Miss Missouri Outdoors graces the cover of the July issue of Traveler. Inside, deer season has few changes this year, but at least one is a very big change.
There will be no check stations this year. It will all be handled on the phone or on the internet. There's a commentary from Traveler about that. It is repeated below.

There's a story on floating and camping on Big Piney River. Also, stories on fishing and floating on Huzzah River, Meramec River, Big River, St. Francis River.

A series on the Civil War moves from Shiloh to the first Confederate advances into Missouri. And our Indian features is about rocks and minerals used by the Indians.

There's a story about traveling with pets and another about 10 steps to make a child's first fishing trip a success. Also recipes, seasons, coming events, sunrise/moonrise tables.

Missouri has lost most of its wetlands, but some landowners are using a federal program to restore lost acres. Its getting to be a pretty big thing.

Use to be squirrel hunting involves not just the hunter, but the all-purpose farm dog. Some folks are trying to bring back those times with a breed called the Mountain Cur. It tells you where the breed got that name and goes along on a hunt.

Deer check stations: we'll miss them,

but lets move on.

By Bob Todd
We’re going to miss the check stations come deer and turkey seasons, but unlike some writers of late, we’re not concerned that the Conservation Department may be throwing the door open to illegal activity.
One publication said MDC was making the “biggest mistake in the history of Missouri conservation.”
Turns out the writer used to hang around check stations when he was a kid, apparently and was enthralled by what he saw. So much so that the highlight of his own son’s first deer kill was showing the doe off at a check station.
Check stations have indeed been a part of Missouri deer seasons for more than 50 years, but they’re hardly the heart of the season, certainly not for me.
There’s also a slew of charges going around that somehow the lack of check stations is going to be the end of law abiding deer hunting. If anything, closing check stations may lead to more and better law enforcement, not less. But deer and turkey seasons are different.
DEER
For deer, there’s little evidence that check stations do much for enforcement. The vast majority of us take our deer to meat processors, and to do that, we’ll need to call the thing in and get a number. The writer most obsessed by the elimination of the check stations failed to mention this part of the situation.
To by-pass regulations, you’d need to process your own.
But that’s nothing new. People don’t take illegal deer to check stations. People don’t take illegal deer to processors.
You either check the animal or process it yourself. People who process their own had just as much opportunity to skip the checking process before as they have now.
Now, we’re aware that some illegal deer were brought to check stations from time to time. Used to be it was mostly deer of the wrong sex, taken ignorantly by a hunter not entitled to take a doe.
Typically, conservation agents - the enforcement guys - do not spend time at check stations anyway. They have the job of administering the things, but they know serious violations seldom show up at the check stations.
The information about the ignorant guy who takes a doe when not entitled to one, or a second buck, can be collected and the agent can follow up. Same is true with the phone-in system.
Personally, I hunt my own land. Perhaps if I processed my own deer, I’d be less likely to check one in now. On the other hand, I may be more likely to check the thing since I don’t have to transport it anywhere - just pick up the phone.
We’ve also read some concern about the antler restrictions and the theory it would be easier to cheat or cover up a small buck if there are no check stations.
Come on! If you shoot a small buck in an antler restricted county, are you going to check it there? If you have any brains, you’ll simply take it to an adjoining unregulated county. Or claim you shot it in an unregulated county.
There were complaints last fall of small bucks being checked, but they turned out to have been taken in open counties and quite legally checked in an adjoining county that happened to have antler restrictions.
Check stations are expensive to operate. Most states have done away with them. In this regard, Missouri was in the dark ages, wasting money and inconveniencing sportsmen. The money would be better spent on more enforcement in the field.
The old system would be like requiring drivers to stop by a Highway Patrol office every so often and report how fast we’ve been driving. If you want to put a cap on speeding, you are probably better off to close that office and have more patrolmen on the road where speeding is actually happening.
If you think running dead deer through check stations is the only way to keep track of the herd, think again. It IS indeed the final and best way to count, and Missouri can go back to it if it becomes necessary. But who in his right mind thinks that is going to be necessary in the foreseeable future.
TURKEYS
Turkeys may be another matter.
Unlike deer, the vast majority of turkeys are processed by the hunter. Indeed, the likelihood of not checking a turkey is vastly increased by not requiring people to bring them in.
I don’t see that any more turkeys are going to be illegally killed, but the chance of forgetting or putting off checking is vastly increased.
Typically, people checked their turkey on the way home. Once home, they went about the business of dressing the bird. Now, they may clean the bird and and then get distracted. Next thing you know, they’ve missed the deadline and rather than call in and tell MDC about that, they’ll just not report the bird at all. Its already in the freezer, or even the oven.
Our count may fall as a result, but that is not the only measure used for setting turkey seasons. MDC has more tools to measure the flock than just the report on how many were checked.
Get real! There have been almost as many changes to squirrel season as there have to turkey season in the past several decades. If you are going to run the same season regardless of ups and down in the population, how much value does an in-person count really have?
SOCIAL
The whole idea in the minds of many hunters is the social aspect of the check station. That will be missed. Many rushed their deer through the process, but other hunters lingered to see the deer others were taking and to compare notes. Some, clearly, like to be inconvenienced.
One e-mail we got said “Check stations are a part of deer season. The Conservation Department owes us our check stations!!They’re getting too high tech!!!”
Perhaps the parking lots of meat processors will take on that role. Some already do.
The writer who loved them as a boy also seems to think rural economies will be devastated by not having check stations. No doubt there’s something to that, but it may be an opportunity for others.
Instead of getting a contract that compels hunters to stop by, a smart businessman might advertise “public phone for hunters”. You don’t have to be one of the few who are chosen as check stations to perform this sort of public service.
FINALLY
Also voiced was a complaint that it is all about the money. Indeed it is. MDC finds check stations a very inefficient way to spend taxpayer dollars.
Taking steps such as this is why MDC is still a well-funded agency while many other state agencies are crying for increased funds.
There’s a certain aura about check stations that we’ll miss. When they began, you could still buy a beautiful wooden ice box. Now, we have refrigerators. It is time for the check stations to fade away. They played a valued roll. But the time is past.
Lets turn our attention instead to fine tuning the new system before it can get itself in some deep ruts.
And one more thing. One writer complained that MDC slipped this in on us with no publicity. But if you read Traveler, you would have read about it last fall when the phone-in system was optional for turkeys. He had access to the same information we did.

Two dozen years ago, July 1981

A storm was brewing in the Ozark National Scenic Riverways over canoe rental permits. A sizeable number of outfitters were operating without permits and the National Park Service has just issued notice to them that they were illegal.
A pair of bald eagles had built a nest in Mingo National Wildlife Refuge - the first in Missouri in many decades, and refuge manager Geral Clawson was hopeful. He noted that new pairs often “test nest” and that was probably the case this year, but hopefully they would be back in 1982 and hatch some young.
An Australian, hitch-hiking across America, had rented a tube at Van Buren and was floating down Current River. He had no ride back. So I took him from Big Spring Landing back to Van Buren by way of Big Spring itself. Then I took him upstream from Van Buren so he could get the most out of his tube rental.
From the dry side of Australia, he was impressed by Big Spring and Current River. But the humid day reminded him of Singapore.
The Reagan Administration had proposed that boaters pay a $20 to $40 a year fee to pay for service of the U.S. Coast Guard. A Mississippi River towboat would pay up to $400 a year.
Luckily, the administration couldn’t find anyone in Congress who would sponsor the bill.
Doe permits were slashed for 1981. The kill of does the year before had exceeded expectations, largely because of a change in language in the 1980 regulations. Previously, farmers could take a deer of any sex. But in 1980, the word was changed to “landowner”, and the number of does taken by landowners doubled that which had been taken by “farmers.”
Drought changed to a pattern of flash floods.
Don Slover did a story on an unusual Ozark inhabitant. The legless lizard. No fooling. The thing looks a bit like a snake, but it moves by twisting its body the way a legged lizard does to run.
State government reorganization was relatively new and the fact that the Department of Natural Resources was putting its stamp on the state park system was annoying to some folks. Previously, state parks had been an independent agency.
There was a picture story on Dillard Mill State Park, one of the newest additions to the system at that time.
There was talk of stocking paddlefish in Clearwater and Wappapello Lakes. Since construction of the dams, there have been no paddlefish in the rivers above the lakes. But paddlefish do well in Lake of the Ozarks and other west Missouri lakes.
The U.S. Forest Service announced it was doubling the prices of its maps from 50 cents to a dollar.
Remember Woodsy Owl? Give a hoot! Don’t Pollute! Well Woodsy was 10 years old that summer.

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