Outdoors

MDC offers free nature and outdoor skills programs in January in Kansas City

Learn how to shoot archery or how birds survive winter weather with some of the free programs offered in January at the Anita B. Gorman Discovery Center in Kansas City. The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) naturalists and instructors will lead sessions devoted to nature and outdoor skills. Among the programs offered: People huddle indoors

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The Pool Hall Kid

I went to work at the pool hall one afternoon, straight from school. Ol’ Jim and Ol’ Bill were there and they could tell I was pretty despondent. I was 13 years old and had just got my first pair of glasses. I wanted a girl friend awfully bad at that time and those glasses

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Muzzle-loader Hunters

You have to be smart to hunt with a muzzle-loader! If you aren’t giving some thought to what you are doing and you nonchalantly ram a bullet down the barrel before you pour the powder in, you have a problem. The powder absolutely has to go in first! Hunting with a ‘smoke-pole’ causes you to

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Let Cuivre River State Park recycle your Christmas tree

Give fish a gift this year by recycling your live Christmas tree. Cuivre River State Park will accept live Christmas trees for fish habitat until Jan. 15, 2023. Team members from Cuivre River State Park will join fisheries biologists from the Missouri Department of Conservation to sink the donated trees in Lake Lincoln in an

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Just Another Passing of Night

There won’t be any New Year’s Eve party here on Lightnin’ Ridge. Things will be about like they are almost every night during the winter. Before midnight, a pair of raccoons will be ambling along the small creek that leads down to the river, looking for food that is becoming harder to find because the

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First day bison saunter at Prairie State Park

Kick off the new year with a First Day Bison Saunter at Prairie State Park. Join park team members at 1 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 1, for a guided saunter. Participants will brave the conditions and take a 2-mile hike over uneven terrain to see the bison. Since the location of the bison is unknown until

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MDC reports three elk harvested during 2022 season

The Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) reports that Missouri hunters harvested one bull elk during the archery portion of the 2022 elk-hunting season, Oct. 15-23, and two bull elk during the firearms portion, Dec. 10-18. The three Missouri hunters were each selected for one of five elk permits issued in 2022 through a random drawing

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Grandkids and Christmas

As much as I loved my two little grandsons, I didn’t get either of them a Christmas present when they were young. That’s because they had toys stacked so high in their home that you couldn’t see any corners. I think back on those great Christmases when I was a kid, when there was common

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Habits of the Bucks

There is misinformation about deer rubs on trees that you see in the fall and winter. No, the story that those rubs you see are made by bucks whose velvet antlers are itching and they need to get rid of drying velvet, the blood-filled covering of young, forming antlers, isn’t completely accurate. That is the

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