Firewood in Abundance

 

         I went to Bull Shoals Lake last week and you can see the effects of the drought there, as it is lower than I have ever seen it.   The Ozarks of both Missouri and Arkansas need inches of rain badly to fill our lakes and rivers to a level they all need to be.  The Buffalo River is so low that only the lower portion is full enough to float.  On upper sections, nearly three quarters of the river, there are shoals so shallow canoes can’t pass through or over without dragging.  That doesn’t bode well for all the canoe companies there.  Spring rains may fix that but my feeling is that we won’t get the kind of rains in the spring to raise lakes like Bull Shoals or Truman or Norfork.   

         Speaking of Norfork, my spring magazine carries a story by Robert Page Lincoln which was published in 1952 in an outdoor magazine. It is all about the new Norfork Lake, in which he expounds on its wonders as a fishing lake and one which is different than any others as it won’t fill in with silt as all others seem to be doing at that time in the Midwest. Lincoln didn’t like reservoirs because of many factors; chief among them is the fact that they destroyed free-flowing streams.

         When I was a boy there was talk of damming the Big Piney River where I grew up, but the problem seemed to be the hundreds of caves along the river, which would drain any impoundments there.  Right now, the up-river sections of the Piney are so low, even in the spring, that where my dad and I once floated in wooden johnboats, you can’t get down the stream in a kayak.  It is little more than a creek now in the area north of Cabool.  I think the Missouri Department of Conservation could use some of its millions to place a dam there on those headwaters, which could create a 2- or 3- hundred acre lake which would not hurt the stream at all and provide some good fishing for the folks in Cabool, Willow Springs and Mountain Grove.  That portion of the Piney is ruined for good, with not enough water for anything but green sunfish and punkinseeds.           

            Landowners have removed most of the trees, and in places where I remember deep holes with rock bass and smallmouth, there is little more than shallow, gravel-filled little eddies where even crayfish are few.  I would give anything to see a conservation-oriented group get behind the idea of a small dam there.  It wouldn’t put much of a dent in the MDC budget to create a dam, which would have no affect on the lower river.  Most of the upper third of the river that I know like the back of my hand is something of a skeleton of what I remember from the fifties and sixties.

         Down in Arkansas on the watershed of the White River, in a stretch of highway between Mountain View and Calico Rock, there is an ugly scar where a fire has destroyed several hundred acres of National Forestland.  Enough standing dead timber there would fill the stoves and fireplaces of thousands of Ozark homes if the National Forest Service would get behind a project to allow woodcutters from all over the Ozarks to come in and cut trailer loads of the dead oak and hickory and pine trees that will soon fall and rot. Right now it is illegal to go into that blighted area and cut firewood.  

         We are a nation of great waste and it tells you a lot about the Forest Service, willing to see so much wood going to waste when it would be so simple to build a road or two into the dead areas and invite woodcutters to have at it.  I believe some would come a long way and there is thousands of truck and trailer loads of good firewood there to be harvested and used.  But we are a wasteful nation, and government agencies like the Forest Service and even the National Park Service, that I once worked for, are bound up in regulations that prevent common sense approaches and solutions inside their boundaries.  But anyway, there is enough wood there in that burned wasteland to make a woodcutter rich. Maybe if someone were to contact the Forest Service there could be a way by filling out the right forms, to go in and cut some of it.

 

Don’t forget that I write columns each week for my websites.  See larrydablemontoutdoors and larrydablemont.com. My email address is lightninridge47@gmail.com.

My magazine, The Lightnin’ Ridge Journal, spring issue, will come out in late March. If you want to get a copy you should email me or call my office at 417 -777-5227 for details in getting a copy. The cost is $8.50.

Eat More Rabbits -- & bear seizure by MDC

 

    By the time you read this, the snow will likely be gone, and I will have eaten the last fried rabbit of the winter. If you don’t eat a fried rabbit or two each winter, you aren’t living right. There were so many of them when I was a kid, and from December until February, rabbits and quail kept many a farm family well fed. Eating rabbits makes you sharp-eyed and hones your reflexes. Rabbit meat makes you more resistant to the cold, and it makes your legs stronger. We were watching a college basketball game the other day and you could tell that those players descended from rabbit hunting families. If you see really short-legged people who can’t take the cold it is because they haven’t hunted rabbits enough. 

    I can’t see as well as I once could, and can’t walk nearly as fast or as far, and my reflexes aren’t as good. I blame that on the fact that each year I hunt and eat fewer rabbits. Correspondingly, I think eating more fish, as I seem to be doing as I get older, gives a person arthritic elbows and sore shoulders. The fish I catch are awfully big! I have noticed something about my fishing buddies… the more they fish, they more they stretch the truth. I think eating fish causes that too but it hasn’t happened to me yet.

    Up here on Lightnin’ Ridge, where I live, there is a little rough-edged road coming up to my house. As I drive up that little rocky hill, I have a garden off to the left of the drive, about the only open place on this whole oak-hickory ridge-top. At night this time of year, especially when there’s some snow, I often see four or five cottontails cavorting and playing around my garden, getting ready for the mating season. In the moonlight, I sometimes watch them running and jumping over one another. That isn’t necessarily because they know they’ll be eating my green beans in a few months. That leap-frogging is a mating ritual, indicating how close spring must be. 

    There are more rabbits here because of my Labrador, keeping coyotes and foxes and bobcats away from my place. A great horned owl is not so leery, and he quite often roosts in a big oak right beside my office. I lose a rabbit or two to that owl and his mate, and they get some flying squirrels too. But it is the way it is. God created all things, great and small, gentle and fierce, and he sees value in all wild things. That gives me hope, as I use to be a little wild. But not anymore… I have quit howling at the coyotes and shooting at house cats and I haven’t been out running and jumping in the snow in quite a few years. I envy those rabbits!

    On a poetic note… Soon the wicked winter will slide from the budding limbs of redbud and wild plum and fall gently into the warm crevices of March, as blooming forsythia and jonquils herald its welcome demise. Sometimes I get to writing stuff like that and feel like Carl Sandburg! I hope I am right about all that. There are things I can’t figure out, and some of them are important. How does the road-runner bird I saw recently survive our winters up here, when he is carnivorous, and never known to eat an acorn, and how do people who sell propane gas in February for those kinds of prices get a good night’s sleep?

    I don’t think about things like that much when spring comes, as I am too busy hunting turkeys and morels and fishing. It is winter that makes you know if you are independent. I don’t need the things city people need. Here on Lightnin’ Ridge I have a crosscut saw and a fireplace and canned goods from the garden and a spring for water. I don’t need electricity or gas or a super market. But I sure as heck do need April! I can’t wait to grow tomatoes and cucumbers and green beans, and fill the freezer with wild turkey and fish. And Carl Sandburg couldn’t do that, even if he was a better poet!

 

I received this letter from a reader, Lyndell Williams. It is a chance for all of us to help a young hunter wrongfully accused…and robbed!

 

            My son Wiley, an 11-year-old who loves the outdoors, shot a massive 421-pound black bear on our family land in Missouri. The Department of Conservation seized Wiley’s bear, accusing us of wrongdoing despite no charges against him. We fought back, but the judge ruled against us. Now, we’re seeking to appeal this decision, but the legal costs are overwhelming. We need your support to help us reclaim what’s rightfully Wiley’s. Any contribution, no matter how small, will bring us one step closer to justice. Thank you for standing with us during this difficult time.  We have set up a gofund me account to help with the thousands of dollars this appeal will cost. If you want to help contact me at …lyndellwilliams49@gmail.com 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A letter to the MDC

 

  

I wrote my last MDC column about how a man and his son had a 19-point buck confiscated by an MDC agent name Clare Burch. Here is the letter he sent to the MDC chief of enforcement with the form they require. This is his attempt to recover the valuable set of antlers after the whole charge and citation was dismissed in court. Want to know what MDC’S wardens are like? Read this letter... from Joe DeAngelo

 

 

To whom it may concern... After my son's deer was loaded on the truck we were going home and past Matthew Gingrich (an Amish farmer) on the road. We came home to start getting the meat in the cooler on ice because it was almost 60 degrees and couldn’t hang overnight. So we got it all cut up and was getting rid of the bone and carcass. And right before we got back Matt called Ray and told him he called the MDC on him because if he (Gingrich) couldn’t get that deer he (Ray-my son) shouldn’t have it either. We got home and Clair (MDC agent) was waiting there. She asked about the deer and where it was. I told her we had to process it and was in the cooler in my garage. She went in my garage, opened up the cooler and then was asking why we processed it so fast. I told her because it was way too warm to let that deer hang. 

            When she was standing in my barn, I watched her key the radio and call for a thermal drone. There was 3 of us that heard and seen her do it. So then she asked us about what was going on and where the rest of the deer carcass and remains was. So I took her out there to it. When we got to where the carcass was, the officer from Lafayette County came out there also. I didn’t get his name. And at this point we had been up for two and half days with no sleep. They were calling me a liar for cutting it up so fast. I would think your agents would know better. It was 60°! You can’t let something hang. So the 2 1/2 hour interrogation went on and on asking us the same question 10 different ways. They knew we were worn out and exhausted. That shouldn’t have happened till the next day. We went back to where she took the meat and the hide and the head. She put all that good meat in a scented garbage bag. 

            She asked why we didn’t tag the deer when we got to him and Ray told her because there was no service there. When he got service, it went through. Nope she said that wasn’t true and we were lying. I told her go back over there and she would see there was no service but nope. The Lafayette County agent was calling us liars about the broad-head shot through the shoulder and was ready to take me down with a severe attitude because I was telling him it was shot with an arrow through the shoulder. So I finally called Raymond after being called a liar multiple times he seen Raymond coming over there and started screaming him to get back in the truck. I said hey man, he’s the one that shot the deer he’s the hunter he need to show you something so that changed his attitude. Raymond showed him the video of the deer with the arrow clearly protruding out of its body and then that changed his tone after us being called liars multiple times I was just about done with them at this point. I’m a businessman in Ray County. I’ve lived here my entire life. I’ve hunted for 32 years with never having a problem. I’ve run a business for almost 18. I have never been dehumanized and called a liar like that in my life not even close. I was ticketed Sunday for illegal transportation of a carcass and for the use of a drone. I’m sure you see all the charges that they liked to pile on. 

            My problem with the whole thing is when Clare got down to my 17-year-old’s face and told him this was gonna sting. Wasn’t it losing that deer she tried provoking an altercation with a minor… I know two other people she has done this too, and then she tried pressing charges on them for intimidating a law-enforcement officer when they blew up on her this is her game. Pretty disgusting and sad! We were harassed for 12 days with a drone. I called Clair. She denied having a drone that wouldn’t stop so I finally called the Ray County sheriff and made a report and then it stopped. I had called Jade I guess in Northeast Mo he denied that you guys had a drone two days straight. The drone was lined up with my living room window. My kids saw it one evening from my living room. 

            Sunday morning I went back out to Calvin‘s where we hunted at 5 AM and there were drones in the sky. I seen two and MDC denies it. So if the MDC does not have drones, she had to call in a third-party because three of us heard her do it and seen her do it, and we all witnessed the drones and harassment. I have video of them over my farm and house. People here are sick of the double standard. She violated and abused the fourth amendment right for sure. She had no right to enter my garage. Our privacy was violated for days and days. my advice to people to ask me is to plead the fifth not tell your agent a word and get a lawyer because all they do is dehumanize you and make you look like a monster that you’re not. Not only did she keep the deer that was tagged in before she took it. So that Ray lost his buck tag also and couldn’t hunt the last 3 weeks of the best part of bow season too.

             Also last January we were checked three days in a row by Clare on the same farm with the same truck. She actually came a fourth time to check us and my brother called her and asked her if she was just harassing us so not really sure what her problem has been but she’s never had a reason to have a problem. we are not law breaking poachers like they want to make us to be. We have abided by the law, our entire lives. I feel like fair is fair if you’re gonna make the people walk this straight and narrow with no common sense used in any situation than the people should make sure the MDC is also walking straight and narrow by the law. Both my grandfather’s were US Marines, and then went on to be New York City police, which they both retired. Always had the most respect for law-enforcement. But not gonna lie after being scrutinized like this I know how the minorities feel now and understand why they feel the way they do sorry to say. You would never understand until you were treated in this way I never understood either until then.

 

The White and the Browns

 

Gaston's Resort guide, Frank Saksa

         

         Every year at this time I mention the great trout fishing found on the White River… where the brown trout reach gigantic sizes. Brown trout are more active in January and February because it is their spawning time in waters where they are native, mostly in Germany and Scandinavian countries.   Browns are not native to the United States. They have been stocked in the White and no one would think they could successfully spawn there, but when the water is high this time of the winter, they actually do to a lesser degree, but not to any great extent. To thrive there they must be raised and stocked.   

         They, and rainbow trout, have to be raised in hatcheries then   released into the White when they reach a certain size.  This year a disease devastated the trout in those hatcheries and so in January the stocking was limited to a fraction of what was normal. White River fishermen were not allowed to keep any trout at all because of it… catch and release only.

         I talked with Arkansas guide, Donald Cranor, who told me that in February the catch and release plan is still going to be in effect, but fishermen will be able to keep two trout only.  He says most of his clients this time of year are after big brown trout and they are a fish that are mostly released anyway.  Fishing with him, anglers often catch ten-to-twenty-pound browns and it is possible to land them in the thirty pound range.   Rainbows that are stocked    do not reach sizes often that are above 12 or 14 inches.

         I suspect the disease that has infiltrated the hatcheries is something called whirling disease, which causes trout to swim in circles on the surface of the water before dying.  There is no real   estimate as to when the white can be fully stocked again with trout.

         Guide, Frank Saksa, who guides fishermen out of Gaston’s Resort, told me that because of the brown trout, and even the diminishing numbers of rainbows, he hasn’t seen a big decrease in  winter fishermen, as catch and release fishing has never been a big problem in the winter with the type of fishermen that come to the White and seek guides.  But if the situation continues into the spring, I think it may really hurt the resorts along the river.  In a future article I will interview some Arkansas biologists to find out   more about the situation.

         In the winter I have fished for brown trout with Saksa, and once I landed an 8-pound brown.  I fished once with Cranor, and   wrote about his experience with another outdoor writer from Arkansas. They were using some horny-head chubs to try to catch a   big brown trout and the writer got confused. He wrote in his article that he and Cranor were using horned toads!           

         If you want to fish the White, I certainly recommend hiring a guide like Cranor.  Saksa too is a great guide for browns but he is now in semi-retirement.  If you want to hire Frank, you have to call Gaston’s Resort.  That resort has the distinguished honor of selling more of my books in the last twenty years than anyone else, including the big national bookstores.  To meet or talk with Frank Saksa, go to Gaston’s Resort sometime or call 870- 431-5202.  You can call Donald Cranor at 870-430-5484.  These two guys can tell you more about the situation on the White than anyone I know.

         I urge you to also read my website concerning a theft of valuable deer antlers… larrydablemontoutdoors.  My email address is lightninridge47@gmail.com

Visiting the Od Homeplace Covey

                             

Visiting the Old Homeplace Covey         

 

    Reprinted from the book “Dogs and Ducks and Hatrack Bucks”…by Larry Dablemont-- published in 2003

               

 

            Old Luke had found them and there wasn't any doubt about that.  He stood there in the woodland cover with his tail high and head forward, his body twisted slightly with one foreleg lifted, drinking in the mesmerizing scent of bobwhite quail. The three of us moved in quickly and the air was filled with the explosion of brown birds.  There wasn't much time to find a target and intercept it. I clobbered a small oak with a charge of number eight shot and then missed the same bird clean as he sailed past it.  Tom and Kent did the same thing I did and we stood there talking about how tough it was to hit a quail in that heavy cover.  The first covey of the afternoon and we hadn't pulled a feather.  But Tom Goldsmith had seen his first covey rise.

                Tom is the talented wildlife artist from Coldwater, Ontario who illustrates my books, and he owns a pair of English Setters back in Canada where he hunts grouse and woodcock with enthusiasm.  He spent several days with me this week, anxious to see what quail hunting is like.  Since my little Setter died a few years ago, I have been without a pointing dog.  But I knew who would have the very best, and I called him.  Kent Caplinger lives in Ozark, Missouri, and he grew up hunting quail as a kid in Howell County.  I met him at the University of Missouri when we were both about 18 years old and I have always counted him as one of my closest friends.   Little wonder....Kent is one of the most enthusiastic outdoorsmen I have ever known.  He and I once hitch-hiked home from the University of Missouri to hunt ducks on the Piney, thumbing a ride with cased shotguns hidden behind the suitcases. There has never been a time in all those years I've known Kent that he hasn't had two or three good bird dogs.

                Luke and Sadie aren't just good, they are great!   They both sat in my boat while we motored across Truman Lake to a hard to reach spot where Freckles and I found quail years ago.  And in the high cover along the lake, they disappeared for awhile.   Three wild gobblers flushed before us, only yards away, and I heard Kent groan.  "Not this again," he said. "Old Luke just loves turkeys!  And they seem to be more of them than quail anymore."

                I took them up just into the woods and we walked past the foundation of an old homeplace, through skimpier cover and briars and buckbrush with small groups of cedar and scattered hardwoods.   We talked about how often coveys are found around an old homeplace like that.  And just moments later old Luke found a covey.   It was their good fortune to leave us there with nothing but spent shotshell hulls and excuses, but it was our good fortune to watch many of the birds, 15 or 18 in all, sail out into high grass and a sunflower field.  

                Tom downed his first bobwhite 15 minutes later in front of Sadie's staunch point and as he did, another bird flushed beside me and sped toward the sunflower field just skimming the weeds, never higher than my waist.  That's the kind of shot I can handle.  Moments later Luke pinned a bird next to Kent and we all had some weight in our game bags.  But we left them with only the three birds to our credit and motored over to a spot where I thought we'd find another covey in less difficult conditions. 

                Topping a rise 150 yards from the boat, we watched Luke working birds before us.  He moved into the wind with head low and tail moving nervously, something bird-dog men recognize instantly, a clear message that a covey is close by.   Kent cautioned his dog to go easy, and sharply commanded Sadie to hold.  She hadn't scented the quail yet but she heard the command and looked for Luke.  By that time he was frozen before her and she honored his point.

                 This covey rise was in shorter cover and we each dropped a bird.  Someone got two.  I said it was me but I don't think it was. I don't think it was Tom either or he would have argued with me.  Kent didn't claim it, the gentleman today he has always been.  The entire afternoon he situated himself where the shot was least likely to be, putting Tom and I in the best of positions.  But none of us were there for the shooting.  We talked about how, as you grow older, you walk in slower... not wanting the moment to end.   You know that any second the birds will take to flight and the wonder of the magnificent scene before you will be gone.   I just want to stand there and drink it in, absorb it to the fullest while the dogs are statue-still before me.

                "Some people think I'm crazy to keep going with my dogs in a time when there are so few quail," Kent told me.  "But I can't give it up, not ever.  Even if we only find one covey, it's a big day for me.  Anyone who has ever hunted over good dogs knows why, you can't explain it to anyone else!"

 

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DeAngelo's Antlers and the MDC

 

         A few years ago the Missouri Department of Conservation paid out one million dollars as a result of a lawsuit brought about because two agents violated the law by entering a barn without a  search warrant.  Another agent has done the same thing, and added theft to a possible charge.   

         Back in October, Joe DeAngelo and his 17-year-old son went bowhunting on land he paid to hunt. His son shot a big buck with his bow late in the evening and they had to track the deer, finding it about 10:30 that night.  It was a very big deer, with 19 points and wide-spreading antlers.  He notched his tag and tried to call in the kill but was in an area where his cell phone wouldn’t work.   He and his father loaded the deer and then called it in via the tele-check system the MDC has instigated.  A little after midnight they took the deer into their workshop and began to cut up the meat because it was still 60 degrees. They left the entrails and hide and head in the pick-up bed.

         A little later in the night MDC agent, Clair Burch, just walked in without permission and said she was going to write a citation to Joe DeAngelo for transporting an illegal deer.  She said it was illegal because even though his son had correctly notched his tag she felt he had not done so soon enough after killing the deer, even though there was no evidence he had done anything improperly.

         She took the hide and head and then went to a large cooler in the shop, opened it without permission and removed the venison it held. That is not legal either without a warrant. Burch told Joe DeAngelo that the meat and butchering of the deer was an admission of guilt. Joe pointed out that when it was that warm he would never let a deer remain unbutchered over night.  Burch gave little credence to anything he said.   It was obvious that she wanted that giant set of antlers and she was there for no other reason. 

         Taxidermists have told me that they mount deer heads of huge bucks for conservation agents who keep the mounts and the MDC pays for the work. One told me that he mounted a confiscated deer head for an agent who gave it to her friend as a Christmas gift. I was told by an employee of the Bass Pro Shop Taxidermy shop that they have mounted many confiscated deer heads for the MDC which were either sold to or given to Bass Pro Shops or one of Johnny Morris’ properties.

         Here is a point I want to make… when the DeAngelo boy called in that deer kill in October, if it had been a regular set of antlers, only 6 or 8 points, Agent Burch would have never come to invade their property without a warrant.   When he called it in the boy told how large the beam was at the base and how many points it had as hunters are required to do.   She wanted it and I would bet she has been paid for it or will be soon, and that it is at a taxidermist shop right now.  But I will also bet a thousand dollars that no one anywhere, including the governor himself, will ever know where that set of antlers is today or where it went when agent Burch walked out of the deAngelo’s shop with it.  The MDC can defy a judge if they want, and never tell what happened to it.

         The DeAngelo boy did nothing wrong, nor did his dad….  But they like others have the possibility of a lawsuit against the MDC for what has happened.  Agent Burch entered their property with no warrant and searched a cooler illegally and effectively   stole property with a false premise.  She should be fired for what she did but she won’t be because agents are held to no standards at all. They consider themselves above highway patrolmen and elected sheriffs and they are treated that way by their superiors.  Agent Burch broke the law, but that it is of no consequence to the Conservation Department.

          The entire story doesn’t in there.  Agent Burch was very smart.  Soon after the incident in the workshop she had the charges against the DeAngelos dropped, depriving them of a day in court in which they might have been able to get the deer head back.

        The family was forced to take their 17-year-old son to Juvenile Court, where he was not found guilty of anything in a matter of minutes, and the whole procedure they were forced into was therefore determined to be an admission of guilt again, and being used to keep them from knowing where the antlers are.

          Where are the deer head and antlers now. I doubt that even the FBI could find it!   I met with Chief of Enforcement, Travis Mclain, recently in his Jefferson City office, and then talked with him on the phone about what agent Burch has done.  He has required Joe DeAngelo to fill out a two-page form before he will listen to me about what happened.  And then Burch can receive no discipline that anyone can know about, because personnel matters cannot be discussed. If only the victims of MDC agents could receive such protections before a judge, however, I’m concerned that many are in the Department’s pockets.  This kind of thing involving MDC agents happens often.

          I have sent this magazine article to Mclain and MDC director, Jason Sumner, asking them to enter their own comments, allow me to interview agent Burch, or to correct anything they feel is not accurate here.  If there is a lawyer anywhere who feels he can help the DeAngelos find the antlers he might call me at 417-  777-5227 or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com

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.