A Haven

 

A photo I took several years earlier of Snow geese and their reflections

       My secret place is quiet and serene, and beautiful even in the starkness of full-blown winter.  There are no roads into it; I get there by boat. Sometimes in the winter there are grey skies threatening rain and waves are whitecapping out on the lake. Sometimes it is a still warm day that hints of spring. But not today. I just motor to a protected cove and I head up into familiar hills. 

       Flying south on the north wind, a big flock of snow geese come over me. Just above me only 200 feet or so, they break into a concerted, frenzied cry, as if they are tremendously excited all of a sudden.  When they sound like that, they are envisioning a place to alight and rest, and I am sure it was within a few minutes of them, a bottomland field across the lake somewhere.         

       Even tired snow geese do not often favor landing on the water when they are in large groups.  They want an open field somewhere, with vegetation too short to hide a predator.  I thought back to times in past years when I have laid in Canadian harvested crop fields, covered with concealing straw, watching flocks above me like that one, so loud you can feel the excitement in their crescendo.

       In the woodlands, where giant oaks and hickories and cedars are as big as any I have ever seen anywhere, I find scrapes and rubs freshly made by buck deer.  Not far away are the remains of a fireplace and a rock foundation only about 10 by 15 feet, where an old cabin once stood.  There are the remains of a rusted iron bedstead there, and nothing more.  A cedar growing out of it has to be a hundred years old, so the cabin has been gone at least that long.  I wonder what the people were like who lived there a hundred years ago and perhaps much longer back. I hope the six piles of rock on a small flat area above the creek aren’t graves, but they may be.

       My back, recently injured in some way, has me in agony, and so I sit down against a big chinquapin oak. A shortened evening is advancing with no sunset.  My back problem will not keep me from walking where I want to go, but it will make me get there slower.   A slower hunter though, is a better hunter.  You have to make the most out of each situation you face in life. Do what you can and give no thought to what you cannot. Age has taught me that.

       In sitting, I notice that woodrats have an advanced nest around a nearby tree with a root system favoring a tunnel beneath it.  It is quite an arrangement of sticks.  These woods are filled with dens of one type or another, beneath rocks and crevices, under the roots of huge fallen giants, in the boles of standing, but rugged, den trees. There is such a variety of wild creatures here it is amazing.

This is my place, this large acreage of land set aside on an Ozark lake. It is everyone’s. There are thousands of acres of public land here.  Much of it is typical of the Ozarks, with small pockets of clearing, stretches of cedar glade and open, mature forest.  In this I can lose myself, forget whatever has been bothering me, and wonder if God isn’t behind me somewhere, aware that I have returned to marvel at the greatness of his unspoiled creation. I am hoping he isn’t upset with me for missing church, but I seek out a greater place to talk to Him.

       This secret place of mine seldom sees humans, unless it is the opening days of deer season.   Earlier in the day I picked up two recently discarded beer cans, to show me some nitwit passed here who didn’t know what he was doing. It is a sacrilege to come to a place like this and leave something to defile it.  I am convinced that most deer hunters are not like him, but nothing brings out the bad side of hunting and hunters like deer season. 

 

      Before that, along a winding old overgrown lane, I found hundreds of frost flowers, erupting from the base of stems of composite plants.  They are unique, white, fragile ice formations that form in the night as the dead plant somehow emits a freezing water vapor. Each is a piece of sculptured art. You cannot find two alike.

       In the lateness of the day, as small flakes of snow fall, intermingled with drops of rain driven by the wind, I gain my feet with little sign of the pain I had felt an hour before, and slowly head back to my boat, watching for whatever I may not have seen earlier. I know that I am far from my boat and it is so late in the day I may have to motor back in darkness.  But the sun will shine here again and I will be back.  It is something to remember, when skies are dark and grey and winter’s ominous breath is strong and cold above your collar. The sun will shine brightly here on another day!  Spring will come soon, and I will be back.

 

A 17-year-old boy recently killed a19-point buck and the antlers have been stolen from him.  Read the whole story on the  internet at www.larrydablemontoutdoors.  

       

A Little Winter Walk

 

There is a remote little gravel bar along the river where I love to camp, quite a walk from the road. I parked my pickup and headed down there, determined to see it as a new year comes, in a bleak, drab winter picture of the river. 

I came across a nice buck and doe that bounded away.  He still had his antlers and she was getting a little bit round with a pair of fawns, if I am a good judge of such things.  I was surprised to see them together, but it tells me where I might find his antlers in a month or so.

The slough where the wood ducks were in October, and will be again in April, was frozen over.  I stopped and looked at very clear bobcat track in soft sandy soil. On such ground it is easy for anyone to tell a cat track because there are no claw marks. 

There will be young bobcats born very soon, long before the fawns are born.  In the Ozarks bobcats may bear young any time during the winter, from December on.  And some are even born in late spring.  But most are born in February and early March.   

I happened across a terrapin shell, this one very old because only the white undershell was there.  Terrapins have an outer and under shell, and Ozark boys in my grandpa’s generation often carved their initials and dates in the outer shell.  When I was just a boy, I found terrapins with initials and dates, and it caused me to realize how long they lived.  I suspect a terrapin might live forty or fifty years if he is lucky enough to stay upright.  They are unusual in that they are capable of living a long time and yet producing a lot of young.  Most all wild things are good at one or the other.  A species has high ‘biotic potential’ (the ability to survive well and live long), or high ‘reproductive potential’ (the ability to produce high number of offspring during a season).  Usually, they don’t have both. 

The predators have few babies, and live long and survive well.  A rabbit or a wood rat has a short life span because of predation and a weakness to disease and parasites.  But the small ground mammals are like rabbits; they raise lots of young to ensure survival of their species.  Any species which produces a small number of offspring in its lifetime is a species that has a great biotic potential, the ability to survive.  Only man throws a wrench in that natural equation.  In next week’s column I will say more about this year-end trip to the river.

            

      As much as I love to hunt and fish, I was born a naturalist first and foremost, and I am lucky to live out here in the sticks and still write about it all for newspapers scattered about in places far from where I might be this week or next.  If you read this column and like it, let the newspaper hear from you.  I wish I could answer all the letters and e-mails I get from you folks out there who read this column each week, but I just can’t.  I will reproduce many of the letters and emails I get in my magazine, the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal, the next one due to come out in the spring of 2026.

 

      In the next few months I will write about some illegal things done by conservation agents and many newspapers cannot print those articles.  You can read them in January on a special Internet site… www.larrydablemontoutdoors.  Those articles give you an idea of what the Missouri Department of Conservation does that can affect you.  You can have property confiscated and never returned to you even if charges are dismissed. It has just happened to one 17-year-old deer hunter. 

       I don’t blame newspapers for not printing those articles but you have a right to know what this state agency does and they have extraordinary power to keep it hidden.  Please go to that website and read the articles.

 

Notify me by email…lightninridge47@gmail.com or   call my office at 417-777-5227

 

 

No Ducks, But No Worries

 

I haven’t seen many ducks but it is duck season and I can’t wait to go out with my Lab to try to find some. If you have never owned a Labrador, you have missed out on one of the greatest things in life, and if you have never watched ducks come into decoys on cupped wings, rocking back and forth with those red legs extended you have missed something. 

Recently I sat up against a tree scratching my dog’s ears while he slept beside me. I rested; watching empty skies and realizing that I couldn’t remember how much money I had left in the bank nor how old I was. Other things are more important when you’re out in the woods or on the river.

You may not believe this, but in a local pharmacy they have a blood pressure machine, and I can take my blood pressure. It remains pretty good until I get mad, which town traffic usually makes me.  If it is too high then I can set back and take it again while I close my eyes and envision a flock of wild ducks circling above me, and then dropping like fall leaves into my decoys. Then the second time I take it, my blood pressure will have dropped ten or fifteen points!

 

      It seems sad to me that we have arrived at a time when the men who truly understood and knew the ways of the wild are old men, or long passed away.  Most of what they knew, we are losing.  But this much is true; there are more self-proclaimed experts in the outdoors today than you can shake a stick at.... more pros and champions and authorities than fish in the sea.

      For an outdoor partner, give me someone who doesn’t proclaim himself a pro at anything. Someone who will slowly walk the ridge tops and the valleys from dawn to dusk and be sorry the day has ended.  Give me someone who loves it so much he can't tire of the songs of birds, nor experience enough the sound and smell of rain coming across a still valley…someone who notices the scent post of a fox as he passes, who finds the pellets beneath an owl roost and    knows what they are.  

      Put me in a boat with someone who can paddle down the river so slowly and quietly even the beaver and the mink and the wood ducks are unaware of his presence. Give me a man who leaves nothing but his tracks, and takes only what he uses and wastes nothing.  Give me an outdoorsman who has learned more from experiences beneath a hardwood canopy or along a flowing stream than from books.  Such a man needs no trophies or acclaim.  He seeks the treasures which God bestows on those who walk in wild places men have not yet ruined. 

      When we come to the end of 2025, may there still be such places, and such men.  May the values and convictions of our ancestors still be strong with us.

      I     write too much I   guess, about those days when those old men I knew were young.  Those days when being poor still had its blessings.  Why…when I was a kid, I really did go to the local army salvage store to buy hunting clothes and a variety of items used in my hunting and fishing forays as a youngster.  At the time, I was so poor I had to get used haircuts.  I was so poor that I had a burlap bag for a lunch pail, with a hammer and a handful of walnuts in it.

 

This column comes out weekly... If your newspaper misses a column or two you can read them and dozens more on a BlogSpot called larrydablemontoutdoors.   My website with my books and magazines on it is larrydablemont.com. I    have written 12 books and more than 100 magazines which you can order on that last website. If you want to get in touch with me just email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com

Eagles, and Treasures…

 

Adult parent eagle keep a watch on us and her young

Adult parent eagle teaching it's young how to find food

     Right now in the Ozarks, there are eagles everywhere, and each spring more and more of them nest here. If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you know where eagles nest, and it is very easy to see them. I found a new eagles nest this week, and counted about a dozen different birds, about half of them immature.

Last year we floated a river in early January and found five eagles feeding on the carcass of one deer on a gravel bar. As years go by, they become more and more docile, and now you can easily get within a few yards of eagles along the river in winter, so if there is anyone who wants to photo one, it becomes rather easily.

One fall in Canada, we were feeding smaller yellow perch to an eagle out in the middle of nowhere, and would get to within 15 or 20 feet of her almost everyday we went out. She had two eaglets, both a little bigger than her in that stage of their development, and they were tagging around, waiting for her to give them their share. 

I heard more sounds from those three eagles than I have ever heard from any. The young ones sat in a tree one evening just before dark and whistled almost exactly like quail regrouping before dark after being scattered. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. If I hadn’t seen it and heard it, I would have bet all I had the sound was from bobwhite quail.

I do not worry about the eagle population. They are becoming very numerous, and in ten years there will be even more of them. In time biologists are going to be wondering if some numbers in some areas shouldn’t be controlled. They’ll start becoming a problem for newborn sheep and newborn cattle.

 

 

Another treasure I obtained recently is a little wooden shelf, which obviously was made by a true craftsman. A lady brought it to a book signing and I traded her one of my books for it. I didn’t know who made it. On the back it says, “Early American Craftsmanship by that Crafty Early American, J. F. Keefe”. 

Jim Keefe was one of my heroes when I went to University of Missouri. He was the editor of the Missouri Conservationist, an old time country outdoorsman who loved to hunt with muzzle-loaders. Keefe, with a limited budget, put out a great little black and white magazine that talked and taught real conservation, a far cry from the million-dollar piece of propaganda the MDC puts out today.

 

Mr. Keefe published a couple of my first magazine articles, and I would go to the brand new offices in Jefferson City to talk to him as often as possible, about writing, about hunting, and about conservation. 

 

I won’t be somewhere on New Years Eve blowing a horn and drinking that stuff that comes from France, acting like I can’t wait to see a New Year come. I hate losing the old one. Every time the calendar gets a new number, there are fewer days to enjoy the woods and the waters and fewer opportunities to learn more about the perfection of God’s creation. 

But I might take a little walk out in the woods behind my house on the last night of 2025 and see if I can hear a coyote or a great horned owl. I’ll be asleep at midnight and greet the New Year the next morning with hopes of finding some good duck-hunting soon.

I won’t wish you a prosperous new year; I wish you peace, and contentment and good health. Those things can indeed be found without the wealth men are intent on today. It is part of the little treasures God grants to those who are happy with what they are, and the blessings they are given.

I came across a valuable piece of history this past week when I bought a little book entitled, “Hillbilly Humor” by Jim Owens, the man who got float-fishing started on the White River and became famous because of it. I was pleasantly surprised to find it autographed by Jim Owens. Again, it might be worth more than I sell any of my own books for. To me it is a treasure.

Remember that on Saturday December 20 I will be giving away a book entitled, “Dogs, Ducks and Hayrack Bucks” to kids at my Big Piney nature center a mile south of Houston Mo. on highway 63.  The address is1640 S. Hwy 63.  We’ll have a big sale that day with lots of outdoor gear and art for sale.  For more information call my office… 417 777 5227.

 

 

 

 

Larry Dablemont  column  12-8-25

 

The Wind and the Oaks

 

The opening of the doe season was only a few hours away and the wind was blowing through the oaks up here on Lightnin’ Ridge. “Shucks” I thought to myself, “There won’t be a leaf left on my oak trees!”  

I am sensitive about such things.  I had watched those oak leaves bud out on the big white oak beside my back porch, only a few months ago. First there were the tassels hanging down, shedding a yellow-green pollen all over my porch, a thick dusting of it that caused me to sneeze.  

How wonderful spring was, if I can remember right. But finally those squirrel-ear-sized leaves began to pop out and it was easy to see summer was on its way.  In no time, they were fully formed and bright green and it was great to sleep at night with the windows open and hear the rain dripping through that thick canopy. 

In September, I abruptly awakened to the sound of acorns bouncing off my roof.  I smiled to myself knowing that those first acorns meant the bass would be smashing buzz-baits and topwater lures on the river. In no time, you could hardly sleep at night for the sound of bouncing acorns off the roof. It was one of those Octobers where you had to sweep the porch every couple of hours.   

October flew past, the sun began to set earlier and earlier, and those beautiful green leaves began to turn, and yellow, and gold and red and finally, brown.  In the last days of that wonderful month, I began to sweep some leaves off the porch as well as acorns. 

Ten or fifteen years ago I would have likely shot a doe during this season because I like to eat venison. For some reason, it is harder to want to now that rocks beneath the oaks are harder to sit on. And my camera is lighter than my rifle.  I can now gaze through the woodlands before me, at squirrels busily gathering the acorns they so willingly ignored when hickory nuts were plentiful, and I can see, in my minds eye, the first skiff of snow, and hear some distant church bells ringing out a Christmas carol, as deer season is forgotten.

I can feel the cold mornings of January, and see falling snow that gets deep enough to make for good photos and good rabbit hunting.  Even beyond that, I gaze into the future and imagine the coming of longer, warmer days and those first oak stamens which will make me sneeze in April, just when some long-bearded, gobbling tom is easing through the woods, scratching at old dead leaves which were bright green a few months ago.  What a picture I will get then, as  I  lean up against a big oak tree.

It feels good to be in the woods, no matter the season and no matter the reason, waiting and listening and thinking. There will be many more oak trees to sit against, I hope. I think I’ll keep bringing that old camouflaged boat cushion with me to soften the rocks.  Make no mistake about it, it will not soften me any!  And make no mistake about it, I’ll get that hat-rack buck yet, with my camera, sometime before all of today’s oak leaves are blown away and decay. I’ll get him and some of his sons with my camera.  Maybe.  If there’s a soft spot against a big oak, and a layer of leaves to cushion the rocks…

 

      I made a big mistake in the article I wrote about our Christmas event coming up soon.  I said it was Saturday the 22^ndof December when it is actually Saturday the 20^th from 9 to 3.  On that date we will have a big sale of lots of   art and other items and I am going to be giving away one of my outdoor books to children who like to read.  A neighbor of mine has given me some beautiful big wooden bowls to sell as Christmas gifts and they are sold for high prices in gift shops at various places in the Ozarks. At our event they will go for fifty percent of original costs.  There will be lots of tackle boxes, fishing rods and reels and likely 200 or more fishing lures, plus a portable depth finder that is brand new.  If you have an office or den you would like to add some color to, there are several large framed pictures of wildlife for sale, done by world renowned artists, and  a beautiful mounted deer head as well.   The address  is 1640 South Highway 63 at Houston Mo. Hope to see you there! Come by and get a free Christmas magazine.  See my websites… larrydablemont.com and larrydablemontoutdoors.com

The address is  P.O. Box 22, Bolivar, mo 65613 and the  email address is lightninridge47@gmail.com

 

 

 

A Christmas Event

          

The fire had burned down in the fireplace, and it was a trifle warm, so I stepped out on the back porch to feel the coolness of the oncoming winter, looking down on the dark river valley. The moon was faint, shining through the clouds and it was so still you could have heard a coon cough. Down in the timber below I could hear an old hound on the trail of something. Its deep baying was mournful, and beautiful in the still night. 

It made me wish I was sitting on a gravel bar somewhere, before a roaring fire, with a few of those old-time coon or fox hunters who would rather listen to the baying of distant hounds than listen to the music of the finest choirs or orchestras.

Oh I know that if you have never heard it, you can’t imagine it, or appreciate it, but baying hounds in the night are a kind of music you can become addicted to. I have never owned a coonhound or foxhound, but my dad and uncles had some and I cannot forget what a sound it is when they are trailing something through the hills of the Ozarks. Every man knows the sound of his own hound, no matter how large the pack. 

Hearing that one made me feel something so nostalgic and fine that I didn’t want to leave. In time, he faded off into the darkness way off to the west, and I wished I could have followed. Ozark houndsmen are the last of a breed of real outdoorsmen. 

 

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         If you have a youngster between the ages of 9 and 15 who likes to read I    have a free book for them. The name of it is  ‘Dogs, Ducks and Hatrack Bucks’.  It is a book of short stories about the Ozarks outdoors which I wrote several years ago. I will be signing that book to boys and girls who might   like one for Christmas.  It sells for 15 dollars but on Saturday December 20 it is free and I will sign it to your youngster for a Christmas gift.  You can pick one up between 9 and 3 o’clock that day at my Big Piney nature center… 6410 South Highway 63, about one mile south of Houston, Mo. Despite some health setbacks I am going to work to put up displays about the river and I’m looking for volunteers who want to help with that.  I actually hope too open it to the   public three days a week next spring.  

         Back in September we had an open house with all kinds of stuff for sale hoping to raise some money. Lots of folks came, but a heavy rain hit about noon, which ended the whole day.  So now I have a roomful of good items for Christmas gifts, which   includes fishing lures, rods and reels and carved duck decoys.  There are also several valuable framed wildlife paintings and other art.  You just might find something special for a Christmas gift.  I will have all twelve of my books there, selling for a 4-dollar discount, and some antique magazines.  My new Christmas magazine will be there too, on sale for 5 dollars.

         If I can get them there I will sell a really nice NuCanoe kayak and a 19-foot square-stern Grumman canoe as well as a 20-foot boat trailer.  All proceeds will go toward finishing the nature center for next spring.  If you would like more information, call me at 417 777 5227 or email me at lightninridge47@gmailcom. You can read past and future columns on the Internet at larrydablemontoutdoors and see all my books and magazines at www.larrydablemont.com.

 

 

Don’t Be Fooled

 

         Deer hunters need to know that some conservation agents come to the homes of those who telecheck large antlered deer and ask to see the place where their deer was killed. If a hunter complies they will be cited for some technical offense or charged with baiting even if no baiting has been done.  Always, 100 percent of the time, if you take an agent to the place you killed a deer, you will be charged with some type of offense! Always, 100 percent of the time, it will involve a large antlered deer that will be   confiscated.  It happened to me a few years back.  Two agents stood on my porch for a half hour questioning me about a buck I killed. I eventually closed the door on them and they left.

         Often bait is found at such a site that comes from the uniform pocket of the agent!   They will only do this if the antlers are large enough to warrant being confiscated.  If you have an agent come to your door do not let them in, and DO NOT take them where you killed a buck or cleaned it unless they present you with a signed search warrant. 

         I now have forms which have been given to me by the Department’s Chief of Enforcement with which you can file a complaint against an agent or agents who violates your rights or tries to coerce you to reveal where you hunt or who asks you to allow inspection of your property without that search warrant.  If you want to fill out a complaint, which can be filed with the MDC and kept secret or made public, notify me. I will fill it for you, use it in my column and protect your identity.

 

         A local taxidermist says that a woman conservation agent spends lots of time in his shop trying to find a reason she can confiscate deer heads and antlers brought to him.  He says she ought to spend as much time in the field as she does in his shop.  I once wrote that hunters might consider checking an unusually large set of antlers as smaller than they really are so that they will not be the object of an agent’s attention.  Now she goes into taxidermy shops and tries to find antlers that are in any way different or smaller than reported. She can and does take hunters deer heads or antlers from a taxidermist’s shop with no ones approval but her own.  It isn’t right, but a hunter who loses his deer head that way has no choice but to pay a fine and lose a legally taken deer head if he cannot afford a lawyer.

         As an example… a taxidermist tells me that a deer head was brought to his shop by an agent who declared it to be illegally taken.   He said he wanted it mounted for educational use in an MDC office.  Instead, he hung the mounted head, paid for by the   Department of Conservation, in his own home.   If there are those who think I am making this up, I can tell you the name of the    agent and of the taxidermist.

          What they call “Sunshine Laws” don’t apply to the MDC.  Agents who violate laws or are proved to be in violation of MDC policy are never publically named, and some have even been promoted. The MDC paid out a million dollars years back because two agents violated the laws and illegally searched a home. They were never disciplined.

         I am told no one in the MDC can comment on “Personnel Related Matters”.  I can name illegal acts and violations by individual agents that they were never questioned about.  It is beyond belief.  Are they so powerful that they can never be questioned or investigated?  This 18-million dollar construction boondoggle, that has destroyed for good a fantastic wildlife area named Schell-Osage, likely involves the violation of state laws and certainly has allowed for tens of thousands of dollars in interest going into powerful individual’s pockets, both in and out of the MDC.  But it can never be investigated by anyone.  In time cost over-runs will amount to several million dollars more than the 18 million supposedly given to someone who will never finish the project, and it is likely that waterfowl will never come there in appreciable numbers again.

         Newspapers and television stations tell me that they can be closed down by reporting on the MDC because the powerful agency can shut off much of their advertising other funds that they depend on.  If you doubt that I can give you the name and station manager of the news media station, which told me, and I quote… “The department is awfully upset that we had you on the air last week…they give us an awful lot of money to control what is said about them!” When a state agency controls what newspapers and televisions can report, that is full-scale corruption.

 

I had an interview in Jefferson City a month ago with director of the MDC, Jason Sumner and the enforcement chief, Travis McClain.  In a future column I will write about what is going to come from that meeting that may be a big benefit for Ozark rivers and those who own land along Ozark rivers.