Don’t Hunt Fall Turkeys

 

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

 

The Low-Down on Doves

 

Did you know that a mourning dove has 2,635 feathers? I found that statistic in a book written by John Madson, entitled “The Mourning Dove”. Madson is gone now, but he was a top-notch outdoor writer, on of the old-timers who actually grew up in the outdoors, unlike the suburban outdoor writers that dominate the pages of our larger newspapers today. Madson worked for Winchester Arms and Ammunition, and he published several books about wild game birds and animals through Winchester Press..

Madson reveals many fascinating things about the dove. As a writer, I have likely written a hundred newspaper columns and perhaps a dozen magazine articles about dove hunting. It is so simple and so uncomplicated, what can you say about dove hunting that hasn’t been said a million times. You can’t tell a shooter how to hit one. Sometimes early in the season when the younger doves are coming to a feeding spot, or to a water hole, they are so easy to hit it is simpler than catching sunfish on worms. Sometimes, after they have figured out that hunting season is open, they can elude a shot pattern with ease, diving, twisting, and turning. At times it is something like hitting a butterfly with a rock. 

If it has been written once, that dove hunting is a good way to get a youngster the chance to hunt and experience a day outdoors, it has been written a million times. If you have seen, at the beginning of September, a story talking about training a young Labrador to retrieve, and how the heat can be hard on him so you need plenty of water, that too has been said again and again in print by some enthusiastic woods and waters journalist. If you haven’t heard that number seven and one-half or eight shot, light loads is best for doves, you’ve never read a doggone thing about hunting. So what is there to say about dove hunting. Not much. Heck, let me rephrase that… not nothing.

I might point out that hunting in a crowd isn’t my thing, but I have often written that. I have often said that I do not like to hunt in the heat, and there is never an opening day that doesn’t seem hotter than an August manhole cover on main street. What I don’t often say is that two or three weeks later, when it cools down and you can hunt in midweek and find the right spot, you can hunt doves in a long-sleeved shirt and all alone with your dog. But I’ll be darned if I am going to tell anyone where the hunting might be in early October.

Early hunting seasons interfere with some good fishing, and one good catfish equals a whole tubful of doves. Be that as it may, if you think you have indeed read everything there is to know about dove hunting and doves, get your hands on John Madson’s book. It was he who pointed out that in the bird family called Columbidae there are 269 doves and pigeons, two thirds of them on the other side of the world. Doves and pigeons, Madson said in his book, are the only birds that can drink water by suction, with their heads down, never lifting their beaks, as other birds must do.

 Mourning doves nest from southeast Alaska all through Canada, and each of the 48 contiguous states in the U.S. Forty years ago, they were not known to nest in such northern climates. Some never migrate. Some stay where they are all winter, and northern doves often lose toes to the cold. Doves and pigeons feed their young with something called pigeon milk, as most folks know, and as most folks don’t know, the most deadly dove disease, known as trichomoniasis, is a growth of cankers in the mouth and throat, caused by the ingestion of a living protozoan usually picked up in water.

You can learn a great deal more about doves if you can find John Madson’s book. Even the hunting tips we have all heard a million times. But as to how that study turned up 2,635 feathers on one dove, I don’t know. Probably some college kid counted them one at a time and got a thirty thousand dollar grant from a state conservation agency to do it. But I wonder, how would anyone know if he really counted them all or just gave up and guessed at it?

 

Contact me if you are interested in reading one of my books or the new magazine coming out in November.  My address is PO Box 22  Bolivar Mo. 65613. Or there is my office phone, 417 777 5227. The email address is lightninridge47@gmail.com

 Other columns I have written and my outdoor photos can be found on the computer at larrydablemontoutdoors. 

 

Wylie's Bear Pelt and the MDC

        

 

 

 

 

       I am willing to bet that some  higher echelon  employee of the  Missouri department of conservation will  soon possesses a bear skin today that was killed legally by a thirteen year old boy. Or maybe Johnny Morris will get it. Perhaps it is the director  or  a friend  of the director or maybe a commissioner or a friend of a commissioner.         Someone  will get the pelt of  a  420 pound black bear that was legally taken by young Wylie Willams and no one will ever find out  where it went. The MDC has falsely charged that kid who killed it and legally owns it.  This isn’t unprecedented.  The judge is likely well acquainted with the MDC.   He works  out of Jefferson City.  Would an investigation show he is obliged to the MDC? 

       That has   happened before.  A judge named Kelso was given a gift of 245  thousand dollars by the MDC because he allowed MDC members to hunt on his hunting preserve.  When I found out  about it, they told   me the money was to improve his   property for wildlife.  However they won’t give me anything to improve my property. I am not a judge.

A judge in Oceola had his 400 acres of land along the Sac River made into a magificent private waterfowl marsh with a  mile long levee.  The work was done by employees and heavy equipment  of the MDC. The right people in the MDC hunts there often. You cannot!

        John Hoskins, a past director of the MDC on  the day of his retirement gave 145 thousand dollars to a friend of his who I am told was a lawyer. That is theft of state funds, taxpayer money.  But Hoskins got away with it.  Kelso got away with it and that St. Cllair  county judge got away  with   it.  Your money helped pay for all that.  I am wondering what that honorable judge in Jefferson City got from the MDC to take 13 year old Wylie Williams bear skin away from him. 

                                                                                           ***********UPDATE ************

       The Chief of Enforcement for the  Missouri  Department of Conservation is Travis Mclain, who tells me that the bear hide the department has confiscated from 13-year-old hunter Wylie Williams is in their Jefferson City freezer.  An MDC employee who  gives me a lot of information about what goes on inside the department says Johnny Morris, owner  of Bass Pro Shops and Cabela’s will soon get the hide of that  giant 420 pound  black bear.  

       “He gets a whole lot of what gets confiscated,”  I was told, “who knows how  many deer heads and things, all mounted and ready to put up in his stores.  He got that elk head and hide from the illegally killed elk that was found in Shannon county too!  By now it is hanging in one of  his stores as well.

       A fellow I was talking to not long ago commended Johnny  Morris for giving so much money to the MDC.  It is time for people to know where it comes from. Years ago clerks were told to ask folks to make contributions through Bass Pro Shops to the  Missouri Department of Conservation.  They weren’t getting enough that way so now they ask people to donate to “conservation projects” without  mentioning the MDC.  That’s where Morris gets the money to give to Missouri’s so-called ‘conservation’ department.

       Morris was given two and a half million dollars by the MDC a few years ago…a gift of tax-payer dollars.  This dishonest collection of money by people who have no idea where their bass Pro Shops donation is going is an indication of how Morris and the MDC are tied together.  Each year when the MDC gives out 4 or 5 elk tags by drawing to  people who pay for their privilege to hunt one of the tame elk at and around the Peck Ranch  wildlife management area, where they try to keep the elk they bought for several millions , Morris gets one of the tags free.  

       They hide it by calling it a free  tag for an adjacent landowner.  Morris’ land borders Peck Ranch  and for years MDC employees worked to make that land a haven for elk. Those employees didn’t like being hands for Morris and two called me to ask me to write about it.  They claim Morris doesn’t use the tag but gives it to lucky friends or associates.  It all needed to be investigated but wasn’t.  meanwhile the elk that we all paid for are  plentiful on Morris’ property.

A Petrified Bass

 

       Several years ago, after a fishing trip to Arkansas’ Bull Shoals Lake, my Uncle Norten, the best fisherman I   ever knew, walked into his favorite morning café with a fish story even his buddies at the Lone Pine Restaurant wouldn’t believe.  He had them looking at each other with winks and nods as he declared that on a fishing trip just a couple of nights before, his nephew had caught a “petrified bass” of better than five pounds.  He wasn’t actually lying; it was just a matter of choosing the wrong word!

We had fished most of the night, and by 7:00 a.m. I was bone tired.  It was daylight, but the submerged lights on either side of the pontoon boat were still burning, and threadfin shad were circling by the thousands, their masses making a slight whirring, rustling sound in the water around us.   The shad nets were so full of shad you could barely lift them out of the water.  We had an ice filled cooler stuffed with walleye and crappie.

       I hooked one of the shad on to a quarter ounce jig-head I had just tied on, and cast it out away from the boat toward the steep rock bank about thirty feet away.  Immediately a fish took it. I set the hook, and the fight was so-so, even though I could see in the clear water that it was a pretty good bass.  In fact it weighed a little better than five pounds by my best estimation, even though it fought like a bass half that size.

       Examining the fish, I could see why.  Apparently it had been injured at one time or another, seriously enough that one side of its body was stiff and inflexible, like it was made from a hard Styrofoam.  I called Norten over to look at it, even though he had just landed a nice walleye and was much more interested in it than my rather ordinary bass.

       And then he too was amazed.  “Never seen nothin’ like it,” he told me.  “That bass is stiff as a board.  Wonder how he swum like that?”

And that’s when I said it…”Yeah, he’s been injured and those muscles on one side have ‘atrophied’.  It’s a wonder he has been able to survive.”

       So he was a little miffed at his card-playing friends at the local restaurant.  If he said we caught a petrified bass, they ought to believe him, he figured.  I bailed him out by coming along a day later and putting an end to the snickers and winks.  Uncle Norten hadn’t exactly lied.  The fish was atrophied, not petrified.  And while they accepted what I said, they weren’t real sure what the difference was either.

             ****************

      NEWS FROM  THE  CHIEF

 

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.  

       If you will get on the Internet and go to larrydablemontoutdoors.com you can see copies of that two-page form.  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 or email to you. You can also email me to get it … www.lightninridge47@gmail.com

 

       I encourage you to also read the story on that website of what the MDC is going to do with the bear hide they confiscated from 13–year-old hunter Wylie Williams. There is a photo of the bear Young Wylie killed legally. Guess where it is going and how much it is worth?  It is an unusual situation because Jefferson City Judge wrote in his decision that Williams did not prove he was innocent. I  didn’t know any  judge anywhere could decide a case because someone couldn’t  prove they were innocent.  Also the agents who accuse him of using bait went to the site days after Wylie had hunted there. They went to the place he killed it days later…on a date that the bait would have been legal.  Because of the power of the MDC and their lawyers, newspapers and other media cannot use this story.  I can, and I have… larrydablemontoutdoors.  Please read it..

 

A Dreams End

 

Deer season was a big thing in the Big Piney country of south-central Missouri where I grew up.  When somebody killed a deer, whether it was a doe or a buck, they brought it to that small town main street, on the open tailgate of a pick-up, or tied across the hood of some old car if the hunter didn’t have a pick-up.

Since my dad and grandpa’s pool hall, where I worked, was right at the middle of Main Street, so I got to see a lot of them.  I learned something when I was only 12 that I wonder if anyone pays attention to at all today.  Somebody was pointing out that the antlers had 5 points on each side, and that meant the deer was five years old.   Later, Old Bill hoorahed the whole notion.  “Ain’t nothin’ to that, boy,” he said.  He might be ten years old and have six points, and he might be three years old and have fifteen points.”

Ol’ Bill Stalder and Ol’ Jim Splechter were my heroes because they were rivermen and outdoorsmen like my grandpa, and they knew more about the outdoors than any men I had ever knew.  Ol’ Bill followed it up by telling me that you could figger an old buck by a lot of things, but the only definite way was by looking at his teeth.

“Yep,” Ol’ Jim said with a laugh… “any old buck is gonna have false teeth, like Bill.”

 

****************************************************

 

 

       All dreams come to an end and my dream of making a Big Piney River nature center and museum have ended.  The center which I have worked on for four years will soon be sold, as I cannot continue to work on it. When the property is sold all donations will be refunded.  There were few donations, less than 600 dollars total and none above 100 dollars.  Land donated will be paid for too. That land purchase has already been partially refunded. Anyone who donated small amounts not listed by the accountant can just tell me and I will return them.   The main cost... well over 100 thousand dollars, was paid for by me.  I received free flooring from a Mt View flooring company that will be refunded also.  

        I've had two knee surgeries recently which were botched and I am nearly crippled by that, then recently I had an MRI which reveals that I have to have back surgery.  Hoping I am going to recover somewhat, but it will not be soon.  So I have to hope someone will take over and do it for me.  I just can't do the work anymore, and cannot find help. 

       The biggest donation was 100 dollars from the late Don Shelhammer, and Joe Richardson helped us get our water line placed.  Few people under 60 expressed any interest in the project and I was surprised by that. In fact I lost 400 dollars to one local carpenter by the name of Jackson.  I loaned it to him as advanced pay and he abandoned the job.   But the best carpenter in the county, Brent Tucker, took over and finished the building at a rate well less than he should have been paid.   I could never thank him enough; but will give him addition payment as well.         Truthfully I don't think any of the present generation sees the Piney River as the wonderful resource I believed it was.  I loved the river and the people I knew when I was young.  But those days are gone, and a museum can’t bring them back. A difficulty with the local police, the county library, and being banned from the Houston Walmart Store because I wrote about some corruptness I saw there, has made me realize my dream of a nature center at Houston was really a silly notion. And too, the degradation of the Big Piney River is much of a disappointment. My plans too move back to what was once my hometown did not come to fruition because of many things. They say you can never go home again. That is true.  But I make this promise... I have taken advantage of no one, and will not.  Just come to me with any complaints or needed refunds.

       It was reported by an editor that I came to this conclusion on the spur of the minute but I have thought it over for months and it is    one of the most difficult things I have ever done. Certainly something I agonized over for weeks. My heart wants to continue but my body prohibits that.  The realtor handling the sale is Patsy Tackett, VIP realtor from Salem, Missouri.  My email is lightninridge47@gmail.com and the office phone is   417 777  5227.

 

 

Fishing Trip on a Hot Day

 

       People expect us outdoor writers to write about catching fish even when it is hot.  So a week ago I took my boat down to the nearby river above the lake and paddled up to where flowing water was coming in.  A favored spot, it was, where I have hauled in some nice bass over the years.  And I know what you are thinking… you are thinking you are about to hear a story about a big largemouth splattering the surface and inhaling a silver-sided topwater Rapala lure as it jiggled along, dodging a stick here and a leaf there, creating a wake in the gentle current.  

       That lure did exactly that for cast after cast as enticingly perfect as I could make it. A perfect duplicate of an injured minnow. In twenty minutes of that there was nothing.   Patient I am not, so I drifted into a big deep eddy where the current swirled and stilled.  I tied on a deep running wiggle-wart, a big one, orange and brown like a crawdad.  In that deep water, you might imagine me writing about the savage strike I expected, as I knew there were smallmouth lurking there.  But no! Not one!  

       Nor was there a savage jolt from walleye that I knew was there.  There were no strikes from even a little one.  Patient, I ain’t!  This was aggravating me to no acceptable level.  I have fished an hour now… no fish, no strikes no hang-ups even!  I am discouraged but not dissatisfied.  After all, I am all by myself on a beautiful stretch of magnificent water as dusk comes.  A bullfrog bellows and a white-tailed eagle leaves it’s perch with flapping wings as I float by.  There is peace here and I am at peace at least. It is   peaceful, placid and perfect! A great blue heron screeches, a barred owl hoots from a distant sycamore limb upstream. 

       Downstream there is the splash of a nice bass around a jumble of logs… or maybe a big turtle fell off a log. But you can’t think that way. I am sure it was a hefty bass. I put on one of my favorite jitterbugs, colored like a leopard frog.  Bass love leopard frogs!  Slowly I move toward the logs in deep water along the mud bank across from the bluff.  The cast was perfect.  The lure came across the still, dark, perfectly placid, peaceful water, bloop, bloop, bloop, bloop.  Then it did it again, ten or twelve more times.  

       You would expect a big slab-sided bass to sweep up from the depths and crash the lure savagely.  I did too.  None did. And so it is getting dark and I have been there two hours.  Patience? I ain’t got none.  It has been a complete failure as a fishing trip… no strikes, no bass, no excuses.  But I am at peace and happy.  Actually I would have been happier with a half dozen bass and just a little less peace.  Maybe more happy.  I reach for my paddle and downstream a coyote howls.  Peace is worth a great deal.  You won’t find that in town.  Patience would be worth a great deal too.  I don’t have any.  Darn heat--darn bass!

 

This outdoor column goes to many different newspapers in three states.  Some of those newspapers only use them on occasion, because some cannot use anything I write that is critical of the Department of Conservation and others don’t always have enough space every week. Everything I write goes on a computer site each week.  You can therefore read every column and see every photo that goes with it on that computer site ---larrydablemontoutdoors. In fact I think maybe a year or more’s worth of columns are on there right now.   If your newspaper does use this column regularly and you enjoy reading it, I like to hear from you, but please let your newspaper know as well.  Another website shows all my books and past magazines. It is www.larrydablemont.com.

 

A Valuable Bear - MDC

 

      Thirteen-year-old Wylie Williams  killed a 420-pound black bear during the 2024 season on his father’s land.  He had paid for all his tags and violated no laws. MDC agents came to the site two weeks after bear season opened and claimed they found bait there. Therefore they confiscated the bear’s pelt. If indeed they did come to the site after the hunting season, then indeed the bait they may have found was legal. 

      BAIT IS ONLY ILLLEGAL DURING THE SEASON AND THE AGENTS WERE NOT THERE DURING THE OPEN SEASON.  THEY DIDN’T FIND ANYTHING DURING THE OPEN SEASON.  THEY WERE    NEVER THERE THEN!

 

      Lyndell Williams, Wylie’s father told me this… “We had baited the area legally in the months before, mostly with old bread and donuts, but very little corn. Two weeks before the season opened we removed all the bait we could as the law says to do. After the bear hunting season was over, agents came and found what one told me was ‘less than 20 grains of corn in the dirt’, even some that had germinated.  We had removed all we could with a rake and shovel.  Just those few kernels were all that were left.”

     An Arkansas bear hunter who has killed 16 black bears over bait, which is legal there, told me this… “We use popcorn and you would need a bulldozer to remove it all before the season.  It is scattered everywhere and buried in the packed ground!”

      If Wylie had killed a 200-pound bear he would be in the clear.  A 200-pound bear’s hide isn’t worth much, but a 420-pound bears hide is.  Therefore Wylie and his dad were in trouble.  The MDC wanted that bear skin!  So after the season ended they came after it.  It was confiscated from a taxidermists shop.

      It cost Mr. Williams 30-thousand dollars to go to court to try to get it back and they made him go to Jefferson City court to contest it,  rather than Christian County where the bear was killed.  There, his lawyer and the prosecuting attorney got together and decide there wasn’t enough evidence for a wildlife conviction.  His lawyer told him that if he would plead guilty to ‘littering’ and pay 300 dollars he could get the bear skin back for his son.  The attorney lied to him-- what’s new about that! I am wondering what that honorable judge in Jefferson City got from the MDC to take 13-year old Wylie Williams bearskin away from him. I have investigated three occasions when judges have received gifts from the MDC. Western Missouri judge name Kelso got a gift of 245- thousand dollars.

        The Jefferson City judge said the MDC could have the bear hide, so they can sell it for whoever wants to pay for it or give it away as they have done often with confiscated products. In his written judgment the judge indicated the boy and his father did not prove they were innocent.  He wrote, (concerning the  bear skin) that the ‘plaintiff did not prove he acquired it (the bear) in conformity with the law”. 

      That is a quote from the written judgment.  The kid didn’t prove he was innocent from the charge that he had killed the bear over bait!  READ THAT AGAIN… HE NEEDED TO PROVE HE WAS INNOCENT!

        There is a good chance that sometime in the future it Wylie's bear will show up in a Bass Pro Shop somewhere or maybe in Cabela’s.  Many confiscated mounts; especially deer heads have showed up in both.

      I will continue this in another column someday after and if I can interview the agents and the MDC director about this.  In the meantime Lyndel and Wylie Williams want to appeal this decision but he is told it will cost another 30 thousand dollars to do so.  Why? If there is an honest lawyer out there who will help him, his number is 417-840-0453. Williams says he has heard of something called ‘gofundme’ on the Internet to help raise money for a good cause but knows nothing about how to do it. Whoever feels they can help with this appeal or set up that ‘gofundme’ site for him, should call him.

 

An add to this column.. the MDC gained more than 8,000 dollars from hunters applying for the 400 tags sold eventually that first year. The eight bears killed (likely all killed over bait) in the weeklong season was a heck of an idea for an agency whose only goal is money.  Add to that a couple thousand the boy’s bearskin will surely bring them.