tjm

Both are easy to over cook. I wouldn't use batter on either.

Seems unlikely to me that the average hunter or fisherman will carry a two sided step ladder in their rucksack, and if we carry it to the corner with a vehicle and we cross the corner with it, how do we get the vehicle over it? This decision would have more significance if the landowner were required to provide gates. Won't matter though if the feds sell off all those BLM/NFS sections.

Feb-May 1970 in San Diego NTC (Camp Nimitz?) the weather that I recall was daily smog at a predictable mid morning time and extreme after smog heat on the grinders. If there was ever a breeze I didn't notice it.

That depends on where you are, trout permits are needed to keep and transport trout, except on Taneycomo, where you need one to fish, and in the Parks during C&R. So, if in the Park, you would need a daily tag and if on Taneycomo you would need a trout permit, but on a stream you'd only need a trout permit if you are keeping the trout. In any case you would need a fishing permit or an exception.

Probably not. But he wouldn't have either.

And if you had had a heart attack? Was he CPR qualified? What if you had reacted violently with a fight reflex? Doesn't seem like behavior that an employer should encourage and seems unrelated to any "work ethic", but maybe that's just me.

Some states do specify the primary be 5th wheel, some require driver license endorsements; as far as I know Mo. doesn't, but they do have width, height and combined length limitations and braking recommendations.

It's a guberment job and work is four letter word that guberment employees shouldn't have to put up with.

Sounds like you were lucky, a guy willing to pull you out and the car still derivable. I've seen cars that were strip salvaged right beside the street in the cities where police make constant rounds. In less than 1/2 hour time as I went down a sidewalk and made a return about 1/2 hour later. Saw what looked like a drug deal behind a doughnut shop where officers were having coffee at the time. A deputy driving by a couple times a week isn't likely to deter criminal activity at a place deemed to be "public". I bet you could find instances of drug labs and pot growth on private land that were tended by kayak or canoe if you searched a bit. Your anecdote describes a circumstance that seems to justify elimination of the free access. And that may well be why the MODOT has closed all their land. And as far as floats go, I've seen groups of kayakers at the low water bridge that appeared to be intoxicated while floating, and a couple of times groups of "wading anglers" that were obviously not sober. I suppose that if a pair of deputies spent enough time at any low water bridge they could likely find reasons to arrest a fair number of floaters, even though the boating while intoxicated laws wouldn't apply, maybe they should. Unrestricted public access means access by criminals is encouraged. Advocating for unrestricted public access to private lands is in effect advocating for criminal use of those private lands. But if we want access to streams at bridges, we must allow that same access to all, parties, drug deals, drug producers, dumpers of stolen cars, all. If laws are broken, the complaint must be about the law that is broken, not just use of the access. And although you say underage drinking happened and I say some kayakers were intoxicated, I expect that in both cases we'd have no proof, you didn't get ID for age nor take a blood test and neither did I.

Not many bars that I'm aware of though. Not long ago that was a "Dry County" and the residents would buy trunk (or truck) loads of spirits to drink at home.

The dam doesn't make any water, whatever water there is, is what there is. It's not a flood control dam nor used to store water, it's just there to raise the head height. Dam removal would not take any water out of the river's flow, it would mean that some lake front property becomes 'lost in the woods' property, but it would also mean that floaters would not have to portage the dam, and that the river would become wild again over time. Take out Bagnell too and over enough time the eels might return to Niangua River. The USGS gage shows 282CFS and that should be plenty for a float, it's more than twice what Little Sugar is flowing and everyone says it's floatable. I doubt that they allow floating through the construction though, so during that time you'd be right about no floating.

Potato Planting Day! It's always a marvel to me how many people become both Irish and Catholic that one day each year. I have thought that bars/pubs should not not have parking lots. Only loading zones, make it part of the building code or licensing requirements. Area Pub Crawls should sponsor a trolley bus transport for the revelers, with constant bus circulation the party could make the rounds two or three times to all the participating pubs.

Better on the river perhaps than on the highway? The argument could made that no place is a good place to be blotto? Such people always need a babysitter no matter where they are?

You think the party people are not part of the public that has access to the gravel for recreation? A party is recreation, isn't it?

The foresters always look at marketable timber and burn scars hurt the $ value of a forest. What they didn't always realize is that the longer between burns, the more fuel is accumulated and the greater the damage. Every year burns would prevent almost all fire damage, but would have so little fuel that it would be hard to keep the fire going, three years has just about the right amount of fuel for a sustained fire with minimum damage, and that is slowly being taught to the state foresters, younger ones learn faster than the people that grew up with Smokey. I think that if we had a time machine and went back to about 1800 that we'd find very little timber across the Ozarks by comparison to today. My grandfather told me that when he was a boy, 1890s, all this local forest was savanna, and that his father told him it was almost all prairie during the Civil War. When Henry Schoolcraft explored the Ozarks 1818 he is said to have carried a packhorse load of campfire wood with him because of distance between stands of trees.

Old timers used to burn parts of the land every three years on rotation to prevent worse fires and to promote grass and wild berries. And March was usually when they burned. So if 1/3 of the Ozarks is burning, that's just about right. Huckleberries need fires and blackberries, raspberries like fires. Three years more or less fits their cycle and doesn't allow too much accumulation of fuel, fire prevention is bad for healthy forestland. Smokey Bear should be skinned and made into a rug. Try not to pick a wind storm day to burn though, as you do want to contain the burn.

A "funny story", when I lived in the east, I had been there 8-10 years and was an avid fly fisher when one of the national fishing magazines did a feature story about fly fishing (using "shad darts") for shad as they made their spawning run up a river three miles from my house, and before reading that article I had not been aware that anyone ever fly fished that river or that it was a "destination". In the past the shad had been so numerous there that a shad processing factory had stood there. I had heard of the "Shad Factory Pond" and knew that salt anglers dip netted bait fish there. After reading that, I did stop there a few times each year until we moved, but I never caught it when the shad were active; I did talk to guys that had caught them and they said that if anyone shouts 'fish on' that everyone else should reel up and get out of the water as the shad tend to make several long fast runs and the angler would have to chase it. Since that time the shad have declined to the point that the last time I checked, likely 20 years ago, there was doubt that shad were still returning there. Shad are said to have been George Washington's favorite food, and may have saved his troops from starvation.

I've forgotten the details, but shad was the biggest or one of the biggest exports from the USA for a hundred years or so. A IIRC the decline of shad along the east coast was one of the reasons for establishing the US Fish Commission in 1871, the same folks that brought us common carp and brown trout from Germany, and redband trout from California.

Too late. Pears are too wide spread now for even fully coordinated landowner and government efforts to do anything about them. Think Mimosa, Sericea Lespedeza, Kudzu, Burdock and almost all other Eurasian species. When is an introduced species change status from "introduced" to "invasive" to "naturalized" or "established"? How is that determination made?

As I said, no belief that all those streams claimed to fit Elder really do. How? do you do water samples and lab work on the streams you fish? Mo has no laws keeping streams open to the public, just a presumption that most streams would fit a case law precedent if so tested; and as outlined above it is thought that many would not pass that test in court. If there is enough doubt that the courts would rule a stream to fit the Elder standards that we don't want such cases; then it can be presumed that those streams are not legally public thoroughfares. What is fact is that no stream is a public thoroughfare in Mo. until it is tested in court, with the exception of the federally navigable rivers. A number of smaller streams have been tested in court and now are legally public thoroughfares, but on the rest we are there at the landowners pleasure, mostly because they too fear the outcome of a court test. A coalition of anglers and floaters could raise the funds to take one stream at a time through the court process. So what if the county court rules adversely, that is what appeals courts are for.

Thanks for bringing this up @Ham, I won't be over there where you are, but I will try to stop by the one in Springdale.

I imagine that happens a lot and is the primary reason that all Mo, streams have not been in court and opened up. Until someone does take it through the process, the access remains questionable enough that landowners and deputies can restrict access somewhat by various means. If the landowner just once fails to drop the charges, then the court has to do an Elder-Delcour determination. ButI think that they can involve the law a thousand times to remove people that are allegedly trespassing because the stream laws are vague and later drop the charges and the stream stays a "maybe".

I once watched lightening run from nail to nail on partially stripped concrete forms 30-40' inside a building and within inches of my workmate's hard hat, out the window opening and into the sky. It does have a peculiar smell to it. My uncle was opening a barbwire gate in the rain when the unseen lightening juice ran through his bridle reins and killed his horse dead. Unpredictable stuff. @dan hufferd that is pole barn erection machine. Drill the holes, set the poles, and swing the trusses.

So no real belief that the popular interpretation of Elder is legally correct.

Any thing that is suspected as being not legal should be taken to court. Any creek that has not been taken to court can be assumed to not be public access just as easily it can be assumed to be public access. Get up a case and press for a ruling. Do that for any creek that we want to access. Once the courts make a ruling, there is no longer any doubt and the landowners will know where they stand.