Wild Turkey Gobblers-- Part 1

 

       My grandfather got his first breech-loader shotgun in 1911 by guiding turkey hunters in the fall and winter in north Texas County on his father’s land bordering a northern section of the Big Piney River.  He did so by scattering corn to feed them, then scaring turkeys off the roost during the night and waiting for them to come back to the bait and the roost the next morning at first light.  

       He saw big flocks of wild turkeys during his youth but he told me he saw wild turkeys decline in the late twenties and thirties to near extinction in the Ozarks because of three reasons.  First and foremost, diseases brought in by farm families in tame turkeys, primarily something called blackhead disease. Secondly were the free-ranging hogs, which decimated acorn crops before the years end making that food source unobtainable during the cold snowy months.  But the biggest decline wasn’t due to the predators that like to eat wild turkeys and destroy eggs, nor was it due to habitat loss.  It was due to hard times and the coming depression.

       “Country folks were hungry,” he told me. “Gettin’ enough for them big families to eat was hard and turkeys was danged easy to kill, so they got kilt and et more than anything else. In the depression time if’n you had a hog or cow you was rich!  Those who had chickens got ‘em stole or et by hoot owls!”

       “I was a trapper and hunter and fisherman from the time I was a boy,” he said. “You could eat fried muskrats and boiled possum, even a beaver er a bobcat. Wa’n’t no coons to be had after awhile but ever farm boy knew where turkeys roosted.  So they got cleaned out.  I use ta take a turkey er two up to Houston and sell one for a dime or a quarter.  By1930 you couldn’t find one. Nor a deer neither.”

       As I tape-recorded his recollections back in 1966, I understood how those problems eliminated the wild turkey a hundred years ago.  Today, much the same things are coming about.  There are too many predators, but men are the number one predator and there are more now than ever. Gobblers are too easy to kill.
       Like my grandfather, I guided turkey hunters in the 1970’s and 1980’s in Arkansas and Missouri, and one spring, even in Kansas.  I worked at calling turkey gobblers for men who were well off, doctors, surgeons and dentists who could afford to pay a lot of money for the experience the hunt provided. None were interested in just killing a gobbler.  Often a friend and I would set up a camp in the National Forest or on a river in the Ozarks. There were so many wild turkeys back in those times that anyone who could hunt three days had a very good chance to get a gobbler.  Most mornings at daylight we could hear 3 or 4   gobblers if not more. We almost never failed. 

       There were some years I spent more time trying to get a client a gobbler than I spent hunting by myself. In the years I guided hunters, nearly thirty-five clients killed more than sixty turkeys, which I called in.  And that was the key to it… they didn’t want to ambush one, or kill one off the roost or even use a decoy. It was old time turkey hunting at it’s very best.  

       Most of today’s young hunters don’t seem to care about that.  There are things today that were not thought of then.  Decoy’s, calls on smart phones, permanent blinds, and baiting are only a part of it. I’ll talk about some of that next week.

       I learned a lot of what I know about wild turkeys thru my grandfather and then turkey biologists working for the Missouri Conservation Commission back in the 1960’s. The Missouri Department of Conservation didn’t exist then and we’d be better off if it didn’t exist now in my opinion. I believe it is a corrupt agency with millions of dollars and agents who regularly break the law with no consequences, and no desire to bring back turkey numbers if it hurts revenue. 

       The ‘Department of Conservation’, established in 1982 after the1/8 cent conservation tax passed and money became plentiful for them, DID NOT EVER STOCK WILD TURKEY OR DEER. The “Conservation Commission” did that back in the 50’s and 60’s.  The latter agency we refer to today as the MDC, stocked some grouse and prairie chicken that have gone nowhere and the otter, which we watch decimate our streams and private ponds today.

       Wild turkeys now are at the lowest number I can remember since the 1960’s and in next weeks column I will tell you why and how landowners can bring them back.  In the meantime, you can read another story or two about wild turkey and some photos I have taken of them, on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.

       

       

I will mention again that I have finally gotten my spring magazine printed and mailed. If you are a subscriber you should get yours this week.  If you aren’t a subscriber, get to be one by calling our office, 417-777-5227.

TURKEY HUNTING PHOTOS FROM YEARS PAST

TURKEY HUNTING IN ARKANSAS

 

TWO TOMS IN CAMP

GOBBLER

ARKANSAS TURKEY CAMP

 SEVEN BEARDED GOBBLER

Wild Turkey Numbers Falling

  

        Dennis Whiteside is a float-fishing guide who travels down a dozen or more streams across the Ozarks of Missouri each year, through all seasons.  He also is someone very knowledgeable about wild turkeys and he reports on what he sees through a survey that he turns in regularly to the state’s Department of Conservation.

         “I’ve done it for about 15 years, “he says, “I turn in the results on the form they gave me and I wonder why I do it. They have never responded in any way. This past spring and summer was the lowest number of turkeys I have ever seen while floating rivers with dozens of clients. Ten to fifteen years ago I would see lots of turkeys and hear lots of gobblers as we floated,” he told me. “Last spring I saw one hen with three poults, and heard only a few gobblers.”

         Dennis also counts numbers of turkeys on hunting trips and during spring drives through the Ozarks. We talked about how years back you would see eight or ten strutting gobblers and hens in March and April back in the reaches of green fields along timber edges. You could drive Ozark back roads and count a hundred turkeys in a dozen fields or less. He agrees with me that now such a sight is seldom seen… the turkeys are mostly gone from those places.

         I follow turkey populations in the Ozarks too, in five different counties. But I count them in December and January when turkeys group together in flocks assembled in winter gatherings close to where I live. They gather in a few places from adjacent lands of three hundred acres or more. One place they gather is along the lower Pomme de Terre River bottom above Truman Lake. About 20 years or so ago that river bottom field of thirty or forty acres had more turkeys in it than I could count, easily seventy to eighty birds. Last year there were between fifteen to twenty turkeys coming to the field each evening to feed, flying from the deep woods across the hills beyond the river. The decline in their numbers was little by little over the years, but numbers never as low as what I counted last spring. If those numbers I have seen in years past are compared to what I saw last winter, many areas have only about 20 percent of the flocks we had 15 to 20 years ago. 

         The Department of Conservation doesn’t have any idea what we have when it come to wild turkeys. I interviewed the director, Jason Sumner, a couple of months ago and he sat there and told me that there was an increase in turkey numbers this past year. To have the director of the Department say such a thing is ridiculous.

         He is not going to ever be out there counting flocks like Dennis and I do. He and the turkey biologist, Nick Oakley, echo the same refrain… that the alarming drop in wild turkey numbers is due to habitat loss and predators. As for the predators…the number of bobcats, hawks, owls and raccoons have remained constant and high for these past 10 years.

         And the idea that habitat loss is a factor is easily proved to be false. The five thousand acres around me is exactly the same as it was 10 years ago. National forestland is much the same as it has always been in terms of good or bad turkey habitat. But numbers of turkeys on my neighboring land are getting scarce! I once heard eleven gobblers about 12 years back within a square mile of my home. You might hear one or two now on an April morning, but they grow silent in May, easy for hunters to find, call and kill.

         Ten years ago on my place I was feeding seven long-bearded gobblers behind my home. Now there are none! The last single gobbler to feed there was three years ago. None since! I quit hunting several years ago because there are too many of us out killing turkeys in the spring and fall.

         Several southern states have changed season lengths; bag limits have been reduced and regulations altered. Missouri has done nothing and it is making turkey numbers pretty lean. To help the wild turkey in my area I have changed from a gun to a camera and I encourage hunters in the Ozarks to do the same. As for my advice for the Departments of Conservation in any Midwest state… Let the flocks alone in the fall or allow a one-week season only in October. Change youth season to the back end of the regular season. Set the regular season back one week. Shorten it to only two weekends. Allow only one gobbler in the spring for two years along with all of the above, and you’ll see recovery in wild turkey numbers. But the Missouri Department would never option for any of that because it would cause them to lose money through the loss of turkey tags. Their main goal is not wild turkeys, it is the sale of  wild turkey tags!

The Knife

 

         I found an old pocketknife the other day, fairly rusty, and with part of the handle gone. It had three blades, but one was broken.  If you soaked it in oil and sanded away the rust and loosened it up again, the old knife would have a few years left in it. I wondered just where it had come from, and when it had been new.  What era had it seen and what stories could it tell if knives could talk?   What kind of man had carried the old knife...was it perhaps a gift he had cherished in a day and time when little things meant a great deal more than they do today?  Looking at the old knife, I could almost picture him in my mind.

         I grew up around Ozark rivermen, farmers, trappers, hunters and fishermen who owned such knives.  At a young age, I learned the importance of a good knife.   Most of my schoolmates had some kind of pocketknife, many handed down from fathers or grandfathers, and each one a prized possession.  I had several, a lot like that one I found recently, usually with blades worn down from constant sharpening... some with a point or handle partially broken. I got most of them from my grandfathers.

         Folks said you could judge a man somewhat by his knife. Anyone wearing a large sheathed knife was thought to be something of a show-off, since there were no Indians left to fight during my boyhood.  A man who had a dull blade was considered a bit lazy, and if a man had broken blades he was perhaps careless.  Anyone who asked to borrow a knife wasn't looked upon highly.  A fellow who lost his knife regularly wasn't dependable, and one who cut himself was a real greener. If you swapped knives where I grew up, you were gullible. Kids at the old country school did that on occasion, one would hold his knife in a closed fist and offer to trade for whatever pocket knife you had in your pocket. If you ever yielded to temptation, you would likely find out that anyone wanting to trade knives sight unseen had one in such poor shape he didn't figure you could come out ahead.

         Old-timers kept favored knives for years, until the blades were sharpened to near nothing. Then they gave them to youngsters they thought highly of as my grandfathers did with me.  Or perhaps on occasion they gave them to kids who made a nuisance of themselves asking for one, as I often did.

         I never knew any Ozark woodsman to carry a large sheathed knife,

though there may have been some during the deer season.  A good outdoorsman carried a small axe to do heavy work, and a large pocket-knife with two blades or maybe three. One blade was always duller than the others, used for emergency prying or scraping or anything you wouldn't want to use a fine-honed edge on.  But you could bet there would be one blade he kept so sharp he could darn near shave with it.

         Knives weren't so expensive then, but there was less money to waste, so they were taken care of.   As they grew old, Ozark outdoorsmen often became whittlers. You could see them in the summer sitting on a bench in front of the courthouse telling tall stories about legendary bucks and catfish too big to fit in a johnboat, all the while whittling away on a cedar plug.  They'd move inside during the winter, and tell the same stories before the pot bellied stove at the general store, whittling away and chewing tobacco.

         If you had some ability, you whittled something like a toy or a figure.  If you weren't that good at it, you just whittled.  You didn't have to whittle anything in particular, just whittling was enough. It showed that your knife had an edge so keen you could whittle a toothpick out of a railroad tie, and that said something about you.

         Grandpa Dablemont used his knife to fashion rabbit-trap triggers or deadfall sets, to skin a mink, cut bait, or shave a rough edge off his sassafras paddle.  Grandpa McNew had different uses for his knife. He cut green hickory whistles for his grandkids, and cut off plugs of tobacco for himself. He used it to trim his toenails regularly before bedtime, and then used the same knife to peel an apple on occasion. The old timers I grew up around seemed to never eat an apple off the core. They sliced off pieces, chunk by chunk, and balanced each slice on the knife blade with a leathery thumb while guiding it to their mouths.

         Grandpa's knife was an old Shrade-Walden, and he was proud of it. It had "good metal in it", he claimed.  And he referred to the men he liked and respected the same way.  They "had good metal in 'em." I think the original term was 'mettle', but he didn't know that. 

         I still have a couple of old knives owned by my grandfathers.  I sometimes carry one around for awhile for good luck, but I am ever fearful of losing it.  Still there is something about sitting at a deer crossing, whittling on a stick with a knife that is 100 years older than I, and once fit in the weathered hand of one of my grandfathers.

 

The spring issue of the Lightnin’ Ridge Magazine has arrived from the printer.  To get your copy, call me at 417- 777-5227.

 

Fishing An Ozark River

 

Piney River Goggle-eye

         There is a different kind of fishing in April and May in the Ozarks, something that goes back a couple hundred years… grabbing suckers.  It’s a pretty simple thing.  When the suckers are running upstream to spawn, folks just found a nice clean gravel bar and used a white rag and big treble hooks to ‘grab’ the fish we all called yellow suckers.  

         Actually those fish referred to by most Ozarkians as ‘yaller suckers’ are golden redhorse. In the book, Fishes of Missouri by biologist William Pflieger, there are white suckers, blue suckers hog-molly suckers and river redhorse commonly found in sections of the Ozarks.  None of those suckers get much bigger than 3 or 4 pounds but the river redhorse, 70 years ago reached 15 pounds or better quite often.  

         If you don’t know suckers well you might not realize what species you are grabbing, but they all are great eating if you know how to score the fish body, that consists of cutting thru the meat to the backbone every quarter inch or half inch, therefore eliminating the tiny thread-like bones throughout the body.

         If you look out into the river current when the suckers are schooling before the spawn and you have a treble hook out there, you can’t see it very well.   But you can see a white rag tied about 2 feet in front of the hook. When a fish is over the rag, jerk hard and the hook finds it’s mark and the fight is on.

         But while you are grabbing suckers you might be missing some really good rock-bass fishing.  I have always called them goggle-eye and they too spawn in mid April in rocky swift shoals and the pools at the    end of the current.  When I was young, dad and I used little ‘shimmy-flies’, which were made in Salem, Missouri by a fellow named Art Varner.  We would often catch 12 or 15 goggle-eye from one shoal by just letting the spinner flash and keeping the upright hook from turning over.  

         In time, rubber beetle spins became popular for the little fish and the black perch as well. The beetle spin was just a rubber bait duplicating a shimmy-fly.  And with each lure, every now and then, a good-sized smallmouth would attempt to eat it.  Today in river eddies that once had a hundred goggle-eye, I think it is safe to say there are only half as many now.   Limits have been reduced and in many Ozark rivers and the length limit has been set at nine inches. But enforcement of the regulations on goggle-eye is seldom found on the streams.  The scrappy little fish hold their own but I wish I could find them again like they used to be.   Thankfully you can find them though, and it’s good to know that they are hanging in there.

         First time I ever went fishing as a boy was in April.  Dad took me, and one of our old wooden johnboats, on a trip down the upper reaches of the Big Piney River and tried to teach me how to cast an old Shakespeare reel with braided line and a monofilament leader. 

          I was about six years old and I developed a backlash that I was trying to unravel when a scrappy green sunfish (known to dad as a black perch) picked up the little lure we called a “shimmy-fly” and took off with it.  The little fish was only about eight inches long but to me he was a slab-sided frog-eater and the struggle to reel him in was memorable. I will never forget it.  

         I have caught thousands of black perch since then and that’s because they are such a prolific and adaptable little creature that they survive from the muddiest pond in the Ozarks to the biggest lakes we have here.  Every river in the Ozarks has an abundance of them; they often get as big as goggle-eye (rock bass) and as numerous as long-ear sunfish (punkin-seeds). They will sometimes hit a lure as big as they are.  They can do that because they have such a big mouth for such a little fish. They are a member of the sunfish family, which black bass and bluegill are also members.

         But the black perch are good eating too. As a boy who liked to camp, I always had black perch to eat at night when I camped on a gravel bar near some big eddy on the river even if I hadn’t caught a bass all day. They are especially a favorite food for my number one trotlining target, the flathead catfish.  And they weren’t bad eating for me either.

 

To read other articles about fishing and the outdoors go to larrydablemontoutdoors on your computer.  Contact me at lightninridge47@gmail.com

OLD TURKEY HUNTER

 

I have an extensive collection of old magazines and  I thought some readers  might enjoy this ancient story on turkey hunting.  It was entitled “The Gentle Art of Turkey Hunting” and appeared in a1914 magazine called Forest and Stream.

 “The wild turkey is probably the wariest bird in the woods. His hearing is the keenest, and whether from the sense of smell or from some unknown intuition he will take flight and disappear without any apparent cause. For genuine stupidity however, the turkey certainly outrivals the verist greenhorn with a piece of can or an old pipe. Like partridge or quail, wild turkeys will follow a trail or shallow ditch in which some corn and leaves have been strewn and walk straight into a pen, with an opening at the bottom. After scratching the leaves and trash back into the hole, they never look down again to find the opening through which they came. In this manner great numbers of them are caught. 

The Pot Hunter shoots them from a blind, which has been previous baited with corn or peas, but the true sportsman will only shoot them after he has called them to him when they have flown from the roost in the morning. 

Once when the writer was returning from a visit through a short cut in the woods on a beautiful sunshiny morning, a flock of turkeys was seen some distance off on the edge of the swamp. I immediately squatted behind a large pine tree and began to look for something to call them with. Fortunately, I found a small piece of cane, and covering one end carefully with my closed fist I began to call slowly and to my great delight I saw an old hen feeding toward me. I had no gun and was too young then to notice which direction the wind was blowing from and even hoped she might come near enough for me to catch her. I continued to yelp and the hen came nearer and nearer. With my heart in my mouth and almost afraid to breathe, I waited until she got within about ten feet of the tree, when I made a terrific leap, and all but got my arms around her, I had miscalculated the distance however, and she disappeared like a brown streak through the woods. 

This gave me a keen zest for turkey hunting however, and I determined never to be caught again without my gun and unprepared for Mr. Turkey. I had a small muzzle-loading gun, which I used to load with small shot, or chopped up lead or pebbles, or anything I could get, and I determined in future to wrap one buckshot in the moss, which was rammed down on the birdshot, so that I might be prepared for large or small game.

On a brisk cool morning I spied a lonely gobbler on one of my tramps through the woods. At first, I thought that it might be a tame turkey, but he was too far from home for that so I determined to try my luck with the single buckshot as I did not suppose that the small shot would do anything more than to make him run a little faster. I blazed away and to my delight he seemed to be very wobbly. I rushed up to him and grabbed him by the neck thinking that I could strangle him. He was, only wounded very slightly, and promptly proceeded to put up the fight of his life, and gave me the worst licking with his wings and claws, which I ever got. I conquered him in the end however and carried him home in triumph on my shoulders. An amusing incident occurred on one occasion when a bird, which had already been wounded by someone else, was flushed by a pointer dog. He lit on a small tree, and having nothing but birdshot in the gun, I fired at him with that and brought him to the ground. He was still only wounded however, and the dog, having been frequented by the poultry man for chasing the tame turkeys, was afraid to catch him for fear of being whipped. He finally grabbed the turkey by the neck and dragged him to me as if to say “here he is and I have not hurt him.” I need not say that I was glad to have the dog as I could not have caught the wounded turkey without him.”

 

To get the Spring outdoor magazine I put out, The Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal or my book about turkey hunting, The Greatest Wild Gobblers, just call my office (417-777-5227) or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com 

A Fish in the Sky

Actual photo I personally took...no enhancement

 

             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.  It is unbelievable that in surveying dozens of ponds in the Ozarks I never saw a mallard or even a gadwall. What’s happening is strange!

             All in all, I think I'll put this last duck 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; sometimes we easily forget entire seasons.

            About 40 years ago, I hunted pheasants with the publisher of well-known magazine, and as a prospective writer, I wanted to make a good impression.   I was using a brand new over and under shotgun. His dog, a German wirehair pointer, worked flawlessly that morning. She pointed four rooster pheasants in two hours, and in each instance, I missed pheasants that rose before me so close I could see their eyes blink.  The publisher speculated that I would never write about that trip. 

            I blamed the new gun, of course, and sold it only a few days later. All I remember is, I dug my old Smith and Wesson automatic 12-gauge out of the pickup that afternoon and killed my limit of birds, all of which flushed wild, halfway across the cornfield. But the dog never pointed another bird. In fact, the dog stayed away from me the rest of the day. 

            There have been plenty of disastrous hunting trips for me, but it may be, the all-time most embarrassing situation took place more than twenty years ago when I took my Uncle Norten duck hunting on the Sac River.  I've hunted rivers since I was shorter than my shotgun.  Behind a floating blind, we've floated hundreds and hundreds of miles hunting everything from deer and turkey to ducks and squirrels. Norten passed away fifteen years ago, but he had told me stories about how he began hunting that way in the '30s, and I can't remember for sure when I started. 

            In all those combined years, no Dablemont ever let his boat get away from him until that one December years back.  It happened because we stopped on a gravel bar so my Uncle Norten could walk up to look over a crop field to see if there were any rabbits to be found. I stayed with the boat, adding some more foliage to the blind. I pulled the boat 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 in 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, in water ten feet deep or better.

            We had one pickup six miles upstream, and another eight miles downstream. We were in big trouble. Fortunately there was a farmhouse on a distant ridge. 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 aging 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 Norten accepted full blame. He said he should have never left me in charge of the boat.

 

Our spring magazine,  ‘The Lightnin’ Ridge Journal’ is about ready to go to print.   To see the cover go to larrydablemontoutdoors on your computer. To get a copy email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com. Or you can call my office and talk to Gloria Jean about how to get   one mailed   to you.  You can see a very unusual photo on that website of mine this week, a photo of a fish in the sky.

            

 

 

About Fishing…

       I’ve got a couple of things to pass along concerning Ozark lakes that are really interesting.   One is about crappie fishing in Norfork Lake where biologists just recently finished a lead-net sampling of fish.  They checked about 700 crappie to learn the ages associated with different sizes.  From their reports it looks like there will be some exceptional fishing for black crappie this spring on Norfork with a big improvement over their findings from 2022.

      The Fisheries division of the Department submits this report…..

”Crappie in Norfork Lake are reaching harvestable size (10 inches) in just 2- 3 years and growing to 12 inches by age 3-4. The collected fish ranged from 3.4 to 14.6 inches, with an average size of 9.7 inches. Perhaps the most exciting finding was the large number of 1.5-year-old crappie averaging around 8 inches in length. This strong year class indicates excellent fishing opportunities on the horizon as these fish reach prime harvestable size in the coming year or two. The sample was dominated by Black Crappie (89%), likely due to clear-water conditions in Norfork Lake, which favor Black Crappie over White Crappie.”

 

      Then there was news from the Missouri Fisheries division that beginning now, the 15-inch length limit on bass at Tablerock Lake will pertain only to largemouth and smallmouth but not to spotted bass.  Spotted bass and Kentucky bass are the same fish with two different names. And the new length limit on that fish is 12 inches. The average fisherman cannot tell the difference between a 12-inch spotted bass and a 12-inch largemouth just by looking at them.  

      Spotted bass, though the belly spots for which they were named may not be as prominent, can always be distinguished by the rough, rasp-like patch on top of the tongue.  If it is a largemouth the top of the tongue is smooth.  Fisheries biologists know all about the differences but I doubt if many conservation agents can tell one from the other if the fish is in the 12- to 15-inch range.  There’ll be some problems there with a few fishermen getting them mixed up and keeping a 12-inch largemouth.

      Spotted bass are not native to Ozark streams where  smallmouth are found.  Smallmouth males sometimes cross with spotted bass females and create a hybrid between the    two that some anglers refer too as a ‘mean-mouth’.   Fisheries biologist say that they do not like the spotted bass thriving in smallmouth waters as they compete for habitat and food that the largemouth does not seem suited for.  Therefore it can be said that largemouth in smallmouth rivers are not as much of a problem for smallmouth as the spotted bass are.

 

      I have a favorite hard-to-get-to stretch of water on the Sac River where spotted bass grow unusually large. In most waters they grow much slower than largemouth and if you ever land a five-pound spotted bass you’ve done something akin to landing a six-pound smallmouth.  They just don’t get that big without a few more years of growth. Even smallmouth get to four pounds quicker than spotted bass.  A largemouth will get to four pounds in an Ozark river in about five or six years.  A smallmouth needs about eight years to reach four pounds and a spotted bass needs about ten years to accomplish that size.  If a spotted bass reaches 12-inches a largemouth of the same age has probably reached 15.  So there is the reason for this new regulation shortening the spotted bass length limit in Tablerock and it ought to be done the same on every lake and river in the state.

      The Sac River stretch I mentioned has walleye and largemouth too but the spotted bass outnumber largemouth and there are no smallmouth to speak of in that western Missouri river.  I keep spotted bass when I want fish to eat because unlike smallmouth the meat is very white and solid and tasty.  In that stretch on the Sac I once caught three or     four spotted bass above three-pounds in a couple of hours   and then landed one above four pounds.

      One spring afternoon a friend and I motored up a large tributary to the Sac and found a small bluff-hole just full of spotted bass weighing about one to two pounds.  We must have caught 20 there where the water was about 10-feet deep and dinghy colored from a spring rain. On our light gear it was some fishing I will never forget.

      You can despise the spotted bass because they hurt    native smallmouth but you can’t gripe about the way they fight. Get a two- to three-pounder on light gear and you won’t be complaining.

 

Read about all kinds of   fishing on   my book  “Recollections of an Old-Fashioned Angler”. Find it   on www.larrydablemont.com  Email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com

 

Walleye Time

        Walleye are a different kind of fish!   They may not always be in deep water, but they are almost always close to the bottom. If you are serious about walleye fishing, you have to give it some effort; walleye don't often come easy in our waters.  And the time for that effort is now.  Successful walleye fishermen in the Ozarks begin to catch them as they prepare to spawn.  The first of the walleye spawn takes place in late February into early March and many of them will have finished by April.

       If there's plenty of water, they move up the tributaries and streams at the slightest warming of the currents that call them.  If there isn't plenty of water in those creeks and rivers, they will move to rocky points and rip-rap near dams and bridges and spawn there.  Northern fishermen spend more time fishing vertically for walleye than they do casting for them.  

       Sometimes they find the schools by trolling for them, and then when they locate a fish or two, they go back and drop a jig tipped with a minnow down to the bottom and lift it up and down only a couple of feet off the bottom.  When a walleye takes a lure fished vertically, he seldom hits it very hard, you just start to lift the jig and feel the weight of the fish.

       Some of the best walleye fishing I have ever had was on the Mississippi river in March, up near the Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois corners, fishing below the locks and dams, drifting in the current.  We were vertically fishing 1/2-inch blue and white jigs tipped with big minnows.  To keep the minnows on, you would run the hook through the mouth, out the gill and then through the back under the dorsal fin.  That day, we must have caught twenty big walleye between the three of us, up to eight pounds, and all over three pounds.

       You can catch walleye that way in the winter on Bull Shoals, Norfork, Stockton and Truman lakes, fishing points and deep channels around standing timber.   But in March, if you fish the same way in creeks and rivers which feed the same reservoirs with lots of persistence you can have some success. Walleye stage in the deeper holes and eddies below shoals in March, and they feed better early and late in the day and even at night.  They spawn at night, moving up to that shallower swift water where the eggs are fertilized and roll in the current.

       One old-time walleye fisherman on the Little Red River in Arkansas, which feeds Greers Ferry Lake, (where walleye over twenty pounds have been taken) told me that he catches huge walleye at night from the Little Red River in the wake of the first couple of big spring storms which come through.  He says those storms, which accompany the first warm spells in early March, quickly raise the water temperature, and walleye come up to stage at the foot of the shoals.  He finds them there and catches them on large chubs and minnows and even bluegill.  His favorite bait is small bluegill.

       Walleye, as the late winter progresses into early spring, will also hit crank-baits, and the long-billed, narrower ones are the best producers, on Stockton, Bull Shoals and Norfork lakes.  Use yellow and red and chartreuse combinations. 

        Every year with the first good fishing weather in late February and early March; meaning whatever temperatures I can stand, I fish tributaries to the lakes for white bass, black bass and walleye.  Sometimes the other species are much easier to find, but it is the walleye which I treasure, because they are so good to eat. I went after a big walleye in the Sac River a few years ago with the same jig and minnow combination I have used so often with good success in Canada.

       I concentrated my efforts on a deep pool below a shoal and sure enough, I got the fish on I had been hoping for.  He was heavy, and fought like a walleye of ten or twelve pounds, staying deep and lunging long and hard.  I handled him like a master and in about ten minutes brought him up to the surface.  And he was a beautiful silver-blue instead of the walleye gold and bronze I had been looking for.   It was a huge drum, about fifteen pounds.

       I am going to try the same technique again in early March, here and there, where walleye ought to be.  I know I'll catch some bass and white bass and maybe another drum or two, but there might someday be a horse of a walleye in one of those places.  I caught an eleven-pound walleye years ago in Manitoba.  I just know I can get a bigger one somewhere if I keep at it.  The time to do it is upon us.

       

An Owl Before Dawn

There is no more efficient predator than a great horned owl.  Silent and deadly, he can eat whatever he wants, up to and including a roosting wild turkey.  Their flight is completely silent, and they occasionally break the neck of roosting turkeys in the darkness before the dawn.  But that does not happen often if there are plenty of possums, rabbits and small ground mammals to feed upon. And, he will attack and eat a skunk with enthusiasm.

Always, beneath a February or March moon, when there is a little snow on the ground, I watch rabbits playing around my place, in the pre-mating-season antics which include games like jumping over each other and kicking their heels up as if they had never heard of a great horned owl.  Certainly the semi-uncivilized atmosphere around my home, and the presence of my Labradors, eliminated the threat of foxes and coyotes, which stay down in the woods behind the pond.  So this became a sort of haven for cottontails, especially with all the brush piles I have built here.  

       Of course, I would probably opt for not having one house mouse or Norway rat in the whole Ozarks, but I like the idea of some ground mammals like the woodrat and harvest mice and white-foot mice…and rabbits! I’d lot rather have cottontails and quail than hardly anything I can think of.  I would have more if the great horned owl that lives beside us were gone, but I would not want to never hear or see him again.

My grandfather, who always lived out in the woods or on the creek somewhere, sawed the top out of medium-sized trees up about twenty feet from the ground, to create a flat landing place for the great horned owl, and then would set a steel trap there, and bait it with a wood rat or small squirrel.  He was paid a small bounty at the county courthouse for the feet of owls, but he also saw no good in them, and believed in maintaining them only in strong enough numbers so that they survived along the river miles from where he kept a few chickens.  Grandpa liked to eat eggs and the owls liked to eat chickens, and he was much more inclined to believe in the survival of things he liked to eat, like rabbits, quail and ducks, than things he didn’t eat. 

There were so fewer men back then, than there are today. Grandpa wasn’t so far removed from a time when a man’s greatest concern wasn’t so much the economic stimulus, but what he was going to eat and perhaps what might be about to eat him. Who could believe we would ever make a great and drastic impact on the land, and perhaps endanger our own existence in time?

When I was 15 years old, Grandpa and I floated a particular Ozark river in a wooden johnboat he built, and caught some nice fish from it.  Today that stream is nearly dry. If I mention it on occasion when I speak to a live audience somewhere, it quickly comes to me they would rather I didn’t. So more often, I talk about the funny stories, which came from the old men in the pool hall back in that time. 

I figured out long ago that even if you know something, it isn’t always wise to try to explain it to anyone. That’s true of things like the spreading of billions of gallons of chemicals, all over the Ozarks.  Nothing will stop it, and what is going to come from it is going to come from it, and that’s that. 

Maybe God himself knows this, and is just watching and waiting, ready to reclaim, rebirth and regrow this old earth sometime in the future.  I guess it follows then, that the best thing to do is the best we can, to try to get our grandkids someplace where there are songbirds still singing and the water still has some crawdads and kingfishers and there are more trees than there are stumps.

If you wonder how any of this has anything to do with that owl, I can’t explain it.  I just thought about some of those things while I was listening to him, mice and rabbits and water, and that fire in California last year, and the mess the cities of this nation are in. 

 It was awfully quiet and peaceful up here on Lightnin’ Ridge that night, with the moon so bright it was casting shadows on my lawn as it sunk toward the west well before dawn. That old owl is likely sitting in a hollow tree somewhere right now, getting some sleep, and maybe a little bit hungry because there aren’t as many rabbits around my place.  Some of that may be his own darn fault. But at least he has no steel traps in flat-topped cedars to contend with now, and his feet aren’t worth a thing.

 Read other columns of mine on larrydablemontoutdoors.com, and see my books and magazines on larrydablemont.com

Firewood in Abundance

 

         I went to Bull Shoals Lake last week and you can see the effects of the drought there, as it is lower than I have ever seen it.   The Ozarks of both Missouri and Arkansas need inches of rain badly to fill our lakes and rivers to a level they all need to be.  The Buffalo River is so low that only the lower portion is full enough to float.  On upper sections, nearly three quarters of the river, there are shoals so shallow canoes can’t pass through or over without dragging.  That doesn’t bode well for all the canoe companies there.  Spring rains may fix that but my feeling is that we won’t get the kind of rains in the spring to raise lakes like Bull Shoals or Truman or Norfork.   

         Speaking of Norfork, my spring magazine carries a story by Robert Page Lincoln which was published in 1952 in an outdoor magazine. It is all about the new Norfork Lake, in which he expounds on its wonders as a fishing lake and one which is different than any others as it won’t fill in with silt as all others seem to be doing at that time in the Midwest. Lincoln didn’t like reservoirs because of many factors; chief among them is the fact that they destroyed free-flowing streams.

         When I was a boy there was talk of damming the Big Piney River where I grew up, but the problem seemed to be the hundreds of caves along the river, which would drain any impoundments there.  Right now, the up-river sections of the Piney are so low, even in the spring, that where my dad and I once floated in wooden johnboats, you can’t get down the stream in a kayak.  It is little more than a creek now in the area north of Cabool.  I think the Missouri Department of Conservation could use some of its millions to place a dam there on those headwaters, which could create a 2- or 3- hundred acre lake which would not hurt the stream at all and provide some good fishing for the folks in Cabool, Willow Springs and Mountain Grove.  That portion of the Piney is ruined for good, with not enough water for anything but green sunfish and punkinseeds.           

            Landowners have removed most of the trees, and in places where I remember deep holes with rock bass and smallmouth, there is little more than shallow, gravel-filled little eddies where even crayfish are few.  I would give anything to see a conservation-oriented group get behind the idea of a small dam there.  It wouldn’t put much of a dent in the MDC budget to create a dam, which would have no affect on the lower river.  Most of the upper third of the river that I know like the back of my hand is something of a skeleton of what I remember from the fifties and sixties.

         Down in Arkansas on the watershed of the White River, in a stretch of highway between Mountain View and Calico Rock, there is an ugly scar where a fire has destroyed several hundred acres of National Forestland.  Enough standing dead timber there would fill the stoves and fireplaces of thousands of Ozark homes if the National Forest Service would get behind a project to allow woodcutters from all over the Ozarks to come in and cut trailer loads of the dead oak and hickory and pine trees that will soon fall and rot. Right now it is illegal to go into that blighted area and cut firewood.  

         We are a nation of great waste and it tells you a lot about the Forest Service, willing to see so much wood going to waste when it would be so simple to build a road or two into the dead areas and invite woodcutters to have at it.  I believe some would come a long way and there is thousands of truck and trailer loads of good firewood there to be harvested and used.  But we are a wasteful nation, and government agencies like the Forest Service and even the National Park Service, that I once worked for, are bound up in regulations that prevent common sense approaches and solutions inside their boundaries.  But anyway, there is enough wood there in that burned wasteland to make a woodcutter rich. Maybe if someone were to contact the Forest Service there could be a way by filling out the right forms, to go in and cut some of it.

 

Don’t forget that I write columns each week for my websites.  See larrydablemontoutdoors and larrydablemont.com. My email address is lightninridge47@gmail.com.

My magazine, The Lightnin’ Ridge Journal, spring issue, will come out in late March. If you want to get a copy you should email me or call my office at 417 -777-5227 for details in getting a copy. The cost is $8.50.

Eat More Rabbits -- & bear seizure by MDC

 

    By the time you read this, the snow will likely be gone, and I will have eaten the last fried rabbit of the winter. If you don’t eat a fried rabbit or two each winter, you aren’t living right. There were so many of them when I was a kid, and from December until February, rabbits and quail kept many a farm family well fed. Eating rabbits makes you sharp-eyed and hones your reflexes. Rabbit meat makes you more resistant to the cold, and it makes your legs stronger. We were watching a college basketball game the other day and you could tell that those players descended from rabbit hunting families. If you see really short-legged people who can’t take the cold it is because they haven’t hunted rabbits enough. 

    I can’t see as well as I once could, and can’t walk nearly as fast or as far, and my reflexes aren’t as good. I blame that on the fact that each year I hunt and eat fewer rabbits. Correspondingly, I think eating more fish, as I seem to be doing as I get older, gives a person arthritic elbows and sore shoulders. The fish I catch are awfully big! I have noticed something about my fishing buddies… the more they fish, they more they stretch the truth. I think eating fish causes that too but it hasn’t happened to me yet.

    Up here on Lightnin’ Ridge, where I live, there is a little rough-edged road coming up to my house. As I drive up that little rocky hill, I have a garden off to the left of the drive, about the only open place on this whole oak-hickory ridge-top. At night this time of year, especially when there’s some snow, I often see four or five cottontails cavorting and playing around my garden, getting ready for the mating season. In the moonlight, I sometimes watch them running and jumping over one another. That isn’t necessarily because they know they’ll be eating my green beans in a few months. That leap-frogging is a mating ritual, indicating how close spring must be. 

    There are more rabbits here because of my Labrador, keeping coyotes and foxes and bobcats away from my place. A great horned owl is not so leery, and he quite often roosts in a big oak right beside my office. I lose a rabbit or two to that owl and his mate, and they get some flying squirrels too. But it is the way it is. God created all things, great and small, gentle and fierce, and he sees value in all wild things. That gives me hope, as I use to be a little wild. But not anymore… I have quit howling at the coyotes and shooting at house cats and I haven’t been out running and jumping in the snow in quite a few years. I envy those rabbits!

    On a poetic note… Soon the wicked winter will slide from the budding limbs of redbud and wild plum and fall gently into the warm crevices of March, as blooming forsythia and jonquils herald its welcome demise. Sometimes I get to writing stuff like that and feel like Carl Sandburg! I hope I am right about all that. There are things I can’t figure out, and some of them are important. How does the road-runner bird I saw recently survive our winters up here, when he is carnivorous, and never known to eat an acorn, and how do people who sell propane gas in February for those kinds of prices get a good night’s sleep?

    I don’t think about things like that much when spring comes, as I am too busy hunting turkeys and morels and fishing. It is winter that makes you know if you are independent. I don’t need the things city people need. Here on Lightnin’ Ridge I have a crosscut saw and a fireplace and canned goods from the garden and a spring for water. I don’t need electricity or gas or a super market. But I sure as heck do need April! I can’t wait to grow tomatoes and cucumbers and green beans, and fill the freezer with wild turkey and fish. And Carl Sandburg couldn’t do that, even if he was a better poet!

 

I received this letter from a reader, Lyndell Williams. It is a chance for all of us to help a young hunter wrongfully accused…and robbed!

 

            My son Wiley, an 11-year-old who loves the outdoors, shot a massive 421-pound black bear on our family land in Missouri. The Department of Conservation seized Wiley’s bear, accusing us of wrongdoing despite no charges against him. We fought back, but the judge ruled against us. Now, we’re seeking to appeal this decision, but the legal costs are overwhelming. We need your support to help us reclaim what’s rightfully Wiley’s. Any contribution, no matter how small, will bring us one step closer to justice. Thank you for standing with us during this difficult time.  We have set up a gofund me account to help with the thousands of dollars this appeal will cost. If you want to help contact me at …lyndellwilliams49@gmail.com 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A letter to the MDC

 

  

I wrote my last MDC column about how a man and his son had a 19-point buck confiscated by an MDC agent name Clare Burch. Here is the letter he sent to the MDC chief of enforcement with the form they require. This is his attempt to recover the valuable set of antlers after the whole charge and citation was dismissed in court. Want to know what MDC’S wardens are like? Read this letter... from Joe DeAngelo

 

 

To whom it may concern... After my son's deer was loaded on the truck we were going home and past Matthew Gingrich (an Amish farmer) on the road. We came home to start getting the meat in the cooler on ice because it was almost 60 degrees and couldn’t hang overnight. So we got it all cut up and was getting rid of the bone and carcass. And right before we got back Matt called Ray and told him he called the MDC on him because if he (Gingrich) couldn’t get that deer he (Ray-my son) shouldn’t have it either. We got home and Clair (MDC agent) was waiting there. She asked about the deer and where it was. I told her we had to process it and was in the cooler in my garage. She went in my garage, opened up the cooler and then was asking why we processed it so fast. I told her because it was way too warm to let that deer hang. 

            When she was standing in my barn, I watched her key the radio and call for a thermal drone. There was 3 of us that heard and seen her do it. So then she asked us about what was going on and where the rest of the deer carcass and remains was. So I took her out there to it. When we got to where the carcass was, the officer from Lafayette County came out there also. I didn’t get his name. And at this point we had been up for two and half days with no sleep. They were calling me a liar for cutting it up so fast. I would think your agents would know better. It was 60°! You can’t let something hang. So the 2 1/2 hour interrogation went on and on asking us the same question 10 different ways. They knew we were worn out and exhausted. That shouldn’t have happened till the next day. We went back to where she took the meat and the hide and the head. She put all that good meat in a scented garbage bag. 

            She asked why we didn’t tag the deer when we got to him and Ray told her because there was no service there. When he got service, it went through. Nope she said that wasn’t true and we were lying. I told her go back over there and she would see there was no service but nope. The Lafayette County agent was calling us liars about the broad-head shot through the shoulder and was ready to take me down with a severe attitude because I was telling him it was shot with an arrow through the shoulder. So I finally called Raymond after being called a liar multiple times he seen Raymond coming over there and started screaming him to get back in the truck. I said hey man, he’s the one that shot the deer he’s the hunter he need to show you something so that changed his attitude. Raymond showed him the video of the deer with the arrow clearly protruding out of its body and then that changed his tone after us being called liars multiple times I was just about done with them at this point. I’m a businessman in Ray County. I’ve lived here my entire life. I’ve hunted for 32 years with never having a problem. I’ve run a business for almost 18. I have never been dehumanized and called a liar like that in my life not even close. I was ticketed Sunday for illegal transportation of a carcass and for the use of a drone. I’m sure you see all the charges that they liked to pile on. 

            My problem with the whole thing is when Clare got down to my 17-year-old’s face and told him this was gonna sting. Wasn’t it losing that deer she tried provoking an altercation with a minor… I know two other people she has done this too, and then she tried pressing charges on them for intimidating a law-enforcement officer when they blew up on her this is her game. Pretty disgusting and sad! We were harassed for 12 days with a drone. I called Clair. She denied having a drone that wouldn’t stop so I finally called the Ray County sheriff and made a report and then it stopped. I had called Jade I guess in Northeast Mo he denied that you guys had a drone two days straight. The drone was lined up with my living room window. My kids saw it one evening from my living room. 

            Sunday morning I went back out to Calvin‘s where we hunted at 5 AM and there were drones in the sky. I seen two and MDC denies it. So if the MDC does not have drones, she had to call in a third-party because three of us heard her do it and seen her do it, and we all witnessed the drones and harassment. I have video of them over my farm and house. People here are sick of the double standard. She violated and abused the fourth amendment right for sure. She had no right to enter my garage. Our privacy was violated for days and days. my advice to people to ask me is to plead the fifth not tell your agent a word and get a lawyer because all they do is dehumanize you and make you look like a monster that you’re not. Not only did she keep the deer that was tagged in before she took it. So that Ray lost his buck tag also and couldn’t hunt the last 3 weeks of the best part of bow season too.

             Also last January we were checked three days in a row by Clare on the same farm with the same truck. She actually came a fourth time to check us and my brother called her and asked her if she was just harassing us so not really sure what her problem has been but she’s never had a reason to have a problem. we are not law breaking poachers like they want to make us to be. We have abided by the law, our entire lives. I feel like fair is fair if you’re gonna make the people walk this straight and narrow with no common sense used in any situation than the people should make sure the MDC is also walking straight and narrow by the law. Both my grandfather’s were US Marines, and then went on to be New York City police, which they both retired. Always had the most respect for law-enforcement. But not gonna lie after being scrutinized like this I know how the minorities feel now and understand why they feel the way they do sorry to say. You would never understand until you were treated in this way I never understood either until then.