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Speaker 1: Outrageously Dependable. My name is Clay Nukeoman. 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 North
Speaker 1: American wilderness to bear. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation,
Speaker 1: who will also bring you into some of the wildest
Speaker 1: country on the planet Chasing Battery. On episode fifteen of
Speaker 1: the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast, we go on a live
Speaker 1: coon hunt with myself and a good friend of mine
Speaker 1: named Jonathan Webster. We take my two plot hounds, Fern
Speaker 1: and Jed here in the Ozark Mountains. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: the history of coon hunting, the cultural significance of coon hunting,
Speaker 1: the conservation aspects of coon hunting, the how to what
Speaker 1: we're actually doing inside of coon hunting, and then we'll
Speaker 1: take you along to a tree where we got a coon.
Speaker 1: How does this hunt time with bear hunting. These dogs
Speaker 1: of mine I got from a bear dog breeder, and
Speaker 1: these dogs their whole family history for a long ways back.
Speaker 1: We're bear dogs, but I've trained them to be coon
Speaker 1: dogs and we have had a tremendous time the last
Speaker 1: four years hunting these dogs. You're gonna enjoy this podcast.
Speaker 1: It's something different. Stay tuned to the end. Don't knock it,
Speaker 1: tell you try it. Okay, Hey, we're a hundred and
Speaker 1: thirty yards directly below him. I'm not gonna lie to you.
Speaker 1: That's a rough piece of talk to him. Third to
Speaker 1: talk to him. Good job, good job yet. Welcome to
Speaker 1: the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. Tonight. We are going on
Speaker 1: a coon hunt. The date, what's the day, Jonathan? So
Speaker 1: he's a fifth. Today is January and it is about
Speaker 1: six fifty in the evening, and we are we are
Speaker 1: loaded up and I've got with me a long time friend,
Speaker 1: Jonathan Webster. Jonathan, give us, give us just a little
Speaker 1: introduction of yourself. Oh man, I am really excited to
Speaker 1: be here tonight. Never been hunting before. Obviously we've been
Speaker 1: friends for a long time, but uh, I've never been
Speaker 1: hunting before, and really really excited. Left goals also being
Speaker 1: on a podcast Life Goals Sam. Well, you know, it's
Speaker 1: kind of one of these deals where Jonathan and I've
Speaker 1: we've been friends for a long time, but we've we've
Speaker 1: never hunted together. And just last last week we were
Speaker 1: looking for some time to get together and I said, Hey,
Speaker 1: let's go coon hunting and he was like, tell me
Speaker 1: when and I'll be there very very much like that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so this is a great actually a great opportunity
Speaker 1: to talk about coon hunting raccoon hunting, and what we're
Speaker 1: gonna do on this podcast is I'm gonna I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk about basically two separate things that about coon hunting,
Speaker 1: and I'll tell you what they are. And then we're
Speaker 1: gonna go on a coon hunt and we're gonna record.
Speaker 1: We're gonna record some of the kind of live action
Speaker 1: of the hunt. And uh, and this is the spiel.
Speaker 1: We got dog collars for the dash of the truck.
Speaker 1: This is the spill that I give every single time
Speaker 1: that I take new people coon hunting. And I really
Speaker 1: really enjoy taking new people because it's a you know,
Speaker 1: if you're trying to take somebody deer hunting. Jonathan, first
Speaker 1: of all, they've they've got to have their own weapon.
Speaker 1: They've got to be proficient with that weapon. They've they've
Speaker 1: got to be prepared to deal with large amounts of
Speaker 1: meat if they kill a deer. I mean not everybody's
Speaker 1: really prepared or ready to do that. They've got to
Speaker 1: have patience, they've that. You know, the seasons are more
Speaker 1: are aren't as liberal as say a small game season, okay,
Speaker 1: because like the deer seasons would be much shorter. A
Speaker 1: small game season, like coon season here in Arkansas is
Speaker 1: is nine months long. There's actually only three months of
Speaker 1: the year that you cannot hunt raccoons in Arkansas. I
Speaker 1: didn't even know there was a season. But yeah, I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know plenty of people who as soon as it's
Speaker 1: deer season, they just jet from work. You never see
Speaker 1: you don't see him for you know, ten days, and
Speaker 1: so I didn't even know, right, And so so this
Speaker 1: is a this is a great entry point for people
Speaker 1: to experience hunting. And you don't you know, when you
Speaker 1: coon hunt, it's a it's a it's safe in the
Speaker 1: sense of like I take a lot of kids coon hunting,
Speaker 1: and I tell their parents, you know, my friends, my
Speaker 1: my children's friends come coon hunting with me, and I'm like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is safe. Friends, friends, your children's friends. Oh no,
Speaker 1: your children's y Yeah yeah, children's friends or friends children there,
Speaker 1: we gon go either way, take him coon hunting. And
Speaker 1: a lot of times people that have never interacted with hunting,
Speaker 1: I think that it's it's unsafe. They think that their
Speaker 1: kid is going to be running around with a gun
Speaker 1: at night, and I'm like, no, no, no, this is
Speaker 1: this is actually very safe. There only one gun. I'll
Speaker 1: be carrying the gun. Um. And that's pretty unique to
Speaker 1: hunting because in most times hunting, everybody needs a gun
Speaker 1: butt in a not in coon hunting. And uh, and
Speaker 1: we'll describe exactly what we are doing. But it's a
Speaker 1: good entry level sport. And this is what I truly
Speaker 1: love about coon hunting, Jonathan. That's in contrast to my
Speaker 1: big game hunting, is that big game hunting is typically
Speaker 1: a solo sport. Even even though even though I have
Speaker 1: all these people that I connect with on a relational
Speaker 1: level inside of bear hunting and deer hunting and turkey
Speaker 1: hunting and all these different things, when you go on
Speaker 1: a bear hunt, you're by yourself. Yeah, I mean, now
Speaker 1: you may be in camp with people, but I mean
Speaker 1: we're actually out there hunting. You're by yourself, man, coon
Speaker 1: hunting I have taken last week, we took a group
Speaker 1: of maybe seven or eight people, three or four ladies,
Speaker 1: ladies that you would know, uh, that you would never
Speaker 1: expect to go coon hunting. My wife was there with us,
Speaker 1: and my kids were there, and there were seven or
Speaker 1: eight of us. I think last year we went on
Speaker 1: what we called the Cousins coon Hunt, which was all
Speaker 1: my my wife, sister in law, and I think there
Speaker 1: was seventeen of us that went, and I mean it
Speaker 1: was just a blast. You get out in the dark,
Speaker 1: you turn your hounds loose, and you're able to talk,
Speaker 1: you're able to converse, you're not you don't have to
Speaker 1: be quiet, you don't have to worry about your scent,
Speaker 1: and most types of big game hunting there's it's really
Speaker 1: there's really more stress involved because you gotta do a
Speaker 1: whole lot of things right right to kill a deer,
Speaker 1: to kill a bear, you know, there's a lot more
Speaker 1: at stake. That's actually been an intimidation point for me,
Speaker 1: as someone who does has no real exposure or entry
Speaker 1: into the hunting world. To like want to dip atoe
Speaker 1: in it that knowing that there's like a lot on
Speaker 1: the line that I could mess up for somebody else's shot.
Speaker 1: So like that's something that, uh, that's that's cool, that
Speaker 1: that's not a factor here. Yeah. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a term that that houndsmen have you used for
Speaker 1: I don't know how long, but what we're doing tonight
Speaker 1: is what you'd call a pleasure hunt, and that that
Speaker 1: phrase may not make sense unless you're a houndsman that
Speaker 1: you know, if we if we tree a coon or
Speaker 1: if we don't, it's really not the issue. It's not
Speaker 1: like we're out here trying to you know, three fifteen
Speaker 1: coons and sell the hides and make a living for
Speaker 1: our family. This is a pleasure hunt. Pleasure hunt we're
Speaker 1: doing for fun, just purely fun. And obviously other types
Speaker 1: of hunting is enjoyable and fun, but there's something about
Speaker 1: turn to loose a hound at night that's a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. So here's what we're gonna talk about, Jonathan.
Speaker 1: There's two things I want to tell you about. I
Speaker 1: want to talk to you about plot hounds and this
Speaker 1: is I'm gonna talk to you like you're a ten
Speaker 1: year old. That's basically that's my hunting age. Actually that's
Speaker 1: your hunting age. Well, when when these kids come with me,
Speaker 1: like the life has to be interpreted or or you
Speaker 1: don't understand it. I mean, it's like walking into an
Speaker 1: art gallery and if you saw that same piece of
Speaker 1: art out of context in somebody's garage, you might walk
Speaker 1: by it and not realize that that's a world famous
Speaker 1: piece of art that has some intrinsic beauty that is extraordinary.
Speaker 1: So to me, on a coon hunt, you could be
Speaker 1: fooled into thinking that all that these dogs are just
Speaker 1: a diamond dozen and we just turn them loose, and
Speaker 1: coons are diamond dozen't and they just run out there
Speaker 1: and tryer coon and we go and shoot it and
Speaker 1: go home, and we were coon hunters. But actually it's
Speaker 1: a complex sport that takes a lot of dedication. It's
Speaker 1: taken decades and decades of breeding in these hounds to
Speaker 1: get them to do what they want. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of cultural value inside of coon hunting that I think
Speaker 1: some coon hunters don't even recognize. And so we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about We're gonna talk about ploth hounds and my
Speaker 1: specific dogs history of plot hounds and what they why
Speaker 1: I've got these dogs because this is a bear hunting
Speaker 1: magazine podcast, and I'm gonna tie these dogs into bear hunting,
Speaker 1: even though these dogs have never been on bear number two.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about the way that we're hunting here
Speaker 1: in the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, with with dogs and
Speaker 1: with hounds, and and we'll talk will weave in some
Speaker 1: of the cultural significance of of raccoon hunting, Okay, And
Speaker 1: I think we'll maybe start there is that in the South,
Speaker 1: raccoon you know, coon dog is kind of a culturally
Speaker 1: iconic and has this like special place in people's hearts
Speaker 1: in real communities. You know, coon dog, coon do oh man,
Speaker 1: he's got a good coon dog. Well, at one time
Speaker 1: the coon hide was worth up to twenty five dollars
Speaker 1: in the in the in the seventies, even up to
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, a coon hide, Jonathan would have been
Speaker 1: worth twenty five dollars. That was during a time period
Speaker 1: when the average poor Southerner was probably making about three
Speaker 1: dollars and fifty cents an hour. Oh Man, And I
Speaker 1: could I could be wrong in my I did some
Speaker 1: research a long time ago, and that's what I recall,
Speaker 1: but you knows, was a lot of money in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy for somebody that was probably making maybe twenty five
Speaker 1: dollars a day. Okay, you get a couple of coons,
Speaker 1: you got you got a couple of days worth. You
Speaker 1: had a good coon dog that you could take out
Speaker 1: a couple of nights a week in the winter and
Speaker 1: tree three coons, four coons, one coon man. You you
Speaker 1: might make a month's wage, you know at the salt
Speaker 1: you know, compared to what you're making at the sawmill
Speaker 1: from this coon dog. And so this dog all of
Speaker 1: a sudden had some real value in that family. He
Speaker 1: became like a working piece of equipment. And in in
Speaker 1: the in the further you go back in history. In
Speaker 1: in American history, fur has been has gone up and
Speaker 1: down in value, but I mean back in the eighteen
Speaker 1: hundreds and all the way through the nineteen seventies when
Speaker 1: fur prices kind of plummeted because the anti hunting communities
Speaker 1: influence on the fur trade. So it's not that way anymore.
Speaker 1: It's no fur today. These coons that we're hunting there week,
Speaker 1: they they do have some market value, but they'd be
Speaker 1: worth about probably two dollars of pelt. Wow, dramatic change. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so these hides aren't worth money anymore now. In
Speaker 1: different parts of the country, Jonathan, they would be worth
Speaker 1: more like if you killed if you took a coon
Speaker 1: way up in some of the northern states, the pelt
Speaker 1: quality would be a whole lot better than the pelt
Speaker 1: quality here in Arkansas because of the temperature, it's just
Speaker 1: not cold enough here and so our coon's don't have
Speaker 1: the fur density that northern colon would have. But you
Speaker 1: see where I'm going with the cultural value that came
Speaker 1: from a coon dog. Okay, And obviously it's kind of
Speaker 1: been a you know, there's a stigma and coon hunters
Speaker 1: that these are just like backwoods hillbillies, and you know
Speaker 1: they were and they were. These were people that were
Speaker 1: trying to scratch out a living from the resources that
Speaker 1: they had, you know, and that's what I that's what
Speaker 1: I like about it. And uh So to be a
Speaker 1: coon hunter today is I think kind of a unique thing.
Speaker 1: And there's a strong coon hunting culture very much so
Speaker 1: alive all over the country where there's raccoons, and uh
Speaker 1: there's a big competition coon hunting culture, which I'm not
Speaker 1: really into, but I have competition coon hunted some but
Speaker 1: but that's that's not a focus the reason, and I
Speaker 1: want to jump right to the conservation side of why
Speaker 1: we do what we do. And this is what I
Speaker 1: tell all the kids that hunt with us. Coon are
Speaker 1: they are nest predators. So one of the biggest challenges
Speaker 1: we have right now and Arkansas is that we don't
Speaker 1: have any turkeys, and coons are notorious nest predators, and
Speaker 1: turkeys lather eggs on the ground, and so by removing coons,
Speaker 1: you are given a chance for a nest of turkey
Speaker 1: polts to survive. Um coons are because they don't have
Speaker 1: value anymore, that very few people hunt them and trap them.
Speaker 1: And so basically there is an unnatural amount of coons
Speaker 1: in almost every place as compared to natural coon population
Speaker 1: patterns that would have been here pre civilization, pre European
Speaker 1: civilization in North America. So basically, by having farms, and
Speaker 1: by having trash cans, and by having chicken coops, and
Speaker 1: by having all the things that we've done to this place,
Speaker 1: there's a ton of coons. You know. It is fascinating
Speaker 1: how hunting works on a conservation level. That's one of
Speaker 1: the that's one of the first things that I remember
Speaker 1: you saying about hunting was that was the history of
Speaker 1: Boone and Crockett, I believe, and incentivizing taking older males
Speaker 1: out of the population. And and I had no idea
Speaker 1: about that. I had heard many times on wherever, you know,
Speaker 1: hunters called themselves conservationists, and that I never understood that.
Speaker 1: But that's cool to see that. It even goes to like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, it's a raccoon of varmat, of varmat
Speaker 1: level arm there's my knowledge. You know, there's a there's
Speaker 1: a tenant of the North American model for wildlife conservation,
Speaker 1: and it's called non frivolous use. So these would be
Speaker 1: like the ethics of the North American model for wildlife
Speaker 1: conservation that basically our whole hunting culture in North America
Speaker 1: is built around, and people do this and they don't
Speaker 1: even know. People have this built inside of them and
Speaker 1: they don't even really know where it came from. But
Speaker 1: non frivolous use, which means that any one of these
Speaker 1: hunting dads out here would say to their kids, if
Speaker 1: you shoot it, you're gonna skin it. You're gonna use it.
Speaker 1: You're gonna eat it. Now. With coon, we don't eat coon.
Speaker 1: I have eaten coon, but typically you're not eating eating coon.
Speaker 1: Coon is a predator. Typically we don't eat predators. Okay,
Speaker 1: typically for you can it's like they're edible, but that's
Speaker 1: not We're not killing this coon for meat. We will.
Speaker 1: If we kill a coon tonight, I will skin it
Speaker 1: and I will use that hide for personal use. I
Speaker 1: get the hide tanned out if it's a nice hide,
Speaker 1: and give it as a gift or use it in
Speaker 1: some way. Um. But even if we didn't, we would
Speaker 1: still be justified because we just need to kill coon's.
Speaker 1: We just need to kill coons a population. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.
Speaker 1: This guy that we're hunting on a piece of private
Speaker 1: land out here, and I texted him just a minute
Speaker 1: ago and said, hey, we're gonna coon hunt it on
Speaker 1: your place tonight is exact words where get them all?
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a landowner that's trying to manage
Speaker 1: for turkey. He's trying to manage for quail. Quail or
Speaker 1: ground nesting birds, and coons are varmints. They will find
Speaker 1: and get into everything. They'll destroy turkey, gigs and nest,
Speaker 1: and so there is a massive conservation aspect to coon
Speaker 1: hunting aside from it just being fun and we enjoy it,
Speaker 1: and it's a cultural experience to go on a coon hunt,
Speaker 1: so there's a lot to it. Okay. So that's that
Speaker 1: kind of gives some history of of why we can
Speaker 1: number two plothounds. I want to tell you a story
Speaker 1: about treehounds. Most people don't understand treehounds unless they have
Speaker 1: some connection to the hound world. So it seems like
Speaker 1: treehounds are different than plothounds. Well, okay, jumping ahead, plot
Speaker 1: hoound is a tree hunt. So a plothhound is a
Speaker 1: breed of dog. Okay, plothhound is a is a u
Speaker 1: k C registered breed of dog. And that's what I've
Speaker 1: got back here. I've got two registered plothounds in the
Speaker 1: back of my truck. Um. But these plothhounds are tree dogs.
Speaker 1: So tree dog would be a characteristic of a dog
Speaker 1: that would describe its action and behavior. So when you're
Speaker 1: hunting a raccoon, what we're doing is we're turning these
Speaker 1: dogs a little and they are going out and going
Speaker 1: hunting and looking for where a coon this very night
Speaker 1: has climbed out of a tree and gone out about
Speaker 1: his business, walking down creeks, walking down ridge, just looking
Speaker 1: for acorns, catching, you know, whatever he can catch to
Speaker 1: eat or find to eat. And he's leaving scent right now.
Speaker 1: The coon that we're gonna tree here in an hour
Speaker 1: leaving scent somewhere. And these dogs go out and find
Speaker 1: that scent. And when they find that scent, they have
Speaker 1: this instinct to trail it up. Now, what makes a
Speaker 1: hound hound, now, pay attention, young tenure over, is that
Speaker 1: a hound barks on the track when it smells scent.
Speaker 1: There are many dogs that are trail dogs that do
Speaker 1: not bark on the track, and they are typically not
Speaker 1: they're not hounds. Like there's cur dogs and fice dogs
Speaker 1: that are tree dogs. Okay, they trail stuff, but they
Speaker 1: don't bark on the track very little. So the characteristic
Speaker 1: of a hound is that when he smells sent he
Speaker 1: lets you know he's found it, okay, and you have
Speaker 1: to train that or is that just that's just inside
Speaker 1: of him and has been for a long long time. Um,
Speaker 1: So they trail this. They're trailing this coon, trailling this
Speaker 1: coon er er, we're listening to him er or or
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, that coon knows he's being chased,
Speaker 1: and he goes up a tree. The dogs get to
Speaker 1: the tree, and they smell up that tree, and they
Speaker 1: circle the tree to make sure he didn't jump out,
Speaker 1: and they decide that he's up that tree. A tree
Speaker 1: dog will stay at that tree and bark and tell
Speaker 1: his master gets there. That is in contrast to a
Speaker 1: running hound. Okay, so treehound barks at the tree, stays there,
Speaker 1: and that is a beautiful, wonderful thing. I mean, like,
Speaker 1: I don't know what would be an example, Jonathan, is
Speaker 1: something that that you would just be like a contoisseur
Speaker 1: of that you would just be like, this is a
Speaker 1: beautiful thing. Oh man, I don't even know a good
Speaker 1: pay a good podcast. Yes, well, a tree dog is
Speaker 1: a beautiful thing because they're hard to come by, and
Speaker 1: not just because you've got a you know, a breed
Speaker 1: of dog like plot that's that are typically tree dogs.
Speaker 1: It actually doesn't mean they're gonna be a good tree dog.
Speaker 1: Inside of that breed. There's gonna be variations. There's gonna
Speaker 1: be some dogs that are really strong tree dogs. Like
Speaker 1: when an animal goes up a tree, they start barking
Speaker 1: and they'll stay there for ten hours. Uh. Other dogs
Speaker 1: might you know, smell it couldn't go up a tree
Speaker 1: and might bark around there for twenty minutes and then
Speaker 1: peel off and want to go hunting. But here's here's
Speaker 1: the Here's the thing about a running dog, a running
Speaker 1: hound is that when he smells sit on the ground,
Speaker 1: he barks. When he smells where that game has gone
Speaker 1: up a tree, He's like, well, shoot, he read up
Speaker 1: a tree. I guess I'll go find something. And and
Speaker 1: and so that's a pretty common typehound that people use
Speaker 1: for different things. For running foxes, for running coles, for
Speaker 1: running game that does not climb a tree. You don't
Speaker 1: need a tree dog, right, And so these are tree
Speaker 1: dogs and that that is that is valuable. And these dogs,
Speaker 1: specifically our plothounds. And this is where I'm gonna tie plots. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tie this coon hunt back into bear hunting.
Speaker 1: Is that these dogs come from a long, long line
Speaker 1: of bear and mountain lion hounds. Now have I told
Speaker 1: you that before I knew that you had gone to
Speaker 1: to look at a dog in like another state some
Speaker 1: months ago, and I assumed that there would be a
Speaker 1: reason for that some sort of pedigree or something. But right, well,
Speaker 1: so when you're talking about a coon dog, like there
Speaker 1: there's certain mammals that we chase with hounds that climb trees, raccoons, bears,
Speaker 1: and mountain lines. And there's some some characteristics that are
Speaker 1: similar between dogs that would chase those animals like pretty much. Um,
Speaker 1: and and and there's in each of those species of
Speaker 1: animals that you're trying to trying to chase, there's going
Speaker 1: to be there's gonna be characteristics and a dog that
Speaker 1: you need really strong that you don't in others. Okay,
Speaker 1: and here's where I'm getting at Fern and Jedi, because
Speaker 1: my two plots male and female. Ferns four years old.
Speaker 1: Jeti's two or three. I think he's coming on three. Um.
Speaker 1: All of their genealogy back for generations have been bear
Speaker 1: in mountainin dogs, a few of them coon dogs in Kansas.
Speaker 1: And I got these dogs almost on accident. I had
Speaker 1: written a legendary bearhound column, the very first one for
Speaker 1: Bear Hunting magazine. We started a column called the Legendary
Speaker 1: Bearhound Column because I wanted to include more hound content
Speaker 1: in the magazine, and I needed content that I could
Speaker 1: create myself. That like I could be that I didn't
Speaker 1: have to go on a bear hunt a cow on
Speaker 1: the side of the road just did you look, Oh
Speaker 1: my goodness as a cow out in the ozark Um.
Speaker 1: I needed content that I could create, and so we
Speaker 1: started this legendary bearhound series, and I think we've made
Speaker 1: like we've written twenty five legendary bearhound articles. The very
Speaker 1: first legendary barhound article I wrote was about a guy
Speaker 1: named Steve Heard and his line of plots called Bluff
Speaker 1: Creek Plots, and Steve Heard lived in Protection, Kansas. I
Speaker 1: called Steve Heard I'd heard about him and told him
Speaker 1: what I was doing. I said, I want to write
Speaker 1: a story about one of your old dogs. We wrote
Speaker 1: a story about a dog named bear Path Gunner. Remember
Speaker 1: that bear Path Gunner in the nineteen seventies was one
Speaker 1: of the was a national, nationally known bear dog that
Speaker 1: just people just knew about and wanted to breed their
Speaker 1: dogs too, and he was just a great dog. Well,
Speaker 1: these dogs, both of these dogs right here in the
Speaker 1: back of my truck, have bear Path Gunner in their
Speaker 1: ten generation pedigrees. Like I don't even want to say
Speaker 1: how many times, but like forty times or something. Uh,
Speaker 1: and I somebody's gonna call me and say that was wrong. Basically,
Speaker 1: this is a line bred strain of plot hounds, which
Speaker 1: means they when they find a good dog, they want
Speaker 1: it over and over and over in that lineage. And
Speaker 1: so these dogs come strong from the Bluff Creek and
Speaker 1: Shamrock line of plots. Okay, Well, I didn't want to
Speaker 1: bear hunt with hounds. Uh, we can't do it here
Speaker 1: in Arkansas legally, and I never have. And but I
Speaker 1: wanted to have my fingers in the barehound world. So
Speaker 1: I got dogs out of this real good line of
Speaker 1: bear dogs and I coon hunt them, because coons and
Speaker 1: bears are actually quite similar in some ways there for
Speaker 1: leg critters that run up trees when dogs chase them.
Speaker 1: Bears are a little bit bigger, a little bit meaner.
Speaker 1: Where the similarities in. Uh yeah, um. So, like I've
Speaker 1: had a couple of litters of pups out of these
Speaker 1: two dogs, and those pups are right now in different
Speaker 1: parts of the country where it's legal to hunt bear uh.
Speaker 1: And they're they're being trained his bar dogs. So Fern
Speaker 1: and Jedi's offspring are being trained his bear dogs in
Speaker 1: different places. So, but plothounds are really cool because they're
Speaker 1: the only they're the only u k c. Registered hound
Speaker 1: that didn't descend from European fox hounds. So there's multiple
Speaker 1: breeds of hounds. Walker, black and Tan, blue, Tick, English
Speaker 1: red Bone, all those dogs kind of descended from the
Speaker 1: same lines of European fox hounds. Okay, and a lot
Speaker 1: of those dogs look quite similar. Well. Plot hounds or
Speaker 1: descendants of German dogs that came over by They were
Speaker 1: brought over by a young German boy named Johanna's plot
Speaker 1: seventeen fifty and as the story goes, he he brought
Speaker 1: five dogs over from Germany that were given him to
Speaker 1: him by his father, and the breed was never outcrossed
Speaker 1: one time in three years. I had no idea that
Speaker 1: that was the legend, that they came from such a
Speaker 1: specific point in time, and yo, yeah, and and I
Speaker 1: mean it's more than it's it's a little better than
Speaker 1: legend because it that actually happened. Now, the thing about
Speaker 1: outcrossing that we won't step into because there's a big controversy.
Speaker 1: There's some people that are like, they have never been
Speaker 1: out crossed one time from those five dogs in the
Speaker 1: history of the plothound, which is probably didn't happen. And
Speaker 1: then but there's other people who believe that probably most
Speaker 1: of the plotounds that we have today came from those dogs,
Speaker 1: and those dogs were developed and bread and the Great
Speaker 1: Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Plot is the family name
Speaker 1: of this. It was Johannes's Plot. They had these dogs.
Speaker 1: There's there's a there's a range of mountains in North
Speaker 1: Carolina named after that family. And the plothounds is a
Speaker 1: state dog of North Carolina. I had no idea, and
Speaker 1: and so bare hunting with hounds is big in the
Speaker 1: southern Appalachians and in North Carolina, and so like hunting
Speaker 1: these dogs. It's like, man, you get into the Appalachians
Speaker 1: and you start talking plots. I mean, this is like
Speaker 1: cult type devotion to the breed these guys have. Now,
Speaker 1: can anybody raise plothhounds? Where is it like the plothhounds?
Speaker 1: The Plot family is still involved. That's a good question,
Speaker 1: that's a great question. Anybody can raise plothhounds. The Plot
Speaker 1: family is still involved. Uh, there's a lot of the
Speaker 1: Plot family that still lives in North Carolina. Huntings, plots,
Speaker 1: um and plots. The epicenter of the plot world is
Speaker 1: the southern Appalachian Mountains eastern Tennessee, where from North Carolina
Speaker 1: West Virginia, Virginia. That's kind of the epicenter of where
Speaker 1: the plots still are and some of these really good
Speaker 1: lyne bred strains of dogs. Are any any thoughts or
Speaker 1: questions on that, Well, No, I had just no idea
Speaker 1: that I always wondered where the name Plot came from,
Speaker 1: and that it's a family name. Okay. So to me,
Speaker 1: that's what makes like this hunt have some uniqueness and
Speaker 1: complexity and kind of a story behind it, is that
Speaker 1: like these brindle dogs, one of them is almost black,
Speaker 1: the other one's brindle. There's a immense history behind it
Speaker 1: that's really unique and um and let me just describe
Speaker 1: this to you and this will help makes sense. Bear
Speaker 1: dogs are these guys that hunt bear dogs over where
Speaker 1: all these strains, where all these strains came from, and
Speaker 1: especially back in the eighteen hundreds and in time periods
Speaker 1: when there wasn't much room for having a dog that
Speaker 1: didn't produce game. Dogs were like you bred the best
Speaker 1: dog to the best dog, and if a dog didn't
Speaker 1: couldn't tree a coon, couldn't chase a bear. You didn't
Speaker 1: keep him and you didn't breed him. Okay, like he
Speaker 1: had to produce game. And so think about seventeen fifty two,
Speaker 1: what do we weout three hundred years? Um, just about
Speaker 1: three eight fifty We're gonna edit that part, Yes, almost
Speaker 1: three hundred years. Envision breeding the best dogs to the
Speaker 1: best time and time again. This would be very different
Speaker 1: than like just a dog breeder that's breeding, you know,
Speaker 1: Schnauzer's trying to get the physical appearance of a Schnauzer
Speaker 1: to look a certain way. Like these, a bare dog
Speaker 1: has to be bred for athleticism, extreme endurance, grit, courage,
Speaker 1: the courage to stand and fight a bear if it
Speaker 1: turns and and and comes after the dog. It's got
Speaker 1: to be a tree dog. I mean, like I gotta
Speaker 1: have that tree instinct big time. It's got to have
Speaker 1: a cold nose. Like you can take a line of
Speaker 1: twenty hounds, Jonathan, and they all hounds are not created equal,
Speaker 1: and their ability to smell scent is not created equal.
Speaker 1: So in a line of twenty dogs, there's one that's
Speaker 1: gonna be the best and one that's gonna be the worst.
Speaker 1: And so you're breeding for all these different characteristics that
Speaker 1: have to be present in this one dog to make
Speaker 1: it worth its salt. And back in the day, there
Speaker 1: was no room to have an average dog, and so
Speaker 1: they didn't have them. So I mean they they fine
Speaker 1: tuned these lines with dogs down extreme in an extreme
Speaker 1: way and produced dogs like this right here and u
Speaker 1: Fern and Jetta and it's and I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: there exceptional dogs, but I am saying that they are
Speaker 1: the result of very very intentional breeding for hundred two
Speaker 1: hundred years. That's it's that's I had no idea. And
Speaker 1: it's funny because it sounds almost just like what you
Speaker 1: hear about for racehorse breeding, just the intentionality and the
Speaker 1: extensive selection process that goes through and for such a
Speaker 1: long time. Yeah, that's what. I had no idea that
Speaker 1: that kind of I don't know, you think about like racehorses,
Speaker 1: and you think about kind of a noble, strong tradition
Speaker 1: and I was just totally ignorant to well, And it's
Speaker 1: and it's not just plots. You know, all the other
Speaker 1: breeds like if if I was if I had walker
Speaker 1: dogs would be able to tell you similar stories. It
Speaker 1: would just be a different story. But I mean the
Speaker 1: plots aren't the exception. But the point is is that
Speaker 1: these old hillbillies in the mountains that have been breeding
Speaker 1: dogs for all these years are pretty dang smart, some
Speaker 1: of them. And uh, and there's a lot more to
Speaker 1: it than meets the eye, you know. And to me,
Speaker 1: that's what's so cool about it. It's kind of this
Speaker 1: like hidden culture that the mainstream world doesn't really know
Speaker 1: about or care about. And uh and man, I'll tell
Speaker 1: you what, if there is one thing that I could
Speaker 1: keep and that I could pass on to my children
Speaker 1: that I just love and now, I love big game hunting.
Speaker 1: I mean, geez, Louise, I loved to bear hunt, loved
Speaker 1: a deer hunt. Man, I love to coon hunt. I
Speaker 1: have more fun coon hunting than almost anything I'd do.
Speaker 1: And it's there's there, There is a there is a
Speaker 1: rare human pleasure when you can take a dog that
Speaker 1: you have raised and trained and partner with that dog
Speaker 1: to go out and acquire wildlife commodities, rare human pleasure.
Speaker 1: And all of the dog men know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: And man, that that is like to me, the essence
Speaker 1: of the freedom that really this country represents is that
Speaker 1: we and it's kind of been our cultural history is
Speaker 1: that we've got we've got a lot of wild lands.
Speaker 1: We've stewarded our wildlife resources as well, and the hunters
Speaker 1: have the right to access that those wildlife resources. And
Speaker 1: uh and Jonathan, you you would, I mean you know
Speaker 1: it because you've heard me talk about it. But my
Speaker 1: goodness to hound sports are massively under fire right now.
Speaker 1: For real. I mean, like like for real, my kids
Speaker 1: when they're mage could have dramatically less opportunity to do
Speaker 1: what we're doing tonight than than I did. You know,
Speaker 1: and that that's really sad. I mean, it's like losing
Speaker 1: a part of your culture. And uh, and so in
Speaker 1: in in any way it and and coon hunting is
Speaker 1: not the biggest target. The biggest target for the hound
Speaker 1: community is is mountain lion bear hunting. I mean they're
Speaker 1: wanting to snuff that out. But it's no different. I mean,
Speaker 1: if we lived out in Nevada, or if we lived
Speaker 1: in you know, in eastern Tennessee, we we probably wouldn't
Speaker 1: be coon hunters. We'd probably be bear hunting, you know.
Speaker 1: But the point is that it's a it's a really unique,
Speaker 1: really fun, really fun hunt. We're gonna turn around here.
Speaker 1: I think I think we're gonna go back and and
Speaker 1: here's where we're gonna start talking about what we're gonna
Speaker 1: do tonight, is that we're gonna turn these dogs out
Speaker 1: and we're just gonna FreeCast them on the back side
Speaker 1: of a pond. And for whatever reason, coons are almost
Speaker 1: always around them to water. That's usually where you find them.
Speaker 1: Here you strike them is there around water. And these
Speaker 1: dogs are gonna run off and go hunt, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna sit there and we're gonna listen. And when they
Speaker 1: first find a track and they bark, that first bark,
Speaker 1: we would call that a strike. I would say, oh man,
Speaker 1: Fern is struck. Okay, terminology will use you kind of struck.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna need you to use this terminology. Oh man,
Speaker 1: I'm down. She's gonna be struck. And Fern when she
Speaker 1: strikes a track, she's kind of squally on the track
Speaker 1: at first, like she'll kind of squeal a little bit
Speaker 1: and bark, and it will be kind of an irregular bark,
Speaker 1: and you can you can tell how fresh that track
Speaker 1: is based upon the intensity of her bark. If she
Speaker 1: just screams out of there, just spurgargarder and just gets
Speaker 1: further and further away. You know that they are really
Speaker 1: close to that coon if she just gets out there
Speaker 1: and it's just like you know, and you can tell
Speaker 1: she's just like she's just like grubbing out this track
Speaker 1: trying to find it and it's old, and you'll we'll
Speaker 1: hear just move down the hall of er and then
Speaker 1: at some point she will when they hit the tree, Jonathan,
Speaker 1: they will do what they call a locate bark, and
Speaker 1: it's extremely nuanced and hopefully we'll be able to hear it.
Speaker 1: But a but a but a tree bark is when
Speaker 1: that five second period when the tree bark, the locate
Speaker 1: bark up, backing up, back up. The locate bark is
Speaker 1: that short period of time when the dogs have decided
Speaker 1: that the coon has gone up a tree and it's
Speaker 1: no longer on the ground, and that it's almost like
Speaker 1: they're excited that they found it and they let out
Speaker 1: a long, long, extended bark and then they go into
Speaker 1: a chop. So like Fern, she'ld be trailing. This would
Speaker 1: be an example, Okay, she would be like, oh, oh,
Speaker 1: she's barking, and then she finds the tree and she
Speaker 1: goes long bark and then she well, well, well well
Speaker 1: she starts chopping. Nice. It's to the untrained here, it's
Speaker 1: just a dog barking. But too it's it's like, you know,
Speaker 1: like a conscissur of wine, you know, that can just
Speaker 1: take Oh, this is grapes from the from the heels
Speaker 1: of Sedona, roasted in the august sun. You know. It's like,
Speaker 1: there's the locator bark. Yes, And all my kids are
Speaker 1: like masters and like calling Fern you know what she's doing,
Speaker 1: what she's doing. And all these little kids that we
Speaker 1: take hunting with us, you know there, I'm like, y'all
Speaker 1: listen for the locate bark, and I mean they'll be like,
Speaker 1: you're just located, and I mean they just get on it.
Speaker 1: It's so much fun because it's it's it's just there's
Speaker 1: few things in life and in the natural world where
Speaker 1: you just have the patience to just give something your
Speaker 1: attention that's not a computer screen or that's not um
Speaker 1: something that gives you this like immediate gratification and you
Speaker 1: you kind of dissect it and and can call it
Speaker 1: and learn it and anyway something that we've really grown
Speaker 1: to enjoy and so you're gonna see these dogs go.
Speaker 1: So we're gonna turn loose and we're gonna we will
Speaker 1: probably just kind of stand up here for a while
Speaker 1: and let them go down off in the hollow and hunt.
Speaker 1: We may walk off down there to them. They may
Speaker 1: tree within two yards of us, or they might tree
Speaker 1: five or six yards to us. But the beauty is
Speaker 1: we don't have any hurry to get to them. Was
Speaker 1: just take our time. They're gonna keep busy. They're gonna
Speaker 1: they're gonna once they we won't go to them until
Speaker 1: they get treated. So we won't, you know, we we
Speaker 1: may hear them run and they hear them do a
Speaker 1: bunch of stuff, but we won't go to them til
Speaker 1: they get treated. These dogs will have these dogs will
Speaker 1: have tracking collars on so I will know where they're
Speaker 1: at at all times at garment tracking collars um and
Speaker 1: so we'll be able to keep track of them. We'll
Speaker 1: know where they're at. And let's go, let's go tricking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all right, you go get these tracking collars on them
Speaker 1: so we know where they're at all the time, so
Speaker 1: we can get them back anytime we need them back.
Speaker 1: They'll come back if I toning them we grab that is,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go down here. There's a there's a pond
Speaker 1: right up here, and there's a creek that flows out
Speaker 1: of the backside of that pond, and we're gonna turn
Speaker 1: those dogs down this hollow. And my prediction is that
Speaker 1: they will strike down in the hollow about two yards
Speaker 1: from us, and they'll run it up that spur hollow
Speaker 1: back over there that way. Okay, this is where we
Speaker 1: want them to go. It's right here. So I'm just
Speaker 1: going to I'm gonna check and make sure that I
Speaker 1: got them both picked up on the collar. I do.
Speaker 1: They're both on the collar, So Jedi go get them.
Speaker 1: Whoop m hmm, don't get them, Jesus kind of joy. Barking,
Speaker 1: there's a strike. It's possible that they just struck right there,
Speaker 1: but I don't think so. I think they were just
Speaker 1: babbling a little bit. Yeah if that, if they keep barking,
Speaker 1: they may have struck one. I think they just struck one.
Speaker 1: I thought she was just babbling. They ain't babbling, buddy,
Speaker 1: listen to him. They're burning it up. The dogs struck
Speaker 1: right off the leash and went about two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty yards, fell in treed. Okay, we're almost directly belown.
Speaker 1: He were a hundred and thirty yards directly below him.
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna lie to you. That's a rough piece
Speaker 1: of day right through here. Um, let's just see what
Speaker 1: it looks like. They got him, Jonathan, how you got him, Treed?
Speaker 1: They got him, Jonathan, you've turned your light on. It's
Speaker 1: a coon. They got him. Talk to him, Fern, good girl,
Speaker 1: good girl. Yeah at a girl, Fern, at a girl.
Speaker 1: It's him a dog, all right. We had to work
Speaker 1: for that one, didn't we, Yes, sir, well hold for you.
Speaker 1: So you know that's what a tree dog looks like.
Speaker 1: You know how long they've been treated over here? Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just working, man. They just they just stay there
Speaker 1: and tree. I mean, honestly, I don't know how long.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've never left him there all night because
Speaker 1: I've always gone to him. But in theory, they'd stay
Speaker 1: there until we got here. That's what you want, two
Speaker 1: in or fifty years of strategic breathing. That's right, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: going on to your let's pop him out ty a
Speaker 1: tree just a little bit away from the tree that
Speaker 1: the coons up. Man, you're still happy, ask NB right here.
Speaker 1: You were coming here with fire in the hole. After
Speaker 1: this tree, we'd cast the dogs two more times and
Speaker 1: tree one more coon before we called it a night.
Speaker 1: To Coon's treed. It's ten. We're on our way home.
Speaker 1: Jonathan closing thoughts Perceptions of coon hunting go. Man. I'll
Speaker 1: tell you what. There's something about seeing animals that are
Speaker 1: bred for one thing do that thing they're bred for.
Speaker 1: Like I had never seen that before in person. I
Speaker 1: had seen like videos of like rat terriers in England
Speaker 1: that would go out and actually uh get rats at
Speaker 1: like barns and stuff that guys would hire them for.
Speaker 1: And to see that in since seen these dogs just
Speaker 1: totally go for it, be totally enthralled. I mean you
Speaker 1: had to. We had to pull them down several times
Speaker 1: when you were trying to get him away. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: It was amazing. And how I could through the woods too,
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. I was telling you that I had
Speaker 1: never really been like kind of that off trail before.
Speaker 1: But man, we were going up bluffs and we were
Speaker 1: checking out the I mean, we're just going, We're just
Speaker 1: going for it, and it. I think those raccoons they
Speaker 1: got a little strategy and them to go into high places.
Speaker 1: Have some good mountains tonight. Yeah, we had two nice,
Speaker 1: pretty uh adventurous walks to the tree. Indeed, I always
Speaker 1: always like it when they get back and hard to
Speaker 1: get to places, and so it was fun. The first
Speaker 1: tree they they they probably twohund fifty yards, but we
Speaker 1: had to scale a mud slick bluff that was pretty step.
Speaker 1: And then second when they went about four hundred five
Speaker 1: yards up a mountain, we had to we had to
Speaker 1: go to them. It was a lot more doable. Yeah, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: thank you for kind and this won't be I have
Speaker 1: a feeling that we have ignited the houndsman. That's right,
Speaker 1: that's right. Hey, thanks for listening to the Bear Hunting
Speaker 1: Magazine podcast. Check out our website bear dash hunting dot com.
Speaker 1: Subscribe to the only print bear hunting magazine in the world,
Speaker 1: and check out our YouTube channel. We're putting up new
Speaker 1: videos at least every two weeks, and we're about to
Speaker 1: jump back into our weekly vlog schedule. So what we're
Speaker 1: what we did through the hunting season was we did
Speaker 1: our bare Horizon season, which is our cinematic, polished hunting
Speaker 1: adventure conservation videos. And then when we run through all
Speaker 1: that content and all that, We're gonna go back to
Speaker 1: our weekly vlog, which Jedi, who's in the dog box
Speaker 1: right now, is always a part of in the global headquarters.
Speaker 1: So keep the wild hold on, hold on. Did you
Speaker 1: have a closely thought? Oh, I was just I finally
Speaker 1: got to meet Fern and Jedi. I mean that's seen
Speaker 1: him in the in the Weekly pot the weekly YouTube
Speaker 1: videos so many times. And bo Jed's a different dog
Speaker 1: when he's after a coon, isn't it. Yeah, he could
Speaker 1: care less about the camera when you see him in
Speaker 1: the YouTube videos with those long eyes and just listening
Speaker 1: to you and giving contemplative and then not he was
Speaker 1: jumping on that tree. Whole business. Yeah man, yeah, yea. Well,
Speaker 1: keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears
Speaker 1: live and the coons and the coons