The Toughest Fish



This is the little survivor, the green sunfish, (or black perch) He thrives in all waters, and hits a lure as if he were a bass.
No one ever complained about catching hand-sized green sunfish.


In the June issue of my magazine, the Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal, there is an article about the toughest little fish in the Midwest, the green sunfish. You might know him as the black perch, as I did when I was a kid. He can get over a pound in size, and I remember catching them 8 or 10 inches long back then. They survive everywhere… in the muddiest, smallest farm ponds, creeks and rivers of any size and huge reservoirs.
The scrappy little fish has a mouth unusual for a sunfish, because it is large, like a bass’s mouth. When they get 6 or 8 inches long, they can tackle a surface lure as big as they are or a huge spinner-bait. If you want to learn more about them, you can see the article in the magazine. But since school is out, and there are folks who want to take kids fishing, the green sunfish is the fish for that job.

I like to go to a local Ozark lake and set a couple of trotlines, then take youngsters and move along the rocky, shallow banks with my trolling motor, letting them learn to cast a spinning outfit with 4-pound line. In one afternoon, they can learn to cast well. Close to those banks from mid-May through September, you will find scores of those black perch (that name sounds better to a youngster who is learning to fish).

Use a hook with a small split shot about 1/16th or 1/8 ounce, and put a small plastic grub or a worm on it, and when it hits the water within two or three feet of that bank, a sunfish of some kind is likely to jump on it. Keep them all-- it makes kids happy. They hate to catch a fish and throw it back. Put them in a live well or fish basket and use them to bait your trotlines or jug lines with, and you might wind up with a big flathead catfish. Flathead seldom hit dead bait or cut bait… they absolutely love green sunfish. And so do channel cat and blues.

While you are catching bait, some of the fish you catch will be big hand-sized green sunfish, and they will really give a youngster with a limber little spinning rod a hard tussle. I can offer one more word of advice. You can catch more fish without ever doing any baiting, by using a 1-inch strip of white fly-strip pork-rind and it lasts for a long time without replacing it. Green sunfish love it, and every now and then a nice bass will show up from nowhere, to make a kid’s eyes twice their normal size. Have a net handy.

Keep the larger green sunfish, scale them and gut them, removing the head, and boil the fish for a couple of minutes. Then you can take them out and separate meat from bones, and you can fry the meat. They are delicious.

I floated a short section of an Ozark River a week or so ago. Once a stream with deep eddies and clear clean water, it is now drying up, and the eddies are filling with silt and gravel. On the shoals, the rocks are covered with slimy olive green and brown slime that would sometimes wrap around my ankles when I would get out to wade. Thirty years ago you would never wade those places; they were much deeper and there were a couple of dozen springs flowing along the stream. Most of those springs are dry now, and it will be a dead river in another 30 years. There isn’t a thing we can do to change it. By that time, I doubt if anyone cares. It won’t be a world where anyone puts treasure in such things.

The day I floated it, there were huge gar ‘shoaling’, the term old timers used for spawning fish coming up into flowing shallow water. There were hundreds and hundreds of them, and you could just wade out into some of those shallow shoals where they were congregated and dip them up with a net, fish more than four feet long. On that day, with a bow or net you could have easily killed a hundred or so gar. But though there are some recipes for gar, and a few old fishermen who say they are good to eat, they have a hide with hardened scales like armor, and it is a job to clean one. They are such a repulsive fish I have a hard time thinking I would eat one if I could get anything else.

The smaller streams, and the upper reaches of many larger ones, are dirty, polluted and algae–filled faint reminders of what they once were. They are waters where carp and gar multiply and thrive, and fish like goggle-eye and smallmouth decline. In even larger streams, we see the mushrooming populations of gar, carp, and hard-shell turtles and the disappearance of species like freshwater eels, soft-shell turtles, Ozark hellbenders, and hellgrammite larvae once so plentiful it was a favored bait. The big 10- to 15-pound river redhorse suckers that were found by my grandfather before I was born, no longer exist. Smallmouth in the Ozarks streams have declined by fifty percent, easily. I’m sure rock bass have declined eighty percent.

It is best, I suppose, that a generation to come

won’t know the difference. They never saw what was. They won’t know what we have lost. I can’t see any hope for changing things. We just seem to be in a big huge unstoppable train hurtling down a mountain, with no one knowing when it is going to reach the bottom.

We have to destroy our forests to build, we have to destroy our streams because of sewage, poison and chemicals, and we have to destroy the air because we can’t live without oil, coal and gas. I have been told that it is stupid to write about these problems, because things can’t change in the world we have made.

I wonder if I should tell my grandchildren what the Ozarks was once. When my grandfather told me that the river I just thought was heaven on earth was only a fraction of what it was when he was a boy, it made me feel awful. Now it breaks my heart to remember what we had once, here in the Ozarks.

An elderly neighbor of mine told me that a couple of weeks ago he arrived home to find two conservation agents looking in his storage sheds. They said they wanted to talk to him about a recent fire, and when he told them he didn’t think they should be looking in his closed sheds, one of the two told him, “We can do anything we want!” I asked him to come to our June 9th dinner when the Enforcement Chief of the MDC would be there, and talk with him. He declined. He said he was afraid of what those two might do if he complained about them going through his sheds.

“That,” he told me, “is why your group is a waste of time… they are way too powerful, and folks are afraid of them because they really can do anything they want, and they will.”

Read about our Common Sense Conservationist dinner on June 9th, and why you should be there, on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com.

Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. Anyone who needs information on the dinner and the organization we are trying to build, can call our offices at 417 777 5227.



It might be as big as he is, but it looked good to eat when it came by.

Dark Nights, Bright Lights, Good Fishing

With the back portion of the cover in place, the front 1/3 is a great fishing platform.

Big trout occasionally show up beneath the lights at Bull Shoals, where they are stocked.

Big walleye can be take beneath submerged lights on Bull Shoals or Stockton.

In the clear waters of Bull Shoals, threadfin shad swarm the submerged light beneath a fisherman.

After fishing all night and sleeping much of the morning, it is time for breakfast.

The rivers of the Ozarks are terribly low. It is tough to float many of them now, that usually are at their best in May. Slowly, slowly, year after year, our rivers drop lower and lower, and springs which were never known to run dry, stop flowing. When we get big rains we have floods, water higher than ever… and then it is gone in a hurry, and our creeks dry up, rivers drop lower than anyone remembers seeing them. The bass season opens in late May on those streams in the Missouri Ozarks, but some of the headwaters of our best streams may not be high enough to float.

Still, there are lakes to fish. I am about to make another trip to Bull Shoals for some serious walleye fishing. We have fished all night with submerged lights for years and years, going back to the 1970’s when I lived at Harrison. North Arkansas lakes have threadfin shad, which are lured to submerged lights by the thousands in the middle of the night, and you catch them in special bait nets hung beneath your boat. Threadfin shad do not exist in northern Ozark lakes like Stockton, Truman, Pomme de Terre and Lake of the Ozarks. Threadfins seldom exceed four inches in length, and at their normal three inches they are the best bait you can find, at least in May on Bull Shoals.

We take my pontoon boat, which I had custom made with a camper cover and no furniture on board. I take along fishing chairs, a little cook stove, a folding table and sleeping bags with air mattresses. I cover the back two-thirds of the boat, with the cover, which has screen doors and windows to keep out the bugs, and set up the chairs on the open front deck of the boat. We get there about three in the afternoon, and bring a couple dozen big shiner minnows. The shad won’t come in until eleven or twelve o’clock usually, so we use the minnows until they do. In the late afternoon, we nap a little, trying to stockpile some sleep, since the fishing will be better the later the night goes, and you don’t want to sleep until first light the next morning, at which time you crash for a few hours.

You need food and water, and a big cooler or two with ice to put your fish on. Before the night is over, we often fill two of those coolers with walleye, white bass, crappie, catfish, black bass, and even a trout or two. One night many years ago we caught twelve species of fish in one night. Unfortunately, you often have to deal with a few gar and carp you would rather not catch.

Strong marine batteries are necessary to keep your lights bright all night long. Thermos bottles with hot coffee help keep you awake, but nothing keeps you more awake than landing a walleye or two in the early hours of the morning, weighing six or eight pounds. Fishing below those lights with threadfin shad, I once caught an eleven-pound walleye from Bull Shoals. I was wide awake that night. On another occasion, a friend of mine caught a sixteen-pound walleye.

Thirty years ago, a fisherman I was guiding caught a five and a half pound white bass one night in May. Twenty-five years ago, my daughters landed two seven-pound trout, and on a half dozen occasions I have caught eighteen-inch crappie there.

The water is clear and beautiful with those lights beneath you in the darkness, and you can see big fish below, waiting for crippled shad to fall below those circling masses of baitfish. You need dark nights, with no moonlight. You need strong tackle, spinning reels with at least eight-pound line and medium action rods, or casting gear with ten to twelve pound line. And don’t try setting out two or three rods, you need to concentrate on holding one rod, feeling the strike and setting the hook hard.

We have been catching big strings of fish on Stockton Lake beneath those submerged lights since mid-April. Usually between eight p.m. and midnight, we have limits of big crappie, from eleven to fifteen inches in length. One night in early May, three of us caught 45 crappie and not one was less than twelve inches long. Our last good trip was May 16th, and those crappie, 25 feet deep over 40 feet of water, were full of eggs. That seems unusual to me, makes me wonder if there will be a good spawn this year. But there’s still time.

On Stockton there are no threadfin shad to draw, so we take a good supply of minnows, and always catch a couple of walleye and twenty or thirty white bass. But we use lighter gear on Stockton, with six-pound line on light spinning rods. The crappie hit light.

One night on Stockton when we were there in mid-week and there were no other boats around, I saw something really strange. I kept hearing a splashing about 50 yards away just before it got dark. A great blue heron was sitting on a stump sticking up out of the water about a foot or so, out 60 or 70 yards from the bank, where it was really deep. That heron was diving into the water headfirst, apparently grabbing fish, then climbing back up on the stump and repeating the whole process. The big wading bird was a diver that night, and I’ll bet he dived off that stump headfirst at least twenty times. When darkness set in, he stopped and flew away, surely going to roost with a full stomach. Or maybe he wasn’t so successful, who knows. It seemed way out of character for a heron, which generally wades the shallows of rivers or lakes, hunting as slow as cold molasses until he quickly strikes an unsuspecting fish or frog with that long sharp beak. The one on Stockton Lake that night must have been watching a pelican or two.

On May 29 we are going to have a planning meeting for our Common Sense Conservationist fish fry and pork dinner, which will take place on June 9. If you would like to help us make this work, just show up that night at the Countryside Assembly of God Church in Bolivar, Mo. about 7:30. We are going to need some workers, and we need some tents, as large as possible, some tables and fish cookers.

If you don’t feel that you can make it to the dinner, but want to join Common Sense Conservationists, just send me your address and phone number. It will put you on our list to receive the newsletter, which is perhaps the most valuable tool we will have in defending innocent people charged with violating some vague hunting and fishing laws.

All information on that daylong event will be found on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com, including a map telling you how to get there. That will be done this week. That website is something you can use to express your own opinion about this column, or tell something you have seen in the outdoors. I notice that there is a statement that all submissions to that website is subject to editing, and that is not the case. You don’t have to agree with me. Your opinion, your ideas, your observations, will be left unchanged.

If you are close enough to pick it up, you might want to listen to my outdoor program each Friday from 8:30 to 9:00 a.m. on Lake Stockton radio station 107.7 f.m. It is a call-in show with a lot of humor in it. You may not learn much, but you should laugh a little.

Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo 65613 or e-mail lightninridge@windstream.net Our office phone is 417-777- 5227

Common Sense, and the Law

The little snake known as the hog-nosed viper, or spreading adder, is the snake I wrote about last week which has venom, yet is never mentioned as a venomous snake. One of nature’s most unbelievable creatures, he puts on an aggressive show with his cobra imitation; he spits, he bites himself, he writhes on his back and plays dead. The act often gets him killed. His venom is weak, used on toads mostly, his main food. Hog-nosed snakes have small fangs back in the rear of their mouth, and those fangs inject that mild venom into toads to stun and kill them. They can’t bite people. Years ago, some college professor put his finger against one of those fangs and injected some of the venom into himself. I don’t know if it is true, but it was said that the venom caused swelling and pain and the professor got a little bit sick.

You’ll hear it said that copperhead bites have never killed anyone. I doubt the truth of that. In this day of antivenin, which costs thousands of dollars per dose, no one should ever die from a bite. But the cost of the shot might cause a stroke! When I worked in Arkansas, I heard of people dying of poisonous snakebites in the early 1900’s. But that was in a time when no one got treatment. My uncle, at the age of 6 or 7 was such a victim of copperhead bite, and he nearly died because of a very high fever.
I find no fault with someone who kills poisonous snakes, or even some farm lady dispatching of black snakes or bull snakes around her chicken house, but I see no reason to ever kill one of those smaller species which I find up here on Lightnin’ Ridge all the time, king snakes, garter snakes, green tree snakes, and many others.

Common sense goes a long way in the country, in the woods and on our rivers. Determining whether to kill a snake or not just goes along with common sense. If you kill every snake you see, just because you are afraid of them, you aren’t using much common sense. If you allow copperheads to live around your home, you aren’t using much either. Someone out on one of our rivers, shooting every water snake he sees, is not very bright, and the law concerning snakes should rightly put that person at risk.

Last week I wrote about killing a black snake and two copperheads on my place. In doing so, I broke the law. It is against the law to kill any snake unless he represents a threat to you or your property. I got that information by calling the Conservation Department and talking with the enforcement chief. He said that he didn’t figure any conservation agent would strictly enforce it, as no jury would convict anyone for killing a snake.

Trouble is, you cannot get a jury trial in such situations. When an agent writes you a ticket, you either pay the fine, or hire a lawyer for big money, and your case will be decided by a local prosecuting attorney or a judge. If you get cited on some silly, petty technicality like killing a snake, or not writing your license numbers on all your deer packages, or by having a dozen crappie in one bucket shared with another fisherman, you are guilty of violating obscure petty and vague laws.

In Missouri, those of us who try to be law-abiding outdoorsmen are still often subject to the ‘out-to-get-somebody’ efforts of a conservation agent who may have grown up in a city suburb, and is suddenly carried away by his power. He feels he needs to write as many tickets as he can with as little effort as possible. I have watched this happen, have seen an agent spend a whole day on a boat launching ramp in his vehicle, occasionally leaving it only to try to get someone on a technicality. The cases like that, involving something so minor and insignificant, which I have seen in the past couple of years, would fill a big book. An agent’s boss may have no idea what he is doing unless we tell him.

If there is ever going to be a situation where this targeting of innocent people stops, it has to involve a large group of people, the building of a fund which can be used in defense of a few, and an ability to get those instances in front of the public… letting large numbers of people see what is happening. Our justice system is so clogged up, so convinced that no one is ever innocent, that you do not have a chance if you try to go to court and tell what actually happened on your own. Judges deal with some real low-life’s all the time, and they get hardened. They don’t have the time to listen to you and they really figure you wouldn’t be there if you weren’t guilty.

Nothing will change the actions of some of these agents and prosecuting attorneys more than knowing the public is becoming aware of what is going on. That’s why we are having that big fish fry here in Bolivar on June 9, and it is why, if you have ever complained, ever been targeted, ever watched innocent people clobbered by this system which is just getting out of hand, you need to be there. It can happen to you to. Read all the details, where, when and what, on my website, given at the end of this column, or contact me to get all details mailed to you.

I got letters this week from a lady who says conservation agents have approached her telling her that they might need to take their vehicles on her property and want her to leave gates unlocked when they call. ‘Do I have to do that?’ she asked. My advice to her was, “Come to our meeting and ask the MDC’s chief of enforcement in person.”

Another lady sent me a letter saying that an agent made her take her bow and go out in her back yard and show him she could shoot it well enough to kill a deer. ‘Can they do that to just anyone?’, she asked. People who have these questions need to be there to talk to Larry Yamnitz, and let him know what some of his agents are doing. One man said he was told if he didn’t let the agent search his barn without a search warrant, he would hold him in jail for 24 hours. He needs to be there to talk with Yamnitz about this. Others tell me that agents have threatened them with further charges and increased fines if they go to court and contest the ticket. Yamnitz says he doesn’t believe these things are happening.

Not long ago when we were talking on the phone he told me, “I will investigate any complaints, even the anonymous ones. But you aren’t getting any of these people to tell ME about these things, I only hear it from you.”

On June 9, if you want to bring complaints directly to him, we will set up meetings after dinner, so that you can make your grievances known. I don’t know if it will change a thing, but I can tell you this, he is willing to be there and listen and talk with anyone, and this has never happened before. If nothing comes of this, it will never happen again.

My website…. www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com
E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.com or write me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613   

How to Get the Farr Bit Out of You



This young cottonmouth still has some markings on its body, displays the 
white mouth for which it is named.  He is sometimes very aggressive, 
and very poisonous.



The author, giving a snake program at Buffalo National Park many 
many years ago...where he occasionally got the farr bit out of him.



The round eye pupil tells you he is non-poisonous, but his copper coloration might fool some
people into thinking he is a copperhead. He is a banded water snake, and if you pick him up or agitate him, he will inflict a painful bite. The bigger they are, the worse it hurts.

The word naturalist, when I was a boy in the pool hall back home, meant someone who ran around naked. The old guys on the front bench got things mixed up when a nudist colony sprang up on a river somewhere south. They called them naturalists.

Today there are some 'master naturalists' being created in classrooms here and there, fully clothed authorities on the outdoors and the wild creatures that live there. I think it might cost forty dollars to become one and it may take two weeks of night classes to be awarded the title.

At a swap meet in Springfield, Missouri last year I met one of them. He told me a lot about how things were with wild creatures and woods and waters. He was quite a bit different than Audubon, Miner, Muir and Leopold, but you could tell he had read a lot of what some of them had written. But he lived in a suburb where the greenest part of his world was the nicely manicured lawns of his neighbors, along paved streets where they sat on porches and watched hummingbirds.

I read recently where some of those kinds of naturalists were urging people to not kill any poisonous snakes, because they "are not aggressive" and if you leave them alone "they will just crawl off". Harmless creatures all!

I worked for many years as a naturalist, the best of those years along the Buffalo River in Arkansas. I was paid for it; it was a profession, not a hobby. The more I learned, the more amazed I was about how little I understood and how much there was to know. The books I studied in college didn't really give anyone a true and complete picture of the natural world.

Today I live out in the woods surrounded by a natural world, as I have all my life. I don't even like to mow around my place much until mid-May so I won't kill any baby rabbits, and I like those small wildflowers that erupt through the 'weeds'. My lawn doesn't grow well because it has moles, which are also part of the natural world and should be protected, as any master naturalist would surely tell you. It is shaded by dozens of oaks and hickories, walnuts and redbuds, mulberries and hackberries. A few white oaks around me are giants, more than 200 years old. Truthfully, I wouldn't trade those oaks for the prettiest lawn in the world.

I built a screened porch off my office and from there I watch dozens of species of birds, and mammals which never know I'm there. I went against what is natural by putting up a bluebird box last year. They began a nest this spring. For several days I would sit out on the porch just after dawn, listening for wild gobblers in the woods around me, watching that male bluebird feed his mate, who was incubating eggs. A couple of days ago, a five-foot blacksnake ate the eggs. I hope he didn't get the female. I still see the male out there chasing bugs (insects), but though I think they might nest again in one of the hollow trees around, I doubt they return to that box.

The black snake climbed straight up the side of a big post oak only a few yards away trying to get at another nest. A screaming blue jay tipped me off as to where he was and that tree became filled with other birds, robins, a thrush, a downy woodpecker and a tanager, and black-capped chickadees. They were all worried. He was in a leaf-covered branch about nine feet above the ground and was all wrapped up in the leaves, hiding and waiting. I got my .22 rifle and killed him and I don't feel a bit bad about it, integral part of nature that he was.

I don't like black snakes, and my tolerance goes only so far. They are big and obnoxious, and will clean out nests of birds or chickens. They will eat mice all right, but also baby rabbits, and newborn Labradors if they get the chance. On occasion if I find a black snake around, I move it off into deep woods a few miles away. But I am careful because they will indeed bite the farr out of you. I don't know exactly what farr is, but I remember my grandpa telling me that if you fiddle with a big blacksnake he will bite the farr out of you, and sure enough, I fiddled with one and he bit the farr out of me.

I am very defensive of king snakes, which are known to kill and eat other snakes including copperheads. I have never killed a garter snake, a green snake, or a hog-nosed snake. Those smaller snakes are harmless, and meek. None of them will bite the farr out of you. I should point out though, that a banded water snake will indeed bite the farr out of you, and they have a lot of sharp teeth. There's an anti-coagulant in their saliva that will cause you to bleed like a stuck hog if they bite you.

I use to handle a lot of snakes, working as Chief Naturalist for Arkansas State Park System, and then again for the National Park Service at the Buffalo River. We'd catch several species each spring, and handle the non-poisonous ones. I never liked the water snakes nor the black snakes, though the black snake will indeed tame readily, and in time will not bite the farr out of you. Here at my place, I will allow all snakes to live unharmed except for black snakes and copperheads. I also destroy all red wasps that I find in my sheds and under my porch. None of the suburban naturalists who like to urge us to let those poisonous snake just cohabitate with us out here in the woods have defended red wasps or ticks or mosquitoes. I wonder why? Most of the year, red wasps won't cause a problem. It's just during the months of August, and September that they sting the farr out of you.

At times, those poisonous snakes aren't very aggressive. AT TIMES THEY ARE. I am not writing that because I read it in a book, or had someone else tell me about them. I am saying that because if have spent a lifetime living in the woods and on the rivers. I've been there and seen it. Sometimes they will do one thing and sometimes they will do something else.

Last week I killed two copperheads in my Labrador's kennel one morning right at dawn. She is a pregnant female, and didn't want to share her kennel with them. Now, if I killed those two copperheads when they were no threat to my Lab, which at the time they weren't, did I break the law? Did I break the law killing that black snake, trying to get to a birds nest? Read this column next week to find the answer. At that time I will tell you about a venomous snake which is completely harmless, and gives the appearance of a monster. Can you guess what it is?

And should you be a master naturalist who feels the need to defend these harmless poisonous snakes, tell me where you live, (complete with your street number) and I will bring you some copperheads. Might could get you a nice sweet-tempered cottonmouth soon as well! But I am telling you, he'll bite the farr out of you on occasion.

Details about joining Common Sense Conservationists, and our June 9th fish fry can be found on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo 65613 or e-mail me at lightninridge@ windstream.net

It’s Now or Never

 I wrote last week about a big fish fry we are going to have on Saturday, June 9. It will consist of a dinner catered by Richard’s Hawgwild Barbecue out of Aurora, Missouri, so we will have more than just fish. His food is sensational. The reason for the get-together will be the organization of a group we call, “Common Sense Conservationists”. We will get together most all day on the grounds of the Countryside Assembly of God Church along Highway 13 in Bolivar, Mo.

The idea behind this is to assemble and unite a growing number of sportsmen, outdoorsmen, nature lovers and conservationists who are concerned about the direction the Missouri Department of Conservation has taken now for many years. It concerns what I believe is downright corruption involving the spending of millions of dollars, but also disturbing trends in what they refer to as “wildlife management” which results in the devastation of timber, and the removal of wildlife habitat on MDC-managed public lands. 

It involves many things, grants and gifts to selected people, like that 155,000 dollars going to a retired employee to write a book, mostly because he was a close associate of a retiring director. It involves attempts to sell, trade and give away land donated to them, and the attempts to take land from private landowners. But as much as anything, it involves the targeting of innocent people by conservation agents for frivolous, technical offenses. For years now, I have been watching situations where MDC agents clearly overstep their bounds to harass hunters and fishermen who are doing nothing wrong. And our justice system makes it nearly impossible to fight it.

Though it was not reported by the news media, one agent was fired for reporting another agent who broke the law in his job. The agent had conducted an illegal search of an innocent person’s outbuilding. A lawsuit resulted in a one million dollar settlement against the MDC about a year or so ago, while the offending agent, who had broken the law, was promoted to supervisor.

All over the Ozarks, you hear of situations where an agent targets someone who cannot fight the citation because legal costs are so much greater than the fines of several hundred dollars. What we hope to do soon, through this newly formed organization, is build a fund which can help defend people in court against some ridiculous charge, like that of the man and woman in Seymour recently charged for not having license numbers written on the packages of deer meat in their freezer. Those people had legally killed, tagged and processed their deer, had written confirmation numbers on their tags, even had the tags with the meat. 

They made the mistake of showing the freezer contents to an agent who asked to see it, rather than telling him he needed a search warrant to legally do that. They had broken no law, had nothing to hide. He found a technicality, and therefore attempted to have them pay 500 dollars in fines. In order to establish their innocence, it cost them nearly as much in legal fees. Their case was dismissed.

On June the 9^th, Larry Yamnitz, the chief of enforcement for the Missouri Department of Conservation will be on hand to talk to those of you who have seen this kind of thing happening. I think he is a person who wants to see things done right, and I think he knows there are a lot of problems in his division.

One of the things he can do on that date is clear up a lot of questions which all of us have, things about the technicalities in game and fish laws. Can a conservation agent threaten to keep a mounted deer head if you choose to go to court? Can he threaten to hold you in jail for 24 hours if you do not let him search your shed or vehicle? Can he indeed file further charges and increase fines if you exercise your right to go to court. According to Yamnitz, the answer to these questions is ‘no’. And yet in the past year or so, all these things have been done.

One lady contacted me saying that after she killed a deer, an agent came to her house demanding that she come outside and shoot her bow at a target to prove she could actually draw it and kill a deer. Are agents allowed to do such things? Bring those questions you have to our get-together on June 9, and lets get some answers.

If we do not organize a large number of people on this date, we will have little voice in what the MDC does, and we will never be able to make a difference. Right now we have several hundred people on our list of members, but we need a mission statement, a set of leaders to form a board, and a way to communicate, with perhaps a quarterly newsletter. We need local chapters set up in various areas of the Ozarks, and we need to have a treasurer and a bank account which can be used when it is clear an innocent person is being targeted again.

Please spread the word… if we do not do something about what is happening, this powerful, wealthy organization, which controls the news media almost one hundred percent, will be unstoppable. 

I spoke last week to the director of the MDC about some things to which he promised answers I did not get. Recently the department provided its own helicopter to use to shoot feral hogs on land along the Osage River owned by Bass Pro Shops. I asked him to tell me if they did the same thing for other private landowners, and I asked if he would tell me the hourly cost of flying that helicopter. He was very cordial, and told me he would have someone get back in touch with me with the answers. It has been three weeks, and there are no answers to either question.

I don’t want to organize a group of lawbreakers and poachers, I want to see a grass-roots organization of outdoorsmen who want to see game laws followed, and an equal treatment of everyone. I want to see a way for innocent people to be heard, and be able to afford some kind of justice. I want to see an organization of people who want to see public lands managed for no other reason than the propagation of wildlife, and will speak up in defense of our rivers and woodlands, which the MDC seems willing to watch decline with little effort. And more than anything else, I want to see the light of truth shine on what these people have done. Newspapers and television stations are in their hip pocket, and we need to change that.

It may be a silly dream, and I haven’t got much longer to see it happen. But somewhere out there are some leaders who can help us form this group, make it grow and become a formidable force. If you are such a leader, we need you. And we need a growing membership. It will succeed or fail with what happens on June 9. 

The meal will be six dollars, and it will be a good one, with both pork and fried fish, potato salad, baked beans and cole slaw, bread and desert. We will meet from 10 to 4, with dinner served between noon and two p.m. Start planning now, and spread the word. If you have been complaining about what is happening, and you don’t have the ambition to join and help, you should never complain again. It is time to do something.

Find more about this on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com  E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net, or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613

Lustiness, and a Cedar Branch

I think the terrapin found the garter snake dead and thought it was a worm.
Terrapins have poor vision... I think.

Shortly after legal shooting hours ended, these gobblers came
along. Photo by Sondra Gray..

Sometimes everything goes wrong. First of all, I didn’t get out there at daylight; it was mid-morning before I walked into the woods. Things were quiet, but for a bunch of geese honking away on a nearby pond, absolutely sure I was there to steal eggs. I hate geese during the turkey season. And crows… and bluejays, which one old-timer at the pool hall referred to as “warnin’ birds”.

When I got settled down in the woods I took out my turkey call, which is a little box call I make myself, and found out I didn’t have a striker to use with it. Guess I left it at home, a couple miles away.

So there in front of me was a straggly little cedar tree, and I broke off a limb about an inch in diameter and went to work making a striker from that limb with my pocketknife.

I sat there thinking about what a messed up turkey season we have had. There are turkeys everywhere. I had just seen three gobblers walking into my hunting area, and they had five or six hens with them. During the turkey season, you don’t want to see groups of turkeys, because as a rule you can’t call in groups of turkeys. It is like trying to call an old western cowboy out of a bar full of saloon girls! Turkey hunting is best when you find the gobblers in groups of one, or one in a flock all by himself, as Cajun comedian Justin Wilson use to say.

It took awhile, but I whittled out a little five-inch striker from the piece of cedar that morning, smoothed it off and chalked it up and tried it. It sounded great! A gobbler a couple of hundred yards away heard it and thought so too. He gobbled lustily (only a man who has lived a lonely life would understand that term) and passionately! He was without hens, I would bet. He gobbled about four times, and I tried my best to lead him on.

Usually I don’t like hunting fields for gobblers, I like to hunt in woodlands. When you hunt fields, it is like saying you would be willing to ambush one rather than call him in. But while this old gobbler was in the woods, and I was in the woods, there was a small field between us. He quit gobbling, but it didn’t matter. He was coming, lustily seeking out that hen, strutting when I saw him enter the sunlit green grass. Behind him was another gobbler; I guess hoping the hen they were hearing might have a friend.

I called another time, then quit. He was a hundred and fifty yards away, and not wasting any time. The two of them were stepping it off, strutting a little, stopping to hold bright red heads high, looking for the hen they had heard. Seventy-five yards away they went into a little swale and disappeared from view. I kept waiting, hoping, and wondering. I am one of those people who always figure if something can go wrong, it will.

When I saw them again, two bright red and white heads came up out of tall green grass right before me. I had my gun barrel up and put it on one of them. He started bobbing his head up and down like he was trying to be a difficult target. I called softly by mouth, and he stuck his head high. My shotgun roared and the other stupid gobbler ran around in circles, wondering why his buddy was flopping around dead. Thankfully, he wasn’t any bigger than the one I killed.

Something different happens on every turkey hunt. I have forgotten my shells before, forgot my boots, forgot my cap and once I forgot my call, but it is the first time I ever whittled out a striker in the woods before I could hunt. And I suppose for that old long-bearded gobbler, it was the first time he had come looking for a hen and got shot for doing it.

Sondra Gray, editor of my publishing company publications, hasn’t killed a gobbler yet, and will try again this week. Last week she shot three big gobblers with a camera which came along a half hour after shooting hours ended. You can see that photo on my website, given at the end of this column. I took her and her husband David on a fishing trip that night on Stockton Lake, where we called in fish with some submerged lights. We fished there off my pontoon boat until about eleven p.m. and caught white bass and crappie hand over fist. David even caught a nice walleye. They were dandies, with a number of crappie up in the 13- to 14-inch range. The whites and crappie were full of eggs. That type of night fishing is good until late May on most Ozark reservoirs that have water clarity, as long as you have a dark night. Bright moonlight ruins it.

Another photo you can see on the website is that of a terrapin eating a garter snake. In all my born put-togethers I never ever seen a terrapin eat a snake. He must have found the garter snake dead and thought it was a giant earthworm. In the woods, you always see something you never saw before, if you walk, watch and listen.

Trouble with today’s outdoorsmen is, they spend so little time walking. It is the day of the ATV, and advanced technology. That will never change. The future will create some of the fattest deer and turkey hunters you can imagine, and a market for bigger ATV’s I suppose. Find the places where you can walk alone far from today’s technology and buck the trend. There are treasures to be found, something new in every trip you take, if you watch and listen and walk.

I am going to write next week about some conservation topics, and want to make all readers aware that on Saturday June the 9th, we will have a fish fry in which we are trying to unite and organize a group known as Common Sense Conservationists. It is all about trying to shed a light on some very serious problems with the directions of the Missouri Department of Conservation. On that day, MDC enforcement chief Larry Yamnitz will briefly address our audience and then spend several hours being available to answer questions and hear complaints. In next week’s column, I will discuss some of the things which outdoorsmen are concerned about, and talk about a recent conversation I had with MDC director Bob Ziehmer.

There are major problems with our state conservation agency, and if you really believe in conservation, in wildlife management and preservation of our natural resources, you need to know what is happening, not just what they want you to believe. Set aside that Saturday in June, and join us. Bring some friends. Changes can be made if thousands of people unite and demand it. The truth about what is happening is never reported by our major news media. That situation has been created by the power and the money of the MDC. Next week I will discuss some of those things which have been kept quiet for too long.

The best thing we can do, as a growing number of people wanting to make a difference, is to see to it that the public has an awareness of what is going on. In light of the success they have had in keeping it all unreported and out of the public light, that will be a major effort. Join us..Saturday.. June 9th.



That website is www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613

Misc. Photos

Lightnin' Ridge Editor Sondra Gray took this photo while turkey hunting - fifteen minutes after the 1 p.m. deadline. Go figure....















A terrapin consumes a small garter snake...a long process. Photo by L. Dablemont













"Can someone bring me the toilet paper?"A little squirrel finds safety in a birdhouse during a recent rainstorm. Photo by L. Dablemont














Hundreds of butterflies congregate along the river gravel bar. Photo by Sondra Gray