Speaker 1: Well, I used a good word their story. I call
Speaker 1: it a saga, and I sure hope I don't disappoint you.
Speaker 1: We can't prove this, We can't.
Speaker 2: Some stories are so sacred, so old, you almost have
Speaker 2: to earn the permission to tell them.
Speaker 3: This is one of those.
Speaker 2: I don't think it could be told by an outsider
Speaker 2: by like a visiting journalist. The only way to tell
Speaker 2: the story is from the inside. The audacity of my
Speaker 2: attempt comes after nearly a decade of curiosity, hunting with
Speaker 2: and meeting some of America's top plot hound families and historians,
Speaker 2: and maybe most critical, being a plot man myself. Well,
Speaker 2: that is even if I qualify. But I feel like
Speaker 2: I'm ready. We're talking about the saga of the American
Speaker 2: plot hound, which is a breed of big game hounds
Speaker 2: special lising and bear hunting, developed deep in the mountains
Speaker 2: of southern Appalachia, specifically Haywood County, North Carolina.
Speaker 3: Unique to the.
Speaker 2: Breed is they carry the family name of plot They
Speaker 2: were kept in isolation from the wider nation for nearly
Speaker 2: one hundred and fifty years while being refined by the
Speaker 2: frontier mountaineers of Appalachia. We've beaten around the bush of
Speaker 2: the plot genesis story, but we've never told it in
Speaker 2: its entirety, nor included the controversy of its authenticity. I'd
Speaker 2: be remiss to say if I didn't say that plot
Speaker 2: people are usually outsiders, a little bit quirky, often opinionated,
Speaker 2: and perhaps unsatisfied with the mainstream trends of the hound world.
Speaker 2: And I think they're quite content with this identity. The
Speaker 2: plot hound is anything but mainstream. In my extensive travels
Speaker 2: to meet plot hound men and women in this country
Speaker 2: over the last decade, I've met some of the finest
Speaker 2: salt of the Earth people in America. But this is
Speaker 2: not a story without drama and debate. This is a
Speaker 2: fascinating story of true Americana, and I really doubt that
Speaker 2: you're gonna want to miss this one.
Speaker 1: Not everyone's been born in North Carolina. Not everyone lives
Speaker 1: in western North Carolina. Not everyone has been around a
Speaker 1: plug dog. Unselfishly, I will tell you that it is
Speaker 1: a pride that I have that not everyone has.
Speaker 2: My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear
Speaker 2: Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search
Speaker 2: for insight and unlikely places and where we'll tell the
Speaker 2: story of Americans who live their lives close to the land,
Speaker 2: presented by FHF gear, American made, purpose built hunting and
Speaker 2: fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the
Speaker 2: place as we explore.
Speaker 4: There's where Plot Creek begins right up there.
Speaker 3: This see old log house.
Speaker 4: Right there, that's the remnants of the Henry Plot cabin.
Speaker 4: He's got to be back to about eighteen oh three.
Speaker 4: And that house there was built in nineteen oh three
Speaker 4: by Mantraville Plot and his son John Plott moved into
Speaker 4: it nineteen twenty four after Mott died. And that's where
Speaker 4: little George Plott lived as a boy.
Speaker 2: I'm in western North Carolina. The mountains and places are
Speaker 2: so steep and thick it's intimidating, or at least when
Speaker 2: I think about traveling long distances of foot in them.
Speaker 2: Right in a truck with a man whose last name
Speaker 2: is Plot P L O T. T. You see, this
Speaker 2: isn't just a story about dogs.
Speaker 3: It's a family story.
Speaker 2: This is my friend Bob Plot, a direct descendant of
Speaker 2: the people who lived in that cabin and bred and
Speaker 2: built what's known today as the American Plot Hound.
Speaker 4: This creek here you see, there had dogs all lined
Speaker 4: up down they watered to dogs. They had dogs all
Speaker 4: up that run, all in a run where they could.
Speaker 2: I've seen that a lot over here in the Appalachians,
Speaker 2: where these there's these little springs like a spring maybe
Speaker 2: and they'll they'll state their dogs out.
Speaker 3: A passerby might.
Speaker 2: Be in jeopardy of missing the beauty history the legacy
Speaker 2: of such a scene. One of the most striking images
Speaker 2: of Appalachia is a narrow hollow full of handsome, dark
Speaker 2: brindle hounds tethered to wooden dog houses, with their lead
Speaker 2: extending far enough for them to have free access to
Speaker 2: fresh spring water. It's common to the uninformed it might
Speaker 2: be unnotable or even an eye sore. Archaic may be
Speaker 2: hillbilly and the derogatory sense of the word, but not
Speaker 2: to meat or the people on the inside. A plot
Speaker 2: hound is a muscular built dog, with males averaging sixty
Speaker 2: to seventy pounds and females in the fifty pound range,
Speaker 2: often with a saber tail, short to coarse hair, and
Speaker 2: moderate length ears not reaching past their nose when outstretched.
Speaker 2: Their classic color is brindle with a brown undercoat and
Speaker 2: dark stripes, but some appear almost black at a distance.
Speaker 2: There are two rare color variations of plots. Number one
Speaker 2: the Maltese brindle or this kind of grayish black stripe
Speaker 2: looking dog. But the most rare is the buckskin plot,
Speaker 2: colored almost like a Golden Retriever or a yellow lab
Speaker 2: intelligence trailer in ability, grittiness to stick with rough game.
Speaker 2: I've actually heard plot men in East Tennessee. You refer
Speaker 2: to them as nervy, and they're strong tree dogs. Plot
Speaker 2: Hounds are traditionally used on raccoons, hogs, mountain lions, but
Speaker 2: most importantly and core to their identity, bears. In many circles,
Speaker 2: they're known as plot bear dogs. Imagine there being twenty
Speaker 2: five plot hounds right through there. That was the beginning
Speaker 2: of the plot breed.
Speaker 4: And there were I mean that right there is where
Speaker 4: they were, and I mean, I've got pictures that big house,
Speaker 4: the bigger house there. The white house was built in
Speaker 4: nineteen oh three by Mott Plot and he didn't have
Speaker 4: any running water in it till probably the forties, and
Speaker 4: didn't have an indoor bathroom in it until the forties.
Speaker 4: John Plott said he wasn't going to go to the
Speaker 4: bathroom inside of house he lived in, but there was
Speaker 4: a great picture of him and his wife standing right
Speaker 4: there with two of the grediest plotthounds you've ever seen.
Speaker 2: The story of the plot Hound goes way back to
Speaker 2: before America was America. The reason this story is unique
Speaker 2: is that most of the hound breeds came here from England,
Speaker 2: in many.
Speaker 3: Ways already developed.
Speaker 2: But the origin story of the plot is surrounded by mystery,
Speaker 2: cloaked by faded time, geographic isolation, and scant documentation congruent
Speaker 2: with the hill folks ways. But in the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: this dog just emerged out of the hollows of the
Speaker 2: Great Smoky Mountain region, fully developed, uniquely suited, and deeply
Speaker 2: tied to the region's interior circle of bear hunters. These
Speaker 2: dogs became the symbol of Southern Appalachian ingenuity, Taylor fit
Speaker 2: for the rugged landscape, its people, and its beasts. The
Speaker 2: most interesting thing to me about plots, though, is their
Speaker 2: cult like following and this deep connection to place. No
Speaker 2: other hound breed has this. It's a phenomena unlike anything
Speaker 2: I've ever seen. And because of that, there is great
Speaker 2: risk in telling this story. If I die a suspicious,
Speaker 2: untimely death. It might be related to the version of
Speaker 2: the story that I tell. This is serious business, and
Speaker 2: what I've always loved about plot people is their passion.
Speaker 2: I've always been attracted to passionate people who dedicate their
Speaker 2: lives to narrow windows of expertise. One such man is
Speaker 2: John Jackson of western North Carolina. He's an old style
Speaker 2: Highland gentleman, a pastor, a schoolteacher, but most uniquely for
Speaker 2: my interest, a plot historian.
Speaker 3: I haven't told you yet, but.
Speaker 2: The plot hound is the state dog of North Carolina.
Speaker 2: There's a strong case that this was our first maid
Speaker 2: in America hound. But kind of like building a Ford
Speaker 2: truck in twenty twenty three, we had to bring in
Speaker 2: some overseas materials. We're going to jump right into the
Speaker 2: story with mister John. Where did these dogs come from? So,
Speaker 2: mister John, there's such a rich history of plot hounds
Speaker 2: in North Carolina, which is where they got started.
Speaker 3: Tell me that story.
Speaker 1: Well, I used a good word their story. I called
Speaker 1: it a saga. In seventeen sixty, there were two brothers
Speaker 1: who came from Germany, a Palatinate area of Germany. There
Speaker 1: was a great mass migration of Germans from that area
Speaker 1: to colonbial America, and the story. The saga goes that
Speaker 1: they were the sons of a German gamekeeper. They brought
Speaker 1: with them some what we would call plot dogs, the
Speaker 1: ancestors of plots, one of which was yellow and the
Speaker 1: rest were brown colored, which means they were brendled.
Speaker 2: This is the foundation piece of the plot hound story
Speaker 2: known far and wide in plot circles.
Speaker 3: The two brothers from Germany.
Speaker 2: Their father was a gamekeeper, a guy who took care
Speaker 2: of the large property of some type of royalty, and
Speaker 2: he sends his boys to the English colonies future America
Speaker 2: with some of his prize hunting dogs, brindle and yellow
Speaker 2: colored hunting dogs. If we were building a car, the
Speaker 2: dogs would be the engine and the brothers would be
Speaker 2: the power train. And please note how mister John referred
Speaker 2: to these as plot dogs, as in dawgs. That's a
Speaker 2: term of endearment. It means something. I now want to
Speaker 2: go back to the man I just rode around with
Speaker 2: with the interesting last name of plot. This is Bob
Speaker 2: Plot and he's jumping in right where mister John left off.
Speaker 4: The story we always told him was told generation for
Speaker 4: generation was my fourth great grandfather said, man, this just
Speaker 4: there's no future here for my kids. I'm sending my
Speaker 4: two boys and the only thing of real value I
Speaker 4: have to America, and it's these five of these dogs.
Speaker 4: And three of them are supposed to be brindle colored dogs.
Speaker 4: Two of them are supposed to be light colored or
Speaker 4: buckskin type dogs.
Speaker 2: Did he just say my fourth great grandfather, Yes, he did.
Speaker 2: Bob's fourth great grandfather would have been the father of
Speaker 2: the German brothers that mister John was talking about. But
Speaker 2: this is going to get dramatic real quick, so brace yourself.
Speaker 4: They his brother died because you know, the conditions on
Speaker 4: the ships took two months to get to America. They
Speaker 4: were terrible, bad food, bad water. Anyway, legend has it
Speaker 4: that he died buried at sea. So here's this kid,
Speaker 4: sixteen years old at most, and he's like, man, all along,
Speaker 4: five dogs, gets to Philadelphia, He's got to go and
Speaker 4: then does The version I always heard was that they
Speaker 4: were coming to America to be contract hunters in Newburn,
Speaker 4: North Carolina, which at that time was the largest German
Speaker 4: settlement on the East Coast. But they didn't have you'd think, oh,
Speaker 4: it's the frontier and it was. But they had blacksmiths
Speaker 4: and wheelwrights and as they didn't have hunters. So so
Speaker 4: that was a theory and what we're always told. But
Speaker 4: now the other theory is they arrived in Philadelphia and
Speaker 4: just went down the wagon road and went straight to
Speaker 4: the Pied Mine in North Carolina, where we know they
Speaker 4: did end up. But the story I was always told
Speaker 4: was the real poignant story was his two brothers, my
Speaker 4: third great grandfather, George, his brother, they're in route. They
Speaker 4: got five dogs with them. They can't speak English, you know,
Speaker 4: they're Germans. When George got here, they still referred to him.
Speaker 4: Even his son Henry, who came to Haywood County later,
Speaker 4: they referred to him as the Old German because they
Speaker 4: still had these strong German accents, still spoke German.
Speaker 2: We've just covered a ton of ground really quickly. Enoch,
Speaker 2: one of the brothers, has died. Johannes lives and brings
Speaker 2: the five dogs from Germany with the intent of becoming
Speaker 2: a professional hunter in the colonies. Even two generations later,
Speaker 2: Bob said they called his great grandfather the Old German.
Speaker 2: Bob actually wrote an incredible book about the history and
Speaker 2: story of the plot Hound called Strike and Stay the
Speaker 2: story of the plot Hound. In it, he details this
Speaker 2: plot genesis story, which was handed down in his family.
Speaker 3: It's believed that the.
Speaker 2: Modern plot hound was bred and evolved directly from these
Speaker 2: five dogs that were on that ship. Some believe they
Speaker 2: were never outcrossed from those original five dogs. However, I've
Speaker 2: never personally met anyone who confessed to fully believing this.
Speaker 2: It's kind of like believing the most extravagant version of
Speaker 2: a fairy tale. It's just not really that functional. But
Speaker 2: I have some interesting news for you, and of all people,
Speaker 2: I hate to cast doubt on such a great story,
Speaker 2: but I'd advise you to not get too attached to it.
Speaker 3: Here's mister John.
Speaker 1: Here's where we got to stop him in it, And
Speaker 1: I surely hope I don't disappoint you. We can't prove this,
Speaker 1: We can't. I have worked on it and worked on
Speaker 1: it and thought I had found him, and it's not him.
Speaker 1: There is, to my knowledge, there is no Johannes plot.
Speaker 1: His name would have been George Plott, George Plutt senior.
Speaker 1: There's a George Plutt junior. He came he and his
Speaker 1: family together. They were well to do. They paid their
Speaker 1: manumission fee and they came down the o' wagon road
Speaker 1: to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. That's where Charlotte is. He
Speaker 1: would have settled in what is now Cabaris County, which
Speaker 1: used to be part of Becklenburg.
Speaker 2: Now, so you're saying the story of Johannes Plott and
Speaker 2: his brothers, you're saying that's not necessarily true, right, And
Speaker 2: you're saying this is true. Is that George Plot And
Speaker 2: so George Plott isn't Johannes Plott.
Speaker 3: This is a semi wealthy guy.
Speaker 2: Okay, he was not to So this is the traditional
Speaker 2: The traditional story was Johannes Plott and this boy's his
Speaker 2: dad send him with dogs.
Speaker 3: And you're saying that's not necessarily what he can prove.
Speaker 1: It's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2: What he's saying is this, they've never found written record
Speaker 2: of a lone teenager named Johannes Plott bringing dogs from
Speaker 2: Germany to fully corroborate the traditional story. However, would lost
Speaker 2: or inaccurate records from the mid seventeen hundreds be all
Speaker 2: that surprising. Written records of that time would undoubtedly have
Speaker 2: been a dim record of reality. There is, however, record
Speaker 2: of a man named George Plott coming over with his family,
Speaker 2: just no dogs. I want to see what Bob Plott
Speaker 2: has this about this, and don't think for a minute
Speaker 2: these are trivial matters in Appalachia. If I go mysteriously
Speaker 2: missing after this series, I'd like to commission Brent Reeves
Speaker 2: to come out of retirement and lead a reconnaissance team
Speaker 2: into the Great Smoky Mountains, not to avenge my death,
Speaker 2: but to do even more research so that we can
Speaker 2: get to the bottom of this.
Speaker 3: Here's Bob.
Speaker 4: Now. The other version is, and it may be true,
Speaker 4: it may not be true, is that his parents took him,
Speaker 4: that the family came together as the family unit. Again,
Speaker 4: all I'd ever heard from time I was as tall
Speaker 4: was the first story. It's been convoluted from the start,
Speaker 4: you know. Nineteen fifty nine first year book came out
Speaker 4: about plothounds. There were ten different stories in the first
Speaker 4: Year Book, and all of them were different, Like how
Speaker 4: can you put ten different stories in the same yearbook.
Speaker 4: I mean, one of them's got to be true. And
Speaker 4: so all I knew was was what they had told me.
Speaker 4: My father told me this was a story Bonne and
Speaker 4: told me, this was a story my grandfather's. You know,
Speaker 4: all these my uncle, my grandfather, my grandfather died by them.
Speaker 4: But my uncle's this is what my daddy told me.
Speaker 4: This is what his daddy told him. And so and
Speaker 4: I also had a kind of unique situation in that
Speaker 4: I'm just a third great grandson to George Plot, who
Speaker 4: founded the breed you know, who bottom over here from
Speaker 4: Germany supposedly, and most people are five six seventh great grandson.
Speaker 4: But see, my grandfather was born in the Civil War.
Speaker 4: Really yeah, So he died in nineteen forty four. I
Speaker 4: didn't know him, so, but my dad was at D
Speaker 4: Day he died, you know, when I was just still
Speaker 4: a kid too. So I was around all these old guys.
Speaker 4: So you don't have to go back, you know, just
Speaker 4: three generations and you're there.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: So they knew this stuff, you know, and it all
Speaker 4: made sense, It all tracked when I started researching it.
Speaker 4: So and I tried to document as much as I could.
Speaker 4: And once the Plot family got to North Carolina, it
Speaker 4: was very easy to document. Yea, they got there, it
Speaker 4: was a little more difficult.
Speaker 2: Bob believes that the name Johannes was anglicized to George,
Speaker 2: and so we're talking about the same person. Bob's grandfather
Speaker 2: was born during the Civil War, and Bob's father had
Speaker 2: him later in life. Bob is a rare fellow. You
Speaker 2: feel like you're touching history just by talking to him.
Speaker 2: The Plot's story holds some water for me simply for
Speaker 2: this reason, and he just clarified a distinct line in
Speaker 2: the story of what we're sure of and what we're
Speaker 2: not sure of. Once the Plots got to North America,
Speaker 2: the history is much easier to track, and it's clear
Speaker 2: that a man named George Plot arrived and quickly appeared
Speaker 2: with the unique line of hunting dogs not found anywhere
Speaker 2: else in the colonies, and these dogs that they had
Speaker 2: were uniquely different than these English strains of hounds. So
Speaker 2: let's clarify the controversy and look at the options. It's
Speaker 2: possible that no dogs came from Germany at all, but
Speaker 2: the Germans who came here acquired hunting dog stock that
Speaker 2: was already present in the colonies when they arrived, and
Speaker 2: from this emerged what would become the Plot hound. That's
Speaker 2: option one. There were definitely hounds, curves and all varieties
Speaker 2: of mongrel dogs as potential stock. Here or number two,
Speaker 2: the story is true, and they brought in a unique
Speaker 2: strain of German big game hounds that developed into a
Speaker 2: new identity in the New world under the guiding hand
Speaker 2: of this isolated family on the frontier. I'd like to
Speaker 2: note how quickly they emerged with a unique looking dog,
Speaker 2: which was brindle, while most of these English hounds were
Speaker 2: not brindle at all. However, as my friend Alvin once
Speaker 2: told me, the brindle color is a recessive gene and
Speaker 2: almost all dogs. If you mix up a bunch of dogs,
Speaker 2: it isn't long before you get that brindle coat.
Speaker 3: Hmmm.
Speaker 2: So maybe this unique brindle's stuff isn't entirely relevant regardless, Bob,
Speaker 2: mister John, and the whole lot of Plot connoisseurs agreed
Speaker 2: the period between the seventeen fifties and eighteen oh three
Speaker 2: is a mystery. But Henry Plot we just saw his
Speaker 2: old cabin in North Carolina. By the time he showed up,
Speaker 2: he had a line of dogs fully established in the
Speaker 2: region as reputable brindle bear dogs. So if option two
Speaker 2: is right and the family story is correct, and the
Speaker 2: stock did come from Germany, what were they doing with
Speaker 2: the dogs over there?
Speaker 4: Here's Bob, So I think these guys are like that works,
Speaker 4: that works together. And I think over multiple generations, going
Speaker 4: back probably five or six generations before my family came here,
Speaker 4: this breed was evolving into that. So sometime around either
Speaker 4: seventeen forty two seventeen fifty, depending on.
Speaker 3: The Germans were using these dogs for what over there.
Speaker 4: Boar hunting mostly and anything. There were multipurpose dogs because
Speaker 4: they used them for herding, they used them for hunting,
Speaker 4: but they were already on big game. Whatever they needed
Speaker 4: to do, that's what they used them for, you know.
Speaker 4: But they had great value. So all these dogs were available,
Speaker 4: you know. But the most thing it was really unique
Speaker 4: was most it was the Germanic origins because most of
Speaker 4: the American purebread dogs come from their British house, whereas
Speaker 4: its plihound came from Germany. But they're all applied.
Speaker 2: And what's interesting at that time is he would have
Speaker 2: been sending his sons to a new world that was
Speaker 2: known for hunting in wilderness, So it would have made
Speaker 2: sense that he would have given he would have sent
Speaker 2: his kids.
Speaker 3: With tools that they would have needed to survive. And
Speaker 3: thrive in this place.
Speaker 2: I really want to believe this version of the story,
Speaker 2: and many do, but some don't. But nobody complains about
Speaker 2: it not being.
Speaker 3: A good story.
Speaker 2: But as we've seen in many of our other deep
Speaker 2: dives into American history, myths can become told so many
Speaker 2: times they become infallible truth. What's your gut telling you
Speaker 2: right now with just this little bit of information you have.
Speaker 2: You don't have all the info yet, but you're probably
Speaker 2: leaning the direction. I really appreciate Bob's perspective, and of
Speaker 2: all people, he's got the right to have one. This
Speaker 2: is his family's story that he heard while sitting on
Speaker 2: the knee of his family in a rocking chair in
Speaker 2: North Carolina. He's kind of become the caretaker of this story,
Speaker 2: which I'd say is very noble. But he's the first
Speaker 2: to acknowledge that it's hard to know exactly how it
Speaker 2: went down. However, once the calendar rolled into the eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: the evidence is clear and undeniable. The more I understand
Speaker 2: about history, especially that far back in American history there
Speaker 2: just wasn't a lot of documentation was so, I mean,
Speaker 2: these stories have like oral tradition does hold a lot
Speaker 2: of relevance to these kind of stories, and obviously there's
Speaker 2: documentation of land records and all this stuff, like these
Speaker 2: people did actually exist. But so, you know, I want
Speaker 2: to say that because it wasn't like it is now,
Speaker 2: where every single thing we do is documented. I mean,
Speaker 2: like if I go down here and buy a coffee,
Speaker 2: somebody two hundred years from now will know it. Yes,
Speaker 2: they'll say, Clay Nukam was in North Carolina with Bob
Speaker 2: Plott on the morning of July seventh.
Speaker 3: Man. Back in those days, that wasn't the case.
Speaker 4: No, And that's a great point because up until eighteen hundred,
Speaker 4: passenger ships didn't have a cargo manifest supposedly, or some
Speaker 4: of them did, but a lot of them didn't, so
Speaker 4: sometimes you didn't know who was on there who wasn't.
Speaker 4: But John Plot he had supposedly. I never saw it,
Speaker 4: but I know people, reputable people who did, who said
Speaker 4: there was a manifest, a cargo manifest that listed the
Speaker 4: five dogs now and that they were listed as three
Speaker 4: brenda or tiger stripe dogs and two solid colored buckskin dogs. Now.
Speaker 4: Again I never saw that. I don't know, but again
Speaker 4: that was oral tradition. But I know four people who
Speaker 4: have never lied to me before, who swear to God
Speaker 4: that they saw it.
Speaker 2: Greater mysteries have been solved, but at this point it's
Speaker 2: unlikely this ever will be. Paper products from the seventeen
Speaker 2: fifties usually don't accidentally get preserved, and I want you
Speaker 2: to hear these stories so you can make a decision
Speaker 2: for yourself what you believe. But truthfully, what you or
Speaker 2: I believe about the origins of these dogs really isn't
Speaker 2: that relevant, because today what's not disputed is that plot
Speaker 2: hounds are widely distributed across America and even much of
Speaker 2: the world, and are a top notch big game hound.
Speaker 2: So let's just take a time out for a minute
Speaker 2: and clarify exactly what we do know. George or Johannes Plot,
Speaker 2: without dispute, did come from Germany on September twelfth, seventeen
Speaker 2: fifty on a ship called the Priscilla. There is documentation
Speaker 2: of a signature G Plot on that car manifest.
Speaker 3: Just no dogs.
Speaker 2: And to give a big time fast forward, high level view,
Speaker 2: this George Plot would die in Lincoln County, North Carolina
Speaker 2: in eighteen ten at the age of seventy six, So
Speaker 2: all that adds up, and it's well documented that he
Speaker 2: had a pack of hunting dogs, which he turned over
Speaker 2: to his son, Henry, who would then move to the
Speaker 2: Great Smoky Mountains. Bob and I were just at Henry's
Speaker 2: home place. The mystery is simply, where did these dogs
Speaker 2: come from. Here's Bob with a summary of the deep
Speaker 2: Plot family history describing their movement through North Carolina.
Speaker 4: We know for a fact. Now up to that point,
Speaker 4: we can speculate. You can have this camp over here
Speaker 4: saying yeah, they went to New Bernard, the camp over
Speaker 4: here saying no, they went from Philadelphia to the area
Speaker 4: around Salisbury. Either one could be true, but we know
Speaker 4: for sure that by seventeen sixties they were there. There's
Speaker 4: lane grants, there's marriage certificates, theres death certificates, theres the
Speaker 4: court records signifying yes, George Plot was here, George Platt
Speaker 4: got married here, George Platt started having a family here.
Speaker 4: And there's records of other people talking about these dogs.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they just called them Brendle bear dogs. Sometimes they
Speaker 4: talked about dogs on the frontier, literally defending households now
Speaker 4: because this was Cherokee country and Kataba Country at that time.
Speaker 4: I mean, this was where they were living on the
Speaker 4: east side of the Kataba River was frontier. You know,
Speaker 4: this was before the French and Indian or right bout
Speaker 4: the time of the French and Indian War. So my
Speaker 4: third great grandfather's there. He starts having, like everybody did
Speaker 4: back then, a bunch of kids, and most all of
Speaker 4: them are born there in what's now Caberts County around Concord. Well.
Speaker 4: Again like this great manifest destiny of American history, it's like,
Speaker 4: we got to find something better. So they go a
Speaker 4: little bit further. They go into Idol County and they
Speaker 4: go in across the Kataba River and become the first
Speaker 4: white settlers across the Kataba River. And that's where George
Speaker 4: settled there, and that's where his boys started really hunting
Speaker 4: hard and doing a lot of different stuff. But Henry,
Speaker 4: who was my great great uncle, he and his brother
Speaker 4: in law, Jonathan Osborne, who was another German immigrant, they
Speaker 4: came up here sometime around eighteen oh three with the
Speaker 4: mind to settle and supposedly they took the dogs with me.
Speaker 4: And here is Heywood County. Yes, so there's an area
Speaker 4: there called Pleasant Garden, beautiful beautiful area along the Pigeon River,
Speaker 4: and he thought, man, this would be a great place
Speaker 4: to set up homestead, plant a proper corn and that's
Speaker 4: what in his brother in law did, had the dogs
Speaker 4: with him. Well, the corn crop failed, they could get
Speaker 4: their first taste of a mountain winter, and they're like, man,
Speaker 4: Jonathan's like, I'm getting the heck out of here, you know,
Speaker 4: I'm going back down where it's a little bit warmer. Henry,
Speaker 4: being stubborn, Plot goes, Nah, I'm staying, man, I'm keeping
Speaker 4: my dogs with me. And so he later credits the
Speaker 4: dogs of keeping him alive during that first winter, you know,
Speaker 4: keep me helping him put food on the fire. Well,
Speaker 4: then again, following that ruther of or Trace, he goes
Speaker 4: up over Pigeon Gap, comes down into what's now Waynesville,
Speaker 4: down into what's now Hazelwood, and then goes follows the
Speaker 4: creek up this beautiful valley to the confluence of Richland
Speaker 4: Dix Creek and says, now we'll build a house right there,
Speaker 4: and builds a cabin there.
Speaker 2: Where Henry lives became known as Plot Valley. It's pretty
Speaker 2: cool how many locations in the region are named after
Speaker 2: the Plots. There's even a range of mountains called the
Speaker 2: Plot Balsam Range, which is on the Blue Ridge Parkway
Speaker 2: in North Carolina. There's a historical marker there that you
Speaker 2: can go and see. Here's mister John with another unique location.
Speaker 1: Name Famous Plot was the brother to John Plot. Henry
Speaker 1: Plutt would have been his father. He had a line
Speaker 1: of Plot dogs that were just superb. One was called
Speaker 1: Porter Porter lost his life in Porter Dye Gap.
Speaker 3: He's dog and a bear Porter dyed. On the map
Speaker 3: you could find Porter Dye Gap.
Speaker 1: Can't now, that's water Rock Knob. Okay, get on the parkway,
Speaker 1: go water Rock Knob. Porter Dyke Gap is there. Well.
Speaker 1: I had to go to Porter Dyke Gap because I
Speaker 1: want to feel the history. Didn't want to read it,
Speaker 1: won't feel it. And you know, you visit these places
Speaker 1: and it's Hallod Ground. It's Hallock ground. To a person
Speaker 1: who likes to bear hunt, run a cone, tre apostle
Speaker 1: or something like that, you know it's it's Hallod ground.
Speaker 1: It is. That's that's the thing that endears me to
Speaker 1: the pluck Hog. It's a just tremendous, overwhelming pride and
Speaker 1: what we have been bequeathed.
Speaker 2: I hope you're beginning to pick up from these men
Speaker 2: just a fraction of what these bear dogs mean to
Speaker 2: these people. When's the last time you heard someone speak
Speaker 2: of being bequeathed the royal heritage of a mountain strain
Speaker 2: of American bear dog. You haven't, my brethren, We've found
Speaker 2: ourselves in the midst of something unique, unknown to the mainstream,
Speaker 2: and deeply American. Here's Bob with more on Henry plot
Speaker 2: down in Plot Valley.
Speaker 4: Well, by the eighteen ten or so, he'd honed pretty
Speaker 4: much the whole valley. The dogs were becoming famous. That
Speaker 4: they were. You know, people made Brandy to make a
Speaker 4: living too, They did that. He had a steal steals
Speaker 4: in his will. He's ignifized out. Yeah, and he too
Speaker 4: had a prolific family, I mean multiple sons.
Speaker 2: And when you say the dogs became famous, let's describe
Speaker 2: what that would mean to someone who wouldn't even understand
Speaker 2: hunting culture. Maybe yeah, regionally, especially if these dogs are
Speaker 2: helping this guy acchoire game for food on his table.
Speaker 2: I mean that kind of stuff quickly gets out. Oh yeah, so,
Speaker 2: I mean someone with a past of hounds. And the
Speaker 2: other thing is that this is not recreational hunting, and
Speaker 2: during that time as well hunters and the idea of
Speaker 2: being a hunter. I mean this is right in the
Speaker 2: time of Daniel Boone when Daniel Boone's.
Speaker 4: Daniel Boone lid right up the river from the Plot
Speaker 4: family and yachtkin read out valley.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I mean, to be a hunter was
Speaker 2: a widespread cultural very much a compliment like these guys
Speaker 2: are good hunters. I mean that was essentially like saying,
Speaker 2: this is a good family that is well off.
Speaker 4: And not only that, but the good hunters usually had
Speaker 4: the good dogs, and so those dogs had value. I mean,
Speaker 4: we've got in our Plot family, we've got a bean
Speaker 4: rifle which today would sell for probably hundreds one thousand
Speaker 4: dollars that was sold that was traded for a dog,
Speaker 4: you know, in the early eighteen hundreds, and the flint
Speaker 4: lock rifle. And there was Stanley Hicks, oh deer friend
Speaker 4: of mine has passed away now his third great grandfather
Speaker 4: sold an entire valley for a rifle, keepskin, and a dog.
Speaker 3: So I mean probably felt like you got the better
Speaker 3: end of the.
Speaker 4: Absolutely bragged about it, you know. So you start hearing
Speaker 4: this reputation. People started talking about these these some of
Speaker 4: them just called them Rendel bear dogs. Some of them
Speaker 4: start calling them Plot dogs because the Plot family had them,
Speaker 4: you know. And what was really interesting about this area
Speaker 4: at that time was between eighteen hundred and really about
Speaker 4: really about World War two. Trains didn't come into Ashville
Speaker 4: in eighteen eighty something was twelve hundred people living there.
Speaker 4: By nineteen hundred, when the train was there, it was
Speaker 4: the third largest city in North Carolina. But between that time,
Speaker 4: between the time Henry Plot first got here in the
Speaker 4: early eighteen hundreds and that time, it was kind of
Speaker 4: a time capsule. You know, people here there was no
Speaker 4: really connection to the outside world because trains didn't get
Speaker 4: to Waynesville until eighteen eighties, didn't get the Murphy until
Speaker 4: eighteen nineties. You couldn't get in here or out of
Speaker 4: here except by a wagon or horse. Yeah, and the
Speaker 4: roads were terrible. If it was raining and you could
Speaker 4: forget it. Snowing could definitely forget it. Yeah, game was abundant.
Speaker 4: There weren't many white people even living here then, and
Speaker 4: the few that were were farmers, subsistence farmers, hunters, and
Speaker 4: like you said, that was a big deal. Man. You
Speaker 4: had to hunt It wasn't a matter of like, oh,
Speaker 4: I just enjoy hunting, to go get me a trophy.
Speaker 4: This was about I got to put food on the table.
Speaker 4: We got to smoke some meat for the winter.
Speaker 3: These dogs had some real legitimate value.
Speaker 4: Most definitely, And people forget they were looking for multi
Speaker 4: purpose dogs. Yeah, they were looking for dogs to defend
Speaker 4: their homesteads from a time of the Indian Wars all
Speaker 4: the way up to the Civil War when deserters were
Speaker 4: coming back and you know, trying to attack homesteads and
Speaker 4: that sort of thing. And then you have the fact
Speaker 4: that you know, people think about fences. Back then, fences
Speaker 4: were you used to keep livestock out. Yeah, In other words,
Speaker 4: you build a fence around your garden to keep livestock out.
Speaker 4: You let your pigs and your cows. You notched their
Speaker 4: ears or gave them a mark, and they wentere range
Speaker 4: and you kind of knew where they were, and you'd
Speaker 4: go check on them two or three times a year.
Speaker 4: But in the fall you'd go get the dogs, and
Speaker 4: the dogs we hurt them back.
Speaker 2: So what I'm hearing you say is that these dogs
Speaker 2: were guard dogs absolutely, so herding dogs, yes, and then
Speaker 2: they would have been what we'll define later, but as
Speaker 2: tree dogs, dogs that run game that can climb up trees.
Speaker 2: This gets as caught up on the plot family history,
Speaker 2: their frontier life, and how they were using these dogs.
Speaker 2: And the term tree dog is an important distinction amongst hounds.
Speaker 2: This means that the dog will stay and bark at
Speaker 2: the base of the tree that the game they're pursuing
Speaker 2: has climbed, or as Henry Plot probably would have said,
Speaker 2: had clumb not all will do this. And it's a
Speaker 2: badge of functional honor to be called a tree dog.
Speaker 2: And as a quick lineage summary, I think we've got
Speaker 2: to go through this plot history just real quick so
Speaker 2: you can stay on track. George or Johannes Plott was
Speaker 2: born in seventeen thirty four and immigrated from Germany. Interestingly,
Speaker 2: Daniel Boone was born in seventeen thirty four too, so
Speaker 2: George Plott had a bunch of kids. But one of
Speaker 2: them was Henry Plott, who was born in seventeen seventy.
Speaker 3: We've been to his home place.
Speaker 2: He was a hunter and as the story goes, he
Speaker 2: was handed down his father's dogs. Henry had eleven children,
Speaker 2: one of which was John Plott. Who was born in
Speaker 2: eighteen thirteen and was a big time hunter. He had
Speaker 2: a son named Montroval Plot, who was probably the first
Speaker 2: to be recognized as having plot dogs. Montraval had a
Speaker 2: bunch of kids, but the most famous of his kids,
Speaker 2: and maybe the most famous plot hunter of all, was
Speaker 2: von Plott, who lived into the nineteen sixties in Heywood County,
Speaker 2: North Carolina. Bob Plott, the guy I'm talking to right now,
Speaker 2: knew Vaughn personally when he was a kid.
Speaker 3: It was one of his uncles.
Speaker 2: However, to be fair and to throw a wrench in
Speaker 2: our story, it's not entirely known how these dogs arose
Speaker 2: into modern history.
Speaker 3: With the plot name attached to them.
Speaker 2: It seems evident the trail is clear that this family
Speaker 2: had a unique fingerprint on these.
Speaker 3: Dogs, like no doubt.
Speaker 2: But could they have just been the most prominent folks
Speaker 2: using these brindle bear dogs that were developed by a
Speaker 2: wider community. Here's mister John and he's going to give
Speaker 2: his opinion on the development of the plot hound in Appalachia.
Speaker 3: I asked him where he thought they came from.
Speaker 1: Now, to your question, not every plot dog came from
Speaker 1: the Plot family. Taylor Crockett has told me that they
Speaker 1: were a type of dog rather than a breed at
Speaker 1: one time, and they were numerous breeders, numerous hunters. You
Speaker 1: couldn't have very many dogs because they weren't some dog food.
Speaker 1: Back thee it fed them scraps. We watch you feed
Speaker 1: them normally dog corn bread. There are three types of
Speaker 1: people that settled western North Carolina. One where to be
Speaker 1: the townsfolk settled in towns. The other would be farmers
Speaker 1: who owned the best low lying bottom land farming land.
Speaker 1: And then there were folks. There were three types. There
Speaker 1: were folks, and I smile when I say this. They
Speaker 1: were folks I call the Branchwater Mountaineers. They lived up
Speaker 1: the hallows at the head of the branch. To get
Speaker 1: to their cabin you had to take a slid rode in.
Speaker 1: There was a log cabin there with the dog, truck, kitchen.
Speaker 1: Dog slept under the house. Everywhere that man went, his
Speaker 1: dog went with him. He took his rifle if he
Speaker 1: was working. If he heard the dog, tree picked up
Speaker 1: the rifle, left to work and went to the dog.
Speaker 1: That was the supper for that night. But the Branchwater Mountaineers,
Speaker 1: those old families I think a lot in a large
Speaker 1: part responsible for what eventually became the Plot dog.
Speaker 2: Mister John appreciates the story of the German origins of
Speaker 2: the Plot hound stock, but doesn't fully buy it.
Speaker 3: He believes the dogs.
Speaker 2: Were likely developed from stock that was here, and that
Speaker 2: this breed of brindle bear dogs weren't the sole doing
Speaker 2: of the Plot family. And just to clarify, it wasn't
Speaker 2: necessarily the Plots who claimed one hundred percent ownership of
Speaker 2: this brendle bear dog. It just kind of happened, and
Speaker 2: people often believe what seems to be an easy narrative.
Speaker 2: There's an argument to be made that the Plot simply
Speaker 2: became the dominant spokesman for this type of dog. As
Speaker 2: John's mentor Taylor Crockett told him, it's important to remember
Speaker 2: that there was no United Kennel Club, and these people
Speaker 2: weren't trying to start a breed.
Speaker 3: These hill folk families simply.
Speaker 2: Needed dogs that could get the job done on bears, hogs,
Speaker 2: and coon and these brindle dogs were doing it.
Speaker 3: It was only.
Speaker 2: Later that we got interested in where they came from.
Speaker 2: I've now got a question for Bob, so tell me
Speaker 2: about from eighteen hundred to nineteen hundred, what happened with
Speaker 2: the plot hound breed, because at this time it's not
Speaker 2: even called no, no, it's not a plot hound breed.
Speaker 2: It's just this kind of regional phenomenon. This family talk
Speaker 2: to me about how they like the dogs became distributed
Speaker 2: and how that happened.
Speaker 4: Two things happened there that I really think played a
Speaker 4: huge role in making the plot hownd what it is today.
Speaker 4: I think because we were in that time capsule, so
Speaker 4: to speak, it allowed the dogs to get skipped better
Speaker 4: and better and better, you know. And von Platt talked
Speaker 4: about his father, Montreville Plot was born in eighteen fifty.
Speaker 4: He talked about what he called the Toasac network. I
Speaker 4: think I actually named that. But settlers from upstate South Carolina,
Speaker 4: North Georgia, East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia would come riding in
Speaker 4: on horses and mules with toasacks and get puppies. And
Speaker 4: the understanding was that, you know, we get you a puppyre,
Speaker 4: we sell you a puppy, or we trade puppies. Is
Speaker 4: that we work together. You know, you got to keep
Speaker 4: this bloodline as close as we can. We're gonna there's
Speaker 4: gonna be stuff introduced into it at times, but the
Speaker 4: most part, we're will try to do a lot of
Speaker 4: line breed and we're gonna try to do some things
Speaker 4: to keep this what's working. Yeah, And so they really had.
Speaker 4: And then of course then you had other families who
Speaker 4: took that and said, well, I want to go this
Speaker 4: direction with it, and they did and they did well.
Speaker 4: But you had this network of people that were doing
Speaker 4: this that were not named. Some of them were related,
Speaker 4: some of our cousins and whatnot. But that time between there,
Speaker 4: between eighteen hundred and nineteen hundred, the breed was continuing
Speaker 4: to evolve. But even then it was still more kind
Speaker 4: of I think what I have been a regional phenomenon,
Speaker 4: except for around nineteen hundred, people started coming in here.
Speaker 4: Once a train was in here, the train was train
Speaker 4: changed everything. You can take a train end all the
Speaker 4: way to Murphy. You could get off in Proctor, you
Speaker 4: go up on Hazel Creek and hunt and all these
Speaker 4: communities had hunting camps. All these some of them were
Speaker 4: affluent people, some of them were just common people. So
Speaker 4: branch Ricky, who was arguably the most famous or one
Speaker 4: of the top probably three or four famous athletes, in
Speaker 4: the world at that time. You came here and hunted,
Speaker 4: you know. He was credited with later signing Jackie robertson
Speaker 4: the professional Baseball contract Integrating Professional Baseball in nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 4: But he came here in thirty five and was working
Speaker 4: for the Saint Louis Cardinals then. And I've got a
Speaker 4: letter on Saint Louis Cardinal letterhead of Ricky writing back
Speaker 4: to Vonplat saying, man, you guys got the professional stamding
Speaker 4: of professional athletes, you know, running these dogs, and I
Speaker 4: want to buy these dogs. I want to get these dogs.
Speaker 2: And so basically, when this area opened up, these hunters
Speaker 2: started getting some national attention because of their their prowess
Speaker 2: as hunters. People started coming in here. There started to
Speaker 2: be writers, big name people coming in and talking about
Speaker 2: and they were like, hey, there's these hunters down in
Speaker 2: North Carolina and they've got these dogs. And again, up
Speaker 2: until this point, this isn't a recognized This is still
Speaker 2: just kind of this regional phenomenon, these guys with dogs.
Speaker 2: And obviously by the nineteen hundreds it would have spread
Speaker 2: beyond the Plot family most definitely.
Speaker 3: It would have. It would have been dogs all over
Speaker 3: the country.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I've got shipping receipts from early nineteen hundreds of
Speaker 4: plot hounds being shipped Arizona. You know, plot howns being
Speaker 4: shipped different parts of the country. By the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 4: those dogs were going for one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 4: dollars each, which was a lot of money at that time. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but backing up a little bit to your point. By
Speaker 4: nineteen hundred, early nineteen hundreds, when these train was here,
Speaker 4: people could get here a little bit better. Writers were
Speaker 4: coming here. You know. Raymond camports writers, sports writers. Raymond
Speaker 4: Camp was a writer for the New York Times. So
Speaker 4: imagine this New York Times. You don't think about New
Speaker 4: York Times that way. New York Times had a full
Speaker 4: time out door commns named Raymond Camp who wrote three
Speaker 4: articles a week.
Speaker 2: So by the nineteen hundreds, the dogs are getting national
Speaker 2: attention and they're being called plot hounds. But where are
Speaker 2: the first written accounts of them being called plots Because
Speaker 2: to my knowledge, there is no record of the early
Speaker 2: plot family in the seventeen hundreds and into the middle
Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds calling them plot hounds. They might have simply
Speaker 2: been referred to as the plots hounds, as in the
Speaker 2: Plot family has some hounds, not as in a proper
Speaker 2: noun plot hounds. But at some point there was a
Speaker 2: big shift in ownership. Here's mister John.
Speaker 1: I have found as early as the nineteen hundreds of
Speaker 1: New York Times articles about plot dogs, yeah, and hunting
Speaker 1: plot dogs and hunting paar in western North Carolina. So
Speaker 1: believe it or not. As early as that was this
Speaker 1: national publicity about the Plot family and their plot dogs.
Speaker 2: So by the early nineteen hundreds they're referring to them
Speaker 2: as proper noun plot hounds, which is pretty compelling evidence
Speaker 2: that they'd probably been calling them that for a long time.
Speaker 2: The first known photograph of a plot was taken in
Speaker 2: nineteen oh six. A handsome, dark hound looking dog with
Speaker 2: a frosty muzzle sits happily.
Speaker 3: In an old school family portrait. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 2: You can see that photo along with countless other incredible
Speaker 2: images in Bob's book Striking Stay. You really should order it.
Speaker 2: Every one of you should have a copy of Striking Stay.
Speaker 2: But the dog in that first plot photo came from
Speaker 2: the stock of Montraval Plot, who would have been the
Speaker 2: great grandson of the original immigrant Johannas or George Plot
Speaker 2: and Montreval would have been Bob's great uncle.
Speaker 3: And not to throw a possum and the egg house
Speaker 3: of our beautiful story. But it's just too relevant to ignore.
Speaker 2: Montrovale Plot, who's known as one of the modern patriarchs
Speaker 2: of the Plot story. He's the first one we really
Speaker 2: know a whole lot about, primarily because of his son Vaughn.
Speaker 2: But old man Montraval was adamant that his dogs weren't
Speaker 2: hounds at all, but rather plot curs. He corrected anyone
Speaker 2: that called them hounds. Bob told me that kerr is
Speaker 2: the transliteration of the Welsh word key, which is a
Speaker 2: purebred and highly coveted hunting dog. So Mantraval, only two
Speaker 2: generations removed from Europe, had some allegiance to the idea of.
Speaker 3: A cur dog.
Speaker 2: Today, however, the modern usage of the word cur is
Speaker 2: multi layered.
Speaker 3: Some might use that like a curse.
Speaker 2: Word for a dog that's nothing but an old cur or,
Speaker 2: you know, like a mixed breed mutt. But there are
Speaker 2: also some legitimate breeds like black mouth, stephens, curd and
Speaker 2: tree and curve. It's complicated, but this is bear grease.
Speaker 2: Did you expect the day off from complicated drama?
Speaker 3: I hope not.
Speaker 2: I want to get back to mister John and ask
Speaker 2: him a pointed question about why the dogs carry the
Speaker 2: name Plot. Remember, what we're in search of is the
Speaker 2: authenticity of the general arc of this story as it
Speaker 2: relates to the Plot family, because it's wildly interesting and
Speaker 2: just to be frank, mister John is skeptical of the
Speaker 2: origin story of the Plot hound and these boys bringing
Speaker 2: over five dogs from Germany. So my question to him is,
Speaker 2: why is this breed named after the Plots if they
Speaker 2: weren't the sole creators of them?
Speaker 3: Man, I hope I don't get in trouble for this.
Speaker 2: What you're telling me doesn't surprise me. Like the traditional
Speaker 2: story I've known and I mean just kind of believe
Speaker 2: was probably for the most part true. But one thing
Speaker 2: I know that humans do very well is streamline stories
Speaker 2: to kind of make it fit an easy narrative. Would
Speaker 2: you say that that's happened place?
Speaker 1: And also, the Plot family were the most identifiable, the
Speaker 1: better known of the hunters and we're written about, and
Speaker 1: at that time the family members were getting out in around,
Speaker 1: serving in the military, serving in World War One, for example,
Speaker 1: they just were better known and could communicate better. I know,
Speaker 1: I tried to explain to some folks. I said, I
Speaker 1: know it may be disappointing to you, but there's an
Speaker 1: other side to this too that's just as fascinating, if
Speaker 1: not more intriguing than that. I've just I used the
Speaker 1: term here first on this couch pure Americana. It's just
Speaker 1: a very intriguing account and story about Plot dogs.
Speaker 3: Pure Americana. That's a good phrase.
Speaker 2: What I'm hearing mister John say is that the Plot
Speaker 2: family might have just risen as the most prominent family
Speaker 2: hunting these Appalachian brindled bear dogs, and thus the dogs
Speaker 2: were named after them, and that in and of itself
Speaker 2: would be completely fair and reasonable. They deserve to have
Speaker 2: this dog named after him. That's not what we're trying
Speaker 2: to get at. But what I'm also hearing him say
Speaker 2: is that it really doesn't matter. And that's really what
Speaker 2: I'm hearing Bob say too. He's just interested in preserving
Speaker 2: the traditional family story, which he's done an incredible job at,
Speaker 2: and the story absolutely deserves.
Speaker 3: To be saved.
Speaker 2: We just don't know how it all happened, but we
Speaker 2: still have this hound or this cur as old Montrable said,
Speaker 2: that was developed here in an incredible fashion. Regardless of
Speaker 2: intent or who did what. Bob and mister John are
Speaker 2: on the same team. They're actually friends. Bob quotes mister
Speaker 2: John in his books Striking Stay. These men both have
Speaker 2: dedicated their lives to plot hounds and their history. And
Speaker 2: to go back to this idea about the plot family
Speaker 2: being dominant, this kind of stuff happens all the time
Speaker 2: in life. Some activity is happening and gaining popularity. In
Speaker 2: this case, it was hunting these brindled dogs, and then
Speaker 2: a prominent person arises and the activity becomes deeply associated
Speaker 2: with them. For example, think about bow hunting legend Fred Bhaer.
Speaker 2: He didn't invent bowhunting. He was just a guy that
Speaker 2: came around at the right time, was incredibly good, was
Speaker 2: a good businessman, a good marketer, and genuinely ushered us
Speaker 2: into the modern era of bowhunting. But he didn't create
Speaker 2: bow hunting. It's possible the plot family was this for
Speaker 2: these dogs. Now, I still think it's kind of risky
Speaker 2: to fully buy into what mister John is saying. I mean,
Speaker 2: the data points are extremely compelling and It's undisputed that
Speaker 2: this family had a unique line of dogs that stretch
Speaker 2: back to their patriarch, George Plot. It all goes back
Speaker 2: to the question, did George or Johannas have the these
Speaker 2: five dogs on that ship or did careless record keeping
Speaker 2: delete that from history? Or is it a fabricated myth?
Speaker 2: And if it's a myth, who and why did they
Speaker 2: make it up? And man, it is a good story
Speaker 2: if they made it up. I love this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: It's really in the realm with the Black Panther Bigfoot.
Speaker 2: Are you a believer or not? I have a feeling
Speaker 2: Gary believer. Nukem will believe those dogs were on that ship.
Speaker 3: And if Brent Reeves would have been around, he'd have
Speaker 3: been an undercover warden.
Speaker 2: On that ship, dressed like a pilgrim trying to catch
Speaker 2: some outlaws. Maybe by the end of this you'll have
Speaker 2: a sense of what you think actually happened.
Speaker 3: But what's not disputed is that the.
Speaker 2: Plot family were the most prominent, well known plot dog
Speaker 2: hunters in Appalachia when the calendar rolled into the nineteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Here's Bob bringing us into the finish line of the
Speaker 2: official formation of the Plot hound breed.
Speaker 3: This this is big.
Speaker 4: So that's all of a sudden, be like, man, I
Speaker 4: want to hear more about this. I want to see
Speaker 4: more about this, you know, And so they come here.
Speaker 4: So by thirty five, the Ricky thing kind of exploded.
Speaker 4: By then you got guys in the Midwest who are
Speaker 4: coming here after, Like a senator from Wisconsin came here
Speaker 4: and he went back and started telling people about it. Well,
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, guys from Michigan and Illinois and
Speaker 4: all over the place are saying, man, I want some
Speaker 4: of those dogs. And like you said, and you're so correct.
Speaker 4: Without all that it would have, you know, as much
Speaker 4: as I love my family, as much as I love
Speaker 4: the history of the breed, it would have been really
Speaker 4: nothing more than a regional phenomenon without that sort of recognition.
Speaker 4: But when it did, man, it took off. And then
Speaker 4: all of a sudden there became a crime of crusade
Speaker 4: for to get the dog registered as an official breed.
Speaker 4: And so that happened in nineteen forty six when the
Speaker 4: UKC finally sanctioned that and approved that. And if you
Speaker 4: look at the first I think there's about one hundred
Speaker 4: dogs registered at that time eighty seven of them roughly
Speaker 4: were all either owned by Vane Plot, John Plott, Taylor, Crockett, Gola, Fergus.
Speaker 3: All those guys would have been from right here, yeah,
Speaker 3: right here, yeah, North Carolina.
Speaker 4: Taylor was living in Macon County at that time. Vaughn
Speaker 4: John were living right here in Haywood. Gola was living
Speaker 4: right over in Jackson.
Speaker 2: So nineteen forty six, yeah, the plot Hound became a
Speaker 2: United Kennel Club UKC official breed.
Speaker 3: And these guys right here.
Speaker 2: In western North Carolina were the ones who defined what
Speaker 2: the breed was. They presumably presented a case to the
Speaker 2: UKC said we've got two hundred years history, We've got
Speaker 2: two hundred years of breeding.
Speaker 3: They had to prove that, I.
Speaker 2: Mean some of the stuff that you have today, like
Speaker 2: these old records of what these old men said and
Speaker 2: what their dogs look like, and old pictures and like,
Speaker 2: they basically built a case for this breed, its own
Speaker 2: specific breed.
Speaker 3: And that was a big, big moment for huge for
Speaker 3: the plot Hound.
Speaker 4: Huge, huge. You can't you can't put that in really
Speaker 4: any perspective, how big it was. I mean it was
Speaker 4: because here you got the guys, the original family members
Speaker 4: I say original dating backed. I mean, Henry Plott would
Speaker 4: have been Von's great great grandpa. Henry Plott was my
Speaker 4: great great uncle. So you had that direct connection. You
Speaker 4: had these multiple generations, and like I say, of the
Speaker 4: first one hundred dogs, a eighty seven of them came
Speaker 4: from those guys. And guess what, the rest of them
Speaker 4: were all bought from them by people in the Midwest.
Speaker 4: So it all came from the same thing. Now, give
Speaker 4: the Midwestern guys credit. Once they got them, boy, they
Speaker 4: marketed them. Man, all of a sudden, it became like,
Speaker 4: let's start advertising, let's start doing this. I started doing it.
Speaker 2: And so when in the late forties when this happened,
Speaker 2: this is like such a powerful time too in American
Speaker 2: hot Yeah, world War two.
Speaker 3: Yeah, world War two is ended.
Speaker 2: All these guys come back with these young guys come
Speaker 2: back from war, and there's there's money here, there's time
Speaker 2: that they've never had. America's kind of popped.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: There became a big demand for the plot Hound, huge
Speaker 2: all across the country.
Speaker 4: And but yeah, that's the thing. I mean, you come
Speaker 4: back to this, just this greatest generation the guys are
Speaker 4: coming back from the war. Economies booming. People have a
Speaker 4: little bit of disposable income. You've got a railroad system.
Speaker 4: Now the roads are actually getting in here where you
Speaker 4: can drive a car in pretty much anywhere. And so
Speaker 4: that network across the country which is boom, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And those Midwestern guys give them credit. They were like, man,
Speaker 4: we want to promote this. You know, magazines start coming out,
Speaker 4: you know, yeah, the full Hunter's Horn, Yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 4: and so people start subscribing to them, and then it
Speaker 4: just became this big push for we got to find
Speaker 4: a way to support this even more. And so by
Speaker 4: I think it was late fifties, the National plotoun Association
Speaker 4: was formed to kind of promote the breed. You know.
Speaker 2: In nineteen forty six, the UKC recognized the plot hound
Speaker 2: as an official breed. In eighty seven, of the first
Speaker 2: one hundred dogs registered were from a very tight circle
Speaker 2: in western North Carolina, and a bunch of them had
Speaker 2: the last named plot. By the late nineteen fifties, the
Speaker 2: fame of the plot hound as a bear hog and
Speaker 2: coon dog was soaring across the country. You've got to
Speaker 2: wonder if those old Branchwater mountaineers carrying away brendle puppies,
Speaker 2: and toasacs had any sense they were building something that
Speaker 2: would become a mainstream breed of American hound, I think
Speaker 2: we can undoubtedly say they didn't. As we closed down
Speaker 2: on this first episode of this series, I want to
Speaker 2: ask mister John a question, a personal one. I think,
Speaker 2: to me the most the most special thing about plot
Speaker 2: dogs and being here in North Carolina, regardless of the history,
Speaker 2: which really will never know all the details because it
Speaker 2: was during a time when records just weren't being taken
Speaker 2: very well, and.
Speaker 1: Fact it becomes legend, legend becomes fantasy.
Speaker 2: But the thing that is special that can't be taken away.
Speaker 2: And I want to ask you, what does a plot
Speaker 2: dog mean to you? Being here in the mountains of
Speaker 2: North Carolina, being a bear hunter, knowing some of these
Speaker 2: old old guys that dedicate their lives to the plot
Speaker 2: breed like you have.
Speaker 3: Now, what does it mean to you?
Speaker 1: Well, to the person who never hunts, never has hunted,
Speaker 1: it wouldn't mean anything. But in my view, it is
Speaker 1: a tremendous pride. Unselfishly, I will tell you that it
Speaker 1: is a pride that I have that not everyone has,
Speaker 1: because not everyone's been born in North Carolina. Not everyone
Speaker 1: lives in western North Carolina. Not everyone has been around
Speaker 1: a plot dog. Not everyone has had an interest in
Speaker 1: the history of this fabulary, breed of dog. And so
Speaker 1: it's a tremendous overwhelming pride. It's a state dog in
Speaker 1: North Carolina.
Speaker 3: Do you know what a plot dog is?
Speaker 1: No, don't believe I do. I said, well, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: teach you. It's a state dog in North Carolina.
Speaker 3: A lot of kids, you know, Uh, it's.
Speaker 1: Usually grocery store cashiers. I get you. But it's a
Speaker 1: tremendous overwhelming pride. And I can go places where these
Speaker 1: events took place, and Clay, this is just funny feeling
Speaker 1: comes over you. That's a funny feeling like you're right
Speaker 1: back in time.
Speaker 2: The most compelling thing about plot Hounds for me, from
Speaker 2: the very first time I heard this story was the
Speaker 2: deep history tied with these dogs. Their story is kind
Speaker 2: of a hound version of America. On the next episode,
Speaker 2: we'll hear more of the modern story of the plot
Speaker 2: hound and hear from some of the people who've dedicated
Speaker 2: their lives to them. I can't thank you enough for
Speaker 2: listening to Bear Grease. Please tell a friend about our
Speaker 2: endeavors here and leave us a review on iTunes, and
Speaker 2: be sure to order Bob Plott's book Strike and Stay.
Speaker 2: You can find it all over the internet. Bob's actually
Speaker 2: a prolific and very good writer and has written all
Speaker 2: kinds of history books about Southern Appalachian.
Speaker 3: Be sure to check out the meat Eater.
Speaker 2: Dot com for just about all of your outdoor gear needs,
Speaker 2: ranging from optics to rifles, to coolers, boots, backpacks, tents, knives,
Speaker 2: and outdoor cooking supplies.
Speaker 3: We've got it all.
Speaker 2: I can't wait to talk to all those hillbillies on
Speaker 2: the render next week.
Speaker 3: We'll see that