A Christmas Event

          

The fire had burned down in the fireplace, and it was a trifle warm, so I stepped out on the back porch to feel the coolness of the oncoming winter, looking down on the dark river valley. The moon was faint, shining through the clouds and it was so still you could have heard a coon cough. Down in the timber below I could hear an old hound on the trail of something. Its deep baying was mournful, and beautiful in the still night. 

It made me wish I was sitting on a gravel bar somewhere, before a roaring fire, with a few of those old-time coon or fox hunters who would rather listen to the baying of distant hounds than listen to the music of the finest choirs or orchestras.

Oh I know that if you have never heard it, you can’t imagine it, or appreciate it, but baying hounds in the night are a kind of music you can become addicted to. I have never owned a coonhound or foxhound, but my dad and uncles had some and I cannot forget what a sound it is when they are trailing something through the hills of the Ozarks. Every man knows the sound of his own hound, no matter how large the pack. 

Hearing that one made me feel something so nostalgic and fine that I didn’t want to leave. In time, he faded off into the darkness way off to the west, and I wished I could have followed. Ozark houndsmen are the last of a breed of real outdoorsmen. 

 

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         If you have a youngster between the ages of 9 and 15 who likes to read I    have a free book for them. The name of it is  ‘Dogs, Ducks and Hatrack Bucks’.  It is a book of short stories about the Ozarks outdoors which I wrote several years ago. I will be signing that book to boys and girls who might   like one for Christmas.  It sells for 15 dollars but on Saturday December 20 it is free and I will sign it to your youngster for a Christmas gift.  You can pick one up between 9 and 3 o’clock that day at my Big Piney nature center… 6410 South Highway 63, about one mile south of Houston, Mo. Despite some health setbacks I am going to work to put up displays about the river and I’m looking for volunteers who want to help with that.  I actually hope too open it to the   public three days a week next spring.  

         Back in September we had an open house with all kinds of stuff for sale hoping to raise some money. Lots of folks came, but a heavy rain hit about noon, which ended the whole day.  So now I have a roomful of good items for Christmas gifts, which   includes fishing lures, rods and reels and carved duck decoys.  There are also several valuable framed wildlife paintings and other art.  You just might find something special for a Christmas gift.  I will have all twelve of my books there, selling for a 4-dollar discount, and some antique magazines.  My new Christmas magazine will be there too, on sale for 5 dollars.

         If I can get them there I will sell a really nice NuCanoe kayak and a 19-foot square-stern Grumman canoe as well as a 20-foot boat trailer.  All proceeds will go toward finishing the nature center for next spring.  If you would like more information, call me at 417 777 5227 or email me at lightninridge47@gmailcom. You can read past and future columns on the Internet at larrydablemontoutdoors and see all my books and magazines at www.larrydablemont.com.

 

 

Don’t Be Fooled

 

         Deer hunters need to know that some conservation agents come to the homes of those who telecheck large antlered deer and ask to see the place where their deer was killed. If a hunter complies they will be cited for some technical offense or charged with baiting even if no baiting has been done.  Always, 100 percent of the time, if you take an agent to the place you killed a deer, you will be charged with some type of offense! Always, 100 percent of the time, it will involve a large antlered deer that will be   confiscated.  It happened to me a few years back.  Two agents stood on my porch for a half hour questioning me about a buck I killed. I eventually closed the door on them and they left.

         Often bait is found at such a site that comes from the uniform pocket of the agent!   They will only do this if the antlers are large enough to warrant being confiscated.  If you have an agent come to your door do not let them in, and DO NOT take them where you killed a buck or cleaned it unless they present you with a signed search warrant. 

         I now have forms which have been given to me by the Department’s Chief of Enforcement with which you can file a complaint against an agent or agents who violates your rights or tries to coerce you to reveal where you hunt or who asks you to allow inspection of your property without that search warrant.  If you want to fill out a complaint, which can be filed with the MDC and kept secret or made public, notify me. I will fill it for you, use it in my column and protect your identity.

 

         A local taxidermist says that a woman conservation agent spends lots of time in his shop trying to find a reason she can confiscate deer heads and antlers brought to him.  He says she ought to spend as much time in the field as she does in his shop.  I once wrote that hunters might consider checking an unusually large set of antlers as smaller than they really are so that they will not be the object of an agent’s attention.  Now she goes into taxidermy shops and tries to find antlers that are in any way different or smaller than reported. She can and does take hunters deer heads or antlers from a taxidermist’s shop with no ones approval but her own.  It isn’t right, but a hunter who loses his deer head that way has no choice but to pay a fine and lose a legally taken deer head if he cannot afford a lawyer.

         As an example… a taxidermist tells me that a deer head was brought to his shop by an agent who declared it to be illegally taken.   He said he wanted it mounted for educational use in an MDC office.  Instead, he hung the mounted head, paid for by the   Department of Conservation, in his own home.   If there are those who think I am making this up, I can tell you the name of the    agent and of the taxidermist.

          What they call “Sunshine Laws” don’t apply to the MDC.  Agents who violate laws or are proved to be in violation of MDC policy are never publically named, and some have even been promoted. The MDC paid out a million dollars years back because two agents violated the laws and illegally searched a home. They were never disciplined.

         I am told no one in the MDC can comment on “Personnel Related Matters”.  I can name illegal acts and violations by individual agents that they were never questioned about.  It is beyond belief.  Are they so powerful that they can never be questioned or investigated?  This 18-million dollar construction boondoggle, that has destroyed for good a fantastic wildlife area named Schell-Osage, likely involves the violation of state laws and certainly has allowed for tens of thousands of dollars in interest going into powerful individual’s pockets, both in and out of the MDC.  But it can never be investigated by anyone.  In time cost over-runs will amount to several million dollars more than the 18 million supposedly given to someone who will never finish the project, and it is likely that waterfowl will never come there in appreciable numbers again.

         Newspapers and television stations tell me that they can be closed down by reporting on the MDC because the powerful agency can shut off much of their advertising other funds that they depend on.  If you doubt that I can give you the name and station manager of the news media station, which told me, and I quote… “The department is awfully upset that we had you on the air last week…they give us an awful lot of money to control what is said about them!” When a state agency controls what newspapers and televisions can report, that is full-scale corruption.

 

I had an interview in Jefferson City a month ago with director of the MDC, Jason Sumner and the enforcement chief, Travis McClain.  In a future column I will write about what is going to come from that meeting that may be a big benefit for Ozark rivers and those who own land along Ozark rivers.