THE GREEN GROUNDHOG

 

      Mont Cleary was not well-liked. Folks said he had killed a man in the 40’s after a poker game on the river by pushing him over a bluff.

      Argis Blackfern was a good old boy that everyone in the pool hall liked and had fun with. Argis, who was known as Argie to everyone, was mentally slow, but happy. I think he was the one who ate a whole jar of mayonnaise after Rube Wallace bet him a dollar he couldn’t do it in less than a minute. 

      Argie’s old mother came to the pool hall once madder’n hell because Argie had come home in his socks!  Mont Cleary had taken his boots in a bet of some sort.  They were nearly wore-out boots, as I recall it, who would want ‘em?  Mont did just because he could laugh about Argie walking around in socks with holes in them.  

      You might remember me writing about how Argie came into the pool hall once limping badly. Someone asked him why he was limping and Argie replied that he had gravel in his boot. When asked why he hadn’t removed it, Argie replied that “he jest hadn’t had the time.”

      Well as it came to be, that worthless Cleary had won five dollars from Argie in a bet and was laughing about it. The unbalanced young man never had much money and the whole thing angered Doc Dykes and Jerald Jeffries, two of the more intellectually-advanced members of the front bench regulars in dad’s pool hall.  

      Argie had come in one Saturday evening in the spring, telling a story about how he had seen a beaver run under his mom’s barn. Ol’ Mont bet him five dollars it wasn’t a beaver, so on a bright Sunday evening he and two or three of his ne’er-do-well buddies went out to Mrs. Blackfern’s barn with Argie.  They found a pair of groundhogs feeding out around the jonquils and emerging clover. Mont yukked it up about how he had won five dollars from Argie and it angered Doc and Jerald enough that they cooked up a plan.

      The following Saturday, Jerald gave Argie a hundred dollar bill and told him to wait ‘til Mont got there and swear that he had seen a bright green groundhog emerge from under his mom’s barn on St. Patrick’s Day.

      Things pretty much went according to plan after that.  Doc Dykes hoorahed the story of the green beaver. Mont joined him of course, as Doc bet Argie100 dollars that there was no such thing there at the barn. As he had been instructed to do, the  befuddled Argie said little and took out that hundred-dollar bill, and Doc produced his. Jerald was to hold the money.

      Mont was suckered badly that day, begging to add his 100 dollars to the bet as all the front bench regulars whooped it up and slapped their knees and laughed derisively. Now Jerald held three 100-dollar bills and Doc and Mont decided that when they took Argie’s 100, they would split it 50-50. But if Argie could in fact produce a green woodchuck sighting, he got the whole 300.

      The trap was set. I don’t think it could have gone any better. Argie just kept his mouth shut and Doc and Jerald said that if, before church the next morning there was no green groundhog to be seen, Argie lost the bet and Mont and Doc would be 50 dollars richer. 

      Doc of course, was the brains of the deception and he couldn’t have prayed for it to go better. On Friday, Jim Splechter and Ol’ Bill Stalder went out and live-trapped a groundhog under the widow Blackfern’s barn. They spent a considerable time there, having coffee and a slice or two of her oven-baked sweet-tater pie and flirting with the old widow. That gave a young groundhog time to emerge from beneath the barn to go in the trap to get the carrot it was baited with. And he was caught!

      On Saturday, the week after St. Patrick’s Day, Ol’ Bill handed over the live-trap cage and after a good spraying with bright green paint, they had the green whistle-pig that would cost Mont Cleary a hundred dollars.

      Sometimes though, perfect plans go awry and when Doc and Jerald and Mont and Argie and a half-dozen of the pool hall’s front bench regulars went out on Sunday morning to witness a green groundhog…he had escaped from the pen inside the barn. Doc and Jerald had forgotten that there are two things woodchucks can do…dig and chew!

      How much of a barn floor can a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck wants to chuck wood under his pen?

He was gone! Mont was ecstatic as they walked out of the barn with Argie’s head held low and Jerald fishing in his pocket for the 300 dollars, of which he only had two.

      And then came the miracle still talked about today. It was Ol’ Jess Wolf who saw it and exclaimed, “Looky Yonder!”  And there, well below the barn in the creek bottom, feeding amongst and patch of clover 400 yards away, was a bright green groundhog.

      There almost was a fight, as Mont figured things out, but there were too many there for Mont to whip, so he just resolved that he had been tricked and cheated, flamboozled and deceived!

      Doc got his 100 dollars back and Argie got Mont’s 100 dollars, probably the most money he ever had at one time. The groundhog eventually got the green paint to wear off, I guess. One of the front bench regulars said that they saw him before it did, on the other side of the crick downstream a ways in Morley Ryker’s field.  Morley’s son hunted groundhogs in the summer and the family ate them. They all chuckled when thought of Morley’s son shootin’ and bringin’ home a somewhat-green groundhog.

      But I’ll bet a hundred dollar bill that none of that family would eat a green groundhog!  It’d be sort of like shooting a sacred white buffalo! 

An Enticing Skirt, A Deadly Blade

 

 

It was two o’clock in the afternoon before we got to the lake, and it was up a liitle but not much. The water was just a little murky, but there was still a few feet or so of visibility in it.  That’s about perfect for a big spinner-bait.  If you fish small spinners and light line, clear water is fine, but if you are after a brawling, broad-sided bass, and the spinner blade is about the size of a spoon you use to serve mashed potatoes with, a little bit of murkiness in the water is fine.

I pulled a yellow and white skirt with two large gold willow-leaf spinners out of my tackle box, and I put a trailer hook on the main hook. I added a strip of white pork rind on the main hook below the trailer, so the trailer hook wouldn’t come off, and it made the whole thing look even more delectable.  When you get through with that you have about three-quarters of an ounce of lure to cast.  With that I was using an Ambassadeur 4500 casting reel and 14-pound line, on a medium-heavy graphite rod.   Of course, such a rig isn’t meant for enjoying the resistance of small fish.  You are hoping to attract a largemouth of lunker proportions, and you are looking for him in brushy water, back up in a cove which is full of timber, or  maybe in that cove halfway out to the main lake.

 

And of course, I caught five bass in the first hour from 12- to 15- inches long. That is better than nothing, but I am one of   those  lunker-busters.  I want a hog… a slab-sided frog eater! Smaller bass would have been great fun on a spinning outfit with eight-pound line but in the brush we were fishing, that kind of gear is too light.  They were out away from the bank in six or eight feet of water, and to get to them, I was hanging up on occasion, then working to get that lure loose.

It happens that way when you fish a spinner-bait the size of a bird’s nest in that kind of water.  You don’t just cast it and retrieve it. You vibrate that blade, you lift it and you drop it and you let it fall and flutter into water where there are logs and limbs.  You try to tantalize a bass, get him to rise up from the brushpile hideout where he lurks and come after that spinner bait.  You use your rod tip, you feel your lure through places where you can’t actually see what is there.  I don’t know what a bass thinks that spinner-bait is, but you make him like the idea of eating it, by causing the blade to throb and the skirt to undulate.  You make it look alive, like something with a fishy taste to it.

There are all kinds of spinner-baits today, and blades of a variety of colors and shapes.  Apparently my gold willow leaf variety was what they wanted that day last week.  I had just retrieved the lure from an underwater limb, and made another cast ahead of me, when between two upright trees, I felt it hit another limb.  I lifted it quickly and felt it stop and give just a little.  Then in a split second I saw it move, away and down.  I set the hook hard and the bass, only eight or ten feet from the boat, didn’t give an inch. A hog!

 Finally I had attracted a bass worthy of the gear I was using.  He just stripped a foot or so of line against my drag, then came back below me, arcing the rod like a catfish on a cane pole.  It was fun… at times like that I remember why I like to fish for bass.

 

No, it isn’t quite along the lines of dueling a four-pound smallmouth in a current below a river shoal, but a big largemouth bass with a mouth that will easily hold a softball, and a belly wide and heavy with eggs, will make you forget there is any work left undone at home.  I fought him, and I won.  Many times I have hooked bass of that size and they have won the struggle, but last week it was my turn.  I hefted him, actually a ‘her’ and my partner took a couple of pictures.   The bass was a little better than 21 inches long, and you can guess it’s weight by going to my website (www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com) and looking at the photo.

 

The lake was a place of solitude that day in midweek.  There wasn’t a boat to be seen, not an unnatural sound to be heard.  I don’t fish lakes which are heavy on development, and I don’t fish on weekends because there are too many boats on the water, often because of the tournament crowds.  I like being out there alone when I can be, where you can’t see anything but water and woods around you. And with  those conditions, every now and then…

Read more of my outdoor news and columns on larrydablemontoutdoors.  Email  me at lightninridge47@gmail.com.  Our river trip on the Big Piney will be April 20 and the Truman Lake pontoon trip will be April 27.  Call and talk too my secretary, Ms. Wiggins, if you want to go along, or get more information.  The office phone is 417  777 5227. 

 

 

Hot Dog, Jerry’s Coming!!

 

 

  

          Jerry McCoy, who is one of the best north Arkansas guides, especially for White River trout, will be at our swap meet on Saturday with all kinds of antique and modern fishing gear and antique lures.  He is an expert on old fishing lures and old gear, and he buys a lot of those. He has written some great articles for my magazine, “The Lightnin’ Ridge outdoor journal. But he can tell you the value of old lures, reels, rods, creels, any kind of old time fishing equipment.    He is a magnetic personality and you will enjoy talking to him, a man who has 60 years of fishing experience on the lakes and rives of Arkansas.  I can’t wait to see him again, one of my favorite fishing partners.

            That Swap meet is 9 to 2 on Saturday, the 9^th, at the Noble Hills Church Gymnasium about 5 miles or so north of Springfield Mo on highway 13.  It is free to who who come, but it costs 10 dollars to get a table or two to sell your wares.  I do hope that you will be able to come because I am speaking at 11 a.m. about how I almost became the head of the Fish and Wildlife Service during the Bill and Hillary Clinton presidential administration.  Last time I did that, only four people showed up.  This time I am hoping to have twice that many. The $10 vendors pay and any donations goes to the church youth to help them pay for a summer camp they want to attend.  I will also be selling my 12 autographed books, and individual copies of nearly 100 outdoor magazines I have published over the last 20 years.

            If you have something to sell too, bring your own folding tables, no more than two, 6 or 8 footers.   If you have an interest, call Steve Johnson or me. His phone number is 417-414-3128. We have been assured that President Trump will visit if he doesn’t have anything else to do.  And many other celebrities will be there!

            If you want to come and only have one or two items, like an old-time shotgun or deer rifle or squirrel gun, you can leave it at my table with a price on it and I will sell it for you.  I am an amazing salesman! It has been said of me that I could sell mushroom seeds to a garden center.  I once sold spaghetti plants to Pizza Hut.

 

            On a more serious note, I will have two interpretive trips this spring. One will be a float trip on t he Piney River near Licking Mo The time will likely be early April whenever water conditions are right.  I once was a National Park Service naturalist on the Buffalo River doing such float trips involving up to 40 people at a time.  We stopped often to identify the trees and furbearers and birds, we seined fish, taught people how to fish with casting and spinning gear, how to paddle a boat or canoe, and had a big dinner on a shaded gravel bar with a fish fry as the big attraction.  I hope to have several guides for those who need one… the main attraction will be 80 year old river guide Charlie Curran who guided fishermen on the Piney when I was born.

            We will also have another trip for up to 15 people back into the wildest area of Truman Lake I know of.  We will go there on my pontoon boats, have a mid-day fish fry, and hike into some timbered regions of the lake, then ride around just before sunset to see eagles and migrating spring birds, which should include Canadian loons.  If you are interested, contact me to get on the list and we will notify you a week or so before the date we set.  There is no charge for either trip.

 

My office phone is 417 777 5227.  Write to me at P.O. Box 22 Bolivar, Mo. 65613.  Read more on the computer at larrydablemontoutdoors, or email me…lightninridge47@gmail.com.  There is no ‘g’ on the end of lightnin.

 

 

I Need Help

 

       I need help. Not for me, but for three children and their father in north Arkansas…  David, the father, has done some work for me and he is a very intelligent man, a hard worker about as down on his luck as anyone I have ever seen.  He has been beset by the law and justice of Boone County if you want to call it that.  David’s wife and mother of his kids is not with them. He moved from a town in Ohio to a country setting at Lead Hill Arkansas, seeking a better life for them.  He got a job there and traded a kayak for an old car. Times were difficult, so he didn’t have the money to get the car licensed and buy any insurance.  His kids, now from 9 too 13 years of age needed to be fed so David took a chance and drove to a food pantry in nearby Yellville.  Coming back the only cop from Diamond City spied him, a real dandy of a lawman, confiscated his car and wrote him out a fine he had no chance to pay.  The old beat up car was towed, confiscated and sold.  David saw it being driven around a month later, after being told it had been destroyed.  Lying is fine if you are part of the justice system.

       So I called the court in Harrison and told the story of how, could David get his license back, I could help him get a car and he could make a couple hundred dollars per week working for me on weekends.  I was speaking with a ‘judge’s aid’ by the name of Mrs. Wright, who seemed soooo sympathetic, telling me that the lady judge would be very sympathetic to helping those three kids.  She told me to be in court the next Thursday at 10 a.m. and in only minutes, before regular court started, we would see how much money I would have to pay to get fines cleared and get David a drivers license.

    Keep in mind that David works for hourly wages.  He rides a motorbike to work a mile from home in any type of weather, cold, snow, rain, whatever.  But they are as poor as they can get, and Mrs. Wright was sure anxious to help.  Apparently the judge wasn’t!

       That Thursday I drove 2 and a half hours, arrived early to find that Mrs. Wright, for some reason, was gone, couldn’t be called, wasn’t going to be back.  Mrs. Judge had no intention of talking to me, hadn’t even heard of me, or David, and couldn’t care less about three kids.  That wasn’t her job!  Her job was whackin’ victims who appeared before her, guilty or not.  In front of a judge anywhere, offenders are guilty if they cannot pay a lawyer!  But I was told that MAYBE about two o’clock she might see me.  Maybe you can see why I lost my temper.  But the ladies at the desk couldn’t help, and a little banty rooster court helper told me to get out quick or he would take me to jail without charge.

       That’s what the north Arkansas justice system is all about…David and those three kids are of no importance.  Who is, unless they have money?  David can’t afford a lawyer and it takes a lawyer to get him a driver’s license and the kind of money it takes to make a living in north Arkansas.  Lawyers help those who can pay a lot of money.  If anyone has any ideas, let me know.  If we can get him a driver’s license I am willing to help him get a car, and pay the judge and lawyers in Harrison whatever fines they demand.  All they have to do is listen to the problem as Mrs. Wright did and just help someone. And if you get a chance, you might call Mrs. Wright and ask her why she wasn’t at work that day, when I drove 5 hours to do what that judge could do in 5 minutes.

       If anyone knows one good lawyer who might work a couple of hours to help those three kids without being paid, tell me who he is.  I have been around those three children. They are respectful, obedient and intelligent kids.  I want to help them, but I have no idea what to do now.

A Sad Season

 

       All through the fall hunting season, those of us who love to hunt waterfowl prayed for rain.  The one thing you need for great duck hunting is plenty of water, and we just didn't have it. So I have decided to go duck hunting this spring, when the ducks start heading back to the north.  I’m going to hunt them with my camera.         

       Shucks, if you like to watch ducks work the decoys and respond to your call, why do you have to have a shotgun with you?  I can take home a whole flock with my camera, and never miss. Another thing I will do this spring, before the hunting season, is shoot some turkey gobblers… again with a camera. As our wild turkey numbers decline drastically, more of us old-time gobbler getters should turn to that.  You bag more wild turkeys with a camera, and you don’t have to clean one. Then at the local grocery store, a turkey that is ready for the smoker costs a fraction of what a turkey tag does.

        All in all, I think I'll put this last hunting season in the "ones to forget" file.  Outdoor writers who hunt and fish often have wonderful opportunities and, therefore, some very good trips. We write about those trips and very often keep quiet about the others. But we all have outings we'd like to forget, The duck season of 2023-24 was like that for me.

       There have been plenty of disastrous hunting trips for me, but it may be, the all-time most embarrassing situation took place 25 years ago when my Uncle Norten and I went duck hunting on the Sac River. I've hunted rivers since I was shorter than my shotgun.  We do that often via a floating blind. We've floated hundreds and hundreds of miles in a johnboat concealed with a blind of limbs and camouflage, hunting everything from deer and turkey to ducks and squirrels. 

       In all those combined years, no Dablemont ever let his boat get away from him until that December.  It happened because we stopped on a gravel bar so my uncle could go up into the timber to visit a man about a dog! 

       I stayed with the boat, adding some more foliage to the blind. Then I pulled the johnboat up on the bank and sat down against a log to wait, my back to the river. I dozed off a little in the warm sunshine and my uncle returned and called my attention to the fact that our boat was floating out into mid-stream, heading away with the current. We followed down the bank knowing full well it wouldn't come back, despite my pleading. It drifted into a log on the other side, and sat there with our guns and gear, in water ten feet deep or better.

       We were in big trouble. Fortunately there was a farmhouse on a ridge behind us. Getting there in chest waders was something of an ordeal, but I did it and the farmer said he had an old boat and paddle he'd loan me. The ground was frozen, so he drove the boat fairly close to the river in an old farm truck. I used his boat to paddle across to retrieve mine, and an hour later, we headed downstream again. The farmer had a lot of questions, of course, and I answered them in a somewhat deceptive manner in order to make him think I wasn't some sort of greenhorn, and then I thanked him and told him my name was Joe Smith. He said there was a fellow who wrote a newspaper column who looked a lot like me, and I said I had been told that before.  My uncle accepted full blame. He said he should have never left me in charge of the boat!

       Let me remind readers of this column that there are other stories and columns I write each week which you can read on my website, larrydablemontoutdoors, via computer.  I am posting one this week about a father with three children. They need help. They are located in north Arkansas and I can’t tell their story in newspapers.  Please go to that computer spot and read about them.  

       The outdoorsman’s swap meet at the Noble Hills church a few miles north of Springfield on Hwy 13, will be Saturday, March 9.  If you want to come and set up a table to sell old fishing and hunting and outdoor gear, call me at 417-777 5227. You can also email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com.