MDC Telecheck Letter

 

All Missouri hunters should read this letter 

Know the Truth, Know Your Rights

 

       I have a letter from an ex-employee of the Missouri Department of Conservation that outlines the Telecheck system and how it is used in rather nefarious ways by agents. These systems are now fairly uniform in several states of the Midwest, and with deer season ahead, every deer hunter needs to read this letter. It could save you a lot of money paying fines you should not have to pay.  Newspapers cannot print this letter because the sender does not want his name used.  Therefore I put it, as I received it, on a website where you CAN read it.  That letter may be seen on your computer at larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com.  You are going to be very surprised what the Telecheck system may do to you even when you are completely innocent.  In many states bordering Missouri, it is much the same. The 4^th amendment is the same in all states. Agents use the Telecheck system far beyond its original purpose. I have documented many, many instances of that and they are being printed in an upcoming book I have written, “THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MISSOURI DEPARTMENT OF CONSERVATION!”

 

           Shortly after that Telecheck letter was received, I contacted the newly appointed Enforcement Division Chief for that department, Randy Doman.  We agree on very little, but we do agree that a high percentage of hunters have no idea what their rights are.  If you do not, you are in danger of being given a citation over a technicality even if you are trying to obey the law.  You need to know that you should NEVER let any agent come into your home, barn, shed or vehicle without a search warrant. They DO NOT have a legal right to do so unless you give them permission.  I’ll tell you in a future column what happened to one innocent hunter by the name of Henshall in Northern Missouri; when he allowed a pair of nice friendly smiling agents with hats in hand to come into his home because they could never get a search warrant to do what they wanted to. His loss from their trick, was in the thousands of dollars, and every hunter and fisherman should read his story. Here is what Enforcement Chief Randy Doman sent me in an email.  Read it, print it and keep it where you do not forget it, and where you can show it to an agent bent on making a victim of you….

 

-----“The 4th Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure apply to conservation agents just the same as they do for state troopers, sheriff’s deputies, city police, etc.  The Open Fields Doctrine provides that open fields do not carry the same expectation of privacy as an occupied dwelling or curtilage.  Pending exigent circumstances, conservation agents may not search a closed barn or shed without consent or a warrant.  Conservation agents may not force their way into a home without a search warrant or consent based on seeing a mounted deer head on the wall.  

Regarding the enforcement of baiting laws, citations are warranted when hunters are found physically within or immediately adjacent to baited areas. When hunters are found outside of sight of the baited area or out of range for killing an animal standing in the baited area, no ticket should be issued unless other evidence is present to indicate the hunter knew or reasonably should have known the area was baited and is hunting there because of the bait; or is the person who placed the bait for other hunters; or there is a preponderance of evidence clearly indicating the hunters are in a particular location because the placement of the bait is attracting deer or turkeys to that location. If the evidence for baiting violations is not clear-cut, agents are instructed to consult with supervisors for guidance in enforcement actions.  Conservation agents may instruct hunters in the immediate surrounding area of the bait that further hunting in that area is prohibited until ten (10) days following complete removal of the bait.

Agents are instructed not close entire farms or large areas of land simply because bait was found at a particular location. Likewise, adjoining property owners should not be considered in violation unless they were aware of the bait and were using it as an attraction to deer or turkeys for hunting.

Conservation agents must abide by the same 4^th Amendment protections as any other law enforcement officer.  Conservation agents often follow up on deer and turkey Telechecks as their schedules allow.  With the discontinuation of wildlife check-in stations in 2005, these Telecheck investigations have become an expectation and a valuable tool for conservation agents; not only to increase compliance with the Wildlife Code, but to ensure the integrity of the self-reported harvest data.  When hunters raised concerns about increased poaching if check-in stations were discontinued, the Department assured them that conservation agents would conduct spot checks of the Telecheck system to provide reasonable assurances that the self-reporting system was being used properly. 

While the majority of these Telecheck contacts are positive and most hunters are following the regulations, conservation agents also discover occasional violations including but not limited to; taking over-limits of deer and turkey, taking deer or turkey over bait, fraudulently obtaining/using permits, and taking deer and turkeys in closed season.”------Randy Doman.

 

Readers may contact me via email at lightninridge47@gmail.com or write to me at Dablemont, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or if you  want you may call me when I am in my office, 417 777 5227

 

 

Fall Leaves… Fall Fish

 

 

         The darned leaves in the water makes it tough to fish a river in the fall. I should remember that! But I have a hard time learning things due to a deficiency which comes from being hit on the head so often over the years by falling limbs and lightning bolts resulting from high winds and thunderstorms.  But I keep trying! Last week, with temperatures up in the seventies I tried again, up my favorite river on a calm day with no storms in sight.

 

         I kept reeling back leaves and no fish.  BUT… I found a spot below a shoal where there were   hundreds of fish congregated.  With that, my plans changed.  To heck with those leaf-catching lures sporting treble hooks, I quickly found a small spinner with a white plastic grub on a single hook.  That is a lure I have used in a pinch which will catch every kind of fish you could imagine; all three species of bass crappie, walleye, drum, and white bass on many occasions. It is a super lure to use for white bass, which is what I found by the jillions in that eddy where the swift water of the shoal swirled and slowed.

 

         White bass fishermen don’t have to be very good fishermen.  When they swarm up the tributaries of any midwestern lake in the spring, they just have to be found to be caught. But then they leave the rivers and go back to sulk in the deep waters of the lake from which they came.  And the average fisherman thinks they will stay there until next spring. Not so!           They get confused by the cooling water of the fall and up the river they go again for some reason cannot tell you.  There are not many things about the outdoors I cannot venture a good guess on, and that fall migration is one of them.  That is something to be written about later.  Anyways, there they were. Only problem was, while I could catch a fish from 8- to 10- inches on every cast, there seemed to be none bigger than that. If you want to have fun with smaller fish, you have only to fish with ultra-light gear, a rod like a switch and light line.

 

         I had such an outfit, and as the evening sun sank beyond treetops behind me, I caught a bunch of those yearlings.  With each fish I hooked, there came a half dozen or so others, swirling beneath the unfortunate fellow, wanting to help him eat whatever it was he had. They fought like the devil on that little light rod!  In my river, only smallmouth compare to those white bass when it comes to fighting long and hard.

 

         Let me say here that if I had wanted to take home those short-sized white bass, I could have kept a number of them, filleted them and used them for delicious fish patties to be eaten over the winter. I have a recipe for that, involving crackers and eggs.  But I didn’t keep any.  An hour before darkness I just drifted down stream, hoping I could catch a black bass or walleye on that little spinner bait. 

 

         I stopped at a place that has an amazing history for me, a place I call the miracle-tree eddy. I will tell that unbelievable story in the spring issue of my outdoor magazine, but here with limited space, I can’t get into that.  I can just say that I only caught four more fish. Three were white bass from 14- to 15-inches, which I kept for supper.  The other was a channel catfish a little less than four pounds, which is to say, he could have also been a little better than three pounds, if you get my drift. I turned him loose, amazed that with all the fish I mentioned earlier, I could now add catfish to the little white spinner list.

 

         You know what was great about that evening?  I never saw or heard another soul. It was just me and the Great Creator and something close to perfection…at least as close as you can get nowadays.  I thanked Him for it, even if the fish were small. I never want God to think I will just settle for anything when I go fishing! 

 

         There was one of the most beautiful scenes I have ever enjoyed on the river, the yellow-gold tint of late fall trees and drifting leaves accentuated by the setting sun beyond them, and a beautiful multi-colored bluff above dark water. Back home on my ridgetop, I sat down to write this, knowing that there isn’t enough room to tell it all or enough words to describe it. But in time I will get to it all… fascinating things to tell, like what that channel catfish did, and why those white bass were so small, and what you have to do to remove the red meat on the bigger ones to make them excellent eating. Then there is the long ago story of the miracle tree. As I said, I will get to it all… someday!

        

         I have written ten books about the outdoors. See them on my website, www.larrydablemont.com. Email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com If you want a free copy of the holiday issue of my  ‘Journal of the Ozarks’ magazine, call and tell MS, Wiggins, my secretary, to send you one. Phone 417 777 522

The Voice

 

I left the border of Nebraska and South Dakota at midday on Wednesday, crossing the wide, sandy banks of the swift but shallow Niobrara River.  Beyond it, I gazed across desolate, gentle hills of prairie grass, rolling away as far as the eye can see.  It is the land where Chief Spotted Tail led a band of Sioux Indians northward, to find a place where there were no intruding white people that were coming destroy to his homeland in a search for gold and all it would buy.  

 

At six o’clock that evening I got lost trying to find my way into Iowa, and I stopped on a high point to look across miles of the city and suburbs, of Omaha. There were lights to every direction, and from that high hill I could see giant ribbons of car lights backed up to a distant horizon, creeping slowly along.  To all directions there were nothing but lights… herds of humanity in masses too great to imagine.  I thought to myself that out below me was a misery of wasted time and wasted lives, where people worked their days and lives away to make enough money to survive, and flee on occasion to enjoy what their wages would buy, as far as they could get from a life that imprisons them without their knowledge of it.

 

Eighteen hours later I sat on an Ozark river near my home, watching the late-day sun cast the world in a yellow and orange landscape, where a quiet music played in flowing water and in the whisper of crisp falling leaves hitting an adjacent gravel bar.  There were small fish there by the hundreds.  I became tired of catching them from the dark, shadowed waters of a clear, cool current.  Below me there was a river bluff with shades of subtle colors, bathed in the glow of a setting sun’s last rays.  There was not a soul there but me, and a peace and contentment I cannot describe, settling over me in the late evening. It was a peace that made me want to stay forever, where I felt the Great Creator’s presence and a blessing far beyond what I deserve.  It comes in a way I have felt a million times before, since boyhood, in those places where there is no man-made sounds, and His presence sends a chill throughout my being.

 

There is the distant howl of a far-away coyote, the screech of a wood-duck hen and the splash of an occasional fish below the shoal.  I am a writer.  I feel as if God is conveying to me a message to write for others, from Him.  In a matter of hours, He showed me the beauty of the sand hills prairie, the confusion and waste in a great city during the late hours of the evening, and the wonder of an Ozarks river that seemed to have been, in those few hours, as it could have been a thousand years ago.   Often, I feel the urgency to convey a message from God after seeing what He has shown me… but I have no idea how to do it.  And I have no idea what it is! 

 

God doesn’t need me.  He has told our nation what will save us and what will destroy us. In the wake of our complicated technology, which is so loud amongst the great, crowded herds of men, God’s voice has been drowned out, I think.  But you can hear it in the winds blowing through the grasses of Spotted Tails lands, and in the sound of flowing shoals and falling leaves from mine, hundreds of miles away.  God is still alive I think, if you can find a place where you can hear Him.

No Water, No Turkeys

This is the flathead catfish my grandpa caught the night I was born, in October

        It is amazing to me what a drought we have gone through for two months throughout the Ozarks, after the high water from heavy rains in the early summer. Seems like we are living in a day of feast or famine. Down on Norfork and Bull Shoals a couple of months back, I saw some very high water. But last week on Bull Shoals the lake was about 30 feet lower. It looked like they were draining it.

       Same thing up on Truman Lake. A few months ago, it was the highest it has ever been, but now it is as low as I ever saw it. BUT… low water on these reservoirs makes fish easier to find. I remember fishing Bull Shoals years back with a resort owner by the name of Jim Carr in October at night. We fished with big white spinners against bluffs, and let them drop down over ledges into deep water, where smallmouth bass and a few largemouth as well, seemed reluctant to let that spinner pass.

     Those were moonlit nights that were chilly but not cold. Right now as low as the lakes are, I would love to do that again. But it is harder now to start my day early in the morning and still be going strong at midnight. If anyone in Arkansas knows where Jim Carr is, tell him I said hello.

     And if you want to catch catfish now is the time to set trotlines. Truman Lake is a great body of water for that, and so is Norfork. I think Truman has as many catfish per acre, especially the big blues, as any lake in the Midwest. For a while, October’s flathead catfish will feed hungrily to fatten up for winter. On the night I was born in mid-October, many decades ago, my grandfather caught a 72-pound flathead catfish from the Gasconade River.

     Blue catfish and channel catfish can be caught on dead shad or blood bait or many other baits, but flathead are always taken on live sunfish or big chubs, good-sized live baits of any kind or occasionally nightcrawlers or crayfish that are put on a hook live. I have always wondered why that would be, but it is one of many things in nature that seems unexplainable. Of course there are always exceptions to that, but usually you will not catch flatheads on any bait that isn’t alive.

                 *************************************************************

photographed in 2014 near my home, you could hear these old gobblers sound off in the spring until 2016. Now there are none.

     I have hunted wild turkeys in the fall since Rover was a pup. But no more! It is alarming to me that wild turkey flocks have declined so much over the past few years. If you are a hunter, the best thing you can do for wild turkeys is to pass up the fall turkey season. I urge you to do so.

      Right now we need all the turkeys we can get to survive through the winter. Any kind of fall harvest is too much. There aren’t many outdoorsmen who know how bad things are, and I think that our biologists in the Midwest may not have a clue. They keep saying it is due to a poor spring hatch, and that is only a small part of it. In Missouri, there has been no change whatsoever in the turkey seasons or bag limits through the many years of decline, and it is time for that. Consider this…. In 2014 there were 47 thousand gobblers killed in the spring, and 57 hundred killed in the fall. In the spring of 2019 there were only 38 thousand gobblers killed and only 19 hundred killed in the fall. I am afraid the MDC will watch them fade into oblivion before changing anything because they do not want to lose the revenue from turkey tag sales. BUT, with fewer turkeys there will be fewer tags sold.

     Back in 2010 I photographed seven mature toms feeding in my back lawn. In 2014 there were only three, and now there are none. There have been none since 2016. My game cameras last year on my back acreages caught the image of one gobbler last winter, and one hen. In places where wild turkey congregate along rivers in winter fields before spring, I remember seeing flocks of turkeys that would number from 40 to 80. Last winter I never found one flock in those numerous areas that would number more than 20. That folks is really a problem. If I could see any kind of rebound in those numbers the past 8 years it would be a little bit of encouragement, but all I have seen is a steady downtrend. Something needs to be done yesterday! Nothing is being done in Missouri, and I wonder why not. The MDC will never abolish the youth season, which accounts for more illegal kills than anything else. Missouri biologists, depending so much on their telecheck system, have no idea what the actual harvest is, because more and more each year, hunters who have never been violators are starting to just ignore reporting gobblers they take because the telecheck system is being used to target hunters. If you doubt that, read a letter from an enforcement agent on my computer site, larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com. Every deer and turkey hunter needs to read that letter. Myself, I will hunt gobblers in the spring with my camera, as I have been doing. But the photos I got so easily years ago are harder and harder to come by. If you have been a fall turkey hunter, I urge you to do something else this fall. Squirrel hunting is good and fall fishing can be fantastic.

      This week is the last week you can get a free copy of my Ozarks magazine in the mail. To do so you need to call or write and give me an address to send it to. Call my office at 417 777 5227 or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com. Or write to me at Box 22 Bolivar, Mo 65613. I have a website which you might want to see also…. Just www.LarryDablemont.com

Common Sense Climate Change

 

living off the land in the far north country of Canada... not another soul withing a hundred miles

 

Larry Dablemont column… 10-12-20

 

         My dad and I had lots of talks on river gravel bars; from the time I was a boy to the years after I had kids of my own.  I remember in particular, a time in the fall when I was home from college, talking about the education I was getting.  

 

         “An education ain’t worth much,” Dad told me, “if you don’t have common sense to go with it.  I’ve got to say that in what I have seen in my time, it is common sense that I’d value most.” 

 

         “But I would say too” he continued, “that a man who has both and uses them right is the man who’s ahead of all the rest.” 

 

         I have always hoped that men could see a little of both in what I write, and I have not written at all about this thing we call climate change.  I see it and I recognize it, but it is an ‘earth change’, and little more.  Maybe it is a progression that comes from greatly increasing numbers of humans and their livestock.  I suspect that is the case, and if so there is nothing we can do about it in congress or the Supreme Court, or even in church.

 

         A little common sense is needed, and very hard to find today.  But what is coming is coming!  Men might be able to stop a speeding meteor from hitting the earth with a speeding missile, but a slow, slow change that is eventually either catastrophic or of no consequence cannot be stopped.

 

          Humans WILL progress and repopulate.  There will in time be too many of us to say ‘let’s save our forests’, or ‘let’s save our rivers.’  Where men live in masses, there can’t be clean air or clean water.  Change won’t be in our hands, no matter how much that overused word is sought.

 

         There will never be less concrete and pavement in those places, unless a great catastrophe occurs, to bring human populations well down from what it is now. Men flock together in such huge cities, predominantly for material gain, greater knowledge, greater power.

 

         A few who live in remote spots where they are close to a natural world do so to have peace and freedom and a satisfaction from living with what they have, disdaining more money or more things. And they love not being part of the herd.  I grew up amongst some very poor people who lived that way. They believed that life was too short to waste on material things, which deteriorate. They believed heaven was a real place, and I saw a happiness and contentment then that most of the world today seems to have lost.  I think they and their time is far behind us, that philosophy of life forgotten.

 

         But… make no mistake… the earth IS changing. It is going too far to say that it is going to be unlivable if we don’t rid ourselves of fossil fuels.  Shooting one rat in the grain bin don’t do much good if you have 20 more beneath the barn you are oblivious to. 

 

         What if the sun is just edging a tiny bit closer to the earth? Or is it vice versa? How many people know the answer to that?  I grew up with old time Ozarkians who didn’t.  But they didn’t care one way or another, they just worried about why springs were drying up, or why the hoot owls were getting so thick or why the hens weren’t laying eggs… or when it was going to rain, or when the snow was  going to melt.  Life was simple, but life was good.  I know. I was there.

 

         As a naturalist, living with and studying the natural world for five decades, I see things that fascinate me that I cannot explain. I’ll write about that here too in future columns. I saw the time when the earth was a giant sponge, which soaked up and held the rain and melting snow, and now it has become a giant rock that holds no moisture. The rain falls and leaves in a hurry. Hasn’t anyone noticed the results of that… the floods that come?

 

         In recent years I have seen some Ozark rivers at the highest levels ever and then soon after at the lowest levels ever recorded. That cannot be reversed now.  But if we look for reasons that there is a gradual heating of the earth, we have to look at the millions of acres of concrete and pavement, which holds and increases the sun’s heat.  Is that possibly the reason that heat is melting the ice caps?  Who amongst the climate change experts, talks about that?

 

         What climate will become it will become, and we might as well live the life we have chosen and give it no more thought.  Tomorrow is not changeable now… maybe it never was.  But I don’t think it is wise to build back a house on sand where a hurricane raged.  Worse ones are to come. I don’t think it is wise to live where floods leveled the land, or in California where the fires will only get worse. But men will do that, they always have.

 

         That’s what I think, but what do I know? Maybe I have too much commons sense and too little education.  We cannot fight what great populations of men cause, but here in rural, Midwestern country, we can live without so many consequences.  Problem is, the people from New York and Chicago and California are going to flee what they have created, and they will come here, where they will want to create what they left.  More concrete and pavement is coming everywhere!  And when the sun is hot, you can’t live on concrete and pavement, even if there are no fossil fuels and the air is clean.

 

         As much as I love the Ozarks, if I were young right now I would go to the land of northern lights.  I have seen that land of northern Manitoba and Northwest Ontario, and Saskatchewan and Alberta.  It is land much like God made it. It is land where few men are found.  But people there are much like the Ozarkians I knew as a boy. It is a place where men will survive the catastrophe, which is coming. And it is someplace where a little global warming might be welcomed!!!

 

 

What To Do About Webworms

 

 

Larry Dablemont outdoor column 10-5-20
 

        A couple of years back, I talked about a surefire way to destroy fall webworms by using a long pole with a newspaper page or two taped to the end.  What I do is set fire to the paper, hold it up beneath the webs and burn the worms inside. 

         Shortly after my column came out, a Springfield-office media specialist for the Department of Conservation wrote that such a technique should never be used because it might ‘damage the tree’.  He recommended using chemicals. 

         Damage trees?!!!  What nonsense! The silliness of that amazes me. You couldn’t possible damage a tree with that flame beneath a web. Where there is a web, the leaves are mostly gone.  But actually fall webworms really never harm trees.  I have seen them so thick on persimmon trees you would think there would be irreparable harm but there never is. 

   

      I am only affected by those webworms which get into my hickory tree over my boat or pickup and leave millions of little round pellet droppings which result from the leaves they strip passing through their larval bodies.  Eventually the adult stage is a small white moth with little black dots on the wings.  That moth is commonly called a Mulberry moth, or Hyphantria.  It is the moth-larvae that is known as fall webworms. 

         They are not tent caterpillars; those are spring larvae from a different moth that build similar webs, but always at the end of branches… a different insect entirely.

        Anyway, if you have tent caterpillars you want to get rid of close to your home, just use a long pole and newspaper wrapped around the tip to burn them.  Despite what that office-bound suburbanite MDC media-specialist who gets his knowledge from the Internet wrote, it WILL NOT damage the tree.  Chemicals have been known however, to damage people.  MY ADVICE IS DON’T USE THEM!!

 

       The difference between outdoor writers of my time years back and the ‘outdoor communicators’ of today is that the old-time writers lived the life, did what they wrote about, and learned via study and observation from their own experiences rather than the internet or books.  I never knew a good outdoor writer (and I have known some great ones) who grew up in a suburb or city.  But then, the people who read what today’s ‘media specialists’ and ‘outdoor communicators’ write, too often believe everything they read. If only they knew.         

       There is much I see today written about nature and the outdoors that is very, very erroneous. Or as the old rivermen in the pool hall might have put it, in more colorful terms… it is a product involving the droppings of male cattle.  

 

      Ozark outdoorsman Don Lynch is a good friend of mine living down near Yellville, Arkansas who loves bird dogs and quail hunting. He is really upset about the burning of a tract of public land that is suppose to be an Arkansas Game and Fish Commission’s quail restoration area.  Last week they burned it off, completely eliminating the winter escape cover and any food the plants might offer. 

 

       “I don’t think they have any idea what they are doing.” He told me, “the hawks are going to have easy pickings this winter if any quail cross that burned over land.” 

         I think Don is right.  He says they have a big sign there saying, ‘Bring Back Bob’.  If you are interested in restoring a population of quail, you don’t burn land off in October, destroying the cover that will get them through the coming winter.

        Last year they burned it off in July,” he said,  “and I told them, for gosh sakes there are still nests coming off and young quail there… They were surprised to hear that.  They told me they wouldn’t do that anymore in the summer!” 

         I asked him if the burners were biologists and he said he had no idea what they called themselves.

 

       Sometimes burning can be a tool for helping quail if done in March in order to bring back new spring growth for food and nesting which will begin in late April and May and continue into late summer.  But if you have some idea of helping quail, you sure as heck don’t burn off the plant life that will help them survive the winter.  By doing that, you only help predators, and high numbers of egg eaters and hawks are part of the reason quail have declined.  I hope to see the area Lynch has told me about, and take some pictures.  I’ll write more about quail in a future column.

      Retired Arkansas wildlife biologist Michael Widner, who grew up on an Ozark farm, wrote a book about quail that I wish those habitat burners working for them now, had read.  If you are a quail hunter or simply someone wanting to see their return in appreciable numbers, read his book.  To get a copy, call our office at 417 777 5227 or email me at lightninridge47@gmail.com.  

 

 I also urge you to see my website, www.larrydablemont.com.  And you can write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo 65613.