Traveler is printed 11 times a year. This is the issue that covers two months. We call it a "vacation planning issue" or a "sports show" issue. Ozark Travel maps complete with outfitters appear again in this issue, allowing you to plan for a vacation or a getaway weekend in the season ahead. This is also the issue we take to various sports shows to give away as samples for people who have not seen Traveler before.

Coverage in this issue includes the developments taking place in redrawing crappie regulations for Lake Wappapello. Traveler goes along with biologists as they work their sampling nets. Mark Boone has watched the crappie population in Wappapello for years. He favors the proposal to go to a nine inche length limit and a creel limit of 15.

A slow fishing trip turns to fast action on the St. Francis River. Bob and Bo Todd found some nice bass as they moved into the riffle areas late in the afternoon. Other fishing stories included trips on Black River, and Current River.

Jim Featherston's history story is about Moses Austin this issue. Austin is credited with making the lead industry a real industry shortly before the Louisiana Purchase. There is also a story about the Osage Indians of this area - they used furs to purchase weapons to maintain control of the vast region they claimed. They eventually lost out, but they dominated the area for many decades.

The Legislature has proposals before it to put the soils/parks tax and the conservation tax before voters again. And to designate the bullfrog as the state amphibian. Deer hunters killed a new record 273,905 deer this past season.

There's a story on collecting patches for visits to state parks and other areas. It was announced the Conservation Commission has approved an experimental hand fishing. The report for Clearwater Lake says crappie sizes will remain good, but numbers may be down this year. Bass fishing should be the same, with on of the nicest bass size structures in the state.

There's a story about land management, including cutting cedars and using control fire on old glades to improve the area for wildlife. The story is repeated below. There's a story about a woman's first experience with a firearm - target shooting.

Reviving old glades by cutting cedar, burning

By Bob Todd
Cedar. Good stuff? Bad stuff? Neither.
Eastern red cedar is part of the Ozarks, and depending on where it is and how much there is of it, it can be good stuff, bad stuff or unimportant.
Wildlife managers regard cedar as a pest in two basic situations. It invades rocky, thin soil areas - glades - and crowds out native grasses and shrubs. And it is a quick invader of old fields and pastures, choking them as well.
If you have some recreational property, there is a fair chance you have an old glade or two on it. And chances are, cedar is the dominant thing growing there. While a cedar glade is beneficial to some wildlife, it does not invite deer and turkeys, nor some other Ozark critters, the way grass and shrubs do.
Grass covered glades are especially attractive to wild turkeys. Dave Hasenbeck, a private lands specialists with the Department of Conservation, recalls working at Peck Ranch near Van Buren when he first got out of college.
Research was underway with turkeys that had been trapped and equipped with radios so they could be tracked.
“Basically, most of them went to the places were cedars had been cleared and the landscape burned. They nested there, raised their young there. Most of the hens were bred there.”
There is a lot of research information that suggests this, but actual experience made a profound impression on Dave.
That’s why one of the things he is proud of that he’s been involved with as a private lands specialist has been the conversion of an old cedar glade to a grassland on the farm of Stan and Sue Nations north of Fredericktown.
First step was simply going in with chain saws and cutting down the cedars on about a 30 acre glade. The land - facing south - had very thin soil, was very rocky. Hardly the place where someone interested in wildlife could plant a food plot and get anything to grow.
If you’ve ever set fire to an old Christmas tree after the holiday season, you know it goes up like a rocket. So does cedar. It can send fire and sparks high into the air, possibly turning a control burn into a wildfire.
However, those explosive oils in the needles disappear after awhile. So after a decent interval, the 30 acre cleared area was burned.
In pre-settlement times, fire was a frequent visitor to the Ozarks and many of the plants that grow here respond positively to fire. The wild grasses of the glades, for instance, lay dormant for decades in the shade of the cedars. But remove the cedars and apply the stimulation of a fire, and the grasses roar back.
That’s the case on Stan’s glade. And such a place is a magnet for wild turkeys. Ten days after the glade was burned last spring, Stan killed a nice gobbler there.
The grass responds quickly enough that turkeys nest in the area the same spring it is burned. When we walked it this winter, the land was crossed by deer trails.
When we think of doing something for wildlife on our land, our first thoughts turn to food and water. But they need other things too. The glade will never produce the nutrition of a bottom corn field or an oak forest growing on a rich north slope. But as grassland it provides more than you’d think.
Besides being terrific cover for a turkey to nest in, the grass feeds an abundance of insects, which in turn are just what the doctor ordered for small turkeys. What’s more, the native grass - which grows in bunches rather than as a sod - allows the young turkeys to forage through, finding those insects. And at the same time, the young turkeys are protected from predators.
There’s not much there for a deer to eat, but talk about a neat place for deer to bed down on a cold winter day. The south-facing slope is out of the north wind and gains what sunlight there may be available.
The thing is, on such poor soil, the stuff that nature provides is about the most the site can produce. If you have a cedar glade and want to do something for wildlife, this is about the best thing you can do.
Also, it is cheap. It involves no tractors, seeds, chemicals. Just hand work with a chain saw and a carefully planned fire every few years.
The trade-off? Up to a point, deer and turkey can use some dense cover such as that provided by a cedar glade. They need it for shelter in harsh weather. So if your cedar glade is the only dense cover in the neighborhood, maybe you should think twice. But generally, there are other stands of dense cover growing on more productive ground.
And birds. Cardinals use the cedars, for instance. You may have fewer cardinals if you clear and burn your glade. But you’ll gain other birds - turkeys are one bird that will benefit.
And “mountain boomers”.
Missouri’s largest lizard is the collared lizard. It is very definitely a resident of glades. Open, grassland glades. The glade on the Nations’ farm already had these colorful lizards, but now they are more common. They’re fun to watch.
Something else worked for Stan. Before work began, the glade was pretty much a thicket of cedar with little view of the countryside. Now, he has a panorama that is very pleasing.
“I love to be here at daylight in turkey season,” he says, going on to describe the scene with fog laying in the valleys in the distance.
Something Stan - and Sue - are still waiting for is the wildflowers. But they’re coming.
Dave says the seeds of many native plants lay in the soil for many years, waiting for the right conditions to sprout. The grasses respond almost immediately, but the plants that produce the wildflowers come along more slowly.
While the grasses were bursting forth, these plants were sprouting and building root systems. Here and there on the glade, you could see a tiny rosette, green even in winter, marking the location of a plant that will bring forth beautiful blossoms in another year or two.
Variations: If your cedars are large enough, there may be a market for them. Not only would someone else do the major chain saw work, but you’d pick up a little money.
You could create brush piles with them if the downed cedar looks unpleasant to you.
On the Nations’ place, the cedar was not marketable, and the decision was made to simply let them lay where they fell. The skeletons of the trees will survive many fires and still provide hard cover.
Stacked, they’d have to be protected from fire or they’d burn up.
Taking on a small cedar control project probably doesn’t involve a major planning effort, either. Dave says he and other MDC private lands people, as well as people in the USDA and DNR, can probably give good advice based on a phone conversation.
But it can get complex. It is a good idea to touch base with a professional and if an on-site visit is needed, make an appointment. There are even cost share programs to help in some situations.
Cedar glades are a good topic for this time of year. You have to get up close and personal with a cedar if you want to saw it down, and that’s best done in cold weather when you are wearing plenty of clothes.
We’ll write about cedar in old fields in a future story. It is somewhat of a problem in the Ozarks, but one that gets worse as one goes north in Missouri. On some north Missouri soils, all you have to do is quit grazing and mowing a pasture for half- dozen years and you have a cedar thicket that takes a bulldozer to control.

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