Deer Camp Characters

DEER CAMP CHARACTERS
by Larry Whiteley

Every deer camp has its cast of camp characters. Individuals with their own special uniqueness that when blended together like spices and seasonings in a recipe, make deer camp so special.

  

My deer camp has Dean. A bundle of energy and wise cracks who hunts deer and moose and elk but is afraid of a little mouse. His mouse phobia has brought great joy at to the rest of us camp characters. We’ve never seen anyone get out of a sleeping bag as fast as when a stuffed mouse “accidentally” got in the sleeping bag with him. I will never forget how high he climbed and the look of horror on his face when he thought the noise in the old wood stove was a rat instead of the bird it turned out to be.

  

You could call Dean our camp coordinator. He makes sure the camp cabin is properly stocked and clean, collects the dues, buys groceries, and helps hang stands. His most notable contribution is the annual Saturday night “boil”, a grand feast of shrimp, kielbasa, mushrooms, broccoli, potatoes and corn on the cob boiled together in a big pot and dumped on the table for hungry hunters. He always cooks too much but taking home a bag full of “boil” is part of deer camp.

  

Dean is constant movement, washing dishes, emptying trash, picking up the cabin, bringing firewood in for the night, setting the alarm clock, and asking everyone where they will hunt the next day. His energy is endless and he is always the last one in bed. The rest of us wouldn’t want him to know it but we don’t know what we would do without him.

  

He may put up a front of being a tough, fun-loving guy serious about his deer hunting but I know the real Dean. He’s the guy who takes his young son Conrad on a youth turkey hunt and cries when he gets his first gobbler. He’s the guy who brings Conrad to deer camp, puts him in the stand with him, shares the moments of the hunt with him, and looks forward to the time when once again he will wipe tears from his eyes when Conrad takes his first deer. He’s the guy who helped my son when he first came to camp and took time to guide him on a successful turkey hunt one spring. He is also the guy who caused the lump in my throat when he showed up unexpected at my mother’s funeral. He will never know how much that meant to me.

  

Conrad is the youngest of our deer camp characters and like his dad, he’s a bundle of energy and constant movement. I love his imagination. Computers, television and video games keep a lot of kids from developing an imagination. What a shame! When I was a kid, my imagination took me to the mountains where I trapped beaver and muskrats and fought wild Indians and grizzly bears. I don’t know where Conrad’s imagination takes him but it will help shape his life, along with mom and dad and maybe some deer camp characters, into the man he will be.

  

Our deer camp characters even include a celebrity, although I don’t think he really considers himself one. Jerry co-hosts an outdoor TV show, has outdoor columns in magazines and newspapers, is a member of a pro hunting team, and has hunted and fished around the world with country music stars, NASCAR legends and even generals. I’m sure if you asked him, he would say “I’m just an old country boy who has been lucky enough to get to do some things I never dreamed would be possible.” I think he would tell you being in deer camp with the rest of us deer camp characters and his son Flint or daughter Chase is one of his favorite places to be.

Jery’s been a teacher and a mentor to my son and me. To all of us, he’s just ole’ Jerry. To Flint and Chase, he’s the dad who took the time to take them hunting and pass on his love and knowledge of the sport to them as they will to their kid’s one-day.

  

Then there’s John or “J.B.” as we call him. Deer camp wouldn’t be the same without J.B., his Wisconsin accent and holey underwear.

Through his wise cracks and jokes, he doesn’t fool me. He has a heart of gold. There’s nothing fake about J.B. He is who he is. He’ll never change and I’m glad because I wouldn’t want him any other way.

  

Ed is somewhat of a newcomer to hunting but is quickly gaining knowledge and experience. As a business executive, he is under a lot of pressure and stress so he looks forward to deer camp with the rest of us characters. He enjoys his time in the woods not caring whether he gets a deer or not. Ed was with Dean when Conrad got his first turkey and he too shed a tear. He delights in the hunting success of Daron and Flint and Chase. I will never forget my son’s face when Ed passed on to him one of his still very good and very expensive bows. Like some of the rest of the characters, Ed’s an old softy too!

  

Mike is the newest adult member of deer camp and adds his own uniqueness to the mix. He’s the consummate outdoorsman, serious about his hunting with the knowledge to back it up. Slow to smile, he was the object of probably one of deer camp’s best practical jokes. Mike had taken a nice buck and brought it into camp with the adhesive tag around its antlers. Where he is from that’s the way they tagged them but in our state they must be tagged around the leg. Dean told him the rule and that he better switch the tag to the leg or it could be illegal. This was next to impossible without tearing up the tag. Dean and I left to check our deer at the local fire station and set up a mock arrest of Mike for “mis-tagging” a deer. Although Dean and I weren’t there, those that were said the firemen played it perfectly. They even took a picture of a very serious looking Mike posed with his illegal deer thinking he was about to lose his hunting license, rifle and deer because he tagged his deer wrong. I’m sure Mike will find a way to get even.

  

The last member of our camp characters is a very special young man, my son Daron. I am so thankful that Jerry got me in as a member of deer camp many years ago. If he hadn’t, I’m not sure Daron would ever have gotten to take as many deer as he’s harvested over the years and especially wouldn’t have had the chance to take some of the quality bucks that now hang on his wall. Unlike most of us, he doesn’t drink, chew, smoke or cuss but he sure enjoys being around all the deer camp characters and they all think the world of him. Deer camp has brought us closer together as father and son and created memories that will last a lifetime.

  

I forgot to mention one camp character and that’s me. I’m the “old man” of deer camp, the one who cooks the annual opening morning breakfast and helps Dean with his “boil”. I’m the one who really doesn’t care if I take a big buck and who is content to harvest doe’s to help fill our quota. Most years I tag out as early as possible so I can use my ATV to help others get their deer out of the woods or help with deer drives. I look forward to deer camp every year and in spite of the practical jokes and name calling thrown my way sometimes, it is important to me to be with the rest of the deer camp characters. It’s more special for me because there are fewer deer camps left for me than the others.

  

Deer camps are not just about filling your deer tags. They’re about wood ducks whistling through the trees or the ka-honk of a goose high overhead. They’re about a wild turkey, a coyote or a bobcat happening by your secret hiding place. They’re about two fawns playing chase underneath your tree stand, squirrels rustling in the leaves, birds flittering through the tree tops, sunrises and sunsets. They’re about sitting around the campfire or the old wood stove and telling stories and jokes. Most of all they’re about sharing this special moment in time with your fellow deer camp characters.

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Outdoorsmanism… and how to teach it!

Alex is seven years old, and Ryan is nine. They are my grandsons, and that’s about all they have in common that I can see. The older boy has blonde curls, the younger one is a red-head, making me think they might share the genetics of the Scotch-Irish side of my family, from which my mother descends. But they get along fairly well, and none of my mother’s family ever did if I remember right.

I sometimes think I need to teach them about the outdoors, how to hunt and fish, track Indians and skin grizzlies. But truthfully, I don’t know where to start. Both boys are still fairly small, and sheltered to a point that they never have fallen out of a tree, or been bitten by a pet coon. I don’t even think they ever got real good and muddy. Their mother, who is my daughter, is the reason for that. Even as a little girl, she spent all her time studying, and eventually she became a doctor. And while she can tell you all about ameeba’s and hydrofilectic shock and auto-immune therapy, she hasn’t got the slightest idea how to tell a twelve-gauge from a twenty-two. She wouldn’t know a persimmon from a possum grape! Knowing that, I feel it is my duty to try to guide those little grandsons of mine toward the path of outdoorsmanism.

So I snuck them away from home just this past weekend by telling her we were going to pick up walnuts. It wasn’t a lie… we did for awhile. We must have filled up a whole five-gallon bucket! And then I brought out the .22 rifle for a little target practice. It scared Alex half to death and Ryan, biting his fingernails, asked if he could go play on the computer.  I gave them the old talk about how any Dablemont worth his salt had kilt his first squirrel before he was ten years old, and how if a man meant to be self-sufficient he had to know how to bring home his own supper, just in case some day the world is taken over by left-wing liberals, hamburger soars to 20 dollars a pound, and McDonalds doesn’t have anything but a vegetarian menu.

We made a target out of a cardboard box by drawing a squirrel on it. I made the squirrel look a little too realistic, so they both felt sorry for the squirrel. They preferred to shoot at a bullseye target so I drew one of those too. And then we talked about safety, and how a .22 rifle works and how there is no recoil. Recoil is what had Alex worried. That little boy has watched way to dam-much TV! Then he wanted ear-plugs, because his mama had already told him about how loud noises can cause hearing loss. I said “heck Alex, this ain’t no darned artillery range!” And then he puckered up and so I went in and found a couple of pairs of old ear plugs.

“Do you want to shoot first Ryan?” I asked.

“HUH”? he said. 

“Take those darned earplugs out until we get ready to shoot.” I said.  They both looked at me and said “HUH?” in unison.

To make a long story short, they are both too short-armed to hold my Ruger .22 properly, and they missed the target badly. Alex ran down to look at where he hit, and started to cry when he couldn’t find a hole anywhere in that 3-foot by 3-foot box. His grandmother came out and made me quit yelling at him, and held him on her lap and tried to explain that even grandpa had missed when he was a little boy. (Frankly I don’t remember missing anything quite that badly.)

So I went down to rearrange the box against the stump and put a hole in the bullseye with the point of a bullet I had in my pocket, and we let Alex shoot again. He missed most of the back yard, but that hole he found in the target made him happy. He thought he done it. Ryan did a little better, he hit the box twice, not more than two feet from the bullseye. Then I showed them a little bit about form… how you bend forward at the waist, you close one eye, you hold the stock firmly against the shoulder and squeeze the trigger gently. I drilled that squirrel right in the eye I had drawn in with a black magic marker, and Alex cried again because I hit the squirrel.

I got out a little Stevens-Marksman rifle I own, a tiny little .22 made a hundred and five years ago. It is a very small and light hammer-gun, and it fit them better. Both boys shot it and missed the target a lot less than before. Alex didn’t cry this time, and so as a reward we went out under a big white oak to pretend we were hunting squirrels and see how we would go about doing it when we did actually go squirrel hunting. We took the rifle, unloaded. Alex sat there peering into the branches and got all excited when he thought he saw one.

So sometime this fall, we are going to go hunt squirrels. The boys won’t shoot of course. They’ll tag along, and I will kill a squirrel and show them how to skin and clean one, and I am sure Alex will cry again. But he has to learn that squirrels are not pets and they are evil and must be eaten or they will eat little bird’s eggs in the spring and we won’t have any bluebirds and goldfinches or cardinals.

Then eventually, as they grow older, I will have to teach him that rabbits and turkeys are evil too. But that is a long way down the line. The way my daughter is raising these two little boys, they may not shoot their first deer until they are 40. Then and only then, can I brag about how good I taught ‘em.

Please make plans to join me down at Bull Shoals Dam on Saturday, October 22. I will be there finishing a pair of wooden johnboats, giving away magazines and signing and selling my books. And there will be swap-meet folks joining me with hand-made fishing lures, hand-made turkey calls, hand-made fishing rods, antique outboard motors, old outdoor magazines, and all sorts of outdoor stuff of interest, probably 20 or so tables filled with outdoor items, many of them antiques.

We are doing this in conjunction with an annual event the Arkansas State Parks people put on called a Dutch Oven Cook-Off, in which a number of folks are cooking all sorts of things in Dutch ovens. You can sample the cooking, and learn how to do it yourself. It will all take place on the east end of Bull Shoals lake, at a big park pavilion nestled in huge oak trees overlooking Bull Shoals Lake. On the west end of the dam, there is a huge visitor center you will want to see, and I have been telling folks that since it will be right in the middle of the brightest of the fall colors, you ought to think about staying a couple of days and seeing everything in the area. Bull Shoals is back to normal, and there’s good fishing to be found there. Below the dam, the White River is full of rainbow trout, and you might think of hiring a guide for a half-day to take you trout fishing.

But I recommend that you get down into the National Forest south of Mountain Home, and see that country where Sylamore Creek flows, where Blanchard Springs Caverns are found. Take a tour of those caverns… spectacular! You might even want to go see the Buffalo River if you have never been there, float it if you have an extra day. Anyhow, come by and visit with us on October 22, and enjoy yourself at this big cook off and swap meet and johnboat building. I have hundreds of old outdoor magazines of all types I will be giving away that day to whomever wants them. The State Park number is 870-445-3629 if you need more info.

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

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Defective Dove Hunting

Dennis Whiteside shows the big bass he caught on on his birthday, before releasing it.

 Three doves winged in over the sunflower field where Rich and I were hidden amongst the stalks. I fired twice and they just kept going. At that time I had shot 8 shells without dropping a bird.

“Looks like I would get lucky just once,” I muttered.

“Maybe your best chance would be a dove that is just UN-lucky…” Rich thought to himself. I knew what he was thinking. He didn’t have to say it!

For one thing, those 20-gauge shells were bought on sale about ten years ago. Old shells lose their power. I am sure of that, though it hasn’t been proven. And for another thing, I had a defective shotgun.

My old friend Rich Abdoler had owned it since his boyhood, one of two model-50 Winchester automatics, and he knew I wanted one of those badly, so he sold me the one he least wanted. I figure he knew something about the guns inability to shoot straight, and took advantage of me. I am thinking about legal action, partly because the shotgun has a bound up poly-choke, one of those bulging chokes on the end of the barrel that you twist to adjust, from open to fully choked. It was stuck on full choke that evening, and the last thing you want while hunting doves is a full-choke barrel, and you couldn’t adjust it with a four-foot pipe wrench.

So you can understand why, by the time the evening was over, a top-flight experienced shotgunner like me had only killed two doves with 12 or 14 shells.

And honestly, one time I killed ten doves with ten shells, a long time ago when I was younger and not under so much pressure and had a really good shotgun.

So you shouldn’t be thinking I am just a lousy shot.

    I did have a pretty good dove dinner, if there is such a thing. Rich killed 8 doves that evening and gave me his. He was using a twelve gauge, because he was out of twenty gauge shells, having shot all he had the evening before at that very spot, taking a limit before sunset. So the doves I shot at were extremely wary, unlike the easy ones he had found the day before.

    I may never shoot that poorly again, and I doubt that I ever have before, and while it is extremely embarrassing for a grizzled old outdoorsman like me to admit to such an evening, you can see how journalistic integrity would compel me to report the bad outings with the good. I have always felt that honesty is the best policy when there is a witness.
  
You see some strange things when you are outdoors. That evening Rich and I watched three different doves light on standing sunflower stalks and peck away at the seed heads. Neither of us had ever seen that before. Doves are not known to perch and feed, as other birds do. They are ground feeders, and you have to have grain on the ground in fairly open areas to attract them. We saw three of them break the rules. But then again, I have spent enough time outdoors to not be surprised at anything I see. You can never say ‘never’ or ‘always’ about wild creatures.

Wildlife that doesn’t adapt at all seems to have trouble surviving in the changing outdoorsmen have created.

    My friend Rich Abdoler has been a Corps of Engineers Ranger on Truman Lake for many, many years, and he says this year there were seven fatalities on the lake. One of them was a man who died in an ATV accident. He says that the biggest resource problem they have on the 115,000 acres of public land around the lake relates to the illegal use of ATV’s, and the erosion and disturbance it creates. Men are becoming too lazy and overweight to walk, and ATV’s are the answer for a modern-day generation that wants to enjoy the outdoors without any effort. But you are nothing close to a hunter or an outdoorsman if you spend your time in the woods on the seat a motorized vehicle. Every year, there are thousands of people who die or are seriously injured on ATV’s. And you can never really see the woods as it is on one of those. But then again, there is a difference in being a hunter and a shooter. Today’s generation is losing track of the difference.

On that 108-degree day we had back in the early part of August, I floated the river with writer Jim Spencer and his wife Jill Easton. I wrote about that trip and mentioned that a very large bass had made a pass at my buzz-bait that day right near my boat. The bass was close, and I saw his tail as he rolled across the surface. So as it happens, I was on the river last week with my good friend Dennis Whiteside, paddling him down the river on his birthday. When we neared that spot, I told him about the big bass I had missed and eased him to within casting distance of that spot, where some big snags and a log rested in deep shaded water. I’ll be darn if he didn’t cast a white buzz-spin in to the exact spot and that big bass nailed it. He fought him awhile and landed him, we took photos of it and released it. It was a real beauty, and I will never pass that spot again without fishing it well. That big bass will get even bigger! You can see a picture of it on my website, that address given at the end of my column.

On Friday and Saturday afternoon, September 23 and 24, Sondra Matlock Gray and I will be at the Hammons Walnut Festival at Stockton Missouri handing out free copies of the outdoor magazine we produce. It is quite an event; if you have never been there you should come and see it. Then our big outdoorsman’s swap meet will be on October 22, at Bull Shoals State Park in north Arkansas, and it is in conjunction with an annual event they have known as the Dutch Oven Cooking Competition. Last year we drew about 1500 people to our swap meet, but they expect 2000 people to come to that Dutch Oven meeting, so we may have a big crowd. If you have outdoor items or gear to sell, you should attend this as a “vendor”. You can reserve space close to where I will be building my wooden johnboat, just by contacting Tabitha Stockdale at the Bull Shoals Visitor Center, phone 870-445-3629. Or you can e-mail her at tabitha.stockdale@arkansas.gov. Do that early so that all the spaces won’t be reserved already.

    If you want more information, you can write me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613 or e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. You can see recent photos from our Canada trip, or that big bass from last week’s trip, on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors. blogspot.com





  

  

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High Heat and Tall Tales

Jim Spencer shows off an excellent smallmouth! Photo by Jill Easton

Summer rivers often require pulling a canoe. Photo by Jill Easton

The heat didn’t ruin the beauty of the river in summer, and if you tried to stay in the shade, it wasn’t so bad. About mid-afternoon, it was 108 degrees, and I’m sure I have never been on the water fishing anywhere when it was that hot.

The fish weren’t tearing it up. I think most of them were reacting to the effect of warming water, and perhaps seeking deeper places to stay cool, wishing they had a cold watermelon! Fish love cold watermelon on a hot day.

Nonetheless, Jim was casting a small spinner-type lure he normally uses for trout, and he hooked into two or three hard-fighting smallmouth which were getting up close to two pounds. He’d land the fish, then release them quickly so they wouldn’t die of heat stroke.

Every now and then we’d beach my 19-foot square-sterned canoe on a gravel bar where there was a nice, cool, deep current and a chance to catch a fish, and we would wade out up to our armpits and cast to the other side. It didn’t work, for some reason; maybe the fish could smell us. In heat like that you sweat a lot, even in the water. I think maybe, in that river, we had an easier time of it that day than other folks in the Ozarks.

As I mentioned in my last column, outdoor writer and book author Jim Spencer and his wife Jill Easton, also an outdoor writer, spent a couple of days at my place last week when the heat was so awful. They were on their way to a trapper’s convention, as Jim still traps on the lower White River and has written a book on trapping.

When outdoor writers get together, they get outdoors somehow, so we went to the river and fished. The Niangua is one of my favorite rivers, though certain sections of it have been ruined by canoe rental companies who just pack it with people, and the refuse and waste that comes with great numbers of people, a number of them with drugs or too much alcohol. But there are places on this great smallmouth stream where the chaos and capsize crowd doesn’t go. That’s where I go. Only a few years ago, the biggest smallmouth I ever caught in an Ozark river, came from the place we fished last week.

I told Jim and Jill the story about that big fish, which I released, and showed them where I figured he still lives. When two outdoor writers are together, one can’t tell a fishing story the other doesn’t try to top. Jim held up that little brown hairy jig with a spinner on it and said, “See that lure? I caught a trout down on the White River not far from my house that would likely be able to eat any smallmouth in this river in one gulp.”

I listened, and though I hate to admit it, I think the story was probably true. Jim said it was a brown trout, and he figured it was a little better than 30 pounds. He was fishing with light action spinning gear and four pound line, after the stocking-sized rainbows that go 14 or 15 inches and rarely larger. The monster brown lay in deep water, and took the little spinner when it passed too close. Spencer was by himself, with a small net, and he kept the fish on for an hour.

“There was four different times I had that big trout up beside the boat, wallerin’ on top of my net, and all four times the net was too small to get him into it. The fourth time he gave a surge and the line broke. All I would have needed to land him was a big net, but who carries a net that big… who expects to ever catch a fish like that?

Big brown trout lurk in the White River, where they spawn in the middle of winter. There are a number of them in the fifteen- to twenty-pound class, and who knows how many that are larger. The biggest landed so far was 39 pounds.

About that time, Jill hooked a scrappy bluegill and hoisted it in. On those small spinners they were catching bluegill and green sunfish right and left, some big enough to put on a platter and make a nice fish fry.

On shallow places below the shoals, where you could see the gravel two or three feet below us, there were dozens and dozens of big black fish, slowly, slowly moving upstream. You could have gigged a hundred of them during the day, drum from two to eight pounds. I have never seen so many drum. Since they sometimes hit small lures, I am surprised we didn’t catch one or two. If you could have drifted a nightcrawler down along those gravel shoals and held it there awhile, I think you could have caught several.

But drum are not prized. The meat is white, and good, but the fish has such a large spine and rib cage that you have to have a big one just to get a filet of any significance. Nevertheless, no one complains about the fight they put up, as they are real scrappers. Before the day was over, we must have seen several hundred of them, a sight I never witnessed before.

We paddled upstream for hours, a couple of miles or better, than turned and headed back, well into the afternoon. I kept using a big buzz-bait, sure that I would hook a hefty bass that Jill could get a good picture of. Just before we reached my pickup, along a deep quiet bank with lots of logs, a monstrous largemouth bass followed the topwater lure and boiled at it right beside the boat. My jaw fell open as I saw his broad side and tail sweep across the surface. I am not exaggerating when I say he would have weighed seven or eight pounds.

Jim heard the eruption of water and turned to see the commotion on the surface beside the boat. “How big was that one?” he asked.

I just told him it was way too big to get in the net! But at least he didn’t break my line.

Last winter in early January, a friend and I floated an Ozark river hunting ducks when it was eight degrees at dawn. All day long the temperature never rose above twelve or fifteen. I have floated the rivers for years and years and years, beginning when I was just a small boy. In all that time, I never floated when it was that cold or when it was as hot as it was last week. But when it is hot, it is easy to cope with. You just get in the water, and stay wet all day. In that extreme cold, you are in real danger. With hip boots and heavy clothing, you are so bundled up you might not get out if you went in. Hypothermia is a killer that comes on you when you don’t know it is there. But what a day it was for duck hunting, mallards were everywhere. The only trouble is, I was so cold I couldn’t shoot worth a darn.

In 108 degrees, it is easy to cast, easy to paddle and easy to swim. Still, I think I will be happy when the cooling weather makes the fish hungry. In October and November, April and May, I won’t complain about a thing. If I should, somebody remind me about what July and early August was like. At my age, I might forget.

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

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Observations From My porch

How to spend a very hot day and never complain about the temperature.

I sat on my screened porch this morning early, when it was at least as cool as it is going to get. A squirrel made a hole in the screen last winter, coming in to get at a bag of birdseed I had setting on a table. And a raccoon made a bigger hole last summer so he could get into a bag of corn cobs leftover from roastin’ ears I should have thrown out in the back lawn. So I am going to have to fix some places, when it cools down. I said that in February too… “I am going to fix that screen when spring gets here.”

As I get older, a lot more things go undone. You know what the problem is? When it is too hot, you can’t work, and when it is too cold, you can’t work! When it is just right, you remember how hot it was or how cold it was, and you take that time to go hunting or fishing rather than work, knowing those perfect days for hunting and fishing are all too few. That’s the way it ought to be. What harm does a hole or two in the screened porch do? If I just leave the screen door open, the coon won’t make the hole any bigger, he’ll use the door. And why worry about constantly mowing. My back lawn has a lot of wildflowers in it most all summer if I don’t mow, and there are baby rabbits in there, and more food for the birds if I don’t mess with it.

If you mow all the time, you have nothing but grass. If you don’t, there is variety and diversity, more wildlife and more birds. Dozens of species of birds live in the trees and shrubs behind my screened porch. One I saw this week was an indigo bunting and his mate. The female is very drab, but that male is a bright metallic blue, a tiny little guy whose color makes him stand out. I seldom see the bigger rain crows, also known as yellow-billed cuckoos. They are shy, and hard to see, because they actually see you and hide behind large branches. Their call is loud and raucous, a diminishing cluck, cluck, cluck, which old timers said would foretell the coming of a rain. Every morning and evening I hear them, and true to the legend, a rain always comes….within a couple of months. It happens every time I hear them.

Rain crows have had a feast this summer because they are one of the very few birds that will eat fuzzy, hairy caterpillars, and a huge crop of walnut caterpillars descended upon us in June. They stripped the leaves from walnuts and hickories and pecans, and some of the big trees in my lawn are nearly leafless. It won’t kill them unless it happens a couple of years in a row, and then it might. But nature doesn’t work that way usually, as things of mass destruction and aggravation, like those darned noisy cicadas, usually come in cycles. The numbers of walnut caterpillars across the Ozarks this year were unbelievable. They are gone now only because they changed into little brown moths with rusty-red colored collars, a little better than an inch long, and for the past week you could see them by the millions beneath lights at convenience stores. They have short lives; they just lay eggs under leaves and then die.

Sitting on my porch, I notice leaves on redbud and mulberry trees turning yellow, probably as a result of dry weather and heat. I watched a few yellow leaves drift down off the mulberry tree, giving just a little hint of the coming of fall, now only a few weeks away. Another hint is the maturing acorns on the branches of a giant white oak tree that grows nearby to shade my porch. That’s good news; we need a good white oak acorn crop for wildlife species of all kinds.

The heat is awful, and I suspect I should keep an eye on my pond, which I made years ago on this high ridge to give water to wildlife, a home for some fish and bullfrogs, and a cooling relief for my Labradors. As the water drops, the mud around it is an indication of all the visitors; raccoons and skunks, a fox and a bobcat, and several turkeys and deer. Because of the dry hot summer, we will see some deer dying in the Ozarks due to blue-tongue… also known as epizootic hemorrhagic disease. Deer which die from that awful affliction come to water to die, more of them in August and early September. Some years are worse than others, and I think this year will be one of those.

I still don’t know what the wild turkey hatch is going to be in this area. I haven’t seen many poults, but late-hatching turkeys are hard to see until late summer and early fall. The quail seem to be non-existent this summer, up here on Lightnin’ Ridge. In past summers, as I sat on my porch early in the morning and late in the evening, I have heard four or five bobwhite roosters whistling. This summer I have heard only one, and I heard him only one morning. What a shame that this Ozarks country will have fewer and fewer quail, until someday, I think we will have none at all.
Tomorrow, early in the morning, I will be on the river. An old friend of mine, outdoor writer Jim Spencer, will be here to visit, and we are going to float the Nianqua River and catch some bass on topwater lures. Another old friend, river guide Dennis Whiteside, reports that bass are clobbering the buzz-baits we love to use, if you know the water to fish. You have to seek out shady, deeper water with a little current to catch bass, but from now into September, buzz-bait fishing should be excellent for those who know what they are doing.

Jim Spencer and I began writing about the outdoors when we were just kids, back in the sixties. Looking through old magazines a few weeks back, I found an article he had written when he was 14 years old for Harding’s magazine, now known as Fur, Fish and Game. It was a trapping article, and he was paid for it.

Like me, Jim has always lived in the woods, his home now is at the edge of the national forest down in Arkansas, off in the middle of nowhere. We both obtained wildlife management degrees the same year, mine from Missouri University, his from Louisiana State University. About the same time, we began writing for Outdoor Life and Field and Stream magazines.

Not long ago, I found a book produced years back entitled, “The Best of Outdoor Life… the Greatest Hunting, Fishing and Survival Stories from America’s Favorite Sportsman’s Magazine.” In it were articles Jim and I wrote in the early 1970’s, and with our stories were others written by Zane Grey, Jack O’Conner, Archibald Rutledge and a list of famous writers who were old men when we were born, or long since gone. It made me realize that we are the last of a dying breed.

I don’t think the world will miss us when we are gone. That’s why we are going fishing tomorrow, with Zane Grey and Archibald Rutledge and Isaac Walton. It is going to be a great deal cooler, standing out in that current under a shade tree, than it is on my porch. If anyone needs us just… well, heck, nobody ever has needed us. I keep forgetting that!

My mailing address is Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. See www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com
Posted by Sondra Gray at 8/01/2011

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The Little Jones Boy

The two little boys were only 7 years old. Cousins, they had spent a day at their grandparent’s place in the country, and had wandered off down to the river, where they were forbidden to go. Their mothers had been distraught, threatening to never let them visit their grandparents again. Both had received a spanking, and they were pouting about the harsh discipline meted out. After all, their fathers had been there fishing only the week before, and the river sounded like great fun.

That evening they were sitting on the porch with their grandpa, and he was sympathetic. “Nothing seems fair when you’re seven years old,” he said, “and subject to the whims of cruel mothers set on keeping you from having fun.”

He had their full attention that warm summer night, as the sun began to set and they were all three enjoying a glass of lemonade Grandma had brought them. “I reckon it’s all because of that little Jones boy, years back, that they is so doggone mean to you two,” he said, “but I reckon we can’t speak of that, it's too awful to remember and I promised I wouldn’t tell you little guys that story. It was a bad, bad thing…best forgotten and too bad to talk of.”

It wasn’t quiet long. The two wanted to know who the little Jones boy was. Grandpa could tell that much, he reckoned. “Cute little guy… lived down the road apiece, but mean as a pet Billy goat. Course I can’t say anymore about him, cause nobody talks about it nowadays… reckon he’d be nigh onto a growed man now if he’d just not been so determined not to mind his ma.”

“Was that a whippoorwill I heard,” the old man took out his pipe, and seemed to want to change the subject. The two little boys wouldn’t hear of it. “Tell us about the little Jones boy,” they said, nearly in unison.

“No, no, boys,” the grandpa shook his head as he filled the bowl of his pipe. “It’s a story you don’t want to hear and yore mothers would skin me alive if I told you about that little Jones boy and the awful thing what happened to him.”

With an interest heightened by his hesitancy, the two begged him to tell them the story. “Please grandpa,” said one, “we won’t tell nobody.”

As the urging continued, the old man lit his pipe in the fading light of evening, swatted a fly with his fly swatter, and gave in. “Well, all right, I’ll tell you, but you’ve got to always keep this a secret between the three of us. Cause I may be the only man what knowed what happened to that little Jones boy.”

The old man sent a puff of sweet-smelling pipe tobacco smoke into the air, and took a deep breath, the two little boys’ attention riveted on him. “I reckon I was just a young man back then, when the little Jones boy up and disappeared. He was bad to just ignore his grandma and his ma, and folks thought for a while he just wandered off into the woods and might wander on back when he got good and hungry. Some folks said maybe he went off down to the river and got drowned or ate by a giant alligator snappin’ turtle or something, but his ma had told him never to go to the river, and she said he was sure to stay away from there, bein’ the kind of good kid he was.”

He drew a puff from his tobacco, noting he had the two boys in undivided awe; their mouths open with anxiety. “Only I never did figger he was a good kid. Mean as a snake, I’d say, bad to lie and sneak off, not mind his ma and kick old dogs and throw rocks at the chickens and that kind of thing.”

The old man continued as dusk settled and the sun left a blood red sky to the west, “So as I remember, that’s when I went down and set me a trotline for catfish in that big deep scary hole of water down there where you boys was just a couple days ago. And I baited it with big old worms and some shade peerch I had caught from the creek.”

With his two grandsons sitting on the wooden floor of the old porch before him, the old man shifted in his rocking chair and put his foot up beneath him, the way that old-timers do. The boys were totally enthralled with the forbidden story.

“Well sir, I tell ya,” the old man puffed on his pipe and listened as a screech owl wailed from the woods across the gravel road before the old farmhouse. “When I went back in the middle of the night, dark and scary as it was, I figgered I’d have me a big ol’ catfish. But I went out there in my ol’ boat and that line was hung up down deep on the bottom pulled back in under a big rock bluff.”

The screech owl wailed again, and the western sky began to dim as the old man continued. “I couldn’t pull that line up at all, so I just strips off my overalls and my boots, and I grabs my flashlight, and I dives into that clear deep river to see if I can unhang that hung-up trotline.”

Dramatically, he took his pipe out of his mouth and shook his head. “Don’t know if I should tell the rest of it,” he said quietly, looking at the floor beneath his rocking chair in mock anguish. The boys, beside themselves with excitement, urged him to continue the story, as they were now on their feet beside the rocking chair, hair standing up on the backs of their necks as the screech owl gave forth its eerie cry again.

“Well boys, you got to remember that its natures way to rid the world of the weak and the stupid,” he said, “when a kid won’t obey his mother, its like a little duck that gets off away from his brood and gets ate up by a big ol’ bass or a fawn that won’t stay hid, and gets ate up by a wolf…”

The little boys knew something awful must be coming. “Go on Grandpa,” one urged.

“Well I swum down into the deep dark water with my flashlight, an’ there he was, a humongous ol’ catfish the size of a full growed Hereford bull. A good axe-han’les distance it was between them beady little horrible eyes…”

Well boys I hates to tell it, I hates to remember it, but there ain’t no way to forget what I saw… there sticking out of his big ol' ugly mouth, full of jagged old teeth…”

The old man’s voice was just a whisper now, as he glanced over his shoulder as if afraid of what might be behind him… “Stickin’ out of his big ol’ ugly mouth was that little Jones boys leg!”

Years later when the two boys were much older, their mothers commented on how they never went near the river again when they were small. Sometimes it takes a grandpa to help raise little boys.

You can see this grandpa’s website at www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. The e-mail address is lightninridge@windstream.net

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The Rescue

Larry Dablemont paddles the first official "float" of the new johnboat

Last November, I drifted slowly down a river in my johnboat, with a blind attached to the bow; limbs of sycamore and oak to hide me and the boat as I floated down the river. It was getting cold. I figured there would be mallards on the river, but there weren’t many.

As I looked downriver, trying to make out the movement of a flock of ducks, three wood ducks flushed from some brush alongside me, only twenty or so yards away. I dropped my paddle and picked up my shotgun in time to drop the last one of the three. A beautiful drake wood duck in front got clean away, but the other two were hens, and the last one folded cleanly and fell to the river downstream from me.

That night, I admired what a beautiful creature she was, and cleaned her, cutting out the two sides of meat lying to each side of the breastbone. The meat was dark, and red. I soaked it in milk overnight, and the next evening I cross-cut the two breasts into a total of 8 little steaks about an inch and a half wide, wrapped each in a small piece of bacon, sprinkled some special seasoning and garlic on them, and put them on a wooden skewer, with a slice of onion and green pepper between each piece of meat. In about fifteen minutes over a hot flaming grill, the meat was cooked, and it was delicious.

If you are a vegetarian, that is fine with me, but I am not. I like wild game, and I would not hunt anything unless I prepared the meat and ate it. That makes me a predator. You would think I would sympathize with other predators.

That brings me to only a few days ago, when I drove a couple of miles down the road that takes me from this wooded ridgetop where I live, and started to pull out on a two-lane highway, just beside a bridge over the river. As I stopped there, I saw another wood duck hen fly along before me, only a few feet from my hood, and right above her was a sharp-shinned hawk, death on wings.

The hawk nailed the woodie in flight, and drove her to the highway shoulder pinning her with its talons, and trying to rip away her neck with its sharp curved beak. I just stopped my pickup in the middle of the highway, jumped out and ran toward the scene of the crime, and rescued the squealing wood duck by threatening to make a football out of the hawk. It tried to carry the hen away, but he wasn’t quite as heavy as she was, and the hawk couldn’t get airborne.

Freed from the iron grasp, the hen waddled out into the highway as if stunned, the feathers on her back askew, her mouth open, squawking as only a hen wood duck does, a sound like no other on marshes or rivers. There had been no traffic, but I looked up to see a couple of oncoming vehicles now stopped, drivers frowning, not understanding the urgency of the situation. I got back in my pickup and the hen took to flight over the bridge, and was nailed again by the hawk. The feathers flew from her back when he hit her and knocked her to the bridge-top pavement.

What could I do? I jumped out again, screaming threats at the hawk, and the wounded wood duck dived over the side toward the river as the hawk retreated. I don’t know what happened to her, but I gave her a chance. Drivers in both lanes now were stopped, yelling something out their windows, hopefully directed toward that villainous hawk. If they were talking to me, I hope they are ashamed of themselves. After all no one should be in such a hurry so early in the morning, and patience is a virtue!

Reflecting on it later, I felt bad about what I did. Not so much about stopping traffic, but for not realizing the hawk had more right to take a wood duck for a meal than I do, because he was merely being what God created him to be. It isn’t his fault that he looks wicked and mean. Actually, I too have sharp toenails and little beady eyes. Certainly his plumage makes him more beautiful than I, and his graceful, swift and powerful flight is spectacular. When I am chasing rabbits out of my garden, there ain’t nothin' swift or graceful about it.

If the hawk had shot the wood duck with a shotgun, and cleaned her and cooked the meat, I would have less of a problem watching it. But the attack of the sharp-shinned hawk is swift, savage and heartless. In his talons, the duck would not die quickly; she would be partly eaten before her heart stopped beating. Maybe it is that part of it which makes it hard to watch, difficult for us to accept. Nature is perfect in its functions, but brutal at times.

I am a naturalist, trained and existing that way since boyhood, and I know what happens in the woods because I have always lived there and worked there. It doesn’t bother me to watch a hawk kill a rat, because I don’t care much for rats. I can hardly stand to see a little fawn or a baby rabbit killed and eaten by anything, even though I know the great Creator made it to be that way, and I need to accept it.

In the reality of it, there is nothing more brutal or savage than man. Man has this little streak of evil that wild creatures do not have. He is destructive, gluttonous and barbaric at times, and yet in most all of us, there is a ton of goodness, and compassion and sympathy. I see my friends and neighbors showing love and generosity constantly, and find it more often than not in complete strangers. But men are not part of nature any more. Neither am I. That poor hawk may have gone hungry that day, when God meant him to eat, to serve his purpose in nature thinning out the weak and sick, feeding his youngsters just as we must feed ours.

But if you were in one of those vehicles behind me, He meant for you to be a little more patient when somebody is trying to save a wood duck!!

What a great day we had at Bull Shoals State Park in north Arkansas, last Saturday, building an old time White River johnboat. A big crowd turned out and it was fun. We took the boat down to the lake and gave folks a boat ride and it didn’t leak a drop. Now we don’t know what to do with it. If you know someone in need of a 20-foot wooden johnboat like they made almost a hundred years ago, contact me. And you can see photos of the event, and the finished boat, on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com

My publishing company has a facebook page now. You can find it under Lightnin’ Ridge, if you know the way to do that facebook stuff. The ladies who work for me, Sondra and Dorothy and Diane, take care of facebook and websites and computer stuff. I am a grizzled old veteran outdoorsman, and I ain’t never gonna get involved in such technical, modern nonsense. There’s fish to catch, rivers to float, wilderness to explore and computers are evil, to my way of thinking… like them darned hawks.
Write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. Or e-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net. E-mails aren’t evil, I don’t suppose.

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