The Bates County Fair Board welcomed two new members at their annual dinner and meeting held last night. Linda Mareth and Matt Shannon were added as board members during the evening. The executive board members remained the same- President Kermit Kauffman, Vice-President Ed Steele, Secretary Calee McElwain and Treasurer Renee Hendrix.
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
Bates County Memorial Hospital Christmas Tree fund raising event
Applications for scholarships provided by the Bates County Health Foundation of the Bates County Memorial Hospital will be available beginning April 1st, 2012. Every year the foundation provides $500 scholarships for those already in college planning to enter the health field and plan to practice their profession in Bates County. It is also open to employees of the Bates County Memorial Hospital who plan to continue their education in the medical field.
The funds generated for the scholarships come from fundraising events such as the yearly sale of Memory Tree Angel ornaments. The ornaments are sold during November by those that have lost a loved one and wish to honor their memory. Last year, the sale of ornaments raised $1,025.00.
The ornaments sell for $15 each or two for $25 and all proceeds will go toward the scholarships that will be awarded in August.
More information can be found on the hospital web site here.
It's beginning to look a lot like...
FALL! Rain and cooler temps on the way:
Wednesday
Cloudy. Chance of showers in the morning...then rain in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 60s. Temperatures falling into the 50s in the afternoon. South winds 15 to 20 mph shifting to the west 10 to 15 mph in the afternoon. Chance of rain 80 percent.
Wednesday Night
Rain in the evening...then rain likely after midnight. Colder. Lows in the mid 30s. Northwest winds 15 to 20 mph. Gusts up to 30 mph in the evening. Chance of precipitation 90 percent.
Wednesday
Cloudy. Chance of showers in the morning...then rain in the afternoon. Highs in the upper 60s. Temperatures falling into the 50s in the afternoon. South winds 15 to 20 mph shifting to the west 10 to 15 mph in the afternoon. Chance of rain 80 percent.
Wednesday Night
Rain in the evening...then rain likely after midnight. Colder. Lows in the mid 30s. Northwest winds 15 to 20 mph. Gusts up to 30 mph in the evening. Chance of precipitation 90 percent.
Apply now for Foods Matching Grant Program
Up to $5,000 in grant funding is available through Department of Ag's Local Foods Matching Grant Program.
Funding Now Available for Underserved Urban and Rural Areas to Grow More Fresh Foods
The Missouri Department of Agriculture announced today that funding is available for urban and rural organizations to help underserved populations increase access to fresh foods. Through the development of production infrastructures, direct distribution venues, education programs, workforce development and expanding the understanding of the importance of agriculture and where food comes from, more Missourians will be able to enjoy locally-grown fresh foods in their cities and neighborhoods. Up to $5,000 in grant funding is available to each qualifying organization through the Department's Local Foods Matching Grant Program.
The one-time competitive grants are targeted to:
Assist farmers' markets, urban/community garden expansion efforts and youth initiatives related to promoting agriculture, establish or expand partnerships with urban/community gardens, youth initiatives and farmers' markets.
Funds must be used for the creation of a farmers' market, the expansion of an urban or community garden, to promote local food efforts and/or youth initiatives that combat hunger, poor nutrition and obesity in collaboration with community gardens or farmers' markets.
For an application or to learn more visit http://mda.mo.gov/abd/financial/localfoods.php.
Funding Now Available for Underserved Urban and Rural Areas to Grow More Fresh Foods
The Missouri Department of Agriculture announced today that funding is available for urban and rural organizations to help underserved populations increase access to fresh foods. Through the development of production infrastructures, direct distribution venues, education programs, workforce development and expanding the understanding of the importance of agriculture and where food comes from, more Missourians will be able to enjoy locally-grown fresh foods in their cities and neighborhoods. Up to $5,000 in grant funding is available to each qualifying organization through the Department's Local Foods Matching Grant Program.
"As we travel the state, you quickly realize that some people don't have the access to local foods that so many of us take for granted. Through grant programs like these, we are able to connect resources to those ready to make a difference in their communities," said Director of Agriculture Dr. Jon Hagler. "We hope these funds go a long way in helping areas promote agriculture through farmers' markets, community gardens and to establish partnerships in their communities that will bring more fresh foods to the table."
The one-time competitive grants are targeted to:
Assist farmers' markets, urban/community garden expansion efforts and youth initiatives related to promoting agriculture, establish or expand partnerships with urban/community gardens, youth initiatives and farmers' markets.
Encourage agricultural production to combat hunger, poor nutrition and obesity, and Provide training and develop skills to the next generation of agricultural producers.
Funds must be used for the creation of a farmers' market, the expansion of an urban or community garden, to promote local food efforts and/or youth initiatives that combat hunger, poor nutrition and obesity in collaboration with community gardens or farmers' markets.
For an application or to learn more visit http://mda.mo.gov/abd/financial/localfoods.php.
Recent bear sighting warrants concerns for deer hunters
Deer hunters need to be bear aware
Cover scents used by deer hunters and other intriguing smells can overcome bears’ natural shyness and bring them too close for comfort.
Daron Wilkins wasn’t looking for a close encounter with a black bear when he climbed into a tree stand on Nov. 2, 2010, but he got one. Good luck allowed him and the bear to escape unharmed, but the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) says hunters don’t have to rely on fate to determine the outcome of bear encounters.
Wilkins was hunting on private land, sitting in a 20-foot ladder stand near the edge of a field. The oak flats surrounding the field had patches of dense underbrush and blackberry thickets. He first spied the bear around 5 p.m.
Wilkins, who hosts the Wild Idea Outdoors show on 98.7 FM, a sports talk-radio station in Springfield, carries a hand-held video camera when he hunts, so he started filming the bear.
“She was just browsing around in front of me. Every once in a while she would stop and dig around and then move on. Over the next few minutes she browsed her way to within 30 yards of my tree stand. All of a sudden she paused and stuck her nose in the air and turned right toward me.”
Following an intriguing scent, the bear moved without hesitation to the base of the tree where Wilkins sat.
“I had no idea how fast a bear can climb. Before I knew it, she was at my feet. I don’t think she had any idea I was in the tree. She got to the foot part of my stand, where she couldn’t go any further. Then she went around to the back side of the tree and continued coming up.”
Up until that moment, Wilkins had felt nothing but excitement at seeing a bear close-up. When he found himself within an arm’s length of the animal, another emotion washed over him.
“I was actually still trying to film her at the time. I leaned over the back side of the tree, and about then a light bulb went off in my head. ‘Are you going to let this thing climb up in the tree stand with you? You better get rid of it.’”
What Wilkins did next probably wasn’t the best thing, but it worked.
“I didn’t know what to do, so I just leaned over at her and went “Naaaah!” like a doe bleating. She stopped and looked at me. At this point, she was about two feet below me. We were looking eye-to-eye at one another. I figured it was going to be flight or fight. I’m either going to startle her to the point where she takes a swipe at me, or she’s going to leave. Thankfully, she decided to leave.”
The bear backed down the tree and departed, leaving Wilkins shaken.
“I realized the danger I had been in. My hands were shaking from sheer adrenalin. It was probably 15 or 20 minutes before I calmed down enough to hold my video camera steady and speak clearly enough to describe what had just happened.”
Video of the bear’s approach and Wilkins’ reaction is available atyoutube.com/watch?v=Q0KI8dhLd8w. After viewing the video and discussing the incident with Wilkins, MDC Resource Scientist Jeff Beringer identified several themes that reoccur in many hunter-bear encounters throughout the eastern United States.
Beringer said black bears rely primarily on their sense of smell to find food. They are totally focused on food at this time of year and forage practically nonstop. Although acorns make up the bulk of their autumn diet, they will investigate anything that smells interesting.
Other factors likely were at work in the recent encounters as well. Bears are at the top of the food chain and don’t expect to encounter danger in the woods. Hunters begin visiting areas that bears have had to themselves throughout the summer. Young bears that have little or no experience with humans don’t always flee at the first hint of human presence as older bears generally do.
“You’ve got a hunter who is basically invisible and smells like a deer,” said Beringer. “All a young bear is thinking about is food, unless something flips the switch in its brain that says, ‘Danger!’ It’s up to hunters to flip that switch before things get out of hand.”
Looking back on his brush with the bear, Wilkins says he would do things differently the second time around.
“That bear moved so fast, the only chance I had to stop her was when she was in the field foraging. When she smelled something, her behavior went from one thing to something completely different. In a matter of seconds, I went from ‘Hey, this is cool’ to ‘She’s in the tree with me!” If I had it to do over, I would yell at her when she was still way out in the field.”
Shouting is a good idea, according to Beringer. So is waving your arms, banging on the metal of your tree stand or making other loud noises. He advises hunters to remain standing during a bear encounter so they look as large as possible, and make and maintain eye contact with the bear.
“Staring at another animal is aggressive, predatory behavior,” said Beringer. “You want a bear to know you are there, and you want it to see you as a threat.”
Beringer said advice about how to act during a bear encounter is different if you surprise a bear at close range. Hunters or hikers who suddenly come upon a bear with food or cubs or where the bear has no place to run should speak in a calm voice and back away slowly. Never run from a bear, he says. That is prey behavior.
The great majority of Missouri’s bears live south of Interstate 44. MDC studies have identified hubs of bear activity around Webster, Howell and Shannon counties. Bear numbers drop off sharply where the typical, wooded Ozarks landscape gives way to prairie in southwestern Missouri and to the intensively farmed landscape of extreme southeastern Missouri.
Availability of seasonal foods, such as berries and nuts can draw bears to those food sources, making their behavior somewhat predictable. Persimmon trees, crop fields and food plots also can be bear attractors. In years when acorns are abundant, however, bears can be almost anywhere.
Beringer said bears have good memories, and they return periodically to places where they have found food in the past. He said hunters who use corn feeders to attract deer to their property have a better chance of encountering a bear, even if they stop feeding before the hunting season, as required by Missouri’s Wildlife Code.
Beringer said bears leave ample evidence of their presence in an area, especially this time of year. Consuming large amounts of acorns results in large piles of droppings – too large to be from anything smaller than a bear. If you find a large pile of dung that contains partially digested acorns, berries and other plant material, you can be fairly sure a bear has been there.
One thing hunters can do to minimize the likelihood of a bear approaching them is to keep any food they bring to the field in sealable plastic bags. Put left-over fruit peelings, apple cores, candy bar wrappers and other refuse back in the plastic bag to reduce enticing smells.
Beringer emphasized that bear encounters don’t have to be a bad thing.
“It’s kind of cool to see a bear,” he said, “and if you’re hunting, you don’t want to ruin your hunt by yelling. I can see where a person might be reluctant to make a bunch of commotion. But when a bear gets within 30 yards, that’s time to scare it off. Stand up and wave your arms. If the bear doesn’t see you and leave, you should shout and maybe throw things at it. If a bear gets uncomfortably close, it’s OK to shoot over it.”
In the extremely unlikely event that a bear does attack, Beringer says a hunter should shoot it. “We’re not trying to protect those kinds of animals,” he said.
If shooting isn’t an option, Beringer said you should always fight back, kicking or clubbing with a bow, a stick or any object at hand. He said learning to live with bears is mostly a question of raising outdoors people’s awareness.
“Folks in states that have had black bears for many years don’t think much about it,” he said. “They aren’t scared of bears, because problems are so rare. People know bears are out there, and they know what to do if they see one.”
Cover scents used by deer hunters and other intriguing smells can overcome bears’ natural shyness and bring them too close for comfort.
Daron Wilkins wasn’t looking for a close encounter with a black bear when he climbed into a tree stand on Nov. 2, 2010, but he got one. Good luck allowed him and the bear to escape unharmed, but the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) says hunters don’t have to rely on fate to determine the outcome of bear encounters.
Wilkins was hunting on private land, sitting in a 20-foot ladder stand near the edge of a field. The oak flats surrounding the field had patches of dense underbrush and blackberry thickets. He first spied the bear around 5 p.m.
“She came out of the woods about 75 yards to my right,” Wilkins recalls. “She went back in the woods after a minute or so, and I kind of assumed she had winded me and had gone away. Probably 20 minutes later she came back out in the field.”
Wilkins, who hosts the Wild Idea Outdoors show on 98.7 FM, a sports talk-radio station in Springfield, carries a hand-held video camera when he hunts, so he started filming the bear.
“She was just browsing around in front of me. Every once in a while she would stop and dig around and then move on. Over the next few minutes she browsed her way to within 30 yards of my tree stand. All of a sudden she paused and stuck her nose in the air and turned right toward me.”
Following an intriguing scent, the bear moved without hesitation to the base of the tree where Wilkins sat.
“I had no idea how fast a bear can climb. Before I knew it, she was at my feet. I don’t think she had any idea I was in the tree. She got to the foot part of my stand, where she couldn’t go any further. Then she went around to the back side of the tree and continued coming up.”
Up until that moment, Wilkins had felt nothing but excitement at seeing a bear close-up. When he found himself within an arm’s length of the animal, another emotion washed over him.
“I was actually still trying to film her at the time. I leaned over the back side of the tree, and about then a light bulb went off in my head. ‘Are you going to let this thing climb up in the tree stand with you? You better get rid of it.’”
What Wilkins did next probably wasn’t the best thing, but it worked.
“I didn’t know what to do, so I just leaned over at her and went “Naaaah!” like a doe bleating. She stopped and looked at me. At this point, she was about two feet below me. We were looking eye-to-eye at one another. I figured it was going to be flight or fight. I’m either going to startle her to the point where she takes a swipe at me, or she’s going to leave. Thankfully, she decided to leave.”
The bear backed down the tree and departed, leaving Wilkins shaken.
“I realized the danger I had been in. My hands were shaking from sheer adrenalin. It was probably 15 or 20 minutes before I calmed down enough to hold my video camera steady and speak clearly enough to describe what had just happened.”
Video of the bear’s approach and Wilkins’ reaction is available atyoutube.com/watch?v=Q0KI8dhLd8w. After viewing the video and discussing the incident with Wilkins, MDC Resource Scientist Jeff Beringer identified several themes that reoccur in many hunter-bear encounters throughout the eastern United States.
Beringer said black bears rely primarily on their sense of smell to find food. They are totally focused on food at this time of year and forage practically nonstop. Although acorns make up the bulk of their autumn diet, they will investigate anything that smells interesting.
Other factors likely were at work in the recent encounters as well. Bears are at the top of the food chain and don’t expect to encounter danger in the woods. Hunters begin visiting areas that bears have had to themselves throughout the summer. Young bears that have little or no experience with humans don’t always flee at the first hint of human presence as older bears generally do.
“You’ve got a hunter who is basically invisible and smells like a deer,” said Beringer. “All a young bear is thinking about is food, unless something flips the switch in its brain that says, ‘Danger!’ It’s up to hunters to flip that switch before things get out of hand.”
Looking back on his brush with the bear, Wilkins says he would do things differently the second time around.
“That bear moved so fast, the only chance I had to stop her was when she was in the field foraging. When she smelled something, her behavior went from one thing to something completely different. In a matter of seconds, I went from ‘Hey, this is cool’ to ‘She’s in the tree with me!” If I had it to do over, I would yell at her when she was still way out in the field.”
Shouting is a good idea, according to Beringer. So is waving your arms, banging on the metal of your tree stand or making other loud noises. He advises hunters to remain standing during a bear encounter so they look as large as possible, and make and maintain eye contact with the bear.
“Staring at another animal is aggressive, predatory behavior,” said Beringer. “You want a bear to know you are there, and you want it to see you as a threat.”
Beringer said advice about how to act during a bear encounter is different if you surprise a bear at close range. Hunters or hikers who suddenly come upon a bear with food or cubs or where the bear has no place to run should speak in a calm voice and back away slowly. Never run from a bear, he says. That is prey behavior.
The great majority of Missouri’s bears live south of Interstate 44. MDC studies have identified hubs of bear activity around Webster, Howell and Shannon counties. Bear numbers drop off sharply where the typical, wooded Ozarks landscape gives way to prairie in southwestern Missouri and to the intensively farmed landscape of extreme southeastern Missouri.
Availability of seasonal foods, such as berries and nuts can draw bears to those food sources, making their behavior somewhat predictable. Persimmon trees, crop fields and food plots also can be bear attractors. In years when acorns are abundant, however, bears can be almost anywhere.
Beringer said bears have good memories, and they return periodically to places where they have found food in the past. He said hunters who use corn feeders to attract deer to their property have a better chance of encountering a bear, even if they stop feeding before the hunting season, as required by Missouri’s Wildlife Code.
Beringer said bears leave ample evidence of their presence in an area, especially this time of year. Consuming large amounts of acorns results in large piles of droppings – too large to be from anything smaller than a bear. If you find a large pile of dung that contains partially digested acorns, berries and other plant material, you can be fairly sure a bear has been there.
One thing hunters can do to minimize the likelihood of a bear approaching them is to keep any food they bring to the field in sealable plastic bags. Put left-over fruit peelings, apple cores, candy bar wrappers and other refuse back in the plastic bag to reduce enticing smells.
Beringer emphasized that bear encounters don’t have to be a bad thing.
“It’s kind of cool to see a bear,” he said, “and if you’re hunting, you don’t want to ruin your hunt by yelling. I can see where a person might be reluctant to make a bunch of commotion. But when a bear gets within 30 yards, that’s time to scare it off. Stand up and wave your arms. If the bear doesn’t see you and leave, you should shout and maybe throw things at it. If a bear gets uncomfortably close, it’s OK to shoot over it.”
In the extremely unlikely event that a bear does attack, Beringer says a hunter should shoot it. “We’re not trying to protect those kinds of animals,” he said.
If shooting isn’t an option, Beringer said you should always fight back, kicking or clubbing with a bow, a stick or any object at hand. He said learning to live with bears is mostly a question of raising outdoors people’s awareness.
“Folks in states that have had black bears for many years don’t think much about it,” he said. “They aren’t scared of bears, because problems are so rare. People know bears are out there, and they know what to do if they see one.”
FFA parents and friends meeting postponed until Thursday...
Due to the football game tomorrow night the FFA Parents and Friends meeting that was to be at the FFA building at 6:00PM will be rescheduled for Thursday Nov 3 at the FFA building. Sorry for any inconvenience please come and support your local FFA Chapter.
Scammers are at it again...
There's a new credit card scam and it's hitting pretty close to home- most recently reported just over the Kansas line. It's a clever scheme, so read carefully. Bear in mind, the caller already has your credit card number, what they want is the three digit code off the back of the card:
correct?' You say 'yes'.
The caller continues - 'I will be starting a Fraud Investigation. If you have any questions, you should call the 1- 800 number listed on the back of your card (1-800-VISA) and ask for Security. You will need to refer to this Control Number. The caller then gives you a 6 digit number. 'Do you need me to read it again?'
Here's the IMPORTANT part on how the scam works - The caller then says, 'I need to verify you are in possession of your card'. He'll ask you to 'turn your card over and look for some numbers'. There are 7 numbers; the first 4 are part of your card number, the last three are the Security Numbers that verify you are the possessor of the card. These are the numbers you sometimes use to make Internet purchases to prove you have the card. The caller will ask you to read the last three numbers to him. After you tell the caller the numbers, he'll say, 'That is correct, I just needed to verify that the card has not been lost or stolen, and that you still have your card'.
Within minutes of getting the three digit number, the scammer is able to make on line purchases with your card. Chances are you won't call the credit card company back to verify any of this. After all, it had to be somebody official, they had all my information, right?
Note that the credit card company will never ask you for information they already know, including the three digit number on the back of the card. If you suspect anything suspicious, hang up and call the credit card company directly to verify any information.
Note that the credit card company will never ask you for information they already know, including the three digit number on the back of the card. If you suspect anything suspicious, hang up and call the credit card company directly to verify any information.
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