Squirrels for Thanksgiving? -- MDC

 

I shot this buck several times and left him there

       You can have the traditional thanksgiving dinner.  I guess you likely will.  I never did like store-bought turkey; it is tasteless and dry and if you have a slice of one when you are young you can bet it never is going to get better as many years of Thanksgiving pass.  Maybe it should be prepared as I do wild gobblers.  I slice the breast thin as possible and then fry the razor-thin meat slabs with a good coating of various types of seasoning and flour to give it taste.  I did that back when I use to shoot turkeys with a shotgun.  I roam the woods now with a camera, and as scarce as wild turkey are becoming I would be ashamed of myself if I killed another one.

       In Missouri, the conservation department has figured out a way to make more money out of dwindling numbers of turkeys.  It use to be that if you bought an archery tag you could hunt both deer and turkey with a bow.  Not now.  They got together and figured that they could double the income from bow-hunters by requiring different tags for each, therefore twice as much money.  I don’t know if that will work so good, because if a game warden got real ambitious and left his pickup to walk back into the woods and catch some smart fellow in a tree stand with a bow, the hunter could just claim he was hunting coyotes, or bobcats, or weasels and produce a predator call to prove it.  Or he could say he was hunting squirrels maybe, and then bark like a squirrel.  

       To make more money the MDC will have to make a new law saying that during the bow season for deer or turkey, a hunter may not hunt anything else with a bow.  Of course they could charge fifteen more dollars for permission to bow-hunt anything from squirrels, ducks and groundhogs to coyotes and bobcats.  That would work! And more money!

       The MDC has a lot of additional regulations.  For instance, you cannot shoot a deer or turkey with a firearm within 450 feet of a residence, barn, shed, etc -- in some areas of the state, nor hunt with a bow within 200 feet of those buildings-- in some areas of the state.  It is not clear whether or not you can hunt turkey with a bow in November with a gun turkey tag for October.  In October you can hunt turkey with gun or bow or atlatl or slingshot without a new tag after October. But in November thru January if you use a bow, atlatl or slingshot to hunt turkeys you need a new tag. Understand?   

       Some agents do not know for sure about all this neither. If you want to hunt deer and/or turkey with a bow you have to buy a turkey and deer tag separately.  Figure that what you have to do to hunt anything in the fall with gun or bow now costs more money.  If you buy deer tags for archery, turkey tags for archery, gun tags for turkey, and gun tags for deer, and then new spring tags for turkey you will spend well over 100 dollars.  You will have to spend a little more for getting a youth tag I think, but that enables a hunter who can drag a kid out in the woods to get one more turkey than it is legal for him to kill with his own tag.

       I hope I have not confused anyone here.  It is best that when you go bow hunting you call a game warden to straighten it all out and tape record the conversation so he can’t change anything if he comes after you.  Also, if you hunt coyotes, groundhogs, bobcats, or wolves with a bow, have a predator call with you.  And oh yes, there are some additional requirements for hunting bobcats, which I do not understand.  On the Internet it said there are also additional regulations involved for hunting squirrels, rabbit, rails, snipe, bobcats, coyotes, pheasants, coots, and several more species.  Thankfully that list on the computer does not involve ducks and geese.  That’s all I am concerned with.  If you hunt ducks with a bow, you do not need any special license, you need to have lots and lots of arrows and your head examined!

       I did shoot a nice buck this year with my trusty 35 millimeter Nikon single barrel. I just left him there! Last summer I shot several strutting gobblers! Called them to within a few yards. I never bought deer or turkey tags to do that and I recommend you follow my example! With all the regulations and efforts to make more money the MDC has agents that don’t understand all of it either.  

       I interviewed the Chief of Enforcement a month or so back and was surprised by an attitude I admire.  He said that if any hunter or fisherman receives a citation he feels is unwarranted, or if any agent treats someone disrespectfully or illegally according to that citizens rights, that he should be notified.   His name is Randy Doman and his phone number is 573-751-4115.  You will have to go through a lady at the desk, but just ask for him and then leave a message.  

His email is Randy.Doman@mdc.mo.gov if you need help getting through to him, call me at 417-777-5227 and I will put him in touch with you. He has assured me no one will be ignored. This opportunity has not been available before and I applaud him for making it happen.  Trouble is he gets told what he can do by some very uncaring higher-ups.   I like Doman and I intend to try to work with him.

 

       I have written lots of books and put together more than 100 outdoor and Ozark magazines.  Some might make good Christmas gifts.  See them on your computer at   www.larrydablemont.com.  

There One Went…A Road-Runner

 

       Once a fellow called me to report seeing a hen pheasant down on the Arkansas-Missouri border. I knew exactly what he had seen. I had just seen something similar… a road-runner.

       About twenty years ago I saw a road-runner up here on Lightnin’ Ridge about forty yards from my back door.  The bird, which is  about the  size of a hen pheasant, was running as if the cartoon coyotee was after him, but I  never heard him beep.  Last week I saw him or one like him again.  For this part of the northern Ozarks, he is a rare bird. They are not suppose to be here, and my wooded ridge top is possibly the farthest north they have ever been seen. 

        But he is not a bird of woodlands.  He is a desert bird found in Mexico, Texas, Arizona and western Oklahoma. I guess mine has moved up here from northern Oklahoma  or maybe Arkansas.  If you want to see one, there is a gravel road west of the Big Creek resort on the north side of Bull Shoals where road-runners are thick in the summer.  On one day I have seen three or four crossing that road.  

       There isn’t a lot known about road-runners. They seldom fly and don’t get but a few feet off the ground, seldom going more than 20 yards at a time in flight.  But that is  how they avoid predators that are faster runners.  They can’t outrun a coyote but they can elude him.  The bird usually runs about 15 miles per hour but if necessary they can run 25 miles per hour.  You never see one pecking around in one spot like a dove or quail.

       They almost never get off the ground, except when they nest. They nest a few feet off the ground in bushes or small trees.  Some nests have as few as two or three eggs, and some have up to eight. Some ornithologists say they mate for life, but I think  that is unlikely. I have never seen two together.  

       They  have a cousin, in that same cuckoo family, that we in the Ozarks call a rain-crow, or  ‘yellow-billed cuckoo’.  The two birds seem to have little in common, but their four toes have two pointing forward and two pointing backwards.  Their track makes an X. The rain crow is common here, and is elusive in high branches of tall oaks. They stay off the ground while their cousin, the road-runner seldom leaves it.

       In the desert states, road-runners have been seen killing large rattlesnakes by pecking at the head and avoiding strikes until the snake is dead.  Usually that is seen involving two of the birds.  

       What will he eat up here on Lightnin’ Ridge in the  winter?  Anything he wants.  There are lizards  out on warm days, small mammals like field mice, and they also eat a small percentage of plant and seed matter.  As a photographer, I would give a good portion of my left little toe to get a picture of a road-runner up here on this ridge-top. Wouldn’t it be something to get him running through my woods in a skiff of snow? He  can live through an Ozarks winter because he never has to drink water, and doesn’t, ever.  He gets all the moisture needed from his food, like many other desert small animals.  He  doesn’t have to eat a great deal and his body temperature drops to surprisingly low levels much like a reptile, when it gets real cold. 

       He can thrive if it stays above 40 degrees, but I suspect that he would be in a sort of suspended animation for periods of time under cover somewhere  when freezing temperatures approach. I know darn well he and his kind do not migrate.  I tried walking to Arkansas once and gave up after the first ten miles.

       I  wish I  could help that  road-runner with a feeding station of some kind, or just see him more often.  A more fascinating bird I have never seen anywhere. 

 

       One last thing… deer hunters beware.  If you kill a big-antlered buck, DO NOT take a game warden,  who shows up later, anywhere you hunt. He will suddenly appear at your home, wanting you to take him and  show him where you killed your deer and cleaned it.  He’ll mysteriously find corn there or in the deer’s stomach (which  comes from his pocket) and therefore charge you and confiscate your antlers, which likely are worth a good deal of money.

       Not all conservation officers are crooked enough to do  that, but some are.  Don’t be their victim!  Any time and agent shows up WITHOUT A WARRANT, tell them to leave and close the door. They have no right to your cooperation without a legal warrant, and if they get your antlers you will never see them again.. EVEN IF YOU GET A LAWYER AND ARE FOUND INNOCENT OF THE CHARGE!.

       One agent in Stone County has a shed full of antlers he calls his ‘Retirement Account.’ Almost none were legally obtained! Don’t let them get yours.

Make Thousands With This Example

 

       The Missouri Department of Conservation may not accomplish much, but you have to hand it to them…they know how to make money.  In talking with a retired MDC employee I learned more about that. Take the great black bear and elk fiasco. They inflated the number of bears in Missouri to 1200 or so.  

       “In reality” my friend told me, “there are between 6 and 8 hundred.  But  if you want to make some  big money out of bears through deceiving some really gullible hunters, you tell them that there are oodles of them  out there!”

        Then you tell those gullible hunters that they can apply for a bear tag by sending in 10 dollars that is non-refundable.  When  they first offered this, 7800 of those would-be bear hunters  sent in their ten bucks…  and bingo, the MDC has pocketed 78,000 dollars.   Next came the big drawing for a tag.  They decide to draw,  from those 7800  applicants some of whom might not know a bear from a ground hog, 400 tags.  Each  of those tags would cost 25-dollars. Hose tag -holders consist of hunters who do not  know that you only even see a bear by baiting them… which is made illegal before the hunting  begins.  

       So now the MDC has made another 10 thousand from those tags issued to 400  ‘bear-hunters’.  Now they have pocketed 88 thousand dollars by flim-flamming 7800 people who  think this is all on the level.  That first year, there are eight hunters who know how to bait bears… thus eight bears killed over popcorn or day-old donuts.  So eight black bears bite the dust.  

All of a sudden they  have made  11 thousand dollars per each dead bear.  And they found out that one of those bear killers was a twelve-year-old boy.  They confiscate that big male bear and charge his dad with creating some illegal opportunity. 

        This year hunters wised up some.  The applications drop from 7800 to 6000  and more hunters find out how easy it is to bait bears and get away with it.  Fifteen are killed, but the MDC profit has dropped some but it is still 70 thousand dollars.  That  comes to $4,666 dollars per bear.

 I have shot several black bear in Canada… with my trusty 35 mm Nikon over bait. Shot one in Arkansas the same way I would be ashamed to shoot one with a gun.

       The MDC does the same thing with elk.   They gain about 100 thousand dollars with the  same scheme.  Then they give out five tags.  One of those five is given to an adjacent landowner at the ‘conservation’ area who is always the owner of Bass Pro shops.  He can then sell his tag or give it away to one of his friends.

If  you own a lot of land, say 200 to 1,000 acres, you can get very wealthy by doing the same scheme.  Build a herd of buffalo, maybe 15 or 20!  Do that before the MDC thinks of it! Charge 10 non-refundable dollars to get in the drawing and 100 dollars to get a tag.  Then guide the hunter yourself, so he or she can get a chance to shoot a wild buffalo.  You can even lie all you want here, like the MDC does by telling folks we have 1200 black bear.

          Here is a sample of your public deception…

--- “Come hunt wild buffalo in the Ozarks…  we have determined that there are a few bull bison on our land with the DNA of the original wild ‘woods-bison’ known to have roamed the Ozarks 250 years ago.  Outdoorsman Larry Dablemont will guide you on your  hunt.   Caution… these bull  buffalo are very dangerous.  While only 100 applicants for tags will be accepted,  if you are one of the hunters accepted you  can get a wild buffalo bull to have its head mounted and great-tasting buffalo meat for your freezer!”

       Well it might work.  I know a  lady who has more than a hundred buffalo on 3000 acres.  Heck she could be a millionaire too, kinda like the MDC has done it… by making it the greatest goal of her existence.

       I don’t have  that many acres but you know…I  think I have a white turkey roosting in the back of it with 3-inch spurs and a 15-inch beard! If you’d like to hunt him send me ten dollars…

       Contact me on lightninridge47@gmail.com