Horseshoe Bend Bear Final Update

 She was caught yesterday and MDC will be taking her up north we hear.

Horseshoe Bend Bear Update

More for posterity than anything, here's how things are going with "the bear". 

She (high confidence it's a female) has taken up residence on our property because she's found both food (trash) and shelter (15+acres of woods in the area). Trying to secure our trash cans only resulted in mutilated trash cans. We engaged the Missouri Department of Conversation (MDC) to help us, and after a bit of prodding finally got an agent to come out and evaluate our situation. He agreed that given the availability of food and territory, she was unlikely to just leave voluntarily. This animal was here to stay. 

The idea suggested by MDC was to condition her that trash cans were bad in two ways. One was a "trash trap" of sorts, a wired up trash bin the agent setup designed to give her an electric shock when she got into it, and the other was to shoot her with rubber bullets when caught in the act of getting into a trash bin. These "bullets" are low power and simply give her a nasty sting when  struck on the flank or rump, but a pained animal can do funny things so we weren't exactly thrilled with the idea of confronting her. But three of us whipped out our man cards and, armed with rubber bullet loaded shotguns plus a couple of large caliber handguns for safety, waited for her to approach the trash cans to try and condition her directly as suggested by MDC. I personally had little faith this would ultimately chase her off the Bend.  I mean, where was she supposed to go? After that epic swim across the main channel I'm sure she thought she'd found a home.  But MDC wanted to give conditioning a try and we were obliging. I'll reiterate that it was never our intention to kill or even injure her, but it's not often you get to "hunt" bear at the Lake of the Ozarks.

The long and somewhat funny story short version is that we were successful in hitting her in the rump as she was in the act of ransacking a trash bin. Unsurprisingly she fled up the nearest tree but within a few minutes, she climbed back down and cautiously headed back toward the trash bin. Great! A condition reinforcing opportunity! But by then a crowd of people gathered from neighboring rentals after being told to stay away had the exact opposite affect of bringing everyone out with cell phones in hand. It became unsafe to discharge weapons near the trash cans. Such a display of little regard for anyone's safety including their own by people sometimes has to be experienced to be believed. Guns in hand, large predator nearby...sounds like the perfect opportunity for creating a youtube video to me! But the enthusiastic Tik-Tok-ers managed only to spook her back up a tree where we were clear to give her another couple of shots in the rump to reinforce the point that this was not a safe area to be in. Knowing she would not come back down for quite awhile, plus it was getting dark, we packed it up and hoped she would have moved on by morning.  Sorry for no pictures of the "hunt", but I was more interested in being in the moment and making sure everyone was safe during the encounter then snapping pics. I'm sure those enthralled Tik-Tok-ers have posted plenty enough video as it is.

The problem with the "conditioning" idea in general, and we expressed this to MDC, is that in the best case scenario, we were just making the bear someone else's problem. In my opinion, this was not a solution. There is nothing to sustain her other than trash, and humans are everywhere. The other concern is that there are other less tolerant property owners out there and a dangerous interaction is inevitable. Never mind that if she is a female, she'll draw a male to her in the breeding season from as far as 50 miles away and NOW you got a real problem. We understand MDC has limited resources, and that trying to motivate her off the peninsula was a reasonable first step as they simply cannot come trap and remove a bear every time one shows up in someone's backyard. But this animal cannot stay on Horseshoe Bend. The likelihood of a lethal encounter with a car or poacher is very high. That tree in the picture above is right next to the road. Plus she is now destroying property, making a mess, and scaring paying rental customers. And I don't care what anyone says about a black bear, while not usually a threat, they are not harmless. They are a large wild predator and lucky for her the largest state park in Missouri is just down the road. She should be moved there where her presence is expected and tolerated.

Update! As of this morning, our efforts to motivate her away did not work and she's sitting in a tree nearby right now. Thankfully MDC agrees that she should be removed and is coming to trap her. Hopefully they will find her a home where she can have a proper and natural bear life. Thanks MDC!

Friggin' Bears

This image is from a video captured by one of our guests on 5/25/2026 in the evening at the end of Horseshoe Bend (thankfully, our guests took this from their vehicle). Bears are nothing to mess with, and this one looks like a female that may still be nursing given the enlarged teat on her abdomen in this pic. The cubs won't be far away and that's the danger. With cubs, Momma will treat anything as a perceived threat and will deal with it quickly. She won't hesitate to take on any male bear of greater size and strength, so humans don't really intimidate her much. If you see one, stay away. If you can't escape, make yourself as large and noisy as you can and stand your ground. If you see a cub, get a swivel on your neck and calmly get out of the area or in shelter. Never ever approach a cub. Yes, I know they're adorable, but just don't.

Here, I gave her a glamour makeover since she's famous now.

Dam to Dam May 2024 (Unofficial)

I've been boating on The Lake of the Ozarks since I was a toddler with my parents, but I have never made the long trip up the Osage arm to Truman Dam and back. An official Dam to Dam run is the full round trip from Bagnell Dam to Truman Dam and back in a single day. This is roughly 188 miles. Our trip on this day was only from Truman to Bagnell, but it was still epic.

My son purchased a new-to-me pontoon boat from Angler's Port Marine in Warsaw, and we launched from Drake Harbor in Warsaw at the 91-92 mile marker. First, a quick plug for Angler's Port. Everyone was great to work with and did everything they could to help make our trip home a successful one. We used Navionics for navigation at their suggestion and it worked great. Second, Warsaw's launch facilities at Drake Harbor are excellent and the town itself looks great. I haven't been in this area in I don't know how long, but very happy to see it thriving.

So we launched, fired up the navigation app and got underway. Saturday May 11th was a beautiful day to be on the water! However, Truman was dumping heavily (about 50,000 cfs) with The Lake levels at 658.11 and outflow matching Truman. With all this flow, there was a good amount of debris in the water, whole trees in fact. Surprisingly, while Lake depth was good, we still had to follow the main channel, which unlike established navigable rivers, does not have channel markers. This is where your navigation app with depth information is important. At this stage of The Lake, the Osage Arm is basically a river, with characteristics resembling it's pre-Bagnell Dam days. In low water situations, there are some areas that may be impassable. This is fishing country, and with a 28ft pontoon, you need something like Navionics with accurate depth and channel information to keep from grounding. I know folks run up in go-fast boats, but now that I've been on that section, I can say that the video of the 40ft Outer Limits making that run at 100mph, would be nail biting to watch now (video no longer available?).

89-ish mile marker?

Gas is not particularly hard to find, your first opportunity from Truman is the Oar House at the 82mm. Buck Naked at the 77mm. Hiawatha Beach Resort at the 67mm and Holiday Hills Marina at the 68mm. Of these four I can only confirm the Oar House was serving up gas. We stopped at Rebel Harbor Marina at the 60mm. A s-l-o-w idle into the area as the water depth in the cove was often only two feet deep. We were told by locals that a week ago, it would have been impossible to get the big pontoon in there. Thanks to the helpful staff, we gassed up and were on our way again.

Rebel Harbor looking across the channel

Beyond the 60mm, things start looking more and more like The Lake of the Ozarks, and the need to run the channel becomes not as critical as depth more reliably runs 20-45ft deep. Further downriver, around the 47mm you begin to see some of the more popular tourist spots, like Big Dick's Halfway Inn, Captain Ron's at the Hurricane Deck bridge and on into the confluence of the Osage and Niangua arms at the 31mm.

We were going to just park the boat at our condo at Grand Glaize, but the family wanted to take their new boat for a ride so we brought it all the way to the 8mm. Being so close, we just had to finish it off at Bagnell to make the claim.  Dam to Dam.

All in all it was a great trip and I highly recommend the run if you can!

Unmanned Drones On The Lake

 I'm going to have to give Lake Expo a lot of credit for making this blog a little more obsolete. They're starting to do some decent journalism and looking into things before most of us are really aware. Good work. So I hope I give all due credit for the inspiration of this post.

To that point there is the story today about Unmanned Surface Vehicles being spotted around The Lake.

USV - Lake Expo by Tegan Pasley

In short, a company named Simple Unmanned LLC is doing a bathymetric survey of The Lake using unmanned drones. Note: Sorry, Tegan, but your suggestion that drones would be a good idea for Door Dash is not really practical...as of yet. Does anyone remember Domino's pizza delivery on The Lake?

Anyway, Tegan reports that Water Patrol and Ameren are aware and "monitoring" the drone activity, but I want to talk about Ameren on this matter. They need to do more than just monitor, they need to act on the data. Somewhat for themselves, but mostly for property owners like me.

Sedimentation map of a boat ramp launch. Source Simple Unmanned LLC

The Lake is filling in. Despite the decades of development and subsequent improvements such as concrete swales and other erosion prevention measures, sedimentation of The Lake continues. I live at the back of a cove and can honestly say I've lost 2 feet of depth since the 70s. We have dredged (permitted of course, and only within the footprint of the slip!) prior to the ban on dredging in 2007, but overall it's a losing battle anyway. Eventually, my property will no longer be waterfront and there doesn't seem to be a lot I can do about it. It sucks for my property, but what does it mean for Ameren?

Does Ameren care if The Lake fills in? Of course, but not in anyone's lifetime. Sedimentation near the shoreline can go on for centuries without affecting the performance of the dam as a power generator. The turbines only care about "head height", and with over 600 billion gallons of water, volume is never really a problem. Unless.

Heavy sedimentation of The Lake means overall volume is reduced. Volume management is the basis for Ameren's tight-assed control of the shoreline. The volume of water stored behind a dam represents it's ability to maintain energy production in periods of changing conditions. While The Lake is fed by many sources, constituting nearly 10,000 cubic feet per second flow at all times, prolonged and severe drought would have an impact. Meaning in times of extended drought, the reservoir could drain faster than it is replenished. Maintaining The Lake's ability to retain as much water as possible mediates such issues. 

Think of it this way. If the contour of the Osage River valley had been deeper and steeper, before it was flooded by Bagnell, then the main channel of The Lake would be less wide than it is, and there would be far few fewer coves, but the dam itself would still be able to generate as much power. The only difference is that it would be far more susceptible to rainfall, closer to a "run of the river" style waterwheel power generation. See my lengthy article on how Bagnell Dam works. In other terms, Tam Sauk Dam, a completely different type of dam, used more as a battery than a generator, can produce more power than Bagnell using a fraction of the amount of water. It just can't do it for very long.

As a power generating system, Ameren isn't too worried about sedimentation, but somebody is or Simple Unmanned would not have been contracted to perform this very expensive work. I wanted to do something similar with side-scan sonar systems, but didn't really see the value in a full detailed bathymetric data set for The Lake. It would be fascinating though and I do hope the results of this survey, and the data will be shared with the public (or me!).

March 2024 Lake Levels and Flow

 I was not going to do these monthly summaries any longer, but with March's rare "double-dip" draw down low, I thought it was worth showing. The second, low at the end of the month was only 2.28 inches above the lowest level set on March 5th. 653.92 and 654.11 respectively, with April starting even lower by about an inch.

Drawdown 2024 - Who Says It's Over?

I swear, sometime I think Ameren views this blog and deliberately changes things up to make me look bad. But then again, I've been told to get over myself time and time again.

Looks like a rare double dip drawdown season. Just as I declared maximum low levels had been reached on the heel of returning higher levels, Ameren goes and drops it right back down near the low of the year.

To be fair, the spring monsoon hasn't exactly shown up as expected either and lake levels are likely being kept low in anticipation that the rains will come.

As it stands now, we are one and half feet below the fifteen year average depth for this time of year.