A River Trip

Dennis Whiteside with the buck we found dead in the river. 
It happens often that deer are found in the river, 
as they seek water when they are wounded. 
We found an even larger buck last year upriver from this one.

We slid the canoe into the river just at first light, and pulled through a shallow shoal, listening to a group of turkeys on a roost just downriver. They make a great racket at dawn when they are a little nervous about something, putting, chirping, and cackling just before they fly down from the roost.

We drifted past them in deeper water, without a sound. But they knew we were there. You could see a half-dozen different turkeys on sycamore limbs, silhouetted against the sky. Surprisingly, there was a pair of eagles perched in the limbs of another sycamore, close by.

One or two gobblers began to gobble back up on a ridge above them, and they gobbled a dozen times or so, just like it was spring. They all made a heck of a racket coming down through the limbs, and then they were quiet.

But as they became still, three or four coyotes began yodeling along the hillside just downstream. It wasn’t exactly a howling, more like a shrill, high-pitched wailing. We floated downstream, right up on one, which was foraging along beside a log at the stream’s edge. The coyote figured out that something wasn’t right, and he hot-footed it up over the hillside in a hurry. A woodrat could be found elsewhere, I suppose.

The sun was nearly up when we drifted upon a young otter, and when we got close, he lifted himself up out of the water all the way above his front feet, so that his neck looked something like that of a serpent. He was uncertain as to what we were, and began a short snorting, coughing sound, as if he were disgusted to see us there. I could hear him thinking, “that’s why fish are so hard to find anymore, too many of those darned humans on the river!”

He was comical looking, with that long neck sticking up so high out of water, but there is no more deadly river killer than he and his cousin, the mink. They devastate our fish populations in small ponds and in rivers which men have altered so greatly, reducing the cover and deep water fish need to survive. An otter will catch and eat almost anything he can, including very young fawns, turkeys, muskrats, even a young beaver on occasion.

There were a number of eagles along the river, some with white heads and tails, others in the drab plumage marking birds less than two years of age. They too are efficient predators, but they do not mind eating carrion. In winter especially, all birds of prey will eat carrion when it is easy to find. About midday we came upon a dead doe on a gravel point jutting out into the river and five eagles were feeding on the deer.

A day or so before, Dennis Whiteside, my hunting companion that day, had floated the river by himself and seen two different spike bucks, one crossing on a shoal, another bedded down on a wooded high bank. He had filled his doe tag that afternoon with a young doe. So on that day toward the end of the season, he was paddling for me, and we drifted slowly down the stream hunting deer, like we so often hunt ducks in the winter, and even turkeys in the fall.

As we did, I thought back to a time many years ago when I had come home from college and my dad paddled me down an Ozark river in November, hunting ducks and deer from a wooden johnboat. We had hunted ducks that way since I was very small, but never deer. I didn’t even have a deer rifle, so I had borrowed one from a young teacher I worked with in M.U.’s archeology department. It was a 30-30 lever action Marlin, and he hadn’t fired it in years, he said.

I didn’t fire it either. I got home late on Friday night and we were on the river at daylight the next morning. Floating along that morning, with an oak and sycamore blind on the bow of the boat, we drifted into a flock of mallards and I killed a couple with my old pump shotgun. Just a few minutes later, a doe jumped into the river followed by a nice buck, maybe an eight pointer or so. I excitedly put down the shotgun, picked up the rifle and waited as Dad paddled me closer, and the deer waded slowly across the stream. They climbed out onto the bank as we drifted to distance of only 40 or 50 yards, and I put the sights on the buck’s heart as he stood broadside. I squeezed the trigger expecting to hear the roar of the rifle, only to hear the dull metallic ‘thunk” the hammer hitting a broken firing pin. Carbines will not fire with a broken firing pin! The rifle’s owner recalled that a friend had “dry-fired” it a time or two, but didn’t know that would break the firing pin. I figure that buck had to have grown old and grey-muzzled with that kind of luck.

Dennis and I didn’t see a deer that day last week. That happens on occasion. But we did find a dead buck floating in the river, one with a heavy set of antlers and eleven points, if you count three small ones only a couple of inches long. Last year we found a dead 9-pointer on the bank only a mile or so from this one. Wounded deer always go to water, and you find them on the river, a testament to inefficient, or inexperienced hunters who lack the ability to trail a deer which doesn’t drop right away.

Our favorite deer season is to come, however, and we will float the river again in December with muzzle-loaders, maybe hunting some ducks at the same time.

If there was enough space here, I would tell you about Sondra Gray’s first deer hunt. Sondra is the editor of my magazine, The Lightnin’ Ridge Outdoor Journal. She proved herself to be a very good fisherman last spring and summer, and wanted to try deer hunting. You can read about that in this column next week, and trust me, it is a story you have to hear.

In the meantime, we just received the Christmas issue of our magazine, and if you would like to get a copy, just send five dollars to LROJ, Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613. They are also sold in magazine racks at many Wal-Mart stores, or you can call our office to find out where our magazines are found closest to you. That number is 417-777-5227. Our Christmas issue is 80 pages long, instead of the usual 72, and it has some great stories in it, with lots of nostalgia, and humor. It is our 29th issue and if you haven’t seen the magazine, you have missed some very good reading by excellent Ozark writers like Jim Spencer, Keith Sutton, Monte Burch and others.

On December 6th I will be helping to organize a Common Sense Conservation chapter at Lamar Missouri. The meeting will be at 7:00 pm at the Memorial hall beside the fire department. If you live near Lamar, please try to attend. Then on December 14th I will be in Salem, MO. helping to organize a chapter there. You can get all the information about these meetings and see the cover of the Christmas magazine on my website, www.larrydablemontoutdoors.blogspot.com. E-mail me at lightninridge@windstream.net or write to me at Box 22, Bolivar, Mo. 65613.