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January 25, 2008
Jefferson
City, MO - Saying that Jordan Brown had a good year outdoors is
akin to saying the MU Tigers football team had a good season. The
only downside to the 14-year-old Cuba, Missouri, resident’s
envy-inspiring string of 2007 successes is that he might never have
another year that measures up.
Brown’s year got off to a good start when he killed a nice gobbler
during the spring turkey season. He was excited when the month-long
fall turkey season opened Oct. 1, but his wildest dreams fell short
of what actually happened.
“We went to the area where I killed the gobbler in the spring
season,” said Brown, “We didn’t have any luck up there. I had two
farm tags that I could use on 20 acres right around home, and dad
had been seeing a little group of gobblers there. We were trying set
up on those turkeys, but we came up on them in the middle of a
field. We didn’t really set up; we just sat down with nothing but
grass to hide us. When they started stretching their necks out
looking at us, dad said ‘You better shoot when you get an open
shot.’
“I didn’t really line them up. I just shot and one of them flew off.
I thought the others had run off, but I ran up there and there were
two gobblers flopping around. I was just in awe.”
The pair of gobblers weighed 21 and 22 pounds.
If Brown thought his season couldn’t get any better, he was
mistaken. He started opening day of the November Portion of Firearms
Deer Season by shooting a doe, then bagging a 10-point buck, both
before sunrise. While the buck isn’t record-book material, it is
trophy most hunters would cherish.
Was Brown’s banner year over? Not quite. He, his father, Bruce
Brown, and two friends were gigging on the Big Bourbeuse River in
northeastern Phelps County four days before Christmas when he sank
his spear into a big fish. Jordan thought it was a carp. He probably
would have cleaned and eaten the fish, but for his father.
“Dad has gigged 12-pound river redhorse before,” said Jordan. “He
was sure this fish was a redhorse, but it didn’t have a red tail, so
he knew it wasn’t a river redhorse.”
Bruce Brown, a retired Conservation Department forester, pulled out
a copy of The Fishes of Missouri, the authoritative reference book
by William L. Pflieger, PhD. The best Bruce could make out, his
son’s fish was a silver redhorse, a smaller species than the river
redhorse. The book said silver redhorse typically weigh between .5
and 3.5 pounds. Pflieger noted that the largest one previously
documented in Missouri measured 27 inches from snout to tail and
weighed 9 pounds, 1 ounce.
Bruce knew they had killed a couple of similar fish in the 6-pound
range in the same area last year. Jordan’s fish seemed bigger, so
they decided to keep it and weigh it. It tipped the scales at
weighed 9 pounds, 13 ounces.
The Conservation Department did not have a silver redhorse
registered in the “Alternative Methods” category, which covers
gigging, snagging, trotlining and everything else other than fishing
with a pole, line and lure. Consequently, all they had to do to
secure the record for Jordan was get Fisheries Management Biologist
Jennifer Guyot and Conservation Agent Rob Brandenburg to confirm the
fish’s species and weight.
The fish fell just 1 pound, 10 ounces short of the 1985 Wisconsin
catch recognized as the all-tackle world record by the International
Game Fish Association.
“It has been my best season ever,” said Jordan, “probably the best
one I’m going to have, too.”
Time will tell.
-Jim Low-
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