Speaker 1: My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into
Speaker 1: the world of hunting the icon of the North American wilderness. Prepare.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation. We will also bring
Speaker 1: you into some of the wildest country on the planet
Speaker 1: chasing Fair. This week, we're going back to one of
Speaker 1: our classic Bear Hunting Magazine episodes, our episode that we
Speaker 1: did with Advance at his home in California. Advance is
Speaker 1: a longtime houndsman, hunting both bear and mountain lion and
Speaker 1: Ed wrote a book called Trained by Hound Dog. I
Speaker 1: knew nothing of him. I read his book and I thought,
Speaker 1: I gotta meet this guy, and so I went to
Speaker 1: California and I met Ed van Ants. It's been a
Speaker 1: friend of mine ever since. This podcast will go down
Speaker 1: as one of our classic episodes. If you haven't heard it.
Speaker 1: For those of you that are new to the podcasts,
Speaker 1: I know you're gonna enjoy it. And if you've already
Speaker 1: heard it, then you can check it out again. This
Speaker 1: podcast is brought to you by our friends at w
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Speaker 1: this podcast with Advance. The green Horn Mountains of southern
Speaker 1: California look like a steep rolling savannah of grass and trees,
Speaker 1: many of which are some type of small oak. The
Speaker 1: mountains go up over seven thousand feet, many as steep
Speaker 1: as a cow space. From this property, I call lions
Speaker 1: and bears all over everything, all of all of this
Speaker 1: stuff that you can see. Ad points to a bear
Speaker 1: hide hanging on the wall of his home. That was
Speaker 1: one of the toughest bears that I've ever got my
Speaker 1: dogs after. I mean I had others, they were just
Speaker 1: as bad. Because there's the right here, I'm gonna explain
Speaker 1: to you, and I'm gonna show you where it started,
Speaker 1: where it went to him, where it ended come right
Speaker 1: here at this house. Advance is seventy eight years old,
Speaker 1: and he hunted these mountains for lions and bear in
Speaker 1: a twenty five year stretch from the nineteen sixties through
Speaker 1: the nineteen eighties. Today, he can see much of his
Speaker 1: favorite hunting ground from the incredible view from his home.
Speaker 1: But I want to explain, I want to show you.
Speaker 1: We're gonna walk over here We'll have to walk around
Speaker 1: a little bit in order for you do U to
Speaker 1: take in all of what I'm gonna show you. Because
Speaker 1: Ed is a gifted craftsman with wood, brick and stone.
Speaker 1: His home he built himself. It's a mix of a
Speaker 1: timber framed bungalow style Western log cabin, ornate with saddles worn,
Speaker 1: cowboy hats, bear hides in a mounted mountain. Lion killed
Speaker 1: before the hunting band in California. It's clear to see
Speaker 1: that Ed is a meticulate master of everything that he
Speaker 1: takes on, and at one period in his life his
Speaker 1: entire focus was hunting lions and bears with hounds. This
Speaker 1: particular bear that I got out after it was in
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the book. Um I started him in
Speaker 1: October and it was just at the crack of dawn
Speaker 1: and I had I couldn't find a bear by driving roads,
Speaker 1: so I got uh. I had two hunter with me,
Speaker 1: and so we stopped and I says, I want to
Speaker 1: walk up a canyon and see if I can get
Speaker 1: a bear started up there. And I'm gonna show you
Speaker 1: where this is at. You see this ridge right in
Speaker 1: front of us, So you see a lone tree standing
Speaker 1: up there all by myself. From that tree. If you
Speaker 1: went straight down into the canyon, you see the ridge
Speaker 1: on the other side, straight down into the bottom. That's
Speaker 1: where they started this bear. I went up there and
Speaker 1: then and they struck this bear and this ridge. You
Speaker 1: can see where that lone tree standing. You can see
Speaker 1: the ridge it's on, and that ridge follows and keeps going.
Speaker 1: And then he gets right up to a point. They
Speaker 1: pulled him out of that cannon. He came out of
Speaker 1: that canyon, crossed onto this side of that ridge, and
Speaker 1: he skirted that ridge almost on the top all the
Speaker 1: way around. And then where you can see that one
Speaker 1: high point, he turned and he went to the opposite
Speaker 1: side of it. Now there was no roads to speak
Speaker 1: of it, so I was following him on foot. M hmm.
Speaker 1: By the time I got to there, I could hear
Speaker 1: those dogs. It was placed called Portuguese Pass, and Portuguese
Speaker 1: Pass is the furthest ridge that you can see as
Speaker 1: far as you can see. And he's just about to
Speaker 1: go over, and I thought, if he goes over that,
Speaker 1: so there's a big valley in between that. It's called
Speaker 1: bill Run Basin. The other side is called bill Run Basin.
Speaker 1: I was north of that high point that we're talking about,
Speaker 1: which is from right where that point is out to
Speaker 1: where it started. Yeah, it's only like maybe three miles
Speaker 1: through the air, but we weren't going through the air.
Speaker 1: We were going on ground, and it's different. It's different.
Speaker 1: So I got around to the other side of that
Speaker 1: and I heard those dogs headed towards Portuguese pass. I
Speaker 1: had five dogs on it, I recall, and they were
Speaker 1: really hammering that thing. And I was suspicious of what
Speaker 1: bear this was because I I didn't know at the time,
Speaker 1: but I caught him two other times and let him go.
Speaker 1: And he was a non tregable bear. You're gonna bay
Speaker 1: him out. That was it. So as far as you
Speaker 1: can see, they just he just about got over that
Speaker 1: far ridge and they were then he was he was
Speaker 1: moving and and these dogs were hitting it as hard
Speaker 1: as they could, and that he is like extremely steep
Speaker 1: and rough. And then I lost hearing of them. Now
Speaker 1: we're gonna have to walk to another spot. Show you
Speaker 1: where this thing ended up at. In the meantime, I
Speaker 1: had two had these two guys that where I was.
Speaker 1: I had him here on a bear hunt, and they
Speaker 1: were waiting to inform me at my pickup. I had
Speaker 1: a CB radio in the pickup. I walk up on
Speaker 1: this little dog here a little bit, and I can
Speaker 1: show you a little bit further, get right up there
Speaker 1: in that opening. It's kind of it's kind of nice
Speaker 1: to be living in a spot where I can take
Speaker 1: and look at places like this and say, well, I
Speaker 1: know what had happened, because I was there and it
Speaker 1: did happen. Now we look straight ahead of us, and
Speaker 1: we can see him rounded mountain and on this side
Speaker 1: has been burned. And I mentioned to you that at
Speaker 1: the transition between the trees that have been burned, which
Speaker 1: were lower as the ones above, those dogs were on
Speaker 1: that side. You keep in mind they started over here,
Speaker 1: they went around that point, and when they did that,
Speaker 1: I lost him. I had no idea where they were.
Speaker 1: I was no I was. I was up on this
Speaker 1: from where you started swoops down Portugee passes in there.
Speaker 1: I was up in that area someplace, and I could
Speaker 1: hear my dogs going down on that hillside, which is
Speaker 1: several miles from there too, and I could hear him
Speaker 1: for several miles, and then they disappeared. So I came
Speaker 1: down through all of that and it's late in the afternoon. No,
Speaker 1: I'll keep in mind this started at about six in
Speaker 1: the morning, late in the afternoon, which would be about
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say about three o'clock. I crossed this road
Speaker 1: right here, the road that I'm living on. But I
Speaker 1: was about four miles up. When it got to the road.
Speaker 1: He cranked on the CBE radio and heard the voice
Speaker 1: of a good friend that he didn't even know was
Speaker 1: in the area. Asked me. He says, let me come
Speaker 1: and get you. And I said, do you have you
Speaker 1: heard my dogs? And he said, yes, your dogs the
Speaker 1: last I heard. And he said, your dogs are done
Speaker 1: on White River by the campground. Now I'm gonna show
Speaker 1: you what White River Campground is. That he wanted to
Speaker 1: come and pick me up, and I said, no, I
Speaker 1: wanted to just go across the country. I'm just gonna
Speaker 1: keep it's all downhill, and I can travel pretty fast
Speaker 1: going downhill, and uh, as long as I know that
Speaker 1: that's where they're at, and anything from Louisa this time,
Speaker 1: you've already traveled twelve fourteen miles close to that through
Speaker 1: through air miles, and so you're going down in these
Speaker 1: steep valleys and ravines and up mountains. Yes, because where
Speaker 1: the bear was started was at the five thousand foot
Speaker 1: elevation in Portuguese passes seven thousand. So they almost got
Speaker 1: he almost had. You had to you had to lose elevation,
Speaker 1: and yes, yes, back and forth, back and forth the road.
Speaker 1: If you look right down in the bottom the canon,
Speaker 1: you see a dirt road down there. And when I
Speaker 1: got there, those dogs, White River was about five miles
Speaker 1: from there to the north, and those dogs and they
Speaker 1: were coming this to the south, about halfway between that
Speaker 1: ridge that you're looking at in the bottom of the canyon,
Speaker 1: which is about a thousand foot drop in elevation below
Speaker 1: where I was at, and he started, he started skirting
Speaker 1: going this way. He's going southwest. I followed that ridge
Speaker 1: and knowing that if he gets on this side of it,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna lose Those Doctors're gonna go down and
Speaker 1: nothing but private land, and I can't get into that stuff.
Speaker 1: So not halfway between these two points, which it is
Speaker 1: gonna be about a half three quarters of a mile,
Speaker 1: he was getting close to crossing over, and I got
Speaker 1: to where I could drop down, and I came head
Speaker 1: on onto him, and we walked right into each other.
Speaker 1: When he saw me, he spun and I had this.
Speaker 1: They weren't behind him, they were all right alongside of it.
Speaker 1: They're right on it. Yeah, I got Mike, shot at him,
Speaker 1: and I was almost at the bottom between those two ridges.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's some ranchers said they was listening to
Speaker 1: the whole thing, and I shot and killed him right there.
Speaker 1: So how many miles it is, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I do know this. I had twenty minutes to get
Speaker 1: the hide off of him, and it was gonna be dark.
Speaker 1: I don't have a clue how many miles that is.
Speaker 1: It has to be in straight line air miles, fifteen
Speaker 1: air miles. But we're talking about starting at five thousand
Speaker 1: foot in the elevation, going up and down until he
Speaker 1: gets a seven thousand foot and then going up and
Speaker 1: down until you dropped down to Bud elevation. And that's
Speaker 1: what it took to stop that whole race. I think
Speaker 1: that's an incredible feed for the dog, has been an
Speaker 1: incredible feat for a man. This bear is the only
Speaker 1: bear hide that Ed still has in his home. Ed
Speaker 1: wrote an incredible book that you're gonna hear about inside
Speaker 1: of this podcast that tells many of the stories and
Speaker 1: tales of his twenty five years of hunting California, Utah, Nevada,
Speaker 1: and Montana with a pack of hounds. Welcome to the
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting Magazine podcast we Are. This is gonna be
Speaker 1: a really neat episode. I'm in the home of a
Speaker 1: man that's become a friend of mine today really um,
Speaker 1: but I feel like i've I feel like I know
Speaker 1: you after I read your book. But I'm in the
Speaker 1: home of of Ed and Lynette Advance and we're in Posey, California,
Speaker 1: which Ed, I would not have known where Posey, California
Speaker 1: was until I learned that you lived here. But it's
Speaker 1: an incredible and beautiful place just south of the Sierra
Speaker 1: Nevadas or we're in the southern Sierra Nevadas. Is that
Speaker 1: on the southern southern tip of the Sierra Nevadas, in
Speaker 1: a mountain range known as the Greenhorn Mountains and Sekoyan
Speaker 1: National Forest and Sekoya National Monument. Is um right on
Speaker 1: these Greenhorn Mountains. UM a place that a lot of
Speaker 1: people really don't know about. In fact, there's people that um,
Speaker 1: we've met that live in the valley the San Joaquin Valley.
Speaker 1: They've never even gone up into these mountains and they
Speaker 1: have no idea what's up here. Um, well, this morning
Speaker 1: we started off in I mean we were in Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, California. Seven seven seven lane going one way,
Speaker 1: seven lane traffic going the other. And we drove two
Speaker 1: and a half hours. And I mean we're twenty miles
Speaker 1: from a gas station. I mean we're more than that.
Speaker 1: More than that we're in Really, you're forty miles away
Speaker 1: from a gas station. The only thing that um, the
Speaker 1: closest little town is a town called Glenville's in Current County.
Speaker 1: We're until Larry County, and there's not much difference between
Speaker 1: the two counties actually, but um in Posey, all that
Speaker 1: we have in Posey as the post office For somebody
Speaker 1: who doesn't or did not know much about California. California
Speaker 1: is an incredible state for wildlife and and and really
Speaker 1: has an incredibly rich history and hunting and and that's
Speaker 1: why I'm here is uh So. Ed wrote a book
Speaker 1: called Trained hound Dog. The book was released back in November,
Speaker 1: and the book is is basically a collection of stories
Speaker 1: about Ed's life as a as a houndsman, hunting mountain,
Speaker 1: lions and bears in these mountains right here where we're at.
Speaker 1: And uh. And so that's what I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about today, is I want to I want
Speaker 1: people to get a feel for for your history and
Speaker 1: hound hunting and and uh. And in doing that, we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about the book. And and we just did
Speaker 1: a I didn't know ed, wouldn't have known ed, but
Speaker 1: several months ago it was probably Lynette that contacted me
Speaker 1: just through Bare Hunting magazine and said, I'd like to
Speaker 1: send you a book that my husband wrote. And I said, well, sure.
Speaker 1: And I get a lot of books, and I really
Speaker 1: do a lot of people. A lot of people write books,
Speaker 1: and I read a lot of books. And when I
Speaker 1: read this book, it I could tell that the the
Speaker 1: voice of this writer was someone special. I really did
Speaker 1: and uh and I as I as I read the book,
Speaker 1: I thought, man, I'd like to I'd like to meet
Speaker 1: that guy and uh. And and it just so happened
Speaker 1: that our family was coming to California, and so I
Speaker 1: looked up where Posey, California was, because that's on your
Speaker 1: Trained by Hound Dog website and it was just a
Speaker 1: couple of hours out of where we were, and so
Speaker 1: you graciously said, yeah, come onto the house, fed us lunch,
Speaker 1: and here we are. I've got my whole family here
Speaker 1: and uh, and we're here with you and and and
Speaker 1: so anyway, thank you for hosting. Welcome. We're sure happy
Speaker 1: to have you here. UM. I hope that this will
Speaker 1: turn into a um, a long term friendship, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure I will. You know, I wanted to say something
Speaker 1: about these mountains here. UM during the during the years
Speaker 1: of the Bounty for Mountain Lions, and a lot of
Speaker 1: people have no idea of this, there was a there
Speaker 1: was a California state line under that lived here and
Speaker 1: his name was Howard Builton. And I wish that I
Speaker 1: had have known Howard. He died just about the same
Speaker 1: time that I started hunting these mountains. But had he
Speaker 1: been alive when I was doing this, that guy that
Speaker 1: had a hard time getting rid of me, I'm sure that.
Speaker 1: But I was really surprised when I moved here and
Speaker 1: talked to guys that had hound dogs that there was
Speaker 1: hardly anybody other than the long time residences that even
Speaker 1: knew that this guy even existed here. But he did,
Speaker 1: and and like to say, he was a full time
Speaker 1: line uner for the state of California, and uh, I
Speaker 1: think he was. I checked his record and in his
Speaker 1: final years of as a state line unner, he was
Speaker 1: actually killing about fifteen lions a year, which you know,
Speaker 1: that's quite a few actually, And some places, you know
Speaker 1: that the where you have snow all the time to
Speaker 1: catch your lions, fifteen lions might not sound like a
Speaker 1: whole lot to some of those people, but here it
Speaker 1: was predominantly bare ground trailing, and uh so you couldn't
Speaker 1: just go and roam around these hell was looking for
Speaker 1: a line track in the snow because it just wasn't
Speaker 1: it wasn't there, And so the dogs that they used
Speaker 1: had to be pretty good quality dogs. The hunters had
Speaker 1: to be totally dedicated, and that's what I found in
Speaker 1: this part of the country. I've seen some places it
Speaker 1: was pretty easy to catch lions as compared to others.
Speaker 1: When I was in Montana, it was definitely one of
Speaker 1: the easiest places because it's like it's snowed almost every day,
Speaker 1: and every time that she'd find a line track is
Speaker 1: just about counting out. It was once very old, you know,
Speaker 1: but that and then the bear population in in this
Speaker 1: part of the country is um really good. It's far
Speaker 1: better than people would have thought it was. UM. The
Speaker 1: entire Sierra Mountain Range has been and and the Coast
Speaker 1: Range both have been noted forever for having the a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of bears um and a lot
Speaker 1: of large bears to go with it. And the reasons
Speaker 1: for that was basically because the winners were short, growing
Speaker 1: seasons were long, and it was either oak trees or
Speaker 1: oak brush that's covering all these hills, and those happened
Speaker 1: to produce acorns, and acorns bears love them and they
Speaker 1: get fat on them, so so it's it was an
Speaker 1: area that very unique. But at the same time, a
Speaker 1: lot of people in this part of the country, they
Speaker 1: say that they use a term that Posey, California was
Speaker 1: Tillarry County's best kept secret because nobody seemed to know
Speaker 1: where it was at. And in fact, even at the
Speaker 1: county seat. We've had to talk to the people out
Speaker 1: of the building department and some of them didn't even
Speaker 1: know where we were and we're in their county. But anyways, no,
Speaker 1: it's it's a beautiful place. UM. Four seasons winn is
Speaker 1: the shortest, summer is the longest and a lot of
Speaker 1: beautiful scenery to go with it. Yeah, Ed, give us
Speaker 1: a give us a kind of a run through of
Speaker 1: your well, just let me let me just start off
Speaker 1: with this. When did you start hunting with hounds and
Speaker 1: how did you get into it? And why? Because you
Speaker 1: didn't grow up in a family had hound I mean
Speaker 1: you that was when I first started reading the book.
Speaker 1: That caught my attention because a lot of time, most
Speaker 1: of the time, somebody that's in hounds is introduced to
Speaker 1: it or there's some pretty close connection to them that
Speaker 1: was able to get them in. But it's almost like
Speaker 1: you started running hounds just this. Yeah, you know, I
Speaker 1: always as a kid, I grew up in a suburb
Speaker 1: for the town by the name of Glendale in California,
Speaker 1: and in those days, of course, the population wasn't what
Speaker 1: it was today, and I kind of like the act
Speaker 1: like I was hunting him because if right from our
Speaker 1: house you just go off in the hills, they're just
Speaker 1: covered with brush and just kind of make believe, you know.
Speaker 1: But over time I drifted away from that, and then
Speaker 1: I found myself working in an assembly plant for Chevrolet
Speaker 1: in Van Eys, California, and directly across the line from
Speaker 1: me was a a guy by the name of Sherwood Barrett,
Speaker 1: and uh he was from Georgia and and sure what
Speaker 1: he he was a Mormon. And he told me, he
Speaker 1: says that he left Georgia and he's on his way
Speaker 1: to Salt Lake City and because he wanted to live there,
Speaker 1: but he had to get go someplace and earn some
Speaker 1: money in the process. And so he was I was
Speaker 1: putting gas lines, gasoline lines on these cards as they passed,
Speaker 1: if fifty something an hour, and so we'd get a
Speaker 1: few moments every now and then to visit. And he
Speaker 1: started telling me about chasing these hound dogs in the
Speaker 1: Oki Finocchi Swamp in Georgia, and uh, it really caught
Speaker 1: my interests. I mean it really did. And they're on
Speaker 1: ragged coons. Yeah, and uh so anyways, he teld me
Speaker 1: these stories about this what he was doing, and it
Speaker 1: just really caught my interest. And so I asked him,
Speaker 1: I said, Sherwood, where would you where do you go
Speaker 1: to buy these dogs? And he told me, says, he
Speaker 1: could have like outdoor life. They had these guys advertising him.
Speaker 1: I didn't know at the time that most of those
Speaker 1: guys were selling dogs nobody wanted, you know, and people
Speaker 1: like myself and buy him because I didn't know what
Speaker 1: I was buying in the first place. So anyways, I
Speaker 1: started with that. And what was your intention? Was your
Speaker 1: intention to run lion? Or I just wanted I like dogs,
Speaker 1: and I liked the idea of hunting and as honey
Speaker 1: with dogs sounding it good. So you would have been
Speaker 1: in your early twenties probably at this time I was.
Speaker 1: I was just I just wanted some hunting dogs. I
Speaker 1: was like twenty years old, and nobody in my family
Speaker 1: it had never even heard of it. And so I
Speaker 1: ordered a dog from him, and I got a red
Speaker 1: bone hound and uh his nice looking dog actually golden Buck.
Speaker 1: He seemed to know his name. So I got this dog,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know where to go hunting, so I
Speaker 1: took off and I went up and in the in
Speaker 1: the mountains up by Ventura, which is just covered with brush,
Speaker 1: and I actually a terrible place to try and hunt dogs.
Speaker 1: And I never caught anything with him. And then I
Speaker 1: started meeting different guys that had hound dogs and they
Speaker 1: weren't doing any good either, and uh so I pooled
Speaker 1: around with those different fellas and and the dogs that
Speaker 1: they had and the couple of dogs that I had,
Speaker 1: And eventually I learned that what these dogs were chasing
Speaker 1: was not anything they could climb a tree at all.
Speaker 1: But the guys that are hunting with they were just
Speaker 1: fooling themselves about, you know, what they're really but they
Speaker 1: were after but they were probably chasing deer. They were
Speaker 1: chasing deer, That's what they were chasing, you know. So
Speaker 1: if the time went by, and the next thing I knew,
Speaker 1: I was introduced to guy out of Utah by the
Speaker 1: name of Willis but Off, which was a very well
Speaker 1: known government hunter and had caught hundreds of lions, unbelievable
Speaker 1: numbers of lions. I mean it had really caught them
Speaker 1: too as well. And so I got with him and
Speaker 1: hunted with him a few times, and I bought a
Speaker 1: few dogs from him, and from there I started learning
Speaker 1: about the difference between hunting dogs and taking dogs hunting
Speaker 1: and kitchen stuff and uh so, then from there I
Speaker 1: ended up losing a couple of these dogs too too,
Speaker 1: tenady poison, which was terrible, terrible situation. And that was
Speaker 1: in Utah. And then I ended up meeting a guy
Speaker 1: it lived. It was he worked for a big farm
Speaker 1: out of Wacoe, California, and he said that the people
Speaker 1: told me that he had a hound that he might
Speaker 1: sell because of his age, and I got in touch
Speaker 1: with him. Guy's name is J. D. Reynolds, and he
Speaker 1: had this red dick count that he said he would sell,
Speaker 1: and I bought him, and I couldn't believe what I
Speaker 1: had bought. I went from from not catching anything to
Speaker 1: speak of, to every time I put that dog's filled
Speaker 1: on the ground, he caught something. And he didn't run deer,
Speaker 1: he didn't run coyotes, and he caught bobcats and raccoons
Speaker 1: and foxes every time he hit the ground practically, And
Speaker 1: from there I started learning the difference between good dogs,
Speaker 1: mediocre dogs, and dogs that just darn't any good. And
Speaker 1: so on the book that I titled the title Trained
Speaker 1: by a Hound Dog, that title was really thinking about
Speaker 1: this dog, this red tick down, which we called bow
Speaker 1: and Uh, like I said, he was six years older
Speaker 1: than I got him. I was working as a carpenter
Speaker 1: framing houses in Thousand Oaks, California, where framing houses there
Speaker 1: as a carpenter was more like an athletic contest, and
Speaker 1: it was anything else because it is all peace work.
Speaker 1: And then and you didn't get paid much for the
Speaker 1: for what she did. And if you're gonna have any
Speaker 1: money at all, you're gonna work like you're fighting fire
Speaker 1: from the moment you got there until it was time
Speaker 1: to go home, which I did, and I'd take and
Speaker 1: load bow up on Friday nights and i'd head off
Speaker 1: from Ventura, California to the Green Worn Mountains, which is
Speaker 1: where we're at right now, and Wish is where bow
Speaker 1: was read actually trained. He came from Arkansas. He was
Speaker 1: a red Dack count um out of the Elbert Vaughan
Speaker 1: stock of English Towns, which eventually became the ober One
Speaker 1: Blue Ticks, but in those days he was still dealing
Speaker 1: with registered English dogs and which is the same thing basically,
Speaker 1: just different colors. And I think that first year I'd
Speaker 1: i'd get off work and I'd drove all the way
Speaker 1: up here, which was three and a half to four
Speaker 1: hours each way, after working all all week. And I
Speaker 1: think that first year I had Bowen and I bought
Speaker 1: a a plothound. I called him Pat and he was
Speaker 1: like two years old when I got him. Bo wouldn't
Speaker 1: run a line at all. He wouldn't I'd find a
Speaker 1: line track was fresh, and he wouldn't pay any attention.
Speaker 1: But Pat had been on some lions. I got Pat
Speaker 1: from Willis butt Off in Utah, and he'd been on
Speaker 1: these lines, and so he he was eager more eager
Speaker 1: to try and trail. And then Bow was bo didn't care.
Speaker 1: And I think I caught on Friday night hunting Friday
Speaker 1: nights and Saturday right out a hundred animals that first year.
Speaker 1: And that was driving four hours each way to go
Speaker 1: after putting in five days of slave labor type work,
Speaker 1: you know, which it was very impressive to me. And
Speaker 1: it was basically bobcats and foxes with so they tree
Speaker 1: these foxes and these little oak trees. They do three here,
Speaker 1: that's called a great cross fox. And um, there are
Speaker 1: a lot harder to tree than the bobcats are. And
Speaker 1: but then two and then in the summer months you
Speaker 1: had to have something that was really good too to
Speaker 1: be able to even trail any of it, because the
Speaker 1: trailing conditions got really poor, very dry conditions, very difficult
Speaker 1: for most towns to be able to to catch much
Speaker 1: of anything in the summer months. And uh, but it
Speaker 1: didn't seem to make any difference, that dog would do it.
Speaker 1: And so that anyway, that's the the title of trained
Speaker 1: by a hound dog was that I was taught by
Speaker 1: a hound dog named Bow. He taught you what a
Speaker 1: what a good dog was supposed to do. He not
Speaker 1: only what is supposed to be, but I was able
Speaker 1: to use him to take younger dogs and train them,
Speaker 1: and UH and I and and the experience that I
Speaker 1: had had prior to this, I did learn that one
Speaker 1: of the things that hound under doesn't want to do
Speaker 1: with his dogs is get him in bad company. And
Speaker 1: up until I had gotten Um introduced to Willis, buttop
Speaker 1: most of the hunting that I did with anybody was
Speaker 1: his old dogs and bad company. And the Bow was
Speaker 1: he was straight as a clean dog. And from there
Speaker 1: I started um having other dogs. And you started really
Speaker 1: searching across the country I did for for hounds I did.
Speaker 1: You would have been now, so you're still in your
Speaker 1: early twenties, and that's when you set out to try
Speaker 1: to get a sustainable pack of hounds. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: about twenty five years old. I guess when I got Bow,
Speaker 1: maybe twenty six at the most. What year would that
Speaker 1: have been in the sixties. Yeah, I think I got
Speaker 1: bow in sixty three or sixty four. He was born
Speaker 1: in ninety. He was born in Paraguld, Arkansas, and which
Speaker 1: is where Albert lived. But Elbert didn't have him, but
Speaker 1: Elbert owned the father to him. And now you went
Speaker 1: and spent some time down there. I did because j D. Reynolds,
Speaker 1: this guy in Waco that I got it got the
Speaker 1: dog from. He was from Paraguld and he grew up
Speaker 1: with Albert Vaughan and j D told me that, uh,
Speaker 1: if I was interested in that line of dog, it'd
Speaker 1: probably would be a good idea for me to take
Speaker 1: off and go back and visit with Elbert, which I did,
Speaker 1: and uh I stayed with Elbert for I think it's
Speaker 1: about three months, and uh Ever wanted to hire me.
Speaker 1: He ever worked in a shoe factory and so that
Speaker 1: was pretty full time for him, and he didn't have
Speaker 1: the finances or the time to be able to taking
Speaker 1: all these wild coon hunts and stuff like that. But
Speaker 1: he he figured that he could make enough money to
Speaker 1: pay me something and give me room and board, and
Speaker 1: I'd stay there and I'd take his dogs to these
Speaker 1: to these cop nuts. And but I did. I wasn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't. I didn't want to do it. I just
Speaker 1: wasn't cut out for that. Uh. And I love these
Speaker 1: mountains here and there of course Paragold, Organsas was just
Speaker 1: out on the flat lands. And but I did learn this.
Speaker 1: He had awfully good dogs and he really did, There's
Speaker 1: no doubt about that. And while I was there, I
Speaker 1: was able to pick up a pup from him, which
Speaker 1: was not easy to do um at the time. And
Speaker 1: I called him Sailor. And Sailor was was out of
Speaker 1: a female that he called Lula the second. And I
Speaker 1: did learn at that time from the Elbert that of
Speaker 1: his blue ticks, which he had a number of different
Speaker 1: families of them, that those that have that came out
Speaker 1: of the the stock of dogs who was sired by
Speaker 1: a dog called Floridy Curly, which was owned by a
Speaker 1: guy named Jake Size and Coffeeville, Mississippi. Um, he got
Speaker 1: a dog named Curly and out of that and from
Speaker 1: there he got a female called Lula. Uh And and
Speaker 1: I learned that anything that came out of Lula was
Speaker 1: going to be pretty hard to beat, especially if it
Speaker 1: came to speed. And I took, of course, Sailor. He
Speaker 1: was out a little of the second. Elbert also told
Speaker 1: me that in breeding, his experience would he had a
Speaker 1: lot of it. In breeding in families of dogs, he said,
Speaker 1: to duplicate. If you're trying to duplicate a dog, he said,
Speaker 1: the chances are you'll see the duplication and the grandparents
Speaker 1: before you'll see it in the parents two generations. Now, yes, yes,
Speaker 1: and and I could see that um sometimes with the
Speaker 1: in breeding with these dogs, that the grandchildren would be
Speaker 1: more likely to be like the grandparents. Then the children
Speaker 1: would be by the parent itself. And of course, now
Speaker 1: Lula the second happened to be excuse me. Lula was
Speaker 1: Sailor's grandmother. And as time went by, Sailor kept getting
Speaker 1: better and better and better, and finally he passed up Bow.
Speaker 1: Of course, Boat had a few years on. He was
Speaker 1: getting a little old, but he still did. Sada was
Speaker 1: getting faster and faster and faster, and he died at
Speaker 1: the age of seven and a half. Um through heartworm
Speaker 1: treatment is what took him out. In this part of
Speaker 1: the world, it seemed like with the guys that had
Speaker 1: dogs that could catch bobcats regularly or foxes, it usually
Speaker 1: would take half an hour to get him to go
Speaker 1: up a tree anyways under good trailing conditions. When Sailor
Speaker 1: got to worry, he's about five years old. I was
Speaker 1: done with the bobcat. I mean because I was I
Speaker 1: was full time guiding then and it was just lions
Speaker 1: and bears, and I didn't have a need or and
Speaker 1: interest for chasing bobcats. But I would still have to
Speaker 1: hunt the dogs loose to um to hunt to find
Speaker 1: lions because or bears, because we didn't have snow over
Speaker 1: conditions to find tracks that way, and and they get
Speaker 1: on a bobcat. Well, I didn't want dogs out there
Speaker 1: wearing themselves out, Jason a bobcat when I'm out there
Speaker 1: trying to find a lion. Um And come to find out,
Speaker 1: these thirty minutes forty five minute bobcat chases started getting
Speaker 1: shorter and shorter and shorter. And the last two years
Speaker 1: of that dog's life, um, he would catch thirty five
Speaker 1: forty bobcats a year. I don't remember. I didn't keep
Speaker 1: track to the foxes, but um, if any bobcat can
Speaker 1: still on the ground three minutes, he was on the
Speaker 1: ground a long time after he jumped it, and most
Speaker 1: of them would be within a minute, two minute and
Speaker 1: a half. And that you know, and I'm not bragging,
Speaker 1: I'm just dating facts. Dot is how fast that dog?
Speaker 1: And that was sailor that you got directly? Yes, And
Speaker 1: then I ended up with a um a granddaughter of
Speaker 1: sailors who was killed at a very young age, um
Speaker 1: accidental death. And this was in Montana, and it appeared
Speaker 1: as though that she had that speed as well, that
Speaker 1: most dogs wouldn't have. I just I couldn't. I just
Speaker 1: couldn't find anybody that or hunted with anybody that had
Speaker 1: dogs you could run that fast. It just it was
Speaker 1: just everything was a one dog grace once he was jumped.
Speaker 1: But anyways, from there, I stayed in California until we
Speaker 1: got drun out of here. Um But let me can
Speaker 1: I back up a little bit? So what year so
Speaker 1: you got interested in hounds, You got a good hound,
Speaker 1: started treeting some bobcats and foxes when you were by
Speaker 1: this time your mid twenties. And then when did you
Speaker 1: start outfitting for Barren Line? Because that's what the that's
Speaker 1: what the book is primarily about. It's talking about your
Speaker 1: years as an outfitter. Yes, I started, Okay, I started
Speaker 1: advertising I'd hurt my back really bad in framing houses,
Speaker 1: and I I just couldn't um. I couldn't keep doing it.
Speaker 1: So I left Ventura and I moved to this area
Speaker 1: where we're out here. That was in um nineteen sixties
Speaker 1: six when I moved here. I've been keeping mind, have
Speaker 1: been hunting it for about three or four years, been
Speaker 1: traveling back and forth. But I moved here full time.
Speaker 1: Started running some ads in the magazine, like Outdoor Life magazine,
Speaker 1: and I was I was so poor. I was poor
Speaker 1: as a church mouse is a sayings go, you know,
Speaker 1: and living in the back of my truck at the
Speaker 1: same time. But anyways, I uh renting an old shock,
Speaker 1: moved into that started advertising, and uh, I started getting
Speaker 1: some customers. And you said, a little bit of ad
Speaker 1: in the Outdoor Life, said Barren Mountain Lion the Hounds
Speaker 1: in California, fifty dollars a month, fifty dollars a month
Speaker 1: from one call a mench add and I wish it
Speaker 1: was just it was it was just about broke me
Speaker 1: to have to pay that advertisement, you know, but you
Speaker 1: paid or you didn't get any any others. And it
Speaker 1: started to grow from there, you know, and then I
Speaker 1: ended up having a U. I guess people started knowing
Speaker 1: a little bit a bit about me being there, and uh,
Speaker 1: I knew this guy lived up at Sugarlow Village and
Speaker 1: he said that he knew I that worked for the
Speaker 1: LA Times, and he talked to him about what I
Speaker 1: was doing. And they've wanted to know if they could
Speaker 1: come up here and I'd take them lyne under. They
Speaker 1: run an article in the Los Angeles Times, so you know,
Speaker 1: I said, well, yeah, okay, let's do it. And this
Speaker 1: was obviously time was a little more favorable to hunt
Speaker 1: lions in California. It was what it was a little
Speaker 1: more favorable back then the bounty had the bounty had
Speaker 1: been taken off, that was in and I wasn't against
Speaker 1: them taking that bounty off. I didn't think they needed
Speaker 1: to do anything like that. Um And the lion population,
Speaker 1: according to bounties, numbers of bounties annually had dropped significantly. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, because just like there were years that they
Speaker 1: bounty four hundred lions in a year and now they
Speaker 1: were down to like a hundred lions a year. That's
Speaker 1: for the entire state. So they really didn't need to
Speaker 1: be paying people to do this. There's guys are gonna
Speaker 1: do it. Anyways, he's doing it for fun. So anyways,
Speaker 1: these guys came up, guy named Dewey Lindsay and with
Speaker 1: him was this photographer that worked for the HES, a
Speaker 1: freelance photographer and he worked for UH basically worked for
Speaker 1: a national geographic And here I am twenty five years
Speaker 1: old with about three three hound dogs and UH I
Speaker 1: got these high powered professionals from Los Angeles come up here.
Speaker 1: I want me to catch a line? They said, I
Speaker 1: only got three days to do it. In Well, the
Speaker 1: pressure was really on because trying to trying to you know,
Speaker 1: there's one thing to catch a lion. Were you just
Speaker 1: out there hunting and you run into him and you
Speaker 1: catch him as a as they become available. But if
Speaker 1: you're gonna do this as as a profession and you've
Speaker 1: got people coming in and you're gonna you're on a
Speaker 1: no catch, no pay, which I was it those days,
Speaker 1: no catch, no no catch, no pay you. If you
Speaker 1: didn't catch, you, you didn't get paid anything. Was that
Speaker 1: common back then or is that just something that you
Speaker 1: wanted to know? I know that was common. That was
Speaker 1: the way it was everywhere. Um all of them through
Speaker 1: the Mountain States. Everybody, no catch, no pay. You had
Speaker 1: to show for these people around and pay for their
Speaker 1: food and sometimes drive a couple hundred miles each way
Speaker 1: to an airport to pick them up and take them back.
Speaker 1: And UH, if you didn't catch them a line, you
Speaker 1: didn't get paid anything. So that the pressure was on,
Speaker 1: you know, and UH made for some good outfitters, didn't it.
Speaker 1: It separated them, It truly did. And I caught him
Speaker 1: a lion on the on the third day. And you're
Speaker 1: just dry ground line hunting, so you're just roaming around
Speaker 1: freecasting the dogs on your horse at that time. I
Speaker 1: didn't know I wasn't using horse. What what I'd have
Speaker 1: to do is I just had to go places where
Speaker 1: I knew that lions would frequent and and that's you know,
Speaker 1: they're they're kind of a a strange animal in that,
Speaker 1: um do you find lines that would certain use certain
Speaker 1: areas and airs I close by, they wouldn't even go
Speaker 1: and bother over there. And so I would go to
Speaker 1: these places where I knew that it either caught lines
Speaker 1: already or I had seen lions. I was really looking
Speaker 1: for some place where I could find a lion track,
Speaker 1: knowing that I hadn't already caught the thing and h
Speaker 1: So anyways, we ended up catching the line and they
Speaker 1: they ran this story in the what's we called West
Speaker 1: magazine to the Los Angeles Time, it's a weekend magazine.
Speaker 1: Through that ad, it it generated quite a bit of
Speaker 1: business for me. And uh, next thing I knew I
Speaker 1: was I was sober, so dull, gone poor, hurting for
Speaker 1: money so bad that i'd coast home I'd find when
Speaker 1: I'd be driving home, I turned the motor off so
Speaker 1: I didn't burn the gas tree going downhill of it.
Speaker 1: And the next thing I knew that I could leave
Speaker 1: the motor running and you were catching some eight lines,
Speaker 1: You could leave the motor running when you go down
Speaker 1: the hill. Yeah, yeah, I was really getting rich. You know.
Speaker 1: I'd like to say this too, that that was during
Speaker 1: the years that I did all this. Um, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: trade the memories of that for anything at all. I mean,
Speaker 1: it was just something that was just really important to me,
Speaker 1: and I I cherished those memories. But I'll tell you what,
Speaker 1: I was so poor it took every penny that I
Speaker 1: made to feed those dogs buy new ones if I
Speaker 1: needed to buy a dog, um pay for gas. Trucks
Speaker 1: didn't last very long in those days. Uh, seventy thousand
Speaker 1: miles on a truck that I was driving news By one,
Speaker 1: brand new and seventy thousand miles later it was pretty
Speaker 1: rough shape. So so anyways, from from there, UM, I
Speaker 1: stayed in California, UM doing the line in the bearing
Speaker 1: and I took the I started hunting bears in northern California.
Speaker 1: I'd run into a guy and his two boys one
Speaker 1: day on a dead end road down here, this is
Speaker 1: in Current County. I just called a lion and as
Speaker 1: a young guy with me. His name is Roy Stevenson.
Speaker 1: He's still a good friend, and he retired out of
Speaker 1: Current County Fire Department, and uh he was with me.
Speaker 1: He was it's on his sixteenth birthday. He told me.
Speaker 1: He says he wanted to go go hunting and see
Speaker 1: if maybe we catch a line together. And it was
Speaker 1: it was December, I think, and we caught this line,
Speaker 1: but we got a flat tire in the process of
Speaker 1: trying to stay with the dogs, and uh, we were
Speaker 1: just about ready to leave and we're right at the
Speaker 1: end of the dead end road. Anyways, at the end
Speaker 1: of the road couldn't be five feet away from us.
Speaker 1: And I looked down the road and there's these two
Speaker 1: boys standing there with four hound dogs and asked Roy Stevenson.
Speaker 1: I said, do you know I know those kids? He says,
Speaker 1: I've never seen him in my life, and uh there
Speaker 1: was a friendship that is still going on today. The
Speaker 1: two boys is Bobby Bridges and Gary Bridges. They lived
Speaker 1: in by Reading and their father Jim Bridges, who has
Speaker 1: now passed on. We hit it off really well, and
Speaker 1: uh so the next thing I knew, I was up
Speaker 1: there taking bare hunts and shot to county and Jim
Speaker 1: Bridges was giving me a hand at it. And I
Speaker 1: ended up buying three of those dogs that we're standing
Speaker 1: at the end of the road that day from Jim,
Speaker 1: and all of them wonderful dogs, outstanding dogs. Um to
Speaker 1: say the least I say, to say they were good
Speaker 1: dogs wasn't really much of a compliment. Um, they were
Speaker 1: exceptionally good dogs. And so like I said, Jim, of
Speaker 1: course he's he passed on. Unfortunately they were. They were
Speaker 1: all timber followers. Jim was one of the actually one
Speaker 1: of the finest men that I think I've ever known
Speaker 1: in my life. You could believe anything he said, and
Speaker 1: you can't find any of him that you can do
Speaker 1: that with. And if he said a dog was was
Speaker 1: a good dog, it was a good dog, and it
Speaker 1: was a good dog by his standards, and his standards
Speaker 1: were quite a bit above when a lot of guys
Speaker 1: standards for good dogs were um. But it was just
Speaker 1: a wonderful friendship that developed. And the and the bears
Speaker 1: um at that time in these Green Arm Mountains, which
Speaker 1: is where we're at, the bear poplace was was very
Speaker 1: poor and necessary. They had had a from what I understand,
Speaker 1: they had had a drought, a severe drought in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen fifties, and they said that the bears went
Speaker 1: clear to the San Joaquin Valley in those years. And
Speaker 1: in those years they were using the poison called ten
Speaker 1: eight to kill ground squirrels and everything else. And ten
Speaker 1: eight is a kind of a poison that if a
Speaker 1: ground squirrel eats it, and something comes along and eats
Speaker 1: the ground squirrel, it's gonna kill that thing too. And
Speaker 1: I kind of think that between the drought and the
Speaker 1: widespread poisoning ground squirrels in these mountains, that had just
Speaker 1: about wiped the bear population out for a long, long
Speaker 1: ways away, and it wasn't until about nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: which would be about ten years after that drought that
Speaker 1: we started finding that was super good. How long did
Speaker 1: you just to give an overview, so you started you
Speaker 1: started guiding in what year and ended in what year? Okay?
Speaker 1: I started guiding in nineteen sixty six, late nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: I quit guiding. I didn't quit hunting. I quit guiding. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and um I was in Montana when I quit. So
Speaker 1: you guided for about fifteen years or so close to it? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: close to it. I know in your book you talk
Speaker 1: about you talk about and this is one thing that
Speaker 1: intrigued me, was you hunted on horseback a lot um
Speaker 1: was that one of your favorite ways to hunt ed
Speaker 1: was hunting on horseback with the dogs free range and out.
Speaker 1: I did enjoy that. It was, you know, the easiest
Speaker 1: way to hunt dogs, just to turn the dogs loose
Speaker 1: and let them run down the road in front of
Speaker 1: a pickout and the fallen in a truck, which is
Speaker 1: very common then in common today, but in iron hunting.
Speaker 1: Sometimes with what I was doing, see how I couldn't
Speaker 1: catch lines? That just my leisure it didn't make any difference.
Speaker 1: If I was out there and called a line, I
Speaker 1: didn't have any anyone with me. I didn't do me
Speaker 1: any good. I didn't get paid anything. And I was
Speaker 1: full time doing this, so I needed a paying customer
Speaker 1: to be with me, and a paying customer had to
Speaker 1: be there when I caught it. I mean I could
Speaker 1: catch I could catch the line the day after the
Speaker 1: guy left, and it didn't do me any good because
Speaker 1: he left and he took his money with him when
Speaker 1: he was when he left, you know. So during those
Speaker 1: years I had to go wherever the lions were at
Speaker 1: and and it's like most of the hunts were like
Speaker 1: one week hunts, and during that week period of time,
Speaker 1: I had to come up with the lion. And if
Speaker 1: I didn't come with the lion, I just got to
Speaker 1: I just got to pay the bill all by myself,
Speaker 1: you know. And did happen very often? Did you catch?
Speaker 1: Most most people live? You know, I was running. I
Speaker 1: thought a pretty high percentage and I'm talking, I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I've I hear guys give their their percentages, and sometimes
Speaker 1: you you have to question whether there's any truth to
Speaker 1: that um because of weather conditions and things that can
Speaker 1: happen to you while you're hunting. But on the both
Speaker 1: the line, the both line and bearns, I was hitting
Speaker 1: pretty close to hum, which meant you if you had
Speaker 1: if you had a guy on a line and you're
Speaker 1: gonna he's gonna give you five days or like in
Speaker 1: this case with the newspaper, they gave three. Um, you
Speaker 1: didn't get much time to do that. So you better
Speaker 1: know where there's one at. And so to do that,
Speaker 1: I had to stay active, actively looking, even if I
Speaker 1: had nobody with me. Well, here comes the whole snout. Okay,
Speaker 1: I drive Rhodes, I look for tracks alongside the rose
Speaker 1: walks and trails, but you can only walk so far. Um.
Speaker 1: Then there's other areas that you know that are pretty
Speaker 1: decent for having lions in them. Um. But it didn't
Speaker 1: do you any good to go way back in the
Speaker 1: back country. If you're gonna take what we used to
Speaker 1: call them dudes, take them in there to go catch
Speaker 1: a lion, because you had to get them in there too,
Speaker 1: you know. So so I would take and I'd use
Speaker 1: the horse to scout to constantly look see if I
Speaker 1: could find a line, if I caught him, and make
Speaker 1: sure I let him go, um, but try and keep
Speaker 1: tract of it so that you could hopefully find it again,
Speaker 1: which wasn't all that often. I seemed like I guessed
Speaker 1: lines let them go, and I never even see their
Speaker 1: tracks again. They're just gone. You know, I don't know
Speaker 1: what so you weren't. I guess that's obvious. You couldn't
Speaker 1: use the horse when you had clients with you, So
Speaker 1: you were using that horse to be mobile to find
Speaker 1: lions for when people came in. Basically, yes, but I
Speaker 1: did use them on occasion. Um if as an example, Um,
Speaker 1: there's a place that I used the horse every time
Speaker 1: I went there, and that was up out of a
Speaker 1: place called Johnson Dale. There's a trail they're called a
Speaker 1: rent con trail. It was very good for having lions
Speaker 1: in it, but the Forest Service would lock the road
Speaker 1: getting to it, which meant that you had a two
Speaker 1: and a half miles behind a locked gate before you
Speaker 1: could get to the rent Cotton trail. And it was
Speaker 1: all up hill get into it, you know, So so
Speaker 1: you had to use horses to do that, and I did.
Speaker 1: I did use horses to take guys in there, and
Speaker 1: it was almost always you could find you could find
Speaker 1: something going on in there, lines hanging out in some
Speaker 1: place in that you know. Um, but anyways, um, how
Speaker 1: many did I catch is compared to driving roads? I
Speaker 1: caught more driving roads mm hmm, just because you can
Speaker 1: travel fast, just it's an efficient way to hunt. It is,
Speaker 1: you can travel much fatter. You're looking for an actual track,
Speaker 1: dirt track in the road. That's right, Dusty Rhodes. You
Speaker 1: try and find these roads of where the roads are
Speaker 1: just powder on them, you know, And did you get where?
Speaker 1: You were really good at seeing a track? I mean,
Speaker 1: I know what I'm hunted with these guys out in
Speaker 1: Tennessee that that are there looking for tracks crossing gravel
Speaker 1: roads and places where bears skid down banks, you know,
Speaker 1: and leaves, and they can see things a lot of
Speaker 1: people wouldn't see. They're they're really trained to see like that. Yes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like I used to tell people, I said, you know,
Speaker 1: I could walk right through her toor deer not even
Speaker 1: see any of them because I can't I see their track,
Speaker 1: but I can't look up because I'm just look came
Speaker 1: down so much that I just automatically look at the ground.
Speaker 1: You see what's in the still find yourself doing that
Speaker 1: today when you're out. I do the ground right here
Speaker 1: on our property. But do I'm just looking at the
Speaker 1: ground and see what the what kind of tracks? Any
Speaker 1: tricks for finding line tracks with your eyes? I mean
Speaker 1: anything you look for? Did they cross? And I'm sure
Speaker 1: they crossed in certain places? Or is it just totally
Speaker 1: arbitrary where they cross? You know what? Lions? Um? They
Speaker 1: they seemed him use trails. They're obvious to you. You
Speaker 1: get to the point to where you could you could
Speaker 1: you find a lion track? You're walking up a canyon,
Speaker 1: you find a lion track, and just going a certain direction,
Speaker 1: you look off in the in the distance. You can
Speaker 1: just about say if this line has gone that far
Speaker 1: whatever that is a mild or whatever it is. The
Speaker 1: chances are he went right through there, and and you
Speaker 1: almost you can predict where he was. Yes, you almost
Speaker 1: always right, just just by trailing so many of them?
Speaker 1: You know? And would you? So you you outfitted for
Speaker 1: lying and bear? What was your favorite? What was your
Speaker 1: favorite to chase with your hounds? I love chasing bears.
Speaker 1: Did you more than lyons? Oh that's hard to say. Um,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you what I liked about about the lion hunt.
Speaker 1: I really did enjoy catching a lion. Where the dogs
Speaker 1: would start with a track. There was almost nothing where
Speaker 1: they doubt they and you had to have dogs had
Speaker 1: good cold noses to where they've done. You find a
Speaker 1: lion track in the dirt, and you point at it,
Speaker 1: and they stick the nose down there. They couldn't smell it,
Speaker 1: but they they knew you were pointing something out and
Speaker 1: they started looking and they find a twig that had
Speaker 1: touched that animals side, and they could smell it on
Speaker 1: that twig, and they'd bark. And you look at the
Speaker 1: ground where they're at and there's that lion's track. Mhm.
Speaker 1: And you start from that and maybe ten miles later
Speaker 1: you're looking at the lion. That to me made it
Speaker 1: all worthwhile. That was that was hunting dogs. That's not
Speaker 1: that wasn't hunting lions. That was taking dogs and seeing
Speaker 1: them at their very finest. And I just loved that. Um.
Speaker 1: I know there's lots of lines that I'd caught people
Speaker 1: that I had taken in the past. After writing this book,
Speaker 1: they had asked me about it, and I forgot all
Speaker 1: about it because they were they were what we call
Speaker 1: it pop up. You know, you you you cut the
Speaker 1: track and it was fresh. The lion wasn't very far
Speaker 1: away with you, so that was the easy one. Those
Speaker 1: are these pop upportunity to forget about them, but those
Speaker 1: ones that where you get out out to those things.
Speaker 1: Then you go all day long just working, sometimes in
Speaker 1: the summertime where the dogs just just taking both of you.
Speaker 1: You gotta find the track to help the dog, and
Speaker 1: the dog to take the track a little ways where
Speaker 1: you couldn't find it, and next thing you know, they
Speaker 1: turned that thing into a movable track, and like save
Speaker 1: later you're looking at it. One thing that you did,
Speaker 1: and this I noticed inside the book, was you did
Speaker 1: some incredible athletic feats. In my mind following these dogs.
Speaker 1: I mean we we talked earlier at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the podcast about a hunt where you probably went twenty
Speaker 1: five miles by foot in a single day in these mountains.
Speaker 1: I mean, were you a exceptional I mean what what?
Speaker 1: Were you? A really great athlete? And no, as a
Speaker 1: matter of fact, is as an infant, I had to
Speaker 1: Birkendulsis and they've figured that I would um never be
Speaker 1: able to do anything athleticalized. But then I'd Also, it
Speaker 1: learned that your lungs can repair, and apparently mine did.
Speaker 1: And you know I would go places that following a
Speaker 1: hound dog. I wouldn't even think of going there. But
Speaker 1: it was because the dogs and I were doing this together.
Speaker 1: This wasn't a situation where let me put it like this,
Speaker 1: but the numbers of lines that I caught, I let
Speaker 1: a lot, let a lot of them go, Just let
Speaker 1: them go. Same with bears. I'll let hundreds of bears go.
Speaker 1: I mean hundreds. I don't mean one hundred. I don't
Speaker 1: mean to hundred. I mean maybe like three hundred treed bears.
Speaker 1: Just let them go. One day, we caught five bears
Speaker 1: one day in Montana, which is against a lot of
Speaker 1: chase a bear in Montana, but we did it anyways,
Speaker 1: and we caught five bears, separate bears, not traveling together,
Speaker 1: no cubs, let every single one of them go. Um,
Speaker 1: it was all about dog hunting. But in order for
Speaker 1: me to do this with these dogs, I had to
Speaker 1: take people along that would pay me to do it,
Speaker 1: and to do that, they had to shoot it. So
Speaker 1: so we did that. But anyways, I've lost my train
Speaker 1: of thought. What was your question? And just being an
Speaker 1: athletic feat to do what you did, and you had
Speaker 1: tuberculosis as a kid. I did. Now there's a lot
Speaker 1: of times, you know, I keep telling myself, no pain,
Speaker 1: no gain, you know, and um, but if I if
Speaker 1: I could hear those dogs, I'm going to him. And
Speaker 1: there was one time in my entire career that my
Speaker 1: dogs treat a bear and I didn't go to him.
Speaker 1: I started to go to him, but had two guys
Speaker 1: with me. This is up in Shasta County, and they
Speaker 1: treat a bear in his place called hell Soul. That's
Speaker 1: with the name of that canyon m And that canyon
Speaker 1: is so steep that you had to hang on to
Speaker 1: stuff as you're going downhill, otherwise you're gonna just start sliding.
Speaker 1: And you go all the way to the bottom mm hmm.
Speaker 1: And from where the where we started the bear they
Speaker 1: dropped off into canyon is about feet in elevation to
Speaker 1: the bottom of straight down and treated about a thousand
Speaker 1: feet up the other side. And we started going down
Speaker 1: to these dogs, and I had two guys with me,
Speaker 1: and one of them was really heavy set, and I
Speaker 1: knew that he was never going to get there. And
Speaker 1: I really wasn't too happy about going there anyways myself.
Speaker 1: But the dogs were just blowing the top out of
Speaker 1: this tree and across the canyon from where we were
Speaker 1: standing to where those dogs are actually tree, and we
Speaker 1: could not have been a thousand feet through the air
Speaker 1: apart from each other. But at the same time, we
Speaker 1: were about a thousand feet in the elevation down and
Speaker 1: another thousand feet in elevation back up. And uh so
Speaker 1: I asked these guys, I said, done, what's gonna happen
Speaker 1: If we get to the bottom, You're gonna be able
Speaker 1: to get back to the up to this tough because
Speaker 1: if you can't, there's no sense going down there. And
Speaker 1: they told me, they says, we'll never make it. So
Speaker 1: I started yelling and if iired more rifle a couple
Speaker 1: of times, and it's really surprised me. I remember how
Speaker 1: many dogs I had, and it probably I usually I
Speaker 1: usually had about four. I like to during the embars season,
Speaker 1: I like to have no less than three, and usually
Speaker 1: about four. I'd rotate the dog. You could catch dogs.
Speaker 1: You can catch bears with three, four or five hounds. Yes, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you a little about my philosophy on that,
Speaker 1: and which was the same as a few other guys. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyways, the dogs came to me, and I was
Speaker 1: totally shocked that they. Quentin came cost that cannon. But
Speaker 1: as we got out of there, you know, and it
Speaker 1: comes to numbers of dogs, Will's bet off. He's alliant.
Speaker 1: He was a guy she's winning gout. He was a
Speaker 1: government hunter, but he also guided people as well, and
Speaker 1: he he trapped for coyotes. He uses dogs for lions
Speaker 1: and bears. Stopped killing lions and bears. And he told
Speaker 1: me early on, he said, if you have three or
Speaker 1: four dogs that can't catch a bear, you don't need more,
Speaker 1: you need new ones. Yeah. I found that to be true.
Speaker 1: If you got four dogs and they can't catch bears,
Speaker 1: you better start looking for new dogs or help for
Speaker 1: some of them. You might have a you know, now,
Speaker 1: when I say three or four dogs, yeah, three or four.
Speaker 1: If you've got three or four dogs and they can't,
Speaker 1: you need new ones. I'm talking about three or four
Speaker 1: dogs where all three or four of them are bear dogs.
Speaker 1: Where you've got one dog. There's a lot of guys
Speaker 1: got that. They have one dog that's good, and then
Speaker 1: then the rest of them is just a bunch of
Speaker 1: dogs are just following, you know, and they catch the
Speaker 1: easy ones. But whenever they get up to a bad one,
Speaker 1: pretty soon they get started strung out. And you hear
Speaker 1: one dog he falling behind, another one's falling behind. And
Speaker 1: then after a little while you hear this one dog
Speaker 1: all by himself, and he was, yes, he is, he's
Speaker 1: the guy doing all the work. Well, that's where you
Speaker 1: need to keep him. And started looking for replacements for
Speaker 1: the other ones. But you don't good bear dogs. You
Speaker 1: can do the job, you know. Um, And but they
Speaker 1: don't all make good bear dogs, you know. When you're
Speaker 1: talking about these guys like you said in Tennessee on
Speaker 1: these gravel roads. Um, there's a there's a method that
Speaker 1: is very popular today. Saylor was the very first dog
Speaker 1: that I had that would do this, and that's strike
Speaker 1: a bear out of the back of a truck. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And and and Saylor would when he started doing that.
Speaker 1: The hound hunters in this part of the world, they
Speaker 1: didn't believe it. They they didn't believe that dog could
Speaker 1: do that. And um, but he did. And and then
Speaker 1: Bo was doing it as well. Um, but they strike
Speaker 1: a bear track that the bear hadn't even crossed the road,
Speaker 1: but the track would be maybe five ft away from
Speaker 1: the road, you know. But they and and they strike
Speaker 1: the thing and then you let him go and they
Speaker 1: didn't up catching the bear. Yeah. But prior to those years, um,
Speaker 1: there was a guy up in Washington State by the
Speaker 1: name of D. Moss. I think his first name was d.
Speaker 1: He had plots, all plots, and he worked for Zirah
Speaker 1: called Simpson Timber Company, which Simpson at the in those years,
Speaker 1: they had professional bear hunters killing bears on Simpson ground.
Speaker 1: What they were doing and what the bears would do,
Speaker 1: they would do the Douglas fir trees, they would they
Speaker 1: would strip the bark off of him to go for
Speaker 1: the Cambian layer of the all the trees. So Simpson
Speaker 1: Simpson Timber Company, their solution was kill all the bears.
Speaker 1: And D. D. Moss was one of those guys. And
Speaker 1: and I had heard that he had dogs. They would
Speaker 1: strike a bear off the box, you know, they put
Speaker 1: them on the box, you know, and drive the roads
Speaker 1: and they start them like that. And believe me, that's
Speaker 1: a whole lot simpler than that's taking. That was new
Speaker 1: technology back in the day. Yeah, Now that's that's like,
Speaker 1: that's the way most a lot of these guys hunt.
Speaker 1: I even I've even been told that you guys got
Speaker 1: dogs will strike lines that way. They'll strike line tracks
Speaker 1: off the truck. You know. Dogs they learn how to
Speaker 1: do it, and they're good smart dogs, you know, and
Speaker 1: and they'll they'll pick up on that. They started learning
Speaker 1: on their own how to do it, you know. But
Speaker 1: in the back, in the back then, you know, in
Speaker 1: the earlier years, prior to the sixties, I'd say, prior
Speaker 1: to the seventies. Actually, um, nobody's had dogs and do
Speaker 1: that stuff. Um, except for just a few. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: like I said, I had a couple of guys probably
Speaker 1: weren't giving him much of a chance to do it either,
Speaker 1: were they. They probably weren't giving him much of a
Speaker 1: chance to do it. I mean, you know, it's like
Speaker 1: if you if somebody knows that a dog has that capability,
Speaker 1: he's probably given it opportunity and paying attention to it
Speaker 1: when it's on the box. And if you never did
Speaker 1: it before, you just think the dog's barking maybe or right,
Speaker 1: you know, you just you just didn't know. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 1: I I caught a line one time, just not too
Speaker 1: far from the alice where we're at right now that
Speaker 1: um I mentioned it in this book and all right,
Speaker 1: um it's on Santa Creek fire Road. And I found
Speaker 1: that lions track a couple of days before on the
Speaker 1: far south end of it was about I think that
Speaker 1: rose like miles long, and uh, but it's an old track.
Speaker 1: And I just worked at myself with trying to dogs
Speaker 1: couldn't smell it, and um, I got about ten miles
Speaker 1: of it, and then I so you followed the actual
Speaker 1: tracks of the lion with your and I pointed out
Speaker 1: to the dogs if they could smell it, they bark,
Speaker 1: they try and find it, you know, but you know
Speaker 1: you're taking like some of these dogs. All right, this
Speaker 1: is I'm being very honest and serious about this. You
Speaker 1: find a lion track in a dirt road, and the
Speaker 1: track is was made when the road was wet in
Speaker 1: the mud, and it's not wet now it's dry and
Speaker 1: it's hard, and you've got dogs. You can stick the
Speaker 1: nose down in that thing and smell that lion's track.
Speaker 1: They're smelling and responding to attract. It is probably four
Speaker 1: days old, maybe a little older than that. Now they
Speaker 1: can't trail it much at all. They smell it, they
Speaker 1: can't traill it, but at least they're identifying it that
Speaker 1: I know that he was here, and you're looking there
Speaker 1: and and you see them with they're barking and they're
Speaker 1: sticking their nose down in the dirt track that was
Speaker 1: mud that it is now hard solid. So I would
Speaker 1: take and and try and work the dogs and and
Speaker 1: see if we can get something out of it. You know. Well, anyways,
Speaker 1: I got to the point that I figured it. I
Speaker 1: got up here to this um telephone ridge, and uh,
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, I think I'm pretty caught caught
Speaker 1: up to that line pretty closed, which that's about eight
Speaker 1: miles I guess from where I first found it. And
Speaker 1: uh so I got this friend of mine, Joe Bryan,
Speaker 1: who um he's another fireman that good friend still friends
Speaker 1: and and uh I mentioned Joe in the book. Joe
Speaker 1: hund'd an awful. I didn't have dogs, a terrific hand,
Speaker 1: a very good hand anything, horses dogs, it didn't matter.
Speaker 1: He just tell him to do it, and he would
Speaker 1: do it, and he would. He's very helpful. And uh
Speaker 1: I called him over and I said, I think I
Speaker 1: found this line and he's a on telephone ridge and
Speaker 1: I said, if you want to go with me, Uh,
Speaker 1: I'd like to have you go along. I'm want to
Speaker 1: come around from the north side and and drive in
Speaker 1: to the south and and start looking. And that lion
Speaker 1: apparently met us ine the road because you're driving down
Speaker 1: the road and the dog just exploded in the back
Speaker 1: of the truck. And uh, this was before I had
Speaker 1: dogs who were striking bears and stuff out the back
Speaker 1: of the truck. But they just exploded, and uh, the
Speaker 1: road was hard. He couldn't see tracks of anything. And
Speaker 1: I said, well, whatever it was, it's fresh. And I
Speaker 1: know that these dogs in the back, I know what
Speaker 1: they what they look for when they what they chase,
Speaker 1: and if whatever it is, it will climb a tree.
Speaker 1: So let's find out. And we dumped the dogs out
Speaker 1: and it wasn't any time at all, and they had
Speaker 1: that line up a tree. You know, so you had
Speaker 1: you had trailed him with your eyes for eight miles
Speaker 1: you had, yes, you knew which direction it was going.
Speaker 1: You came in from the other way and just caught
Speaker 1: him red hot. I'd find his track, Yes, I'd find
Speaker 1: his track where it stepped into the road, and then
Speaker 1: he then you'd lose the track. He had no idea
Speaker 1: where it was at, and all you knew is that
Speaker 1: he either went below the road or above the road.
Speaker 1: So that from that point i'd take a dog. One dog,
Speaker 1: just one dog gets gonna be out there with me.
Speaker 1: And and and at that time it was either said
Speaker 1: or a bow, and both of them is extremely good
Speaker 1: at coal trailing. And just walk the road. Don't get
Speaker 1: him excited or anything. You don't want him casting out
Speaker 1: going long ways from you. But start walking the road
Speaker 1: and just looking, and you see the dog over there
Speaker 1: and smelling of a twig, and his dale starts wagging
Speaker 1: and he's checking it out more, and pretty soon he's
Speaker 1: running his nose out about a foot or a little
Speaker 1: more on a twig, smelling to see what he's He's
Speaker 1: not too sure what he's smelling. Pretty soon they throw
Speaker 1: their head in the air and they let out a ball,
Speaker 1: and you know you're you're going the right direction anyways,
Speaker 1: you know. So from that point you just keep going.
Speaker 1: And like I said, I was able to do that.
Speaker 1: This line was I was lucky. The lion was at
Speaker 1: five thousand foot elevation. That roads at five thousand foot
Speaker 1: all the way, and it was just traveling heading north
Speaker 1: at that same elevation and that road just happened to
Speaker 1: be there, and so anyways we ended up catching the thing.
Speaker 1: Is there any part of the book that you'd like
Speaker 1: to tell people about? I mean, is there is there
Speaker 1: was your favorite part of the book for you? That
Speaker 1: just a story? As we kind of start to wind
Speaker 1: down here a little bit, well, all the stories that
Speaker 1: I put in there having to be kind of favorites,
Speaker 1: you know, and I guess the thing for him to
Speaker 1: do is get a coffee of the book and read
Speaker 1: the thing you know that will tell But you know,
Speaker 1: there there is something that I'd like to say that, Um,
Speaker 1: I haven't hundred hounds since well, I hundred with Jim
Speaker 1: Bridges one um one time up in Susanville that we
Speaker 1: called a baron let it go, of course, and but
Speaker 1: I didn't. I haven't had hounds since the late nighties.
Speaker 1: And um, I kind of burned myself out between myself
Speaker 1: and my dealings with politics, and politics went all the
Speaker 1: way down into fishing game departments, very political and in
Speaker 1: some cases you find yourself on the outside of the
Speaker 1: good old boys club and which is something that unless
Speaker 1: you're in it, you don't like it. And I want
Speaker 1: to know part of being in it. Um. I got
Speaker 1: involved in the Montana fishing game of tagging mountain lions,
Speaker 1: and myself and a fishing game bologist up there named
Speaker 1: Jerry Brown, we got together and Jerry made the proposal
Speaker 1: to the Fishing Game department to start um tagging lions
Speaker 1: for research. And I was all for that, and I
Speaker 1: quit guiding to do that, and I learned a bad
Speaker 1: side of politics. Mm hmm, some bad stuff goes on there. Um.
Speaker 1: You know when you've got to Jerry Brown is a
Speaker 1: silo is he's a good guy here, really a good guy.
Speaker 1: But when you've got a biologists in charge of the
Speaker 1: the special of what they call specialty animals the state
Speaker 1: of Montana, which were grizzlies, moves, big orange sheep and
Speaker 1: eventually the mountain line, I guess they've got in there
Speaker 1: when uh, you're conducting a study for them and you
Speaker 1: asked them what are you doing with this information? And
Speaker 1: they tell you nothing? And then they asked you, why
Speaker 1: is it that you're not tagging more lions? And you
Speaker 1: tell them, well, we're using tranquial lives which in the
Speaker 1: beginning days I didn't. I caught a number of lines
Speaker 1: without tranquilizers, but that was clear back in the sixties
Speaker 1: in California. When they tell you go ahead and start
Speaker 1: the thing anyway, I said, well, the line is up
Speaker 1: in this country. The most of them retreat pretty high,
Speaker 1: and uh I don't want to door the line to
Speaker 1: watch him fall sixt to his death. They say, you
Speaker 1: go ahead and do it anyways, and I asked the question.
Speaker 1: I said, what do we do? What we tagged that one?
Speaker 1: And they say, well, what this is really all about
Speaker 1: is too full the general public into believing that them
Speaker 1: is a ficient game department. Are doing a lot of
Speaker 1: things for the good of the animals. Put down deep inside,
Speaker 1: all they're doing is trying to fool the general public.
Speaker 1: M I heard that out of this state of California,
Speaker 1: and I heard that in the state of Montana, and
Speaker 1: I quit him when they when I was told that,
Speaker 1: I said, I'm done, yeah, and uh so I gave
Speaker 1: it up. But Jerry brown Um and I started that
Speaker 1: Mountain lion tagging program in that state. It was like
Speaker 1: five I think, is what it was. Does this day
Speaker 1: you can't even find that study. I've I've looked on
Speaker 1: the internet to find out if there's anything any record
Speaker 1: of that particular study of lions, and I find nothing mhm.
Speaker 1: But what I can find is where they took my
Speaker 1: information and published it along with the map showing every
Speaker 1: place that I was catching lions and releasing lions. And
Speaker 1: when they did that the following year, it was standing
Speaker 1: room only in the area that I was hunting. They
Speaker 1: came as far away as Florida, dount lions in an
Speaker 1: area that I was i to do a study in.
Speaker 1: So this is what I gotta say about to the
Speaker 1: guys with the hound dogs. Be careful who you vote for. Yeah,
Speaker 1: be careful what you say. Your videos are beautiful, don't
Speaker 1: put them on the internet. They're using them against you.
Speaker 1: What happened in California also happened in Oregon. Then it
Speaker 1: happened in Washington State, also the Panhandle of Idoh. You
Speaker 1: can't chase bears with with hound dogs in the Panhandle
Speaker 1: of Ido either. The day's coming. If you're not careful,
Speaker 1: they're gonna take your hunting privileges away from you, your
Speaker 1: hound dogs, just just like here, Just like they did here.
Speaker 1: All you'll have his pets. That's all you'll have. And
Speaker 1: uh so what do we need to do? First off,
Speaker 1: careful who you vote for. Make sure you know who
Speaker 1: you're voting for. Yeah, Like I say, the these videos,
Speaker 1: I can certainly understand. You know, back when I was
Speaker 1: doing this, we didn't have videos. If you had anything
Speaker 1: of moving, you had to have a movie camera and
Speaker 1: and you weren't taking that hunting and what you weren't
Speaker 1: going to take that hunting. No, you had to have
Speaker 1: a movie camera with you and and and in order
Speaker 1: to do that, you also had to have the knowledge
Speaker 1: of how to use that thing, otherwise you got nothing
Speaker 1: out of him. You know, today we've got uh handheld
Speaker 1: telephones that give you just beautiful videos. Yes, go ahead
Speaker 1: and get your videos. Just keep it to yourself. You
Speaker 1: put that thing on the internet. These protectionists are seeing
Speaker 1: that and they're going to use that against you, just
Speaker 1: like they did here. Yeah. Um, I feel sorry for
Speaker 1: the guys that I love this sport so much, and
Speaker 1: yet at the same time they've got shackles on them.
Speaker 1: They got a short lease put on these guys for
Speaker 1: those hound dogs. And it's a wonderful sport, it truly is.
Speaker 1: I just like say, I I cherished my memories, but
Speaker 1: I got spoiled. I was spoiled, I truly was. I
Speaker 1: got to see the best of it. You know, when
Speaker 1: I started, Mountain Lion was a bountied animal. Podcasts were
Speaker 1: non protected. Some places the bears are non protected. You
Speaker 1: could just catch as many as you want, do whatever
Speaker 1: you want or with them. And today you're lucky if
Speaker 1: you don't. Some places you've got to get in a
Speaker 1: drawing just to be able to to go hunt them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, well we it really is a it's a
Speaker 1: wildlife management tragedy. It's a cultural tragedy really that they've
Speaker 1: what they've done in California with hounds. And I think
Speaker 1: it's important that we're here and that we're talking about this,
Speaker 1: and that you've written a book about all these things
Speaker 1: that people can no longer do. And I think I
Speaker 1: think people are so well. Human nature is shortsighted. Human
Speaker 1: nature thinks about today and tomorrow and not further ahead oftentimes,
Speaker 1: and and and currently, I think there's somewhere around seventeen
Speaker 1: states where you can run big game with hounds in
Speaker 1: the United States. I believe I believe there's seventeen somewhere
Speaker 1: in that range. And whether these guys know it or not,
Speaker 1: their rights are currently being plotted against as we speak.
Speaker 1: And and so even in places where it's not as threatened,
Speaker 1: it is absolutely written by the current culture of this
Speaker 1: of the world of the in specifically this country. And
Speaker 1: you know what I say to people, ed, is that
Speaker 1: we have to get a whole lot smarter. We wrote
Speaker 1: an article in Barony magazine the other day about not
Speaker 1: posting bay up videos of hounds and social media and
Speaker 1: all this. I'm in a percent agree with you. The
Speaker 1: one thing that I know that I can do as
Speaker 1: a houndsman is clean up my own act. If I
Speaker 1: could say it that way, I mean some of the
Speaker 1: bad apples inside the hound hunting community that have given
Speaker 1: people a bad name by being poachers or by being
Speaker 1: this or that. And there's there's gonna be there's gonna
Speaker 1: be bad characters in any sport, any sport. There's bad
Speaker 1: characters in tennis. Uh. But but I think about if
Speaker 1: we're being if we're being scrutinized, then Clay Nukeom better
Speaker 1: be on his best behavior all the time. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're being scrutinizing on the way we care for our dogs,
Speaker 1: were being scrutinized on, you know, everything, So it's like, man,
Speaker 1: I want to make sure that I'm doing everything right.
Speaker 1: And then part of what we're trying to do at
Speaker 1: Barony Magazine is that if I believe that, if if
Speaker 1: we don't create the narrative and tell our narrative, then
Speaker 1: the bad guys are going to tell the narrative for us.
Speaker 1: And that's part of the reason I wanted to come
Speaker 1: talk to you is to is to uh. I mean,
Speaker 1: hound hunting is an incredible sport. It's an incredible heritage
Speaker 1: that we have in this country. I mean, jeez, are
Speaker 1: hunting culture was founded on hounds. I mean George Washington
Speaker 1: had hounds, Teddy Roosevelt loved hound hunting. I mean, we
Speaker 1: have this rich, rich history. And if our generation, my
Speaker 1: generation doesn't do something different and get a whole lot smarter,
Speaker 1: a whole lot wiser, a whole lot more savvy when
Speaker 1: it comes to how we handle social media and Internet
Speaker 1: and all this different stuff, we will lose it. And
Speaker 1: that's what then, and what we're saying is, hey, let's
Speaker 1: let's be smart, let's let's not lose it, and let's
Speaker 1: tell our narrative, scientific base. This is conservation base. Bears
Speaker 1: are thriving in North America. Mountain lions where there's good
Speaker 1: habitat are thriving. Hounds are management tool that that we
Speaker 1: used to manage these animals. And it's a beautiful and
Speaker 1: amazing thing, really is, you know, I want to I
Speaker 1: want to add something here that what we're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we've had outlaw hunters is what we kind of dubbed him,
Speaker 1: you know, and I'd have to say that it's not
Speaker 1: all their fault. Um. In the twenty five plus years
Speaker 1: that I did this, I did this. This wasn't a
Speaker 1: hobby to me. I was in the woods um um
Speaker 1: a dozen years there. I made my living from that.
Speaker 1: If I had two nicolas to rub together, it was
Speaker 1: because somebody gave me that for taking a hunting. And
Speaker 1: if they gave it to me for taking a hunt,
Speaker 1: and it's because they got the animal that they were
Speaker 1: hunting for or they didn't give me the two nickels.
Speaker 1: You know. But over all those years I hunted California, Nevada, Utah,
Speaker 1: Idaho in Montana, and and all that time, which is
Speaker 1: like thousands and thousands of days, I think I only
Speaker 1: saw three three game wardens three different times. Now, the
Speaker 1: woods were left wide open for the outlaw hunter to
Speaker 1: do anything he felt like, and he did. He did
Speaker 1: do anything he felt like. He didn't have anything to
Speaker 1: worry about. Nobody's gonna nobody's gonna catch him. Big predators
Speaker 1: were just not on the Do you think do you
Speaker 1: think it's different now? I had, I mean, because I
Speaker 1: would think that it would be different. I have no
Speaker 1: idea what they're doing. They kind of turned a blind
Speaker 1: eye to it. That's what you're saying. They just didn't care.
Speaker 1: They didn't care. Yeah, but eventually that there's some people
Speaker 1: came along. They did care, and they had money, and
Speaker 1: they had a lot of spare time too, and they
Speaker 1: really don't like doing what we were doing. They didn't
Speaker 1: like that idea. You know, the same people though, the
Speaker 1: anti hunting community. Yes, right, but yet these people also
Speaker 1: have the ability, through through money, to take and by
Speaker 1: legislators to introduce bills to stop a guy with his
Speaker 1: hound dogs. Well, it's been a pleasure to talk with you,
Speaker 1: and and people can people can find this once you
Speaker 1: tell us where people can find your book. Okay, um,
Speaker 1: it's I have a website and it's by the titles
Speaker 1: of the book. You go www. Trained by hound Dog
Speaker 1: dot Com. You can purchase the book there or you
Speaker 1: can go to Amazon, and you can purchase it on
Speaker 1: Amazon as well. It makes no difference where you purchase it.
Speaker 1: Amazon will cost you more money. And I mail every
Speaker 1: one of them, so it doesn't matter. They all come
Speaker 1: out of this house right here, and uh so that's
Speaker 1: the place that she can go and it'll it'll enlighten
Speaker 1: some of you too. Other things we've not talked about,
Speaker 1: and I'd sure like to see um a lot of
Speaker 1: these protection is stopped. I really do. I I have
Speaker 1: no interest in going on any myself, but I never
Speaker 1: forgot how good it is to do it. So they
Speaker 1: can go to Trained by a Hounddog dot Com. And
Speaker 1: this is a two hundred and something page book. How
Speaker 1: many it's about two eight seventy some photos, beautiful photos.
Speaker 1: And I just want to say that I was really
Speaker 1: impressed with this book. Obviously I wouldn't be here if
Speaker 1: I if I was not, but thoroughly enjoyed the writing style,
Speaker 1: the storytelling aspect of it. I felt like it had
Speaker 1: just the right amount of of of of human story
Speaker 1: but also hound dog story and hunting story and excitement,
Speaker 1: but also kind of this you really got a sense
Speaker 1: of of you as a young man, just kind of
Speaker 1: given all that you had to this dream that you
Speaker 1: had to to live the kind of lifestyle that you
Speaker 1: wanted to live with your hounds. And uh, and I
Speaker 1: admired your diligence and just you're starting from zero and
Speaker 1: becoming really a master houndsman over those years. And uh,
Speaker 1: and boy, there's so much I wanted to talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to talk about some of the
Speaker 1: the physical endurance things that you did chasing these dogs
Speaker 1: and staying out way after dark and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: coming in after fifteen twenty miles a day on foot
Speaker 1: and coming in hours after or dark and cold. I mean,
Speaker 1: just some of the stuff that you did physically I
Speaker 1: felt like was just incredible And not a lot of
Speaker 1: people are are doing that kind of stuff these days.
Speaker 1: But no, I just well, and like I said at
Speaker 1: the beginning, that your your voice inside the book is
Speaker 1: strong and and it's clear to just for me to
Speaker 1: perceive that you're a man of integrity, and and uh,
Speaker 1: just I I really thoroughly enjoyed the book, so I
Speaker 1: i'd really encourage everybody to get it supported and then
Speaker 1: in this book and you'll enjoy it for sure. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a great book. And uh, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for having us up today. Oh hey, I'm glad
Speaker 1: that you're here. You got a wonderful family. I'll tell
Speaker 1: you that, thank you. This is really good. Thank you.
Speaker 1: I welcome to the opportunity to do this. And I
Speaker 1: will tell you this that don on that book, I've
Speaker 1: did the best I could to make it to where
Speaker 1: it didn't it sounds like a how great I am
Speaker 1: type of a book, and no bragging or anything like that.
Speaker 1: I brought a lot of other individuals into to the book,
Speaker 1: people from past that I never knew, but I knew
Speaker 1: about him and I I knew the true side of
Speaker 1: the to them. I know that not everything that gets
Speaker 1: written down is honest. I can tell you this from
Speaker 1: my point. Every single word that's in there is true. UM,
Speaker 1: no exaggerations, and UM, I think you'll find it interesting.
Speaker 1: There's some other hound men that you never knew. I
Speaker 1: never heard about that. UM, the way that they did things,
Speaker 1: the dogs they had, UM, I never I never was
Speaker 1: color blind. I'll tell you that I I had a
Speaker 1: saying that I would tell people when they'd asked me
Speaker 1: about different breeds of dogs, and I'd almost always tell
Speaker 1: them that I never saw a good dog that was
Speaker 1: the wrong color, and uh and I really meant that.
Speaker 1: And then I mentioned other brought other guys into the book.
Speaker 1: Charlie Tant he lived like Ben Lilly and got some
Speaker 1: photos of Charlie. I mentioned um Howard Built, and he
Speaker 1: was a California state line hunner. I never could find
Speaker 1: anything that was ever written about Howard Builting is a
Speaker 1: lion hunter. But Howard Building had to be good. I
Speaker 1: could go by his record, and I could tell that
Speaker 1: he caught too many lines to be anything less than good.
Speaker 1: And uh uh. But anyways, I entered out a lot
Speaker 1: of that killed six hundred something lines of California. Well, no,
Speaker 1: J Bruce, Um, he had recorded kills of six hundred
Speaker 1: and six hundred sixties something. Those are not bragging stories,
Speaker 1: those are stories that were documented. It took a set
Speaker 1: of ears off of a lion to before I went
Speaker 1: down on a piece of paper. But J. Bruce was
Speaker 1: one of the he was the very first aid line hunter.
Speaker 1: But Charlie lived like a bad person. I mean he
Speaker 1: didn't have a house. He just lived out there wherever
Speaker 1: you wherever he stopped, that's where he lived. But he
Speaker 1: still called lots of lions and he did it while
Speaker 1: walking to do a No no GPS, no four wheel drives,
Speaker 1: no horses, none of that. He just won't. And well,
Speaker 1: but so I put that in the book and because
Speaker 1: I think it needed to be in there. And yeah, hopefully, um,
Speaker 1: if you ever get the book, you'll read it. If
Speaker 1: you do, I'd like to hear it from me and
Speaker 1: see what you think about it. Yeah. Yeah, so if
Speaker 1: you get a book, send uh, send it an email
Speaker 1: and give him a review on Amazon. But uh, well, again,
Speaker 1: my pleasure to be here, ed, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for having us, and uh we have it. We have
Speaker 1: a saying at the end of every podcast that we say,
Speaker 1: all right, all right, I'll say it, but I'm gonna
Speaker 1: slightly amend it for this one because we're talking about
Speaker 1: a lot ends. But keep the wild places wild because
Speaker 1: that's where the lines live better. Okay, all right, all right,