Opening Date for Big Piney Nature Center

 

Although not the Piney, Duane Had, world renown artist, is known for his river and wildlife art.

         As to a date for opening my Big Piney River Nature Center, a mile south of Houston, Mo. put the date of Saturday, October 16 on your calendar.  That day we will begin putting in the first displays and we will have a couple of real attractions.  Jerry McCoy, who owns a big outdoor antique store at Bull Shoals, will be there with all kinds of antique lures and fishing gear to display and lures to sell as well.     

         He is making a donation to the center and will evaluate any outdoor oriented antiques you wish to bring, lures, reels, whatever.  If you have outdoor gear to sell, Jerry may buy it from you for display in his store. I think Jerry is the foremost expert in the Arkansas-Missouri Ozarks in regard to vintage fishing gear.  You may have a valuable lure or reel that you don’t know about.

          That day I will bring about 200 of my own fishing lures for sale and many of them are new while others are antiques.  I will also be selling and autographing my books and selling antique outdoor magazines.

 

        But the biggest attraction will be another outstanding guest that day, artist Duane Hada, from North Arkansas who is a riparian naturalist without equal, in other words, an expert on rivers and river ecology. He has found a trout species in the Ozarks which were never known to be here.  Duane is an unbelievable fish and wildlife artist and on October 26 he will bring dozens of his paintings which will be for sale. There will be original paintings and prints and you can get his autograph on those. From 10 to 2 he will set up a canvas and do a painting from start to finish which will be raffled off that afternoon to help pay for expenses of our nature center. I have seen Duane do this before and if there are young aspiring artists out there who wish to see him work that would be invaluable to them. If you want to see some of his paintings get on your computer and type in his name.  I will also put some photos on my website this week.  You won’t believe how great an artist this man is.  I am hoping he might do a painting that day of the Big Piney or a smallmouth bass.  Whatever it is, if you win it you will have a very valuable original painting.

         We will have an old wooden johnboat on display and the very first aluminum boat ever made in the Ozarks, a 22 footer built for the   Big Piney and Gasconade rivers by a man named Appleby, who became the founder of Lowe boats, now known as   Generation 3 boats out of Lebanon. There will be some other vendors there who will be selling old guns and gear.  All proceeds will go toward electric and water bills and other expenses. The address of our center is 6401 South Hwy 63. Right now we need someone with a big truck to bring in some gravel and fill dirt to get out parking lot ready for that day.  If you own such a truck, I will be glad to pay you for such a service.  You will need to call me at 417 777 5227 or email lightninridge47@gmail.com

 

         I don’t know how many of you folks have ever gone to my website but I hope you will this week.  As well as photos of Duane and his artwork, I have an account of a sheriff’s deputy coming to my home a month ago to arrest me for trespassing at a Bolivar boat shop.  I hope you will read about that on my website.  I was in another city the day it was to have happened, so the deputy told me he would leave and do an investigation. After three calls to the Polk County Sheriff I have finally figured out that he will not talk to me about it. Whatever was done was never reported back to me.  The sheriff’s office tells me there are no consequences to the boat shop for filing a false report against me. It is the second time this has happened to me. Last time it was the local Wal-Mart store.  That was eventually dismissed with not consequence to Wal-Mart for falsely reporting me as a trespasser.  So I am thinking about reporting a man down the road for stealing a hog from me. He didn’t but since it is not illegal to do so in Polk County I might as well have some fun with my neighbor.  You might try it too, but be sure that filing a false report against someone you are mad at is not illegal in your county too.  Read it all on    www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

Dove Feathers

 

 

 

Before you read this, the dove season will have opened. Dove hunting is fairly easy, and it isn’t high on my list of things to do, but I will do it anyway, because I am a grizzled old veteran outdoor writer and that kind of thing is expected of me.  I know you hear young inexperienced outdoor writers talk about how hard doves are to hit, but not for me.  I got to where I can sneak up on a bunch of them and get four or five before they fly with only one or two shells.

I got to be such a good shot by practicing when I was young.  In the fall I’d go out and throw darts at butterflies.  When you get to where you can hit a butterfly with a dart or a B.B. gun, you won’t have any trouble hitting doves with a twellve-gauge shotgun about half the time.

      I won’t go dove hunting in September though.  I will wait until October and hunt at a waterhole somewhere. I am going dove hunting mostly because intend to take a young Labrador out and see if he will retrieve one.  If my Lab takes to dove hunting, it will likely be a great retriever by the time duck season gets here.  Most all the dove hunters will be out on opening day and within a week there won’t be hardly any of them left… hunters that is.  Many doves won’t migrate in until late September.  Some hunters can’t afford the shells it takes to go on three or four hunts, me included.

You need harvested grain fields for good dove hunting, or a small pond used as a water hole where they come to water in the evening before they go to roost.  I like hunting those water holes because if you have a young retriever and if you can drop a dove or two in the water, it is really good experience for his future as a waterfowl dog.  

Early season dove hunting is sometimes hard on dogs because of the heat and humidity, and dove feathers come off in their mouths and they don’t like that.  A Lab doesn’t mind a duck feather or two, but they hate dove feathers.  You can see why if you ever put a freshly shot dove in your mouth.  You can’t hardly get those feathers out of your throat. 

Teal season will open in a week or so, and they too are hard to hit.  But because I am an old time duck hunter, I look forward to that more than dove hunting.  You’d probably be better off not doing either one because in September, if your time is limited, you will catch a lot more fish on top-water lures than you will in the spring.  Of course you have to know what you are doing there too.  A blue winged teal is small a flying biscuit, fast and erratic in flight.  Many times I have shot more at where one was than where one is!

 When I was young, dad and I use to float the Piney in mid September with a blind on our wooden johnboat, hunting blue winged teal.  One September after a good rain the river was up a few inches and we took along one rod and reel and a wiggle wart lure and began to catch some nice smallmouth, one after another. Dad would catch two or three from the front of the boat while I paddled and then we would switch places and I would catch some, all the while watching for teal.  We killed a few teal that day, but caught more than twenty hard fighting smallmouth in between the flocks we flushed.  What a day that was!

 I   have a picture of dad fighting a fish that day with a shell belt around his waist with shotgun shells in it, causing all who see it to question why he would have those shells on a fishing trip. That was in 1965, and you can see some of those photos on my blogspot page, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

My Big Piney Nature Center and Museum a mile south of Houston, Mo, will be pretty much finished in October and I have an unusual plan to open the finished building, minus the exhibits, sometime during that month to hold a big ‘fishing gear and antique gun’ swap meet.

Anyone who wants to bring guns made before 1965 and fishing gear of any kind is welcome.  I intend to bring several hundred fishing lures, myself, and some are antiques I used when I was young.  That wiggle wart dad and I used back in September of ’65, which we used to catch those smallmouth on, will be there for sale to the highest bidder.  I hope that some folks who have old shotguns or .22 rifles will bring them to sell. To reserve a spot just call me, 417 777 5227. I will announce the date of that event soon.

You   can also contact me via email… lightninridge47@gmail.com or at P.O. Box 22 Bolivar, Mo 65613