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