Prairie Historian Excerpts from 18 years of quarterly Bulletins

THE BIG OTTER HUNT OF 1924

The only otter known to be found in Jefferson County was killed in Elk Prairie Township by Jim Loman and his brother Homer. It weighed 42 pounds. It was quite a sly animal and it took some doing to out- smart it.

It's tracks were first seen near the Abner Cemetery, south and west of Nason. The timber used for piling for the Nason Mine was shipped in from the northern part of the United States on railroad flatcars. Since Abner Cemetery is near to the mine it was finally decided that the otter must have come in on one of the railroad cars and when the cars were stopped at the mine it jumped to the ground and took off.

One morning "Red" Roberts was near the Abner Cemetery with his dogs, going on a hunting trip and the dogs followed the tracks of this otter. They chased it to Lost Knob Pond and then chased it south to Ackley Pond. About one mile south of Ackley Pond the otter ran into Little Awkward Creek and went west of the Big Muddy River. It had made many tracks here on the bank so "Red" stopped to check them very closely trying to decide what kind of an animal it was. The tracks looked very much like goose tracks. He then went to the home of Sam Reynolds and told him about those odd animal tracks he had just seen. Some of the neighborhood men went to look at the tracks and they finally all decided it was the tracks of an otter.

After much chasing and much slyness on the part of the otter, Jim Loman finally caught it with his two old hound dogs, Rowd and Rattler. It took a while though before the dogs treed it in a big drift above Little Awkward Creek on Big Muddy River. The river was frozen over solid, but farther on down there was an air hole through the ice, and the otter discovered this. It would leave the drift and go to the air hole, and the dogs would find it and bark, and then the otter would dive under the ice and race back to the drift. He could dive under the ice faster than the dogs could run on top of the ice. The otter did this stunt many times. Finally Homer Loman, brother of Jim, saw it leave the air hole and move in beside a big log in the drift. The dogs found it, but once again it dived under the ice and ran back to the air hole. Homer said, "now I know just what that otter is up to and how he's doing all of this". Next time the otter swam back to the drift Homer was waiting for it and shot it with his shotgun. It was wounded, but went on into the drift, but some blood came up to the top of the water, so they followed the trail of blood into the drift and the two dogs caught the otter. This was the first, last, and only otter hunting spree ever known in Elk Prairie Township.

*Note from submitter:

Jim Loman is my grandfather. My dad, who would have been three years old at the time, told me he remembered his dad and uncle Homer, walking toward the house from the creek with the otter slung over grandpa's shoulder. Dad said that while they were still a ways from the house, he remembered his mom saying that it looked like his dad had shot a bear.

Submitted by: Robert W. Loman - rwlmn@aol.com