What’s real in the hills

Research briefing compiled Sunday, September 13, 2026

These are publicly reported goat-adjacent, farm-critter, and Ozarks-wildlife stories as of the second weekend of September 2026. The articles in this packet are fictional pieces that riff on these facts. They are not interviews and they do not put words in living mouths.

Open now, opening soon

• Teal season — September 12–20, 2026 (MDC). Sunrise to sunset. Daily bag 6, possession 18, combined teal species. Blue-winged, green-winged, and cinnamon teal only. Shoveler, pintail, and wood duck are look-alikes and illegal during this window. Three permits: small-game, migratory-bird, and a federal duck stamp. Nontoxic shot only.
• Archery deer and fall archery turkey — both open Tuesday, September 15. Deer archery: Sept. 15–Nov. 13 and Nov. 25–Jan. 15, 2027. Fall archery turkey matches those windows. Firearms turkey portion opens Oct. 1 in open counties. Early antlerless firearms deer: Oct. 9–11 in open counties. MDC has said the CWD Management Zone map is gone; sampling rules still apply in designated counties during the November portion.
• 40th Annual Dixon Cow Days — September 18–20, 2026, downtown Dixon, Pulaski County. Parade, 5K, car show, youth pageant, hot-dog eating contest, live music, and a raffle to take home a live cow (promoters have used the phrase “or TWO”). Sunday closes with praise and worship from the Dixon Ministerial Alliance.
• Arkansas Goat Festival — Saturday, October 3, 2026, 10 a.m.–4 p.m., Perryville Park, Perryville, Arkansas. Free. Goat parade, costume contest, lingerie show, soap-making demo, two stages, vendors (list reported full). Municipal goat park on site. No dogs.
• Howell County court — Logan A. Davis, 20, of rural Willow Springs, is summoned for an initial appearance September 28, 2026, before Associate 37th Circuit Judge R. David Ray. Public charge: one felony count of first-degree property damage. West Plains Daily Quill (Aug. 19) reported a June investigation on Forest Service land off Private Road 5371: damaged electric fencing and six dead goats (two nannies, four kids), tire tracks to the animals. This paper records the charge. It does not record a verdict and does not fictionalize the case.
• Grazing school — Shannon County three-day grazing school listed Sept. 28–30. Howell County Extension: 417-256-2391.
• Missouri Good Neighbor Week — Sept. 28–Oct. 4 (MU Extension).

Drought that did not read the order

• Missouri’s statewide drought alert expired September 1 after nearly a year. Local hills did not get the memo. Brownfield Ag News (Sept. 8) quoted Missouri Department of Agriculture’s Tony Hancock: southern Missouri “getting pretty serious, pretty fast” — springs drying, named creeks running thin, some producers already on supplemental hay.
• KY3 and sister stations spent early September on cattle operations breaking into winter hay, shutting down equipment over fire risk, and watching condition slide in the dry wind. Outdoor-burn bans persisted in multiple Ozarks counties after the state alert expired. Confirm with the county before lighting anything that used to be legal last month.
• Arkansas burn-ban maps checked in recent days have shown wide coverage. Flash-drought language is still in circulation for western Missouri and northern Arkansas.

New World screwworm, still a watch and not a local case

• Arkansas Democrat-Gazette outdoors column (Sept. 10): Arkansas Game and Fish veterinarian Catherine Love briefed commissioners Aug. 19 on New World screwworm risk to white-tailed deer and livestock. Adult flies live a few weeks; a female mates once and may lay 200–400 eggs in a wound as small as a tick bite. Deer carry ticks. Feral hogs are described as a high-volume landscape vector if the parasite moves north.
• University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff Extension (standing August guidance): sheep and goats accounted for 18 of 42 confirmed U.S. domestic-animal cases as of mid-July reporting (Texas and New Mexico). Arkansas remained free of confirmed cases and asked producers to watch wounds and report suspects. Livestock moving from affected states have carried extra entry paperwork.
• Missouri officials have publicly described the threat as real and the state as still clear. This paper records the briefing. It does not invent a local outbreak.

Wild side of the same hills

• Armadillos. MDC furbearer biologist Nate Bowersock told KRCG (July 24, still the governing quote) that nine-banded armadillos are expanding north in Missouri, helped by milder winters, and “are here to stay.” They dig. Deterrents are limited. A MoDOT wildlife-crossing study this summer also captured trail-cam armadillos on the night shift.
• Deer, turkey, coyote. A Smithsonian / Missouri camera project retracing Lewis and Clark mammal surveys (Jefferson City News Tribune, Sept. 8) pulled young turkey and young coyote, plus white-tailed deer and two squirrel species, off 15 cameras left out since June. Archery week starts Tuesday.
• Pollinators. Springfield Daily Citizen (Aug. 10) followed Webster County citizen-scientist Richard Herman’s Missouri Bumblebee Watch counts; American bumblebees, a species of concern, were among the captures. MU Extension continues to promote the Highway 13 Butterfly Trail as a pollinator corridor from north Missouri toward Branson.
• Bears and hogs. Missouri’s black-bear estimate remains on the order of 1,000 and growing; 2026 bear season is listed Oct. 17–30. Feral-hog work continues under the multi-agency partnership. Hogs remain a crop, water, and disease problem where they persist — and a mentioned complicating factor in screwworm talk.
• CWD policy (background). MDC said in July it has no plans for targeted deer removals this winter and will lean on hunters and landowners.

Goats and the rest of the yard

• AppleJo Farms, Eldon, Mo. — Public farm page in September 2026 announced a retirement plan; the owner intends to keep select does and named bucks and was bottle-feeding a large kid crop (thirteen kids at one posting) while offering a limited homestead package. This paper records the announcement. It does not invent a farewell tour.
• Still on the local color card: Whiskey Throttle Farm / The Bath Parlor, Marshfield — Nigerian Dwarfs and goat-milk soap. Ozark’s Treasured Acres Farm, Ava — late doelings Mayhem and Midway; Selene Grand Champion Nigerian Dwarf. DeLapp Mountain Ranch, Hartville — ADGA Nigerian Dwarfs and a mixed flock. Robertson operation, Jackson County, Arkansas foothills — about 200 sheep and 50 goats, plus heritage poultry, pigs, and guardian dogs. The Goat Ranch, Dade County, still named for goats last kept there in the 1950s. Bear Creek Boers, Lebanon, continues posting 2026 Boer sales.
• Boone County rescue (already reported): about 70 barnyard animals from an eviction — goats, sheep, lambs, two turkeys, dozens of chickens — were all claimed by Sept. 1. Goat and sheep adoptions capped at four per home.
• Missouri State Fair Sale of Champions and Heart of the Ozarks Fair results were fully reported in the August packets and are not re-broken here.

Standing cautions, not this week’s scoop: heat can still run high in mid-September; shade and two water tubs remain the sermon. Festival biosecurity: keep dogs out of parks that ban them. A North Carolina mobile-petting-zoo rabies exposure in late summer was not an Ozarks outbreak and is not treated as one here.