CWD Management Permits

 

Changes Needed

 

 

Nesting dove in Mid August

 

       In early September, hundreds and hundreds of young doves in nests will die because of the September 1 opening of the dove season.  I know that the majority of dove hunters don’t know that, and few of today’s young bird biologists know that. 

       Forty years ago, lots of doves were migrating down through the Midwest the first week of September.  Far fewer are today.  That is because in forty years, things change in nature. That change is tremendous.  I know, I have seen it. I started observing it all 60 years ago. Right now, nothing that migrates does it like they did forty or fifty years back.              Migrations of wild ducks and geese are far different than they were when I was a kid.  I am not telling you any of this from what I read, but from what I have seen and experienced during those 60 years of being outside more than I was inside.

     Here on Lightnin’ Ridge, there is still a dove nest or two I know about, and likely some I don’t know about.  When the “guns of way before autumn” begin banging away, many like those fledglings will die in the nest.

       It is too hot in early September for me to even begin to want to hunt.  It has been that way for 10 or fifteen years.  I won’t take my Labrador out ever again in the heat encountered in early September, and if you do, you don’t care much about your dog.  Retrievers love to retrieve ducks and pheasants, but not doves.  Dove feathers ruin a young dog… he hates them in his mouth and throat.  And between daylight and 10 a.m. on September the first, he needs about a gallon of water if the temperature soars into the 80’s.  It almost always does now, and often, way past 80.

       Professional people planning game season openings and harvests need to know things change as the years go on and climate does not remain the same, for whatever reason.  The dove season should open 17 to 20 days later than it does now.  At that time, migrating doves will triple the number migrating through in the first week of the month.  I won’t hunt doves until October, and then, mostly over water holes and small harvested grain fields.  And in places where there might be two-dozen hunters this week on opening day, there will be none in October.

       I know, there is tradition involved, but you can have the same father-son tradition beginning two or three weeks later than in the past.  It is time for some game biologists who have not been around long to talk with some who have been around awhile, and look at what is happening.  You shouldn’t hunt birds that still have young in the nest on opening day.   

     And believe me, few young biologists trained by books in the classroom know that there is a tremendous difference in numbers of migrating doves that came through 40 years ago and today.

       There is also a tremendous difference in wild duck migration all across various species.  I know from what I have seen over the last 60 years.  I will write more about mallards changing so much in another column.  But biologists HAVE figured that out and altered seasons and limits to fit those changing habits.

       Right now wood ducks and blue-winged teal are both early migrators.  A two week season for teal usually opening in mid-September worked great decades ago when it all began, but right now teal are migrating a little later than they once did, and wood ducks are migrating earlier.          

    Common sense tells you that lots of wood ducks are killed during that teal special season and left in the marsh.  Why not run the teal season the last week of September and the first week of October, and let wood ducks be included in the bag limit.  So many of today’s waterfowlers cannot tell the difference in the two species flying by at 30 yards in broad daylight, let alone at dawn and dusk. Why allow so many accidentally killed wood ducks to be left in the marshes for the eagles.

       This needs to be done now… but it won’t be.   Today’s experts on migration, doves and waterfowl, need to find some of yesterday’s experts.  If you learn what you know from one chapter of a book, you need to learn from two chapters out in the fields, woods and marshes.  Times have changed, weather has changed, seasons have change, and wild creatures have changed.  We need to change the way we look at hunting seasons for migrating birds.  I’ll continue this in a later column about mallards and geese. 

 

       Some people have laughed at what I wrote about a couple of weeks ago, concerning the Department of Conservation giving me and a certain group of landowners 10 free deer permits and offering hundreds of dollars to have them all processed, over the next few months through most of the winter.  It was a column written in all seriousness.  I have put the letter and forms sent to me by that agency, on my BlogSpot for all to see.  And for those in certain regions of the state, the same privilege can be gained with a phone call.  

       I have placed those letters also in my fall magazine, and an article telling about why they are doing that.

       And NO, I did not register my land with the MDC.  And I will not.  That website where you can see those letters on a computer screen is larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

       If you want to see that fall magazine, email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com or call my office, 417 777 5227 

Acorns, Yellow Leaves, and Free Deer

 

       I don’t think I ever witnessed what the squirrels are doing here on Lightnin’ Ridge this summer.  They are chewing up the white oak acorns in my back yard, and it started the first week of August. 

       Of course they always go to gnawing up hickories in August, but not acorns.  Never saw that here before.  Squirrels are thick as I have ever seen them right now, both colors. 

     I ate a ton of them as a kid. You have to boil the older ones, then bake them with dumplings or fry them.  But you want to know how to eat squirrels in this modern day and time?  Clean them, cut them up and marinade them in some good marinade in the ‘frigerator for a day or so and then cook them over hickory chips and charcoal on a grill. My old friend Rich Abdoler taught me that, but I surely would have come up with it on my own if he hadn’t beat me to it. 

        You know what the first indicator of fall is?  Look up into the walnut tree branches and watch for a few yellow leaves.  They will begin to drift down in a week or so just before a cool rain.  When they do, you know that the ducks are starting their staging flights over the Canadian prairie country.  I always start cutting firewood when the first yellow leaf falls off the walnut branches.  Either then or when it snows a couple of months later! 

        I am heading to Canada this week to fish and help my old friend, bush pilot and guide Tinker Helseth, and try to forget the rest of the world that we all hear too much about any more  I am sure that if I come back I will have a story or two for this column. Tinker wrote a great book about his life as a Canadian outfitter, which  we published for him.  You can get a copy by calling my office.

 

 

       Oh yes, I about forgot to tell you…I am going to get to kill ten deer this fall on my place without buying one deer tag! I will even get paid to have them processed! The Missouri Department of Conservation sent me a letter this past week telling me they want me to do that.  So if you are a landowner who is not among the list of us lucky hunters you need to contact that department and ask why you haven’t been included.  All you have to have is five acres now, in an area where chronic wasting has been documented. That is the gist of the letter.        

     Then you can contact friends who want to hunt and you can go out and kill ten deer on your five or ten or twenty acre tract.  And you can get a 75-dollar check from the MDC to pay for the processing of your deer.  The letter doesn’t make it clear whether that is just a one-time payment or whether or not you get that for each deer you kill.  If it is for each deer, and you do kill ten that means they will send you 750 dollars.  Some of the local meat processors have a very profitable year ahead if that is the case.

       I will try to find out how many hunters in Missouri got this letter turning them into government hunters like me, and also what areas you have to live in to apply for your ten free permits.  The letters and applications I received will be printed in my fall Outdoor Journal magazine in their entirety, so that anyone who doesn’t believe me can read them there.  Please do not tell anyone about this, but if I were a no-account scoundrel, I would run an ad in the local newspaper advertising two free deer permits to five different hunters and a special deer stand for them to hunt out of.  All those free deer plus the free deer processing, for only 20 dollars!!  The MDC is going to provide me with those ten permits and I can say what hunters can use them. It is confusing but I’ll ask if that would be legal.  If it were I would volunteer to bring hot coffee to each stand twice a day.  I am not going to do that because I am only a small-scale scoundrel and that kind of thing is beyond me. I don’t want ALL my deer killed. But maybe if I had 200 acres….?   After all novice hunters lease acreages to hunt all the time.  And twenty dollars is reasonable for a tree stand and coffee.        

    Next week I will tell you if you can apply for such a good thing, by finding out where the areas are you have to own land in.  And I will see how many of us government hunters there were who didn’t have to apply, but are qualified through these letters we lucky ones received. Apparently there are thousands of landowners who are eligible for those free tags and ten deer limits.

 

    In more than 250 speaking engagements over the last 20 years I have never had anything happen to me like what happened in Mt. Grove, Mo. last week at their bicentennial event on their square. At the time it made me madder than a hornet, but it was a little bit humorous now that look about it.  What a mess it turned out to be. You can read the whole story on my blogspot, larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com  Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613, or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com

 

 

Tinker's Place

 

 

         About 20 years ago I flew out to a little lake in northwest Ontario with Canadian guide and bush pilot, Tinker Helseth. It was a place where Tinker’s father, Forrest Helseth, who had also been a Canadian guide and outfitter, had an old trapper’s cabin. Tinker was fixing it up to use as a fisherman’s cabin for Americans who wanted to fish a wilderness lake far from civilization. About mid afternoon I decided to take a boat and go out to catch some walleye for supper. Tinker told me where they could be caught, jigging a small lure up and down over a certain hole out a ways from a big rock not far from the cabin.  “But,” he added, “you won’t catch a one until 5:00, so come get me at 4:30.”

         I kind of laughed at that, but I fished the spot for more than an hour and didn’t even get a bite. Tinker came out and joined me but we caught nothing!  Then at exactly 5:00, and I mean EXACTLY 5:00, we both had walleye on. For the next hour we caught them one after another, nothing larger than 18 inches and few smaller than 15 inches. I had to know how he knew what was going to happen. I remember him telling me… “When you have done this as long as I have, you can’t help but learn a few things.”  About a month ago the book about his life story was finished. The name of the book is “Tinker’s Canada.”  I published it for him and you can get copies from us at our office, but you can get an autographed, inscribed copy directly from Tinker by going fishing with him. It is easier to fish with Tinker in Canada than you think. Right now his lodge and cabins are pretty much below capacity because of the covid problem. This is one of the few times I remember in the past 30 years that I have known him, that he isn’t all booked up.

         To come to his lodge in Nestor Falls, Ontario you will need a passport. You can get one at your courthouse but if you decide you want to come, you will need to do so quickly, it takes a little time. Besides a passport, you will need proof of vaccination and a covid test just before you come which shows that you do not have it.

         Through the magic of computers, which I want no more to do with than I have to, I am sending this column from Tinker’s Place on Lake of the Woods. Yesterday evening I caught several small walleye and a sauger, then finally hooked a 17-inch walleye that will be good eating for supper. I intend to go out tonight in the last hour or so before dark and fish topwater lures for smallmouth bass.

         I will be here at Tinker’s Place in Nestor Falls again in late September and early October, so you may be able to fish a day or so with me here on Lake of the Woods. Contact me if you are interested. However, with Tinker or one of his sons’-in-law you’ll have a lot more fun and catch more fish. The last half of September and the first half of October are the best times of the year to fish… with gorgeous color and passing migratory birds.

         For more information about fishing with Tinker, you can reach his wife Sharon or his daughter Kari by calling 807-484-2664.  Their website is tinkersplaces.com.

 

I will be back home in time to attend the Homestead Expo Friday and Satuday at Marshfield Mo.  The event really interests me because it involves experts in the field demonstrating ways to live a country life like our ancestors did.  Over two days there will be about three dozen demonstrations… on hog butchering, poultry raising, bee-keeping, lumber milling, making maple syrup, black smithing, soap making and dozens of other old time ways of living practiced here in the Ozarks more than 100 years ago.  Tickets are 15 dollars for one day and 25 dollars for two days, children not charged.  There will be about 40 vendor tables and no music involved.  I will be speaking at 10;30 a,m on Saturday about the Ozark culture of 100 to 150 years ago, trapping, fishing, and hunting amongst the first people to settle the Ozarks!  It will be held each of the two days at the fairgrounds in Marshfield Mo.  If you will come by and visit me at my table, I will give you free copies of my two summer magazines, and have signed books books  for sale at 1/3 off.  There are now 11 total.  Hope to see you there.  For more information look on your computer  Homestead Expo at Marshfield, Mo.  I urge you to see that page..

 

To contact me call my office at 417 777 5227 or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com  I should be home  from Canada by the time you read this.

        

Mtn Grove Speaking engagement

 

Here is a brief description again of what happened Saturday, and this will be the last I say about it.  And I will put my hand on my bible and swear this is the truth. In more than 250 speaking engagements over the years, this was the first such bad experience.

 

I was notified by the head of the Mt. Grove Bicentennial event weeks ago. It was grossly misrepresented to me. I gave the event free advertising in both my magazines and wrote about it in my newspaper columns, which are used in 40 or so Missouri, Kansas and Arkansas newspapers.  I told people what I was told.  I was to speak at 11;00 a,m. and I would bring my magazines and give them away to anyone who wanted them after speaking for 30 minutes.  About 20 or 30 people notified me that they were coming to hear me speak and get some magazines. Some came quite a distance.

But at 10;20 that morning, a local band known as the Bakers took over the stage.  They held it ‘til noon, and for at least 30 minutes they just stood there in their cowboy outfits while their leader worked on wiring. No music, no nothing.  They just stood there. I ask their leader if I could speak for 2 minutes during that time, to those who came to listen to me and get magazines.  He told me very belligerently that the stage was theirs and I could not use his microphone.

You wonder why?  Well, if I got up there and told folks that I would meet with them at some other space to give them the magazines, as I intended to do… it would take 20 or 30 people out of their captive audience.  Those little local bands live to have an audience somewhere, meager or not. The leaders of the event should have never given that one man the power to close down their bandstand for an hour and forty minutes.  But that is exactly what happened.

As to the posts from a few of the people who were involved, most of them were relatives of the people in charge….   AND YES.. I GOT MAD…. VERY, VERY MAD.  A bad temper is something I am not proud of, but I have one when I have been lied to and used, as I was at Mt. Grove on Saturday.        

There were no police involved in my leaving!! And as to the cussing they said I did…. I USED NO WORDS NOT FOUND IN THE DICTIONARY.!  I did however, refer to someone who refused to let me share the stage, in a derogatory term (found in the dictionary) used to describe those who are born out of wedlock.  I wish I hadn’t done that, but it was the total amount of my cussing, if it is indeed a curse word.  I am now looking forward to speaking at Marshfield on the morning of Saturday the 27^th.  It is an event I will talk more about when I get back from Canada.  The lady in charge of the Marshfield event laughingly told me they do not have any local bands that day and the schedule of speakers is firm.   It should be quiet and peaceful!  And if you are there, I will give you those free magazines I have left  over.

 

I want to make something clear about the mess I was involved in at Mt. Grove Saturday.  It is no reflection on the people of Mt. Grove. It involved only three or four people. I have been a speaker there several times at various events over the past years. It has always been a joy to be there.  At a church in Mt. Grove years ago, as I said previously, I helped raise 981dollars for underprivileged children in the local school.  Some of that money was my own.  The people of that town are like the people of any small Ozark town… good, decent country people you could count on in any situation.

 

Acorns, Yellow Leaves, and Free Deer

 

 

no one in the ozarks should lack protein.. there’s a million squirrels, full of acorns, hickories and protein.

       I don’t think I ever witnessed what the squirrels are doing here on Lightnin’ Ridge this summer.  They are chewing up the white oak acorns in my back yard, and it started the first week of August.

 

       Of course they always go to gnawing up hickories in August, but not acorns.  Never saw that here before.  Squirrels are thick as I have ever seen them right now, both colors.  I ate a ton of them as a kid. You have to boil the older ones, then bake them with dumplings or fry them.  But you want to know how to eat squirrels in this modern day and time?  Clean them, cut them up and marinade them in some good marinade in the ‘frigerator for a day or so and then cook them over hickory chips and charcoal on a grill. My old friend Rich Abdoler taught me that, but I surely would have come up with it on my own if he hadn’t beat me to it. 

 

       You know what the first indicator of fall is?  Look up into the walnut tree branches and watch for a few yellow leaves.  They will begin to drift down in a week or so just before a cool rain.  When they do, you know that the ducks are starting their staging flights over the Canadian prairie country.  I always start cutting firewood when the first yellow leaf falls off the walnut branches.  Either then or when it snows a couple of months later!

 

       I am heading to Canada this week to fish and help my old friend, bush pilot and guide Tinker Helseth, and try to forget the rest of the world that we all hear too much about any more  I am sure that if I come back I will have a story or two for this column. Tinker wrote a great book about his life as a Canadian outfitter, which  we published for him.  You can get a copy by calling my office.

 

 

       Oh yes, I about forgot to tell you…I am going to get to kill ten deer this fall on my place without buying one deer tag! I will even get paid to have them processed! The Missouri Department of Conservation sent me a letter this past week telling me they want me to do that.  So if you are a landowner who is not among the list of us lucky hunters you need to contact that department and ask why you haven’t been included.  All you have to have is five acres now, in an area where chronic wasting has been documented. That is the gist of the letter. Then you can contact friends who want to hunt and you can go out and kill ten deer on your five or ten or twenty acre tract.  And you can get a 75-dollar check from the MDC to pay for the processing of your deer.  The letter doesn’t make it clear whether that is just a one-time payment or whether or not you get that for each deer you kill.  If it is for each deer, and you do kill ten that means they will send you 750 dollars.  Some of the local meat processors have a very profitable year ahead if that is the case.

 

       I will try to find out how many hunters in Missouri got this letter  turning them into government hunters like me, and also what areas you have to live in to apply for your ten free permits.  The letters and applications I received will be printed in my fall Outdoor Journal magazine in their entirety, so that anyone who doesn’t believe me can read them there.  Please do not tell anyone about this, but if I were a no-account scoundrel, I would run an ad in the local newspaper advertising two free deer permits to five different hunters and a special deer stand for them to hunt out of. All those free deer plus the free deer processing, for only 20 dollars!! The MDC is going to provide me with those ten permits and I can say what hunters can use them. It is confusing but I’ll ask if that would be legal. If it were I would volunteer to bring hot coffee to each stand twice a day.  I am not going to do that because I am only a small-scale scoundrel and that kind of thing is beyond me. I don’t want ALL my deer killed. But maybe if I had 200 acres….?  After all novice hunters lease acreages to hunt all the time. And twenty dollars is reasonable for a tree stand and coffee. 

        

    Next week I will tell you if you can apply for such a good thing, by finding out where the areas are you have to own land in.  And I will see how many of us government hunters there were who didn’t have to apply, but are qualified through these letters we lucky ones received. Apparently there are thousands of landowners who are eligible for those free tags and ten deer limits.

 

    In more than 250 speaking engagements over the last 20 years I have never had anything happen to me like what happened in Mt. Grove, Mo. last week at their bicentennial event on their square. At the time it made me madder than a hornet, but it was a little bit humorous now that look about it.  What a mess it turned out to be.

Frogs and Frog Hunters

 

Bull Frog on a pond bank

 

    When my dad and uncles were boys, growing up on the river in the 20’s and 30’s, they often ate bull frogs for breakfast, freshly caught the night before. Old-time froggers found them at night, using a good light which shines their eyes at a distance.  Many things shine in the light at night along our waterways; spiders and insects, sparkling rocks, and other amphibians and reptiles.

 

    But when you learn what a set of bullfrog eyes look like, you have little doubt when you see a pair of them.  A big bullfrog's eyes looks a little like the headlights on a Model T Ford, right above the water level.

 

    As long as he is blinded, he will set there, stone still, and you can actually reach down and grab him by hand as long as you are quick and decisive...and firm.  I learned to catch them that way when I was about 12 years old, floating the river with my dad in a wooden johnboat. Back then, our headlights were carbide lamps mounted on miner’s caps.

 

     I  found out that a bullfrog can wriggle out of your hands if you don't hold on to him tightly.  Once you have him, the best thing to do is put him in a wet cloth sack or wet burlap bag...and keep it wet and well closed.

 

      The men who ran the rivers and creeks at night, catching bullfrogs by hand as they travel along either wading or boating, were true outdoorsmen.  They came from a different time and upbringing. 

 

    Those kinds of folks don’t exist today. Most of today’s froggers use battery-powered headlamps so much brighter, and they gig them, which is a great deal easier than grabbing them by hand.  You don't have to get into the weeds or get nearly as close.  But if you gig frogs, you need to know which ones are too small just at a distant glance, because you can't cull them.

 

        

     A gigged frog will die in time.  The bigger the frog, the better the eating, and that's what most froggers are after.  Frogging may not be the greatest of outdoor sport, there are perhaps things to do which are more fun.  But frogs are as good to eat as anything!

 

    There are few people who do not relish fried frog legs. The ones you find in restaurants are not nearly as good as the wild ones from Ozark rivers and ponds. A big bullfrog in Ozark waters may commonly reach a length of 15- to 18-inches with their legs stretched out.  A twelve- inch frog isn't big enough for most, and if he is less than a foot in length he isn't really a keeper. 

 

    But if he is big enough to keep, you will find quite a bit of meat on the back, and on the front legs as well as the back legs, so skin the whole frog and fry all of it.  Cut off the head, cut off the feet, and then it will skin easily.  Remove the entrails and cut the sheath of nerve fibers in the inside of the small of the back.  If those are not cut, the frog will jump and twitch in the pan and it looks as if he is still alive.

 

    Frog meat is very white and firm and some people say it is a little like the white meat of a chicken. Baloney!  Bull frog meat is nothing like chicken. It has a taste all it’s own!

 

    Frogs are very clean creatures, actually, though the water you find them in may look bad due to modern day pollution, mud and algae growth.  If it gets too polluted, you won't find the frogs, and that's why so often you hear froggers say, "There aren't any frogs anymore!"  What they should be saying is, "There's not much clean water anymore where they can breed and survive."

 

     Bullfrogs eat lots of insects, and they do nail them with a long tongue.  That's why during the day you can dangle a hook in front of one with a little white or red yarn on it and they'll nail it.  Years ago when ponds had lots of bull frogs and clean water, farm kids caught frogs during the day in such a manner.  But bullfrogs eat a lot of things, including smaller frogs, small snakes, worms, small fish and of course their very favorite food, the crawfish.

 

    The bullfrog is highly favored by mink and coons and water snakes as well, so they have to watch for lots of enemies. Now they have to deal with otters too! One of his greatest predators is the great blue heron, and they are overpopulated right now in the Ozark waters.   Alll those have a lot to do with why there are fewer bullfrogs right now in streams and small waters where there once were so many. 

 

    But froggers have a lot to do with that as well, as does the degradation of our rivers, increasingly tainted with cow manure, herbicides, pesticides, and fertilizer and becoming choked with algae. Some ponds which were clean enough to swim in 40 years ago are now covered with slime. Tadpoles have to survive all that.

 

    You'll find bullfrogs in future summers where you find plenty of big bullfrog tadpoles this summer.  And any place where there are bullfrogs, you'll find a few froggers in July, but nothing like it once was. Today though, like it was back then, you can't find anything much better to eat than a bullfrog!

 

    To see the new summer issues of my magazines, visit the website, www.larrydablemont.com.  My e-mail address is lightninridge47@gmail.com.

 

 

SHORE LUNCH

 

      The lady told me on the phone that she and her husband wanted to have a shore lunch like they had experienced in Canada, so by golly a shore lunch she was going to have, once I figured out what it was, exactly.  When I paddled folks down the river on one of my float trips, as a teen-ager, they generally brought lunch, which consisted of pre-made sandwiches, fruit, cookies, what have you.  And cold soda pop!  

       Shore lunch is something they had in Canada, I knew, but I didn’t know if you could have a shore lunch on the Piney.  I asked the old rivermen in the pool hall, and the only one who seemed to know about it was Ol’ Bill Stalder.  He said it was simple.  You built a big fire on a shady gravel bar and cleaned your fish and rolled them in flour with pepper and salt and plopped them in an iron skillet with about a half-inch of melted lard in it.  And you brought along sliced-up potatoes and onions and dumped them in there on one side… so you had to have a big skillet.  Then you opened up a can of pork and beans and set it to the side of the fire so they would warm up good, and that was it. 

 

       Ol’Jim Splechter chipped in his advice, saying it was good to make a pot of coffee and have sour-dough bread to heat up and dip in the lard to round it all out.  I began to wish I hadn’t promised that lady a shore lunch!  What I was accustomed to was baloney and Velveeta cheese sandwiches with some of those chocolate cupcakes and a banana and a couple of bottles of Jic-Jac grape or orange soda pop.  Now that made a fishing trip tolerable!

 

       When the day of our float trip came, I throwed Mom’s biggest blackest iron skillet in the old johnboat, with everything Ol’ Bill told me to have.  We didn’t have many fish to fry when we stopped in the shade of a big sycamore, a couple of small bass, and a goggle-eye or two and a few black perch.  Back then in the sixties we didn’t filet fish, I just scaled them, cut of the heads and removed the entrails.  Then we cooked them whole and tried not to swallow any bones. 

 

       I guess I really didn’t build a big enough fire, and unfilleted fish are thick, so maybe they really didn’t fry long enough.  And true to my nature, I forgot the salt!  And the flour didn’t stick on real good.  But the pork and beans weren’t bad.  And the potatoes and onions were passable, even if they weren’t fried to a point that you would say they was exactly ‘done’.  The fish weren’t exactly ‘done’ either!  That lady didn’t chip in and help, she just watched me set there on a log and sweat over that fire trying to fry fish and potatoes for the first time in my life, so she could have her “shore lunch”.

 

       Most folks I guided on Big Piney float trips as a kid came back a time or two but that lady never did.  Her husband came back that fall with a friend of his.  And he brought lunch, fried chicken I think, that he had bought at some new place in the city called Corporal Sanderson’s.  But all he had to drink was beer, so all I had was spring water, and there were no cupcakes and bananas.

 

       Nowadays, folk’s go to Japanese restaurants and eat raw fish called soochie or something along that line.  Remembering that day in the summer when I fried fish on the gravel bar for that uppity lady, I wonder how in the heck anyone can sell raw fish!  Since that time on the Big Piney as a boy, I have not offered shore lunch to paying float fishermen I guide on various Ozark rivers.  My dad said that no one should have expected that from a 12- or 13-year old kid who was only getting paid 50 cents an hour.  But in years to come I did lots of gravel bar cooking, usually on overnight float trips when I cooked bacon and eggs over a Coleman camp stove fire.  And today no one cooks more fish for fish-fry events and get-togethers than me.  I have a fish cooker I haul along with a small propane gas tank.  And I have some Andy’s fish coating.  No lard… but plenty of salt for those who need it.

 

       For those near Mt. Grove Missouri I will be speaking at a day-long event there on Saturday, August 14 at 11:00 a.m. It will be a Missouri statehood celebration day!  I will be signing my books afterward and giving away my Ozark magazines and my Outdoor magazines as well.  Hope to see some of you there.