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Speaker 1: outrageously Dependable. My name is Clay Nucleman. I'm the host
Speaker 1: of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your
Speaker 1: host into the world of hunting the icon of the
Speaker 1: North American wilderness. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation who
Speaker 1: also bring you into some of the wildest country on
Speaker 1: the planet. Chasing battery. Hello, always walking down through here
Speaker 1: in a bunch of dogs free ranging and we'll look
Speaker 1: down and seeing the track what they took off. Well,
Speaker 1: we didn't really want all of them to go, but
Speaker 1: they're gone. Thanks for checking out the Bear Hunting Magazine Podcast.
Speaker 1: I want to give a little bit of history, a
Speaker 1: little bit of background about this podcast and why I
Speaker 1: was where I was at and what had actually happened
Speaker 1: even that day and the day before. I just got
Speaker 1: back from being in eastern Tennessee. Tracy and Ben Jones.
Speaker 1: They are a father and son that have a long
Speaker 1: family history of hunting with plots and the Appalachian Mountains
Speaker 1: for bear. I'd contacted Ben several weeks ago and said, hey,
Speaker 1: I'd like to film a hound hunt. He said, well,
Speaker 1: come on, and I said, well, I've got two days,
Speaker 1: and that's a short time to be on a successful hunt.
Speaker 1: But the day before I left was when they had
Speaker 1: the massive snowstorm over in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina.
Speaker 1: We hunted for two days and it had some tremendous
Speaker 1: bear races and I really got to see some fantastic
Speaker 1: dog work. And we had a race that started at
Speaker 1: ten o'clock in the morning on the first day I
Speaker 1: was there that lasted until nine o'clock at night. When
Speaker 1: Ben went in in the dark and pulled his dogs
Speaker 1: off of a off of a bear that was basically
Speaker 1: walking on the ground. I was war to the bone
Speaker 1: in terms of physical strength. Ben as a mountain man.
Speaker 1: He's twenty five years old, twenty four and he ge whiz.
Speaker 1: He can walk like a gazelle in the mountains. And
Speaker 1: I had a hard time, but an awesome time keeping
Speaker 1: up with him for two days. One day we had
Speaker 1: that long race. The second day we started out pretty quick,
Speaker 1: found a bear. Two and a half miles in on
Speaker 1: foot leading dogs. We found a bear and the bear
Speaker 1: immediately jumped and ran into the bear sanctuary, and so
Speaker 1: the race ended. We caught the dogs off the bear
Speaker 1: and pretty much our hunt was over. Bear hunting with
Speaker 1: hounds is something that many people don't understand, and if
Speaker 1: you're listening to this podcast and you've never done it,
Speaker 1: you probably don't get it. Bear Hunting Magazine our desire
Speaker 1: is to show all aspects of bear hunting, and bear
Speaker 1: hunting with hounds is the most traditional method to hunt
Speaker 1: bear in North America. All these guys, Daniel Boone hunted
Speaker 1: with hounds. A lot of historical hunters hunt with hounds.
Speaker 1: North Carolina, the state dog is the plot hound. The
Speaker 1: plothhound was developed and the Appalachian Mountains and its identity
Speaker 1: was formed around bear hunting. It's a super small world.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a small niche of people that are
Speaker 1: committed to this really lifestyle. You can't just have a
Speaker 1: bear hound, and you can't just have two bare hounds.
Speaker 1: If you're gonna be a serious bear hunter, you've gotta
Speaker 1: have a pack of hounds. It's a year round process.
Speaker 1: It's expensive, and these guys devote a big section of
Speaker 1: their life to training and raising bare hounds. And the
Speaker 1: barehound is an exceptional animal that has to have a
Speaker 1: unique set of characteristics. I mean, just really make it
Speaker 1: an exceptional Got my, somebody that didn't know my look
Speaker 1: out into the backyard of some bear hunter and see
Speaker 1: what their eyes perceive as a rough looking old hound.
Speaker 1: But let me tell you, if you really knew what
Speaker 1: that was, you'd look at that hound and you'd say,
Speaker 1: my goodness, that is an exceptional animal that has been
Speaker 1: bred for nose, for speed, for athleticism, for fearlessness. It's
Speaker 1: been bred for for trainability and loyalty. It's been bred
Speaker 1: to have good solid feet so it can run for
Speaker 1: days and days. It's been bred for grit, the desire
Speaker 1: to in in, the courage to stay on a bear
Speaker 1: when a bear turns to fight. There's a lot of
Speaker 1: things that have to happen. So the barehound world is
Speaker 1: extremely complex and hard to understand. And here's the most
Speaker 1: important thing. The bare hound world and bare hunting with
Speaker 1: hounds is the lowest hanging fruit. And I want to
Speaker 1: tell you why it's important to you. If you don't
Speaker 1: even hunt with hounds, and don't care to hunt with hounds,
Speaker 1: and maybe you don't even like hounds. But if you're
Speaker 1: a hunter and you want to continue to see our
Speaker 1: freedoms as hunters in the modern age continue, I will
Speaker 1: tell you that bare hunting with hounds is the low
Speaker 1: hanging fruit for the anti hunting community in this country,
Speaker 1: in this world, and their desire is to pick it
Speaker 1: off and to absolutely extinguish it. Why does that matter
Speaker 1: to the guy that doesn't even like hound hunting is
Speaker 1: because in the long game, and that's why we've all
Speaker 1: got to turn our eyes towards is the long game.
Speaker 1: If we truly are concerned about the freedoms that our
Speaker 1: sons and daughters, grandchildren and great grandchildren will have long
Speaker 1: after we are gone, should this earth persist? Is that
Speaker 1: we got to play the long game. And in the
Speaker 1: long game, if they pick off the low hanging fruit,
Speaker 1: then all of a sudden, the next rung up the
Speaker 1: ladder is the low hanging fruit, and they'll be after
Speaker 1: something next. And the anti hunting community has a strategy
Speaker 1: of incrementalism. They want to pick us off one section
Speaker 1: at a time, and eventually there will be a generation
Speaker 1: of people that wake up and will be like Europe
Speaker 1: and where people can run around and hunt game birds
Speaker 1: raised on a farm, and the very thing that has
Speaker 1: given American hunters the identity that we have and the
Speaker 1: freedoms that we have, and the very thing that has
Speaker 1: made wildlife thrive in this country more than any other
Speaker 1: place on the planet. North American model for wildlife conservation
Speaker 1: is the most successful model of wildlife conservation ever in
Speaker 1: the history of man. We have more big game than
Speaker 1: any place on the planet and it's because of conservation
Speaker 1: minded hunters. And bear hunting with hounds is a tool
Speaker 1: used by bear managers to harvest bear in a regulated way.
Speaker 1: And even if you don't like hound hunting, even if
Speaker 1: you've been offended by hound hunters and states that you live,
Speaker 1: I petition you to give them a chance and just
Speaker 1: out of principle, just out of principle, support hound hunting.
Speaker 1: And I also implore the hound hunters to be respectful,
Speaker 1: to to respect property boundaries, and to respect other hunters
Speaker 1: in the woods, and to you know, clean up their
Speaker 1: game in a lot of ways. If we can all
Speaker 1: stand in unification in these certain areas, it's gonna mean
Speaker 1: a lot. So Hey, that's a quick commentary. Why this
Speaker 1: matters to someone who's not a hound hunt. I think
Speaker 1: you're gonna enjoy this podcast. You're gonna learn at about
Speaker 1: bear hounds. You're gonna learn about the history of bear
Speaker 1: hunting the Appalachian Mountains, and I had a great conversation
Speaker 1: with Tracy Jones. Enjoy all right, Welcome to the Bear
Speaker 1: Hunting Magazine Podcast. I am in Greenville, Tennessee. Not Greenville,
Speaker 1: Tennessee proper, though we're outside of Greenville, Tennessee ten miles YEP,
Speaker 1: about den miles south of Greenville, Okay. And I have
Speaker 1: been bear hunting with t L and Ben Jones for
Speaker 1: the last two days. I kind of put him in
Speaker 1: a bind. I talked to him about three weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Talk to Ben, and I'm going to introduce who these
Speaker 1: guys are. I've got t L with me here. But
Speaker 1: about three weeks ago, I guess I had contacted you
Speaker 1: guys and said I want to do a bear hunt
Speaker 1: and the Appalachians and you guys were hospitable enough to
Speaker 1: let me come up and hunt. But I only had
Speaker 1: two days. And then the day before I got here,
Speaker 1: we had this real bad snow um, which according to y'all,
Speaker 1: could have been good, could have been bad, and uh,
Speaker 1: but I came up here, and man, I've had an
Speaker 1: awesome time. I really have, so thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Who I've got here in front of me is Tracy Jones,
Speaker 1: and so Tracy is uh, Tracy is a pastor here
Speaker 1: and bear hunter. Tracy introduced yourself, my son and I
Speaker 1: live in Green County, Tennessee. My my papa, A lot
Speaker 1: of people knew him, Barry Taunting, He's well known with
Speaker 1: plot people. And then my dad, Terry Jones, was the
Speaker 1: bar hunter plots. And I have several other family members
Speaker 1: that were really good bar hunters and plot men, my
Speaker 1: cousin Charles Lowry and my cousin Rocky Lowry. And it's
Speaker 1: just always been a you know, a family thing and
Speaker 1: a lot of friends around us too. Yeah m hm. So,
Speaker 1: so you guys have been hunting plots since the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: When when Barry, Barry, Charles and your grandfather started getting plots. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we don't know the exact date that he got his
Speaker 1: first plot. Um, my cousin Charles got a puppy from
Speaker 1: him in nineteen sixty five. So we know it pre
Speaker 1: dates nineteen sixty. Uh, Papa went on a bear hunt
Speaker 1: with Vaughn Plot, and if I remember correctly, it was
Speaker 1: down in Gatlinburg before Gatlinburg was really commercialized. And sometime
Speaker 1: dearing that hunt, von Plot just convinced my my grandfather,
Speaker 1: who was hunting different things, he Kuna had mostly and
Speaker 1: had started treading some bar at night, I wanted to
Speaker 1: bear hunt, and uh, Vaughn talked to him in to
Speaker 1: giving Plots a tribe, but then he wouldn't sell him
Speaker 1: a dog. And so my path Bass started looking around
Speaker 1: trying to find a plot. And I'm not exactly sure
Speaker 1: where he got his first one at I don't think
Speaker 1: he really remembered where the first one came from. Um
Speaker 1: early on he did get a plot out of Kentucky
Speaker 1: from a man named Benny Moore, but I don't think
Speaker 1: that was the first one, but that was an earlier one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so the strain of dogs that came from Barry
Speaker 1: and Charles Lowry was is this Houston Valley line? Yeah. Uh,
Speaker 1: Like I said, we know that he had litteral pups
Speaker 1: in sixty I don't know what those dogs were exactly
Speaker 1: where the Houston Valley line really got its start was
Speaker 1: in the early seventies. Papal got a female pup from
Speaker 1: Gene White who had White Holla loots and they were
Speaker 1: very close friends. And if you look at the paperwork,
Speaker 1: Jeane basically was just getting starred in plots too. And
Speaker 1: jean had got the white Holla junior dog and it
Speaker 1: was out of some Kermit Alison dogs and uh, I
Speaker 1: think some Williams bred dogs. And White Halla Jr. Was
Speaker 1: a dog my my papa really thought a lot of
Speaker 1: He hunted with him several times up in Canada and
Speaker 1: this female pup my papa got he her name was Jack.
Speaker 1: She got hurt and was physically unable to keep bear hunting,
Speaker 1: so he went back to Jean and they did a
Speaker 1: pup swap and Jeanne kept the Jap dog and my
Speaker 1: papa got a dog that is caught her on her papers.
Speaker 1: Her name was Roberta. They called her Polly around the house,
Speaker 1: but Roberta became the foundation of Houston Valley plots. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a good place to even jump in
Speaker 1: and describe some of the kind of a strain of hounds.
Speaker 1: I think some people that listen to this may not
Speaker 1: be real familiar with hounds and even hound hunting over here,
Speaker 1: and so what what seems to have happened, And Terry
Speaker 1: tell me if this is Terry Tracy, tell me if
Speaker 1: if this is accurate, is that in these mountains, there
Speaker 1: would be guys that started bear hunting, they started getting
Speaker 1: good dogs, and they they bred good dogs to good dogs,
Speaker 1: and they typically these mountain people wanted to keep they
Speaker 1: wanted to keep dogs in the hands of family and
Speaker 1: the fans, in the hands of loyal friends, and and
Speaker 1: keeping pretty tighten it for many reasons, one of which
Speaker 1: would be that if you sold dogs or sent dogs
Speaker 1: way off, if it was the if it was the
Speaker 1: best dog in the world world, you wouldn't really be
Speaker 1: able to have that much access to to breed back
Speaker 1: into it. But these guys wanted to they wanted to
Speaker 1: keep their good dogs pretty tight. And and there's these
Speaker 1: so in the in in the different breeds, and especially
Speaker 1: the plot breed, there's these pretty tight strains of plots.
Speaker 1: So they're all registered plothounds. I mean, so there's in
Speaker 1: it's it's a breed just like a American border collie,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, plothound, but inside of the plothound.
Speaker 1: It's almost like there's these real tight strains and Houston
Speaker 1: Valley is one of them, and there's all these others too.
Speaker 1: But to me, that's really neat because just the the
Speaker 1: culture and the in the long standing history of breeding.
Speaker 1: I mean, you could look back at papers on your
Speaker 1: dogs and you hunted with a lot of those dogs,
Speaker 1: and then before you were born, probably there was a
Speaker 1: lot of dogs, but you would know the history of
Speaker 1: those dogs. You would know the characteristics of those dogs.
Speaker 1: And so what you've got sixty years into this tight
Speaker 1: blind bread in some cases strain of dogs is is
Speaker 1: something that's really predictable from a breeding standpoint, and that
Speaker 1: it's gonna be I mean, you you breed dogs, you
Speaker 1: I mean, they're not all gonna be perfect, but you
Speaker 1: know what you're getting right um our pubs right now
Speaker 1: depending on what females bread to what male go back
Speaker 1: about I think twelve generations to Roberta, and uh, almost
Speaker 1: every dog that we've bred that we have now goes
Speaker 1: back to Roberta. And so you know, that's our foundation
Speaker 1: that we work from. And the Jap dog actually became
Speaker 1: foundational for Jeans dogs and I think she was also
Speaker 1: really foundational for uh, some of the Polly dogs out
Speaker 1: of Michigan to the Jap Dog was and some other folks.
Speaker 1: And then later on Steve Fielder ended up with a
Speaker 1: pup out of the Roberta Dog and Big Timber. A
Speaker 1: lot of people are familiar with Cascade Big Timber and
Speaker 1: the Bronco Dog was really important in his breeding program.
Speaker 1: So the Roberta Dog has a lot of influence in
Speaker 1: the plot breed that I guess some folks wouldn't pay
Speaker 1: attention to. You know, my grandfather, my Patha, was never
Speaker 1: into advertising and um, but in reference to the family
Speaker 1: type thing, I want delve into plot history because even
Speaker 1: among hardcore plot people that's so controversial that I just
Speaker 1: don't want in the middle that. Uh. There's basically two
Speaker 1: theories when you bullet all down to the bottom line.
Speaker 1: One is pretty much the Plot brothers came over from
Speaker 1: Germany and they were never outcrossed on anything whatsoever and
Speaker 1: bred down with the family. Uh. The other theory, and
Speaker 1: what you're talking about is the origins of the plot breed,
Speaker 1: which which which which would have come from Germany pretty
Speaker 1: much eventually into North Carolina and then specifically the western
Speaker 1: North Carolina in the plot Bostom and then would have
Speaker 1: been filter as a place it's a place of valley. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the plots would have been filtered out from
Speaker 1: plot Bosom, you know, pretty much around the clube now
Speaker 1: and uh, and they're the only let me let me
Speaker 1: say and again, if somebody that's listening to this that
Speaker 1: knows plots is the stuff that they know, we're bare hounds.
Speaker 1: But for somebody that doesn't have any context for that, um,
Speaker 1: the plot hound is the only is the only hound
Speaker 1: that isn't wasn't bred from like European fox hounds, Is
Speaker 1: that correct? That's correct? And they were bred from German
Speaker 1: big game dogs and yeah, basically and in the in
Speaker 1: the unique thing about plots is that they were they
Speaker 1: were known as bear dogs. So in the bear dog world,
Speaker 1: there's all these different breeds of hounds from Walker, red bone, blue, Tick,
Speaker 1: English black, and tan. There's there's all these different breeds,
Speaker 1: which all those breeds were the sense of European fox hounds,
Speaker 1: the plot was different. And and and all those breeds
Speaker 1: make fine bear dogs in different strains for sure, and
Speaker 1: people use them all over the country. But what's you
Speaker 1: what's cool to me about the plots is they they
Speaker 1: were known and developed their their identity as bear dogs. Sure, well,
Speaker 1: I don't consider myself a plot historian at all. You know,
Speaker 1: men like John Jackson and Bob Plot have written extensively
Speaker 1: on that subject. That would be the go to people there.
Speaker 1: But but you have the theory that the Plot brothers,
Speaker 1: you know, came from Germany and they would have been
Speaker 1: basically pure down through the family lines until they start
Speaker 1: the field. Now to others, and some men still you know,
Speaker 1: view their particulars train as going back to the originals.
Speaker 1: The second theory, you know, just basically fundamentally, with a
Speaker 1: lot of twists and turns, would be that along the
Speaker 1: way the plot had X dog added to it here,
Speaker 1: X dog added to it there. Then that's where the
Speaker 1: sort of the disagreements among the plot historians come in.
Speaker 1: And uh if I I mean I was raised with
Speaker 1: mountain people and in an isolated location. Um, it would
Speaker 1: be hard for me to believe that at some point
Speaker 1: a mountain family didn't add something here, something there, Yeah,
Speaker 1: or even something accidental, And I wouldn't you know the
Speaker 1: fact that was somebody that has the purest you know, theory.
Speaker 1: But Mountain people are pragmatic people because uh honestly, because
Speaker 1: of poverty, and they couldn't afford to keep a dog
Speaker 1: that didn't carry its weight. Yeah, and they couldn't keep
Speaker 1: You have to keep a lot of dogs. If if
Speaker 1: you want a line of helms and you only want
Speaker 1: your own name on the paperwork, nor was every dog
Speaker 1: on that paperwork is yours and you're the only one.
Speaker 1: Nobody else has any influence and your dogs all you
Speaker 1: have to keep a lot of dogs, I mean a
Speaker 1: lot of dogs. That's why, you know, this discussion came
Speaker 1: up really this week through a Facebook post. Somebody had
Speaker 1: asked the question, you know, where are the plots that
Speaker 1: are strictly lyne bred with no outside influences, And the
Speaker 1: best answer to that question came from Ray Brown. And
Speaker 1: you know, Ray is a very well known, well respected
Speaker 1: bar hunter and plot man, and and Ray said, it's
Speaker 1: not that nobody is breeding line bred dogs, it's that
Speaker 1: it's a family of dogs. A lot of people stick
Speaker 1: with other words. It may have come from the same source,
Speaker 1: but the name on it will be Brown, or the
Speaker 1: name will be Weams, or the name will be Taunton,
Speaker 1: or the name will be lowry and so on. But
Speaker 1: if you go back far enough, it comes from the
Speaker 1: same source. They all came from the same place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and there was very few originally registered plots that these
Speaker 1: things come out flow out. Well, the plot breed wasn't
Speaker 1: didn't become an official registered UKC breedingtel thin, That's right.
Speaker 1: So it's relative relatively knew that that these dogs have
Speaker 1: had papers kept. And I know there's historical records of
Speaker 1: the plots keeping records of dogs and breeding and different stuff.
Speaker 1: But yeah, but let me let me take the conversation
Speaker 1: this way. I would like for you to describe and
Speaker 1: envisioned somebody that didn't know bear dogs characteristics of a
Speaker 1: bare dog because and I and I can or what
Speaker 1: you're looking for in a dog. Because to me, my
Speaker 1: history with hounds originally started with coon hunting when I
Speaker 1: was in high school, had dogs for several years and
Speaker 1: really learned to love and appreciate the hound sports. We
Speaker 1: never even dreamt of running bear with these hounds. We
Speaker 1: just didn't. And and when I started understanding bare hounds,
Speaker 1: I realized that this is really an elite animal that's
Speaker 1: being bred. And I believe I heard Steve Steve heard
Speaker 1: said it in in an article in Bare Hunting Magazine
Speaker 1: that he said, of all the all the animals that
Speaker 1: man has put his fingerprint of influence on in breeding,
Speaker 1: from cattle to horses to anything, he felt like that
Speaker 1: there was more things that had to line up right
Speaker 1: for a bare dog than just about anything. And there's
Speaker 1: it was an interesting statement because he talked about dog's
Speaker 1: gotta have a super good nose. A dog's got to
Speaker 1: be a super athlete to be able to run and
Speaker 1: chase these beards. I mean we've been in these mountains,
Speaker 1: I mean steep as a cow's face, and these dogs
Speaker 1: put on twelve thirteen miles yesterday, I don't know, I
Speaker 1: mean running straight up and down right, So they gotta
Speaker 1: have they gotta have an incredible nose, which not every
Speaker 1: hound has. The variants and the hounds nose is a
Speaker 1: broad spectrum. Some can smell this amount of scent and
Speaker 1: some can smell this, So you know, nose athleticism, uh tree,
Speaker 1: and when you're when you're running big game, that trees.
Speaker 1: And again this is for someone who doesn't know the
Speaker 1: sport a dog. There there are running dogs that all
Speaker 1: they want to do is run game and when that
Speaker 1: game goes up a tree, they'd be done. But a
Speaker 1: tree dog has got to have that instinct to run
Speaker 1: the game, and when it goes up a tree, he's
Speaker 1: got to have the instinct to sit there and bark,
Speaker 1: I mean until his master gets there, until that animal
Speaker 1: comes down out of the tree. And so that takes
Speaker 1: a really special animal that and that's bred in. I
Speaker 1: mean even to this day. Inside of good bear dog lines,
Speaker 1: there are dogs that aren't good tree dogs. Maybe they'll
Speaker 1: run a bear, but there, you know, we get to
Speaker 1: the tree, they're not that interested. So that's a dog
Speaker 1: that is not bread and and it's kind of left
Speaker 1: out of the breeding program probably in the future. But
Speaker 1: point being, there's a lot of things. What what do
Speaker 1: you guys after in these Tennessee mountains? What do you
Speaker 1: need a dog? What are the key characteristics? Well, before
Speaker 1: I start, you're asking for a matter of opinion, that's right.
Speaker 1: If you ask you know, a hundred bar hunters, you
Speaker 1: are going to get variations. But for us, I think
Speaker 1: you start at the finish line and then work backwards.
Speaker 1: In breeding. Instead of looking at as instill of looking
Speaker 1: at the dog and looking at his paperwork. If you're
Speaker 1: considering it for breeding, you need to look at the
Speaker 1: finish line. In other words, the most important thing about
Speaker 1: a big gamehound is does it produce big game? And
Speaker 1: all the other variables lead to that. But you don't
Speaker 1: want pieces to o'clock. You want to know what time
Speaker 1: it is. And you mean you want to be able
Speaker 1: to catch game, tree game. That's right if you If
Speaker 1: the dog is not a game catcher and it's not
Speaker 1: showing up on the the end, something's missing, something's not there.
Speaker 1: So producing game is the is it? You know the
Speaker 1: coon hunters like they have a big argument going on
Speaker 1: now about dogs at slick three a lot. Well, if
Speaker 1: you're playing a points game, some of that can be overlooked,
Speaker 1: I guess. But if you're walking five or six hours
Speaker 1: in the mountains to a dog that has nothing, that's
Speaker 1: a big pointless Yeah, there's no there's no points up there,
Speaker 1: there's no scorecard. Does that make sense to absolutely? So
Speaker 1: producing is the number one. And what you're describing to
Speaker 1: is it is a dog that just has a natural ability.
Speaker 1: I mean, inside of you turn out ten bear dogs,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be percentage of those dogs that just time
Speaker 1: after time after time and when you say get to
Speaker 1: the finish line, what you mean is at the bottom
Speaker 1: of a bear tree, or have a bear bade up
Speaker 1: or whatever it takes. I mean, or even cross into
Speaker 1: the sanctuary like today with it. I mean, that's not
Speaker 1: that dog's fault, that there's an imaginary line there right right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: what what what he's talking about is today we had
Speaker 1: a really good bear race. We jumped a bear a
Speaker 1: good spot and uh the bear head and crossed the
Speaker 1: across the road and went into an area that we
Speaker 1: couldn't hunt, and so they caught the dogs off the track.
Speaker 1: But if it if we'd have been able to run
Speaker 1: that bear, we probably would have got him. But we
Speaker 1: had to pull him off. But right, yeah, yeah, But
Speaker 1: the traits that lead to the finish line, in my
Speaker 1: personal opinion, my viewpoint right it if not at the
Speaker 1: top of the list, right at the top of the
Speaker 1: list is drive desire mhm, because a dog could A
Speaker 1: house dog is extremely intelligent. Some of them are bird dogs.
Speaker 1: Some of those. One of the smartest dogs I ever
Speaker 1: worked with was an English pointer. But neither the house
Speaker 1: dog or the English pointer will run a bear. That's right.
Speaker 1: But there so there has to be that innate desire
Speaker 1: that when it gets that cent of bear for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: and that in a code, it runs it m hm
Speaker 1: and it don't want to stop until it's over trade, bade,
Speaker 1: caught off, or whatever. So some people call it desire,
Speaker 1: some people call it drive, some people call it heart.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter how smart a dog is if it
Speaker 1: has no drive. It doesn't matter how good of a
Speaker 1: nose it has, if it doesn't have any drive. To me, drive,
Speaker 1: our heart is the engine that everything else is built around.
Speaker 1: And uh, I can think of one dog that I
Speaker 1: had that wasn't the grittiest dog. He wasn't the fastest dog. Um,
Speaker 1: he didn't have a super cold nose, but anything I
Speaker 1: turned him on, whatever it was, he just had no quit.
Speaker 1: And so he made up for a lot of not
Speaker 1: what I would call faults because he was sufficient. He
Speaker 1: just wasn't wasn't exceptional, but except from one area, and
Speaker 1: that was a drive. And he was one of the
Speaker 1: favorite dogs I ever had. He wasn't flashy, nobody knows
Speaker 1: his name, but if you turned him on something, he
Speaker 1: meant to catch it. Yeah, And I think I think
Speaker 1: that that statement can be qualified to by saying or describing.
Speaker 1: I think people that have never beare hunted with the
Speaker 1: hounds don't realize how intensive a intense it is to
Speaker 1: treat or catch a bear. I mean, like you turned
Speaker 1: ten dogs loose on a red hot bear track and
Speaker 1: that bear runs for twelve miles. In these mountains, there's
Speaker 1: gonna be some dogs that drop out of the race.
Speaker 1: There's gonna be some dogs that end up back in
Speaker 1: the truck. There's gonna be some dogs that end up
Speaker 1: sleeping on the side of the mountain because they just
Speaker 1: laid down. I mean, it's it's it happens, um and
Speaker 1: that happens to good dogs too, don't I'm not saying
Speaker 1: that there's a lot of bearables to that many many men.
Speaker 1: And by the point being there, there's there's certainly some
Speaker 1: dogs that don't have the drive that others do. That's
Speaker 1: a fact. Yeah, And so that's what you're that's what
Speaker 1: you're looking for. To me, that's the number one quality,
Speaker 1: and without it you have you have no framework to
Speaker 1: build around. Yeah, that's probably a good quality of humans too,
Speaker 1: and it is make up but for a lot of stuff.
Speaker 1: If you've got a little bit of drive and well,
Speaker 1: I grew up in the time frame when boxing was
Speaker 1: something that that men watched a lot. It wasn't on
Speaker 1: pay per view, it was a national sport. Everybody the
Speaker 1: names of boxers were household names. You know, everybody knew
Speaker 1: the people who were going to fight, and it was
Speaker 1: on regular TV and people would gather up in their
Speaker 1: living rooms and watch a match. And but I bring
Speaker 1: that up to say, it's just it's impossible to whip
Speaker 1: somebody who won't quit m hm, m hm, and a
Speaker 1: dog that just will not quit, yeah, is pretty hard
Speaker 1: to beat. Yeah, yeah, what would what would be? Okay,
Speaker 1: so if we were going back from the finish line backwards,
Speaker 1: that desire would be a number one trait. What would
Speaker 1: what would be some of the other traits that you
Speaker 1: look for in a house. Well, if a dog is
Speaker 1: exceptionally intelligent, I think that's where some of your better
Speaker 1: trail dogs come from. You know, a dog can be
Speaker 1: an asset as a bear dog and not be your
Speaker 1: main trail dog. Tell us what a trail dog is. Well,
Speaker 1: when somebody gets ready to start a bear race, normally
Speaker 1: they'll have a particular dog or dogs that they count
Speaker 1: on to start the track and trail it up when
Speaker 1: the conditions are not real good and get it jumped
Speaker 1: as the other dogs come along behind with the idea.
Speaker 1: The trail dog gets the bear up and running as
Speaker 1: the other dogs catch them from behind. M And you know,
Speaker 1: different people in different areas hunt different ways. But traditionally
Speaker 1: through the mountains here men would have a dog or
Speaker 1: dog that were was their primary trail dog, and then
Speaker 1: the other dogs would be take some place in their pack,
Speaker 1: you know, some bay or somewhere. It's not that the
Speaker 1: other dogs couldn't run a track, but they're just something
Speaker 1: that separates a real top nots traal dog apart. And
Speaker 1: I think intelligence plays a role in that. Uh if
Speaker 1: a dog's you know, if he has a mind to
Speaker 1: figure things out, Like you'll see dogs sometimes even running
Speaker 1: a bear that's already jumped, and they'll get in some
Speaker 1: rocks and for whatever reason, one dog will go right
Speaker 1: on through the rocks just litly split and another two
Speaker 1: or three dogs get hung up at the same place
Speaker 1: the other one went through and can't figure out how
Speaker 1: to go across. Right, there's a reason that one dog
Speaker 1: goes through he has the mental capacity to figure out
Speaker 1: how to how to make it or he at one time,
Speaker 1: maybe pretty prior in his life. He figured it out
Speaker 1: once and so he had the intelligence to figure it
Speaker 1: out again. Yeah, and maybe he just stumbled on it
Speaker 1: the first time, you know. Yep. So intelligence, I think
Speaker 1: is a factor there. And then uh, of course the
Speaker 1: obvious things like endurance and stamina and how long they
Speaker 1: can can go. That right there. To me as somebody
Speaker 1: who wasn't hadn't had a ton of history with the
Speaker 1: bare hounds until the last five years, that's what blows
Speaker 1: my is the athleticism and endurance that these dogs have
Speaker 1: to have. Have so much respect for bears, and and
Speaker 1: I think bear hunters guys are bearing with hounds have
Speaker 1: a whole different kind of respect in terms of these
Speaker 1: bears can run and run and run and run straight
Speaker 1: up and down mountains. I mean these mountains we were
Speaker 1: in today and yesterday just unbelievable. So it takes a
Speaker 1: heck of an animal to overcome that. There there's a
Speaker 1: misperception among non hunters and and a misperception among hunt
Speaker 1: some hunters that using hounds isn't fire chase, and uh,
Speaker 1: nothing can be further from the truth. You know, a
Speaker 1: bear is fully aware that he's being chased, whereas other methods,
Speaker 1: which I'm not opposed to, legal methods do it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but other methods that bear may not even be aware
Speaker 1: you're anywhere in the world and then he's dead. Yeah.
Speaker 1: With the hounds, he has everything at his disposal. You're
Speaker 1: on his turf, you're on his home ground. He lives
Speaker 1: there twenty fires a day, seven days a week. He
Speaker 1: knows where everything's at. They have According to some research
Speaker 1: I've read, they really have a mapping capacity to remember
Speaker 1: where they've been and how things lay. They just have
Speaker 1: all the advantages. And a dog with endurance, you know,
Speaker 1: gives you an advantage. I mean, like you said, they're
Speaker 1: incredible athletes, and so that endurance would play out in
Speaker 1: actual practical terms with having dogs that had really good
Speaker 1: feet like a dog. People probably wouldn't someone who wasn't
Speaker 1: a dog person might not understand that. But these dogs
Speaker 1: run so far, running in rough terrain, rocky terrain, snowy terrain,
Speaker 1: they've got to have genetically predisposed feet that are tight,
Speaker 1: that their pads are thick, that they're you know, one
Speaker 1: of the guys we're hunting with today, Pat was showing
Speaker 1: me one of his dog's feet, and that dog had
Speaker 1: hair that kind of grew over the edge of the pads.
Speaker 1: In his mind, that was a good trait that made
Speaker 1: it had tough feet. You know, um not all dogs
Speaker 1: are gonna be that way, but I gotta have tough feet,
Speaker 1: gotta have for this endurance. Trim dogs. I mean, these
Speaker 1: aren't big hounds. A lot of people would think bare hound,
Speaker 1: big hound. I mean, what would be the bandwidth of
Speaker 1: wait for your for Houston Valley plots. Well, for for
Speaker 1: our dogs, I prefer a male dog that doesn't go
Speaker 1: over you know, fifty or fifty five pounds, and a
Speaker 1: female I prefer not to go over forty five or
Speaker 1: fifty pounds. And uh but then again, you know, a
Speaker 1: dog being a little larger than that, are a little
Speaker 1: smaller than that, He is not always a determining factor
Speaker 1: of it's endurance, true or it's drive. And sometimes a
Speaker 1: bigger dog that you wouldn't think could carry himself can
Speaker 1: run all day and um so, but that size, that
Speaker 1: size is usually pretty good for a dog being able
Speaker 1: to run day after day after day and not break down.
Speaker 1: But typically a bigger, bigger hound is gonna break down
Speaker 1: a little faster and by that. I mean, these guys
Speaker 1: are hunting. I mean I think Ben said he's hunted
Speaker 1: every day since Thanksgiving and it's nowhere December today. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the more the more weight a dog carries,
Speaker 1: and the bigger he gets, there's so many factors at
Speaker 1: some at some point there's a there's a breaking point
Speaker 1: there where that's just too big. He may keep up
Speaker 1: for an hour, or he might keep up for two hours.
Speaker 1: But that great, big, you know, pound dog, generally speaking
Speaker 1: in the mountains is not being all day dog. Now,
Speaker 1: somebody listening somewhere it's gonna say, oh, yes, I have
Speaker 1: Rufus and he waited a hundred fifty pounds and can
Speaker 1: run for four days straight. And that's fine. But Rufus
Speaker 1: is an outliers to the rule. Yeah. Yeah, I've found
Speaker 1: that amongst the barehound guys that I've run into is
Speaker 1: that they typically like the smaller dogs. And even in
Speaker 1: in long legs doesn't equate two speed because on a
Speaker 1: track it's not when you Well, that brings us into
Speaker 1: another characteristic tracy that I think is I know you're
Speaker 1: gonna list, is that you're looking for a dog that's
Speaker 1: got speed. Um, yeah, just to talk about that. Well,
Speaker 1: what I was gonna say was that speed doesn't come
Speaker 1: from having long legs or short legs. Speed comes from
Speaker 1: being able to navigate scent and move through that scent,
Speaker 1: track it with head up. You know. Well, the discussion
Speaker 1: we're having right now about traits you like seems to
Speaker 1: be Uh, I don't. I'm not sure you would call
Speaker 1: it a cyclical thing, but there seems to be different
Speaker 1: factors during different time periods that everybody's after. I can
Speaker 1: remember years ago that everybody wanted something more gritty and
Speaker 1: they started trying to breed. I've seen them even trying
Speaker 1: to breathe pit bull into the end of the hounds,
Speaker 1: and that was a huge train wreck because the dogs
Speaker 1: will get to the tree, and that that desire to
Speaker 1: catch something didn't stop at the tree and need to
Speaker 1: catch other dogs. That was a terrible train wreck here locally. Um, then,
Speaker 1: uh knows is something that seems to be something that
Speaker 1: points in time. Everybody's trying to find more knows, more
Speaker 1: tracking ability, more trailing ability. Yeah, and then recently there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of talk, well at least among people
Speaker 1: that I'm familiar with, about speed. I want to be
Speaker 1: faster and fast is good. But when you and Ben
Speaker 1: I've discussed this, when you look at a hound's physical makeup,
Speaker 1: it's only going to be able to go so fast
Speaker 1: because of the way it's built. If you put that
Speaker 1: in horse terms, there's a reason that the records in
Speaker 1: the Kentucky Derby and some of the other horse races
Speaker 1: are seldom broken because no matter how much money a
Speaker 1: billionaire has, and no matter how much access he has
Speaker 1: to the best trainers, and no matter how much access
Speaker 1: he has to everything he could possibly need to be
Speaker 1: breed a faster horse, it genetically cannot be done. It
Speaker 1: tops out. And a hound is the same way. They
Speaker 1: can only get so fast, right in terms of just
Speaker 1: like foot speed in a race. Yeah yeah, yeah, So
Speaker 1: if you have it hounds that are fast enough to
Speaker 1: produce to me, they're fast enough, yeah yeah, fast enough
Speaker 1: to catch game. If you're catching what you want to catch,
Speaker 1: you have enough speed. Yeah, And I think too that
Speaker 1: may you know what I've seen in different places is
Speaker 1: that that you know? I've heard somebody say speed kills
Speaker 1: talking about just an animal being able to track fast
Speaker 1: enough that they just just gain on a bear. I
Speaker 1: mean a bear's a bear is laying in his bed.
Speaker 1: He hears a hound, you know, five yards away open
Speaker 1: and he goes, man, what if the hounds coming after me?
Speaker 1: It doesn't actually think that, but you know, and and
Speaker 1: the hound's getting closer, getting closer. Finally that hound comes
Speaker 1: within range of threatening that bear. The bear takes off running. Well,
Speaker 1: the ability of that hound to pick up that scent
Speaker 1: and overcome that bear. And again it's not foot speed,
Speaker 1: but it's it's ability for that hound to navigate the scent,
Speaker 1: navigate the terrain, you know. Um well, I mean, the
Speaker 1: bottom line is that dog has got to be fast
Speaker 1: enough to run the bear down and either stop it
Speaker 1: or make it so uncomfortable. What goes up a tree? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: So the doll has to be faster than the bear.
Speaker 1: He's gotta be yep, yep, gotta be well. And And
Speaker 1: like you said today, like you said a little bit ago,
Speaker 1: this hound, honey, is not a given. I've been here
Speaker 1: two days and we've yet to We've yet to see
Speaker 1: a bear in a tree. We've been we've been met
Speaker 1: with tough conditions. But before I got here, you guys
Speaker 1: were tree and bears. And I'm sure as soon as
Speaker 1: I leave this afternoon. You are gonna tree bears tomorrow.
Speaker 1: But it's it's tough. I mean, we ran a bear
Speaker 1: yesterday for for miles. Uh the ready yesterday what you
Speaker 1: turn loose at nine o'clock or so, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: And the last dogs were pulled off of it well
Speaker 1: after dark. Yeah, yep. So they're tough, super tough, and
Speaker 1: it's a it really is a fair chase hunt. I
Speaker 1: mean when you when you look at it that way,
Speaker 1: But I don't get exciting. I mean, you've been here
Speaker 1: two days. We're run you know. We've had one race
Speaker 1: that lasted all day, we didn't kill it. Another one
Speaker 1: today that we run got off into the sanctuary, which
Speaker 1: is you know, a the imaginary line between where you're
Speaker 1: allowed to kill and where you're not. But I don't
Speaker 1: get excited about that because I mean, we've we've did
Speaker 1: this so long. I mean, the bottom line is sometimes
Speaker 1: the bad wine and if they didn't, what would be
Speaker 1: the point? Yep? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they do win sometimes.
Speaker 1: They do win sometimes, and I think that's part of
Speaker 1: the fun of it. And uh, you said, well, if
Speaker 1: you had better dogs, you would have won. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm no expert, but I've seen a few baron dogs
Speaker 1: and uh, maybe somebody had a dog somewhere that if
Speaker 1: we'd have had it here yesterday, we would have it
Speaker 1: would have made a difference. But yeah, I don't think. So,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't think if it's out there.
Speaker 1: I you know, there's some people with some great dogs.
Speaker 1: But you know, if dogs run one all day long,
Speaker 1: just how much more can you ask? Right? You know?
Speaker 1: I said in a unique position at Bear Hunting magazine,
Speaker 1: and I've made some I have been for somebody that's
Speaker 1: not been in a bear hunding world very long. I've
Speaker 1: had the opportunity to hunt with some of the some
Speaker 1: of some some great bearhoundsmen all over the country. Um,
Speaker 1: and I can tell you they all get beat sure
Speaker 1: they do. I mean you you see obviously you're not
Speaker 1: gonna post a picture on Facebook of a you know,
Speaker 1: back of your truck empty and s you know there's
Speaker 1: no bearer. I mean you you hear the good stories.
Speaker 1: You hear are the times when the dogs get did
Speaker 1: great and uh and if you're closer to these people,
Speaker 1: obviously you're here the good and the bad. Well, you
Speaker 1: and I are friends on Facebook, and I enjoy social
Speaker 1: media because I like to see one of the people
Speaker 1: doing hunting and other things. Sometimes I do purposely put
Speaker 1: on social media bears one US zero or the bear
Speaker 1: one today. I do do that because I you know,
Speaker 1: I laugh about it. I don't if I if if
Speaker 1: the dogs were junk and we can never catch anything,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be laughing. But I just know we got beat.
Speaker 1: And if you get beat by a great opponent, there's
Speaker 1: there's no defeating that. So I enjoy that. I enjoy
Speaker 1: the aspect that that it's not a give me and uh,
Speaker 1: it's a good day to me. If you're out there
Speaker 1: and you run upon an opponent that you know, it's
Speaker 1: a worthy of on it. You know, if you turn
Speaker 1: a dog loose every time you turn it loose, and
Speaker 1: the bear just popped up a tree, I would I
Speaker 1: would grow weary of that. I get tired of that. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I think the biggest, the biggest, Uh, just
Speaker 1: you talking about being able to be content inside of
Speaker 1: you know, not tryining a bear and it being difficult.
Speaker 1: You know, you grew up in these mountains in a
Speaker 1: time when it was really hard to trip a bear
Speaker 1: because there weren't as many here we're living. And I
Speaker 1: asked you yesterday, I said, we are you in the
Speaker 1: heyday of bears and and Appalachian mountains and uh, And
Speaker 1: there's probably different answers to that, but no doubt there's
Speaker 1: a lot of bears here, and a lot more than
Speaker 1: there used to be. When I was a kid growing up,
Speaker 1: there was times when we might not find a bear
Speaker 1: for two or three days to even turn it on
Speaker 1: loose on. And so yeah, there's a lot more bear
Speaker 1: now than there was then. The trade off is we're
Speaker 1: pinched a little tighter. There's still as much national forest,
Speaker 1: but they've closed all the gates pretty much. There's very
Speaker 1: few roads to drive, so access is foot only, and uh.
Speaker 1: I know to some people that seems like it would
Speaker 1: make it more fair to the bears. But the problem is,
Speaker 1: as you get older, there's not too many people pass
Speaker 1: say fifty or fifty five that can still handle the
Speaker 1: mountains with any speed anymore. You know about dog speed.
Speaker 1: I mean, the hunter's got to go there too. Where
Speaker 1: the dog goes. You don't walk with the dog track
Speaker 1: for track, But the the end game is you've gotta
Speaker 1: be wherever he stops. And we had a lot more
Speaker 1: access to the mountains when I was a boy to
Speaker 1: be able to get certain places. And um, then so
Speaker 1: many people have moved in around the foot of the
Speaker 1: mountain from other areas that don't understand our culture, don't
Speaker 1: understand their history, have no clue what we're doing. And uh,
Speaker 1: they'll buy say maybe an acre or two acres, and
Speaker 1: then they don't want anybody within earshot of them doing
Speaker 1: anything right that they don't quite understand. Whereas here's ago
Speaker 1: you knew everybody, yeah, or if you didn't know him,
Speaker 1: some guy you were with new them. And so we've
Speaker 1: started training out we got more bear but less access. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that makes that's a great that's a great description of it,
Speaker 1: I think. Um, and and they you know you you
Speaker 1: talk to me the other day about bear sanctuaries, and
Speaker 1: that's that's that's a pretty neat concept. So in Tennessee,
Speaker 1: just to give a very general descriptions of the bear sanctuaries,
Speaker 1: they've got all this national forest, massive amounts of national forests,
Speaker 1: and they've blocked off these huge sections, I mean like
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of acres that they say, okay, this
Speaker 1: is a bear sanctuary, so you can hunt bear here.
Speaker 1: You can hunt bear here, but you can't hunt bear here.
Speaker 1: And you can hunt other stuff there. You can hunt
Speaker 1: deer there, you can hunt tune there, you can do
Speaker 1: other stuff. And what these bear sanctuaries have done has
Speaker 1: helped the bears. You feel like, well, I would like
Speaker 1: to talk about that. And let me begin by saying
Speaker 1: on this subject that I personally appreciate what the t
Speaker 1: w r A has done, say since the mid sixties.
Speaker 1: Now I could be off a little bit in my
Speaker 1: timing and when their programs started and so forth, but
Speaker 1: from the mid sixties, which is just a little bit
Speaker 1: before I was born, up through the mid seventies when
Speaker 1: I was a kid, they wanted to get the barren
Speaker 1: numbers up and they implemented, uh, what I call a
Speaker 1: three pronged strategy. I don't know what's on their paperwork
Speaker 1: at the t w r A, but from a hunter's
Speaker 1: perspective perspective, it was this way. Number one, we only
Speaker 1: had one short kill season, and there was I think
Speaker 1: two weeks in December. It was usually like December one
Speaker 1: two December kind of a deal, and we had a
Speaker 1: short kill season, obviously less barer kill. Number two, it
Speaker 1: was always a late season, and the idea behind it
Speaker 1: was that read seals would be laid up, so you
Speaker 1: kill less seals, so that helped with numbers. Then the
Speaker 1: third prong of that strategy were was the bar reserves.
Speaker 1: And when I was a little kid, I can still
Speaker 1: remember riding with my Papa around the bar sanctuary where
Speaker 1: the bear we put into today, I rode with him
Speaker 1: and I actually nailed up the sanctuary signs around that
Speaker 1: sanctuary that some of them are still there in their
Speaker 1: little triangles, and uh, they're still there today. Well, the
Speaker 1: t w r A uh uh, several years ago now
Speaker 1: i'm gonna say pushing ten years decided that they wanted
Speaker 1: the barren numbers to be lowered. There was too many bear.
Speaker 1: Now we have argued over that. Obviously there are more bear,
Speaker 1: but that's a different discretion than whether the too many bear.
Speaker 1: So the t w r A come up with the
Speaker 1: term cultural carrying capacity. And when I begin to look
Speaker 1: into that, they did an article on it and their
Speaker 1: magazine about cultural carying capacity, and basically that means there
Speaker 1: are too many bear close to too many people, the
Speaker 1: amount of a certain species of wildlife that the human
Speaker 1: population will tolerate. Yeah, basically, yeah, cultural tolerance. Right now,
Speaker 1: we have a good reasonal director here where we're at.
Speaker 1: I like him a lot. I know the biologist, he
Speaker 1: works hard, but that term cultural carrying and pacity. And
Speaker 1: then an article in the magazine implied that the bear
Speaker 1: was just way overpopulated and need to be severely reduced,
Speaker 1: and they begin to implement plans to do that. So
Speaker 1: I asked them the question, the director and the biologist, Um,
Speaker 1: what do you have a how many? I asked them
Speaker 1: how many bear are in the state of Tennessee. Well,
Speaker 1: obviously they don't know how many total bear are here,
Speaker 1: and there's no way to know, but they go off
Speaker 1: based off from what I could tell, primarily complaints that
Speaker 1: are called in that the wardens have to go answer.
Speaker 1: And then they had a research method where they would
Speaker 1: take sardine kins and string them down through certain areas,
Speaker 1: and however many kins were hit, they sort of tabulated
Speaker 1: the bear population general population numbers. One bear can hit
Speaker 1: all those kins in a night, so our too, bear
Speaker 1: can hit all those kins. But you can't say ten
Speaker 1: hit kNs equals ten bear or whatever it's There are
Speaker 1: a lot of factors there. The bottom line is we
Speaker 1: don't know exactly the total number of bar in Tennessee.
Speaker 1: You could not know. They have started a new research
Speaker 1: method where they put up barbed war fence type enclosures
Speaker 1: and as the bear go in to get food, it
Speaker 1: pulls hair out and they use that as samples. That's
Speaker 1: probably more accurate. And him personally, I don't go along
Speaker 1: with the idea that there are too many bear. But
Speaker 1: they implemented this thing where they brought in a lot
Speaker 1: more bow season uh, and I'm not against people bow hunting.
Speaker 1: They brought in shooting bar during deer season, you know,
Speaker 1: just if it passed by your tree, staying kind of thing.
Speaker 1: They implemented longer hound seasons. The hound people really didn't
Speaker 1: want to kill that many more bear, but pretty much
Speaker 1: if we weren't willing to kill them, they were going
Speaker 1: to get somebody else to because they wanted the numbers lowered. Period.
Speaker 1: So I guess the point being, yes, there there are
Speaker 1: a lot more better than they used to be, but
Speaker 1: I doubt there'll ever be too many bear for a
Speaker 1: bear hunter. It's a good way to say, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's so interesting and so this really shows
Speaker 1: the really the heart of the modern conservation hunter is
Speaker 1: that we want wildlife to thrive. We are we are
Speaker 1: the best friend of bear. Well, that's the three pronged plan.
Speaker 1: And we were talking about they've done away with short
Speaker 1: seasons because we have an extremely long seasons now for
Speaker 1: kill UH. And they've done away with having only a
Speaker 1: late season because we're starting all the way in October now.
Speaker 1: So the only prong of that plan left is the sanctuaries.
Speaker 1: And I've heard talk recently that they want to do
Speaker 1: away with the sanctuaries, which I I hope they never do.
Speaker 1: Now I'm gonna say something here. I'm not a biologist,
Speaker 1: I don't pretend to be one, and I didn't sleep
Speaker 1: at a holiday and last night. But from what I've read,
Speaker 1: UH sALS like to go back and raise where they
Speaker 1: were born, same general area. I believe one of the
Speaker 1: reasons we have a stable bear population is because the
Speaker 1: bears that are are actually being born and raised are
Speaker 1: generational from the same places. And what we're killing is
Speaker 1: the overflow out of the sanctuaries. If you take away
Speaker 1: the sanctuaries, more or less, what you'll do is end
Speaker 1: up harassing bear in every location where. How can anything
Speaker 1: ever be a traditional um ground to raise the little ones?
Speaker 1: What can they ever go back to? Where where can
Speaker 1: they get away from being run or tree or whatever?
Speaker 1: You know. I think those seals need places that they
Speaker 1: can go back to that they are familiar with and
Speaker 1: raise their little ones were there's no encroachment at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so again the hound hunters saying keep the sanctuaries.
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, hown hound hunters saying let's let's limit ourselves
Speaker 1: and say we will not kill bear in this big
Speaker 1: section section of ground. And I mean that those sanctuaries
Speaker 1: cost us a bear today. And you guys, I'm fine
Speaker 1: with that. The bear one. Yeah, you just catch your
Speaker 1: dogs off of it and laugh and give him a
Speaker 1: thumbs up. Yep, you beat us today. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next time. Yeah, that's great. And so I mean I
Speaker 1: thought about it in these terms. If the way I
Speaker 1: view it is correct, and you're having generational den sights
Speaker 1: or den areas, areas where sALS raised their little ones.
Speaker 1: If my grandfather was running those bear in uh late fifties,
Speaker 1: mid sixties with plots and now here I'm up in
Speaker 1: and me my cousin, Charles, my cousin Rocky, my cousin Terry,
Speaker 1: other family members, friends that have we've had for years.
Speaker 1: Our dogs are twelve generations, and to me, it's, uh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of Appalachian I don't know, pride is
Speaker 1: the worst, there's the word for it. But there's a
Speaker 1: lot of historical satisfaction for me to think that my
Speaker 1: dogs go back twelve generations to where we got started
Speaker 1: and the bar were running, are still the same offspring
Speaker 1: and the bear those dogs are running and you're you're
Speaker 1: running them in the same place. Yeah. I thought it
Speaker 1: was really neat this week just to hear you Ben's
Speaker 1: commentary and your commentary just on this area you're hunting.
Speaker 1: I mean, really if you think, I mean you've been
Speaker 1: hunting bears since you were a kid, I mean decades
Speaker 1: of even that same mountain. I mean, you guys will
Speaker 1: probably treed bears all over that mountain that races all
Speaker 1: over it. You, I mean your grandfather. Uh, I mean,
Speaker 1: well you live in this valley, but you know you
Speaker 1: you just got so much history here that's not normal
Speaker 1: I mean most people. I mean that's I think that's
Speaker 1: something that's unique to this region of the country too,
Speaker 1: is that there's I don't know. I don't see this
Speaker 1: in Arkansas. Well, papa's family came the Charlton's came in
Speaker 1: in the mid eighteen hundreds, and my dad's side of
Speaker 1: the family, uh, the Reeves side, his mother's side, came
Speaker 1: in very similar long time that the Crocketts came here.
Speaker 1: And I meant to Davy Crockett's family, and David Croctt
Speaker 1: was born in this same county where we're at here,
Speaker 1: in Green County, and his family owned a mill just
Speaker 1: about three or four miles over here on a creek
Speaker 1: going in the river. And when that when the Crockett
Speaker 1: people come in, it was very similar times that my
Speaker 1: dad's family came in. So yeah, I mean we've been
Speaker 1: here in generation after generation after generation. Yeah, and a
Speaker 1: lot of history and and a lot of tradition. But
Speaker 1: like we were discussing earlier, some traditions are really good. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah they are. Yeah. Well, hey, as we I want
Speaker 1: to give you an opportunity before we end to just
Speaker 1: say whatever you want about bear dogs and bear hunting.
Speaker 1: But before we do that, you told me some neat
Speaker 1: stories and I'm trying to uh, you told me some
Speaker 1: neat stories about your grandfather, UM, tell the story about
Speaker 1: him coming into town. This isn't related to bear hunting,
Speaker 1: but this is just well our our strain of plots,
Speaker 1: Houston Valley plots, UM, originated out of where my grandfather
Speaker 1: was born. He was born in Houston Valley. So Houston
Speaker 1: Valley is the place. Yes, it's a place. He was
Speaker 1: born there. And uh, he was thirteen years old before
Speaker 1: he ever went to Greenwood for the first time. All
Speaker 1: he had ever been to was a little country stores.
Speaker 1: And he said his he was shocked when he got
Speaker 1: the green Will because in his mind town was just
Speaker 1: a very large building, a bigger country store. He thought
Speaker 1: he was going to a bigger store. And he said
Speaker 1: he couldn't believe all the buildings in town. Huh, thirteen
Speaker 1: years old road in a wagon. Wow, that's amazing. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: Any other Neat family stories. You've told me something that
Speaker 1: I as you were telling me, I was like, I
Speaker 1: wish I could have recorded that. Um. I can't think
Speaker 1: of what they would exactly offhand, but I remember when
Speaker 1: you told me that, I was like thirteen years old
Speaker 1: before he ever went into town, and that was just
Speaker 1: right down here. This place was really geographically isolated. You know,
Speaker 1: the mountains kind of just isolated people. Well you told
Speaker 1: me this, you said, you said, the rich people lived
Speaker 1: down the river bottoms, the poor people lived up in
Speaker 1: these mountains. And uh, that's the ironic thing today about
Speaker 1: how much how expensive the mountain end is a local
Speaker 1: kid who wants to live here and work here and
Speaker 1: stay here. He can't even afford to buy a piece
Speaker 1: of property, hardly anymore. But the reason his ancestors were
Speaker 1: here is because nobody else literally wanted it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so now people are wanting to live in the
Speaker 1: mountains just for the recreational is the statics these mountains
Speaker 1: are spectacular. It was the worst ground possible for a farmer.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, it goes to show you just
Speaker 1: how much our values system has changed. And and this
Speaker 1: is just a progression of society, I suspect, But I mean,
Speaker 1: there was a time when aesthetics meant nothing. My dad's
Speaker 1: seventy years old and he tells me, he said, Clay,
Speaker 1: we used to not talk about views, and you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of land, like now you go buy a
Speaker 1: piece of land or you build your house in the
Speaker 1: mountains there in the Ozarks, It's like, man, I want
Speaker 1: a place where I have a beautiful view. Or land
Speaker 1: actually has more value if you've got a nice view
Speaker 1: and you can look down. And he said, well, used
Speaker 1: to not talk like that. People were a lot more dysfunctional,
Speaker 1: and so you know, it makes sense. I mean this,
Speaker 1: this is tough ground to just live in. I mean,
Speaker 1: to walk up to your dogs, you gotta walk up
Speaker 1: the hill Ben at Ben's house. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: you gotta put your truck and world drive to get
Speaker 1: his drive away half the time. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: tough to live here. You know what I mean. Well,
Speaker 1: we have a lot of first world problems. Now our
Speaker 1: our kids talk about the career they want. When our forefathers,
Speaker 1: I only wanted a job. I mean my path Ball
Speaker 1: worked at pet Milk Company from the time he was
Speaker 1: sixteen until he was sixty mh. And Uh, I was
Speaker 1: glad to just have a job. He didn't have the
Speaker 1: luxury of wanting a career or choosing a career. Oh no,
Speaker 1: the choice was work or not eat, and they preferred
Speaker 1: to eat. And he was happy and satisfied. He was
Speaker 1: one of the most content people I've ever known. And Uh,
Speaker 1: the principles that came out of that. I mean just
Speaker 1: I could sit here all day and talk about the
Speaker 1: things that him or my dad are some of the
Speaker 1: other old timers you know, believed in. And just just
Speaker 1: one example, when I would help my my papile built fins,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't allow you put your hands in your pockets.
Speaker 1: I mean he could be down on his knees driving
Speaker 1: a staple in the barbed wire and you were just
Speaker 1: waiting on him, you know what he needed next. And
Speaker 1: if he caught me one day with my hands in
Speaker 1: my pockets, and I mean just chewed me out rayly.
Speaker 1: And he was not that kind of person, he jim,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't want to you be wow. But it made
Speaker 1: him mad because he saw me standing there with my
Speaker 1: hands in my pockets. Because in his mind, if he
Speaker 1: had got caught with his hands in his pockets coming
Speaker 1: out of the depression, he would could have lost his
Speaker 1: fifties cent our job because so many other people wanted it.
Speaker 1: And he didn't want me going to work. Just the perception, yes,
Speaker 1: of being at work and in your hands, did not
Speaker 1: put your hands in your pockets. If somebody was working,
Speaker 1: he'd say, watch me, watch me, watch what I'm doing,
Speaker 1: and have what I need next. Yeah. And then my
Speaker 1: dad was fanatical about taking care of equipment and stuff.
Speaker 1: I mean, if if he bought something twenty years later,
Speaker 1: it would be as good as shape as it was
Speaker 1: when he bought it new, because he grew up poor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so those kinds of things. You know, I have
Speaker 1: had it much better than my grandpa had it. I
Speaker 1: had it much better than my dad had it. And uh,
Speaker 1: but I wouldn't trade I grew up for for anything. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 1: Sometimes options aren't necessarily beneficial when you think about, like
Speaker 1: all the options that we have now, I mean options
Speaker 1: in terms of career, where to live. I mean, like
Speaker 1: like the prosperity of of where we live, the time
Speaker 1: we live in has given us a lot of options.
Speaker 1: I mean even like what to have for dinner, who
Speaker 1: to marry, who to marry? You know, fifty sixty years ago,
Speaker 1: years ago, you knew three girls down the road and
Speaker 1: you married one of them and you were happy, and
Speaker 1: you raise kids, and you built a home and you
Speaker 1: had a job and you stayed married for seventy years.
Speaker 1: And now you can use e harmony dot com and
Speaker 1: get all the stars to line up and can't last
Speaker 1: six months. Yeah yeah, it's it's not about the process
Speaker 1: has the heart of the people, Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: Options aren't always good. Options create options create a whole
Speaker 1: another set of issues, you know. But but no, and
Speaker 1: I'll steer it right back into the bearhound world and
Speaker 1: that as we close, and I'm gonna give you you
Speaker 1: can be thinking about this, I'm gonna say, tell us
Speaker 1: a good bear hunting story to end it with. But
Speaker 1: this one I was gonna say is that these mountain
Speaker 1: people that built these lines and strains of plots and
Speaker 1: not just plots, any any line of bear dogs. Man,
Speaker 1: they didn't have the luxury of keeping a dog that
Speaker 1: wasn't producing game. They they didn't have that luxury. And
Speaker 1: so if they had a dog, that dog had a purpose.
Speaker 1: If that dog didn't fulfill that purpose, it was gone.
Speaker 1: And so they had these they they developed the foundations
Speaker 1: of these excellent lines of dogs that had all the stuff.
Speaker 1: And then today, to me, it looks like it feels
Speaker 1: like that we're kind of maybe have the option to
Speaker 1: even make that some of those lines better by the
Speaker 1: options that we do have. Because you can have a
Speaker 1: litteral pups and This is what I mean. You can
Speaker 1: have a litter pups. That female has nine puppies. You
Speaker 1: distribute those puppies to different people, and you're able to
Speaker 1: stay connected to those people just through technology, even if
Speaker 1: they live a long ways away. You're able to get
Speaker 1: reports on how they did. So you're able negotiate a
Speaker 1: little bit and breathed back into some better stuff. Maybe
Speaker 1: well back you're talking about breeding. Back several years ago,
Speaker 1: Steve Fielder, before Facebook, it was a thing. Steve Fielder
Speaker 1: had one of the first plot websites, plot dogs dot Com.
Speaker 1: I was still in Montana at that time, and I
Speaker 1: wrote a thing on there on Steve Fielder's website one time.
Speaker 1: It's pretty lengthy, but it was basically in praise of
Speaker 1: a good dog, and uh, there's lots of talk. There
Speaker 1: was lots of talk at that time about who had
Speaker 1: the phenomenal that was the word that was being used,
Speaker 1: Who had the phenomenal dogs? Who had them because people
Speaker 1: were just starting to connect through social media and everybody
Speaker 1: wants to know what everybody else had. So I I
Speaker 1: wrote this thing that on and you know, in praise
Speaker 1: of a good dog, because to me, when you're breeding dogs,
Speaker 1: that you're primarily looking for. Is not a phenomenon just
Speaker 1: by its very definition of phenomenon is rare. If it
Speaker 1: wasn't rare, it wouldn't be a phenomenon. Right, So if
Speaker 1: you have a lot of phenomenon, just's now it's normal.
Speaker 1: Now the title of your article A good dog, not
Speaker 1: a phenomenal dog, just a good dog right now. What
Speaker 1: you're looking for to me and breeding is consistency over
Speaker 1: a period of generations. Will your dogs catch what you
Speaker 1: want caught them? We didn't quite finish that conversation because
Speaker 1: people will talk things about like it's a dog's mouth,
Speaker 1: does it have a good mouth. Now, I don't personally
Speaker 1: like a silent trailer dog because I want to hear
Speaker 1: the race. That's to me, that's the enjoyable part of hunting.
Speaker 1: It's here in the race. So even if a silent
Speaker 1: dog is producing more, I still want to hear it,
Speaker 1: which I don't particularly think think to catch anymore. But um,
Speaker 1: but if a dog has a great mouth but he's
Speaker 1: not catching game, then the mouth it's like having a
Speaker 1: horn on a car with no engine. It's it's an
Speaker 1: add on, it's an extra, it's a it's good, but
Speaker 1: it's not the fundamental, but a lot of people are
Speaker 1: looking for the like a tree dog. What if what
Speaker 1: if a dog trees a D twenty barks a minute
Speaker 1: but can't catch game. But can't catch game? What I mean,
Speaker 1: what's the point of that dog? To me, he's useless.
Speaker 1: I mean he's completely useless. Yeah, and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a bar dog. To me, we were talking about traits.
Speaker 1: The tree aspect on a bar dog is not how
Speaker 1: many barks a minute he puts off, but will he
Speaker 1: stay tree till I get there? If he will stay
Speaker 1: treat until you get there, that's a good tree dog.
Speaker 1: So it doesn't matter if he's backed off the tree.
Speaker 1: I hear a lot of people talking about big game
Speaker 1: dogs and they say, well, he's not a real good
Speaker 1: he's not a real good tree dog. He'll back off
Speaker 1: the tree and sit down and look up. And I
Speaker 1: mean I even come from a coon hunting background, and
Speaker 1: I'm kind of like, well, as long as he's there
Speaker 1: and he's barking, well, it doesn't matter if he's standing
Speaker 1: on the tree or not. I can't speak for ever
Speaker 1: bear hunter, but to me, I think some of that
Speaker 1: probably flows out of the coon dog vernacular. Rubbing tree
Speaker 1: dog and stuff. A good A good tree dog to me,
Speaker 1: Number one is one it stays till I get there.
Speaker 1: Number two is one who barks till I get there.
Speaker 1: Don't have to be a hundred twenty barks a minute,
Speaker 1: but he needs to keep barking. If it's thirty barks
Speaker 1: a minute, but he will do it for six hours.
Speaker 1: If he's in a bad place, that's that's fun. Uh.
Speaker 1: But back and off the tree. I like a dog
Speaker 1: that stays back off the tree. A lot of bar
Speaker 1: dogs will back up a bank so he can look
Speaker 1: straight across at the bar and Uh. The good part
Speaker 1: about that to me, to some extent, is they stay
Speaker 1: out of trouble. See, there's a misperception that bare dogs
Speaker 1: are ill, and that's totally backwards because if and I
Speaker 1: and I'm not opposed to conut, and I'm four cnut
Speaker 1: and I enjoy it. You and I've talked about that
Speaker 1: this week. But if you have an ill coon dog
Speaker 1: in today's world, you're and you're hunting a wood lot.
Speaker 1: If you have trouble at the tree, you can be
Speaker 1: there in ten minutes. If you have an ill bared
Speaker 1: dog at the tree, you might not be there for
Speaker 1: five or six hours, depending on how hard it is
Speaker 1: to get to the tree. And if you've got an
Speaker 1: ill dog there, you just won't have dogs that are hurt.
Speaker 1: You'll have dogs that are dead. Yeah. Yeah, And so
Speaker 1: you cannot allow an ill tree dog to be part
Speaker 1: of your pack at all. He cannot be ill and
Speaker 1: a dog if you hunt in mixed packs, like if
Speaker 1: you've got buddies you hunt with are occasionally, you know,
Speaker 1: if you bar hunt, you're gonna end up hunt with
Speaker 1: a stranger somewhere and say he's got one it is
Speaker 1: a little rough on the tree. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: want mine, you know, fighting back and you know you
Speaker 1: don't want jumping and running. If he's sitting back, he's
Speaker 1: staying out of trouble. Back up, stay there and I
Speaker 1: get there, stay out of trouble. And because you know,
Speaker 1: on these bear trees, there's usually not gonna be just
Speaker 1: one dog. There's gonna be lots of dogs. So just
Speaker 1: for people that aren't used to this bear hunting, like,
Speaker 1: you're turning several a lot of dogs loose, but end
Speaker 1: us with a Can you think of an iconic bear
Speaker 1: hunting story from these mountains? If it's recent or old. Yeah.
Speaker 1: You before we get to that, you asked me if
Speaker 1: there was anything I wanted to say just in general,
Speaker 1: can touch on that before the story. Um, I'm an
Speaker 1: observer of people, and uh, through social media, you get
Speaker 1: to observe a lot of people who who hound hunt.
Speaker 1: And there's a few things that if I had the
Speaker 1: opportunity to say to people who were in hound hunting.
Speaker 1: The one of the things that I would say is this,
Speaker 1: it would be relax and learn to enjoy the experience
Speaker 1: as much as you enjoy the final product. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Because your life is so short, and if you spend
Speaker 1: your hunting career mad about something, frustrated about something, tore
Speaker 1: all the pieces about something, fighting with other people, you're
Speaker 1: gonna waste your life. And the whole purpose you're out
Speaker 1: there is to enjoy it. If it's not, I don't
Speaker 1: you're we eat the meat, but you can buy beef.
Speaker 1: We're there for the experience. Yeah. So if you're if
Speaker 1: you are the person who's ruining your own experiences because
Speaker 1: you can't deal with every little thing that happens, you're
Speaker 1: never gonna you probably ought to quit houn hunt. Because
Speaker 1: I grew up around people. Some of them were wired
Speaker 1: up so strong that they hunted all their life, but
Speaker 1: I'm not sure they enjoyed it as much as other people.
Speaker 1: But my path ball man, he enjoyed hunting as much
Speaker 1: as anybo there. There was better bar hunters than Barry trotting,
Speaker 1: but nobody enjoyed it more. So I think he was
Speaker 1: the winner. That's saying a lot right there. So learn
Speaker 1: to enjoy it. And the next thing I would say
Speaker 1: is this is, don't try to make your hounds an
Speaker 1: extension of who you are as a person in reference
Speaker 1: to your own pride. Mm hmm um. I think there's
Speaker 1: some people that their whole life has built around what
Speaker 1: their dogs do, and what happens there is they end
Speaker 1: up again not enjoying it and to making life so
Speaker 1: difficult on their hounds that their hounds can't enjoy being
Speaker 1: hounds either. But you know, you're who you are as
Speaker 1: a human being, and what kind of person you are
Speaker 1: is gonna tell a lot. But the way you deal
Speaker 1: with others and the way you deal with hunting and
Speaker 1: so and then to go along with that is and uh,
Speaker 1: maybe this is the pastor coming out in me. If
Speaker 1: you don't mind me throwing this out there, if it's
Speaker 1: not too far off ground is keep keep your your
Speaker 1: hound hunting in it's in its rightful place. Um prioritization. Yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: I know people are not listening to this podcast because
Speaker 1: they want to hear me preach at him. But there
Speaker 1: are some things in this life that are more important.
Speaker 1: Your wife's more important, and your kids are more important.
Speaker 1: And uh, I've seen a lot of destruction and my
Speaker 1: grandpa he tried to help some people along these lines.
Speaker 1: You know, you if you, if you'll keep it in
Speaker 1: this rightful place and its rightful's perspective, you can have
Speaker 1: a balanced life where you enjoy your hounds, and your
Speaker 1: wife can enjoy you having your hounds, and your kids
Speaker 1: can enjoy you having those two. And uh, you know, I,
Speaker 1: I know it's foolish to say this, but I see
Speaker 1: these memes that these boys put on Facebook that it'll
Speaker 1: show them throwing their girlfriend off a cliff. You know,
Speaker 1: she told me it was either mere in the hounds
Speaker 1: and you see her falling off a cliff. You know.
Speaker 1: I know there's probably some humor in that for a kid,
Speaker 1: but as a dad, if I look at that and
Speaker 1: that's my daughter going off the cliff because some some
Speaker 1: boy has that mentality towards my daughter. He's not the
Speaker 1: right guy. There's no perspective whatsoever there. And and I
Speaker 1: say that because at some point, if that's all your
Speaker 1: life is, you're not gonna be happy with that. There's
Speaker 1: gonna know it will be no satisfaction for you. And that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said that, because that's that's the the
Speaker 1: key to life is balanced and understanding the priorities. And
Speaker 1: I think it goes not just for hound hunters, but
Speaker 1: for anybody that is passionate about hunting, or for really
Speaker 1: passionate about anything. But guys that are passionate about hunting
Speaker 1: ten to be can be eccentric and so focused on
Speaker 1: this one aspect of their life. That's great. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you said that about the memes because I
Speaker 1: think that every time I would never in my life
Speaker 1: post meme or something like that. I mean, because obviously
Speaker 1: it might be funny, but there's truth behind what's being
Speaker 1: said and stuff like that. And and your family has
Speaker 1: got to be your family. There's there's a lot, there's
Speaker 1: a lot that's in line above that. But and hound
Speaker 1: honey is all encompassing. I think that to somebody that's
Speaker 1: not been around the hound world, what what Tracy is
Speaker 1: saying is that it is true. Is that to have
Speaker 1: twenty hounds in your backyard and to hunt those dogs,
Speaker 1: and to breathe those dogs and care for those dogs,
Speaker 1: and to have them for decades kinda is can be
Speaker 1: all encompassing. It can dominate your life. It can in
Speaker 1: family plays a major role in that deal there. And uh,
Speaker 1: which this is a totally different subject, but I'm reminded
Speaker 1: of it as we talk about these things, just random things,
Speaker 1: you know that I would want to say about the
Speaker 1: all matters. And I said this at the supper table
Speaker 1: maybe last night. UM, that states are trying to figure
Speaker 1: out how to get more kids in the hunting because
Speaker 1: hunting number hundred numbers are dwindling. There's very few bar
Speaker 1: hunters left in East Tennessee and western North Carolina MM
Speaker 1: compared to what it was years ago. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: it's going downhill. They won't have to outlaw bar hunting.
Speaker 1: There ain't gonna be nobody left to do it. And uh,
Speaker 1: I believe that part of the reason for that is
Speaker 1: because kids are being raised too soft. And I believe
Speaker 1: hunters are partly responsible for that. The men and I
Speaker 1: was raised around. I mean they they were good to me,
Speaker 1: and I tagged along with them, but they expected me,
Speaker 1: as a kid, you know, to participate not just in
Speaker 1: the shooting, but also in the work leading the dogs,
Speaker 1: handling the dogs, helping the dogs, feeding the dogs, taking
Speaker 1: care of everything, uh, you know, taking dogs into the
Speaker 1: person who had found the track and so forth. And
Speaker 1: today what you see is the adults who are just
Speaker 1: obsessed with getting their five year old, six year old,
Speaker 1: seven year old kid in there to shoot their first animal,
Speaker 1: when that kid has no clue what's taken place in
Speaker 1: the in the totality of things, and once they've gone
Speaker 1: in and killed it, what's left for him. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: actually think we we probably are not building the kind
Speaker 1: of kids that can be bare hunters now. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: it takes a certain kind of person, certain kind of
Speaker 1: mindset that can handle that day after day business of
Speaker 1: dealing with hounds and mountains and swamps and other things
Speaker 1: in the uh. Even and we're making things so easy
Speaker 1: on the kids, and we don't have any expectation for
Speaker 1: them to work hard and to do their part and
Speaker 1: to wait for the reward. Yeah, yeah, it's it's kind
Speaker 1: of the trend of modern culture. It's brought itself into hunting.
Speaker 1: Is that. Hey, the way that we recruit these kids
Speaker 1: as we make it really easy for him. And I'm
Speaker 1: with you, but we've got to have a hunter recruitment.
Speaker 1: We've got to involve our kids. But oh man, I
Speaker 1: could do a whole podcast on how I've what I've
Speaker 1: done with my kids. And I think I've made some mistakes,
Speaker 1: but I think I've also done some things right. Um,
Speaker 1: But I'm a hundercent agreement with you on what you're saying.
Speaker 1: I mean, you got you gotta make it. It was
Speaker 1: honey was hard for me growing up. I know that
Speaker 1: it was. My dad did not make it easy for us,
Speaker 1: and he kind of ran my brothers off from it
Speaker 1: in some ways. Um, But but that being said, it
Speaker 1: it wasn't his fault. I mean, it's just just this
Speaker 1: is an over an exaggeration just to prove a point.
Speaker 1: But the way I would maybe explain it is you
Speaker 1: got kids that have killed multiple animals that couldn't tell
Speaker 1: you what a white oak was. I wouldn't know a
Speaker 1: white oak from a popular They don't know anything about
Speaker 1: the woods. They don't know anything about the game. They
Speaker 1: they are just handed to the end result on a
Speaker 1: platter by people who have worked their whole life to
Speaker 1: get there. It's a great example, and I think they
Speaker 1: need to be told when they're young. Son, this is
Speaker 1: important to our family. This is how we do our business.
Speaker 1: You help with the dogs, you lead, things, you feed, things,
Speaker 1: you take care of and at some point it'll be right,
Speaker 1: and I'll let you know when that's good. Well, hey,
Speaker 1: I'll give this offer to you again. I think the
Speaker 1: one that I will mention is being the first bear
Speaker 1: Bend got to kill. Since we're talking about kids. Uh,
Speaker 1: we were living in Montana. I pastored out there, and
Speaker 1: in Montana that time, you couldn't kill big game until
Speaker 1: you were twelve. So we were gonna be moving out
Speaker 1: of Montana, uh in late fall, and the big game
Speaker 1: seasons were opening, and Uh he had turned twelve the
Speaker 1: previous December, so I was able to get him start hunting.
Speaker 1: He killed his first mule deer, buck, killed his first elk.
Speaker 1: I took him pheasant hunting, and I had a nice
Speaker 1: English pointer. He went three for three on the first
Speaker 1: three pheasants had ever come up in front of him,
Speaker 1: and uh, obviously I was just tickled to death with that.
Speaker 1: And uh we moved back to Tennessee and we got
Speaker 1: back here and if I if I remember right, it
Speaker 1: was the last day of bear season. It was on
Speaker 1: a Wednesday, And I remember it was on a Wednesday
Speaker 1: because we went to church that night and most people
Speaker 1: had already used their vacation. Up. The hunter numbers up
Speaker 1: on the mountain were, you know, pretty low, and it
Speaker 1: was just it was me and Ben and my pap
Speaker 1: Ball And at the time he was like probably seventy eight,
Speaker 1: seventy seventy eight somewhere right in there. I'd have to
Speaker 1: calculate that Ben was twelve, just getting ready to turn thirteen.
Speaker 1: And Uh. I was up on a place called Kennedy
Speaker 1: Cabin and I walked out a trail called the fires Gold.
Speaker 1: On the way out, I just had one dog with me.
Speaker 1: I was just looking to see if we could find
Speaker 1: something to turn loose. On the way. I didn't find anything.
Speaker 1: Turned around and it's coming back and struck one red
Speaker 1: hot so crossed behind me. So I called on the
Speaker 1: radio and I told Ben to bring me. I just
Speaker 1: think we had maybe four dogs with us that day
Speaker 1: something like that, told him to bring me the other dogs. Well,
Speaker 1: my papal, who was in his upper seventies there, mid
Speaker 1: upper seventies, came with him leading dogs, and just us
Speaker 1: three and UH turn loose. The bear went down off
Speaker 1: the Camp Creek side of the mountain. I won't go
Speaker 1: into a lot of details because the listeners wouldn't know
Speaker 1: what I was talking about anyways, but it made a
Speaker 1: huge loop around the side of the mountain, turn and
Speaker 1: came back and crossed not far from where we had
Speaker 1: turned loose, dropped on the opposite side of the mountain,
Speaker 1: and Uh, we were still up on top. And just
Speaker 1: so happened that bear was going to try to cross
Speaker 1: the road headed towards North Carolina, and we had some
Speaker 1: brands that had come up behind us, and they were
Speaker 1: able to get block the road and get it turned
Speaker 1: and it went back up the mountain. They packed on
Speaker 1: a few dogs there and we got a tree. So
Speaker 1: we went down the road and came back up and Uh,
Speaker 1: I went up to the tree. It was up on
Speaker 1: sort of a steep face, and I was at the
Speaker 1: base of the tree, and Ben had been brought in
Speaker 1: by my cousin Benny Laws and was with another man,
Speaker 1: I know Dolphins Cutaw. I was there. I know Bill
Speaker 1: Carter was there, and he was able to shoot the
Speaker 1: bear from the bottom and he shot it with uh.
Speaker 1: My dad had bought a Marlin lever action and thirty
Speaker 1: five Remington was his first rifle he bought in the
Speaker 1: early seventies. And I don't know how many bad Daddy
Speaker 1: killed with that gun and several and so Ben was
Speaker 1: able to kill his first bear with that same rifle.
Speaker 1: And that was probably my favorite day I've ever been
Speaker 1: in the woods. Yeah, of any any hunting I've ever done.
Speaker 1: Just because my grandfather, me and now my son, we're
Speaker 1: all there together, you know, hunting the same dogs you
Speaker 1: know that I grew up with. That's great. That's great. Hey,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for hosting me the last two days.
Speaker 1: I know if we'd, if I'd been able to stay
Speaker 1: a bit a little bit longer, we'd probably would have
Speaker 1: better two days. It's not much time, ye, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for having us. You can really impress just
Speaker 1: everything you guys are doing. So Hey, thanks for listening
Speaker 1: to the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. Check out Bear Hunting Magazine.
Speaker 1: We're the only print Bear Hunting magazine in the world
Speaker 1: where our twentieth year Yeah, that's great. Yeah, coming into
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, we actually haven't well it's the it's the
Speaker 1: it's the nineteen volume, but the twenty into the twentieth
Speaker 1: year Barren Magazine. And in this January February issue, which
Speaker 1: we got to print three days ago, that's why I
Speaker 1: was able to come on this hunt. I had to
Speaker 1: get it to print, went to print on Monday. Is
Speaker 1: the story of Charleton's Houston Valley Cub, which was dog
Speaker 1: that just passed away a month ago, and we did
Speaker 1: a legendary barhound article on one of these Houston Valley
Speaker 1: dogs that was being and Tracy's one of their one
Speaker 1: of their favorite hounds, and just uh so, anyway, there's
Speaker 1: an article about that. You'll be able to read more
Speaker 1: and uh so check out Barony Magazine, check out our
Speaker 1: YouTube channel as always saying keep the wild places wild
Speaker 1: because that's where the bears live.