Mark Spitzer

In Search of Massive Missouri Gar

Coming from Kirksville up in the North, I was blasting down to the Bootheel in my station wagon to check out some huge-ass taxidermied gar, as well some humans, who also had some fish tales to tell.  Having researched gar for years, and having received emails and jpegs from gar-nuts all over the world (due to a gar-essay I wrote, which got published on the Internet), I had a burning case of Gar Fever, so had struck out in spite of the wintery weather—which was supposed to be over now that it was April.  

As I was shooting south on 55, the sky was growing gray with overcast.  I kept the pedal to the metal, though, and watched the rocky landscape dwindle. 

After the Ozarks, the land became flat and criss-crossed by canals from the Little River Drainage System.  Between 1914 and 1928, more cubic yards of earth had been moved here than in the construction of the Panama Canal.  This ambitious engineering project had been all about irrigation, and had made agriculture possible in the region.  Still, all those levees and ditches had restructured the sensitive spawning grounds of the now extirpated alligator gar, which requires vast floodplains with sustained water levels in order to propagate.

Then suddenly a freak blizzard hit.  It came blowing out of nowhere and started dumping horizontal snow.  I could hardly see two car lengths ahead, and the interstate was turning to slush.  Within twenty minutes, everything was white and everyone around me was trying to keep their tires in the icy ruts, but no one was slowing down.  We were all doing at least seventy-five, and I was passing in the fast lane.

That's when the car in front of me slid toward the shoulder and the driver overcompensated, cranking the wheel toward the oncoming lane.  The car went into a furious spin, and I knew that if I tried to avoid it, I'd end up flipping in the ditch.  So as it came spinning at me like a steel tornado, I drove straight toward its vortex and braced myself for impact. 

For a split-second, I was in the eye of the hurricane.  And in that split-second, I must've been parallel enough to the whirling car to shoot on through, somehow emerging unscathed.  In the rear-view mirror, though, I could see the car still spinning.  It smacked the guardrail, bounced off, and slid to a halt.  Other cars were slowing down to help, but it didn't make sense for me to stop.  Hell, I had Jumbo Gar to meet!

Still, I slowed it down to forty-five while my heart jackhammered in my chest.  Then getting off on 164, I headed west through the shifting drifts and saw some ducks just standing in the snowy fields, powder piling up on them.  They weren't even tying to find any cover, so I figured they were just as confused as me—since it still wasn't clear to me why I was risking my life to look at some stuffed fish and hear some stories.  If my wife had been with me, I'm sure we would've turned back hundreds of miles ago, or at least pulled over and waited for better conditions.

But I finally made it to the little town of Hornersville on the border of Arkansas and stopped at the gas station.  This is where Barry McFarland told me to meet him when I called last week.  I'd seen him in the Daily Dunklin Democrat standing next to a mongo mummified alligator gar, and had found his number through directory assistance.  He told me to come on down.

When I walked in, Barry was behind the counter.  He was wearing a mechanic's outfit and was whittling a duck call.  In fact, there was a whole glass case full of these award-winning hand-carved suckers, which seemed to be his business on the side.

“You drove through that?” he asked with a shake of his head, and then he shook it some more.  Apparently, weather like this wasn't very common in these here parts, so only a fool would go out on a day like this.

Barry, however, had a high-up truck, so a few minutes later we were in it and four-wheel driving to the Duck Club.  And then we were there, and we went on in and there it was:  all 228 pounds of it, eight-feet three-inches long.

“It got run over in 1957,” Barry explained.    

Like many a manatee down in Florida that bit it due to direct contact with a boat, a prop had killed this lunker, which was no doubt one of the last massive gars in Missouri.  It had survived the settlers, the mass draining of the southeast corner of the state, an industry of trophy-fishing tourism led by guides with deep sea tackle, but it hadn't been able to escape the machinery of the ever-expanding human world——which is why they're totally gone from Missouri, when there used to be thousands of gator gar swimming in the cypressy swamps.

Anyway, I took some pictures and got back on the snowy road and fishtailed my way up to Kennett.  There was a six-foot six-inch gar there, mounted in the Dunklin County Museum.  I'd talked to the museum chair Sandra Brown on the phone about this 126-pounder, and she'd told me it was a hit with the kids.  She also told me to come on down.

But I'd lost some time due to the weather and I was getting hungry.  So I set my sights on New Hamburg, where Schindler's Tavern boasted a famous baloney burger, as well as a whopping nine-foot gar displayed above the bar.

Sliding and swerving up Highway 25, I made it to Dexter, the home of Don Jones, who I'd been corresponding with through the email about a seven-foot ten-inch monster gar he had shot near Caruthersville in 1960.  Don had written me a detailed story about how his father had owned land adjacent to the Mississippi, which had been cleared for farming in the mid-50s.  When Don was fifteen years old, the spring floods made it impossible to till, so his father decided they'd go out on their wooden boat and do some gigging. 

That's when two enormous gar showed up, causing a disturbance on the surface.  They were flinging driftwood all around, which meant they were spawning.  Of course, Don and his father tried to get em, but they couldn't get their pitchforks to penetrate the armored scales. 

Don's father eventually gave up, but Don didn't.  He went back for his 30.06 deer rifle, then went out there again.  He shot the smaller one and it started to sink, but he stuck his gig in and hooked it in the bullet hole.  He ended up holding the gig in one hand while the gar thrashed madly and paddling toward shore with the other hand, where once again he shot the gar—this time in the head. 

An old hermit called Gabby, who happened to be hunting rabbits at the time, came along and helped Don load it into the back of a rickety pickup.  Don then drove into town and went to the bale scales at the cotton gin.  The gar weighed 180 pounds, and being almost eight feet long, a crowd gathered.  A photographer came and took a picture, which was accompanied by a write-up in the local paper that told how the big one got away.

Don was a bit worried about the game warden, because he wasn't sure if shooting gar was legal.  He never got in trouble, though, but I felt a sense of regret in his emails.  He was proud of his catch, but it felt to me that he knew that fish was one of the last big gar in the state, and he had played a hand in its demise.

Back then, however, America was deep in a nationwide campaign to eradicate gar, which left countless cadavers rotting on the river shores.  Basically, government-sponsored propaganda from the 20s and 30s had demonized gar as useless trashfish that attacked humans and ate into gamefish populations.  Lacking scientific knowledge on the species, conservation departments across the country, reacting to stereotypes based on the gar's fierce appearance, had spent decades encouraging their extermination.  Plus, the scientists and naturalists who weighed in on the dialogue (often describing gar as “worthless”) didn't do much to help its reputation. 

But if anyone's to blame for spreading mis-fish-information, it was the media.  Especially the anonymous journalist who wrote an alarmist article in a 1922 issue of the New Orleans Times-Picayune, which relied on a laundry list of undocumented innuendo to conclude that gar destroy “millions of food fishes, and the cause of conservation would be advanced by his destruction.”          

But that wasn't all gar had to contend with.  There was overfishing, bowhunting, sportfishing, and the harvesting of huge gar in general, through whatever means possible.  Their destruction was culturally and socially sanctioned, and nobody cared enough to defend them. 

Evidence, however, has since been gathered that gar feed mainly on whatever is most abundant in their habitats, which are usually minnows and crustaceans.  Recent research has also concluded that gar are advantageous to maintaining equilibrium in ecosystems.  And for all the stories there are about swimmers getting chomped on by gore-crazed gar, there's not one verified account in existence of a garfish ever attacking a human.

It's a tradition, of course, to distort the facts when it comes to fish, but even more so when it comes to gigantic alligator gar——as in the story of the legendary lunker in Schindler's Tavern, where I found myself braving the blizzard to get to.  After being pulled from a ditch by Martin Bisher and his horse in 1916, it was hauled into town on the back of a wagon and the whole town had a feast. 

I'd been in contact with Martin's grandson Leon, who was “borned and raised on a farm in the vicinity of Oran, MO.”  Leon's uncle John had inherited that big stuffed gar, and Leon used to sit on it when he went to visit.  John and his wife Mary left that gar to the Schindlers, who they were also related to. 

Since then, the tavern has gone through several owners.  It has also gone through several regional reporters who made the claim that this 180-pounder was “nine feet long.”  But when I parked my car and walked in, I could immediately see that it was only six-foot-something, yellowed by years of cigarette smoke, and grinning down at me as if to say “Ha, fooled ya!”

That's what happens, though:  the bigger the fish, the bigger its myths.  So I ordered a baloney burger and a beer and talked to the bartender.  He let me get up on the counter and take a few pictures and measure the gar (it was six-foot-nine), and then I ate my baloney burger.  It's “deliciousness,” however, was just as embellished as their fish.

That night I slept in my sleeping bag in the back of the station wagon, parked between two semis at a truck stop.  It was cold and hard and I didn't get much sleep, but in the morning I went and got some coffee, then drove into Cape Girardeau to meet with Christopher Kennedy, a fishery biologist for the Missouri Department of Conservation.  Kennedy was trying to reintroduce alligator gar into the Mingo Wildlife Refuge to the west, a swampy labyrinth still inhabited by longnose, shortnose and spotted gar.

It was a Saturday and Kennedy didn't have to come into the office, but as he told me as we shook hands, “I'm glad to meet anyone who wants to talk gar.” 

Like me, Kennedy grew up fascinated by this mysterious fish, which he used to catch with his father.  His father, however, used to break off their beaks and throw them back, which wasn't (and still isn't) too uncommon a practice for those who were raised to detest the species.  And this always bummed Kennedy out.

Which is part of the reason he studied gar, became a specialist in gar, and is now a gar expert and gar advocate.  So we had a lot to talk about:  decades of gar slander and sloppy science, garfishing techniques, gar diets, gar studies, and, of course, the 115-pound six-foot-four alligator gar mounted in the building next door.

Kennedy asked me if I wanted to see it, but I declined.  I knew the story:  it was shot with a bow and arrow by David Smith in 2001 and was presently the state record — because, like most states where larger gar have been taken, nobody thought they were worth documenting until later in the twentieth century.  Or, in the case of Missouri, the twenty-first century. 

The thing is, at the turn of the millennium, gator gar were believed to be extinct in Missouri.  Until, that is, this one was shot in the Diversion Channel south of Cape Girardeau.  And just as the breaking off of their beaks never sat quite right with Kennedy, the killing of this magnificent fish (which could be anywhere from forty to a hundred years old), didn't sit quite right with me.

So we focused on the Alligator Gar Reintroduction Project, which I had come to interview Kennedy about.  He had received approval to stock twenty radio-tagged twenty-five-inchers, and if all went according to plan, he'd get them in the water this summer and track their movements to gather data on their ranges.

“These guys were meant to be here,” Kennedy explained.  “The system was designed for them.”

But reintroduction of any fanged creature (as in the case of the timber wolf or grizzly bear) is always a touchy process.  There are misconceptions that need to be addressed so that misunderstandings are not repeated.  Hence, Kennedy had plans for “reeducation.”  In addition to brochures and posters to spread awareness, the idea was for the MO Department of Conservation to work with The Friends of Mingo and other environmental groups to inform citizens through a series of public meetings.   

“We've also started to develop activities for elementary through high school students,” Kennedy said, “to help explain the alligator gar's role in the ecosystem.”

Asked if the idea was to restock gar for sportfishing, Kennedy replied, “Our main objective is for the ecology of the system . . . but I'd love to catch one myself!” 

As to whether these gar will be protected, Kennedy responded that it will take two or more years to get regulations in place.  Still, anglers can be asked to help protect alligator gar, even though it's unlikely anyone will encounter them within the first few years, since Mingo Swamp is not highly accessible.  “You'd have to paddle back there or use a trolling motor,” Kennedy said, “and then you can only go back there at certain times of the year.”  As for bowhunting, projectile weapons have been banned in the refuge.

Kennedy told me that he hoped to stock alligator gar every year to bring their numbers up.  He believed the stock would find its way down to Arkansas, but because “there's enough research to speculate that they [have homing] characteristics,” he was pretty sure they'd return, as do salmon.

I asked Kennedy what these gar will feed on, and he replied that there's no need to stock feeder populations, because there's “plenty of food in the system to support them . . . they're going to be looking for fish species that also like the open-water habitat . . . we're talking shad, buffalo, carp.”

Kennedy stated that big gar want “the biggest bang for their buck,” so will therefore “focus on larger prey species.”  Especially shad, which can get a foot long and are abundant in Mingo.  “And when they get that long,” Kennedy added, “there's nothing else in there that's going to feed on them.”  He also predicted that when the gar stock grow large enough to start eating the larger shad, “you'll see less bigger shad and more smaller shad . . . [which] will actually help the gamefish populations.”

Kennedy then got down to the nutmeat of the matter (at least for me), by suggesting that this restoration project offers us more than just the opportunity to repopulate the state with alligator gar.  Since big gar tend to feed on big members of the minnow family, he indicated that this project could lead to a partial solution in controlling the highly invasive Asian carp——which are presently reaping destruction in the Mississippi and its tributaries by destroying the nests of indigenous fish.  Not only that, but they're creating safety hazards by leaping in front of motorboats and smacking people upside their heads.

This led me to question what I'd rather see in the waters of Missouri——and the answer, of course, is obvious:  pesky alien carp, or a nine-foot, 300-pound, mother-lunker gator gar thrashing and splashing all silver on the surface like some prehistoric fish come back from the past.

It then occurred to me that maybe there's a way to market alligator gar as a patriotic fish protecting American waters from ichthyological terrorists that represent the last bastion of Communism left on the planet.  Still, it seemed pretty obvious that refocusing the hatred people have for gar on another species wouldn't really add to anyone becoming more enlightened, even if this could be a way of getting those dang carp under control. 

Anyhow, since Kennedy could see that I wanted to “be good for something” (to quote Thoreau), he invited me to come down later in the summer and go out on an airboat to release alligator gar into Mingo Swamp.  So you bet I accepted. 

Then hopping back on the road, the blizzard was gone and the highway was clear.  But as things turned out, I lost touch with Kennedy and the gar stock never got released that summer.  There was still too much uncertainty, red tape and residual fear. 

A year and a half later, though, I received my monthly copy of the Missouri Conservationist and read that Kennedy had released “300 young kerplunkers to their native dark waters,” where alligator gar “hadn't set fin . . . for more than 30 years.”

So now they're back.  And hopefully, they'll keep coming back, and keep getting reintroduced. 

Meanwhile, my Gar Fever has increased to the point that I've become a gar-fanatic who believes that the question of alligator-gar resurrection isn't just about taking responsibility for what we've messed up, it's also about whether we have the character to overcome our nature for overcoming nature—something I've never had much faith in, but would like to see breed massive Missouri gar.