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Speaker 1: Well, I used a good word their story. I call

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Speaker 1: it a saga, and I sure hope I don't disappoint you.

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Speaker 1: We can't prove this, We can't.

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Speaker 2: Some stories are so sacred, so old, you almost have

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Speaker 2: to earn the permission to tell them.

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Speaker 3: This is one of those.

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Speaker 2: I don't think it could be told by an outsider

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Speaker 2: by like a visiting journalist. The only way to tell

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Speaker 2: the story is from the inside. The audacity of my

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Speaker 2: attempt comes after nearly a decade of curiosity, hunting with

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Speaker 2: and meeting some of America's top plot hound families and historians,

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Speaker 2: and maybe most critical, being a plot man myself. Well,

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Speaker 2: that is even if I qualify. But I feel like

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Speaker 2: I'm ready. We're talking about the saga of the American

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Speaker 2: plot hound, which is a breed of big game hounds

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Speaker 2: special lising and bear hunting, developed deep in the mountains

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Speaker 2: of southern Appalachia, specifically Haywood County, North Carolina.

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Speaker 3: Unique to the.

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Speaker 2: Breed is they carry the family name of plot They

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Speaker 2: were kept in isolation from the wider nation for nearly

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Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty years while being refined by the

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Speaker 2: frontier mountaineers of Appalachia. We've beaten around the bush of

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Speaker 2: the plot genesis story, but we've never told it in

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Speaker 2: its entirety, nor included the controversy of its authenticity. I'd

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Speaker 2: be remiss to say if I didn't say that plot

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Speaker 2: people are usually outsiders, a little bit quirky, often opinionated,

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Speaker 2: and perhaps unsatisfied with the mainstream trends of the hound world.

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Speaker 2: And I think they're quite content with this identity. The

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Speaker 2: plot hound is anything but mainstream. In my extensive travels

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Speaker 2: to meet plot hound men and women in this country

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Speaker 2: over the last decade, I've met some of the finest

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Speaker 2: salt of the Earth people in America. But this is

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Speaker 2: not a story without drama and debate. This is a

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Speaker 2: fascinating story of true Americana, and I really doubt that

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Speaker 2: you're gonna want to miss this one.

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Speaker 1: Not everyone's been born in North Carolina. Not everyone lives

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Speaker 1: in western North Carolina. Not everyone has been around a

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Speaker 1: plug dog. Unselfishly, I will tell you that it is

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Speaker 1: a pride that I have that not everyone has.

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Speaker 2: My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear

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Speaker 2: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search

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Speaker 2: for insight and unlikely places and where we'll tell the

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Speaker 2: story of Americans who live their lives close to the land,

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Speaker 2: presented by FHF gear, American made, purpose built hunting and

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Speaker 2: fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the

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Speaker 2: place as we explore.

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Speaker 4: There's where Plot Creek begins right up there.

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Speaker 3: This see old log house.

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Speaker 4: Right there, that's the remnants of the Henry Plot cabin.

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Speaker 4: He's got to be back to about eighteen oh three.

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Speaker 4: And that house there was built in nineteen oh three

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Speaker 4: by Mantraville Plot and his son John Plott moved into

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Speaker 4: it nineteen twenty four after Mott died. And that's where

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Speaker 4: little George Plott lived as a boy.

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Speaker 2: I'm in western North Carolina. The mountains and places are

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Speaker 2: so steep and thick it's intimidating, or at least when

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Speaker 2: I think about traveling long distances of foot in them.

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Speaker 2: Right in a truck with a man whose last name

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Speaker 2: is Plot P L O T. T. You see, this

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Speaker 2: isn't just a story about dogs.

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Speaker 3: It's a family story.

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Speaker 2: This is my friend Bob Plot, a direct descendant of

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Speaker 2: the people who lived in that cabin and bred and

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Speaker 2: built what's known today as the American Plot Hound.

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Speaker 4: This creek here you see, there had dogs all lined

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Speaker 4: up down they watered to dogs. They had dogs all

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Speaker 4: up that run, all in a run where they could.

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Speaker 2: I've seen that a lot over here in the Appalachians,

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Speaker 2: where these there's these little springs like a spring maybe

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Speaker 2: and they'll they'll state their dogs out.

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Speaker 3: A passerby might.

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Speaker 2: Be in jeopardy of missing the beauty history the legacy

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Speaker 2: of such a scene. One of the most striking images

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Speaker 2: of Appalachia is a narrow hollow full of handsome, dark

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Speaker 2: brindle hounds tethered to wooden dog houses, with their lead

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Speaker 2: extending far enough for them to have free access to

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Speaker 2: fresh spring water. It's common to the uninformed it might

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Speaker 2: be unnotable or even an eye sore. Archaic may be

79
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Speaker 2: hillbilly and the derogatory sense of the word, but not

80
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Speaker 2: to meat or the people on the inside. A plot

81
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Speaker 2: hound is a muscular built dog, with males averaging sixty

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Speaker 2: to seventy pounds and females in the fifty pound range,

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Speaker 2: often with a saber tail, short to coarse hair, and

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Speaker 2: moderate length ears not reaching past their nose when outstretched.

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Speaker 2: Their classic color is brindle with a brown undercoat and

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Speaker 2: dark stripes, but some appear almost black at a distance.

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Speaker 2: There are two rare color variations of plots. Number one

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Speaker 2: the Maltese brindle or this kind of grayish black stripe

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Speaker 2: looking dog. But the most rare is the buckskin plot,

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Speaker 2: colored almost like a Golden Retriever or a yellow lab

91
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Speaker 2: intelligence trailer in ability, grittiness to stick with rough game.

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Speaker 2: I've actually heard plot men in East Tennessee. You refer

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Speaker 2: to them as nervy, and they're strong tree dogs. Plot

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Speaker 2: Hounds are traditionally used on raccoons, hogs, mountain lions, but

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Speaker 2: most importantly and core to their identity, bears. In many circles,

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Speaker 2: they're known as plot bear dogs. Imagine there being twenty

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Speaker 2: five plot hounds right through there. That was the beginning

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Speaker 2: of the plot breed.

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Speaker 4: And there were I mean that right there is where

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Speaker 4: they were, and I mean, I've got pictures that big house,

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Speaker 4: the bigger house there. The white house was built in

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Speaker 4: nineteen oh three by Mott Plot and he didn't have

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Speaker 4: any running water in it till probably the forties, and

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Speaker 4: didn't have an indoor bathroom in it until the forties.

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Speaker 4: John Plott said he wasn't going to go to the

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Speaker 4: bathroom inside of house he lived in, but there was

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Speaker 4: a great picture of him and his wife standing right

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Speaker 4: there with two of the grediest plotthounds you've ever seen.

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Speaker 2: The story of the plot Hound goes way back to

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Speaker 2: before America was America. The reason this story is unique

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Speaker 2: is that most of the hound breeds came here from England,

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Speaker 2: in many.

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Speaker 3: Ways already developed.

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Speaker 2: But the origin story of the plot is surrounded by mystery,

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Speaker 2: cloaked by faded time, geographic isolation, and scant documentation congruent

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Speaker 2: with the hill folks ways. But in the early nineteen hundreds,

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Speaker 2: this dog just emerged out of the hollows of the

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Speaker 2: Great Smoky Mountain region, fully developed, uniquely suited, and deeply

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Speaker 2: tied to the region's interior circle of bear hunters. These

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Speaker 2: dogs became the symbol of Southern Appalachian ingenuity, Taylor fit

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Speaker 2: for the rugged landscape, its people, and its beasts. The

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Speaker 2: most interesting thing to me about plots, though, is their

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Speaker 2: cult like following and this deep connection to place. No

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Speaker 2: other hound breed has this. It's a phenomena unlike anything

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Speaker 2: I've ever seen. And because of that, there is great

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Speaker 2: risk in telling this story. If I die a suspicious,

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Speaker 2: untimely death. It might be related to the version of

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Speaker 2: the story that I tell. This is serious business, and

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Speaker 2: what I've always loved about plot people is their passion.

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Speaker 2: I've always been attracted to passionate people who dedicate their

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Speaker 2: lives to narrow windows of expertise. One such man is

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Speaker 2: John Jackson of western North Carolina. He's an old style

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Speaker 2: Highland gentleman, a pastor, a schoolteacher, but most uniquely for

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Speaker 2: my interest, a plot historian.

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Speaker 3: I haven't told you yet, but.

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Speaker 2: The plot hound is the state dog of North Carolina.

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Speaker 2: There's a strong case that this was our first maid

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Speaker 2: in America hound. But kind of like building a Ford

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Speaker 2: truck in twenty twenty three, we had to bring in

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Speaker 2: some overseas materials. We're going to jump right into the

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Speaker 2: story with mister John. Where did these dogs come from? So,

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Speaker 2: mister John, there's such a rich history of plot hounds

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Speaker 2: in North Carolina, which is where they got started.

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Speaker 3: Tell me that story.

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Speaker 1: Well, I used a good word their story. I called

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Speaker 1: it a saga. In seventeen sixty, there were two brothers

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Speaker 1: who came from Germany, a Palatinate area of Germany. There

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Speaker 1: was a great mass migration of Germans from that area

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Speaker 1: to colonbial America, and the story. The saga goes that

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Speaker 1: they were the sons of a German gamekeeper. They brought

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Speaker 1: with them some what we would call plot dogs, the

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Speaker 1: ancestors of plots, one of which was yellow and the

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Speaker 1: rest were brown colored, which means they were brendled.

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Speaker 2: This is the foundation piece of the plot hound story

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Speaker 2: known far and wide in plot circles.

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Speaker 3: The two brothers from Germany.

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Speaker 2: Their father was a gamekeeper, a guy who took care

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Speaker 2: of the large property of some type of royalty, and

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Speaker 2: he sends his boys to the English colonies future America

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Speaker 2: with some of his prize hunting dogs, brindle and yellow

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Speaker 2: colored hunting dogs. If we were building a car, the

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Speaker 2: dogs would be the engine and the brothers would be

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Speaker 2: the power train. And please note how mister John referred

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Speaker 2: to these as plot dogs, as in dawgs. That's a

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Speaker 2: term of endearment. It means something. I now want to

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Speaker 2: go back to the man I just rode around with

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Speaker 2: with the interesting last name of plot. This is Bob

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Speaker 2: Plot and he's jumping in right where mister John left off.

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Speaker 4: The story we always told him was told generation for

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Speaker 4: generation was my fourth great grandfather said, man, this just

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Speaker 4: there's no future here for my kids. I'm sending my

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Speaker 4: two boys and the only thing of real value I

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Speaker 4: have to America, and it's these five of these dogs.

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Speaker 4: And three of them are supposed to be brindle colored dogs.

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Speaker 4: Two of them are supposed to be light colored or

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Speaker 4: buckskin type dogs.

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Speaker 2: Did he just say my fourth great grandfather, Yes, he did.

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Speaker 2: Bob's fourth great grandfather would have been the father of

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Speaker 2: the German brothers that mister John was talking about. But

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Speaker 2: this is going to get dramatic real quick, so brace yourself.

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Speaker 4: They his brother died because you know, the conditions on

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Speaker 4: the ships took two months to get to America. They

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Speaker 4: were terrible, bad food, bad water. Anyway, legend has it

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Speaker 4: that he died buried at sea. So here's this kid,

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Speaker 4: sixteen years old at most, and he's like, man, all along,

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Speaker 4: five dogs, gets to Philadelphia, He's got to go and

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Speaker 4: then does The version I always heard was that they

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Speaker 4: were coming to America to be contract hunters in Newburn,

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Speaker 4: North Carolina, which at that time was the largest German

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Speaker 4: settlement on the East Coast. But they didn't have you'd think, oh,

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Speaker 4: it's the frontier and it was. But they had blacksmiths

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Speaker 4: and wheelwrights and as they didn't have hunters. So so

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Speaker 4: that was a theory and what we're always told. But

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Speaker 4: now the other theory is they arrived in Philadelphia and

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Speaker 4: just went down the wagon road and went straight to

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Speaker 4: the Pied Mine in North Carolina, where we know they

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Speaker 4: did end up. But the story I was always told

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Speaker 4: was the real poignant story was his two brothers, my

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Speaker 4: third great grandfather, George, his brother, they're in route. They

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Speaker 4: got five dogs with them. They can't speak English, you know,

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Speaker 4: they're Germans. When George got here, they still referred to him.

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Speaker 4: Even his son Henry, who came to Haywood County later,

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Speaker 4: they referred to him as the Old German because they

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Speaker 4: still had these strong German accents, still spoke German.

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Speaker 2: We've just covered a ton of ground really quickly. Enoch,

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Speaker 2: one of the brothers, has died. Johannes lives and brings

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Speaker 2: the five dogs from Germany with the intent of becoming

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Speaker 2: a professional hunter in the colonies. Even two generations later,

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Speaker 2: Bob said they called his great grandfather the Old German.

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Speaker 2: Bob actually wrote an incredible book about the history and

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Speaker 2: story of the plot Hound called Strike and Stay the

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Speaker 2: story of the plot Hound. In it, he details this

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Speaker 2: plot genesis story, which was handed down in his family.

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Speaker 3: It's believed that the.

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Speaker 2: Modern plot hound was bred and evolved directly from these

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Speaker 2: five dogs that were on that ship. Some believe they

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Speaker 2: were never outcrossed from those original five dogs. However, I've

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Speaker 2: never personally met anyone who confessed to fully believing this.

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Speaker 2: It's kind of like believing the most extravagant version of

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Speaker 2: a fairy tale. It's just not really that functional. But

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Speaker 2: I have some interesting news for you, and of all people,

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Speaker 2: I hate to cast doubt on such a great story,

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Speaker 2: but I'd advise you to not get too attached to it.

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Speaker 3: Here's mister John.

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Speaker 1: Here's where we got to stop him in it, And

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Speaker 1: I surely hope I don't disappoint you. We can't prove this,

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Speaker 1: We can't. I have worked on it and worked on

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Speaker 1: it and thought I had found him, and it's not him.

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Speaker 1: There is, to my knowledge, there is no Johannes plot.

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Speaker 1: His name would have been George Plott, George Plutt senior.

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Speaker 1: There's a George Plutt junior. He came he and his

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Speaker 1: family together. They were well to do. They paid their

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Speaker 1: manumission fee and they came down the o' wagon road

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Speaker 1: to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. That's where Charlotte is. He

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Speaker 1: would have settled in what is now Cabaris County, which

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Speaker 1: used to be part of Becklenburg.

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Speaker 2: Now, so you're saying the story of Johannes Plott and

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Speaker 2: his brothers, you're saying that's not necessarily true, right, And

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Speaker 2: you're saying this is true. Is that George Plot And

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Speaker 2: so George Plott isn't Johannes Plott.

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Speaker 3: This is a semi wealthy guy.

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Speaker 2: Okay, he was not to So this is the traditional

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Speaker 2: The traditional story was Johannes Plott and this boy's his

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Speaker 2: dad send him with dogs.

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Speaker 3: And you're saying that's not necessarily what he can prove.

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Speaker 1: It's what I'm saying.

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Speaker 2: What he's saying is this, they've never found written record

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Speaker 2: of a lone teenager named Johannes Plott bringing dogs from

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Speaker 2: Germany to fully corroborate the traditional story. However, would lost

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Speaker 2: or inaccurate records from the mid seventeen hundreds be all

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Speaker 2: that surprising. Written records of that time would undoubtedly have

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Speaker 2: been a dim record of reality. There is, however, record

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Speaker 2: of a man named George Plott coming over with his family,

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Speaker 2: just no dogs. I want to see what Bob Plott

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Speaker 2: has this about this, and don't think for a minute

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Speaker 2: these are trivial matters in Appalachia. If I go mysteriously

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Speaker 2: missing after this series, I'd like to commission Brent Reeves

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Speaker 2: to come out of retirement and lead a reconnaissance team

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Speaker 2: into the Great Smoky Mountains, not to avenge my death,

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Speaker 2: but to do even more research so that we can

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Speaker 2: get to the bottom of this.

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Speaker 3: Here's Bob.

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Speaker 4: Now. The other version is, and it may be true,

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Speaker 4: it may not be true, is that his parents took him,

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Speaker 4: that the family came together as the family unit. Again,

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Speaker 4: all I'd ever heard from time I was as tall

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Speaker 4: was the first story. It's been convoluted from the start,

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Speaker 4: you know. Nineteen fifty nine first year book came out

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Speaker 4: about plothounds. There were ten different stories in the first

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Speaker 4: Year Book, and all of them were different, Like how

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Speaker 4: can you put ten different stories in the same yearbook.

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Speaker 4: I mean, one of them's got to be true. And

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Speaker 4: so all I knew was was what they had told me.

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Speaker 4: My father told me this was a story Bonne and

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Speaker 4: told me, this was a story my grandfather's. You know,

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Speaker 4: all these my uncle, my grandfather, my grandfather died by them.

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Speaker 4: But my uncle's this is what my daddy told me.

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Speaker 4: This is what his daddy told him. And so and

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Speaker 4: I also had a kind of unique situation in that

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Speaker 4: I'm just a third great grandson to George Plot, who

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Speaker 4: founded the breed you know, who bottom over here from

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Speaker 4: Germany supposedly, and most people are five six seventh great grandson.

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Speaker 4: But see, my grandfather was born in the Civil War.

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Speaker 4: Really yeah, So he died in nineteen forty four. I

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Speaker 4: didn't know him, so, but my dad was at D

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Speaker 4: Day he died, you know, when I was just still

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Speaker 4: a kid too. So I was around all these old guys.

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Speaker 4: So you don't have to go back, you know, just

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Speaker 4: three generations and you're there.

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Speaker 3: Wow.

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Speaker 4: So they knew this stuff, you know, and it all

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Speaker 4: made sense, It all tracked when I started researching it.

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Speaker 4: So and I tried to document as much as I could.

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Speaker 4: And once the Plot family got to North Carolina, it

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Speaker 4: was very easy to document. Yea, they got there, it

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Speaker 4: was a little more difficult.

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Speaker 2: Bob believes that the name Johannes was anglicized to George,

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Speaker 2: and so we're talking about the same person. Bob's grandfather

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Speaker 2: was born during the Civil War, and Bob's father had

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Speaker 2: him later in life. Bob is a rare fellow. You

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Speaker 2: feel like you're touching history just by talking to him.

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Speaker 2: The Plot's story holds some water for me simply for

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Speaker 2: this reason, and he just clarified a distinct line in

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Speaker 2: the story of what we're sure of and what we're

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Speaker 2: not sure of. Once the Plots got to North America,

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Speaker 2: the history is much easier to track, and it's clear

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Speaker 2: that a man named George Plot arrived and quickly appeared

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Speaker 2: with the unique line of hunting dogs not found anywhere

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Speaker 2: else in the colonies, and these dogs that they had

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Speaker 2: were uniquely different than these English strains of hounds. So

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Speaker 2: let's clarify the controversy and look at the options. It's

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Speaker 2: possible that no dogs came from Germany at all, but

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Speaker 2: the Germans who came here acquired hunting dog stock that

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Speaker 2: was already present in the colonies when they arrived, and

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Speaker 2: from this emerged what would become the Plot hound. That's

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Speaker 2: option one. There were definitely hounds, curves and all varieties

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Speaker 2: of mongrel dogs as potential stock. Here or number two,

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Speaker 2: the story is true, and they brought in a unique

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Speaker 2: strain of German big game hounds that developed into a

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Speaker 2: new identity in the New world under the guiding hand

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Speaker 2: of this isolated family on the frontier. I'd like to

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Speaker 2: note how quickly they emerged with a unique looking dog,

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Speaker 2: which was brindle, while most of these English hounds were

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Speaker 2: not brindle at all. However, as my friend Alvin once

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Speaker 2: told me, the brindle color is a recessive gene and

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Speaker 2: almost all dogs. If you mix up a bunch of dogs,

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Speaker 2: it isn't long before you get that brindle coat.

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Speaker 3: Hmmm.

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Speaker 2: So maybe this unique brindle's stuff isn't entirely relevant regardless, Bob,

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Speaker 2: mister John, and the whole lot of Plot connoisseurs agreed

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Speaker 2: the period between the seventeen fifties and eighteen oh three

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Speaker 2: is a mystery. But Henry Plot we just saw his

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Speaker 2: old cabin in North Carolina. By the time he showed up,

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Speaker 2: he had a line of dogs fully established in the

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Speaker 2: region as reputable brindle bear dogs. So if option two

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Speaker 2: is right and the family story is correct, and the

337
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Speaker 2: stock did come from Germany, what were they doing with

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Speaker 2: the dogs over there?

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Speaker 4: Here's Bob, So I think these guys are like that works,

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Speaker 4: that works together. And I think over multiple generations, going

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Speaker 4: back probably five or six generations before my family came here,

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Speaker 4: this breed was evolving into that. So sometime around either

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Speaker 4: seventeen forty two seventeen fifty, depending on.

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Speaker 3: The Germans were using these dogs for what over there.

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Speaker 4: Boar hunting mostly and anything. There were multipurpose dogs because

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Speaker 4: they used them for herding, they used them for hunting,

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Speaker 4: but they were already on big game. Whatever they needed

348
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Speaker 4: to do, that's what they used them for, you know.

349
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Speaker 4: But they had great value. So all these dogs were available,

350
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Speaker 4: you know. But the most thing it was really unique

351
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Speaker 4: was most it was the Germanic origins because most of

352
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Speaker 4: the American purebread dogs come from their British house, whereas

353
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Speaker 4: its plihound came from Germany. But they're all applied.

354
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Speaker 2: And what's interesting at that time is he would have

355
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Speaker 2: been sending his sons to a new world that was

356
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Speaker 2: known for hunting in wilderness, So it would have made

357
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Speaker 2: sense that he would have given he would have sent

358
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Speaker 2: his kids.

359
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Speaker 3: With tools that they would have needed to survive. And

360
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Speaker 3: thrive in this place.

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Speaker 2: I really want to believe this version of the story,

362
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Speaker 2: and many do, but some don't. But nobody complains about

363
00:21:52,920 --> 00:21:53,720
Speaker 2: it not being.

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Speaker 3: A good story.

365
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Speaker 2: But as we've seen in many of our other deep

366
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Speaker 2: dives into American history, myths can become told so many

367
00:22:01,840 --> 00:22:06,120
Speaker 2: times they become infallible truth. What's your gut telling you

368
00:22:06,240 --> 00:22:09,000
Speaker 2: right now with just this little bit of information you have.

369
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Speaker 2: You don't have all the info yet, but you're probably

370
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Speaker 2: leaning the direction. I really appreciate Bob's perspective, and of

371
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Speaker 2: all people, he's got the right to have one. This

372
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Speaker 2: is his family's story that he heard while sitting on

373
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Speaker 2: the knee of his family in a rocking chair in

374
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Speaker 2: North Carolina. He's kind of become the caretaker of this story,

375
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Speaker 2: which I'd say is very noble. But he's the first

376
00:22:33,920 --> 00:22:36,480
Speaker 2: to acknowledge that it's hard to know exactly how it

377
00:22:36,520 --> 00:22:41,840
Speaker 2: went down. However, once the calendar rolled into the eighteen hundreds,

378
00:22:42,320 --> 00:22:48,720
Speaker 2: the evidence is clear and undeniable. The more I understand

379
00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:52,840
Speaker 2: about history, especially that far back in American history there

380
00:22:52,920 --> 00:22:55,400
Speaker 2: just wasn't a lot of documentation was so, I mean,

381
00:22:55,840 --> 00:22:59,800
Speaker 2: these stories have like oral tradition does hold a lot

382
00:22:59,800 --> 00:23:02,360
Speaker 2: of relevance to these kind of stories, and obviously there's

383
00:23:02,440 --> 00:23:05,160
Speaker 2: documentation of land records and all this stuff, like these

384
00:23:05,160 --> 00:23:09,320
Speaker 2: people did actually exist. But so, you know, I want

385
00:23:09,359 --> 00:23:13,560
Speaker 2: to say that because it wasn't like it is now,

386
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Speaker 2: where every single thing we do is documented. I mean,

387
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Speaker 2: like if I go down here and buy a coffee,

388
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Speaker 2: somebody two hundred years from now will know it. Yes,

389
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Speaker 2: they'll say, Clay Nukam was in North Carolina with Bob

390
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Speaker 2: Plott on the morning of July seventh.

391
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Speaker 3: Man. Back in those days, that wasn't the case.

392
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Speaker 4: No, And that's a great point because up until eighteen hundred,

393
00:23:32,440 --> 00:23:36,159
Speaker 4: passenger ships didn't have a cargo manifest supposedly, or some

394
00:23:36,200 --> 00:23:38,159
Speaker 4: of them did, but a lot of them didn't, so

395
00:23:38,440 --> 00:23:40,680
Speaker 4: sometimes you didn't know who was on there who wasn't.

396
00:23:41,000 --> 00:23:44,520
Speaker 4: But John Plot he had supposedly. I never saw it,

397
00:23:44,520 --> 00:23:47,160
Speaker 4: but I know people, reputable people who did, who said

398
00:23:47,160 --> 00:23:51,000
Speaker 4: there was a manifest, a cargo manifest that listed the

399
00:23:51,080 --> 00:23:54,560
Speaker 4: five dogs now and that they were listed as three

400
00:23:54,960 --> 00:23:59,920
Speaker 4: brenda or tiger stripe dogs and two solid colored buckskin dogs. Now.

401
00:24:00,080 --> 00:24:02,720
Speaker 4: Again I never saw that. I don't know, but again

402
00:24:02,800 --> 00:24:05,359
Speaker 4: that was oral tradition. But I know four people who

403
00:24:05,680 --> 00:24:07,720
Speaker 4: have never lied to me before, who swear to God

404
00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:08,320
Speaker 4: that they saw it.

405
00:24:09,920 --> 00:24:12,960
Speaker 2: Greater mysteries have been solved, but at this point it's

406
00:24:13,040 --> 00:24:17,000
Speaker 2: unlikely this ever will be. Paper products from the seventeen

407
00:24:17,119 --> 00:24:21,080
Speaker 2: fifties usually don't accidentally get preserved, and I want you

408
00:24:21,160 --> 00:24:23,280
Speaker 2: to hear these stories so you can make a decision

409
00:24:23,359 --> 00:24:26,679
Speaker 2: for yourself what you believe. But truthfully, what you or

410
00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:29,800
Speaker 2: I believe about the origins of these dogs really isn't

411
00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:34,240
Speaker 2: that relevant, because today what's not disputed is that plot

412
00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:38,080
Speaker 2: hounds are widely distributed across America and even much of

413
00:24:38,080 --> 00:24:41,439
Speaker 2: the world, and are a top notch big game hound.

414
00:24:42,440 --> 00:24:44,359
Speaker 2: So let's just take a time out for a minute

415
00:24:44,359 --> 00:24:49,160
Speaker 2: and clarify exactly what we do know. George or Johannes Plot,

416
00:24:49,400 --> 00:24:52,960
Speaker 2: without dispute, did come from Germany on September twelfth, seventeen

417
00:24:53,040 --> 00:24:56,600
Speaker 2: fifty on a ship called the Priscilla. There is documentation

418
00:24:56,840 --> 00:25:01,359
Speaker 2: of a signature G Plot on that car manifest.

419
00:25:01,119 --> 00:25:01,960
Speaker 3: Just no dogs.

420
00:25:02,440 --> 00:25:05,600
Speaker 2: And to give a big time fast forward, high level view,

421
00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:09,240
Speaker 2: this George Plot would die in Lincoln County, North Carolina

422
00:25:09,359 --> 00:25:12,359
Speaker 2: in eighteen ten at the age of seventy six, So

423
00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:15,320
Speaker 2: all that adds up, and it's well documented that he

424
00:25:15,400 --> 00:25:17,920
Speaker 2: had a pack of hunting dogs, which he turned over

425
00:25:17,960 --> 00:25:20,720
Speaker 2: to his son, Henry, who would then move to the

426
00:25:20,760 --> 00:25:23,880
Speaker 2: Great Smoky Mountains. Bob and I were just at Henry's

427
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:27,560
Speaker 2: home place. The mystery is simply, where did these dogs

428
00:25:27,640 --> 00:25:31,960
Speaker 2: come from. Here's Bob with a summary of the deep

429
00:25:32,080 --> 00:25:37,400
Speaker 2: Plot family history describing their movement through North Carolina.

430
00:25:37,440 --> 00:25:39,440
Speaker 4: We know for a fact. Now up to that point,

431
00:25:39,560 --> 00:25:41,800
Speaker 4: we can speculate. You can have this camp over here

432
00:25:41,840 --> 00:25:44,760
Speaker 4: saying yeah, they went to New Bernard, the camp over

433
00:25:44,760 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 4: here saying no, they went from Philadelphia to the area

434
00:25:47,800 --> 00:25:50,720
Speaker 4: around Salisbury. Either one could be true, but we know

435
00:25:51,000 --> 00:25:55,680
Speaker 4: for sure that by seventeen sixties they were there. There's

436
00:25:55,760 --> 00:26:00,040
Speaker 4: lane grants, there's marriage certificates, theres death certificates, theres the

437
00:26:00,240 --> 00:26:05,080
Speaker 4: court records signifying yes, George Plot was here, George Platt

438
00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:08,080
Speaker 4: got married here, George Platt started having a family here.

439
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:12,160
Speaker 4: And there's records of other people talking about these dogs.

440
00:26:12,640 --> 00:26:15,840
Speaker 4: Sometimes they just called them Brendle bear dogs. Sometimes they

441
00:26:16,080 --> 00:26:19,959
Speaker 4: talked about dogs on the frontier, literally defending households now

442
00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 4: because this was Cherokee country and Kataba Country at that time.

443
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:24,919
Speaker 4: I mean, this was where they were living on the

444
00:26:24,960 --> 00:26:28,680
Speaker 4: east side of the Kataba River was frontier. You know,

445
00:26:28,800 --> 00:26:30,440
Speaker 4: this was before the French and Indian or right bout

446
00:26:30,440 --> 00:26:33,480
Speaker 4: the time of the French and Indian War. So my

447
00:26:33,600 --> 00:26:36,640
Speaker 4: third great grandfather's there. He starts having, like everybody did

448
00:26:36,640 --> 00:26:39,560
Speaker 4: back then, a bunch of kids, and most all of

449
00:26:39,560 --> 00:26:43,200
Speaker 4: them are born there in what's now Caberts County around Concord. Well.

450
00:26:43,520 --> 00:26:47,639
Speaker 4: Again like this great manifest destiny of American history, it's like,

451
00:26:47,680 --> 00:26:50,720
Speaker 4: we got to find something better. So they go a

452
00:26:50,760 --> 00:26:52,840
Speaker 4: little bit further. They go into Idol County and they

453
00:26:52,880 --> 00:26:55,320
Speaker 4: go in across the Kataba River and become the first

454
00:26:55,320 --> 00:26:58,439
Speaker 4: white settlers across the Kataba River. And that's where George

455
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:02,600
Speaker 4: settled there, and that's where his boys started really hunting

456
00:27:02,640 --> 00:27:05,440
Speaker 4: hard and doing a lot of different stuff. But Henry,

457
00:27:05,800 --> 00:27:09,160
Speaker 4: who was my great great uncle, he and his brother

458
00:27:09,160 --> 00:27:12,680
Speaker 4: in law, Jonathan Osborne, who was another German immigrant, they

459
00:27:12,800 --> 00:27:15,840
Speaker 4: came up here sometime around eighteen oh three with the

460
00:27:15,920 --> 00:27:18,720
Speaker 4: mind to settle and supposedly they took the dogs with me.

461
00:27:18,800 --> 00:27:22,960
Speaker 4: And here is Heywood County. Yes, so there's an area

462
00:27:23,040 --> 00:27:27,120
Speaker 4: there called Pleasant Garden, beautiful beautiful area along the Pigeon River,

463
00:27:27,560 --> 00:27:29,240
Speaker 4: and he thought, man, this would be a great place

464
00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:32,440
Speaker 4: to set up homestead, plant a proper corn and that's

465
00:27:32,440 --> 00:27:34,760
Speaker 4: what in his brother in law did, had the dogs

466
00:27:34,800 --> 00:27:38,240
Speaker 4: with him. Well, the corn crop failed, they could get

467
00:27:38,280 --> 00:27:41,480
Speaker 4: their first taste of a mountain winter, and they're like, man,

468
00:27:41,920 --> 00:27:44,159
Speaker 4: Jonathan's like, I'm getting the heck out of here, you know,

469
00:27:44,200 --> 00:27:47,800
Speaker 4: I'm going back down where it's a little bit warmer. Henry,

470
00:27:47,880 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 4: being stubborn, Plot goes, Nah, I'm staying, man, I'm keeping

471
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:54,040
Speaker 4: my dogs with me. And so he later credits the

472
00:27:54,119 --> 00:27:57,280
Speaker 4: dogs of keeping him alive during that first winter, you know,

473
00:27:57,400 --> 00:28:00,119
Speaker 4: keep me helping him put food on the fire. Well,

474
00:28:00,119 --> 00:28:03,080
Speaker 4: then again, following that ruther of or Trace, he goes

475
00:28:03,160 --> 00:28:06,520
Speaker 4: up over Pigeon Gap, comes down into what's now Waynesville,

476
00:28:06,560 --> 00:28:09,760
Speaker 4: down into what's now Hazelwood, and then goes follows the

477
00:28:09,800 --> 00:28:13,600
Speaker 4: creek up this beautiful valley to the confluence of Richland

478
00:28:13,720 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 4: Dix Creek and says, now we'll build a house right there,

479
00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:17,800
Speaker 4: and builds a cabin there.

480
00:28:20,040 --> 00:28:23,920
Speaker 2: Where Henry lives became known as Plot Valley. It's pretty

481
00:28:23,960 --> 00:28:27,000
Speaker 2: cool how many locations in the region are named after

482
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:30,040
Speaker 2: the Plots. There's even a range of mountains called the

483
00:28:30,080 --> 00:28:33,080
Speaker 2: Plot Balsam Range, which is on the Blue Ridge Parkway

484
00:28:33,080 --> 00:28:36,520
Speaker 2: in North Carolina. There's a historical marker there that you

485
00:28:36,560 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 2: can go and see. Here's mister John with another unique location.

486
00:28:41,000 --> 00:28:46,480
Speaker 1: Name Famous Plot was the brother to John Plot. Henry

487
00:28:46,560 --> 00:28:49,720
Speaker 1: Plutt would have been his father. He had a line

488
00:28:49,760 --> 00:28:52,960
Speaker 1: of Plot dogs that were just superb. One was called

489
00:28:53,040 --> 00:28:56,719
Speaker 1: Porter Porter lost his life in Porter Dye Gap.

490
00:28:57,320 --> 00:29:00,600
Speaker 3: He's dog and a bear Porter dyed. On the map

491
00:29:00,640 --> 00:29:02,240
Speaker 3: you could find Porter Dye Gap.

492
00:29:02,400 --> 00:29:06,160
Speaker 1: Can't now, that's water Rock Knob. Okay, get on the parkway,

493
00:29:06,520 --> 00:29:10,720
Speaker 1: go water Rock Knob. Porter Dyke Gap is there. Well.

494
00:29:10,840 --> 00:29:12,960
Speaker 1: I had to go to Porter Dyke Gap because I

495
00:29:13,000 --> 00:29:15,120
Speaker 1: want to feel the history. Didn't want to read it,

496
00:29:15,160 --> 00:29:20,200
Speaker 1: won't feel it. And you know, you visit these places

497
00:29:20,240 --> 00:29:24,960
Speaker 1: and it's Hallod Ground. It's Hallock ground. To a person

498
00:29:24,960 --> 00:29:28,680
Speaker 1: who likes to bear hunt, run a cone, tre apostle

499
00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:32,240
Speaker 1: or something like that, you know it's it's Hallod ground.

500
00:29:32,840 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 1: It is. That's that's the thing that endears me to

501
00:29:35,920 --> 00:29:41,400
Speaker 1: the pluck Hog. It's a just tremendous, overwhelming pride and

502
00:29:41,720 --> 00:29:43,400
Speaker 1: what we have been bequeathed.

503
00:29:45,360 --> 00:29:47,920
Speaker 2: I hope you're beginning to pick up from these men

504
00:29:48,160 --> 00:29:51,080
Speaker 2: just a fraction of what these bear dogs mean to

505
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:54,640
Speaker 2: these people. When's the last time you heard someone speak

506
00:29:54,640 --> 00:29:58,600
Speaker 2: of being bequeathed the royal heritage of a mountain strain

507
00:29:58,680 --> 00:30:04,240
Speaker 2: of American bear dog. You haven't, my brethren, We've found

508
00:30:04,240 --> 00:30:08,040
Speaker 2: ourselves in the midst of something unique, unknown to the mainstream,

509
00:30:08,520 --> 00:30:15,240
Speaker 2: and deeply American. Here's Bob with more on Henry plot

510
00:30:15,240 --> 00:30:16,280
Speaker 2: down in Plot Valley.

511
00:30:17,200 --> 00:30:22,280
Speaker 4: Well, by the eighteen ten or so, he'd honed pretty

512
00:30:22,320 --> 00:30:25,200
Speaker 4: much the whole valley. The dogs were becoming famous. That

513
00:30:25,320 --> 00:30:28,520
Speaker 4: they were. You know, people made Brandy to make a

514
00:30:28,560 --> 00:30:31,160
Speaker 4: living too, They did that. He had a steal steals

515
00:30:31,160 --> 00:30:35,360
Speaker 4: in his will. He's ignifized out. Yeah, and he too

516
00:30:35,640 --> 00:30:38,560
Speaker 4: had a prolific family, I mean multiple sons.

517
00:30:38,800 --> 00:30:42,520
Speaker 2: And when you say the dogs became famous, let's describe

518
00:30:42,520 --> 00:30:45,800
Speaker 2: what that would mean to someone who wouldn't even understand

519
00:30:46,080 --> 00:30:50,480
Speaker 2: hunting culture. Maybe yeah, regionally, especially if these dogs are

520
00:30:50,920 --> 00:30:54,640
Speaker 2: helping this guy acchoire game for food on his table.

521
00:30:54,840 --> 00:30:58,880
Speaker 2: I mean that kind of stuff quickly gets out. Oh yeah, so,

522
00:30:58,920 --> 00:31:00,640
Speaker 2: I mean someone with a past of hounds. And the

523
00:31:00,640 --> 00:31:05,920
Speaker 2: other thing is that this is not recreational hunting, and

524
00:31:06,360 --> 00:31:10,000
Speaker 2: during that time as well hunters and the idea of

525
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:12,080
Speaker 2: being a hunter. I mean this is right in the

526
00:31:12,120 --> 00:31:14,800
Speaker 2: time of Daniel Boone when Daniel Boone's.

527
00:31:14,520 --> 00:31:16,480
Speaker 4: Daniel Boone lid right up the river from the Plot

528
00:31:16,480 --> 00:31:18,040
Speaker 4: family and yachtkin read out valley.

529
00:31:18,120 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I mean, to be a hunter was

530
00:31:20,160 --> 00:31:25,800
Speaker 2: a widespread cultural very much a compliment like these guys

531
00:31:25,800 --> 00:31:27,960
Speaker 2: are good hunters. I mean that was essentially like saying,

532
00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:31,240
Speaker 2: this is a good family that is well off.

533
00:31:31,720 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 4: And not only that, but the good hunters usually had

534
00:31:34,640 --> 00:31:37,800
Speaker 4: the good dogs, and so those dogs had value. I mean,

535
00:31:38,480 --> 00:31:40,600
Speaker 4: we've got in our Plot family, we've got a bean

536
00:31:40,760 --> 00:31:44,240
Speaker 4: rifle which today would sell for probably hundreds one thousand

537
00:31:44,320 --> 00:31:46,680
Speaker 4: dollars that was sold that was traded for a dog,

538
00:31:47,480 --> 00:31:50,280
Speaker 4: you know, in the early eighteen hundreds, and the flint

539
00:31:50,280 --> 00:31:54,440
Speaker 4: lock rifle. And there was Stanley Hicks, oh deer friend

540
00:31:54,480 --> 00:31:57,520
Speaker 4: of mine has passed away now his third great grandfather

541
00:31:57,960 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 4: sold an entire valley for a rifle, keepskin, and a dog.

542
00:32:02,240 --> 00:32:04,440
Speaker 3: So I mean probably felt like you got the better

543
00:32:04,520 --> 00:32:04,720
Speaker 3: end of the.

544
00:32:04,880 --> 00:32:08,520
Speaker 4: Absolutely bragged about it, you know. So you start hearing

545
00:32:08,520 --> 00:32:11,840
Speaker 4: this reputation. People started talking about these these some of

546
00:32:11,840 --> 00:32:14,320
Speaker 4: them just called them Rendel bear dogs. Some of them

547
00:32:14,360 --> 00:32:17,120
Speaker 4: start calling them Plot dogs because the Plot family had them,

548
00:32:17,680 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 4: you know. And what was really interesting about this area

549
00:32:21,360 --> 00:32:24,680
Speaker 4: at that time was between eighteen hundred and really about

550
00:32:24,920 --> 00:32:29,160
Speaker 4: really about World War two. Trains didn't come into Ashville

551
00:32:29,360 --> 00:32:34,320
Speaker 4: in eighteen eighty something was twelve hundred people living there.

552
00:32:34,560 --> 00:32:37,080
Speaker 4: By nineteen hundred, when the train was there, it was

553
00:32:37,120 --> 00:32:41,160
Speaker 4: the third largest city in North Carolina. But between that time,

554
00:32:41,200 --> 00:32:43,320
Speaker 4: between the time Henry Plot first got here in the

555
00:32:43,320 --> 00:32:46,719
Speaker 4: early eighteen hundreds and that time, it was kind of

556
00:32:46,760 --> 00:32:49,920
Speaker 4: a time capsule. You know, people here there was no

557
00:32:50,040 --> 00:32:52,920
Speaker 4: really connection to the outside world because trains didn't get

558
00:32:53,200 --> 00:32:56,440
Speaker 4: to Waynesville until eighteen eighties, didn't get the Murphy until

559
00:32:56,440 --> 00:32:58,960
Speaker 4: eighteen nineties. You couldn't get in here or out of

560
00:32:59,000 --> 00:33:01,320
Speaker 4: here except by a wagon or horse. Yeah, and the

561
00:33:01,440 --> 00:33:03,400
Speaker 4: roads were terrible. If it was raining and you could

562
00:33:03,400 --> 00:33:07,480
Speaker 4: forget it. Snowing could definitely forget it. Yeah, game was abundant.

563
00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:10,400
Speaker 4: There weren't many white people even living here then, and

564
00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:14,520
Speaker 4: the few that were were farmers, subsistence farmers, hunters, and

565
00:33:14,600 --> 00:33:16,400
Speaker 4: like you said, that was a big deal. Man. You

566
00:33:16,520 --> 00:33:18,760
Speaker 4: had to hunt It wasn't a matter of like, oh,

567
00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:21,320
Speaker 4: I just enjoy hunting, to go get me a trophy.

568
00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:23,520
Speaker 4: This was about I got to put food on the table.

569
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:25,480
Speaker 4: We got to smoke some meat for the winter.

570
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:29,360
Speaker 3: These dogs had some real legitimate value.

571
00:33:29,440 --> 00:33:33,000
Speaker 4: Most definitely, And people forget they were looking for multi

572
00:33:33,040 --> 00:33:35,760
Speaker 4: purpose dogs. Yeah, they were looking for dogs to defend

573
00:33:35,800 --> 00:33:39,040
Speaker 4: their homesteads from a time of the Indian Wars all

574
00:33:39,080 --> 00:33:41,240
Speaker 4: the way up to the Civil War when deserters were

575
00:33:41,280 --> 00:33:44,200
Speaker 4: coming back and you know, trying to attack homesteads and

576
00:33:44,200 --> 00:33:47,760
Speaker 4: that sort of thing. And then you have the fact

577
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:51,040
Speaker 4: that you know, people think about fences. Back then, fences

578
00:33:51,080 --> 00:33:54,680
Speaker 4: were you used to keep livestock out. Yeah, In other words,

579
00:33:54,920 --> 00:33:58,680
Speaker 4: you build a fence around your garden to keep livestock out.

580
00:33:58,800 --> 00:34:01,080
Speaker 4: You let your pigs and your cows. You notched their

581
00:34:01,120 --> 00:34:04,400
Speaker 4: ears or gave them a mark, and they wentere range

582
00:34:04,920 --> 00:34:06,920
Speaker 4: and you kind of knew where they were, and you'd

583
00:34:06,960 --> 00:34:08,680
Speaker 4: go check on them two or three times a year.

584
00:34:08,920 --> 00:34:11,200
Speaker 4: But in the fall you'd go get the dogs, and

585
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:12,359
Speaker 4: the dogs we hurt them back.

586
00:34:12,600 --> 00:34:15,320
Speaker 2: So what I'm hearing you say is that these dogs

587
00:34:15,320 --> 00:34:19,000
Speaker 2: were guard dogs absolutely, so herding dogs, yes, and then

588
00:34:19,000 --> 00:34:21,960
Speaker 2: they would have been what we'll define later, but as

589
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:26,600
Speaker 2: tree dogs, dogs that run game that can climb up trees.

590
00:34:29,200 --> 00:34:31,880
Speaker 2: This gets as caught up on the plot family history,

591
00:34:32,000 --> 00:34:35,000
Speaker 2: their frontier life, and how they were using these dogs.

592
00:34:35,560 --> 00:34:39,360
Speaker 2: And the term tree dog is an important distinction amongst hounds.

593
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:43,000
Speaker 2: This means that the dog will stay and bark at

594
00:34:43,040 --> 00:34:46,040
Speaker 2: the base of the tree that the game they're pursuing

595
00:34:46,360 --> 00:34:49,920
Speaker 2: has climbed, or as Henry Plot probably would have said,

596
00:34:50,520 --> 00:34:54,160
Speaker 2: had clumb not all will do this. And it's a

597
00:34:54,200 --> 00:34:56,799
Speaker 2: badge of functional honor to be called a tree dog.

598
00:34:57,640 --> 00:35:01,279
Speaker 2: And as a quick lineage summary, I think we've got

599
00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:03,440
Speaker 2: to go through this plot history just real quick so

600
00:35:03,480 --> 00:35:06,520
Speaker 2: you can stay on track. George or Johannes Plott was

601
00:35:06,560 --> 00:35:10,800
Speaker 2: born in seventeen thirty four and immigrated from Germany. Interestingly,

602
00:35:10,960 --> 00:35:14,400
Speaker 2: Daniel Boone was born in seventeen thirty four too, so

603
00:35:14,480 --> 00:35:16,960
Speaker 2: George Plott had a bunch of kids. But one of

604
00:35:17,000 --> 00:35:20,040
Speaker 2: them was Henry Plott, who was born in seventeen seventy.

605
00:35:20,239 --> 00:35:21,360
Speaker 3: We've been to his home place.

606
00:35:21,600 --> 00:35:23,839
Speaker 2: He was a hunter and as the story goes, he

607
00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:27,920
Speaker 2: was handed down his father's dogs. Henry had eleven children,

608
00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:30,160
Speaker 2: one of which was John Plott. Who was born in

609
00:35:30,200 --> 00:35:32,719
Speaker 2: eighteen thirteen and was a big time hunter. He had

610
00:35:32,760 --> 00:35:36,120
Speaker 2: a son named Montroval Plot, who was probably the first

611
00:35:36,160 --> 00:35:40,120
Speaker 2: to be recognized as having plot dogs. Montraval had a

612
00:35:40,120 --> 00:35:42,800
Speaker 2: bunch of kids, but the most famous of his kids,

613
00:35:42,960 --> 00:35:45,319
Speaker 2: and maybe the most famous plot hunter of all, was

614
00:35:45,440 --> 00:35:49,240
Speaker 2: von Plott, who lived into the nineteen sixties in Heywood County,

615
00:35:49,280 --> 00:35:52,960
Speaker 2: North Carolina. Bob Plott, the guy I'm talking to right now,

616
00:35:53,320 --> 00:35:55,680
Speaker 2: knew Vaughn personally when he was a kid.

617
00:35:56,080 --> 00:35:57,520
Speaker 3: It was one of his uncles.

618
00:35:58,320 --> 00:36:01,600
Speaker 2: However, to be fair and to throw a wrench in

619
00:36:01,640 --> 00:36:05,520
Speaker 2: our story, it's not entirely known how these dogs arose

620
00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:07,080
Speaker 2: into modern history.

621
00:36:07,080 --> 00:36:09,439
Speaker 3: With the plot name attached to them.

622
00:36:09,960 --> 00:36:12,640
Speaker 2: It seems evident the trail is clear that this family

623
00:36:12,719 --> 00:36:15,320
Speaker 2: had a unique fingerprint on these.

624
00:36:15,120 --> 00:36:16,520
Speaker 3: Dogs, like no doubt.

625
00:36:17,280 --> 00:36:20,320
Speaker 2: But could they have just been the most prominent folks

626
00:36:20,520 --> 00:36:23,880
Speaker 2: using these brindle bear dogs that were developed by a

627
00:36:23,920 --> 00:36:27,759
Speaker 2: wider community. Here's mister John and he's going to give

628
00:36:27,760 --> 00:36:31,560
Speaker 2: his opinion on the development of the plot hound in Appalachia.

629
00:36:32,480 --> 00:36:34,880
Speaker 3: I asked him where he thought they came from.

630
00:36:35,880 --> 00:36:40,200
Speaker 1: Now, to your question, not every plot dog came from

631
00:36:40,200 --> 00:36:43,480
Speaker 1: the Plot family. Taylor Crockett has told me that they

632
00:36:43,480 --> 00:36:47,000
Speaker 1: were a type of dog rather than a breed at

633
00:36:47,040 --> 00:36:52,319
Speaker 1: one time, and they were numerous breeders, numerous hunters. You

634
00:36:52,360 --> 00:36:57,000
Speaker 1: couldn't have very many dogs because they weren't some dog food.

635
00:36:57,040 --> 00:37:01,160
Speaker 1: Back thee it fed them scraps. We watch you feed

636
00:37:01,200 --> 00:37:07,360
Speaker 1: them normally dog corn bread. There are three types of

637
00:37:07,360 --> 00:37:10,680
Speaker 1: people that settled western North Carolina. One where to be

638
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:16,280
Speaker 1: the townsfolk settled in towns. The other would be farmers

639
00:37:16,360 --> 00:37:21,200
Speaker 1: who owned the best low lying bottom land farming land.

640
00:37:21,960 --> 00:37:24,440
Speaker 1: And then there were folks. There were three types. There

641
00:37:24,440 --> 00:37:27,000
Speaker 1: were folks, and I smile when I say this. They

642
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:31,279
Speaker 1: were folks I call the Branchwater Mountaineers. They lived up

643
00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:35,160
Speaker 1: the hallows at the head of the branch. To get

644
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:38,080
Speaker 1: to their cabin you had to take a slid rode in.

645
00:37:38,520 --> 00:37:41,480
Speaker 1: There was a log cabin there with the dog, truck, kitchen.

646
00:37:42,040 --> 00:37:46,000
Speaker 1: Dog slept under the house. Everywhere that man went, his

647
00:37:46,120 --> 00:37:49,400
Speaker 1: dog went with him. He took his rifle if he

648
00:37:49,480 --> 00:37:51,960
Speaker 1: was working. If he heard the dog, tree picked up

649
00:37:52,000 --> 00:37:54,400
Speaker 1: the rifle, left to work and went to the dog.

650
00:37:54,960 --> 00:38:00,120
Speaker 1: That was the supper for that night. But the Branchwater Mountaineers,

651
00:38:00,360 --> 00:38:04,000
Speaker 1: those old families I think a lot in a large

652
00:38:04,000 --> 00:38:08,520
Speaker 1: part responsible for what eventually became the Plot dog.

653
00:38:09,920 --> 00:38:13,080
Speaker 2: Mister John appreciates the story of the German origins of

654
00:38:13,120 --> 00:38:15,960
Speaker 2: the Plot hound stock, but doesn't fully buy it.

655
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:17,719
Speaker 3: He believes the dogs.

656
00:38:17,440 --> 00:38:20,840
Speaker 2: Were likely developed from stock that was here, and that

657
00:38:20,920 --> 00:38:24,000
Speaker 2: this breed of brindle bear dogs weren't the sole doing

658
00:38:24,040 --> 00:38:27,520
Speaker 2: of the Plot family. And just to clarify, it wasn't

659
00:38:27,560 --> 00:38:31,200
Speaker 2: necessarily the Plots who claimed one hundred percent ownership of

660
00:38:31,239 --> 00:38:34,040
Speaker 2: this brendle bear dog. It just kind of happened, and

661
00:38:34,120 --> 00:38:37,280
Speaker 2: people often believe what seems to be an easy narrative.

662
00:38:37,880 --> 00:38:40,280
Speaker 2: There's an argument to be made that the Plot simply

663
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:43,839
Speaker 2: became the dominant spokesman for this type of dog. As

664
00:38:43,920 --> 00:38:48,200
Speaker 2: John's mentor Taylor Crockett told him, it's important to remember

665
00:38:48,239 --> 00:38:51,040
Speaker 2: that there was no United Kennel Club, and these people

666
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:52,400
Speaker 2: weren't trying to start a breed.

667
00:38:52,960 --> 00:38:55,120
Speaker 3: These hill folk families simply.

668
00:38:54,800 --> 00:38:58,360
Speaker 2: Needed dogs that could get the job done on bears, hogs,

669
00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:01,319
Speaker 2: and coon and these brindle dogs were doing it.

670
00:39:01,320 --> 00:39:02,279
Speaker 3: It was only.

671
00:39:02,080 --> 00:39:04,640
Speaker 2: Later that we got interested in where they came from.

672
00:39:05,600 --> 00:39:08,960
Speaker 2: I've now got a question for Bob, so tell me

673
00:39:09,040 --> 00:39:12,480
Speaker 2: about from eighteen hundred to nineteen hundred, what happened with

674
00:39:12,560 --> 00:39:14,719
Speaker 2: the plot hound breed, because at this time it's not

675
00:39:14,800 --> 00:39:18,120
Speaker 2: even called no, no, it's not a plot hound breed.

676
00:39:18,160 --> 00:39:22,120
Speaker 2: It's just this kind of regional phenomenon. This family talk

677
00:39:22,160 --> 00:39:25,279
Speaker 2: to me about how they like the dogs became distributed

678
00:39:25,719 --> 00:39:26,800
Speaker 2: and how that happened.

679
00:39:27,040 --> 00:39:29,560
Speaker 4: Two things happened there that I really think played a

680
00:39:29,640 --> 00:39:31,880
Speaker 4: huge role in making the plot hownd what it is today.

681
00:39:32,680 --> 00:39:35,239
Speaker 4: I think because we were in that time capsule, so

682
00:39:35,320 --> 00:39:38,400
Speaker 4: to speak, it allowed the dogs to get skipped better

683
00:39:38,440 --> 00:39:41,600
Speaker 4: and better and better, you know. And von Platt talked

684
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:44,520
Speaker 4: about his father, Montreville Plot was born in eighteen fifty.

685
00:39:44,920 --> 00:39:47,840
Speaker 4: He talked about what he called the Toasac network. I

686
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:52,200
Speaker 4: think I actually named that. But settlers from upstate South Carolina,

687
00:39:52,520 --> 00:39:56,560
Speaker 4: North Georgia, East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia would come riding in

688
00:39:56,640 --> 00:40:00,640
Speaker 4: on horses and mules with toasacks and get puppies. And

689
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:03,440
Speaker 4: the understanding was that, you know, we get you a puppyre,

690
00:40:03,520 --> 00:40:06,239
Speaker 4: we sell you a puppy, or we trade puppies. Is

691
00:40:06,280 --> 00:40:08,759
Speaker 4: that we work together. You know, you got to keep

692
00:40:08,760 --> 00:40:11,479
Speaker 4: this bloodline as close as we can. We're gonna there's

693
00:40:11,480 --> 00:40:15,080
Speaker 4: gonna be stuff introduced into it at times, but the

694
00:40:15,160 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 4: most part, we're will try to do a lot of

695
00:40:16,640 --> 00:40:18,520
Speaker 4: line breed and we're gonna try to do some things

696
00:40:18,800 --> 00:40:22,400
Speaker 4: to keep this what's working. Yeah, And so they really had.

697
00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:23,960
Speaker 4: And then of course then you had other families who

698
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:26,080
Speaker 4: took that and said, well, I want to go this

699
00:40:26,280 --> 00:40:28,160
Speaker 4: direction with it, and they did and they did well.

700
00:40:28,400 --> 00:40:31,120
Speaker 4: But you had this network of people that were doing

701
00:40:31,160 --> 00:40:33,400
Speaker 4: this that were not named. Some of them were related,

702
00:40:33,480 --> 00:40:36,839
Speaker 4: some of our cousins and whatnot. But that time between there,

703
00:40:37,040 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 4: between eighteen hundred and nineteen hundred, the breed was continuing

704
00:40:40,120 --> 00:40:42,759
Speaker 4: to evolve. But even then it was still more kind

705
00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:44,920
Speaker 4: of I think what I have been a regional phenomenon,

706
00:40:45,280 --> 00:40:49,279
Speaker 4: except for around nineteen hundred, people started coming in here.

707
00:40:49,320 --> 00:40:51,279
Speaker 4: Once a train was in here, the train was train

708
00:40:51,400 --> 00:40:54,000
Speaker 4: changed everything. You can take a train end all the

709
00:40:54,040 --> 00:40:56,480
Speaker 4: way to Murphy. You could get off in Proctor, you

710
00:40:56,560 --> 00:40:58,960
Speaker 4: go up on Hazel Creek and hunt and all these

711
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:01,839
Speaker 4: communities had hunting camps. All these some of them were

712
00:41:01,840 --> 00:41:04,360
Speaker 4: affluent people, some of them were just common people. So

713
00:41:05,520 --> 00:41:09,719
Speaker 4: branch Ricky, who was arguably the most famous or one

714
00:41:09,760 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 4: of the top probably three or four famous athletes, in

715
00:41:12,640 --> 00:41:15,200
Speaker 4: the world at that time. You came here and hunted,

716
00:41:15,920 --> 00:41:18,960
Speaker 4: you know. He was credited with later signing Jackie robertson

717
00:41:19,000 --> 00:41:23,480
Speaker 4: the professional Baseball contract Integrating Professional Baseball in nineteen forty seven.

718
00:41:23,840 --> 00:41:26,600
Speaker 4: But he came here in thirty five and was working

719
00:41:26,640 --> 00:41:29,360
Speaker 4: for the Saint Louis Cardinals then. And I've got a

720
00:41:29,440 --> 00:41:33,600
Speaker 4: letter on Saint Louis Cardinal letterhead of Ricky writing back

721
00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:37,320
Speaker 4: to Vonplat saying, man, you guys got the professional stamding

722
00:41:37,400 --> 00:41:40,600
Speaker 4: of professional athletes, you know, running these dogs, and I

723
00:41:40,640 --> 00:41:42,880
Speaker 4: want to buy these dogs. I want to get these dogs.

724
00:41:42,880 --> 00:41:47,719
Speaker 2: And so basically, when this area opened up, these hunters

725
00:41:47,920 --> 00:41:52,080
Speaker 2: started getting some national attention because of their their prowess

726
00:41:52,120 --> 00:41:56,120
Speaker 2: as hunters. People started coming in here. There started to

727
00:41:56,160 --> 00:42:00,799
Speaker 2: be writers, big name people coming in and talking about

728
00:42:00,840 --> 00:42:03,200
Speaker 2: and they were like, hey, there's these hunters down in

729
00:42:03,239 --> 00:42:07,120
Speaker 2: North Carolina and they've got these dogs. And again, up

730
00:42:07,239 --> 00:42:11,320
Speaker 2: until this point, this isn't a recognized This is still

731
00:42:11,360 --> 00:42:14,960
Speaker 2: just kind of this regional phenomenon, these guys with dogs.

732
00:42:15,000 --> 00:42:18,000
Speaker 2: And obviously by the nineteen hundreds it would have spread

733
00:42:18,040 --> 00:42:21,040
Speaker 2: beyond the Plot family most definitely.

734
00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:23,000
Speaker 3: It would have. It would have been dogs all over

735
00:42:23,000 --> 00:42:23,400
Speaker 3: the country.

736
00:42:23,480 --> 00:42:27,319
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've got shipping receipts from early nineteen hundreds of

737
00:42:28,040 --> 00:42:31,480
Speaker 4: plot hounds being shipped Arizona. You know, plot howns being

738
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:34,120
Speaker 4: shipped different parts of the country. By the nineteen thirties,

739
00:42:34,160 --> 00:42:35,640
Speaker 4: those dogs were going for one hundred and twenty five

740
00:42:35,640 --> 00:42:38,600
Speaker 4: dollars each, which was a lot of money at that time. Yeah,

741
00:42:38,600 --> 00:42:40,799
Speaker 4: but backing up a little bit to your point. By

742
00:42:40,880 --> 00:42:44,520
Speaker 4: nineteen hundred, early nineteen hundreds, when these train was here,

743
00:42:44,560 --> 00:42:47,120
Speaker 4: people could get here a little bit better. Writers were

744
00:42:47,120 --> 00:42:50,840
Speaker 4: coming here. You know. Raymond camports writers, sports writers. Raymond

745
00:42:50,840 --> 00:42:52,680
Speaker 4: Camp was a writer for the New York Times. So

746
00:42:52,680 --> 00:42:55,600
Speaker 4: imagine this New York Times. You don't think about New

747
00:42:55,640 --> 00:42:58,960
Speaker 4: York Times that way. New York Times had a full

748
00:42:59,000 --> 00:43:02,799
Speaker 4: time out door commns named Raymond Camp who wrote three

749
00:43:02,960 --> 00:43:03,800
Speaker 4: articles a week.

750
00:43:04,920 --> 00:43:07,840
Speaker 2: So by the nineteen hundreds, the dogs are getting national

751
00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:11,879
Speaker 2: attention and they're being called plot hounds. But where are

752
00:43:11,880 --> 00:43:15,200
Speaker 2: the first written accounts of them being called plots Because

753
00:43:15,480 --> 00:43:18,600
Speaker 2: to my knowledge, there is no record of the early

754
00:43:18,719 --> 00:43:21,840
Speaker 2: plot family in the seventeen hundreds and into the middle

755
00:43:21,920 --> 00:43:26,000
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds calling them plot hounds. They might have simply

756
00:43:26,040 --> 00:43:29,960
Speaker 2: been referred to as the plots hounds, as in the

757
00:43:30,000 --> 00:43:33,760
Speaker 2: Plot family has some hounds, not as in a proper

758
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:37,480
Speaker 2: noun plot hounds. But at some point there was a

759
00:43:37,520 --> 00:43:40,720
Speaker 2: big shift in ownership. Here's mister John.

760
00:43:41,800 --> 00:43:45,200
Speaker 1: I have found as early as the nineteen hundreds of

761
00:43:45,400 --> 00:43:49,720
Speaker 1: New York Times articles about plot dogs, yeah, and hunting

762
00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:53,000
Speaker 1: plot dogs and hunting paar in western North Carolina. So

763
00:43:53,440 --> 00:43:55,279
Speaker 1: believe it or not. As early as that was this

764
00:43:55,640 --> 00:43:59,520
Speaker 1: national publicity about the Plot family and their plot dogs.

765
00:44:00,920 --> 00:44:03,839
Speaker 2: So by the early nineteen hundreds they're referring to them

766
00:44:03,880 --> 00:44:07,760
Speaker 2: as proper noun plot hounds, which is pretty compelling evidence

767
00:44:08,000 --> 00:44:10,800
Speaker 2: that they'd probably been calling them that for a long time.

768
00:44:11,840 --> 00:44:14,840
Speaker 2: The first known photograph of a plot was taken in

769
00:44:14,920 --> 00:44:19,200
Speaker 2: nineteen oh six. A handsome, dark hound looking dog with

770
00:44:19,280 --> 00:44:22,000
Speaker 2: a frosty muzzle sits happily.

771
00:44:21,600 --> 00:44:24,919
Speaker 3: In an old school family portrait. It's pretty cool.

772
00:44:25,440 --> 00:44:29,040
Speaker 2: You can see that photo along with countless other incredible

773
00:44:29,080 --> 00:44:33,440
Speaker 2: images in Bob's book Striking Stay. You really should order it.

774
00:44:33,480 --> 00:44:36,120
Speaker 2: Every one of you should have a copy of Striking Stay.

775
00:44:36,880 --> 00:44:39,799
Speaker 2: But the dog in that first plot photo came from

776
00:44:39,800 --> 00:44:42,680
Speaker 2: the stock of Montraval Plot, who would have been the

777
00:44:42,680 --> 00:44:46,920
Speaker 2: great grandson of the original immigrant Johannas or George Plot

778
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:49,080
Speaker 2: and Montreval would have been Bob's great uncle.

779
00:44:49,760 --> 00:44:52,880
Speaker 3: And not to throw a possum and the egg house

780
00:44:52,880 --> 00:44:56,840
Speaker 3: of our beautiful story. But it's just too relevant to ignore.

781
00:44:57,280 --> 00:45:02,080
Speaker 2: Montrovale Plot, who's known as one of the modern patriarchs

782
00:45:02,280 --> 00:45:05,280
Speaker 2: of the Plot story. He's the first one we really

783
00:45:05,320 --> 00:45:08,160
Speaker 2: know a whole lot about, primarily because of his son Vaughn.

784
00:45:08,600 --> 00:45:12,560
Speaker 2: But old man Montraval was adamant that his dogs weren't

785
00:45:12,640 --> 00:45:17,440
Speaker 2: hounds at all, but rather plot curs. He corrected anyone

786
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:21,400
Speaker 2: that called them hounds. Bob told me that kerr is

787
00:45:21,440 --> 00:45:25,480
Speaker 2: the transliteration of the Welsh word key, which is a

788
00:45:25,560 --> 00:45:30,239
Speaker 2: purebred and highly coveted hunting dog. So Mantraval, only two

789
00:45:30,280 --> 00:45:34,960
Speaker 2: generations removed from Europe, had some allegiance to the idea of.

790
00:45:34,920 --> 00:45:35,720
Speaker 3: A cur dog.

791
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:39,680
Speaker 2: Today, however, the modern usage of the word cur is

792
00:45:39,760 --> 00:45:40,560
Speaker 2: multi layered.

793
00:45:41,000 --> 00:45:42,719
Speaker 3: Some might use that like a curse.

794
00:45:42,480 --> 00:45:45,799
Speaker 2: Word for a dog that's nothing but an old cur or,

795
00:45:45,840 --> 00:45:48,440
Speaker 2: you know, like a mixed breed mutt. But there are

796
00:45:48,440 --> 00:45:52,239
Speaker 2: also some legitimate breeds like black mouth, stephens, curd and

797
00:45:52,320 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 2: tree and curve. It's complicated, but this is bear grease.

798
00:45:56,719 --> 00:45:59,560
Speaker 2: Did you expect the day off from complicated drama?

799
00:46:00,280 --> 00:46:00,759
Speaker 3: I hope not.

800
00:46:02,640 --> 00:46:04,799
Speaker 2: I want to get back to mister John and ask

801
00:46:04,880 --> 00:46:07,719
Speaker 2: him a pointed question about why the dogs carry the

802
00:46:07,800 --> 00:46:11,040
Speaker 2: name Plot. Remember, what we're in search of is the

803
00:46:11,080 --> 00:46:14,520
Speaker 2: authenticity of the general arc of this story as it

804
00:46:14,560 --> 00:46:18,840
Speaker 2: relates to the Plot family, because it's wildly interesting and

805
00:46:19,000 --> 00:46:22,120
Speaker 2: just to be frank, mister John is skeptical of the

806
00:46:22,160 --> 00:46:24,760
Speaker 2: origin story of the Plot hound and these boys bringing

807
00:46:24,800 --> 00:46:28,719
Speaker 2: over five dogs from Germany. So my question to him is,

808
00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:32,080
Speaker 2: why is this breed named after the Plots if they

809
00:46:32,200 --> 00:46:34,719
Speaker 2: weren't the sole creators of them?

810
00:46:35,360 --> 00:46:36,920
Speaker 3: Man, I hope I don't get in trouble for this.

811
00:46:38,000 --> 00:46:41,640
Speaker 2: What you're telling me doesn't surprise me. Like the traditional

812
00:46:41,680 --> 00:46:44,320
Speaker 2: story I've known and I mean just kind of believe

813
00:46:44,520 --> 00:46:47,520
Speaker 2: was probably for the most part true. But one thing

814
00:46:47,600 --> 00:46:53,040
Speaker 2: I know that humans do very well is streamline stories

815
00:46:53,120 --> 00:46:56,200
Speaker 2: to kind of make it fit an easy narrative. Would

816
00:46:56,239 --> 00:46:58,279
Speaker 2: you say that that's happened place?

817
00:46:58,920 --> 00:47:03,960
Speaker 1: And also, the Plot family were the most identifiable, the

818
00:47:04,000 --> 00:47:09,000
Speaker 1: better known of the hunters and we're written about, and

819
00:47:09,280 --> 00:47:12,560
Speaker 1: at that time the family members were getting out in around,

820
00:47:12,640 --> 00:47:17,000
Speaker 1: serving in the military, serving in World War One, for example,

821
00:47:17,719 --> 00:47:22,960
Speaker 1: they just were better known and could communicate better. I know,

822
00:47:24,200 --> 00:47:27,080
Speaker 1: I tried to explain to some folks. I said, I

823
00:47:27,120 --> 00:47:29,759
Speaker 1: know it may be disappointing to you, but there's an

824
00:47:29,800 --> 00:47:33,680
Speaker 1: other side to this too that's just as fascinating, if

825
00:47:33,719 --> 00:47:38,279
Speaker 1: not more intriguing than that. I've just I used the

826
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:44,680
Speaker 1: term here first on this couch pure Americana. It's just

827
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:50,160
Speaker 1: a very intriguing account and story about Plot dogs.

828
00:47:51,480 --> 00:47:54,760
Speaker 3: Pure Americana. That's a good phrase.

829
00:47:55,880 --> 00:47:58,520
Speaker 2: What I'm hearing mister John say is that the Plot

830
00:47:58,560 --> 00:48:02,120
Speaker 2: family might have just risen as the most prominent family

831
00:48:02,200 --> 00:48:06,960
Speaker 2: hunting these Appalachian brindled bear dogs, and thus the dogs

832
00:48:06,960 --> 00:48:10,440
Speaker 2: were named after them, and that in and of itself

833
00:48:10,680 --> 00:48:14,759
Speaker 2: would be completely fair and reasonable. They deserve to have

834
00:48:14,840 --> 00:48:17,640
Speaker 2: this dog named after him. That's not what we're trying

835
00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:20,680
Speaker 2: to get at. But what I'm also hearing him say

836
00:48:21,040 --> 00:48:23,920
Speaker 2: is that it really doesn't matter. And that's really what

837
00:48:23,960 --> 00:48:28,799
Speaker 2: I'm hearing Bob say too. He's just interested in preserving

838
00:48:28,880 --> 00:48:33,080
Speaker 2: the traditional family story, which he's done an incredible job at,

839
00:48:33,360 --> 00:48:36,120
Speaker 2: and the story absolutely deserves.

840
00:48:35,600 --> 00:48:36,320
Speaker 3: To be saved.

841
00:48:36,719 --> 00:48:39,680
Speaker 2: We just don't know how it all happened, but we

842
00:48:39,880 --> 00:48:44,080
Speaker 2: still have this hound or this cur as old Montrable said,

843
00:48:44,360 --> 00:48:47,960
Speaker 2: that was developed here in an incredible fashion. Regardless of

844
00:48:48,040 --> 00:48:51,960
Speaker 2: intent or who did what. Bob and mister John are

845
00:48:51,960 --> 00:48:56,200
Speaker 2: on the same team. They're actually friends. Bob quotes mister

846
00:48:56,320 --> 00:48:59,719
Speaker 2: John in his books Striking Stay. These men both have

847
00:49:00,000 --> 00:49:04,120
Speaker 2: dedicated their lives to plot hounds and their history. And

848
00:49:04,600 --> 00:49:07,080
Speaker 2: to go back to this idea about the plot family

849
00:49:07,160 --> 00:49:09,879
Speaker 2: being dominant, this kind of stuff happens all the time

850
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:14,480
Speaker 2: in life. Some activity is happening and gaining popularity. In

851
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:17,239
Speaker 2: this case, it was hunting these brindled dogs, and then

852
00:49:17,320 --> 00:49:21,680
Speaker 2: a prominent person arises and the activity becomes deeply associated

853
00:49:21,760 --> 00:49:25,080
Speaker 2: with them. For example, think about bow hunting legend Fred Bhaer.

854
00:49:25,440 --> 00:49:28,040
Speaker 2: He didn't invent bowhunting. He was just a guy that

855
00:49:28,080 --> 00:49:30,759
Speaker 2: came around at the right time, was incredibly good, was

856
00:49:30,800 --> 00:49:34,680
Speaker 2: a good businessman, a good marketer, and genuinely ushered us

857
00:49:34,680 --> 00:49:37,440
Speaker 2: into the modern era of bowhunting. But he didn't create

858
00:49:37,520 --> 00:49:40,480
Speaker 2: bow hunting. It's possible the plot family was this for

859
00:49:40,560 --> 00:49:44,000
Speaker 2: these dogs. Now, I still think it's kind of risky

860
00:49:44,080 --> 00:49:47,359
Speaker 2: to fully buy into what mister John is saying. I mean,

861
00:49:47,400 --> 00:49:50,840
Speaker 2: the data points are extremely compelling and It's undisputed that

862
00:49:50,920 --> 00:49:53,400
Speaker 2: this family had a unique line of dogs that stretch

863
00:49:53,480 --> 00:49:57,080
Speaker 2: back to their patriarch, George Plot. It all goes back

864
00:49:57,120 --> 00:50:00,239
Speaker 2: to the question, did George or Johannas have the these

865
00:50:00,239 --> 00:50:03,600
Speaker 2: five dogs on that ship or did careless record keeping

866
00:50:03,680 --> 00:50:06,839
Speaker 2: delete that from history? Or is it a fabricated myth?

867
00:50:07,080 --> 00:50:09,319
Speaker 2: And if it's a myth, who and why did they

868
00:50:09,320 --> 00:50:11,440
Speaker 2: make it up? And man, it is a good story

869
00:50:11,440 --> 00:50:14,480
Speaker 2: if they made it up. I love this kind of stuff.

870
00:50:14,880 --> 00:50:17,680
Speaker 2: It's really in the realm with the Black Panther Bigfoot.

871
00:50:18,280 --> 00:50:21,880
Speaker 2: Are you a believer or not? I have a feeling

872
00:50:21,960 --> 00:50:25,320
Speaker 2: Gary believer. Nukem will believe those dogs were on that ship.

873
00:50:25,719 --> 00:50:28,360
Speaker 3: And if Brent Reeves would have been around, he'd have

874
00:50:28,400 --> 00:50:30,040
Speaker 3: been an undercover warden.

875
00:50:29,880 --> 00:50:33,120
Speaker 2: On that ship, dressed like a pilgrim trying to catch

876
00:50:33,160 --> 00:50:37,560
Speaker 2: some outlaws. Maybe by the end of this you'll have

877
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:39,920
Speaker 2: a sense of what you think actually happened.

878
00:50:41,680 --> 00:50:43,879
Speaker 3: But what's not disputed is that the.

879
00:50:43,800 --> 00:50:47,640
Speaker 2: Plot family were the most prominent, well known plot dog

880
00:50:47,800 --> 00:50:52,320
Speaker 2: hunters in Appalachia when the calendar rolled into the nineteen hundreds.

881
00:50:52,840 --> 00:50:56,200
Speaker 2: Here's Bob bringing us into the finish line of the

882
00:50:56,200 --> 00:50:59,160
Speaker 2: official formation of the Plot hound breed.

883
00:50:59,800 --> 00:51:00,600
Speaker 3: This this is big.

884
00:51:01,560 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 4: So that's all of a sudden, be like, man, I

885
00:51:04,640 --> 00:51:06,000
Speaker 4: want to hear more about this. I want to see

886
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:08,120
Speaker 4: more about this, you know, And so they come here.

887
00:51:08,160 --> 00:51:10,719
Speaker 4: So by thirty five, the Ricky thing kind of exploded.

888
00:51:11,440 --> 00:51:14,359
Speaker 4: By then you got guys in the Midwest who are

889
00:51:14,400 --> 00:51:17,759
Speaker 4: coming here after, Like a senator from Wisconsin came here

890
00:51:17,800 --> 00:51:19,520
Speaker 4: and he went back and started telling people about it. Well,

891
00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:23,000
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, guys from Michigan and Illinois and

892
00:51:23,040 --> 00:51:25,279
Speaker 4: all over the place are saying, man, I want some

893
00:51:25,320 --> 00:51:29,280
Speaker 4: of those dogs. And like you said, and you're so correct.

894
00:51:30,120 --> 00:51:32,839
Speaker 4: Without all that it would have, you know, as much

895
00:51:32,880 --> 00:51:34,680
Speaker 4: as I love my family, as much as I love

896
00:51:34,719 --> 00:51:36,960
Speaker 4: the history of the breed, it would have been really

897
00:51:36,960 --> 00:51:40,440
Speaker 4: nothing more than a regional phenomenon without that sort of recognition.

898
00:51:40,800 --> 00:51:43,160
Speaker 4: But when it did, man, it took off. And then

899
00:51:43,160 --> 00:51:45,319
Speaker 4: all of a sudden there became a crime of crusade

900
00:51:45,920 --> 00:51:48,400
Speaker 4: for to get the dog registered as an official breed.

901
00:51:49,320 --> 00:51:52,480
Speaker 4: And so that happened in nineteen forty six when the

902
00:51:52,560 --> 00:51:55,920
Speaker 4: UKC finally sanctioned that and approved that. And if you

903
00:51:55,960 --> 00:51:57,960
Speaker 4: look at the first I think there's about one hundred

904
00:51:57,960 --> 00:52:03,040
Speaker 4: dogs registered at that time eighty seven of them roughly

905
00:52:03,640 --> 00:52:09,920
Speaker 4: were all either owned by Vane Plot, John Plott, Taylor, Crockett, Gola, Fergus.

906
00:52:10,200 --> 00:52:12,200
Speaker 3: All those guys would have been from right here, yeah,

907
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:13,680
Speaker 3: right here, yeah, North Carolina.

908
00:52:13,719 --> 00:52:17,280
Speaker 4: Taylor was living in Macon County at that time. Vaughn

909
00:52:17,719 --> 00:52:20,480
Speaker 4: John were living right here in Haywood. Gola was living

910
00:52:20,560 --> 00:52:21,520
Speaker 4: right over in Jackson.

911
00:52:21,640 --> 00:52:24,799
Speaker 2: So nineteen forty six, yeah, the plot Hound became a

912
00:52:25,239 --> 00:52:28,880
Speaker 2: United Kennel Club UKC official breed.

913
00:52:29,400 --> 00:52:31,680
Speaker 3: And these guys right here.

914
00:52:31,400 --> 00:52:35,080
Speaker 2: In western North Carolina were the ones who defined what

915
00:52:35,120 --> 00:52:38,960
Speaker 2: the breed was. They presumably presented a case to the

916
00:52:39,040 --> 00:52:43,759
Speaker 2: UKC said we've got two hundred years history, We've got

917
00:52:43,800 --> 00:52:45,120
Speaker 2: two hundred years of breeding.

918
00:52:45,320 --> 00:52:47,960
Speaker 3: They had to prove that, I.

919
00:52:47,880 --> 00:52:50,560
Speaker 2: Mean some of the stuff that you have today, like

920
00:52:50,600 --> 00:52:53,799
Speaker 2: these old records of what these old men said and

921
00:52:53,800 --> 00:52:56,440
Speaker 2: what their dogs look like, and old pictures and like,

922
00:52:56,480 --> 00:53:00,680
Speaker 2: they basically built a case for this breed, its own

923
00:53:00,760 --> 00:53:01,680
Speaker 2: specific breed.

924
00:53:02,239 --> 00:53:05,279
Speaker 3: And that was a big, big moment for huge for

925
00:53:05,360 --> 00:53:06,000
Speaker 3: the plot Hound.

926
00:53:06,080 --> 00:53:08,839
Speaker 4: Huge, huge. You can't you can't put that in really

927
00:53:09,000 --> 00:53:11,160
Speaker 4: any perspective, how big it was. I mean it was

928
00:53:11,760 --> 00:53:15,400
Speaker 4: because here you got the guys, the original family members

929
00:53:15,520 --> 00:53:18,680
Speaker 4: I say original dating backed. I mean, Henry Plott would

930
00:53:18,680 --> 00:53:21,840
Speaker 4: have been Von's great great grandpa. Henry Plott was my

931
00:53:21,880 --> 00:53:25,160
Speaker 4: great great uncle. So you had that direct connection. You

932
00:53:25,200 --> 00:53:28,480
Speaker 4: had these multiple generations, and like I say, of the

933
00:53:28,480 --> 00:53:30,560
Speaker 4: first one hundred dogs, a eighty seven of them came

934
00:53:30,560 --> 00:53:33,480
Speaker 4: from those guys. And guess what, the rest of them

935
00:53:33,680 --> 00:53:36,840
Speaker 4: were all bought from them by people in the Midwest.

936
00:53:37,200 --> 00:53:40,040
Speaker 4: So it all came from the same thing. Now, give

937
00:53:40,080 --> 00:53:42,680
Speaker 4: the Midwestern guys credit. Once they got them, boy, they

938
00:53:42,719 --> 00:53:44,560
Speaker 4: marketed them. Man, all of a sudden, it became like,

939
00:53:44,640 --> 00:53:47,400
Speaker 4: let's start advertising, let's start doing this. I started doing it.

940
00:53:47,400 --> 00:53:50,760
Speaker 2: And so when in the late forties when this happened,

941
00:53:50,840 --> 00:53:53,600
Speaker 2: this is like such a powerful time too in American

942
00:53:53,600 --> 00:53:54,840
Speaker 2: hot Yeah, world War two.

943
00:53:55,400 --> 00:53:56,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, world War two is ended.

944
00:53:57,360 --> 00:53:59,560
Speaker 2: All these guys come back with these young guys come

945
00:53:59,600 --> 00:54:04,240
Speaker 2: back from war, and there's there's money here, there's time

946
00:54:04,360 --> 00:54:07,280
Speaker 2: that they've never had. America's kind of popped.

947
00:54:07,400 --> 00:54:07,600
Speaker 4: Yep.

948
00:54:07,920 --> 00:54:11,640
Speaker 2: There became a big demand for the plot Hound, huge

949
00:54:11,960 --> 00:54:13,080
Speaker 2: all across the country.

950
00:54:13,320 --> 00:54:15,440
Speaker 4: And but yeah, that's the thing. I mean, you come

951
00:54:15,480 --> 00:54:17,920
Speaker 4: back to this, just this greatest generation the guys are

952
00:54:17,960 --> 00:54:20,840
Speaker 4: coming back from the war. Economies booming. People have a

953
00:54:20,840 --> 00:54:24,360
Speaker 4: little bit of disposable income. You've got a railroad system.

954
00:54:24,440 --> 00:54:26,680
Speaker 4: Now the roads are actually getting in here where you

955
00:54:26,680 --> 00:54:29,640
Speaker 4: can drive a car in pretty much anywhere. And so

956
00:54:30,360 --> 00:54:33,840
Speaker 4: that network across the country which is boom, you know. Yeah,

957
00:54:33,880 --> 00:54:37,799
Speaker 4: And those Midwestern guys give them credit. They were like, man,

958
00:54:37,840 --> 00:54:40,480
Speaker 4: we want to promote this. You know, magazines start coming out,

959
00:54:40,520 --> 00:54:45,320
Speaker 4: you know, yeah, the full Hunter's Horn, Yes, yes, yes,

960
00:54:45,800 --> 00:54:49,920
Speaker 4: and so people start subscribing to them, and then it

961
00:54:50,000 --> 00:54:52,960
Speaker 4: just became this big push for we got to find

962
00:54:53,000 --> 00:54:55,160
Speaker 4: a way to support this even more. And so by

963
00:54:55,360 --> 00:54:59,440
Speaker 4: I think it was late fifties, the National plotoun Association

964
00:54:59,600 --> 00:55:01,440
Speaker 4: was formed to kind of promote the breed. You know.

965
00:55:03,080 --> 00:55:06,760
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty six, the UKC recognized the plot hound

966
00:55:06,800 --> 00:55:09,880
Speaker 2: as an official breed. In eighty seven, of the first

967
00:55:09,880 --> 00:55:13,640
Speaker 2: one hundred dogs registered were from a very tight circle

968
00:55:13,680 --> 00:55:16,359
Speaker 2: in western North Carolina, and a bunch of them had

969
00:55:16,400 --> 00:55:19,640
Speaker 2: the last named plot. By the late nineteen fifties, the

970
00:55:19,680 --> 00:55:22,200
Speaker 2: fame of the plot hound as a bear hog and

971
00:55:22,360 --> 00:55:25,600
Speaker 2: coon dog was soaring across the country. You've got to

972
00:55:25,640 --> 00:55:29,680
Speaker 2: wonder if those old Branchwater mountaineers carrying away brendle puppies,

973
00:55:29,680 --> 00:55:33,319
Speaker 2: and toasacs had any sense they were building something that

974
00:55:33,360 --> 00:55:37,520
Speaker 2: would become a mainstream breed of American hound, I think

975
00:55:37,560 --> 00:55:42,359
Speaker 2: we can undoubtedly say they didn't. As we closed down

976
00:55:42,400 --> 00:55:45,839
Speaker 2: on this first episode of this series, I want to

977
00:55:45,920 --> 00:55:51,400
Speaker 2: ask mister John a question, a personal one. I think,

978
00:55:51,440 --> 00:55:55,280
Speaker 2: to me the most the most special thing about plot

979
00:55:55,320 --> 00:56:00,239
Speaker 2: dogs and being here in North Carolina, regardless of the history,

980
00:56:00,480 --> 00:56:03,839
Speaker 2: which really will never know all the details because it

981
00:56:03,880 --> 00:56:07,240
Speaker 2: was during a time when records just weren't being taken

982
00:56:07,400 --> 00:56:08,160
Speaker 2: very well, and.

983
00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:11,560
Speaker 1: Fact it becomes legend, legend becomes fantasy.

984
00:56:11,920 --> 00:56:14,600
Speaker 2: But the thing that is special that can't be taken away.

985
00:56:14,600 --> 00:56:17,040
Speaker 2: And I want to ask you, what does a plot

986
00:56:17,080 --> 00:56:20,160
Speaker 2: dog mean to you? Being here in the mountains of

987
00:56:20,200 --> 00:56:22,959
Speaker 2: North Carolina, being a bear hunter, knowing some of these

988
00:56:23,280 --> 00:56:26,880
Speaker 2: old old guys that dedicate their lives to the plot

989
00:56:26,920 --> 00:56:27,799
Speaker 2: breed like you have.

990
00:56:28,040 --> 00:56:29,520
Speaker 3: Now, what does it mean to you?

991
00:56:29,640 --> 00:56:32,280
Speaker 1: Well, to the person who never hunts, never has hunted,

992
00:56:32,280 --> 00:56:36,120
Speaker 1: it wouldn't mean anything. But in my view, it is

993
00:56:36,200 --> 00:56:41,920
Speaker 1: a tremendous pride. Unselfishly, I will tell you that it

994
00:56:42,000 --> 00:56:45,200
Speaker 1: is a pride that I have that not everyone has,

995
00:56:45,440 --> 00:56:49,320
Speaker 1: because not everyone's been born in North Carolina. Not everyone

996
00:56:49,480 --> 00:56:53,520
Speaker 1: lives in western North Carolina. Not everyone has been around

997
00:56:53,520 --> 00:56:57,839
Speaker 1: a plot dog. Not everyone has had an interest in

998
00:56:57,880 --> 00:57:01,520
Speaker 1: the history of this fabulary, breed of dog. And so

999
00:57:01,680 --> 00:57:06,040
Speaker 1: it's a tremendous overwhelming pride. It's a state dog in

1000
00:57:06,080 --> 00:57:09,200
Speaker 1: North Carolina.

1001
00:57:10,320 --> 00:57:11,799
Speaker 3: Do you know what a plot dog is?

1002
00:57:11,920 --> 00:57:13,879
Speaker 1: No, don't believe I do. I said, well, I'm gonna

1003
00:57:13,880 --> 00:57:15,920
Speaker 1: teach you. It's a state dog in North Carolina.

1004
00:57:17,000 --> 00:57:19,120
Speaker 3: A lot of kids, you know, Uh, it's.

1005
00:57:19,040 --> 00:57:24,400
Speaker 1: Usually grocery store cashiers. I get you. But it's a

1006
00:57:24,440 --> 00:57:30,000
Speaker 1: tremendous overwhelming pride. And I can go places where these

1007
00:57:30,040 --> 00:57:33,840
Speaker 1: events took place, and Clay, this is just funny feeling

1008
00:57:33,880 --> 00:57:39,640
Speaker 1: comes over you. That's a funny feeling like you're right

1009
00:57:39,640 --> 00:57:40,280
Speaker 1: back in time.

1010
00:57:44,280 --> 00:57:47,800
Speaker 2: The most compelling thing about plot Hounds for me, from

1011
00:57:47,800 --> 00:57:50,600
Speaker 2: the very first time I heard this story was the

1012
00:57:50,720 --> 00:57:55,400
Speaker 2: deep history tied with these dogs. Their story is kind

1013
00:57:55,440 --> 00:58:10,320
Speaker 2: of a hound version of America. On the next episode,

1014
00:58:10,360 --> 00:58:12,680
Speaker 2: we'll hear more of the modern story of the plot

1015
00:58:12,720 --> 00:58:15,560
Speaker 2: hound and hear from some of the people who've dedicated

1016
00:58:15,600 --> 00:58:18,720
Speaker 2: their lives to them. I can't thank you enough for

1017
00:58:18,800 --> 00:58:22,120
Speaker 2: listening to Bear Grease. Please tell a friend about our

1018
00:58:22,240 --> 00:58:25,800
Speaker 2: endeavors here and leave us a review on iTunes, and

1019
00:58:25,920 --> 00:58:29,400
Speaker 2: be sure to order Bob Plott's book Strike and Stay.

1020
00:58:29,880 --> 00:58:33,040
Speaker 2: You can find it all over the internet. Bob's actually

1021
00:58:33,080 --> 00:58:36,080
Speaker 2: a prolific and very good writer and has written all

1022
00:58:36,160 --> 00:58:38,600
Speaker 2: kinds of history books about Southern Appalachian.

1023
00:58:39,600 --> 00:58:41,200
Speaker 3: Be sure to check out the meat Eater.

1024
00:58:41,200 --> 00:58:44,880
Speaker 2: Dot com for just about all of your outdoor gear needs,

1025
00:58:45,400 --> 00:58:50,880
Speaker 2: ranging from optics to rifles, to coolers, boots, backpacks, tents, knives,

1026
00:58:51,200 --> 00:58:52,640
Speaker 2: and outdoor cooking supplies.

1027
00:58:53,240 --> 00:58:55,120
Speaker 3: We've got it all.

1028
00:58:55,200 --> 00:58:58,320
Speaker 2: I can't wait to talk to all those hillbillies on

1029
00:58:58,440 --> 00:58:59,960
Speaker 2: the render next week.

1030
00:59:00,640 --> 00:59:01,160
Speaker 3: We'll see that