Larry Dablemont....Outdoor Column....February 24, 2008 Old Photos, Old Memories At the outdoorsman's swap meet at Nixa last week, I got the opportunity to talk to dozens of people who read this column, the number of which surprises me as much as you. There were readers who came by from Pittsburg and Ft. Scott Kansas, and from Carthage, Carl Junction, Joplin, Cassville, Gainesville, Cabool, Mt. Grove, Mansfield, Harrisonville, Houston and Piedmont. A few people even traveled up from Arkansas. I know there were those from other communities I am missing, but I enjoyed talking with everyone and it just recharged my batteries, which had gotten pretty low lately with this foul weather and it's effect. Folks seemed very interested in the display I have put together of old lures and reels, and other outdoor paraphernalia from a nearly forgotten time in the Ozarks. I'd like someday to put all that stuff into an Ozarks Outdoorsman's museum so that a way of life our grandfathers began and the Ozarks they knew, a paradise of clean streams and big forests and abundant fish and wildlife would never be forgotten. I have many old pictures of my grandfather, which were on display last Saturday. One of them was from 1954, in which he was holding up a pair of beavers, weighed at the local feed store at the time, at 102 and 96 pounds. I doubt there's ever been another beaver ever caught in the Ozarks that large. Grandpa told me the story long ago about how a river bottom cornfield on the Big Piney was being decimated by beavers, and the farmer asked grandpa and his trapping partner, Bill Stalder, to see if they could trap them. Only ten years before, neither the Big Piney, nor most any of the rivers in the Ozarks had any beaver at all. He said the two beavers had been brought to the area of the river at the mouth of Arthur's Creek just after the war, by "the conservation people" as he called them, and that they had been brought down as adults from Wisconsin or Minnesota or some northern state. Grandpa told me how they trapped beavers back then with a wire running out into deep water attached to a big heavy rock, and staked solidly to the shore. The trap chain had an L-shaped angle iron on the end with a hole in it and the wire passed through that hole. When the beaver, using one of the slides coming down the bank from that cornfield, was caught in the trap set just under the surface, he swam out into deep water and because the angle iron slid down the wire and would not slide back, the beaver was drowned. To many in this day and time it sounds like a cruel thing, but nothing in the wild ever died much easier than a furbearer killed in a drown set, it was the way things were done by trappers in that time. The trouble with the trapping of beavers is, they have a tapered foot, and cannot easily be held in a weak trap. Beaver traps have to be strong, and a massive beaver of 100 pounds or so can't be held in the best of beaver traps. But Bill Stalder had some bear traps, and they used them to finally catch the giant beavers. Grandpa said the pelts, which have to be cut off inch by inch, since a beaver cannot be skinned like other furbearers, and are stretched flat and round, were four feet in diameter, like nothing he had ever seen. I don't write much any more about my grandfather, but he was a tremendous outdoorsman, and a gifted man who built johnboats by the hundreds in his lifetime, which were sold to river floaters all over a three or four state area. I always bring a pair of sassafras paddles with that display that he made in 1927, and 1935, and no one can believe that he made hundreds of those with only a few hand tools. I also bring an old trotline spool he made sometime before I was born, an old gig he made in the 1920's and many of the items he used in his outdoor life. My enthusiasm and love of the outdoors came down from him. Many times when I was young I was told how much I was like him, and some thought that shouldn't have been taken as a compliment. He was a fiery, energetic man who was French and Canadian Indian in ancestry, and not very diplomatic. He said just what he thought, and people either loved him or hated him for it. I of course am tactful and seldom controversial. He taught my father and uncles all he knew about the outdoors and until I was in my twenties, he was healthy and strong and taught me so much also about the rivers and woods and wild things. Much of what I learned from him I still use today in the outdoor life I pursue. But his own outdoor life was one few could imagine, he did nothing else all his life but trap and hunt and fish and make his living from the land. He made almost everything he used, including the rocking chairs we used when I was a kid, sitting out on the porch overlooking the creek, reliving all his adventures. He never had electricity or running water or indoor plumbing. Grandpa gained much notoriety from his ability and lifestyle, and because of that there are lots of old, old photos of him from that time and it all makes a display of great interest to many, especially as the years pass. One full-page story about him, which appeared in a 1927 St. Louis Post Dispatch, garnered the full attention of one man last week, who told me he believed his grandfather was the reporter who wrote the story. Another visitor was Gaylord Moore, an old friend and high school classmate whose father was my grandfather's closest friend. Many of you remember Gaylord from his days on a Springfield television station passing on gardening and horticulture tips. If I don't catch lots of fish in the upcoming week and the weather stays bad, I'll write a little more about all this in the next column. But who knows what outdoor adventure lies ahead. I'm going to get out there this week all I can, just like grandpa would have done. Larry Dablemont... Outdoor Column...February 17, 2008 A Time For Change.... I wish we had Abe Lincoln in charge again. Our nation needs Honest Abe, mostly because he was someone who gave little regard to power or wealth or what was good for him, but what was good for his country. I have said before that if I eventually get to heaven, I hope to be able to meet and talk to Abraham Lincoln, after I get through seeing my grandparents. It would be great if a day or so after we get there, Uncle Norten and I could take Abe Lincoln fishing. That is, if Uncle Norten makes it, and I never have been too sure about that. He isn't all that sure I'll make it either. I don't think Mr. Lincoln could get nominated for President today. The people who are running seem to be of a different species. I get tired of hearing the word "change". As someone who observes and spends as much time in the natural world as I can, I know that in wildness and nature there is not much change ever, when man does not interfere. The creatures God created remain the same, decade after decade. Today's whitetail deer, and today's bobcat and hawk and field mouse, are much the same as their ancestors were hundreds of years ago. When there is change, it is slow and not of great significance. Take for instance the raccoon, which survived in the early part of the last century by taking to caves and earthen dens to raise young when den trees began to disappear in the Ozarks. I figure that is evolution, or slow change; God's continuing creation. But a raccoon still prefers a hole in a tree to a hole in a bluff. I'd like to see some change all right; I'd like to see us change back to the values our ancestors had, to the convictions and beliefs our forefathers used to set up and build our nation. I'd like to see mankind change back to the singleness of purpose Daniel Boone and his settlers displayed when they built Boonesborough, where men struggled for the benefit of all over the benefit of a few, where men who could work did work and they took care of those who could not, not those who would not. I'll bet Booneborough had no liberals or conservatives. I'd like to have seen it like that. I'd like to change back to that time when I was a kid, when families had fathers, and being 'just a mother' was something a woman was proud to proclaim the greatest calling on earth. I'd like to change back to a time when a kid could walk home from school after dark and be safe doing it, and there was quick justice of a fearsome sort for anyone who would harm a child. I'd like to see it like it use to be, when neighbors got together and knew and helped each other, and when you could say a spontaneous, heartfelt prayer anywhere and others would bow their heads along with you, whether it was a school or a store or a courthouse. I'd like to see it change back to the way it was when a teacher was the boss in a classroom, and kids were there to learn, and did. I'd sure like to see our rivers change....like they were years ago when they were full, and clean, and filled with life. I'd like to see it snow again in the winter and rain in the summer, instead of the ice storms and droughts and fires we have today. I'd like to see bobwhite coveys here and there, and fish that didn't have chemicals making them unsafe to eat. What a great change it would be, back to a time when the Ozarks had creeks with enough water to swim in, and grandfathers made hickory whistles and willow fishing poles, and grandmothers made homemade pies. Things have changed all right, and change can be good. When God gave man the knowledge to make drugs and televisions and computers, he meant for those things to be used wisely and for good purposes. What did we do with that knowledge? Change can be a most destructive thing when it is grown from the seed of human greed. I wonder what the change politicians speak of today will bring us. Despite it all, there is a lot of good in the Ozarks if you look for it. I met some good people last week at a Mennonite church in Harrisonville, Missouri, where I was invited to speak at a wild game dinner they put on. I didn't know for sure what to expect beforehand, but I hated to leave when it was over. I gave a talk there, the same one I so often give at churches, and community meetings here and there, more and more often. I have had the privilege of speaking at all kinds of churches, one recently at Mt. Grove Missouri, another at Columbus Kansas. They may be of different denominations, but I find people of one purpose, serving and worshipping God and loving and helping others as Jesus directed us all to do. I do not consider myself a religious person, but I feel close to God because I have seen his handiwork and heard his voice so often in the woods and fields and marshes and along the rivers and streams. I never thought I would write a column reaching so many people nor convey my outdoor experiences to others in groups here and there where I have been asked to speak. But I like doing it and I enjoy being able to speak as often as I can. I never prepare or plan a talk, and maybe that shows when I go to places like the Mennonite church where I spoke last week. But God always gives me plenty to say, and I try to make people laugh, and lift their spirits as best I can. I like pointing out that the words Jesus spoke make more sense than any others that I have heard or read anywhere. And even though I am not given of any great knowledge concerning God's intentions, I know the simplicity of what Jesus said can be passed on by the commonest and ordinariest outdoor writer like me. And so, if you have a church or community gathering where you would like for me to speak, I'll be there whenever or wherever it might be, and I don't want to be paid for it, I'll feel blessed to have the opportunity to get to meet new people and pass on whatever God has given me the ability to share with others, in groups large or small. If your preacher gets sick or takes a vacation, if you are going to have a wild game dinner or just a gathering of your local fisherman's club, call me. Don't forget the outdoorsman's swap meet at Nixa, Missouri this coming Saturday, February 23, in the community center building from 8:30 to 2:30. Bring your outdoor items to sell or swap. There will be a booth where you can leave them, just put a tag with price and name and address on each item. Uncle Norten will be there with some sassafras paddles he makes, and I'll be there to give away free copies of this most recent issue of the Lightnin' Ridge Outdoor Journal. Ms. Wiggins will be selling my books at a discounted price and I'll sign them for you if you'd like. I love the opportunity to meet readers of this column, so come and join us Larry Dablemont.... Outdoor Column... January 25, 2008 Rabbits Recipes Two weeks ago, when I wrote about rabbit hunting, I said I would pass on a couple of good recipes to readers in the next column. My secretary, Ms. Wiggins, was supposed to remind me to do that and she forgot. So here are the recipes I would have passed along if she had reminded me. They come from a magazine article I used in my February magazine, the Lightnin' Ridge Outdoor Journal, which had been written in 1950 for an outdoor magazine of that time. The author passed these two recipes on, and here they are being used fifty-eight years later. I hope that someday fifty or sixty years from now, somebody somewhere reads something I have written and finds some value in it, but that likelihood seems a mite slim. Maybe I ought to come up with some recipes of my own, except I can't cook. I fry bacon fairly well, and eggs. And I can make my elk steaks and ducks taste pretty doggone good with the help of an old gas grill on the back porch. But I may try these rabbit recipes and see if I can make them work. You let me know if they work for you. Here goes..... Parboil the whole rabbit twenty minutes in water containing a pinch of soda. Chop up equal amounts of cabbage and onion and blend the two with lightly beaten eggs, some cracker meal and enough evaporated milk to make the mixture good and moist. Add salt and pepper and a little sage for flavor. Stuff the rabbit, sew it up and then drape slices of bacon over it and bake at medium heat in an oven until brown and tender. The writer says he makes a rabbit dish known as hasenpfeffer, in the following manner.... Mix equal parts of vinegar and water in a crock, add diced onion, minced garlic, cloves, bay leaf, salt and pepper. Cut rabbit into serving pieces; place them in the crock to marinate for 12 to 24 hours. Then remove and dry the pieces and brown them in hot butter, turning them frequently. Add a little of the marinating liquid, and let the rabbit simmer gently in a skillet for about thirty minutes, adding small amounts of the liquid from time to time. When meat is tender, transfer to hot platter, then pour one cup of sour cream into the skillet and stir briskly until it comes to a boil. Pour this gravy over the meat and serve. I have a number of rabbits to try these recipes with, since we ended the rabbit season with a big hunt last weekend. Two old friends came up from Arkansas with four beagles and we had a whole day of beagle music, mixed in with "there he went" and "here he comes" and "there he went again". Beagles get so excited on a rabbit trail they bay and bawl and bellow and squall to a point where a non-hunter would swear they are caught in a fence. It's pure music to the ears of a hunter. The rabbit runs in a circle and comes back to the waiting hunters eventually, but the circle can be a complicated one, and in heavy cover, it is no cinch that you'll get a shot at him. We left a good percentage of them out there in the field. It doesn't matter that much, the men who love to hear the chase are there to enjoy the commotion those dogs make and when all five or six or however many there are pitch in to trail a rabbit, it is something you have to hear to appreciate. My old friends, Jim Killer and Dennis Whiteside, who were Arkansas State Park Naturalist with me in the early to mid-1970's, spent a couple of nights at my home, and we did some big-time recollecting about the good old days. Jim brought his son Nathan, an impressive young man who was just a little boy back then. I guess I am one of the few people who can claim to have a pair of Killers spend a night at my home and come out of it safe and sound and better off because of it. Another old friend, Rich Abdoler, and his beagle Houdini, joined us and served as guides. Rich knew where the rabbits were all right, and we were seldom without a chase of some kind going on. By the time it was over we had bagged 16 rabbits, even in a year when numbers appear to be at the low end of the cycle. Jim's dogs, Dan and Sammy and Smiley and Dirty Joe, were top-notch young dogs, and it is amazing how these two- and three-year-old beagles rally to his call, obedient to a point where he can group them and put them on the trail of a rabbit someone has jumped, within minutes. It is remarkable how he handles them with various calls, and how they respond. We had one heck of a good time and I think the rabbits enjoyed it too. But we have plenty of rabbits to eat between now and spring. There is one other recipe for a rabbit casserole from the old magazine that is even better than the other two I gave above. But there isn't room here for all three. You can see the third one in the February issue of the Lightnin' Ridge magazine which will be out next week. The offer which we made a couple of weeks ago in which you can get that issue and the spring issue both for only ten dollars is in effect until mid- February, so you still have time. Send a check or money order and an address to my executive secretary, Ms. Wiggins, here at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. The whole thing was her idea... allowing folks to subscribe to just the next two issues in order to minimize their investment... and it has netted us better than a dozen subscribers, significantly increasing our readership. Already, that new issue is embroiled in controversy because of a vicious attack which Colonel Calhoun Hedgerow has made in his column upon Hillary Clinton. We try our very best to not get into politics, but I forgot to read the Colonel's column ahead of time, and now there it all is in bold print and unretractable. I just want folks to know I am staying out of the fray, remaining neutral, non-political and certainly as upset about what he wrote as anyone. I do not know how that old coot can tie the outdoors and politics together, but if the general consensus among our readers is that he has gone too far, I will certainly fire him before the spring issue is upon us. The good Lord knows I can ill afford to do without Ms. Wiggins, and I am afraid Colonel Hedgerow is about to cost us a considerable number of our left wing readers, and all of them women. So I am making a plea here and now that if you are a woman, (and only you would know) would you please not read Colonel Hedgerow's column!! Remember you can see my books and magazines on my website, www.larrydablemont.com, or write to me on your computer at lightninridge@alltel.net. It is time to change my website pictures, so in the next few days I'll put some of this week's rabbit hunting photos on there for you to see, before we start posting pictures of big fish. Larry Dablemont, Outdoor Column.... January 19,2008 Cocklebur Country We come now to a very difficult time for the outdoorsman. I guess you knew that! Seems like writers so often begin their columns stressing the obvious, as a way of getting into it. I just don't want to sound too optimistic. We are liable to have snow and ice and cold weather and not much to do for a while but organizing fishing gear. I helped a friend of mine close out the quail season up on Truman lake last week. Mostly all we did is walk around complaining, trying to keep his three dogs in sight. Kent Caplinger and I met in college, and even back then he had bird-dogs at home and loved to quail hunt. I hunted over setters and pointers owned by a friend of my father, back when I was only eleven or twelve years old. Kent has three good dogs, and when you get to be our age, that may be too many. I can keep up with one dog, but not three. I owned bird-dogs most of my life, in addition to my Labradors, and twenty years ago when Truman Lake was young, I found pretty good numbers of quail on the government owned land there, some of it in crops and native weeds. There is somewhere around 120 thousand acres of that public land, and as the lake ages, it has fewer and fewer quail, and each year holds less and less waterfowl. All that has to do with the deterioration of the wildlife habitat there. It now is a good place for turkey and deer and raccoons and bobcats, but not much for quail and waterfowl, as cockleburs take over. Only seven or eight years ago, I knew the location of six coveys of quail on a particular area of Truman Lake. Last week Kent and I visited the general locations of where four of those coveys were found, and found not one bird. You couldn't even find the occasional roost site we once would see in afternoon of walking. Of course, back in the heyday of bobwhite quail in the Ozarks, which was before my time in the thirties and forties and early fifties, old timers say there were hundreds of quail found on just one old farm site, maybe eight or ten coveys within any afternoon walk. My uncle talks about how they'd whistle up quail in the summer right around the old house they lived in and shoot them with a 22 rifle. He said they were as thick as rabbits, and back then there were bunches of rabbits. What they didn't have back then was permanent pasture and raccoons, and skunks. There were few of those nest finding, egg-eating furbearers because every farm kid had a trap line or a deadfall line he was running in the winter, trying to make some money selling fur. In addition, those Ozark families, which had chickens running around their places, shot every hawk and owl they saw, there was even a bounty paid on great horned owls. Coyotes and foxes and bobcats were scarce as silver dollars. Today, all those critters are plentiful, and it is my notion that raccoons and skunks may be a real problem for quail because of their penchant for finding nests and eating eggs. But I also believe the habitat quail have today is very very poor. Kent thinks turkeys eat young quail, and like many bird dog enthusiasts who have to contend with their dogs chasing turkeys, he hates turkeys, except in the April. I remember when Missouri's Conservation Department director took office, several years back, reading a speech he gave to a meeting of biologists from several southern and eastern states, in which he vowed that Missouri was about to concentrate on the expansion of quail in our state by so many thousand coveys. It was to become a top priority. If you'll notice, there are likely fewer coveys of birds on Conservation Department lands to day than there have ever been. Kent is angry about that because he says he knows a small 160 acre tract owned and managed by the MDC which has three good coveys of quail simply because one employee in charge of the area has set about to properly manage the tract for quail, and it is working. He says the M.D.C has another area of thousands of acres which is suppose to be a small game area, which gets no attention, and has almost no quail now, where there once were an average number of coveys. "On that area," he says, "there is no management at all, some of it is in shoulder high grass in fact. And there are sheds and barns there on the area where they have enough new machinery to look like a John Deere implement dealership. I never gets used." Caplinger has sent two messages to the MDC, which promises on their website to respond to all inquiries within 24 hours. He says he asked in both e-mails, why the small area is managed so well, and the larger one gets nothing done to it. There has been no answer in two weeks. Years ago, when Hoskins took office, he and an associate came to Truman lake and went out in a boat with me, and I showed them the idle land there which was growing up in cockle-burs. I urged him to contact the Corps of Engineers and see about managing some of that land for quail and waterfowl. He said at the time it was feasible, but that the money to do it might be a problem. Today, the department gives a great deal of attention to the politically connected, and fairly well off private landowners in the effort to manage that private land for quail. Much money is spent on making good hunting for the privileged few who can hunt that private land. On Truman, it would be easy to select a thousand acres, which is easily accessible, with fertile soil and easy access, and set about managing that public land which any hunter can use. Why won't they? If they can manage for quail, if they want to see if coveys can be increased, what an easy place to show us they really want good hunting for everyone, and not just a few. It is a place to change the landscape with ease, for small game and waterfowl, and the Corps would pitch in and help, with the building of marshes, the introduction of selective burning and installation of food plots. The richest Conservation Department in the middle part of the nation ought to be able to put some of the millions they waste into a small thousand-acre project in this 120 thousand acre expanse of public owned land. And they ought to pay attention to people like Kent Caplinger and start working on the public land they own as well. Truman Lake will remain a good place for deer and turkey and cockleburs, while the MDC will put hundreds of thousands of dollars into private land management. I can show you a large chunk of private land owned by the family of an old-time politician which has long-been used as a private hunting area on which the MDC has committed to pay all property taxes forever. They say the quail and waterfowl hunting there is very good. Larry Dablemont... Outdoor Column... January 13, 2008 Rabbits, Beagles and Swap Meets There isn't much left to do now but hunt rabbits, so next week in this column I am going to pass on two rabbit recipes for all you outdoor ladies who would like nothing more than to cook a rabbit for your boyfriend or husband. But even a man could follow these recipes and make very good rabbits; it's just that, being the masculiminist I am, I don't really think men should be in the kitchen. A man should be out taking care of the beagles, getting them ready for a good rabbit hunt. And the one thing we need always to do, as men, is make the ladies think they can do something better than we can. That of course, is cooking. I guess I am going to sell my little beagle, as I can't get him to run rabbits. He has a voice as beautiful as any I have ever heard, but he only bays at night when I am trying to sleep, at the rabbits in the yard. Take him out in the woods and he just noses around and chases snowbirds. I had him out with a real professional beagle, Houdini, owned by my good friend and hunting partner Rich Abdoler. Houdini is 7 or 8 years old and this is my dog's first year at it. Houdini is always after a rabbit, her nose to the ground, slowly sorting out the trail of a cottontail. I had a chance recently to see how good she is, and how smart a cottontail rabbit is. The little dog was on the trail of her quarry in a long but narrow strip of heavy cover, bordered by a short grass field. I saw the rabbit leave the heavy cover and run up along the edge of the field straight as a string for about 60 yards, then stop and come back along the scent trail he had just made for about 15 or 20 feet, then stop and make a long leap out into the heavy cover. It puzzled the little beagle for a while, she nosed around there trying to figure out why the rabbit trail came to an abrupt halt. Eventually she deciphered it, got out into the cover and found his trail again. In about ten minutes the cottontail, in trying to elude Rich, bounced out in front of me and became the stuff that hasenpfeffer is made of. I seldom miss a slow rabbit, and pursued by a beagle, rabbits are seldom in a hurry. We will make another rabbit hunt or two, and if it snows then Rich and I and Houdini and my beagle, Tagalong Cassidy, will really get out there after 'em. It's snow that makes rabbit hunting a wonderful past-time, because you can see them so well. I hope this little beagle of mine gets interested, because I hate to sell him. If I do, someone will call me next winter and tell me what a great rabbit dog he has turned into. But right now, he doesn't have a clue. A while back on a cold bright moonlit night he was singing a beautiful bellowing tune from his kennel and I looked out the window to spy two rabbits in my sorry excuse for a lawn eating four-leaf clovers not far from his quivering nose. So I got up and went out there about half dressed and turned him loose. Of course I scared the rabbits off into the brush, and when I did, Tagalong shut up. He ran out there to smell where they had been and ran back to his kennel to get some sleep. I am convinced that he figured since the rabbits had left the yard he shouldn't go trailing them around in a circle and running them back where they were. Now if he is thinking that way, he is one smart beagle! Anyhow, when the rabbits stay away from the kennel, you can sleep up here on Lightnin' Ridge, and when he is trying to get them to leave, nothing sleeps. I have been spending my spare time in my basement sorting out the fishing rods and reels and lures which I want to keep and want to get rid of. Over the years you accumulate so much really good stuff you can't use half of it, but you hate to let someone else have it, thinking they may not appreciate the heritage and nostalgia that goes with it. Besides, it is hard to have a garage sale when you live way out in the country like I do. The creek gets up every now and then and visitors occasionally knock their wheels out of alignment in my driveway. I have knives and camping gear and wildlife paintings and lures and reels and boxes and calls and less and less room to store it all. But once a year there is an answer for outdoorsmen like me. This will be the fourth or fifth get together of the Nixa outdoorsman's swap meet, held inside the community building at Nixa, Missouri, on Saturday, February 23. Individuals can by small booths to set up and sell or swap items, as I have. I usually sell my books and magazines there cheaper than they can be found anywhere in the Ozarks, and Uncle Norten always goes along with his handmade sassafras boat paddles and old fishing gear. In past years I have made a good number of my turkey calls for that swap meet so I'll have to get busy with that. If you'd like to attend, it will be from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. If you'd like to get a small booth, you can get one for 15 dollars, but if you have an outdoor business and would like to display your wares they have two other sizes, large enough for canoes or tents or whatever. To get more information, call Scott Parson, at the Nixa Parks and Recreation Department, at 417 725-5486. If you can come, be sure and look me up. Uncle Norten and I always get a kick out of this, although in the past we have spent more than we have made, and brought back home more than we took down there. This year will be different though, I know that my junk has to be someone else's treasure and I'm bringing stuff that has a history behind it. My executive secretary, Ms. Wiggins, may come along this year. Her illegal Mexican boyfriend is in jail somewhere right now and if he doesn't get out, she may be available. However, she no longer has much to sell, having pawned a lot of her most treasured items to pay for repairs on her old Datsun pick-up. She is excited right now about being in charge of selling subscriptions to the Lightnin' Ridge Outdoor magazine we put out several times a year. We have a brand new winter magazine coming out in two weeks and if you'd like to subscribe, just send ten dollars to Ms. Wiggins here at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 and she will sign you up for the new winter and upcoming spring issues, so you can see what the magazine is like without a real big investment. And for each of those subscriptions, Ms. Wiggins gets one dollar, which she thinks is 15 percent. Please don't talk to Ms. Wiggins about that, what she don't know won't hurt her, except for some matters with the IRS. You can call her for more information at 417-777-5227 but it might get confusing. She's like that! You can write to me at that same above address or e-mail lightninridge@alltel.net. Larry Dablemont....Outdoor column.... January 6, 2008 Tragedies and Trophies A friend of mine, who is also an outdoor writer, lost his son last month in a hunting accident. His son was in his thirties, and knew what he was doing in the outdoors, having been taught well since he was a small boy. I don't know the details, but apparently he was duck hunting, and was the victim of an accidental discharge of a hunting companions gun. It is something that can happen, no matter how experienced or how knowledgeable you are. In a split second an accident can take place, with tragic consequences. This past week, I hunted with two old friends I have known for most of my life. One of them hunted with me when I was in college. Since we were very young, the two of us have been involved in guiding fishermen and hunters in the outdoors whom we knew little about. And as a writer, I have hunted with so many people I had just met, with no hint as to what they might do with a firearm. Always, you were mindful of the danger of such a situation. We talked about it last week, how even the most experienced and well-trained hunter can have a gun accident. And maybe that day, all three of us became a little more careful than we have been in awhile. We all recalled those times when in a split second, something happened that could have had tragic consequences... an accidentally discharged firearm, a fall or a gun that was suppose to be unloaded and wasn't. When you have hunted since you were very young, much of it is a matter of training and experience and caution, but much of it is luck. But sometimes, something happens which is a result of intentional action, and shouldn't be treated as an accident at all. One of my two friends has a brother-in-law in Kansas who took two young men goose hunting in early December, and they hid among a spread of goose decoys in the stubble of a grain field. Two deer hunters passed a good distance away in a pick-up, traveling a gravel back-road, probably looking for a deer to shoot from the road. They saw the goose decoys, thought they were real geese, and shot a high-powered rifle at them. They hit and killed one of the boys, who was only 19 years old. It is of course illegal to shoot a high-powered rifle at any waterfowl, and it is illegal to shoot from a pick-up. The two say they were shooting at a coyote, which apparently is not illegal, and since no one can prove they weren't, the shooter may walk away from it completely free of any charges. But he knows...and so does everyone else in the world, that there was no coyote. The bullet passed through a decoy before striking the young man who was killed. If he has anything to him at all, if there is a semblance of a soul inside of him, the shooter will never be able to live with that lie, and the knowledge that he took a life because of downright stupidity will haunt him forever. Maybe no punishment authorities can mete out could equal what he faces from inside himself. Or maybe not... Maybe he is one of those people who just don't care. It is this kind of thing that make so many of us who have been hunters all of our lives despise deer hunting as we see it today. It is nothing close to hunting, it attracts so many who are not hunters or outdoorsmen at all, those who slink out once a year to just shoot, to find some perverted reward in a trophy, and in the kill rather than the hunt. So many of this orange-clad throng speak little of hunting, their vocabulary is that of points, and scoring and measuring. Their quarry isn't a living creature, it is an accomplishment. Many of them will not properly care for or use the meat, as deer carcasses adorn our woodlands, and the dumping places along rural back-roads. Instead of leading the way against such a thing, our conservation departments become enablers, trying to find ways to increase the throngs of weekend deer chasers in order to gain revenue through an increase of deer tag sales. They refuse to outlaw the sale of antlers, sold now for tremendous amounts of money, and they refuse to discourage the "trophy" aspect of deer hunting. They set up "youth deer seasons" which all of us joke about, when six and seven year old kids who never saw a cottontail before a beagle or a squirrel in the sights of a small bore rifle, tote high caliber rifles and help their adult supervisors find early season trophies. Make no mistake about it, it isn't duck hunter or rabbit hunter or pheasant and quail hunter who give the anti-hunting crowd solid ground to stand on; it is the once-a-year deer hunter. And maybe this sorry bunch is a minority of the overall numbers who hunt deer, but it is a very large minority, and that group of slob "hunters" grows with each and every deer season. I also read recently about trailer loads of elk being illegally transported across state lines last month, being taken to some enclosure somewhere where they could be shot by "hunters" who pay large sums to get a big set of antlers. Those elk are not anything close to wild creatures, and the shooter who kills them knows that. But if he takes those antlers back to the city and has the head mounted, no one he boasts to of his great accomplishment will ever know he didn't trek off into the mountain wilderness to find a wily, wild bull elk which fell to his hunting prowess and outdoor savvy. Thousands of elk and deer are raised each year in pens across the Midwest to be released before some shooter with a high-powered rifle and lots of money. I find less fault perhaps in the people who shoot them as I do the people who raise them. I cannot imagine someone who could be so dedicated to money as to make that their profession...to put their life's work into something so degrading and deceitful. But again, it falls upon our state conservation departments to end this awful practice, and they won't. They know, down inside, that the "mad-deer disease" also known as 'chronic wasting disease" which has spread to wild deer and elk in many states, now traveling southward from Wisconsin into Illinois, began in tame deer and elk operations where these money hungry trophy-raisers figured they could grow bigger antlers by putting meat by-products and ground animal organs into the feed they gave the captive animals. But nothing can be proven; just like you can't prove that shooter last month wasn't firing at a coyote when he put a high-powered bullet through that goose decoy. So it continues... I killed a bull elk in the mountains of Colorado last fall and I treasure that experience because of where we were and what we did to find him. I brought home the meat and left nothing there in those high forests that I could put in my freezer and eat. The antlers are in my shed, and I will tan the hide myself. I would not have given the slightest interest to that same animal raised in captivity and held inside a fenced area for me to shoot. To express your opinion on any outdoor subject, write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613, or e-mail me at lightninridge@alltel.net. We'll use your letters in this column or on my website.

Larry Dablemont.....Outdoor column.........Dec 27 to Jan 1

                            Just Another Passing


     The New Year is at hand.  At precisely midnight, a pair of raccoons
will be ambling along the small creek that leads down to the river, looking
for food that is becoming increasingly hard to find because the crawdads are
in deep water and the frogs are buried in the mud, just as it has been for
hundreds of years....maybe even thousands.
    A great horned owl will leave his perch at the edge of the meadow and
sweep down upon an unsuspecting deer mouse without a sound other than the
rustling in the grass when he nails him.  A great horned owlıs wings still
make no noise, just as it has been for who knows how long.  Unfortunately
for the mouse, he wonıt live to see the year 2000, but he doesnıt even know
that.  He has lived almost 10 months, and thatıs a long time.  In the
meadow, there are several hundred deer mice, and several hundred voles, a
group of shrews not much bigger than the mice, and some other species of
ground mammals which are in semi-hibernation.
    In the big oak where the owl sat, there are a pair of fox squirrels
asleep in a small cavity.  They will miss the new year festivities too.  In
fact, when the temperature gets really cold, they may sleep for days.
Squirrels donıt hibernate for long periods, but like many creatures such as
the raccoon, and the dozens of species of ground mammals, they will go into
semi-hibernation when times get tough.
     In the sycamores along the bluff over the creek, several wild gobblers
spend new-years-eve asleep, their forms plainly visible in the moonlight.
Three are big old toms, but there are five jakes which have never
experienced a new yearıs party before.  They sleep through it, with locking
tendons tightly securing their feet to the limbs of the sycamore, and it is
much like it was with their ancestors, who weathered the passing of hundreds
of new years past in much the same way.
     Beneath a cedar, buried in the grasses, a covey of bobwhites form a
ring, eight of them in all.  There were nearly twice as many in November.
The new year brings little to celebrate.  With their bodies huddled
together, they preserve heat, and when there are too few and the temperature
plunges, there is less chance of survival.  As the new year begins, they
will join with birds of another covey and in number, find greater strength
to resist the cold.   Huddled beneath the cedar, they are unaware of the
grey fox which passes as the year 2000 approaches.  His is an eternal quest
for food, and if he only knew they were there, what a party he would have.
But like the owl, he will settle for small mammals on this night of nights
as a new millennium begins.
    A half dozen mallards spring to flight as a bobcat streaks across  the
river gravel bar where they rest, and takes one of their member for a new
yearıs meal.  The young hen is a substantial meal for the bobcat.  The rest
of the flock circles in the bright moonlight and settles into another hole
upstream.
    The last protests of the quacking hen breaks the stillness, but the
sounds of nature at midnight are subtle.  A buck snorts from a cedar thicket
above the creek.   A dying rabbit shrieks from the field across the river,
as a mink ferrets him from a brush pile.  Smaller than the rabbit, the mink
wraps his body around the cottontails neck and hangs on, his teeth buried in
the soft fur as the life and death struggle which marks the beginning of a
new millennium is just as it has always been.
     Here where the creek joins the river, where the woodland breaks into
meadow, where thickets of briar and cedar stand as they have since men first
came to change and scar the land....life goes on.  There is no new
millennium.  There is no new year.  It is only the passing of another night,
the coming of another day.
    And I know that for some it is necessary to group together and make much
of the ticking of a clock, where alcohol flows and the noise grows to a
deafening crescendo.   But Iıll walk that quiet wooded ridge above the creek
at midnight, and listen for the distant yodel of a coyote.  Iıll survey the
river bottoms in the moonlight and be thankful for the stability of
unchanging nature...wild creatures living as they always have, evidence of
Godıs unchanging laws which even man will eventually answer to.
    There is perfection here...thank God we havenıt ruined it all.  We will
in time.  These mushrooming numbers of human beings will destroy it all
eventually.  But not this year perhaps.  For now, there is evidence of
natureıs strength to be found far from the masses who herd into New York
Times Square like cattle.   Here on this little Ozark ridgetop, there is the
security of life  continuing as it always has.  Nothing special here at
midnight, no observance of anything different or new.   And I will not
celebrate the coming of a new year while I linger there. I will mourn the
passing of the old one.  It was a good year, one to give thanks for.  And on
a quiet wooded ridge overlooking the moonlit river, it will be a good place
to ask that the coming year be a good one as well.... a year where-in wild
things and wild places continue to exist, where good is good and right is
right, and men havenıt yet come to make it otherwise.

 

 

Larry Dablemont... Outdoor Column.... December 16, 2007

  A Christmas Story


I picked out that new pocket-knife, so proud to be able to be the one Grandma trusted for such an important Christmas gift.  I took it to the counter to give to Mr. Duff.  He smiled and said something to me as he rang it up. But I never heard a thing he said.  I was reaching frantically into my pocket for that five-dollar bill and it wasn't there.  I was about to panic!  I had lost Grandma's five-dollar bill while I was crossing Main Street from the pool hall.  Ignoring Mr. Duff I ran as hard as I could out into the street, looking beneath the cars, praying that someone hadn't picked it up.  But I knew there'd be little chance.... I sat down on the curb and tears streamed down my face.  Christmas was ruined, and I had ruined it.
A week before Christmas in 1960, I sat in the pool hall, looking at the street light by the corner drug store, trying to see if there might be a flake or two of snow falling through the illuminated darkness beneath the light.   I was 12 years old, and I wanted to see a white Christmas more than I wanted a girlfriend. I wanted a girlfriend awful bad, almost bad enough to break down and talk to one of the girls at school, something I had never done before. Almost more than I wanted a girlfriend, I wanted a bicycle.  I had never had either.  A bicycle was even harder to get than a girlfriend because we were a poor family, and bicycles weren't cheap. Some girls didn't care if you were poor.  Not many, but some. However snow was free, and it ought to be available to folks everywhere, not just  those in big cities up north. There were wonderful things about snow.  You could hunt rabbits better, there would be new mallards on the river and they'd cancel school.   
Grandpa McNew ran the pool hall through the day, and I came in after school, to run the place until dad would get home from his factory job, rest awhile and have supper and come down to take over.  I went in and strapped on the money bag, racked tables and collected money when a game was over, and gave my advice on occasion about a tough shot on the snooker table, or whether or not some shooter might scratch on the eight ball in a game of pool.  In between those times, I listened to the front bench regulars talk hunting and fishing: a big bass that got away down on the Piney, or a monster buck somebody had seen cross the highway over near Bucyrus.
It was an important job, and I was up to it.  After all, my dad had left home when he was only fourteen and went to work in the city.  He told me I was pretty near a grown man, and I could paddle a boat, shoot a pump shotgun and split firewood.  Even though I wasn't real big in stature, I could do a lot of big things.  I looked up to my dad because he took me hunting and fishing and gave me responsibility.  In the pool hall, sometimes I had to make change from ten or twenty dollar bills, and help sort out arguments between two snooker players and be sure the soda box was kept full of Coke and Pepsi and Jic-Jac orange, grape and strawberry.
Dad didn't give me many rules, but it was clear that I was expected to do what he said.  And he said I was never to lie, cheat or steal, and if I could live by those three things I'd grow up to be a pretty good man.  Grandpa McNew backed all those things up, and said other things I have kept with me all these years.  Grandpa McNew was one of the finest men I ever knew.  He was a country farmer all his life, not the outdoorsman Grandpa Dablemont was, but a man of faith, conviction and strength.  I loved both my grandfathers, but about all Grandpa Dablemont could teach me was about trapping and trotlining, and the woods and waters. 
Grandpa McNew was as solid as a rock, he went to church on Sundays, and sang like intended to be heard in heaven.  He said my dad was right, a man who went through life determined to not lie, cheat or steal, took something with him more important than fame or fortune.  And he taught me how important it was to have a good knife.  He had an old Schrade pocket-knife with two blades he must have began sharpening before I was born, because they were worn down to almost nothing.  He used the little blade to cut his toenails, and the bigger blade to peel apples.  He did a lot of other things with them, but I remember those two things because I ate apples he gave me quite often, and I sure didn't want him using that small blade to peel 'em with.
He broke the big blade in the fall of 1960, prying on something, and Grandma wanted to get him a new one for Christmas.  The Western Auto store was right across the street from the pool hall, and they had Shrade pocket-knives just like grandpa used for only five dollars.  When grandma gave me that five-dollar bill and told me to get one for her to give to grandpa, I felt about as important as a kid could feel.  I had never bought a really big Christmas present for anyone, cause up to then I hadn't ever had any money. That all changed by the time I was 13, and got into guiding fishermen on the Piney and finding and selling golf balls and trading in pop bottles.  By the age of 13, I sometimes had a whole pocketful of money.  But at the age of 12, I just SAW a lot of money, there in the money-bag at the pool hall, and in those old men's billfolds when I made change.  I guess when I got that five-dollar bill, I just couldn't believe I had it, and I looked at it too much.  I took it out just before I crossed over to the Western Auto and looked at it, and didn't get it back in my pocket right, and it was lost.  Some rich Christmas shopper got richer because of my bad luck.
As I sat there on the curb crying, Mr. Duff walked out and wanted to know what was wrong.  I wouldn't tell him.  Then he told me that one of his employees had found a ten-dollar bill on the floor back by the knives, and he thought it might have been mine.  My heart leaped and sunk in the same second.  I almost jumped up and said, "Heck yes it's mine, give it to me!"  Then I remembered what Dad expected of me, and what Grandpa McNew insisted on...  "Don't lie, don't cheat, and don't steal!
 "No sir," I said, "I lost my Grandma's five dollars I was suppose to buy grandpa's knife with.  Thank you Mr. Duff....but my Grandma ain't never had ten dollars.  Now she ain't got five dollars neither."
 He sat down on the curb beside me while I sobbed, and handed me that same wrinkled five dollar bill I had been looking at for two days.  I swear, I heard angels singing the hallelujah chorus in the grey clouds above us. No kid ever went from gloom to glory any quicker, or jumped any higher or yelled any louder.  Shoppers up and down Main Street in Houston Missouri must have remembered that Saturday afternoon.
Even years later, Mr. Duff reminded me of that day.  He always told me I was the most honest kid he had ever encountered.  But I wasn't.  I wasn't any different than any other kid, except for a dad and grandfather who expected things of me. Give a kid a dad and grandfather who talks about what's right and wrong and what they expect of a boy, and most boys will be the better because of it.   I believed at a young age in trying to be what dad expected of me, and I took that edict of his all through my life to this very day....'Don't lie, don't cheat and don't steal.' 
Somehow, I got a bicycle that year for Christmas, from the Western Auto, a big red and silver bike that I guess Dad must have been in debt for most of my childhood.  And it did snow; the first white Christmas I remember.  I didn't get a girlfriend however for years, which allowed me to save a little money for many Christmas' to come.
 And I guess, to tell the truth, I have not lived by the simple creed Dad gave me as a boy.  No man can be that perfect.  At times, it has been so hard not to lie or cheat or steal because it is so easy to rationalize that what you are doing is none of those things when it really is.  And there are insurance companies you deal with, and ladies who want to know how their hair looks and this and that.  But the thing about Christmas is, the baby born in that far away place grew to a boy who became a man who made it possible that those of us who aren't quite perfect don't always have to be, as long as we keep trying, and recognize who He was.
 Grandpa's old pocket-knife lies on a shelf above my desk.  Sometimes when I have trouble deciding what to do when wrong seems like it isn't that far from right, I hold it in my hands and remember when I was only twelve... when it was so easy to figure out the difference.

 

 

 

 

 



















     
 




































      


 

 

 
l