The Stealing of a Jug - MDC

 

THERE WAS A  TIME WHEN CONSERVATION OFFICERS WERE A DIFFERENT BREED

       Charlie Curran, the eighty-eight year old Big Piney river-guide whom I wrote about recently, made a trip over to the Osceola area of Truman Lake with a friend, to fish for catfish.  He took with him twenty jugs, each with his name, address and phone number on them as the law requires. Early that morning he baited the hooks from each and set them out in a large area where he could watch them   all.  About mid-morning he saw a boat come in close to the outer ring of jugs and pick one up, leaving with it.  About mid-afternoon Charlie and his friend picked up the 19 jugs that were left and though they looked for the 20^th one it was gone for good. Charlie figured it had been taken by a fisherman who was in that boat.  It wasn’t a fisherman!

       Two weeks later Charlie got a letter from a Truman Lake game warden charging him with leaving a jug on the lake.  The ticket enclosed said the offense had taken place at 9:45 that morning, about the same time Charlie had seen the boat circling his fishing area.  Charlie called the agent who tried to justify what he had done by, saying the jug had been there for days because it had algae scum on it.  All of Charlie’s jugs are like that because he has used them often on Lake of the Ozarks and Truman Lake as well.

        Friends who fish on Truman say the game warden does that often when the address on the jug makes it unlikely that the fisherman will come back to fight the phony charge in court.

       “People in Osceola do not speak very highly of him and I would have liked to fight that ticket,” Charlie told me. “But I couldn’t drive four hours just for the seventy-five dollars I might save.” 

       With the judge there in that county, Charlie would have wasted his time. That judge once put me in jail for stealing a gate I never saw.  I will soon publish a book about that experience entitled “The Justice of St. Clair County.”  I did some investigating and found out the MDC has built the judge a duck hunting marsh. What I uncovered about the MDC working with judges there is unbelievable.        

        Apparently the game warden has an easy work situation on Truman.  Looks like he is a real enforcement officer when he can write lots of tickets to innocent people that way with no confrontation. He can just mail them! 

       I myself had a run-in with that game warden years back. I had come across a buck deer on Truman that was hung in a barbed-wire fence with both back legs broken.  A Corps of Engineers Ranger and I was hunting ducks and I couldn’t stand to see the deer suffer so I killed him to put him out of his misery. Against my hunting partners advice I motored back to my pickup and drove into Osceola and called the agent to tell him where the deer was so the meat could be put to use. 

       He told me he wanted to write me a citation for what I had done, so therefore I needed to come to meet him.  Some rather salty language took place from both of us. I hung up on him and went home that night to clean ducks, and I am sure he never went to find the deer.  But knowing he wanted me to let the deer suffer told me something about him.  What he did to Charlie tells me more about him.  It is a shame because before him, back in the 1980’s that area had one of the best game wardens anyone could ask for.

       In this day and time the MDC has many really bad agents. Some have broken the law and some have violated citizen’s rights.  I can back that up with evidence and facts. But when I was young and the game wardens worked for the MO Conservation Commission, (MCC not MDC) I knew and idolized many of them.  In next weeks column I will talk about some of those wardens and the great things they did when real game violators were dealt with rather than innocent and vulnerable people.

 Don’t forget the big sale and the opening of my Big Piney Museum on Saturday June 28.  Contact me for information at lightninridge47@gmail.comor P.O. Box 22, Bolivar, Mo   65613. Or call my office at 417 777 5227.

Summer Hunting

 

         I was walking along a wooded ridge top trail years ago when a young fox squirrel fell from a limb above me and landed with a thud not more than ten feet from my boots.  He didn't waste any time leaving but he would have been a goner if I had wanted to shoot him.  I just couldn't do it.  The little rascal had hidden in that treetop well enough to keep me from seeing him, but his curiosity had caused him to lose his balance and his dignity at the same time. As I walked on down the trail he sat on the limb of a nearby oak and barked at me.  In my younger years I would have been less forgiving of that kind of insolence and he would have ended up in a potful of dumplings.

             I learned a great deal about hunting when I was a kid, chasing squirrels in the summer. If you grew up in the rural Midwest chances are good you too learned to hunt by searching the branches of an oak-hickory woodlot or creek bottom for squirrels. Bushytails are efficient teachers.  And in the summer, when leaves are thick on the branches, squirrels have little trouble finding a place to hide. 

 

            There are several methods of squirrel hunting that work all over the Ozarks.  The first one of course is 'still-hunting'. When I was a youngster I'd take my old Iver Johnson shotgun down to the Tweed bottoms just off the Big Piney River and walk an old wagon trail where gray squirrels were abundant.  Occasionally I'd spot one by moving slowly along but when I'd reach a certain spot on a rocky hillside I'd find a big flat boulder and sit still enough to be taken for a part of the rock.  Within 10 minutes, gray squirrels would forget there was an intruder and begin moving about.  When one presented a good shot within 30 yards or so, the old shotgun would roar and the forest would be still again. 

    I learned if you stayed put, marking your downed quarry, that in 10 or 15 minutes things would return to normal again and squirrels would begin to scurry about. A still hunter could sometimes take three or four squirrels in less than an hour from one spot.  

   And then I learned that two hunters could effectively find squirrels if one hunter became the eyes and the other became the feet.  Hunter number one moves slowly along, watching the branches as best he can but traveling quietly and slowly.  Usually he won't see squirrels that have already seen him. When he's well down the trail he stops and waits and hunter number two advances in the same manner moving on well past his partner to take a new position. 

            Squirrels react to a moving hunter by moving around the tree, well concealed by the trunk or branches.  And while they are concentrating on the moving hunter they expose themselves to the waiting hunter who is still, and watching. 

          If you like to mix fishing with your squirrel hunting, a floatable stream is a good place to be in the summer when squirrels concentrate along stream bottoms.  If you float, you'll see plenty of them along the bank and in the trees along waterways. If you can paddle quietly you can stalk these river squirrels with a boat.  If you can't paddle you may not do so well.

             Today, I like to hunt squirrels with a .22 rifle but only in areas where I know there aren't farms or livestock nearby.   Where there are large blocks of timberland or a stream flowing through National forest, it's a challenge to hunt squirrels with the small bore rifle, but always think of where that bullet may travel.  The gun made just for the squirrel hunter is the combination  .22-.410 or .22-20 gauge.  I love the old Stevens over-and-under combo with a selector button giving the hunter a choice of rifle or shotgun barrel.  With such a firearm sitting squirrels can be taken with a .22 and head-shots insure undamaged meat for the skillet.  But the shotgun barrel is always there when needed.

             Whatever you hunt squirrels with you probably will hunt with little competition because there aren't many squirrel hunters left in this day and time, especially in the summer when it is hot.  But what hunter ever complained about being out there alone in the woods?

 

The Big Piney museum and nature center is on the east side of highway 63 two miles south of Houston Mo.  The address is 6410 south highway 63.  It is about a half mile to the north of the Souls Harbor church at the top of the hill on hwy 63.  The museum is a work in progress and will be open all day on Saturday, June 28, when we will have a big open house and yard sale to help finance many of the new exhibits we want to put in.  Anyone who wants to help in the project should come on Wednesday and Thursday June 25 and 26 when we will be working to put up various exhibits. A list of sale items can be sent to whoever wants it. Contact me by calling my office, 417 777 5227,  or emailing lightninridge47@gmail.com.

Old Timers and Nature Center News

 

Charlie Curran with goggle-eye

       Charlie Curran was born close to the Big Piney River in 1938 and for 88 years he has stayed close to the Big Piney River.  He lives near Duke, Missouri on the lower third of the river where he fishes regularly for goggle-eyes and bass, sets trotlines for flathead catfish, and rides horses.

       There are no men left who know the river like Charlie knows it.  In 1946 an uncle by the name of Wilford Lee had a pair of St. Louis fishermen he had to take fishing on the Piney, and he knew that his nine year old nephew, Charlie, could paddle a johnboat well enough to take one of them.         He became a Big Piney fishing guide that day and it was an occupation that lasts until today.  Charlie and I went on a float trip last spring and landed a dozen or so goggle-eye and half that many bass. We also found a 100-year-old railroad tie that will someday be in my museum.

       “When I was a boy guiding in the 40’s and 50’s every fisherman used a fly rod and flies.” Charlie told me.  “The casting reels and lures came along after the war, especially in the1950’s.” 

       Charlie dropped by my Big Piney Center and Museum last week and we shared stories about the river and our experiences. He agreed to come back in late June when we have our big sale and meet with people, and tell many of the stories he has about the river and his memories of people from a long ago era. 

       But that’s not all. Charlie is an accomplished wood carver who carves birds from tupelo wood, birds of all species that look like they could fly away. One is a full size pileated woodpecker, another a quail, a cardinal, a wren, a goldfinch and many others.

 

       There will be another remarkable historian there who is in his 80’s.  He is Butch Stone from Arkansas who is a flint knapper.  That means he makes arrowheads from flint stone.  That day he will show you how to do that, which should interest anyone who would like to learn to make their own projectile points.  Butch has made his own primitive weapons for most of his life and has killed deer and wild turkey with his handmade bows and arrows and atlatls.  He is a fascinating maker and user of primitive    weapons plus a great storyteller of the early days in the   Ozarks.  Butch has written magazine articles about his experiences and will have some of those magazines for sale.

       I can’t say enough about Charlie and Butch, who will be there from mid morning until early afternoon.  To get the exact times and a list of for-sale items, contact me and I will mail or email that to you with a map showing how to find us in the woods about two miles south of Houston MO.  Again, the date is Saturday, June 28 from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

       The proceeds of the sale will go to pay for displays in the museum that we have yet too make.  We are wanting to buy a really big, six-foot aquarium to show the fish and aquatic creatures from the river.  I will be there with my books to sign and inscribe and to discount by 30 percent.  I now have 12 books on the outdoors.

       I love to meet people at my Big Piney Center so I am really looking forward to this.  An outdoor writer like me spends most of his time alone on the river or in the woods somewhere, my home is 12 miles from most people.

 

To get a list of what we have for sale on June 28, email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com.  Remember there is no g on the end of lightnin…  OR I have a post office box in town, P.O. box 22, Bolivar, MO 65613. If you call our office at 417-777-5227, I will mail you that information.

The list includes:

-bass boat trailer

-Dodge Dakota extended cab pickup

-fishing lures over 100 for 2 dollars each

-casting rods and reels, spin casting rods an reels Shimano and Ambassadeur brands

-Antique fly rods and fly casting reels

-Antique lures and casting reels, steel rods

-Several hundred 1970’s and 1980’s outdoor magazines

-Several hundred outdoor antique magazines. 1920’s through 1940’s

-Brand new Browning pump shotgun

50 assorted hand tools

-assorted garden tools

-Carved duck decoys-- antiques

-Two eleven-point deer mounts

-Mounted bobcat

-Wildlife art matted and framed

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wylie’s Bear & the MDC

 

         The idea of a bear season in Missouri was to make money for the Department of Conservation. It amounts to that and nothing else. There is no “wildlife management” or “For Nature and You” to it!  To buy a bear tag you first had to get in the drawing and to do that you had to send the MDC ten non-refundable dollars.  During the first year of that drawing about eight thousand very gullible would-be bear-hunters sent in their ten bucks and just like that the MDC made eighty thousand dollars.  

         From those eight thousand applicants, four hundred were selected to buy a bear tag.  Seven thousand and six hundred applicants lost their ten-dollar applicant fee and got nothing for it.  Then the chosen four hundred had to send twenty-five dollars more in order to hunt.  So the MDC got another ten thousand dollars.  Bear season made them a cool 90,000 dollars and there were only going to be eight bears killed.  Chances are good that even though the MDC outlawed bear baiting, that’s exactly how most of them were taken.  Who cares… for 90 grand the MDC would make a tag for mountain lions or tigers or giraffes. They do exactly that to sell a five or six elk tags each fall.  It’s the economy stupid!  Make money and to heck with anything else.

         In a state, where there are a few hundred bears that have filtered in from Arkansas, we can surely sacrifice eight or ten. Last bear season there were a few more taken.  This season there will surely be another eight or ten killed.   So the MDC tells folks they figure we have about twelve hundred bears in the Ozarks, which is double what are really here.  It’s a good practice; fool those gullible neophytes and the few bears killed won’t be missed. For that kind of money who cares if they all are killed.  Who will miss them?  Ninety thousand dollars for a handful of bears!  Lets do this every year!  In ten years or so, the MDC can make nearly a million dollars and probably not lose a hundred bears total.

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         Twelve-year-old Wylie Williams sent in his 25 dollars in 2021 and got a bear tag, one of the 400 issued.  His family owns land next to the National Forest and Wylie and his dad didn’t have to bait for bears.  There is a marker tree there on the Williams property where a big male bear came to scratch his dominance over all other bears and Wylie waited there successfully.  The male he killed was the largest one killed that year.

      When the Powers That-Be found out how big Wylie’s bear was, they sent some agents there to investigate.   But it was too late when they did try to find any bait, so they just assumed it had been there and they wrote a ticket anyway.  

      Wylie’s father said they came to him like old friends, wanting to know where the bear hide was.  He wouldn’t tell them.  So they said since they were buddies if he would tell them where the hide could be found they would make the fine a lot less money.  They made the ticket out for littering and Mr. Williams told them the hide was at a taxidermists shop.  That’s all they needed to know.  They went to that taxidermist and confiscated it.

      Wylie will never see it again.  The MDC wanted it because it is worth a couple thousand dollars or more.  My bet is it will wind up in one of Johnny Morris’s Bass Pro Shops or with a very rich friend of one of the Commissioners.  The best lawyers in the country can never find out where it is or how much money the full mount will bring.

If Wylie's family had refused to talk to the agents, they would still have the bearskin.  Let that be a lesson to all. Never ever cooperate with an agent, never let them in your home and never talk to one of them.   That is the only protection you have, to keep a deer head, a bear hide or a firearm they might want.

The MDC is a corrupt organization, a Missouri mafia that is indeed above the law.

       Their control of the media makes it impossible for this column to be printed in many newspapers or made known through radio and television stations. The director of radio station KWTO in Springfield told me…and I quote…”They pay us a lot of money to keep criticism of them off the air!”

The Storm at Squire Lee's. Part 2

 

         At the end of the last column, brothers Roy Wayne and Tom Morton and I were sitting in a cave above the river praying the raging thunderstorm would end soon.  I remember Chinese philosopher Confuseius saying, “It is better to sit in a cave and watch the storm than to sit in the storm and look for a cave.”  Anyway I think it was him who said that!

         We had seined up a good batch of live bait but thank goodness we had not tied out the trotlines yet.  If we had, a rising river would likely have taken them that night.  It was chilly in the cave because we were so wet and I was still vibrating slightly from the effect of the lightnin’ bolt which struck the barbwire fence I was straddling minutes before.

         An hour later the sun was shining and the three of us were dipping rainwater from the boat, warmed up and enthused again.  We paddled up the river against a rising current to our camp a half hour away.  Thankfully our old bedraggled mattress, covered with the canvas tarp, was still dry, but nothing else was.  With the river rising I didn’t option for setting out trotlines.  We got out our fishing rods and dug some night crawlers and began to catch rock bass and yellow suckers out of the dinghy-colored current before our camp.  At dark we built a nice fire to light up the hot, humid evening, conditions that spelled “a storm is coming” in capital letters.

         We had thrown the wet bread into the river and had strung some goggle-eye and suckers when I heard the first thunder rumbling in the distance. About an hour later the tornado siren began to blow in Houston about six or seven miles to the southwest and I began to panic.  The course of action seemed clear.  Preservation!! Ten minutes later, I had the old pickup parked in front of Squire Lee’s house, pounding on his door.  The storm was close, but Squire Lee, in his nightshirt and cap, came to the door with a kerosene lamp, aroused from his sleep.  He did indeed have a cellar but he said it was awful dirty and might be the home for spiders and snakes. I didn’t say anything but I would curl up fairly close to a copperhead rather than be blown away by a tornado.  Mr. Lee said to just drive the pickup into his open pole barn, built so solidly it would resist the winds of a hurricane. We did exactly that.  

         The damp mattress was comfortable for Roy Wayne, who slept like a baby, but there wasn’t much room on it for Tom and I, who spent much of the night biting our fingernails and praying.  The sirens stopped in a little while but the storm didn’t.  Best thing is, we stayed dry and somewhat confident that the well-built pole barn would at least weather a high wind if not a tornado. Rain pelted down in buckets.

         The day dawned still and foggy but in time the sun shined brightly through and an hour before noon, I and the Morton brothers joined our parents in church, a bit more attentive and repentive than we had been through past sermons.

         And this too is the truth… a year later as a  17-year-old student at School of the Ozarks College, I had my first date, a girl back home who I went home to see in mid-summer. We went to a movie. But a couple weeks later, on a beautiful Saturday in June, I took her down to the Ginseng eddy on the Big Piney to set a trotline.  I even have a picture of the two of us there in an old Johnboat baiting up the line. That particular afternoon I have no idea where the Morton Brothers were.

 

The above story is an excerpt from the yet unpublished book, “The Life and Times of   the Pool Hall Kid”.  To see a dozen of my other books and back issues of my magazine, go to the website, larrydablemont.com.  

The Storm at Squire Lee’s --PART 1

 

The deep dark waters of the bell rock eddy awaited us as an afternoon storm warned us away.

       Squire Lee was an old country gentleman who lived on a sloping hillside above the river. His home was not far from the little cabin where my dad spent much of his childhood. In the river below his old two-story home was a deep eddy with a giant rock sticking out of it. Dad and I always had permission to drive through Mr. Lee’s land to fish there. Some 20 to 40 pound flathead catfish had been taken from the river around the big rock.

       In May of 1964 I had turned 16 years old and could drive my dad’s old 1950 pickup.  So one Saturday in May of ’64 I, and brothers Tom and Roy Wayne Morton, cooked up a trotlining trip.   We had a canvas tarpaulin that would cover the rack on the pickup and I found an old mattress in Grandpa McNew’s barn.  We could sleep periodically in the bed of the truck while running trotlines during the night.  So we put the mattress in first, then the johnboat, and then loaded gear and groceries and headed for the river to yank out some of those flathead catfish.

       The Morton brothers and I seldom got too skip church on Sunday unless it was for fishing. Proclaiming sickness didn’t always work. So we were awfully happy that Saturday morning bouncing toward the river in that old pickup with the sun shining brightly and birds singing from the roadsides.  Most 16-year-old boys back then were looking forward to taking a girl to the movies on Saturday night but not me. I was addicted to the river!  Not only that, I wasn’t blessed with the finances for such a Saturday night, nor was I blessed with the looks to convince a girl too go with me to the movies even if I found a free one!

We drove down past squire Lees big old two-story home to the river bottom where we unloaded the boat beneath a big old sycamore and set up camp.  

       We had ourselves a baloney sandwich with an RC Cola and some chocolate cupcakes and then loaded the trotline gear to head downriver.

 

 

       

The first rumble of thunder came while we were seining minnows about 500 yards downstream from the pickup two hours later. Just after that, the darkening skies told me to retreat to the big cave above the river nearby. Flashes of lightning to the southwest began to worry me. We pulled the old johnboat way up on the bank and tied it, and I headed up the slope behind Tom and Roy Wayne. Halfway there I encountered an old barbwire fence and straddled it in my wet swimsuit and wet shoes. Just then a bolt of lightning streaked down upstream from where we were and I felt numb all over as I tried to get myself up off the ground.  I realized that I had been the victim of a lightning strike and I realized that while I was hurting everywhere… I wasn’t dead!

       I had remembered Ol’ Bill and Ol’ Jess at the pool hall talking about how a lightning bolt didn’t always kill a feller and that in the aftermath of such a calamity, folks who lived was sometimes reduced to being not as smart as they were or much smarter than they had been.

       I am not sure that a kid who would reach out and grab a fence in a lightnin’ storm could get much dumber.  The proof that I was smarter could be seen in the rapidness with which I gained the awaiting cave shelter, where I quickly started going over algebraic equations I never thought I would remember.  And another thing I remember is that my long hair from that time had lifted my cap up an inch or two above my forehead.

       So there we were a good quarter mile below our camp at Squire Lee’s home in a raging storm about midway through what had been a great Saturday afternoon.  Decisions had to be made.  Thankfully we had covered our mattress with the tarp so it should remain dry, as well as our quilts, stored in garbage bags.   BUT… if the river rose ten feet it would reach the back of the pickup and all our breakfast eggs and baloney and Little Debbie cupcakes would be washed down the river.  I was more worried about that truck of dads.  If it got washed down the river, I would just as well go with it. 

       On the bravery side I could leave Tom and Roy Wayne and get in the boat and paddle upriver against the rising current in that storm, dodging broken limbs and lightning bolts and move the pickup, if it wasn’t stuck in the mud.  On the not-so-brave-but-smarter side I could stay in the safety of the dry secure cave.  Would my as yet unseen bravery come through or would I use the increased intelligence that lightning bolt had given me and stay put.

In next weeks column you can read the exciting conclusion to this true account of the storm on the river.

The Toughest Fish

 

I figure the toughest little fish in the Midwest, and the Ozarks, is the green sunfish.  You might know him as the black perch.  He can get over a pound in size, and I remember catching them 8 or 10 inches long.  They survive everywhere… in the muddiest, smallest farm ponds, creeks and rivers of any size and huge reservoirs. They can live in low oxygen waters and reproduce in almost any kind of marsh, pond or creek.

The scrappy little fish has a mouth unusual for a sunfish, because it is large, like a bass’s mouth.  When they get 6 or 8 inches long, they can tackle a surface lure as big as they are or a huge spinner-bait. When school is out and folks want to take kids fishing, the green sunfish is the fish for that job. They are easy to catch and plentiful. 

I like to go to a local Ozark lake and set a couple of trotlines, then take youngsters and move along the rocky, shallow banks with my trolling motor, letting them learn to cast a spinning outfit with 4-pound line.  In one afternoon, they can learn to cast well. Close to those banks from May through September, you will find scores of those black perch (that name sounds better to a youngster who is learning to fish).  

Use a hook with a small split shot about 1/16^th or 1/8 ounce, and put a small plastic grub or a worm on it, and when it hits the water within two or three feet of that bank, a sunfish of some kind is likely to jump on it.  Keep them all-- it makes kids happy.  They hate to catch a fish and throw it back.  Put them in a live well or fish basket and use them to bait your trotlines or jug lines with, and you might wind up with a big flathead catfish.  Flathead seldom hit dead bait or cut bait…and they absolutely love green sunfish. So do channel cat and blues.  A bait shop not far from me makes a lot of money selling black perch for trotline or limb-line bait. I think they are about five dollars per dozen.

If you take a youngster out catching your own bait some of the fish you catch will be bigger hand-sized green sunfish, and they will really give a youngster with a limber little spinning rod a hard tussle.  I can offer one more word of advice.  You can catch more fish without ever doing any baiting, by using a 1-inch strip of white fly-strip pork-rind, and it lasts for a long time without replacing it.  Green sunfish love it, and every now and then a nice bass will show up from nowhere, to make a kid’s eyes twice their normal size.  Have a net handy.

You might want to keep the larger green sunfish, scale them and gut them, removing the head.  Then boil the fish for a couple of minutes and take them out and separate meat from bones.   Fry the meat left and you can you won’t believe how good they are to eat. 

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I floated a short section of an Ozark River back before the rains came. Once a stream with deep eddies and clear clean water, it is now drying up, and the eddies are filling with silt and gravel.  On the shoals, the rocks were covered with slimy olive green and brown slime that would sometimes wrap around my ankles when I would get out to wade.   Thirty years ago you would never wade those places; they were much deeper and there were a couple of dozen springs flowing along the stream.  Most of those springs are dry now, and it will be a dead river in another 30 years. By that time, I doubt if anyone cares.  It won’t be a world where anyone puts treasure in such things as clean, flowing rivers.

       The day I floated it, there were huge gar ‘shoaling’… the term old timers used for spawning fish coming up into flowing shallow water.  There were dozens and dozens of them, and you could just wade out into some of those shallow shoals where they were congregated and dip them up with a net, many more than more than forty inches long.  On that day, with a bow you could have easily killed a hundred or so gar just by wading.  But though there are some recipes for gar, and a few old fishermen who say they are good to eat, they have a hide with hardened scales like armor, and it is a job to skin one.  They are such a repulsive fish I have a hard time thinking I would eat one if I could get anything else.

If you like to read about fish and fishing, I think you would enjoy my book, “Recollections of an Old-Fashioned Angler.    You can see it on my website www.larrydablemont.com