"PrimeTime" is the name of the painting on the cover of Traveler or February. This is the time of year a person's thoughts to turn to scenes such as this.
The art is by Al Agnew, Missouri's top wildlife artist. You can see more of this stuff online at www.alagnew.com.
First page story in this issue, however, had to do with big trout. Eleven Point River is noted for them and a story by Bill Cooper tells you about a guy who has made it his quest to catch the big ones. You can learn where and how he does it. 
Trout also was on the mind of some other authors. Russ Doughty weighed in with a piece on streamers and other fly fishing lures with emphasis on some of the old patterns. Howard Helgenberg said for him, tying flies is part of the trout fishing experience. And Don Rathert has the story about the one that got away as only Don can make you feel it.
A hike along a portion of the Ozark Trail near Sutton's Bluff was covered. Aside from the hike itself, author Bob Todd find an unlikely use for an unusual product. The complete story is repeated below.
Jim Featherston's historical piece is a two-parter about some of the medical quackery of times past, especially the things people were sold as drugs.
There's a story on the breakdown in progress on restoring Johnson's Shut-Ins State Park, and a story that give you a word picture of what the catastrophic collapse of the upper Taum Sauk Reservoir must have been like. Imagine the Missouri River five feet over flood stage, roaring down the mountainside.
Jason Brooks talks about finding shed antlers and how finds can lead to better success in the next deer season. A winter float and camp on Current River is recounted by Chad Craft and Charlie Slovensky writes about what outdoorsmen need to do to keep in shape as the years add on.
There were travel maps for several destinations, seasons, coming events, recipes, sunrise/moonrise tables, news and some items from 24 years ago in Traveler. There were stories about one of the largest floods in the Ozarks in 1982, and an unexpected flood that took two floaters' lives. And a hike into Hickory Canyons.
Hike the Ozark Trail at Sutton's Bluff
By Bob Todd
Apparently I walked the wrong trail, but it was a great hike anyway. And probably better than the Sutton’s Bluff Nature Trail I set out to walk.
And there was an interesting sidelight.
The trail I walked was part of the Ozark Trail, from Sutton’s Bluff Trailhead toward Bee Fork, a few miles to the south. The map I had showed the Ozark Trail and the Forest Service’s nature trail running together, then the nature trail making a loop above the West Fork of Black River while the Ozark Trail took a higher route along the bluffy hillside.
I parked at the Ozark Trail parking lot off a county road, across the West Fork a short distance from Sutton’s Bluff Campground. I glanced at the map and left it in the truck. I was to follow the Ozark Trail and the nature trail would branch off.
But distances were not shown and I went on and on. It is a good trail. Instead of attacking a steep hill head-on, it switches back and forth. Each time you turn back, the scene is different. Starting out, you climb through a hollow with moss coated boulders. Then you turn and there’s the river. There are even some benches placed for you to sit and look out over the valley.
Catching my eye today, however, were the ice formations on the bluff sections. And the vegetation, flat and tiny in the below-freezing weather, but still green and promising to fluff up again with the coming of spring weather.
Ice, which has visited many parts of Missouri this winter, visited here too. Some trees had been uprooted and toppled down the steep slope. Some had been sawed by someone, but there were some that had fallen since whoever maintains this stretch had been here.
Mostly, the human eye screens out the tree limbs in the views you get hiking in the winter. You can see a great deal in winter. Unfortunately, the camera lens does not screen them out so it is hard to capture a picture that replicates the view a hiker gets. But at one point, the ice had done us a favor by downing a large tree and opening up a view that was a delight to the camera as well as the eye.
As I walked, I was working up an appetite for a lunch you usually don’t think of for hiking - grilled shrimp. A dozen shrimp were marinating in a sandwich bag in my pack. A little shrimp boil spice, a couple shakes of hot sauce, some lemon juice.
That was to be the sidelight.
The trail goes along with bluffs above and bluffs below before starting to angle away from the river. I thought at last I’d come to the head of the nature trail when a trail angled left back toward the river. But it turned out it only led to another bench.
Obviously, I’d missed the nature trail or the map was wrong or the trail was no longer maintained by the Forest Service and didn’t exist. An Ozark Trail sign said Bee Fork was a couple miles ahead if I followed the trail any further.
So I turned around and headed back. Up close to the bluffs, you notice how porous the rock is. It is this that makes this part of the Ozarks such an unusual place in the world. These rocks can store immense amounts of rainwater, which gradually works its way down through the rocks and surfaces as springs which feed gloriously clear streams such as the West Fork, below.
When I got back down to river level, it was time for the sidelight.
Traveler doesn’t do very many product reviews, but a promotion company sent me something called a Grillput that intrigued me.
It is a stainless steel cylinder, about an inch through and maybe 12 inches long. Inside is another smaller cylinder and a bunch of wire spokes. The thing can be
made into a small grill without any tools.
I worked my way downriver to a gravel bar and set up to grill my shrimp beside a dead log.
Things were wet, but I gathered a couple handfuls of dead willow branches from inside a thick stand of willow - tiny limbs the size of pencil lead. Then I scrounged the bar for anything high and dry.
There was a sycamore limb the size of my thumb hanging from a tree limb. That would make good cook wood. And some larger stuff that was probably too wet to burn well, but would help support and contain the fire.
Having put the Grillput together once before, it was not too much of a puzzle, and I finished putting it together while the willow branches began to blaze. The sycamore was added then and I quickly put the shrimp on metal skewers and laid them aside while I put the Grillput over the sycamore flames.
Sycamore burns fast, but not especially hot, so I needed to put the shrimp on before the fire burned down to coals.
I gave the shrimp perhaps six minutes in all. Then I opened some cocktail sauce laced with fresh horseradish, opened a tube of crackers and feasted. I’m going to do this again!
It takes but a minute to return the Grillput to its compact cylinder size.
I retraced my way along the river and left. As I crossed the West Fork, I noticed a trailhead for what may be the nature trail next to the bridge. If it is, the trail is much shorter than I was given to believe. However, great things sometimes come in small packages. And in this case, if the short trail is not adequate for an escape to nature, you can walk a bit of the Ozark Trail through the bluffs.
Sutton's Bluff, incidentally, is a Forest Service camp north of the Centerville area. Follow signs from Highway 21, a mile or so east of town. The camp has 35 sites and a host in season - which begins in late April. The area also has ATV trails developed and maintained by the Forest Service.
Grillput is available at several retailers. Check www.grillputusa.com for locations. The suggested retail of $29.99 seems high, but I think it is indeed a neat piece of equipment. A change from lunch meat sandwiches or hotdogs is quick and easy for float trips. And it’s big enough to handle a couple fillets for an overnighter.
Two dozen years ago, January/February 1983
A hike to Hickory Canyons Natural Area was highlighted in the January, 1983 issue of Traveler. The area, owned by the LAD Foundation and managed by the Department of Conservation, was and is open to the public. But it is not signed very well and does not appear on very many maps.
To get there, you have to take an extra step. You have to seek out some
one who can tell you how to get there.
The area is a complex of sandstone box canyons in Ste. Genevieve County, at the head of some small streams that feed east to the Mississippi River.
There were two flood-related stories. One told of the December flood which was of grandad proportions. Another was a lessor flood that was not forecast until it was almost upon the Ozarks. Nor was the extreme drop in temperature. The combination killed two winter floaters on Jacks Fork River.
The two were mostly well equipped, had camped high with more high ground behind them. Yet the river rose even higher and apparently surprised them in the night. The weak spot in their equipment was their clothing - cotton - which lost most of its insulating qualities when it got wet.
The temperature plunged to below zero. They were unable to light a fire in the wet woods, and froze to death trying to walk out.
Other stories in January included state and federal parks and wilderness legislation, an account of New Year Eve on the French frontier, last-minute archery hunting, bird feeding.
The flood was still news in February. Walleye fishermen discovered their favorite fishing spots were moved around considerably by the high water. An adventure into Mingo Swamp also found a cottonmouth apparently flushed out by the flood. It could barely move in the near-freezing temperatures that day. A large and very dead buck deer was found too, but its death probably had nothing to do with the flood.
The Conservation Federation had been drumming up support for a “Governor’s Conference on State Parks”. The idea was to come up with a plan to take parks out of politics and give it some assured funding. Gov. Christopher Bond, however, nixed the idea of a conference with his name on it.
Meanwhile, a bill was presented in the Legislature calling for a one-tenth of a cent sales tax to be earmarked for state parks and soil conservation. Passage would put the measure before voters as a constitutional amendment.
A. C. Lucas had a story about groundhogs. Indians called him Orchek. And Don Slover wrote about Ground Hog Day, the celebration.
Jim Anderson wrote about learning to fish for trout in Missouri’s trout parks and there was a story about catch and release programs which were fairly new at the time.
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IN THE February
