Inside Cliff Keeler's Jefferson City home are signs of an outdoorsman.
Deer, fish and other game are mounted on the walls. His photography and oil paintings feature wildlife scenes, including some of his own adventures. His pet, an American dingo named Shonkay, is a close relative to the wolf and exudes the friendly nature of a dog.
His office walls are covered - floor to ceiling - with books and reference material covering Indian culture, birds, elk and more. The literature is next to his collection of shotguns, fishing rods and newspaper columns that made Keeler a local celebrity at the Lake of the Ozarks. His love for the outdoors eventually led him to find the Missouri Outdoor Communicators, a statewide organization of outdoor lovers and writers.
As a Lake-area business owner in the 1980s, Keeler read the fishing reports published in major metropolitan newspapers: The St. Louis Globe Democrat, St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Kansas City Star. The report authors, though, were night clerks at the local resorts, Keeler said, and lacked the knowledge of what fish were biting.
So, he decided to do something about it. Keeler met with the editor of the Lake Sun Reveille (now the Lake Sun Leader) and they both agreed that he would start writing fishing reports for the newspaper, a piece that didn't have space previously. Keeler requested the newspaper pay for his membership to a professional writer's group, and the company also paid him $25 per week.
Once Keeler's fishing report took off, he also contacted editors at the metropolitan newspapers, convincing them to publish his work as well.
Fishermen and women alike would bring in their catches (and deer during hunting season) to Keeler's store, where he sold dock foam, bait and tackle, and groceries. He took their picture with their game and included it in the fishing report, along with a paragraph about the person in the photo.
"If you took their picture and put it in the newspaper, they absolutely thought you were some kind of God," Keeler said.
What was intially a fishing report turned into a regular and syndicated column called "Cliff's Outdoor Notes." In it, Keeler detailed Lake life, wildlife topics and tips for both men and women. Walking into Walmart, a female greeter welcomed Keeler and thanked him for an article on sharpening knives.
"She said, "I want you to know I don't need my husband to sharpen my knives anymore,'" Keeler said.
"That always makes a writer feel like they've done their job, when somebody read it, got something out of it and it somehow improved the quality of their life."
Keeler went beyond the expectations of a columnist and morphed into a reporter. With a "deep throat" in the Water Patrol, he unveiled a major scandal. Purchases of expensive boats, sometimes multi-million dollar ones, were being exempted from sales tax - costing local government revenue - as the machines weren't registered with the state. He also wrote about the "outlaw society" at the Lake, exposing those driving boats while intoxicated, which was killing people and detouring tourists.
"It was one tragedy after another," he said.
His writing earned him two nominations for the Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting and a second place award from the Missouri Press Association in investigative reporting for Class 1 Dailies.
In 1994, Keeler founded the Missouri Outdoor Communicators with the help of friends and fellow outdoor writers, including E.L. "Buck" Rogers, of Columbia, who has since passed away, and Joel Vance, of Russelville. It was the first of its kind in the state. The movement brought together Missouri's outdoor writers to, as Keeler said, protect environmental causes through their words.
"We just created a place for the guys and gals who had the ink to inform the public ... to educate the public on what was being done to the nest they live in," he said, "and if they didn't know we told them."