Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome episode number thirty of The Hunting Collective.
Speaker 1: I'm Bet O'Brien. Today I am joined by one of
Speaker 1: my favorite people on the planet Earth and probably one
Speaker 1: of the best better guests will ever have. And that
Speaker 1: man's name is Charles the rabbit Man Roden and I
Speaker 1: first met Charles about two years ago on a rabbit
Speaker 1: hunt on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and since then I have
Speaker 1: been infatuated with his passion for rabbit hunting, just his personality,
Speaker 1: the man that he is is life and times and
Speaker 1: why he loves rabbit hunting so much. And hopefully this
Speaker 1: podcast will shed some light on all those questions. Um,
Speaker 1: and it's enjoyed. Charles is a family man, a man
Speaker 1: of God, and a man who is the He is
Speaker 1: the preacher or the pastor at the Church of Rabbit Hunting. Uh.
Speaker 1: He could talk about it all day and all night.
Speaker 1: He loves it that much. So without further ado, please
Speaker 1: enjoy this conversation I sure did with Charles Rodney. He's
Speaker 1: the man. Alright, we're recording, Charles. How are you, sir?
Speaker 1: I'm doing fine. Well. Thanks for having me to your home. Well,
Speaker 1: you're quite welcome. My pleasure. UM. I want to start
Speaker 1: by saying, you know, how long when did we rabbit hunt?
Speaker 1: It was a year. It was about two years ago,
Speaker 1: two seasons, two seasons ago, um on Eastern Shore, Maryland.
Speaker 1: And I wish we could have done it last year.
Speaker 1: We were just talking about having chilled, that being busy,
Speaker 1: and how that that does it. But when we hunted
Speaker 1: together on the Eastern Shore, it struck me that that
Speaker 1: was a hunt I would do every year, and I
Speaker 1: think you should. It was an awesome hunt. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a great hunt. And it also struck me that
Speaker 1: the one the first thing we should talk about is
Speaker 1: how delicious rabbit meat cotton tails are. Rabbit meat is
Speaker 1: one of the best meat and it's it's it's all
Speaker 1: natural and there's hardly any fat. They eat only natural things,
Speaker 1: grass and leaves and twigs out in the woods, and
Speaker 1: they're running and they literally eat soybean and stuff that
Speaker 1: they can get to. Uh, but they're running, so they're healthy.
Speaker 1: There there are no fat on them, and uh, it's
Speaker 1: one of the healthiest foods you can find. A lot
Speaker 1: of people don't know that, and a lot of people
Speaker 1: see them running around their backyard. They don't even think
Speaker 1: about what's right. So after that, we hunted in February.
Speaker 1: After that hunt we did, my dad was a long.
Speaker 1: We went Super Bowl Sunday. We cooked up a bunch
Speaker 1: of rabbit legs. We soaked him in milk, a little bit,
Speaker 1: fried them up, put a little old bay on him,
Speaker 1: served him at a Super Bowl party. Great, everybody that
Speaker 1: was there eating him like these chicken. These chicken legs
Speaker 1: are great. These the best chicken legs in her hat.
Speaker 1: So that's a rabbit. Most city people don't know. They
Speaker 1: were what where'd you get this chicken? Well? I got
Speaker 1: it on the Eastern Shore. And it's a damn rabbit
Speaker 1: that always struck with me. Is not only is rabbit
Speaker 1: hunting fun were talking about it earlier here. Not only
Speaker 1: is it fun, is it easy to do? But you
Speaker 1: end up with, you know, a bunch of rabbits to
Speaker 1: go home, skin and eat. That's fun for a kid
Speaker 1: to do. And rabbits um. Not only are they good
Speaker 1: and good for you, but they're one of the easiest
Speaker 1: game to clean. Yeah, you can clean. I can clean
Speaker 1: a bunch of rabbits by the time I cleaned two squirrels,
Speaker 1: and and it you just cut a little slit and
Speaker 1: you pull them opposite in and all of her come off.
Speaker 1: You slip behind the tail, I slit. I usually slit
Speaker 1: over the back, around the stomach and put my finger
Speaker 1: in and just pull out with yes, right, and it
Speaker 1: comes off the off the back, legs and over the head.
Speaker 1: Now a lot of other guys do it a little
Speaker 1: bit different. And then I just take a knife and
Speaker 1: and got them and I'm done. And if they're if
Speaker 1: they're a little bloody, I soaked them. I got a
Speaker 1: big one of them, big wash tubs. Soak them for
Speaker 1: eight to ten hours overnight usually, and all that blood
Speaker 1: comes out, and then you clean it off, wrap it in,
Speaker 1: freeze the paper. A lot of guys you shrink, wrap
Speaker 1: and label them and there you go and you're you're
Speaker 1: ready and so forth. Did your wife cook up a
Speaker 1: lot of rabbits? My wife actually is a city girl.
Speaker 1: I'm a country boy from Louisiana and we've been married
Speaker 1: tomorrow September to twenties, that will be forty six years.
Speaker 1: Can't get her to even go out and look at
Speaker 1: the dogs when I get a new one, but she
Speaker 1: gives me support, so I do all the rabbit cooking.
Speaker 1: I do all the rabbit cleaning. I have a special
Speaker 1: freezer just for a wild game because a lot of
Speaker 1: the people I take rabbit hunting give me other games elk, moose, dear,
Speaker 1: whatever they hunting while waterfowl, and we eat some of it.
Speaker 1: But there are loads of people that I supply rabbit
Speaker 1: every year. I have names to give rabbits. In my
Speaker 1: cut of the take, in my group, we'll get over
Speaker 1: two hundred, and in my take, I usually get about
Speaker 1: forty forty five. So some guys come just to shoot
Speaker 1: the hunt, shoot the breeze. Some guys take one or two.
Speaker 1: Some guys said, well, I don't want many, So whatever
Speaker 1: they don't take, I take because I have a market
Speaker 1: for giving them away. I don't sell anything. I don't
Speaker 1: expect anything in return. All I expect is to thank you,
Speaker 1: and and if I don't get that, or a big
Speaker 1: smile on your face, and that's thank you enough. So
Speaker 1: there are lots of older people who lived in the
Speaker 1: country of Maryland, southern Maryland, and some city folks North Carolina,
Speaker 1: South Carolina, they did it. Uh, the family hunted and
Speaker 1: they can't get them anymore, and they say, hey at church,
Speaker 1: I got a lot of people say you take rabbits
Speaker 1: to church? I say sure, I said, all these older people,
Speaker 1: I said, well, what mass are you going to tomorrow?
Speaker 1: We're Catholic. And I bring them a rabbit. It's clean,
Speaker 1: it's wrapped, it's label and um, they enjoy it and
Speaker 1: and that's my treat to them. That's awesome. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: get people. You know, there's a lot of people like
Speaker 1: you said, I can't go out and do that. That's right.
Speaker 1: They don't have place to go or time to go,
Speaker 1: or if the physically unable to go and share it
Speaker 1: with him, that's awesome. So you you're from Louisiana, you
Speaker 1: found your way here to Maryland. And we'll get into that,
Speaker 1: but I want to just kind of go back to
Speaker 1: your upbring and when you first started hunting, because I
Speaker 1: know we talked a little bit about swamp rabbits, which
Speaker 1: I thought was fun fun term. When did you first
Speaker 1: start hunting and when did you first start rabbit hunt?
Speaker 1: What was the thing that got you excited about it? Well?
Speaker 1: Growing up, we grew up we were share croppers in Louisiana,
Speaker 1: so we lived on somebody else laying my dad and
Speaker 1: my uncle next door farm and when we would go hunting, UM,
Speaker 1: he just walked behind the house into the fields and
Speaker 1: you would hunt there. I started about eight years old,
Speaker 1: mainly following my big older brother who was eleven years
Speaker 1: older than me. He loved to hunt and they would
Speaker 1: let me follow him, but the rule was I would
Speaker 1: walk right behind him. I didn't have a shot GUNNA
Speaker 1: had a bb gun, and most time nothing carried whatever
Speaker 1: he killed. And I learned that way, and as time
Speaker 1: got I got older and teenager. There was a friend
Speaker 1: who had a couple of dogs, and uh, we hunted.
Speaker 1: We hunted in the cotton fields and on the ditches
Speaker 1: and in the woods, and we'd get cotton tails in
Speaker 1: the field. And then if you wanted the big rabbits,
Speaker 1: you're going in the woods, in the deep woods, and
Speaker 1: which was only probably half a mile walk, and we
Speaker 1: we would get one or two. But we never had
Speaker 1: being poor, we never had quality dogs. Okay, we had
Speaker 1: your dogs that could hunt rabbits too, and and do
Speaker 1: a lot of other things. Uh. These were multi purpose dogs,
Speaker 1: so they would get something. And then I hunted, uh
Speaker 1: throughout my teen years and after college in in Baton Rouge,
Speaker 1: I moved here in seventy two, got married and started
Speaker 1: hunting a little bit here with my wife too uncle,
Speaker 1: and we'd go down southern Maryland. We had a couple
Speaker 1: of little small spots. We'd get one or two rabbits.
Speaker 1: Then when the kids started coming, I quit, And then
Speaker 1: as they got older and in college, in in up,
Speaker 1: in high school, I started back. So I told my wife,
Speaker 1: I said, you know, I was relying on another fellow
Speaker 1: who wasn't too dependable and and didn't have good Dogess.
Speaker 1: I liked this so much, I'm gonna start doing it.
Speaker 1: So I had an old truck that my family was,
Speaker 1: our dads, and when he passed, they gave it to me,
Speaker 1: and I brought it up from Louisiana and we built
Speaker 1: a little common dog box. I got some dogs, made
Speaker 1: all of the mistakes, brought the wrong dog. What the
Speaker 1: dogs by. First I bought a dog name um Rowdy,
Speaker 1: and then I had one name Slim or something like that. Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't know much about dogs, and and the guy
Speaker 1: that sold them to me, he took me for a
Speaker 1: ride because I just wanted two dogs, and he told
Speaker 1: me one dog that was slower and a fast dog.
Speaker 1: Now I know what I know Now that's a bad mixture.
Speaker 1: You want all of your dogs the same speed. You
Speaker 1: want them all medium, all slow, are all fast. You
Speaker 1: want them when they're running to be in a bunch
Speaker 1: together on the scent line. You don't want one to
Speaker 1: be here in won fifty yards away. So I made
Speaker 1: all of the mistakes, bought the wrong dog dogs, and
Speaker 1: then I got some other dogs and I didn't know
Speaker 1: they ran deer, so I lost dogs dogs, spent the
Speaker 1: night in the in the woods. So gradually I started
Speaker 1: talking to some veteran hunters that I trusted, who raised
Speaker 1: dogs and bread dogs, and they gave me a lot
Speaker 1: of tips, and I started reading, and I started using
Speaker 1: better judgment of people that are bought dogs from. Because
Speaker 1: I don't breathe my own dogs. I buy them when
Speaker 1: they're started one to two years. So they gave me
Speaker 1: loads of advice, which I I'm proud to have received
Speaker 1: this advice from them. They told me all of the
Speaker 1: dudes and don't And I learned from my errors, and
Speaker 1: I learned how to break dogs using it was try
Speaker 1: tronics at the time, the training collars. Some people call
Speaker 1: him the shock callers now Garmen, and I use those faithfully,
Speaker 1: and I put them on live deer and break them.
Speaker 1: Now I don't have to because the deers have invaded
Speaker 1: the neighborhood where we live, so I can break them
Speaker 1: right here in the yard. And he's got your dogs
Speaker 1: chasing deer in the in the yard, he had the deers.
Speaker 1: The deer's coming to yard to eat all the flowers
Speaker 1: and things of that sort. So recently last year, I
Speaker 1: built an eight foot fence around my vegetable garden so
Speaker 1: we can have vegetable It looks like a prison camp.
Speaker 1: All I need is a little towel on there. But
Speaker 1: this is a multipurpose dog. You're trading your dogs on deer,
Speaker 1: keeping them hell out of your time. Well, the deer,
Speaker 1: now that the dogs are in the pin, the dogs,
Speaker 1: only one out of six will look at the deer
Speaker 1: and bark. The other five go about their business, and
Speaker 1: the deer know that they can't get out, so they
Speaker 1: go about their business. They just trot alone. But I
Speaker 1: learned from these people, so all of this valuable knowledge.
Speaker 1: Now I know how to select dogs, and have known
Speaker 1: for many years. So in the last fifteen or twenty years,
Speaker 1: twenty years, maybe I have not had one dog run off.
Speaker 1: Deers will get up in front of them, will cross
Speaker 1: the track, will be laying in the brush. They'll see
Speaker 1: the deer. They paid no mine because you know that
Speaker 1: deer scent is much hotter than a rabbit sense. So
Speaker 1: they don't paid any mine, and we keep hunting. So
Speaker 1: when they go in the brush and they start barking,
Speaker 1: I don't have to panic that a big bucket is
Speaker 1: gonna run out the other side. And they're gonna run,
Speaker 1: because if they chase year, then they're no good to
Speaker 1: us as rabbit hunters. And a deer will run straight
Speaker 1: for miles. The dog will if he survived the highways
Speaker 1: that they're gonna cross, then he's no good for you
Speaker 1: because you don't trust him. But now when I go
Speaker 1: with six, come back six and and guys will tell me, Charles,
Speaker 1: the deer just got up. What do you want to do,
Speaker 1: I say, don't do anything. They're not gonna chase him.
Speaker 1: Just wait for that rabbit to come back. And and
Speaker 1: it happens over and over. But when you pick quality
Speaker 1: dogs from quality people, because um a lot of guys
Speaker 1: dog tree, they'll tell you that this dog will do
Speaker 1: all sorts of things, and so forth, and you've got
Speaker 1: a deer running, You've got a dog that's gunshine everything.
Speaker 1: So I buy quality dogs, I work them, and I
Speaker 1: buy my dogs only in the summertime so that I
Speaker 1: have time to train them and let them get used
Speaker 1: to my voice, other and so forth. Because the season
Speaker 1: starts always in Maryland the first Saturday in November. So
Speaker 1: I'll buy dogs in April, May, June and work them
Speaker 1: and train them, and when the season come they're in shape.
Speaker 1: And so I don't have that problem. I have none
Speaker 1: but rabbit ramas. Only rab runs. And I've seen it
Speaker 1: in action. It is unbelievable. That's what those dogs can do.
Speaker 1: Let's go back, uh, because we'll we'll talk dogs forever here.
Speaker 1: But when you were you mentioned a few things. You
Speaker 1: came up poor. Yes, um, you came up it seemingly
Speaker 1: close to your family and you came up hunting. You
Speaker 1: feel like, uh, how that shaped you as a person?
Speaker 1: You know how you became. You know you've been married
Speaker 1: for we say forty eight years, six years when I
Speaker 1: get that number correct. Your wife cooks the hell of
Speaker 1: a breakfast. You probably we just got finished that. Sure
Speaker 1: you've eat many of those, um, but it seems like
Speaker 1: you know, kids, wife, you have a good life. Everything
Speaker 1: has turned out well, you know, very happy and productive.
Speaker 1: And I always try to look back and and how
Speaker 1: you were raised and what that might have given you.
Speaker 1: Do you have any insight as to your upbringing and
Speaker 1: what it meant? Well, we were raised in a in
Speaker 1: a Christian family in South Louisiana. Most of the people
Speaker 1: are Catholic, there are other faiths there and they're good people.
Speaker 1: They taught us the value of working together. We lived
Speaker 1: on a farm, so if we finished early, we helped
Speaker 1: the next guy and my uncle next to them. We
Speaker 1: help people up and down the road, and they helped us.
Speaker 1: And Daddy grew a large vegetable garden. When I mean
Speaker 1: a large vegetable guard. He wasn't selling. He grew and
Speaker 1: we kept wondering, why are we growing all of this stuff? Well,
Speaker 1: back then we didn't have freezes, so the old mason jars.
Speaker 1: We kenned everything and what we what we didn't use,
Speaker 1: we gave away. And I was the youngest of seven,
Speaker 1: so I got the luxury of picking when my older
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters started leaving and so forth. So we
Speaker 1: were raised up in in two family and a mother
Speaker 1: and a father um and we were raised up in
Speaker 1: Catholic school. We went to Catholic elementary and then on
Speaker 1: the public school. But we were raised with good Christian
Speaker 1: values that you help people and you do for people,
Speaker 1: and that's you thank you, and that your enjoyment. And
Speaker 1: that sticks with me today because I do some of
Speaker 1: the same thing, even though I hated it. When we
Speaker 1: grew all those big gardens and Daddy with somebody would
Speaker 1: come and there were certain people who came by. Then
Speaker 1: you when the sweet corn made, then you when the
Speaker 1: figs made, then you win this made, and the pecans
Speaker 1: we had, the countries, and being the youngest, I got
Speaker 1: to go in that hot sun and go get these
Speaker 1: things in boxing things. But I didn't know it. In reality,
Speaker 1: I was enjoying it. I do the same thing today.
Speaker 1: I grow garden, and many of my hunting friends grow
Speaker 1: big gardens. There's a guy that grow greens and he
Speaker 1: plants him for the deer so he can stick an
Speaker 1: arrow on him because he can't shoot a gun where
Speaker 1: he lives, and so he plants the greens for the
Speaker 1: last full or five years. He doesn't sell them, he
Speaker 1: doesn't give him away guess what he does. He tells me, Charles,
Speaker 1: going there and take him, because you give him the people.
Speaker 1: And we, my cousin and I will go and we'll
Speaker 1: pick two pickup trucks the load and we'll give to everybody.
Speaker 1: And their brother will take him to church, to his church,
Speaker 1: to my church and the people, and we can. So
Speaker 1: we're giving back the way we were taught to give back.
Speaker 1: And his old country boy from Maryland too. So those
Speaker 1: family values stick today. And when where we live, everybody
Speaker 1: knew us. Okay, the races were separate, Okay, predominantly white
Speaker 1: and black. We will creole. My folks spoke creole. I
Speaker 1: know a little bit of it. But they have that
Speaker 1: intrinsic value that you help you, fella man, regardless. And
Speaker 1: I do the same thing today. Uh. I give people.
Speaker 1: I give service to the church. I give service to people.
Speaker 1: I have a lot of older friends, I mean older
Speaker 1: friends in the up and nineties and close to a
Speaker 1: hundred and one. Man is ninety three, and we still
Speaker 1: I take him rabbit on twice a year, the last
Speaker 1: last two hunts. He wrote on a little cart, and
Speaker 1: he just come to here on a little John, Dear
Speaker 1: little John, dear four wheel of things, and he rides
Speaker 1: along and he hunts, and we've become friends in three years.
Speaker 1: And he hate. He grows a big truck garden, so
Speaker 1: he sells everything fifty cents a pound. So I go
Speaker 1: sometime and I'll buy a truckloader. You'd be surprised how
Speaker 1: much stuff you can buy for fifty dollars. And I
Speaker 1: give it away and so forth. So I even take
Speaker 1: something to that. We have Nun's sisters at the convent,
Speaker 1: so I take stuff to them. They tell me they
Speaker 1: lie deer. So I got some friends who are gonna
Speaker 1: who gives me a couple of deers and I give
Speaker 1: it away, and so i'm I said, And they're from
Speaker 1: all over the world. They're about twelve of them there,
Speaker 1: but they're about ten different ethnic groups. And they move
Speaker 1: them in and out, so they enjoyed. I give them
Speaker 1: all kinds of vegetables and so forth. You spread the
Speaker 1: gospel of wild game, Oh, wild game and vegetable and service.
Speaker 1: People call me and and so safe Charles, you have this?
Speaker 1: Can you tell me why? I said, I'll get you something.
Speaker 1: And I get in and they said, well, what can
Speaker 1: I pay? You said, there's no money. There's no money.
Speaker 1: You give back. When you give back, it comes back
Speaker 1: to you. And and we'll talk about that in detail.
Speaker 1: How um, the many people who have invited mina hunt
Speaker 1: on their lands, and we'll get to that too, because
Speaker 1: I want to kind of go in order here. Okay,
Speaker 1: go ahead, But but there is this amazing thing that
Speaker 1: you do. You said that a lot of people think
Speaker 1: you're an outfitter. Right, well, I remember you when well,
Speaker 1: when I mentioned we hunted the other you gave me
Speaker 1: your business card and it says it's to some effect
Speaker 1: like Charles the rabbit Hunter Rodney, and it says the
Speaker 1: only game in town for me. It's the only game
Speaker 1: in town for me. Because I don't I don't want
Speaker 1: to insult any of the other hunters. But this is
Speaker 1: all that I do, which is wonderful. And it did.
Speaker 1: It doesn't say like call me for hunts. It doesn't
Speaker 1: say an outfitter a guy, there's nothing of that. You literally,
Speaker 1: for no money, go hunting rabbits with anybody who desires
Speaker 1: to do so. And that well, you'll take the time
Speaker 1: to do it. And I tell people, as my wife
Speaker 1: made the cart up, she said, you could call started company.
Speaker 1: She said, you need a card so these guys can
Speaker 1: call you. So it's got to sell in the house
Speaker 1: and THEMB and the email thing on there. And this
Speaker 1: was way before texting. So I passed my out to
Speaker 1: various people, and UM, a lot of people say, are
Speaker 1: you an outfitter? Well, how do I get on your schedule?
Speaker 1: What do you try to say? Up? Let me clear
Speaker 1: this up. I am not an outfitter. I'm just a
Speaker 1: guy that love I'm passionate about rabbit hunting and having
Speaker 1: good dogs, and I enjoy people, and I meet people
Speaker 1: easy people. We we tend to take to each other.
Speaker 1: I can tell the ones that's laying a lot of
Speaker 1: bs out okay. And I don't hunt with half crazy people.
Speaker 1: If if they talk foolish, they won't get invited. And
Speaker 1: if they come and hunt one time and they do
Speaker 1: something wrong that's not good hunting mannerism, then they're on
Speaker 1: their first and their last and they only hunt. But
Speaker 1: I'm a good judge of people. And some of the
Speaker 1: people I've been hunting with for ten twelve years, and
Speaker 1: they've bring many of their friends and family members and
Speaker 1: so forth. Uh, and most of them have some of
Speaker 1: the same hunting times It's like in February when the
Speaker 1: waterfowl and deer seasons over. Um, the four saturdays in
Speaker 1: February and presidency, they belong to the same four people,
Speaker 1: and nobody can break that lineup. They enjoy it so
Speaker 1: much they won't give it up. That's what it's about.
Speaker 1: I mean, if it's it's I think it goes back
Speaker 1: to what you're saying, having a garden, eating what you kill,
Speaker 1: having a community people that share those same values enough
Speaker 1: to the fact they want to come and get your vegetables,
Speaker 1: but they know they're they're ready to be plucked. That's
Speaker 1: just a life of giving, right, a life of sharing,
Speaker 1: a life of you. You become passionate about something, the
Speaker 1: first thing you think of is to share it with people, right.
Speaker 1: And we grew up that way. We shared. Um, we
Speaker 1: shared with many people. And there were people just as poor,
Speaker 1: poor as us or poor and the rich people we
Speaker 1: knew who they were. They were the big land on
Speaker 1: us who want all the land. Uh. And you know
Speaker 1: they didn't congregate around you because you of that other class,
Speaker 1: whether you're black or white. But um, you know that's
Speaker 1: how it was, and the value was instilled loop in me.
Speaker 1: Two treat people the way you want to be treated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it works well, seems to. So you met your
Speaker 1: I want to hear about just because your life or
Speaker 1: your wife is as lovely and and I just want
Speaker 1: to hear about. It's your anniversary coming up, so I
Speaker 1: want to hear about how you guys met because that's
Speaker 1: about the reason you change to Maryland. Well, my brother recently,
Speaker 1: he's a Catholic priest. He recently celebrated his fiftieth anniversary
Speaker 1: as a priest in May of this year. So he
Speaker 1: was the assistant pastor after he was ordained. He was
Speaker 1: ordained in sixty eight. So Uh, I came up in
Speaker 1: December or of seventy to visit with him, and he
Speaker 1: was assistant pastor of a church here in Washington, d c. St.
Speaker 1: Luke's Catholic Church, and my wife uh worked there as
Speaker 1: a student, typing and entering the phone on weekend. So
Speaker 1: I caught her eye, but she didn't want to have
Speaker 1: anything to do with me the first year, so I
Speaker 1: had my hair long at the time, And tell you
Speaker 1: the truth, I had been out with some of the
Speaker 1: local boys and we were drinking uh we call it
Speaker 1: pluck cheap wine. And gin and my eyes was a
Speaker 1: little red, and oh I had a big, big, wild
Speaker 1: looking after back the time, UM quite different. Yeah we're talking.
Speaker 1: We're talking seventies and we were going through all of
Speaker 1: the cultural changes, in the cultural shocks. So she didn't
Speaker 1: want to have anything to do it. But I like
Speaker 1: what I saw and the next year said I'm going back.
Speaker 1: So I went back on semester Christmas break the next year,
Speaker 1: and I cut my hair and I didn't drink anything,
Speaker 1: so my eyes, it was all intentional by me. And
Speaker 1: she claimed she didn't have a boyfriend. Then dad broke up,
Speaker 1: so she was looking, and so we got to talking
Speaker 1: and visiting. Then we corresponding and visiting, and after college,
Speaker 1: I came back in the next summer and we got
Speaker 1: married in September. So so that's the short end of
Speaker 1: the of the love story. And so what did I
Speaker 1: move here? Because there were jobs here and in Baton Rouge,
Speaker 1: most of the jobs were kind of menial, working in
Speaker 1: the chemical plants, and I never wanted to work in
Speaker 1: the chemical plants. I knew many people who did that work.
Speaker 1: I said, I can do better. So I came here
Speaker 1: and I got a job in the federal government down
Speaker 1: at the Naval Arden and Station in Indian Head. Mayor
Speaker 1: M worked there a few years and then work some
Speaker 1: other federal agencies. And she was working for the Navy Department.
Speaker 1: And we progress along the promotion chain and did well.
Speaker 1: We both ended up in human resources. So that's one
Speaker 1: of my other qualities. I know people from a human
Speaker 1: resource standford. We hired, promoted, classified, did pay changes. Um.
Speaker 1: I worked six years in equal employment Opportunity where I
Speaker 1: dealt with all the people's problems, the discrimination and all
Speaker 1: of the things associated with that not being treated fairly
Speaker 1: perception or otherwise. So I got to know people well
Speaker 1: in handling problems, hiring, firing, all of that counseling. So
Speaker 1: I got to know people quite well. People people in
Speaker 1: a part of people. And it all stems back to
Speaker 1: my upbringing. So UM, and then we just we progress on.
Speaker 1: We both did about thirty plus years in the federal government.
Speaker 1: We've been retired for a few years. I've been retired
Speaker 1: for fifteen years and she twelve years. And we raised
Speaker 1: out with three children in this house. Matter of fact,
Speaker 1: the last one who's thirty seven, she was three days
Speaker 1: old when we moved into this house and they're all gone.
Speaker 1: So uh, we're comfortable and we give thanks to God
Speaker 1: all the time for all of our blessing. We have
Speaker 1: three beautiful kids. They each have two children, and they
Speaker 1: all went to Catholic elementary, Catholic high school, and college.
Speaker 1: And two of them have advanced degrees. So and they're
Speaker 1: doing quite well with their families. So as they say,
Speaker 1: the apple don't fall far from the tree, so they
Speaker 1: have they have good quality and good skills to good
Speaker 1: so well, I mean what strikes me in that whole
Speaker 1: that is, you know, you grew up in segregated Louisiana,
Speaker 1: six seasons of it, and then you move here and
Speaker 1: you you you're working in human resources and discrimination. What
Speaker 1: was that like kind of going from you know, where
Speaker 1: you grew up. I mean, as you said, that's how
Speaker 1: you grew up, how it was at the time, you
Speaker 1: didn't think much of it, But then you get to
Speaker 1: a different part of the world and you start to
Speaker 1: deal with those problems in a more modern sense. Well,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a survival thing. You know, the culture
Speaker 1: dictated how you behave and how you acted where you associated.
Speaker 1: I remember going not being able to go into many
Speaker 1: places because the signs were and if the signs were
Speaker 1: not there, there are certain places you knew not to
Speaker 1: go into, and we were taught not to go into,
Speaker 1: and certain people we couldn't associate with because of how
Speaker 1: things were. But then here I come into a world
Speaker 1: where I have to deal with some of those same
Speaker 1: problems as a young adult in hiring people, hiring people
Speaker 1: of entreating and fair of any color, any belief they have,
Speaker 1: and treat them and or. And then later on when
Speaker 1: I was the equal employment manager at this one agency,
Speaker 1: uh ensuring that everybody got fair treatment, and going out
Speaker 1: and defending people who I thought were wrong. And I
Speaker 1: did that. It probably cost me a few things, because
Speaker 1: I think I fought some battles that some people thought
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have fought, but I saw wrong and I
Speaker 1: tried to deliver it and make it right and so forth.
Speaker 1: And I had some hard cases where some people were
Speaker 1: uh mislabel for no reason other than somebody down the
Speaker 1: line with a little bit more power or ump um,
Speaker 1: I thought they should be treated differently. In that treatment
Speaker 1: I thought was unfair, and I spoke out about it.
Speaker 1: And most of those people were not my color, and
Speaker 1: I didn't. I treated everybody as fair as I can be,
Speaker 1: regardless of who walked in that door. If they came
Speaker 1: with the problem, I shut the door and I listened,
Speaker 1: and I took notes, and we took We had certain
Speaker 1: steps you have to go into into the the equal
Speaker 1: employment channel. You have to do certain things in a
Speaker 1: step by step, in a timely fashion. And I was
Speaker 1: supposed to be neutral, and I try to maintain that neutrality.
Speaker 1: And when some of them I thought it was wrong,
Speaker 1: I told them, you're you're not right with this. And
Speaker 1: when the managers were wrong, all right, I told them too,
Speaker 1: and I shared with him. So I didn't choose one
Speaker 1: side or an other. But some way, ain't there unknownst
Speaker 1: to me, I must have helped some of the wrong
Speaker 1: people or took on some of the issues that the
Speaker 1: management didn't care about. But they never came back and
Speaker 1: told me so. But I did what my heart felt.
Speaker 1: And I think today when I look at people, I
Speaker 1: don't look at anybody's color. I don't look at anybody's religion,
Speaker 1: whether they believe or don't believe. And we surely don't
Speaker 1: talk about politics when we go in the field. In
Speaker 1: a lot of times, when I take various groups hunting.
Speaker 1: I always try and take one of my buddies because
Speaker 1: sometimes we have some new guys that don't understand all
Speaker 1: of the features of rabbit hunting. So while I'm working
Speaker 1: the dog, my buddy will help keep them in line.
Speaker 1: And the main thing with the guys is two of
Speaker 1: them will get together and start talking. And the one
Speaker 1: thing I find that's a big nuisance, now they need
Speaker 1: to leave those cell phones in the truck. If you
Speaker 1: got to talk on the phone, then you need to
Speaker 1: stay at home. So I bring one of my buddies.
Speaker 1: And most of the people I take hunting, they're not
Speaker 1: of my color, my race, but that doesn't matter. I
Speaker 1: tell everybody we're rabbit hunters. With rabbit hunters, that's what
Speaker 1: we're doing. We're not doing We're not trying to cure
Speaker 1: the world of the social ills and all the other
Speaker 1: things and what you believe in, what you know. We're
Speaker 1: rabbit hunting. Long as you're safe and and you're having fun.
Speaker 1: And I tell them my job simply is with the
Speaker 1: dogs to get some rabbits up. Hopefully you make a
Speaker 1: shot or two. Now, if you kill, that's on you.
Speaker 1: If you can't shoot and you keep missing, then there's
Speaker 1: a lot of teasing. But that's my job. The church
Speaker 1: rabbit hunt is open and you're safe, and you're safe,
Speaker 1: and all the guys are hunters. They hunt different things,
Speaker 1: some shooting them in the air, some waiting all data
Speaker 1: for that one shot on that big elk or moves
Speaker 1: or big white tails somewhere and and but they know,
Speaker 1: they know safety and that's the key, and they have fun,
Speaker 1: especially because you're a rabbit hunting there's a rabbits running everywhere.
Speaker 1: There's people going everywhere, there's dogs everywhere. Right, you have
Speaker 1: to be aware, very aware of what your point. And
Speaker 1: people don't understand it. They said, well, Charles, that I
Speaker 1: get all these questions. So they say, how close are
Speaker 1: the dogs are the rabbit of the dogs gonna catch
Speaker 1: the rabbit? I say, very rare, very rare. They'll they'll
Speaker 1: they'll get a wounded rabbit or down rabbit underneath the
Speaker 1: brush and they'll bring him out. Okay, But when the
Speaker 1: rabbit get up, I know that the rabbit is up
Speaker 1: by the sound of the dog's voices. Sometimes I see
Speaker 1: the rabbit, sometimes I see the grass shake. And for safety,
Speaker 1: you never shoot in the grass. You or your target.
Speaker 1: The dogs are running twenty five to a hundred yards
Speaker 1: behind the rabbit. So when you see that rabbit make
Speaker 1: its turn and come back, he's given the dog to
Speaker 1: slip because he's gonna run zig zag. He's gonna make
Speaker 1: a double back on his trail. He's gonna circle, he's
Speaker 1: gonna loop, he's gonna do all sorts of things to
Speaker 1: make you look bad. So yeah, yeah, but you did
Speaker 1: good on the hunt. I was. I was very thrilled.
Speaker 1: I think we got fourteen that then you must have
Speaker 1: got four or five. But you will, you feel pretty
Speaker 1: good about us. I wasn't too sad about it. You
Speaker 1: did well, I'll say, I'll take that compliment, especially on
Speaker 1: the recorded recorded conversation. So let's go back. Let's go
Speaker 1: to the start of a rabbit hunt, right because I
Speaker 1: want to get your tips and strategies and and what
Speaker 1: you look for. But so you have, you know, let's
Speaker 1: say the property that we hunted on, okas back there,
Speaker 1: what do you look for and where you're gonna find rabbits?
Speaker 1: What's the first thing that you show up to a
Speaker 1: place and you're looking at the area you can hunt
Speaker 1: either whether you're looking at a map or just looking
Speaker 1: at the tangible wood lot or open field. What are
Speaker 1: you looking for. What you're mainly looking for is cover.
Speaker 1: Rabbits need cover. They hide under the cover, and they
Speaker 1: need to cover to protect themselves from predators because rabbits, uh,
Speaker 1: they're food that most they have more predators behind them
Speaker 1: than any other animals. And hawks, owls, eagle crows, all
Speaker 1: of the flying predators look for rabbits. Then you have
Speaker 1: the ground animals. That's look from foxes, coyotes, feral cats,
Speaker 1: feral dogs, wild dogs, man in the road when they
Speaker 1: cross the road in the darkness, the light of the
Speaker 1: cars blinding, so you see plenty of dead on the road.
Speaker 1: So that's about ten things that's trying to kill a rag.
Speaker 1: So when you look, you're looking for cover. Briars, thick briars,
Speaker 1: honeysuckle in a mixed with briars, grassy fields, weed fields, uh,
Speaker 1: small trees. You're not gonna find many in where the
Speaker 1: woods are open. Now of the woods, on the edge
Speaker 1: of the woods, you've got a lot of briars and
Speaker 1: a lot of honeysuckle. Where we hunted. They're gonna they're
Speaker 1: gonna be in there because they can hide, and they'll
Speaker 1: cross woods, they'll cross water, and they'll come back. One
Speaker 1: thing about a rabbit, when he gets up, he always
Speaker 1: returned to where he got up. So the dogs will
Speaker 1: chase him in whatever direction, and he'll loop. He'll make
Speaker 1: a turn. Sometime you'll go twenty five yards. Sometime you'll
Speaker 1: go out of hearing. As long as they're pushing him
Speaker 1: and they're running him on scent, he's gonna keep moving.
Speaker 1: He runs so far and he stops and listen to
Speaker 1: those dogs, and he's listening up ahead. So if the
Speaker 1: hunters are up there bs and talking and making noise,
Speaker 1: moving their feet around his dry leaves, those long ears
Speaker 1: are not just there too for pretty to show they
Speaker 1: are there, because he's listening. He's got a keen sight
Speaker 1: and he's got a keen hearing. And everything is brown.
Speaker 1: The grass is brown, the ground is brown, the rabbits brown.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to see him. So he'll fly by.
Speaker 1: He used camouflage and he used his stealth speed to
Speaker 1: get away from you. So you're looking for cover. Now.
Speaker 1: I've hunted some woods in particular, like in Louisiana when
Speaker 1: we go when I used to go there and hunt
Speaker 1: those swamp rabbits. They hunt a lot in the woods
Speaker 1: because they are big briars in the woods. And so
Speaker 1: we'd go down in the woods and it might be water.
Speaker 1: Those things run in the water, sit in the water.
Speaker 1: They cross those little streams in Louisiana they call them
Speaker 1: bayous and none but a mini river. They will swim
Speaker 1: across it. They'll hide in the water, and and and
Speaker 1: uh and everything. That's why shocked people we're hunting together.
Speaker 1: Where these rabbits would end up places where you'd find them.
Speaker 1: They be chased into a freaking rock quarry and crawling
Speaker 1: they they will find. In Louisiana, there are a lot
Speaker 1: of oak trees, so there are a lot of holes
Speaker 1: in the trees at the bottom, and they'll climb and
Speaker 1: go in those holes. Now in Maryland, we have a
Speaker 1: lot of groundhogs. So groundhogs have holes and burrows all
Speaker 1: over the We hunt a lot of hedgerows. Hedgerows or
Speaker 1: nothing but a big wide ditch that separates fields. Farmers
Speaker 1: will grow corn and soybean and ryegrass and wheat, and
Speaker 1: they plow the field so it's clear, and then there's
Speaker 1: a hedgerow and that separate this section. Then maybe a
Speaker 1: hundred yards over theres another hedgerow, or when it ends
Speaker 1: up with a with a weed feel or a little
Speaker 1: briar covered area. So those rabbits come out and eat,
Speaker 1: and then they live in those hedgerows. So we hunt
Speaker 1: those hedgerows down. And I tell the guys, I said,
Speaker 1: do not be afraid to take that long shot. Take
Speaker 1: that shot, but go check where you shot, because it
Speaker 1: only takes one or two pellets down a rabbit. Rabbit
Speaker 1: is one of the easiest thing to kill. So you
Speaker 1: walk up there fast and you look on the ground.
Speaker 1: If you don't see him, you look around and you
Speaker 1: stand still because he might be crawling away. So if
Speaker 1: you see the grass shaking a little bit, then you
Speaker 1: got him down and he'll crawl away. And he knows
Speaker 1: this is his neighborhood. He knows where all of those
Speaker 1: holes are because that's where he lives every day. And
Speaker 1: he'll find a hole and going in. Now, we gotta
Speaker 1: lost rabbit. So if they take that time walking up
Speaker 1: that rabbit is crawling, he finds that holy go away.
Speaker 1: Sometime I've been able to pull him out of the
Speaker 1: hole with a stick. But those holes curves and so forth.
Speaker 1: So you lost the rabbit, and if he if he's
Speaker 1: broken down, broken down, mean you've broken the back leg
Speaker 1: or one or two legs and he's crawling. And if
Speaker 1: he if you see him and he's still moving fast
Speaker 1: and you try to shoot him in the head, okay,
Speaker 1: But if he's down and he went under something, my
Speaker 1: dogs will find them. They'll go under the bar. They
Speaker 1: do not eat the down rabbits. Two or three of
Speaker 1: them will bring him out to me, and boy, through
Speaker 1: my face glows like I won the power ball. My
Speaker 1: face is big when I when I first saw a
Speaker 1: couple of dogs doing that, because we lost the rabbit
Speaker 1: and here they come out with the rabbit in their mouth.
Speaker 1: On one hunt last year, a boy shot at a rabbit.
Speaker 1: And when I use the term boy, it's not a derogatory,
Speaker 1: it's something we hunters call each other. So he shot
Speaker 1: at a rabbit and the rabbit ran across a gully
Speaker 1: and they went on the other side, and the dogs
Speaker 1: pulled up. When when we say pulled up, that's after
Speaker 1: you shot at a rabbit and the dog stopped barking
Speaker 1: and stopped running in the milling around. I said that
Speaker 1: rabbits down I said, I hope he's not in a hole.
Speaker 1: So I go over on the other side, because these
Speaker 1: guys don't move fast enough. I'm sixty eight years old
Speaker 1: and most of these guys are half my age, and
Speaker 1: I out work them all in the woods. So so,
Speaker 1: but this is all I do, so I know all
Speaker 1: of the shortcuts. So I go up there and two
Speaker 1: of the dogs had the same rabbit in their mouth
Speaker 1: trying to bring him back to me. One had him
Speaker 1: by the front leg in his mouth, and the other
Speaker 1: one hand and by the back leg. Now I needed
Speaker 1: a camera for that. Oh that was just awesome. You
Speaker 1: figure out where the rabbits are, I mean most places,
Speaker 1: most places you go find the cover. It's not very
Speaker 1: it's not a hard thing to do most times. No,
Speaker 1: especially here in southern Maryland and the east eastern Shore
Speaker 1: of Maryland. You find the briers, you find you find
Speaker 1: the rabbits, right, and rabbits are plentiful here for sure.
Speaker 1: So then you you're getting your dogs out. So what
Speaker 1: how many dogs? What kind of dogs? And give us
Speaker 1: a breakdown and kind of that part of it. Okay,
Speaker 1: these dogs are pumped up. This is what they live for.
Speaker 1: This is their excitement. So you you you got the cover.
Speaker 1: And when I let them off the truck, they're coming
Speaker 1: out like F fourteen jets off of the tail gate.
Speaker 1: I gotta ramp for them to come down. They don't
Speaker 1: want to walk on the ramp, they want to jump
Speaker 1: off the top. I got all these photos of these dogs,
Speaker 1: ears flopping around. They're hot, they're barking, and normally what
Speaker 1: they do. They've been in the box for maybe a
Speaker 1: two hour ride. So they go and they do their
Speaker 1: bathroom and then they saw it searching and they're going
Speaker 1: through the briars and they're looking for that first cent.
Speaker 1: So they get that first cent up and the chases.
Speaker 1: These are beagles. Uh, their medium speed A run all male.
Speaker 1: Medium speed. They're all pure bred. That is medium speed,
Speaker 1: the blank of their legs. Medi even speed is how
Speaker 1: fast they run. How do you determine? Well, Uh, if
Speaker 1: you have a slow dog, he's gonna be hunting right
Speaker 1: in right near in front of you, moving real slow.
Speaker 1: Is that just the physical ability of the dog. The
Speaker 1: way that's a that's bread into the boy. If you
Speaker 1: you a lot of guys, there are three speeds slow speed.
Speaker 1: Most guys don't use. Most guys use medium speed. They're
Speaker 1: moving fairly quick. They're searching, and when the chase get on,
Speaker 1: they're moving out fairly quick. Now there are some guys
Speaker 1: like fast dog. Fast dogs are gonna go through the briars,
Speaker 1: and when they push the rabbit, they're gonna push him fast.
Speaker 1: They're gonna push him far. And uh, when he comes back,
Speaker 1: he's coming back fast. He's gonna come back fair. But
Speaker 1: that medium speed gives you time to set up. Okay,
Speaker 1: because when the dog get the rabbit up, the rabbit's
Speaker 1: gonna run in a certain direction. So I tell the guys, okay,
Speaker 1: he got up right here, he's gonna come back close
Speaker 1: to that same spot where he got up because this
Speaker 1: is his home. So if it's four of us hunting
Speaker 1: and we're hunting a stretch of cover, I'll put one
Speaker 1: guy on one side so he can wash the inside.
Speaker 1: Then he can watch if you run on the outside
Speaker 1: or try to cross over. One guy on the other side,
Speaker 1: and he can watch that side if he comes running
Speaker 1: down the side, and two of us in the middle. Okay,
Speaker 1: and you find yourself a clearing that you can shoot
Speaker 1: a shooting lane. So when he comes back and you
Speaker 1: see him. He might come back hopping and listening. He
Speaker 1: might come back at full speed, and you said, don't there,
Speaker 1: you go, So the kids, you yelled to your buddy,
Speaker 1: he's coming to you, so he can get prepared if
Speaker 1: you miss him. And then the two guys and you
Speaker 1: can only shoot in front. You can't shoot sideways because
Speaker 1: you've got people close to you. And we we must
Speaker 1: write orange. According according to Maryland, way is orange at
Speaker 1: least one one or more pieces of blaze orange. So
Speaker 1: I carry caps in the truck to give those guys
Speaker 1: who come with the other color caps. And so you
Speaker 1: shoot in front of you. The two side guys can
Speaker 1: shoot on the side because there's nobody there. Now, if
Speaker 1: he runs between us, and he runs behind us, you
Speaker 1: can turn and shoot that way as long as it's
Speaker 1: safe because there's nobody back there but your man, your ground,
Speaker 1: and he's want to come back. He's gonna sit long
Speaker 1: as you stand still, and he will come back. And
Speaker 1: sometime he'll pop up right near you and he'll sit still,
Speaker 1: and you're looking to your left and he's over to
Speaker 1: your right, and he sees you well before and hears
Speaker 1: you well before you see him, so he sits there,
Speaker 1: So if nothing happens, he might stay sitting there and
Speaker 1: he had no reason to move. Say the dog loses
Speaker 1: him and he'll sit there, then he'll take off. But
Speaker 1: most time, uh, they come back and somebody get the shot,
Speaker 1: as long as they're teeny. But you don't look at
Speaker 1: where the dogs are barking, look way in front of
Speaker 1: the dogs, because he's way in front of the dogs.
Speaker 1: It is a strange it's a strange situation because as
Speaker 1: a hunter, you're you're trained, especially with upland game. Right
Speaker 1: dog on point, you got a pointer, right point, you're
Speaker 1: looking where he is is gonna flush. I'm work close
Speaker 1: to there. In this case, like you said, the dogs
Speaker 1: are running in front of us, the rabbits are in
Speaker 1: front of them. There's a bunch of times where I'll
Speaker 1: just be walking along and I'd look up and be
Speaker 1: a rabbit standing there now and he'd, like you say,
Speaker 1: he was standing there looking at me while I was
Speaker 1: walking around. Or I'd be standing there and there'll be
Speaker 1: a rabbit comes shooting back towards me like a missile. Well,
Speaker 1: that happens to now. Some of the places on Marilynis
Speaker 1: and Shore, there are a lot of farms where they
Speaker 1: have fur trappers. They trapped the foxes. The foxes on
Speaker 1: the man thing that eat up a lot of rabbit
Speaker 1: because they hunt them night and day. So they trapped
Speaker 1: the foxes for the hide. And so when they trapped
Speaker 1: the foxes, and some of these guys get hundreds of foxes.
Speaker 1: You don't know where all these foxes come, but they
Speaker 1: tell me they get hundreds of foxes. So when you
Speaker 1: kill all the foxes, then the rabbit have time to multiply.
Speaker 1: And a lot of the places I'm privy to hunt on,
Speaker 1: I'm hunting on land that eat the fox fox trappers
Speaker 1: on it, or they have permission to trap the foxes.
Speaker 1: So the rabbits multiplied. And where we hunted there is
Speaker 1: a trapper who comes in and trapped the foxes, so
Speaker 1: they multiply. We've hunted there, uh each year, maybe twice,
Speaker 1: except we didn't hunt the last year due to family
Speaker 1: matters and illness of our hosts. But we get double
Speaker 1: digits in there, uh, and that's plenty. I remember back
Speaker 1: in the day before I knew all of these people,
Speaker 1: twenty five years ago, we would go hunt, we'd get
Speaker 1: one or two, sometime none. You're telling me yeah. And
Speaker 1: that's it's a big thing, folks to understand. I mean
Speaker 1: in the American West, back in the in the turn
Speaker 1: of the century, where your rabbits stacked up two three high.
Speaker 1: I mean the fields of thousands of rabbits. And so
Speaker 1: when you know, you said you devote your life to rabbit, honey,
Speaker 1: you shoot all these rabbits. You're not putting a dent
Speaker 1: in the poppet, that is correct, not a dent one.
Speaker 1: Give you a couple examples. You mentioned you were walking
Speaker 1: in the brush and you saw a rabbit over to
Speaker 1: your right, and the dogs are running one. Many times
Speaker 1: where there are lots of rabbits, the dogs will run
Speaker 1: that one rabbit, but you'll see two or more side rabbits.
Speaker 1: These are rabbits that are getting out of the bushes
Speaker 1: because the dogs have gone through that and they don't
Speaker 1: know where to go. They hear voices, they hear shooting
Speaker 1: over here, they hear dogs over here, but the dogs
Speaker 1: go through, so they hop out for safety. Unbeknownst to them,
Speaker 1: there's a hunter nearby, and I tell the guys it's
Speaker 1: okay to shoot that one. Shoot him, pick him up,
Speaker 1: put him on a tree. Branch, put him in your
Speaker 1: in your pouch, and the dogs are gonna run that one.
Speaker 1: And rarely do they break and split. Occasionally, maybe twice
Speaker 1: a year, I might have the pack running two rabbits,
Speaker 1: but most time they all gonna stay in that same
Speaker 1: rabbit inside rabbits. And I tell the fellas. Some guy said, well,
Speaker 1: I saw a rabbit run over here, and I saw
Speaker 1: one run over there. I said, if you didn't shoot,
Speaker 1: because a lot of those guys are scared to shoot.
Speaker 1: They don't know what's the optimum distance to shoot. See
Speaker 1: myself and a few other people, we have no scared
Speaker 1: shells because we're gonna that's right, and they're gonna make more,
Speaker 1: and we keep Remington Federal and all the people win
Speaker 1: Chester in business. We're gonna shoot and and we go check.
Speaker 1: So I tell them, if you don't shoot and the
Speaker 1: dogs are running one, we're gonna kill that one. And
Speaker 1: then if you saw one, mark a spot where you
Speaker 1: saw him. I saw a rabbit run by that down tree.
Speaker 1: I saw a rabbit run over by the ditch about
Speaker 1: whatever over here, and we'll work our way around. Those
Speaker 1: dogs will come. And they picked that sent up and
Speaker 1: we got another chill stone, and we get that one
Speaker 1: and and and and just move and move quietly and
Speaker 1: be on your gar be attentive, because as I told
Speaker 1: one fellow, I told him the rabbit was coming on him,
Speaker 1: and he gets all excited. So he had that over
Speaker 1: and under twenty gauge or twenty eight gauge ready, and
Speaker 1: the rabbit bursts out of those bushes, coming straight at it.
Speaker 1: And that is the hardest shot to shoot a rabbit
Speaker 1: when he's coming straight at you, because he's running fast
Speaker 1: and you're aiming and he's shooting over him, so you
Speaker 1: gotta drop down. So he shot boom, You miss him.
Speaker 1: Rabbit ram by boom, he said. Dog on Charles and
Speaker 1: had to beat on him. I don't know how I'm missing.
Speaker 1: I said. Look, let me tell you something. A rabbit
Speaker 1: will make the best shot, the best hunter, look bad
Speaker 1: on your best day. So suck it up, get ready,
Speaker 1: and you can redeem yourself. Said that like the good
Speaker 1: rabbit will make you look bad on your best day,
Speaker 1: the best day, four or five, four or five good
Speaker 1: shots today, you should be happy. That's right, Thank you,
Speaker 1: Thanks to the rabbit. Rabbits. Now you have a unique
Speaker 1: way of talking to your dogs in the field. I
Speaker 1: think probably most people are. And I enjoyed listening to
Speaker 1: you work those dogs at I think that's probably the
Speaker 1: most unique thing about hunting with you, was just listening
Speaker 1: to your run them. So give me an example of al.
Speaker 1: You know, if we were hunting right now and there's dogs,
Speaker 1: how would you How do you talk to them? How
Speaker 1: do you command them? Well, that's that's one of the
Speaker 1: traits that a lot of guys say. They come out
Speaker 1: to hear me. They don't care if they kill anything.
Speaker 1: They say it's lack of it's like a stage performance.
Speaker 1: And I get teased a lot, uh and and and
Speaker 1: so forth. So when all of the dogs have names,
Speaker 1: the dogs I hunted with now my two best dogs
Speaker 1: on Hank and Rattler. Rattler is seven, Hank is six.
Speaker 1: That are two best there. They'll bring a rabbit out,
Speaker 1: they'll stay on the scent. When the mother dogs lose them,
Speaker 1: they will find it. Then I have Bozo and Blue
Speaker 1: Blue is a blue tick. All of these dogs were
Speaker 1: named before I got them because I was going to
Speaker 1: ask you. I wanted to pick some of those names
Speaker 1: because I buy them when they're one to two years old.
Speaker 1: So the owners have named them and they raised them
Speaker 1: and they and they're all good dogs. Then I have
Speaker 1: Buckshot and Sam. They're like twenties seven months old. So
Speaker 1: they're coming along good. So when I put them down
Speaker 1: and they take off, to get them going and where
Speaker 1: I want them to go, I call them and I said,
Speaker 1: come on over here, come on over here, come on
Speaker 1: over here. We're gonna hunt over get in the bushes.
Speaker 1: And they understand. Now blue lights to hunt a little wide.
Speaker 1: So and when they when they when a rabbit is up,
Speaker 1: I said, come on, find him, now, find him, get
Speaker 1: him up, find him. And they respond. And when they
Speaker 1: lose one, I could be fifty to sixty yards away
Speaker 1: and I'll yelled to him. Find them. What that does?
Speaker 1: That give them encouragement? And they're searching a little bit harder.
Speaker 1: And I yelled to him and I ain't come on board,
Speaker 1: get them, find them. Don't make me look bad in
Speaker 1: front of these guys. They're gonna laugh at me. And
Speaker 1: Teesney and the guys are rolling and next thing you know,
Speaker 1: the rabbits is coming and their teas and so when
Speaker 1: they shoot. When I was shooting and kill a rabbit,
Speaker 1: and I try not to do too much shooting because
Speaker 1: my wife gave me a hard time. She said, how
Speaker 1: many did y'all kill on one hunt? I said, well,
Speaker 1: we kill eight? How many? You killer? Said? I kill six?
Speaker 1: When are they gonna start killing? I say, when they
Speaker 1: get there behind and hunted. You stuck a few in everyone.
Speaker 1: Sometimes there's a rabbit, you gotta shoot it, and I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna let them. I'm not gonna let them pass.
Speaker 1: I'll let him run because I want the dogs to
Speaker 1: run the rabbit. I don't want the dogs to one
Speaker 1: run one rabbit for an hour and a half, which
Speaker 1: they do sometimes, and so I want the god's skill.
Speaker 1: But if they are so out of it, then I killed.
Speaker 1: But I yelled to them and encouragement, and then I'll
Speaker 1: yell dead rabbit, Yeah, give me the full dead rabbit.
Speaker 1: I'll say, damn, somebody, you got him. I said, dead rabbit.
Speaker 1: Pick him up. And what you want to do when
Speaker 1: you shoot the rabbit, you want to stay where the
Speaker 1: rabbit is down. Now, if he's crawling, you don't shoot
Speaker 1: him again and put pepping him up with lead because
Speaker 1: you just put your foot on him. Rabbit is one
Speaker 1: of the easiest thing to kill. Hit him with a
Speaker 1: chop behind the neck with your hand. You can kill him,
Speaker 1: or hit him on the gun barrel, hit him on
Speaker 1: the tree. You put your foot on him and leave
Speaker 1: him on the ground. So when the dogs come, they're
Speaker 1: gonna follow the scent line to the down rabbit. This
Speaker 1: is their reward for running. When they sniffed that down rabbit.
Speaker 1: A couple of mines don't even come. They just look
Speaker 1: at him and keep on going. They know, they know
Speaker 1: they have scored a touchdown, so now it's time to
Speaker 1: go searching again so they can score another touchdown. And
Speaker 1: they know because if you don't let him see that
Speaker 1: dead rabbit. And some of the boys tend to pick
Speaker 1: him up fast and said, no, no no, no, pick him
Speaker 1: a fast, let him let him smell it. And sometime
Speaker 1: I'll walk over and hold a rabbit up and let
Speaker 1: him hold it up and shake it in front of
Speaker 1: their face and they'll look at it, they'll smell they
Speaker 1: know it down. But if you don't do that, they
Speaker 1: keep searching because they think that rabbit is still up
Speaker 1: until they run out of scent line. So they'll foll
Speaker 1: him up that scent line, and when they run they
Speaker 1: are running close together when you know you've got a
Speaker 1: good pack of dogs, they're running. And I tell people this,
Speaker 1: and I write. I write articles for a couple of magazines,
Speaker 1: Better Beagling, a national magazine and out of Indiana find people.
Speaker 1: And I write for a local magazine called the Maryland
Speaker 1: Hunting Quarterly, maybe a couple of times a year, but
Speaker 1: I write five or six every year for Better Being.
Speaker 1: The ones I write for Better Beaglan they're they're either
Speaker 1: about hunts. I take pictures of the guys, the rabbits
Speaker 1: and put them in and send everybody a copy and
Speaker 1: they can brag to their friends. And I'll write stories
Speaker 1: sometime about a hunter. You wrote a story about our hunt.
Speaker 1: My dad and I came out hunt with you, and
Speaker 1: you wrote a story about our hunt. Now I'm a writer,
Speaker 1: that's my profession too. And I read this story you
Speaker 1: wrote in Better Biggling magazine and I thought, how the
Speaker 1: hell does Charles remember all this? You had the most
Speaker 1: intricate details of stuff that I would never remember. Do
Speaker 1: you take notes? Uh? Or do you just have a photograph? Remember,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you this. What A fellow who introduced me
Speaker 1: two the starting introduced him. He was the first person
Speaker 1: to introduced me to people who were in the business
Speaker 1: of land and long story. I'm a long winded but
Speaker 1: I'll cut it shot. He This organization was called the
Speaker 1: Maryland Legislative Sportsman's Foundation, made up of about thirteen guys
Speaker 1: who UH promoted hunting and fishing issues UH pros dot
Speaker 1: com and we testified UH before the legislation and we
Speaker 1: worked with the Department of Natural Resources. They asked me
Speaker 1: to do and all I do charity auctions for a
Speaker 1: lot of groups for hunting and fishing groups. And he said, Charles,
Speaker 1: I got your name from some folks. You did a
Speaker 1: charity auction. Now I don't charge for any of these things.
Speaker 1: Susan B. Coleman for a big cancer raising thing twice
Speaker 1: and our auctioneer couldn't make it. Can you do an
Speaker 1: auction for us? I said sure? But what are you charge?
Speaker 1: I said, well, let me ask you something. I said,
Speaker 1: aren't most of the members hunters and fishermen and water fowlers.
Speaker 1: He said yeah, but that's gotta do anything. I said,
Speaker 1: I don't want any money. I want permission to hunt
Speaker 1: on the land that you guys own. AlSi said, that's it.
Speaker 1: I said, that's it, I said, Plus, you can come
Speaker 1: rabbit hunt with me. So he told me. After a
Speaker 1: couple of hunts, he said, and read some of the article,
Speaker 1: he said, How do you remember all of this stuff?
Speaker 1: He said, you remember everything from the first cup of
Speaker 1: coffee two, everything like the shape of the briar past
Speaker 1: the first round. I do have this great memory that
Speaker 1: I can remember who's doing what, who was standing where,
Speaker 1: who shot, who missed? How many times? And I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to remember, but I remember it. I
Speaker 1: remember to cover the type of cover. We're hunting on
Speaker 1: flat ground, were hunting on the slope, were hunting where
Speaker 1: there's a where it bottoms out in a big slope,
Speaker 1: there's a creek running through it. There's a pond over here,
Speaker 1: and and and there were ducks on the pond and
Speaker 1: they flew off. I remember all of this stuff. Who
Speaker 1: killed what, and how many times they shot and so forth.
Speaker 1: I have this memory, and when I put the story together,
Speaker 1: I don't take notes in the field because the action
Speaker 1: is too fast. But what I do when I come
Speaker 1: back home, All right, First rabbit killed within ten minutes
Speaker 1: by being Second rabbit killed by field two shots. Third
Speaker 1: rabbits five guys shot at him, rabbits still running. Because
Speaker 1: I had a little human to it. I can remember
Speaker 1: nineties some percent of what goes on on a hunt,
Speaker 1: and I can hunt multiple hunts, one behind the other,
Speaker 1: and I can still remember with a different group of people,
Speaker 1: and I can still remember. But when I come home,
Speaker 1: I make a little cryptic note, just a few words,
Speaker 1: we killed fourteen. Sometimes I I'll itemize all the rabbits
Speaker 1: up to eighteen rabbits, who did what? And the other
Speaker 1: time I just lumped the story in, and I'll make
Speaker 1: it short because my wife telling me I'm writing too long.
Speaker 1: But I'm long winded. So I can remember all of
Speaker 1: that and and everybody on it. How do you remember that?
Speaker 1: I said, well, I write nine of it, and I
Speaker 1: make up five. And one guy's pretty good writer. One
Speaker 1: guy said he was a joking. He said, you're sure
Speaker 1: you're not making up and ten percent is the truth.
Speaker 1: I said, well, I'm the writer who knows who the
Speaker 1: hell knows. When I read the story you heard about
Speaker 1: our hunt, I thought he could be baking that up.
Speaker 1: But it sounds damn right. It's I don't know how
Speaker 1: he remembered exactly how that rabbit came shooting out of
Speaker 1: that brush. But well, and I tell people this, being
Speaker 1: I tell people this, this is all I do. So
Speaker 1: I'm not hunting with a bow on deer one day,
Speaker 1: and then I'm dove hunting the next day, and then
Speaker 1: black powder comes in and I'm hunting black powder, and
Speaker 1: then I'm hunting with the gun the next day. Then
Speaker 1: I go waterfowl, and i go try to kill a deer.
Speaker 1: I'm not doing all of that. I'm doing one thing,
Speaker 1: and I'm passionate about that one thing, and my memory
Speaker 1: rolls with that one thing. So when I when I say,
Speaker 1: it is pretty well covered because it doesn't take me
Speaker 1: long to capture. We're hunting a hedgerow and the head
Speaker 1: row is made up of this, and we're hunting in
Speaker 1: a in a in a wooded field or grassy field
Speaker 1: and so forth. And I can remember all of that,
Speaker 1: and I don't think I've gotten any arguments back now.
Speaker 1: Jeff Crane, who is president of Congressional Sportsman's Foundation, he
Speaker 1: likes to tease me, and he's a great friend and
Speaker 1: a great guy. So Jeff in one store worry and
Speaker 1: I send Jeff a magazine whether he's in the story
Speaker 1: or not, and they get to go on about three hunts.
Speaker 1: He and Phil whom who works for him and whose
Speaker 1: family owned property, so that we hunt on. So Jeff said,
Speaker 1: he's at Charles. I don't think I missed that many
Speaker 1: you put in the story, I said, believe me, if
Speaker 1: I put in the story, you missed that many. I said, Jeff,
Speaker 1: why are you always bothered about what you missed? You
Speaker 1: shot at four rabbits, you missed two and you killed two. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't think I missed that many, I said,
Speaker 1: next time we write the story, I'm gonna draft that.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna send it to you, and you you market.
Speaker 1: You're telling you if rabbit hunting was baseball, you'd be
Speaker 1: in the Hall of Fame. That's right, that's right, just
Speaker 1: like hitting the fastball. But teasing one thing about hunting
Speaker 1: and fishings. As many of the listeners know this teasing company.
Speaker 1: So if you got thin skin, listen, if you ever
Speaker 1: come hunt around Charles and you don't have a good time,
Speaker 1: that's on you. That's right, it's on chart. Part of
Speaker 1: my job is to make it, to have you get
Speaker 1: to shoot, hopefully kill, and to have some fun. And
Speaker 1: I'm disappointed if you don't shoot, and if you don't
Speaker 1: have some fun. Now they're missing you on your own.
Speaker 1: You're on your own. That's a t shirt. Miss You're
Speaker 1: on your own. Give me the the I don't know
Speaker 1: what you'd call what you call it a chance that
Speaker 1: you do, like a call that you do. Give me
Speaker 1: the it's it's it's just a it's just a call,
Speaker 1: a chant for the dogs. And and they understand it.
Speaker 1: Each hunter, who each owner of dogs have their own china.
Speaker 1: Okay uh. Some say yipe yipe. I say hey, come
Speaker 1: on there, get him in there, boy, find him, now,
Speaker 1: find him and they look a little day. They reached
Speaker 1: back and they they pull a little something out. It's
Speaker 1: like the old fighter. You think he's knocked knocked down
Speaker 1: and he pulls something up out of his sleeve and
Speaker 1: he finds an extra punch somewhere and he to fight.
Speaker 1: They pull a little something up. I've seen dogs tired
Speaker 1: and they get up that last rabbit and it's a
Speaker 1: marathon running. You yell, and in its encouragement, you're coaching them.
Speaker 1: You're telling them what to do. Is just like any
Speaker 1: any coach encouraging their team to play defense, to block
Speaker 1: that shot, to watch that corner, to to do whatever
Speaker 1: it is, uh there there whatever game they're doing, and
Speaker 1: it's the same thing. I'm the coach. So I encouraged them.
Speaker 1: I call the commands and they listen to them and
Speaker 1: they respond to it. Yeah, there's like and you do
Speaker 1: like what's yea? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yea. And when when
Speaker 1: they when we when we see a rabbit running and
Speaker 1: the dogs or someplace else, they'll find that set. But
Speaker 1: maybe they thirty yards away and somebody say, I just
Speaker 1: saw a rabbit run over here, because you walk up
Speaker 1: on them and you can spook them up. And so
Speaker 1: I'll say where, And I'll call a dog. When you
Speaker 1: call him, you gotta call him with enthusiasm in your voice.
Speaker 1: You just can't say here, boy, come here. They're gonna
Speaker 1: look at it. What's wrong with you? So you're calling
Speaker 1: with enthusiasm, and you gotta be consistent. Come on here, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: come on, get him up over here, just jump up,
Speaker 1: come on over here, find him, find him, find him.
Speaker 1: And boy, they're running through the brushes, and all you
Speaker 1: need is one to pick up the scent. And he
Speaker 1: picks up that scent and he gives that certain bark
Speaker 1: the rest of them in about two seconds. They all together.
Speaker 1: And when they're running a hot scent, I tell people
Speaker 1: with my dogs, they're running a pattern so close together
Speaker 1: you can pull a blanket off the bed and throw
Speaker 1: it and cover all six of them. They running that
Speaker 1: pattern that close. Now they are dogs that's gonna keep
Speaker 1: the lead. I got a couple that's always in the
Speaker 1: lead because they a little bit more peppy than the rest.
Speaker 1: Is it a more excitement or is it a veteran dog.
Speaker 1: I think it's a veteran dog, and they gotta lead
Speaker 1: little bit more pep They're a little bit more peppy.
Speaker 1: They got a little bit more speed in their makeup
Speaker 1: than the others. The others are within a foot or
Speaker 1: two apart, but these are always in the leave. Okay uh.
Speaker 1: And then I have the veteran ones that when they
Speaker 1: lose him, they don't give up. They're gonna find him.
Speaker 1: They're gonna be searching, and they're gonna they're gonna think
Speaker 1: like a rabbit, and they're gonna go Those other dogs
Speaker 1: might go to the left, that dog will figure out
Speaker 1: that rabbit didn't go to the left. He went to
Speaker 1: the left, but he doubled back or he tripled back
Speaker 1: and he's over here somewhere. And they figured that out
Speaker 1: because you can have multiple scent because that rabbit gonna
Speaker 1: crisscross his own scent a lot of time. He'll run
Speaker 1: down and he'll run back on the same scent pattern.
Speaker 1: So the dogs don't know which way that scent is going.
Speaker 1: So it's confusing. But those veteran dogs, and it takes
Speaker 1: a dog three to four years to become masters. Okay,
Speaker 1: when they are about four years, thing they own it.
Speaker 1: If they're any good, you can't touch them. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: how do you uh, if somebody wanted to get into
Speaker 1: rabbit Rabbit hunting is is your passion. It's the thing
Speaker 1: that you do, right, and so like you said, a
Speaker 1: lot of hunters just go by the season, right, it's
Speaker 1: waterfowl season, deer season, just going to the thank you.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of people that that just hunt waterfowl,
Speaker 1: a lot of people that just love turkey, says a
Speaker 1: lot they just love a certain thing. Now, But if
Speaker 1: somebody wanted to pick up rabbit hunting and kind of
Speaker 1: take it to your level, how where how would you
Speaker 1: tell him to start? What would you tell him. Think.
Speaker 1: First of all, I would tell them, fine, a veteran
Speaker 1: person who's been doing it, one that you can trust,
Speaker 1: and take you out and teach you the fundamentals of hunting,
Speaker 1: what to buy clothing, what kind of gun preparation for
Speaker 1: that time frame should is best to go? And when
Speaker 1: you start getting into dogs, how to select dogs and
Speaker 1: who to trust is best to buy? Well, let me
Speaker 1: start back, So, so talk about a good gun to
Speaker 1: hunt with. What I would say? I would say, stay
Speaker 1: away from the twelve gauge. They're large, and if you're shooting,
Speaker 1: you tend to put a lot of pellets in the rabbit. Now,
Speaker 1: you can't eat them because you don't want to break
Speaker 1: up all your teeth, and you're gonna prep them up
Speaker 1: with shells. Okay, a lot of people use that. Okay,
Speaker 1: a good twenty gauge. The most fellas use twenty gauge
Speaker 1: number six and seven and a half. I use a twenty.
Speaker 1: I use a twenty eight, and I use a four ten. Okay,
Speaker 1: at four ten, you gotta be on the money, but
Speaker 1: it'll bring them down. In that twenty eight gauge, there's
Speaker 1: nothing but a rabbit killer. It's got good power and
Speaker 1: it doesn't knock him on. And I use six says
Speaker 1: when I can find them, and all of them, and
Speaker 1: I'll go to seven and a half. So the guns,
Speaker 1: the clothing you're gonna need. You're gonna need some orange.
Speaker 1: You're gonna need a vest with a pouch on it.
Speaker 1: You're gonna need a jacket when it started getting cool,
Speaker 1: with a pouch on it to put your game in it.
Speaker 1: You're gonna need some good gloves, leather gloves or some
Speaker 1: kind of material that resists the briars because you're gonna
Speaker 1: go through briars. And you need briar pants or chaps,
Speaker 1: because you can't go out there and hunt with blue
Speaker 1: jeans on, because you're gonna have you'll be picking stickers
Speaker 1: out of your leg for a week. Okay, So you
Speaker 1: need briar pants and you can bond from all of
Speaker 1: them distributors go online wherever you chose, or you can
Speaker 1: get chaps. That's what mistake I made. I came out
Speaker 1: here just I can't remember what kind of pants I
Speaker 1: had on, but they and you were in the bushes,
Speaker 1: and I told some people, I said, boy needs something
Speaker 1: like a veteran. I have some guys who never want
Speaker 1: to go into bushes. So if I said I need
Speaker 1: a guy on the clearing, I got it. Then never
Speaker 1: want to go into bushes. Then I asked some other
Speaker 1: guys go into bushes because a lot of time you
Speaker 1: gotta go in the bushes and walk through. And so
Speaker 1: you need you need that kind of gun. Barrel is good? Okay? Uh,
Speaker 1: the some guys come out there, A few guys come
Speaker 1: out with a single. Lot of guys like a double
Speaker 1: over and under side by side, pump see me, whatever
Speaker 1: is your preference. Um, try that, And you need something
Speaker 1: that's light. You don't need a big heavy gun because
Speaker 1: you're gonna be doing a lot of walking. You gotta
Speaker 1: swing it. You're going through vines, you're going through dishes,
Speaker 1: you're going through gullets, you're going over logs, so all
Speaker 1: of that. You're walking in mud sometime and all of
Speaker 1: that weights down on your Plus, you got your shells,
Speaker 1: you got your knife, you water bottle, two, three rabbits
Speaker 1: in your pocket if you're good. So you need all
Speaker 1: of that and now, um, and of course you need
Speaker 1: a nice place with with a lot of cover to hunt.
Speaker 1: And the acreage doesn't matter. My buddy and I hunting
Speaker 1: on some land about three acres and we kill one day,
Speaker 1: we kill our limit. We went back. We kill our limit,
Speaker 1: two little narrow dishes. There were rabbits in there. Uh,
Speaker 1: but your main things you need cover that houses rabbits.
Speaker 1: I hunt on some people land there on thousands of
Speaker 1: acres of land. We hunt one little piece. We'll hunt
Speaker 1: maybe a hundred yards two hedgerows, and we hunt back.
Speaker 1: We'll get more coming back the second time. Because the
Speaker 1: first time the dogs are running, one or two rabbits,
Speaker 1: we kill them. And when we come back through the
Speaker 1: second time, those rabbits that didn't move, they're spooked up
Speaker 1: and they're ready to run. We hunted on a on
Speaker 1: a ditch in the middle of a field. This is
Speaker 1: a spot loaded with rabbits. I trained there. We we
Speaker 1: killed three one at the beginning. We killed two at
Speaker 1: the uddy in about a hundred and twenty five yards
Speaker 1: loan and it's about twenty five yards wide. We hunted
Speaker 1: back there. I want to say, let's walk to the
Speaker 1: truck in the field and walk to the truck and
Speaker 1: go down. I said no, no, no, no, no, let's
Speaker 1: walk back through slope. We got plenty of rabits. We
Speaker 1: killed seven going back. Now, if we had walked in
Speaker 1: the field and just went to the truck, we would
Speaker 1: have missed seven. And we hunted there a bunch of
Speaker 1: us last year and we went across thirty. There was
Speaker 1: a bunch of us rabbits was running everywhere, and he said,
Speaker 1: there's probably another thirty in there. And so I went trained.
Speaker 1: Because I trained my dogs right after the season in
Speaker 1: the cooler months March, April, me then it get hot
Speaker 1: and in June, July, August, September, I just started running
Speaker 1: them again, not training running because they already trained. But
Speaker 1: they're athletes, so you need to exercise them so they
Speaker 1: can get their stamina. They can lose some of that
Speaker 1: summer way. So I started. I went um two days
Speaker 1: ago and I jumped to They ran him for fifteen minutes.
Speaker 1: That's enough. I'm going tomorrow and run them again. A
Speaker 1: lot of guys don't run their dogs, and when they
Speaker 1: come out there at first day, they expect miracles out
Speaker 1: of these dogs that's been laying around all summer. Man
Speaker 1: and these dogs look like they don't want to hunt.
Speaker 1: That they never heard of rabbit hunting. My dogs. When
Speaker 1: I let them off the truck, they read it a roll.
Speaker 1: So you need to you need to work that. But
Speaker 1: I went trained on this ditch a couple of times,
Speaker 1: and I took a older friend of mine, he's about
Speaker 1: eighty nine now, and I just want you to walk
Speaker 1: on the other side. And so we walked with a stick.
Speaker 1: We're doing the same thing when we when we're running,
Speaker 1: except we don't have a gun. We have a stick.
Speaker 1: In about an hour and a half, we we counted
Speaker 1: at least twenty rabbits, he said, Charles, even at my age,
Speaker 1: I could have killed my That's I'll tell you this now.
Speaker 1: You give say you got a lot of older fellas
Speaker 1: that you hunt with. If it just doesn't mean like
Speaker 1: you can get like you said, you can be made
Speaker 1: to look a full by these rabbits. You can go
Speaker 1: one day and shoot tenant rabbits or what shoot your limit?
Speaker 1: What's your what's the limit? You can shoot four rabbits
Speaker 1: one day and be like I am a rabbit hunter. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want to pick this up and the next time
Speaker 1: you go, you should you go over ten or something
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, yeah, and that happens. That happened. Look,
Speaker 1: that has happened to me. And that happened to a
Speaker 1: lot of guys. They go out there one day. One
Speaker 1: day I hunted with some guys years ago. I shot
Speaker 1: sixteen times. Rabbit came at me straight. I put three
Speaker 1: on him with a pump missing. He went down, ran
Speaker 1: right by me, went down. I loaded up. He came
Speaker 1: back the same pattern. I put three mode that six shots.
Speaker 1: I killed one rabbit that day with sixteen shots. We hunted.
Speaker 1: We hunted at the end of the season on some
Speaker 1: property nearby. This was in Salisbury, Maryland. I made seven
Speaker 1: shots seven rabits. Slack fishing. You go one day, you
Speaker 1: think there's no fishing in the bay. You go to
Speaker 1: the next day, the boats tipping over with fish. It's
Speaker 1: the same thing. So you just have to be patient.
Speaker 1: It's called hunting. It's called hunting and not killing. So
Speaker 1: my dad always said to me, and and and at
Speaker 1: some level that's what keeps you coming back. That's right.
Speaker 1: But the key, the key is to have good property.
Speaker 1: And I tell a friend of mine who hunts a
Speaker 1: lot with when I tell my wife we're religious people,
Speaker 1: I give thanks to God all the time for all
Speaker 1: the people I've met, uh, including you and all of
Speaker 1: your comrades, and a bunch of other comrades from a
Speaker 1: lot of organizations that I've been introduced to, and just
Speaker 1: a lot of regular everyday people that I'm blessed to know.
Speaker 1: So many people who allow me to come and hunt
Speaker 1: on their land when they're finished what they're doing. And
Speaker 1: when February rolls around, the text, the email, the phone
Speaker 1: is ringing, my wife telling me you're one person. And
Speaker 1: I try not to go back to back two days
Speaker 1: in a row because I need a rest and the
Speaker 1: dog need arrest, and and I tell them the Saturdays
Speaker 1: and Presidents they've been gone for the last ten years,
Speaker 1: so you gotta go week days. And some of these
Speaker 1: people got all of these reason why they can't go hunt.
Speaker 1: And I say, look, and if you want to go,
Speaker 1: you tell me if I can, if I invite you.
Speaker 1: But if you can't go, telling me too, because when
Speaker 1: I go to when I pull the sheets upple on
Speaker 1: me at night, I want to know who's going in
Speaker 1: the morning. I don't want you to call me in
Speaker 1: the mornings. I can't make it or out of out
Speaker 1: of this and that and the other not there are emergencies.
Speaker 1: But if you can't go, I got five guys standing
Speaker 1: in line behind, and all I gotta do is call
Speaker 1: one of them because I want to know who's going,
Speaker 1: who I'm picking up, who's meeting me here to go hunt? Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh And and it works pretty good because guys noted
Speaker 1: I'm I'm serious about this and so forth. So I've
Speaker 1: got people coming to me and i'm i'm I'm I'm
Speaker 1: in oval ouds. So I don't I don't need anybody
Speaker 1: else calling me asking me for uh that. I mean,
Speaker 1: it strikes me that you've kind of taken your upbringing
Speaker 1: and what you love and your your religion and it's
Speaker 1: all kind of wrapped up into the church of rabbit
Speaker 1: hunting to like you get it's people for you. You You know,
Speaker 1: it's not just killing. It's not just the pursuit of
Speaker 1: the animal. It's the people. It's it's the relationship with
Speaker 1: your dogs, it's the relationship to the land and time
Speaker 1: has spent outside. Like this seems to me like all
Speaker 1: that is wrapped up in the passion. It's not you know,
Speaker 1: you're not measuring, of course, rabbits are different. You don't
Speaker 1: measure the ear on the rabbit, say how big it is.
Speaker 1: It's did you have were you with good people. Did
Speaker 1: you have some laughs? Did you did, were you safe?
Speaker 1: Were your productive? You have a good time? And once
Speaker 1: hit once we started losing all of those things, and
Speaker 1: it's time to quit. And I don't think we will
Speaker 1: because a deal with a deal only with quality people, okay,
Speaker 1: and we have some fun and if there are any
Speaker 1: person who are any anti people that we run into,
Speaker 1: we eat everything that we kill. And if we don't
Speaker 1: eat it, we got a ton of people who wanted
Speaker 1: that we give away. Even there's a lady my wife
Speaker 1: takes acupuncture from a lady. She and her friend rescue
Speaker 1: straight cats and dogs, and so she asked my wife,
Speaker 1: what do your husband do with the ears she's out.
Speaker 1: I guess he throw them away. So she's asked him
Speaker 1: if he can save them for me, because they've been
Speaker 1: buying ears from China. So they rescue these cats and
Speaker 1: dogs and they make treats for the cats and dogs.
Speaker 1: So the last four or five years I've been giving
Speaker 1: her ears. I give a full five years. So the
Speaker 1: guys laugh at me when I when I'm there on
Speaker 1: the tailgate and I'm cutting all of these ears off.
Speaker 1: You probably did so, and I'm cutting all these ears off.
Speaker 1: So what I do. I take them whatever I have
Speaker 1: on a hunt, I put them in a couple of
Speaker 1: bags in the freezing and at the end of the season,
Speaker 1: when my wife go for her treatment in March, she
Speaker 1: take them to it and she just loved it. I
Speaker 1: even wrote a story about her, got her in the magazine.
Speaker 1: And so nothing goes to waste other than the other
Speaker 1: than the guts and the blood. Yeah, well, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's a good way of living life. Yes, you
Speaker 1: have a good time doing and I know you do. Oh,
Speaker 1: I can't wait. I started when the season's over, the
Speaker 1: last day of February. I'm already counting a month now.
Speaker 1: I'm counting there about about six weeks away. Yeah, gosh,
Speaker 1: that's good. Yeah. Yeah, there's just certain things, you know,
Speaker 1: That's what we were talking about for this. I've hunted
Speaker 1: around a good bit. I'm from Maryland. I spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time on the Eastern Shore, spent a lot
Speaker 1: of time hunting. Think big credits are big antlers, big horns,
Speaker 1: big top of mountains, things like that. But there's something
Speaker 1: about freaking Saturday spent hunting rabbits that I could do
Speaker 1: every year on the year and if I lived here,
Speaker 1: probably every weekend, on the weekend, your buddy, your buddy
Speaker 1: feel whom said, and I quoted him in a magazine.
Speaker 1: You said, the only bad thing about rabbit hunting you
Speaker 1: gotta wait ten more months until you do it again.
Speaker 1: It's fun the end of the season. But people who
Speaker 1: have never done it say, uh, I didn't notice thing
Speaker 1: was this much fun. And some of some of these
Speaker 1: guys have gone. They go and they still do. They
Speaker 1: go all over the world and hunt all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: I mean, they go to Argentina, they go to Mexico,
Speaker 1: they go to New Mexico for all kinds of doves
Speaker 1: and sand hill and the big deer here and the
Speaker 1: elk and all of that stuff. And they go out
Speaker 1: of the out of the South Africa and hunt all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. They say, man, one one guy who's
Speaker 1: a who's a good friend and a associate of Jeff
Speaker 1: and and fill them. Uh he comes out. He came
Speaker 1: out on one hunt. He had a cigar in his mouth.
Speaker 1: And and of course I've made this. I tell a
Speaker 1: story A lot of people in the cigar I've gotten longer.
Speaker 1: Sigal was probably whatever the every length of a cigar
Speaker 1: or six seven eight inches, I said, man, when Greg
Speaker 1: was hunty, he had a cigar that sigal was about
Speaker 1: fourteen inches long and his bough. He never lit it,
Speaker 1: but when the hunt was over he had about an
Speaker 1: inch left in his mouth. Now, I said, Greg, I
Speaker 1: don't know if you ate it or what you did
Speaker 1: with that cigar, but you got enough, he said Charles.
Speaker 1: His hunt was so fast and action so heavy. I
Speaker 1: don't know what I did. I probably swallowed the cigar.
Speaker 1: The cigar, so I tell him us, I keep telling that,
Speaker 1: so he said, keep telling that story and making a
Speaker 1: cigar longer. I said. By the time I finished that,
Speaker 1: he thought that was a great No, it is fun,
Speaker 1: and they're, uh, well, we have this kind of deal
Speaker 1: in the hunting industry, you know that I run around
Speaker 1: in where like we do celebrate the bigger at critters
Speaker 1: and the bigger pantlers and the more adventure like going
Speaker 1: to the top of the mountain and going far, far,
Speaker 1: far away. We tend to celebrate that a good bit,
Speaker 1: which is fine because it's awesome. Don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: But boy, I'll tell you if you get if you
Speaker 1: start going weekend rabbit hunt, you'll never have much more
Speaker 1: fun than that. I don't believe, because what happens in
Speaker 1: a rabbit hunt. And I taught my brother in law,
Speaker 1: who's a city boy, out a rabbit hunt's I want
Speaker 1: to try. He's like thirteen years younger than us. He
Speaker 1: went with me, and he carried a stick for a
Speaker 1: couple of times in carrigun. So I learned him a
Speaker 1: single shot four ten. He said, that's all I need.
Speaker 1: And he bought a couple of common pieces of clothes
Speaker 1: to see if he liked it. Well, he liked it.
Speaker 1: The next year he said, I'm in. He bought him
Speaker 1: the whole outfit, and you shot gune et cetera. And
Speaker 1: he said he told his sister, my wife, He said,
Speaker 1: rabbit hunting is like playing basketball. You got to second left,
Speaker 1: the score is tied, and you got the ball, and
Speaker 1: your adrenaline is pumping, and you make that final shot
Speaker 1: and you win the game by two points or one point.
Speaker 1: You know you might be one under. He said, that's
Speaker 1: what it's like. And I've been doing this since I
Speaker 1: was eight, so for sixty years, and my adrenaline pumps.
Speaker 1: I don't smoke and I don't drink. Uh sometimes I'll
Speaker 1: put a pepper mat in my mouth or stick, and
Speaker 1: I'm like Greg with the cigar. I'll chew a whole
Speaker 1: lot of little branches off, a little dry twigs. Because
Speaker 1: when them dogs are barking, I call it the beagle music.
Speaker 1: When they're barking in hot pursuit, your anxiety and your
Speaker 1: adrenaline is up high because you're looking all over your eye.
Speaker 1: Your eyes are going like a windshield wipe on a
Speaker 1: car on fashion. I don't know where he's gonna come out.
Speaker 1: He might you might see him way in front of you.
Speaker 1: You might see him crossover, he might come right at you.
Speaker 1: He might run right past you. And that happened all
Speaker 1: the time. So your adrenaline is pumping. So don't come
Speaker 1: out there with a weak heart. Okay, we don't want
Speaker 1: to carry anybody, but you're adrenaline will pump whether you're
Speaker 1: like I've heard of people having heart attacks when they
Speaker 1: see this monster deer appear that you read about it.
Speaker 1: I've only read about it, but I've not had anybody
Speaker 1: have one with me, and I hope I never. But
Speaker 1: even at sixty years doing this, my adrenal still pumping
Speaker 1: anticipation because it is just so exciting. Yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: think you may have talked a few people in they're
Speaker 1: going rabbit hunting in this last Well, I hope. So
Speaker 1: wherever wherever, and I wrote this in one of my article,
Speaker 1: wherever you are, it can be upstate New York and
Speaker 1: anyway in between North South Carolina, anyway down south if
Speaker 1: you got the right cover, the right people hunting with you,
Speaker 1: and they've got some dogs in there, and they have
Speaker 1: some good dogs, and you can find out who have
Speaker 1: good dogs. And most of these guys if you offer
Speaker 1: them up some land or something, they want to go
Speaker 1: because uh Land is getting away from us. So if
Speaker 1: you approach some of these guys and let them into
Speaker 1: your world when you finished doing whatever you're doing, you
Speaker 1: can have some good fun and you can find some
Speaker 1: rabbit because they were everywhere. Yeah, and if you've never
Speaker 1: hunted before, there's a lot of people listen to this
Speaker 1: podcast that people I interact with and are part of
Speaker 1: our world that I got excited about hunting but have
Speaker 1: still never done it. That that want to eat something
Speaker 1: they've killed, but it's still never found a way. They
Speaker 1: may live in a place like you said, where there's
Speaker 1: no access. They may think they can't afford the equipment.
Speaker 1: They may. There's a lot of things they that might
Speaker 1: stop them from going to do it. But but rabbit
Speaker 1: hunting in particular has all like you can get a
Speaker 1: four ten for almost nothing. You can get a pair
Speaker 1: of brush pants for almost nothing. There's just borrow a
Speaker 1: pair of somebody like like yourself and and find some land.
Speaker 1: Most people aren't gonna say no, no, no, we we
Speaker 1: want all our rabbits. Don't shoot any of those. And
Speaker 1: it's acts, it's accessible, it's easy to do, it's it
Speaker 1: doesn't cost much money at all. If any really just
Speaker 1: get a tag and it's you know, when you shoot
Speaker 1: four rabbits, come to the Eastern Shore, shoot four rabbits
Speaker 1: and cook them up. It's more meat than you can
Speaker 1: I mean, my dad and I both shot. We had
Speaker 1: what we left with eight probably and we fed. I
Speaker 1: don't know how many people that my dad my dad
Speaker 1: might still be eating those rabbits. Well, we kill fourteen
Speaker 1: that day, and my buddy Max and I didn't take
Speaker 1: any because many time on the hunt we get plenty
Speaker 1: and if the hunters that we're taking one of them,
Speaker 1: all we give them all to them and we help
Speaker 1: we help you guys clean them, but they have many hunts.
Speaker 1: I go on. But a hunter said, well, I don't
Speaker 1: want any one. Guy said, my wife told me, whatever
Speaker 1: you're hunting, don't tell me and don't bring anything back.
Speaker 1: So we got his portion. And some guys said, man,
Speaker 1: I just came to hunt and shoot. I don't want
Speaker 1: any and I don't eat them, but I like to hunt.
Speaker 1: So whatever they don't want, I take, and I give
Speaker 1: to all of the people on my list. So uh yeah,
Speaker 1: if you get that opportunity, and I tell people list,
Speaker 1: if you get that opportunity to go, and you got
Speaker 1: a good, responsible, safe person and with some good dogs
Speaker 1: and gonna teach you and guide you, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: have some fun. There are some people that you go
Speaker 1: with they want to do all of the shooting because
Speaker 1: they know where to stand and how to move and
Speaker 1: when not to move and where the rabbits gonna come.
Speaker 1: I know that, okay, because I can tell how my
Speaker 1: dogs are moving, how fun they are, and if they're
Speaker 1: coming back and so forth. And I tell the guys
Speaker 1: spread out and move and getting a clearing and if
Speaker 1: he's going down, he's coming back, and watch and look
Speaker 1: around you because there are others sitting around. And when
Speaker 1: you see a clump of grass or bush, they can
Speaker 1: sit in a little clump of grass the size of
Speaker 1: a small pumpkin and you can walk by because everything's brown,
Speaker 1: and they won't move, and you walk right past them.
Speaker 1: But what I do, I kick those little clumps and
Speaker 1: when they get up, we don't shoot the rabbit when
Speaker 1: we kick them up like that, particularly the first rabbit,
Speaker 1: because you want the dogs to run the first rabbits
Speaker 1: to get their adrenaline going in, the excitement going. Once
Speaker 1: you get that ascitement going on that first and second rabbit,
Speaker 1: they're looking for more rabbits. This is what they live for.
Speaker 1: So um, you kick them clumps and you stand back
Speaker 1: and you you watch them and then the dogs will
Speaker 1: will get them up. The dogs gonna bring them back.
Speaker 1: Everybody out there is listening. Joined the join the congregation
Speaker 1: Church of rabbit Hunting. I like that term. Well there's
Speaker 1: one fellow. He's a father in law, well almost farther
Speaker 1: in law. I don't know why that boy hadn't married
Speaker 1: his daughter yet. Uh, he's been dating the young lady,
Speaker 1: and I said, you need to marry them. Well, she
Speaker 1: wanted a big ring. I said, what the heck, by
Speaker 1: that big ring? She want a big stone to show
Speaker 1: her girlfriends, I said, by that stone. So his father
Speaker 1: in law to be he had so much from this
Speaker 1: man and never hunted rabbits before. He didn't even have
Speaker 1: a gun, and he didn't even have a jacket. And
Speaker 1: so he come out there the first time with a
Speaker 1: bar of gun from his son in law and a
Speaker 1: kind of like a a coverall suit that the workers
Speaker 1: used when it's cold outside. He didn't. I saw the
Speaker 1: guy giving him shells. I said, every time he shoot,
Speaker 1: he shot three times, whether he hit or not, he
Speaker 1: stopped three times. He shot at three rabbits, three shots
Speaker 1: a piece, miss all of them. So he he want
Speaker 1: to do it. So I said, you need a smaller gun.
Speaker 1: So I brought her twenty gage Simi and loaned to him.
Speaker 1: On another hunt. That man out we kill about nineteen
Speaker 1: that day. He must have killed six or seven. They
Speaker 1: were running on him and he was popping him and
Speaker 1: we tease him about practicing during the summer, and um,
Speaker 1: he said, Charles, I'm gonna call you a different name.
Speaker 1: You are the doctor of rock rabbatology. I know there's
Speaker 1: no such word. You say, I'm giving you a new
Speaker 1: handle doctor Rabbatology business card. I saw him this someone, Well, no,
Speaker 1: I don't need a boostiness card because I got I
Speaker 1: got enough action already. So but he's a he's a fun, fun,
Speaker 1: fun guy of a business card with of just you know.
Speaker 1: It struck me like this guy's got a business card
Speaker 1: on charge of dime. It's just he's just like a
Speaker 1: friend that wants to come out and the rabbit. And
Speaker 1: people say, um, what do you get out of it?
Speaker 1: I say, it's my passion. I get to meet new people,
Speaker 1: I get to see other people hunt. I get to
Speaker 1: share what I enjoy and I get to hunt on
Speaker 1: new lands. Okay, A lot of guys I know don't
Speaker 1: get that. And I'm I'm single out on one of
Speaker 1: the few that gets that. Because I worked on these committees,
Speaker 1: volunteered my time, I met people. I deal with people great.
Speaker 1: I have no hang ups, they have no hang ups.
Speaker 1: If any if they do, then I don't deal with them.
Speaker 1: And I've met I've been blessed to meet all kinds
Speaker 1: of nice people from all walks of life. And we
Speaker 1: don't judge nothing about either. And and I know that
Speaker 1: manities individual a very affluent in life. But I'm not
Speaker 1: into that. I'm into taking you rabbit, no matter if
Speaker 1: you're a king or queen, just a regular guy. So
Speaker 1: so when you put all out of side, and I
Speaker 1: know a lot of people outfit, that's their passion. They
Speaker 1: make a living doing it, doing deer and all kinds
Speaker 1: of things. And that's fine, that's great. I'm not into that.
Speaker 1: If I own twenty five acres, maybe I would have
Speaker 1: I would have done it. But when you start taking
Speaker 1: people money for rabbit hunting, there's no guarantee that their
Speaker 1: rabbits in the bushes. And then people have an expectation.
Speaker 1: Right now, all I can deliver is if they're there,
Speaker 1: the dogs are gonna find them. If you're in the
Speaker 1: right position, you're gonna get a chance to shoot. And
Speaker 1: some of them guys have just as much fun when
Speaker 1: they kill as when they met. I'm telling you, like
Speaker 1: I said, if you come out with blood MUDs flying,
Speaker 1: you come out with the doctor of rabbitility, you don't
Speaker 1: have a good time. I am sorry, but it's on you.
Speaker 1: You have done something wrong, something terribly wrong. Well, I
Speaker 1: appreciate you have me in your home here. Um, and
Speaker 1: your lovely wife cooking his breakfast and spend a time
Speaker 1: with you. I think anybody can learn from something from you.
Speaker 1: It's it's sixty years of passion for whatever it is.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter what it is, rabbit hunting or whatever
Speaker 1: you're doing, but your passion for that thing is it's
Speaker 1: it's inspiring. And and I thank you, Ben, I thank
Speaker 1: you uh in meeting you and the things you've done
Speaker 1: for me and introduced me to your dad, and and
Speaker 1: I feel so blessed and so swingle out have been
Speaker 1: given this opportunity to do this interview. Uh. This just
Speaker 1: gives me a big boost. And I hope the world
Speaker 1: that's listening, I hope I was clear and I hope
Speaker 1: you understand uh and followed through what I said. But
Speaker 1: it is my passion, UH, and I enjoyed tremendously. And
Speaker 1: like I said on my cord, it's the only game
Speaker 1: in town for me. I don't criticize anybody else for
Speaker 1: the things that they do and they love and that's fine.
Speaker 1: But uh, I hope I've given you but those who
Speaker 1: who want to try this somewhere, I hope I've given
Speaker 1: you some good tips. And that's the luck to all
Speaker 1: of you. Well, thank you and and uh I'm glad
Speaker 1: it's the only game in town, because the hell of
Speaker 1: a game. Yes, sir, thank you, Charles, thank you. That's it.
Speaker 1: That's all episode number books. Thanks to Charles Rodney for
Speaker 1: having in his home and his lovely wife for cooking
Speaker 1: me breakfast. It's so welcoming there, um on a rainy
Speaker 1: day in Maryland. It was fantastic to be with Charles
Speaker 1: and to hear about his passion, his life story which
Speaker 1: is amazing and um why he does what he does,
Speaker 1: which is rabbit hunt. That's all he cares for, that's
Speaker 1: all he wants to do, and he has made an
Speaker 1: amazing life, an amazing hunting career of doing just that.
Speaker 1: So enjoy I hope you enjoyed it. I did. I
Speaker 1: really think he is one of the better guests, one
Speaker 1: of the better people that will ever have on the
Speaker 1: Hunting Collective. So until next time, go to the Hunting
Speaker 1: Collective dot com, visit me at Benyo B three oh
Speaker 1: one on Instagram. A lot of conversation to be had
Speaker 1: about this podcast and all the others we've had recently,
Speaker 1: including Jeff Crane and Andy Treeharn other Congressional Sports Is Foundation,
Speaker 1: including Adam FoST including our Texas series, Wyman Men'ser and
Speaker 1: Russell Cunningham and Bryan and Ryan Cedars of Founder's Vietti
Speaker 1: and many more. So get there, listen up, and send
Speaker 1: us some comments and questions and criticisms. We love to
Speaker 1: hear it all. High short, do and stick with us.
Speaker 1: You're done in collective. We'll be back next Tuesday with
Speaker 1: another great guest and another podcast for you, ye