The good news is Johnson Shut-Ins is opens again. Not the whole state park, but the actual shut-ins on the East Fork of Black River. The bad news is, as of publication, drouth was causing very low water levels. Partly due that, and partly due to construction upstream, the river is not as clear as folks remember it. By standards in most of the world, it is very clear. But by standards here, it is off color. People were enjoying it by simply sitting in it or by exploring the various channels the water follows through the rocks.

Charlie Slovensky has a story about reconnecting with the Meramec River after several years and there's a sunrise fishing trip on the St. Francis River. Bill Cooper talks about topwater fishing for bass. And there's tips gleaned from some expert trout fishermen by Howard Helgenberg.

There was news that the Presley Center on Current River might become a state historic site in the State Park System. The old Alton Club, an executive retreat dating back far into the past century, is owned by the Conservation Department now and was to be developed into a youth conservation education center. However, that plan ran aground. Historic site might be a good way to go.

Nearly all of Traveler is about the eastern and central Ozarks in Missouri, but in this issue editor Bob Todd recounts a trip to Colorado with Daughter Kim and granddaughter Shannon for a whitewater rafting trip on the Gunnison River.

St. Joe State Park is known for it areas where ATV's can run pretty much as they please. But it also have a bike trail. Greg "Rudi" Rudroff tells us about the trail with story and photos. Jim Featherston's historical column is about the days not so long again when open range was the law of the land in the Ozartks.

There's a story about the fun things baby animals do in the summer. It is repeasted below. Also repeated is a column about what was in Traveler 24 years ago.

The August issue also includes travel maps, real estate listing, seasons, sunrise/moonrise tables, conservation news and a column by publisher Emery Styron about the kind of travel season this seems to be. There's also recipes, coming events, and stories about Indian traditions and geology.

Baby animals add fun to summertime

By Bob Todd
I didn’t think I was moving very fast, but I went out the door, across the deck and down the steps. And there they were.
Two fawns were still in the yard. I froze and they froze. Then one turned and came toward me. The other followed. Another step and I could have touched them.
I spoke softly and they appeared to listen. Finally, one had had enough and bolted away. The other hesitated, but then bounded off too. They went to my left, into some brush.
I stood, a smile from ear to ear, marveling at what had just happened.
The doe stepped out from under an apple tree, 50 yards away and to my right. She wasn’t at all curious about me. Just looked embarrassed by her children’s behavior. She just looked at me and pranced past, picking up the scent of her daring babies and following them into the brush.
We call it “counting coup”. To show bravery, some Indians tried to touch an enemy. Almost every year, we see a fawn or two pulling off a daring deed. Usually it is a charge through the yard when we are clearly on the deck or in the garden or watering flowers.
But I’d never had this close an encounter with fawns. The close-up lasted perhaps 30 seconds.
It was just one of many encounters with baby wildlife this summer.
Maybe the late freeze created a food shortage in the forest and fields and wildlife had to cover more areas, had to search longer for food, putting them out in daylight when we could see them.
We don’t feed wildlife. We do put scraps out, so sometimes there is food, but not regularly. We do not have a dog - haven’t since we moved to the country 23 years ago.
But this year we’ve had more babies . . . . raccoons, skunks, crows, broadwing hawks - and deer.
Two baby raccoons were downright fearless. If we ate out on the deck, it was only a matter of time until they’d be begging - or muscling in! We didn’t want to start that, so shooed them away. But that wasn’t easy. Pat had to kick at one of them to send the message. That was after one surprised her by licking her ankle.
Baby skunks are incredible. They can’t see hardly at all, and seem to have no sense of what is going on in the world outside a space three or four feet from their nose.
Like little black and white toys, they forage in the grass. I’d walk up to them and would be almost in danger of stepping on one before it would realize something was up.
Then it would whirl in the skunk defensive posture. Someone who had one as a pet said the young ones can’t spray, but I didn’t test it. But I did lay down in front of one and let it feed toward me while I took its picture.
There was a good crop of crows. When they left the nest, they liked to come to our yard just outside the bedroom window and demand food from the adults. Its not a cockadoodledoo, but it’ll definitely get you up about daylight.
Far as we could tell, that’s pretty much how the day goes for young crows. Cry, squawk, scream. Sometimes there would be table scraps out back and both young and old would be at them. The young crows didn’t have sense enough to point their head down and take a bite. They’d scream at the adults to pick stuff up and feed them.
As some of them finally learned to feed a little on their own, their siblings would demand of them and even try to take food out of their mouths. Like some human kids, you wonder how they could ever make it in this world.
Young hawks are funny. They scream for food too. But as they began to learn to hunt on their own, two of them would come into the yard and perch on low branches and watch for something to move. But they hadn’t learned yet that screaming is not the way to lure out something to eat.
I learned one thing. Somewhere along the line I thought broadwing hawks were bird eaters. But they go for lizards, frogs, mice. We had a young redtail hawk once who practiced pouncing by jumping off the fence to catch grasshoppers. I’m not sure what the young broadwings are eating, but they seem to be more successful when they keep their mouth shut.
And a young groundhog showed up. He was doing a number on some cantaloupe vines and on Pat’s flowers. Thought we might have to deal with him, but at this writing he seems to have found a better place to forage. Perhaps he got a dose of the electric fence around the tomatoes and peppers and decided our place was scary.
Groundhog holes, they say, contribute to having a good number of rabbits. We’ve got loads of little guys. You’d think a person could fill a freezer with rabbits in the fall, but they’ll be scarce by October. I think our place is on the list for young owls. I just imagine that they go through training and when the parents think they are ready, they bring them to our place where there are lots of rabbits to practice on.
The most recent sign of wildlife was a big patch of the front yard scratched up one morning. No doubt an armadillo found something tasty there during the night. We’ve yet to see a baby armadillo, but it is probably just a matter of time.

Two dozen years ago, August 1983

A variety of float trips were in the August, 1983 issue of Traveler, starting with a trip on Eleven Point River from Turner Mill to Highway 160. Traveler’s Bob Todd compared the shock of getting in the water on a hot July day to the shock of tipping over in February in the Castor River - something still fresh in his memory.
Daughter Kim paddled me and took in the geology while I tried to take in a trout from the cold water. There were foggy patches from the cold all day long.
Another float was on Current River from Powder Mill to Log Yard. It involved relatives from Georgia and followed a tradition going back to the Indians that lived here: when the group gets too large for the house, take the group camping!
And there was a float fishing trip on Castor River, from Zalma to Greenbriar. This is about as far down Castor as you can float before it becomes a giant drainage ditch, diverting water away from the Missouri bootheel.
Rocks give way to cypress knees and catfish are more common than bass. George Webster declared it is also where the iron from the upstream watershed accumulates, making the jaws of fish too hard for a fish hook to penetrate.
Charlie Slovensky wrote about the methods of capturing bait for fishing on the Meramec River. He noted that he prefers artificial baits that resemble the live baits he uses.
There was also a story on caving by A. E. Lucas. The author said Missouri is the cave state and caving is the last frontier.
Emma Comfort Dunn had a historical piece, telling about the frontiersmen from Kentucky and further east who settled in the Ozarks before Lewis and Clark.
It was announced Jeff Churan and Richard T. Reed were named as Conservation Commissioners. And the Ozark National Scenic Riverways won a lawsuit clarifying that they could limit the number and size of canoe rentals operating in the Current and Jacks Fork Rivers.
Ozark Graphic announced it was shutting down. It started as an outdoor tabloid which Traveler copied to a considerable degree. But then it became a local weekly at Doniphan, but didn’t succeed.
County level highways are designated by letters in Missouri, and it can be confusing in areas such as Wayne and Reynolds Counties where there are several “H” and “HH” highways near each other. Even more confusing, one HH goes two different ways from Piedmont.
Congressman Bill Emerson had succeeded in blocking wilderness designation for the Irish Wilderness area in 1982, but in 1983 the measure moved forward in committee over his objections. It remained to be seen, however, if the designation would pass the full House.
Elmer Tiemann wrote about finding broken stone spearpoints and wondering how they got there. Was this the site of an old Indian ware surplus outlet? he mused.
Don Slover, a Methodist minister, took us on a road trip to Ozarks places where his dad, also a minister, had pastored. And described rural life back then.
As floodwater went down near Ste. Genevieve, a huge stash of Indian artifacts were discovered spread across a field. It was not, however, a discovery of a new Mound Builder settlement, but simply the unearthing of an accumulation of artifacts.
The Mound Builders apparently had a major salt making industry near Ste. Genevieve, but did not live there long at a time. They apparently abandoned a great deal each time they left the area.

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