular mail or email to you. You can also email me to get it … lightninridge47@gmail.com
If you want more information about our new Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal magazine coming out in November, you can call my office and find out what it is and how to get it. The number is 417-777-5227
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