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Speaker 1: is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the Bear Hunting
Speaker 1: Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into the world
Speaker 1: of hunting the icon of the North American Wilderness Prepare.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation. We will also bring
Speaker 1: you into some of the wildest country off the planet
Speaker 1: chasing fair. This week, I'm over in eastern Arkansas with
Speaker 1: my good friend Brent Reeves and Nick Gilliland. We're coon camp.
Speaker 1: We're cooking catfish, we're coon hunting, we're training some young dogs,
Speaker 1: we're letting some old dogs hunt. And we have an
Speaker 1: in depth discussion and I mean in depth about coon
Speaker 1: hunting and we break it down. We break it down.
Speaker 1: This is a beginner's guide to coon hunting because I
Speaker 1: think that coon hunting is a great point for people
Speaker 1: to enter into the outdoor world. You're gonna enjoy this podcast.
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Speaker 1: enjoy this podcast with Brent Reeves and Nick gettle Land.
Speaker 1: You know, I hate to start off this podcast with
Speaker 1: a biology lesson, but I just learned something that I
Speaker 1: hadn't told you all yet. Out here I was skinning
Speaker 1: this squirrel and did you know, did you know tell
Speaker 1: me the truth that a squirrel has a baculi. A
Speaker 1: buck squirrel has a bone just his man parts, and
Speaker 1: just like the raccoon and the bear. I didn't know
Speaker 1: that it is very small that I did not know.
Speaker 1: I absolutely did not know that it's it's about a
Speaker 1: quarter inch long. I don't recall ever having a conversation
Speaker 1: about one, but but I didn't know that it was
Speaker 1: skinning squirrels with my dad and coon's and he said
Speaker 1: they were of the same ilk. It's the only buck
Speaker 1: squirrel that I've ever skinned that I noted it so
Speaker 1: and it was it was not of the normal persuasion
Speaker 1: of a coon. So again, this is a science lesson.
Speaker 1: So this is this is just what we do. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know, as coon hunters, everybody knows about the Baculai vaccoon.
Speaker 1: You know, it's uh notable. Yes, so I we're in
Speaker 1: East Arkansas. I was just corrected because we I had
Speaker 1: said we were in South Arkansas. Any time I'm like
Speaker 1: in swamp country, I feel like I'm in the South.
Speaker 1: But we're not in the south at all actually, and
Speaker 1: not quite northeast Arkansas. But if Arkansas was split into quadrants,
Speaker 1: it would be we would be in the northeast quadrant.
Speaker 1: Would you say we're above the halfway mark in Arkansas,
Speaker 1: we would be in the southern portion of the northeast parts.
Speaker 1: Kind of like a legal description. Yeah, we have to
Speaker 1: be careful describing the people where we are because we
Speaker 1: don't want to actually know where our secret spot. That's right. Well,
Speaker 1: we're so we're in the northeast, the southern part of
Speaker 1: the northeast quadrant of Arkansas, and we are we're at
Speaker 1: Coon Camp. This is a this is the first for me,
Speaker 1: and I've got Brent Reeves who has been here lots
Speaker 1: of times before, so Brent welcome. Do you have any
Speaker 1: science lessons for us? Just anything you've learned in the
Speaker 1: last hour and a half. Alright, good, Nick, plumbing, I
Speaker 1: can I can give you plumbing a plumbing lesson real quick.
Speaker 1: What the three things you need to know about plumbing?
Speaker 1: Go ahead, hots on the left, don't bite your fingernails,
Speaker 1: and all the bad stuff runs down hill. That's everything
Speaker 1: you need to know about. And the hot water in
Speaker 1: this place is scalid. It's hogs. God. Yeah. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I've got Nick gili Land from western North Carolina. I
Speaker 1: think any state or any place that has a direction
Speaker 1: attached to it, it's very important that you add a
Speaker 1: second direction in there, to even be more specific, so
Speaker 1: that people aren't confused that there's one Carolina and you
Speaker 1: live on the north side of it. Are you with me? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: Eastern North Carolina I have come to find out that
Speaker 1: the folks that live in the two directional states that
Speaker 1: proceed Carolina were very particular about which one you say
Speaker 1: that they live in. If they live in the north wind,
Speaker 1: don't say don't you live in South Carolina? That isn't no, no,
Speaker 1: I understand, no, do not do that. The mountains literally
Speaker 1: stopped the state line. It's a desert. After that, they
Speaker 1: just drop straight off with this whole different world. Wey,
Speaker 1: what we're gonna do on this on this session is
Speaker 1: we we I want to talk to you guys about
Speaker 1: coon hunting. You guys are big coon hunters. Um. I
Speaker 1: want to overall, I want to talk about what we're
Speaker 1: doing here this weekend. But I want to talk I
Speaker 1: want to walk somebody through who knows nothing about coon hunting.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of people that are looking
Speaker 1: for ways to to enjoy public lands, enjoy the outdoors,
Speaker 1: and so they're exploring options of what they enjoy. And
Speaker 1: there's some things in life that just seemed to have
Speaker 1: these these barriers inside of them that are pretty dominant
Speaker 1: and hard to get over. Okay, like, for instance, if
Speaker 1: you're a if you're a golfer, like the barrier to
Speaker 1: entry to golf is so huge because your life would
Speaker 1: have to be so in the tubes for you to
Speaker 1: want to play golf that you would have to be
Speaker 1: it like that. I'm kid, I'm kid. You know that
Speaker 1: there's some things that have these strong barriers to entry
Speaker 1: that if you don't have exposure to them in some
Speaker 1: way or know somebody that does it, you would just
Speaker 1: never know that this was an option for something that
Speaker 1: you could do. And I think coon hunting because of
Speaker 1: it's uh maybe maybe it's reputation. Maybe I find that
Speaker 1: people you're you're either a coon hutter or no a
Speaker 1: lot about it or you know nothing about it. And
Speaker 1: like Brent was saying that the people's main exposure to
Speaker 1: coon hunting is from who was it? Mr Wilson Rawls?
Speaker 1: Wilson rawls Where the red fern grows yep, And so
Speaker 1: that's their exposure. A lot of people have read that
Speaker 1: book and they have this idea of coon hunting. But
Speaker 1: here's here's my take on it. And this is why
Speaker 1: we're talking about it is when I was in high school,
Speaker 1: I this is true, this true story. I foresaw that
Speaker 1: my family was going to be an important part of
Speaker 1: my life and that I was going to be a
Speaker 1: family man and have a wife and have kids, and
Speaker 1: I thought, you know what, if I'm a coon hunter,
Speaker 1: I can put those kids to bed and do all
Speaker 1: the normal things I have to do as a dad,
Speaker 1: and I can coon hunt after that. I remember having
Speaker 1: those thoughts when I was a teenager, like this is
Speaker 1: a wise investment to learn how to do. And maybe
Speaker 1: my dad put that in my mind, and somehow I
Speaker 1: don't know where that came from, but that is my
Speaker 1: selling point for you know, as an option. Like a
Speaker 1: lot of people are busy during the daytime. A lot
Speaker 1: of people are busy, a lot of people have stuff
Speaker 1: to do, a lot of people have commitments. Um, if
Speaker 1: you have a squirrel dog, you've got to hunt that
Speaker 1: dog during the daytime. The daytime is valuable real estate
Speaker 1: on a calendar. The nighttime is when a grown man
Speaker 1: can make a decision to whittle away some leisure time.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you miss a couple hours of sleep,
Speaker 1: you can do that, and you can make that decision
Speaker 1: and you can you can find this new thing to
Speaker 1: enjoy the outdoors. Yeah, and you're you're not using it.
Speaker 1: You don't have to burn vacation time. You don't have
Speaker 1: to take that the limited time that you have away
Speaker 1: from your job that you would need to be spending
Speaker 1: with your family. If they're not interested in going with you,
Speaker 1: you don't have to take that in those hours. And
Speaker 1: you couldn't be spending them with them doing something at
Speaker 1: night because I mean, it's not costing you anything. You
Speaker 1: can still do the other thing. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: if you have a family and they decided to go
Speaker 1: with you, it's one of those things they could actually
Speaker 1: partake of. You know, if you have a young child,
Speaker 1: to take them deer and they'd sit there and be quiet,
Speaker 1: don't move, you know, and all that stuff. But you
Speaker 1: can tow them through the woods or have them walked
Speaker 1: with you and it's no big deal. Well and see
Speaker 1: that's just so okay. So point number one is the
Speaker 1: time when you do it. You can coon hunt during
Speaker 1: the nighttime, not as valuable of real estate except for sleep. Okay,
Speaker 1: number two what Nick just said, Um, you can. You
Speaker 1: can take people with you and there's not as big
Speaker 1: a barrier to entry. Most states, a person that's a
Speaker 1: participant inside of a connut wouldn't even necessarily have to
Speaker 1: have a hunting license if they're not gonna be shooting
Speaker 1: and partaking of game. It's a it's a it's a
Speaker 1: social sport. It's easy to take people. Everybody has heard
Speaker 1: me talk about all the honey that I've done my
Speaker 1: whole life. I have taken more people and introduced them
Speaker 1: to hunting through coon hunting than any other thing that
Speaker 1: I do. Um Number three is that the coons happened
Speaker 1: to be doing really well in the current ecosystem. Messo predators.
Speaker 1: Have you guys heard the theory on messo predators? Okay,
Speaker 1: imagineing Uh basically, uh a pre European colonization or colonized
Speaker 1: North America. Okay, limited human influence. I mean a lot
Speaker 1: of human influence, but a lot less than now. There
Speaker 1: would have been big predators everywhere here in Arkansas. There
Speaker 1: would have been mountain lines. There would have been wolves.
Speaker 1: Uh there there Uh well those were in Bears has
Speaker 1: been the three big main predators. Okay, we essentially, well,
Speaker 1: we removed mountain lines, we removed wolves. Now we only
Speaker 1: have bears. Well, the the natural order has this vacuum
Speaker 1: that's created when predators are removed. So the mid size
Speaker 1: the meso predators increased. Coyotes, coons, skunks, possums, mid sized
Speaker 1: predators filled in the void that the the apex predators
Speaker 1: once filled. And so that's why now the place is
Speaker 1: covered with coons, coyotes, possums, foxes, stuff like that. So
Speaker 1: these are also animals that are not highly coveted by
Speaker 1: most people. Am I right? So there's a lot of
Speaker 1: access if you want to pursue finding a place to cuna.
Speaker 1: And now, Nix, I want to hear nick story about
Speaker 1: how he has a tough time in North Carolina find
Speaker 1: a place to cuna, which is hard for me to believe.
Speaker 1: I mean, I believe you, it's hard. I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: known it. Um. So one is is that you're not
Speaker 1: asking a farmer down here to go hunt his hundred
Speaker 1: and eighty in white tail. You're not asking him to
Speaker 1: go kill a gobbler turkeys. You're not asking to you know,
Speaker 1: it's a small ask. So it's accessible public land. Almost
Speaker 1: all public land we would have in the Midwest would
Speaker 1: have coons. Um. So it's a it's a it's it's
Speaker 1: an accessible thing. Um. I'm I'm I'm building some some
Speaker 1: ideas for why this is a This is about everything.
Speaker 1: Number four, Number seven, we're gonna skip number seven. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I don't know. Number one. You you use
Speaker 1: a dog in this hunt. I think people that have
Speaker 1: never used a dog before in a hunting situation. It
Speaker 1: adds a whole layer of excitement that is totally different
Speaker 1: than big game hunting. I mean, I loved the big
Speaker 1: game hunt. I mean I've built my I've built my
Speaker 1: hunting life around big game hunting. I love it to
Speaker 1: be able to go from a big game hunt, which
Speaker 1: is a solo endeavor typically. You know, no, you're not
Speaker 1: using a dog to go to this social hunt. A
Speaker 1: lot of people that can be involved hunting small game.
Speaker 1: You're you're not trying to kill one coon a year.
Speaker 1: We're gonna this is this is an opportunity game, you know.
Speaker 1: And uh and so it's using the dog is just
Speaker 1: so incredible. Okay, what are you gus thoughts on which part?
Speaker 1: On on on all in every part, all in every part. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm just can you guys think of any other I'm
Speaker 1: just trying to build a case. And then we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about how we're coon hunting. Well, when you talk
Speaker 1: about to access if you we always talk about you
Speaker 1: and I talk about limiting factors on something enhancing the experience,
Speaker 1: and and like Nicol explained in a minute, the limiting
Speaker 1: factor he has to deal without North Carolina, we actually
Speaker 1: don't the limiting factor we would have here as far
Speaker 1: as gaining access to property, maybe because someone else has
Speaker 1: already beat us to it, because the the landowner, the
Speaker 1: deer hunter, and the turkey hunter. These coons are a
Speaker 1: problem to them. You know, where it's legal to to
Speaker 1: to feed corn, you know, to deer or whatever, to
Speaker 1: use bait. They're they're in competition direct competition with cones.
Speaker 1: Coons are a nest predator for turkeys, you know there
Speaker 1: and in Arkansas especially, you know Clay that the turkey
Speaker 1: hunting in Arkansas has suffered because of the amount of
Speaker 1: predators and the predation on on nesting, on ground nested animals.
Speaker 1: It's been tough to the point at this point number twelve,
Speaker 1: and we're doing a service. And it's very true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, and it's I mean, it's you can tell it. It'sn't.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't take a you know, three or four
Speaker 1: or five years study to do it. I mean you
Speaker 1: can see you see more dead coon's running up down
Speaker 1: the highway and then you and you're seeing list turkeys
Speaker 1: in the woods, hearing fewer gobblers. You know, Hey, I
Speaker 1: want to make a comment on that, and I really
Speaker 1: don't want to monologue. I'm gonna actually talk to you guys,
Speaker 1: but I just wanted to set this preface. Okay, the
Speaker 1: people that are in the know oftentimes will have have
Speaker 1: a refute a little bit, this idea that coon hunters
Speaker 1: are actually doing something for conservation by taking off coons
Speaker 1: off the landscape. Okay, I talked to I corresponded with
Speaker 1: the Mike Chamberlain, the wild Turkey doc uh, the guy
Speaker 1: that was on Big Big One, the top turkey biologists
Speaker 1: in the country. He he actually did has done an
Speaker 1: extensive amount of research on coon's in the South. He
Speaker 1: sent me a bunch of bunch of his research papers
Speaker 1: over the last twenty years that he has written about coon's,
Speaker 1: coon predation, all these different things. So sometimes like we
Speaker 1: might wear a chip on our shoulder saying, hey, we're
Speaker 1: we're saving the predators. And I basically said, tell me
Speaker 1: why we're not, because I hear some people say, well,
Speaker 1: you're not really having an impact. These guys on and Basically,
Speaker 1: what I felt like he insinuated, and I'm not putting
Speaker 1: his words about this is what I insinuated from what
Speaker 1: he told me is that on a on a small scale,
Speaker 1: a coon hunter can make a difference. On a macro scale,
Speaker 1: coon hunters probably can't. Do you understand what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: I mean, because we hunt on these little bitty pockets
Speaker 1: of land, even this ten thousand acre property that we're
Speaker 1: coon hunting this weekend, that is a spa on the
Speaker 1: map when it comes to turkey habitat in the state
Speaker 1: of Arkansas. So like a like a turkey manager for
Speaker 1: the State of Arkansas would be like, coon hunting doesn't
Speaker 1: really impact success in turkey nesting because there is such
Speaker 1: a You've got to have a really special set of
Speaker 1: circumstances for you to be able to run a dog
Speaker 1: on a place. It's got to be a big enough place.
Speaker 1: The landowner's gotta be happy about it. Um And essentially
Speaker 1: he was like, there's no possible way that you're not hurting.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's no possible way that what you're doing
Speaker 1: is negative for turkeys. He said, I can't prove how
Speaker 1: much it is, but the way I think about it
Speaker 1: is if the one coon that we killed last night,
Speaker 1: or we killed a couple, if that was the coon
Speaker 1: that came upon the turkey nest that day or was
Speaker 1: going to and it didn't because it was dead, that's
Speaker 1: a direct impact. Yeah, And so it's hard for sometimes
Speaker 1: research science to say coon hunters are saving wild turkeys.
Speaker 1: Are you with me? So anyway, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: say that there is credible understand because what's happening to
Speaker 1: wild turkey nest is they're getting robbed by predators. I mean,
Speaker 1: that is what is happening now. It's a lot of
Speaker 1: predators and that's what Mike has shown everybody and their
Speaker 1: research is that it's great horned owls and it's skunks,
Speaker 1: and it's coyotes, and it's possums and it's black snakes
Speaker 1: eating a lot of turkey gigs. So anyway, but that's
Speaker 1: a good point, is that we are doing a service
Speaker 1: and in certain places, and I know from the places
Speaker 1: I hunt back home, you can thin out coons on
Speaker 1: a property to where they are hard to find. If
Speaker 1: you're not making an impact for the whole state, I
Speaker 1: guarantee you the farmer of the man leasing that particular
Speaker 1: piece of land. If you've been there for a year
Speaker 1: or two, you can probably see the impact that you're
Speaker 1: having at least, you know. Yeah, Nick, tell me about
Speaker 1: hunting in North Carolina, Like, uh described to me the
Speaker 1: challenges of hunting there. Well, the proof is I'm here
Speaker 1: and not in North Carolina, right, So that's that number one. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, in western North Carolina everything is mountainous. Um,
Speaker 1: so the terrain has a big factor in it, you know. Um,
Speaker 1: it's very hard to hunt just the terrain. In general.
Speaker 1: Everything's laid out different. There's no crops lands, Um, These
Speaker 1: river bottoms and stuff you know that you have here,
Speaker 1: we don't have those, so that makes it more difficult.
Speaker 1: The biggest issue we have is everywhere around the house
Speaker 1: is turned into retirement community. Um. Well it used to
Speaker 1: be where a guy had some bottom farm land and
Speaker 1: he had two or three d acres on the mountain too.
Speaker 1: It's sold off scoff course down the bottoms, million dollar
Speaker 1: homes all over the ridges, gated community. There's absolutely no access.
Speaker 1: Even if Grandpa did hunted, you're not gonna get to. Um, say,
Speaker 1: Joe Blow gives you permission for teen acres next door.
Speaker 1: One the properties nowhere near big enough you can run
Speaker 1: a dog on. More than likely you're gonna end up
Speaker 1: in the gay community. Law is gonna be called. It's
Speaker 1: just too much of a hassle. Tell me. Let me
Speaker 1: stop you right there, because a lot of people might
Speaker 1: have a question about this. What do you think is
Speaker 1: a big enough property to turn loose a dog on.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't turn loose from no less on heart acres,
Speaker 1: And that would be a young dog that is started
Speaker 1: king hunting. Yeah, more than likely. If it has kun
Speaker 1: on heart acres, you can get something going, but the
Speaker 1: dog and dogs probably not gonna go off of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: more than likely. But if the dog has any kind
Speaker 1: of experience to it, you know, then I probably wouldn't.
Speaker 1: I would need to because he's gonna maybe win one
Speaker 1: from off. He's gonna end up off the property to
Speaker 1: go find one. Yeah, my experience hound, you know, two
Speaker 1: three hundred acres because I can handle him well, I
Speaker 1: can call him off if I need to, and it
Speaker 1: won't hurt him to cut him off the middle of
Speaker 1: the track because he's experienced so that that would probably
Speaker 1: be the memium for him. But you know, a young
Speaker 1: pub you can get by with the Hunter Acres. And
Speaker 1: that's just I can name you maybe five or six
Speaker 1: property owners in my entire county that owned the Hunter Acres.
Speaker 1: You know, that's just that's a that is a regional
Speaker 1: issue because of the population explosion of where you're at
Speaker 1: in western North Carolina. I mean that's like where man,
Speaker 1: I tell you one thing coming from here going back
Speaker 1: east and seeing that world over there is there's a
Speaker 1: lot of people over there. Yeah, I mean more so
Speaker 1: than what word used to here. Everything we used to
Speaker 1: have as far as industry was textiles and plants, and
Speaker 1: then the nineties all those kind of went away, and
Speaker 1: you know, you get a lot of people from Charleston,
Speaker 1: even up north, they moved to the mountains in North
Speaker 1: Carolina because of the temperature, we got good four seasons.
Speaker 1: Everything is a little bit equal. You've got some good
Speaker 1: hot summer, you've got cold winter. You know. So whether
Speaker 1: they're trying to get away from this out of the
Speaker 1: you know, in the extreme, they find it there. And
Speaker 1: so now everybody that loves around or you either sell
Speaker 1: them their land, you build their house, you mother grass
Speaker 1: or something. So it's a necessary evil. We've accepted it
Speaker 1: and we take it in for our livelihood, but we've
Speaker 1: lost all our access to natural resources, you know, for
Speaker 1: any kind of hunting well, and that so there in
Speaker 1: lies a challenge to coon hunting is finding a place
Speaker 1: to hunt, and and that challenge is nationwide. I would say,
Speaker 1: like right now where I live in northwest Arkansas, that
Speaker 1: would be a similar challenge, even though we have a
Speaker 1: lot of public land. Like thirty years ago and beyond,
Speaker 1: you know, it was common for farmers to see it
Speaker 1: normal that they would let the coon hunters hunt their place.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't even necessarily have to have permission just to
Speaker 1: be a given. Oh, coon hunters run you went down
Speaker 1: to let's go to tonight, let's go down to Clay's
Speaker 1: farm and turn loose. And it's just like it was
Speaker 1: permission to build. So I mean, you know, it doesn't care.
Speaker 1: It's the coon hunter, and and that that would have
Speaker 1: been common, and I love it. I love it in
Speaker 1: when I find people still like that. And the two
Speaker 1: places that I hunt are like that. Those guys, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's like they are just like, well, of course you're
Speaker 1: gonna hunt my farm. You're a coon hunter, aren't you.
Speaker 1: I Mean, that's that's kind of the way they look
Speaker 1: at it. Another thing that he fights out there too,
Speaker 1: that he and I've talked about is because of that,
Speaker 1: you can't go down to Clay's farm in turnal Leaves anymore.
Speaker 1: All those folks that used to do that are now
Speaker 1: going to where their state ground is their public hunting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we only have well in the county, we have to
Speaker 1: two areas of public ground. We have a National Force
Speaker 1: and then a state game land what we call it.
Speaker 1: And the National Force has certain restrictions. You know, they've
Speaker 1: got a lot of access roads. I do not understand why,
Speaker 1: but when season comes in, they shut the gates on.
Speaker 1: So even if you want to deer hunt it, you
Speaker 1: gotta hockey in, you know, into the mountains miles and
Speaker 1: so coon hunting is pain to do that. And what
Speaker 1: few guys still coon hunt, You know, they're flogging to
Speaker 1: those areas because I saw they got They don't have
Speaker 1: any public or private land either. It's just like I don't.
Speaker 1: So if you're the last guy to get there ten
Speaker 1: miss after dark, you know, you don't have a creek
Speaker 1: to turn a dog. So yeah, that makes sense. So
Speaker 1: we're sitting here talking about coon hunting because we uh,
Speaker 1: we're on a coon hunting excrapaganza this weekend and Nick
Speaker 1: Nick's dog got hurt. We don't even know what happened
Speaker 1: to it, but Nick hunting, he hunt it. We hunt
Speaker 1: until four am last night, and then Nick drove his
Speaker 1: dog to a to a vet two hours away. And
Speaker 1: you just gotta you gotta leave, like right now to
Speaker 1: go get the dog. Yeah. Yeah, Thursday nights when I
Speaker 1: hunt him and uh, I guess he got a must
Speaker 1: run two you think of beaver stop, Yeah, that's what
Speaker 1: it looked like. And just basically him right in the chest.
Speaker 1: And uh Friday when we came out, was walking him
Speaker 1: saying he was swollen. And then uh, so I left
Speaker 1: him in the kennel. Last night we went hunting, come
Speaker 1: back and he's definitely got infection. So I had to
Speaker 1: drive him to the vet and it's two hours away,
Speaker 1: so they just notify me I gotta come get him. Well,
Speaker 1: it was awesome having you on here. We were hoping
Speaker 1: to have you the whole time. So anyway, you're the
Speaker 1: first guest to exit the bare hunting congratulations. But it's
Speaker 1: because you're we're in the we're in the heat of
Speaker 1: it right here, and you gotta go get that dog.
Speaker 1: So Nick, hey, thanks for thanks for being on and uh,
Speaker 1: we hope the dog's okay. But and we're going hunting tonight,
Speaker 1: so you gotta drive, go get the dog, and then
Speaker 1: we're going hunting again. You'll be back in a a little bit. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, man, Brent, this is what I would like
Speaker 1: to do. I would like to talk through just a
Speaker 1: general conversation about how somebody could get started coon hunting. Okay,
Speaker 1: so walk me through, Um, what what we're doing when
Speaker 1: we're coon hunting? Like what Because because I shared with
Speaker 1: Nick yesterday, people see like coon hunters posting stuff on
Speaker 1: social media and they see these dogs barking at a tree.
Speaker 1: I took a guy hunting one night and he was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I thought these dogs were gonna be crazy all night long.
Speaker 1: He had no He just thought that these were just
Speaker 1: like wild dogs that just we're gonna be barking all
Speaker 1: the time. It's gonna be and chaotic. And when he
Speaker 1: saw my dogs were just like pets in the back
Speaker 1: of my truck and the only time they bark like
Speaker 1: that is when they're on a tree or without a trailer.
Speaker 1: So point being, he didn't understand the aspects of what
Speaker 1: we were doing. And uh so walk me through what
Speaker 1: what you're actually doing on a coon from like the beginning,
Speaker 1: like where we go, what time we go, what we do,
Speaker 1: and then I'll interject and interrupt you. Certain times of
Speaker 1: the year depend on the time dark we're going at night.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a coon is conducted at night.
Speaker 1: The time of year will depend on what time of
Speaker 1: night that you go. Normally, when it's hotter, warmer weather,
Speaker 1: you will go later because coon's just like people, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's hot outside, they don't really feel like going
Speaker 1: onto and doing a whole lot. So usually at the
Speaker 1: optimum time when it's the coolest part of the night,
Speaker 1: as you generally when you get the most activity from
Speaker 1: coon's going you know, moving around coming down from their
Speaker 1: dens out of the trees, and so they're sleeping during
Speaker 1: the day and they're moving around at night as most
Speaker 1: of the time. As a rule that that's that's the
Speaker 1: way it goes, right, And so you're gonna go and
Speaker 1: you're gonna go to an area where you feel like,
Speaker 1: you know there's where coons will be. So you need
Speaker 1: to be familiar with with with what they need, what
Speaker 1: their food sources are um. You know, habitat that is
Speaker 1: suitable form. So you know, hardwood, hardwood timber in this
Speaker 1: area would be UM. Any place, um, well there's water.
Speaker 1: You know, they like crawfish, they like frogs, tadpoles, but
Speaker 1: they'll also eat they want to eat berries and grasshoppers
Speaker 1: and insects and and their corn. You know, they're they're
Speaker 1: hard on a farmer's corn patch. Um, those kind of
Speaker 1: places where they can shop for the wide variety of
Speaker 1: things that they use. They're they're an omnivore deluxe. That's
Speaker 1: part of the reason why they've been so biologically successful.
Speaker 1: And let me distial it down to even like the
Speaker 1: dummies guide to where to turn loose your coon dog,
Speaker 1: if you don't know, is on a creek, on a lake,
Speaker 1: on a body of water. Typically coons are gonna be
Speaker 1: I would say eight percent of the time, I'm turning
Speaker 1: loose on some in some proximity of a body of water,
Speaker 1: Like if I'm in the ozarks, I'm turning loose on
Speaker 1: a pond or on a creek. If we're down here,
Speaker 1: we're turning loose usually along you know, ox bow or
Speaker 1: buyou or something and uh so a coon's one of
Speaker 1: his primary ways of gathering food is in water, and
Speaker 1: they they like to People say coons like to wash
Speaker 1: their food. They actually don't like to wash their food,
Speaker 1: but they like to get their hands wet when they
Speaker 1: feel around on their food to try to it increases
Speaker 1: their tactile sensory ability on their on their hands, which
Speaker 1: I have read that a coon has more tactile sensory
Speaker 1: receptors on his paws front paws than any other animal
Speaker 1: in its class. You know, I'm not gonna say any
Speaker 1: animal in the world because I don't know that, but
Speaker 1: in North America. So they have this incredible ability to
Speaker 1: to feel. And so the way the way that comes
Speaker 1: in handy is at night, when they cannot see, they
Speaker 1: use their hands as their eyes, basically putting that hand
Speaker 1: under water. So water. So you've got us to where
Speaker 1: you're gonna go. You're gonna turn loose in a place
Speaker 1: where you think there's coons, and pretty much anywhere there's woods,
Speaker 1: there's gonna be coons. Wherever you live, there's there's There
Speaker 1: are some places where there are not raccoons in the
Speaker 1: lower forty eight, but anywhere in the East, and even
Speaker 1: more so out west. I've got a friend now in
Speaker 1: Montana that is starting his dog on coons, and I
Speaker 1: mean they're finding coons out in the river bottoms in Montana,
Speaker 1: but typically it would be in the you know, in
Speaker 1: the eastern deciduous forest, you know, in that section of
Speaker 1: the world is where they're gonna have coon's okay, So
Speaker 1: there there, we've that's where we're gonna go. Okay, and
Speaker 1: then what are we gonna do? And then we're not
Speaker 1: talking about training a dog will go back to that,
Speaker 1: but like, what are what are we gonna what? What
Speaker 1: are you doing? Well, when we get there, you know,
Speaker 1: we're gonna hopefully be um, you know, kind of oriented
Speaker 1: to to that piece of property or whether we're using
Speaker 1: going it off a map, you know or Apple on
Speaker 1: the phone, or a place that we're already familiar with,
Speaker 1: maybe a place that were that we deer hunt or whatever,
Speaker 1: or where we grew up, you know, public land, anything
Speaker 1: someway that you know that's that's big enough expense where
Speaker 1: your dog. You can turn a dog loose and let
Speaker 1: it get out and get away from it and start
Speaker 1: looking for the scent fresh scent of a coon, and
Speaker 1: you're gonna do this at night. You know, like like
Speaker 1: I said, when they come down, they come down with
Speaker 1: the trees and they start looking for something to eat.
Speaker 1: You want to put that dog out there and hopefully
Speaker 1: he's gonna intersect his nose is gonna intersect with their
Speaker 1: track that they've made, their scent that they laid down. Okay,
Speaker 1: is this dog like a bird dog that's gonna stay
Speaker 1: within sight of you? Or is he gonna just range
Speaker 1: out and go hunt on its own? Well, you know
Speaker 1: you've got mostly they're going to range out and and
Speaker 1: hunt on their own. Ideally, you're gonna be able to
Speaker 1: turn the dog loose when you listen for when he leaves,
Speaker 1: he leaves silently, and when he runs across a coon
Speaker 1: track the scent of a coon, he's gonna do what
Speaker 1: they we call open. He's gonna open up. He's gonna
Speaker 1: start barking, and he will bark hopefully consistently. Are enough
Speaker 1: that that you can tell his general direction. You know,
Speaker 1: now we have GPS s and and and and satellites
Speaker 1: that where we can keep up with the exact track
Speaker 1: of where our dog is and and in its relation
Speaker 1: to the to the Google Earth view of of this
Speaker 1: piece of property you own, So it's not as him
Speaker 1: being his vocal on the track is not as important
Speaker 1: as it was at one time. It's not a bark
Speaker 1: to to run the quarry up a tree. To make
Speaker 1: him go up a tree, it was a bark so
Speaker 1: you could know where he was at. And so as
Speaker 1: he's going down through the woods and he's barking and
Speaker 1: he's letting you know where he's at, and then that
Speaker 1: he is running a count and he's supposed to be
Speaker 1: only barking if he's running the raccoon. That's right. Now, Hey,
Speaker 1: you've just tapped into the very definition of a hound.
Speaker 1: A hound is an animal as a dog that barks
Speaker 1: on ground scent. I mean, that's that's inside the definition
Speaker 1: of what a hound does. There are other dogs that
Speaker 1: aren't hounds that do that, but that's that is like hound.
Speaker 1: The luxe is he's smelling scent on the ground and
Speaker 1: he barks. Okay, um, let me go back to how
Speaker 1: the dogs hunt, because I don't think it's it's it's
Speaker 1: always real clear with hunting dogs, like a duck dog
Speaker 1: is sitting by your side and retrieving ducks. A bird
Speaker 1: dog is gonna be very have a really good handle
Speaker 1: on it, meaning that the owner can give that dog commands,
Speaker 1: very specific commands, and that dog will obey, but that
Speaker 1: dog is always staying pretty close to the owner, you know,
Speaker 1: never kind of like leaving side of the owner. Typically
Speaker 1: bird dog. These dogs were free casting them what you've
Speaker 1: just described as free casting. And we want a dog
Speaker 1: that is gonna have a lot of hunt in and
Speaker 1: and go out and find the quarry. So I mean,
Speaker 1: like you turn a dog loosen, you you just if
Speaker 1: we're if we're hunting that way by free casting, we're
Speaker 1: just gonna turn a dog loosen. We're gonna sit there.
Speaker 1: And I think that's been surprising to some new people
Speaker 1: I've taken Brent as They're like, well, aren't we gonna
Speaker 1: chase the dogs? Isn't that what? Isn't that what all?
Speaker 1: Uh uh Billy did on where the red friend grows, Yeah,
Speaker 1: followed after him. Well Billy didn't have a garment from
Speaker 1: the w hound supply, Buddy would bury. Um No, the
Speaker 1: what you just said them being able to track a
Speaker 1: dog by sound like used to you would have had
Speaker 1: to follow the dogs pretty close to stay within hearing
Speaker 1: of them. Anymore. We don't have to do that, so
Speaker 1: we turned dogs loosen. We just kind of sit there
Speaker 1: wait for him to go tree or wait for him
Speaker 1: to strike a track. And so that's I just wanted
Speaker 1: to clarify that. Okay, So walk me through the stages
Speaker 1: of a track, okay, like like if they open or
Speaker 1: they strike or whatever they do or what I would
Speaker 1: call it strike or I mean, that would be typically
Speaker 1: what I would say, But they're both the same thing.
Speaker 1: So take me from there, all right, he strikes on
Speaker 1: the track. You know, some dogs, after you get after
Speaker 1: you know them, if you hunt them a while, you
Speaker 1: can tell how hot the track is. And by that
Speaker 1: I mean how fresh it is. You know, a dog
Speaker 1: leaving a uh walking through a place thirty minutes before
Speaker 1: our coon walking through a place thirty minutes before the
Speaker 1: hound comes through, you know, that's that's pretty warm, pretty
Speaker 1: warm track as opposed to one that came through two
Speaker 1: hours ago. That would be what we'd call a cold track,
Speaker 1: and he would be in in the way. The smoking
Speaker 1: hot track would be Yeah, he's he was here, right,
Speaker 1: you know, the puddle or the mud that where that
Speaker 1: coon step is, the waters filling into that track, you know,
Speaker 1: So it's a hot track and the dogs are gonna
Speaker 1: react different. You're gonna get a different reaction from him.
Speaker 1: Where a hot track would be a more excited and
Speaker 1: a more high tempo and you know, excitable bark as
Speaker 1: as opposed to it would be less degrees of that
Speaker 1: for the colder part of the track or a colder
Speaker 1: style track. Yeah. Um, So the dog strikes a track
Speaker 1: and he's smelling the scent of that coon on the ground,
Speaker 1: and he's he very well maybe smelling like okay. Here,
Speaker 1: here's the other thing I think I don't think people
Speaker 1: understand is that what stage does a coon? No, it's
Speaker 1: being pursued by a dog, okay, like that. I think
Speaker 1: most of the time our dogs are striking the natural
Speaker 1: travel patterns of that coon. That coon has been waiting
Speaker 1: along that creek, leaving scent on the ground. Then our
Speaker 1: dogs come in and they hear, they smell him and
Speaker 1: bark and they start tracking that coon, and that coon
Speaker 1: maybe three yards up the creek and goes, oh, I
Speaker 1: hear a dog. Some percentage of coons are pretty much
Speaker 1: gonna probably climb up a tree right then some percentage
Speaker 1: of coons are gonna run. But coons are not like
Speaker 1: this endurance animal like a black bear would be coon.
Speaker 1: The longest coon races I've ever seen would probably be
Speaker 1: like half a mile or three quarters of a mile,
Speaker 1: and and there have been much longer coon races than that.
Speaker 1: That's just my personal experience, and that would be a
Speaker 1: long one. Most of them are two hundred yards. And
Speaker 1: the dog, the dog trails trails, trails, trails. He's barking
Speaker 1: on the track, barking, barking, barking, and then when he
Speaker 1: comes to the tree that the game has gone up,
Speaker 1: he will do what we call a locate bark, which
Speaker 1: is an elongated bark. Typically not not all hounds do it.
Speaker 1: Some of them do it really beautiful. Some of them
Speaker 1: have a quote unquote a million dollar locate. Others may
Speaker 1: not have much of a locate or a changeover. But
Speaker 1: so they're barking this irregular bark and then they they
Speaker 1: hit the tree and it's almost like they're saying, he
Speaker 1: went up the tree. I me and you were walking
Speaker 1: along coon track, Brent, and we were like, there he is.
Speaker 1: There's his track. There's his track. There's his track, there's
Speaker 1: his track, and then we see his tracks go up
Speaker 1: the tree. Would be like, I just think you went
Speaker 1: up that tree, voice would change in octave. And then
Speaker 1: once the dog is solidified on the the coon is
Speaker 1: up that tree, then it begins to treat um. I
Speaker 1: described to somebody the other day, Brent, about how the
Speaker 1: reason that a tree dog is so special. Man, if
Speaker 1: you just talk to somebody that had no context for
Speaker 1: hunting dogs or tree dogs, you would say that dog
Speaker 1: barks at a coon tree. When a coon goes up
Speaker 1: a tree at barks, they would not know that that
Speaker 1: was special. Do you see what I'm saying. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just like, it's a dog barking on a tree.
Speaker 1: What's the big deal? And and we are like, oh, man,
Speaker 1: that's a tree dog. Let's dissect this, Brent Reeves, listen
Speaker 1: to this. A a tree dog is actually a beautiful,
Speaker 1: a beautiful example of the human dog partnership. Perhaps the
Speaker 1: greatest example of the human dog partnership, which dogs which
Speaker 1: were are basically domesticated wolves. If we go back a
Speaker 1: long time and humans partnership with dogs has been a
Speaker 1: massive part of our success as a species. If we
Speaker 1: go back to our hunter gatherer days, the human species
Speaker 1: has been propped up on the back of dogs, domesticated dogs,
Speaker 1: that protected us, that helped us hunt uh, that fed
Speaker 1: humans at different times when time's got rough. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like having a little backup plan if things plan
Speaker 1: f um. But listen to this. A a natural canine
Speaker 1: would never have the instinct to stay embark at a
Speaker 1: tree while I was pursuing game because that game would
Speaker 1: have escaped them. And the reason he is staying there
Speaker 1: because he's waiting for me to come to him. And
Speaker 1: that has been bred into them by selective breeding, and
Speaker 1: it it shows a it's a partnership dynamic because humans
Speaker 1: have a way to deal with critters that climb. It's
Speaker 1: called bullets, it's called arrows, it's called rocks, it's called
Speaker 1: opposable thumb, so we can climb that tree and shake
Speaker 1: it out. A dog does not have that. So my
Speaker 1: point being is a wolf, a coyote, a fox, they're
Speaker 1: chasing stuff on the ground to try to catch it.
Speaker 1: When it ran up a tree, they go try to
Speaker 1: find something else that hadn't run up a tree yet.
Speaker 1: Do you see what I'm saying? Selective breeding, So it
Speaker 1: goes against everything natural for a dog to want to
Speaker 1: stay at a tree and bark. That's why tree dogs special. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's a it's the it's the whole
Speaker 1: volume of that partnership and and and what it means
Speaker 1: to somebody that can really appreciate it is I'm providing
Speaker 1: that dog's healthcare, I'm feeding him, I give him a
Speaker 1: place to stay, dental absolutely, and it's and he's pretty
Speaker 1: expensive for the one that I've got. So and Nick
Speaker 1: just went and no telling how much she's spent one
Speaker 1: for Nick Gilliland's dog that he just went to pick
Speaker 1: up exactly. So I mean, and and that dog is
Speaker 1: also a very important part of my family. You know,
Speaker 1: my wife and my little girl are It's a daily
Speaker 1: ritual when my wife comes home, she picks Bailey up
Speaker 1: from school, which wiks. She goes outside, sets on the
Speaker 1: on the back patio and tells my coon dog that
Speaker 1: he does not have to go hunt and if he
Speaker 1: don't want to, he can stay right here. Your wife. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is Alexei. This is Alexis. Yeah, my wife. And
Speaker 1: uh and because Bailey goes with me, she likes to
Speaker 1: coon hunt. And but it's you know, he's just he's
Speaker 1: a part of the family. And it's that that it
Speaker 1: really makes it. I mean, it's humorous, but it makes
Speaker 1: it that much more special when he does. You know,
Speaker 1: he's just a puppy and he's learning, so it just
Speaker 1: makes it that much more special when he holds up
Speaker 1: his end of the deal. You know, I bought him
Speaker 1: as a as a coon dog. It turned out he
Speaker 1: became a member of our family and through his personality,
Speaker 1: but it makes it that much more special what you're
Speaker 1: talking about when he does what he's had to do,
Speaker 1: what his genetic code you know, tells for him to do,
Speaker 1: and it is it's hard for somebody to understand that's
Speaker 1: not had a dog in the hunt quote unquote. I
Speaker 1: mean there's something like people that are dog people understand it,
Speaker 1: and uh and and nothing against people that wouldn't be
Speaker 1: dog people. But point being, there is something that triggers
Speaker 1: inside of us that is beyond rational explanation. When we
Speaker 1: partner with an animal to acquire meat for our family,
Speaker 1: to acquire hides for our family, to acquire wildlife related commodities.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's like it's like it's almost as
Speaker 1: elemental as a humans attraction to fire. I mean, and
Speaker 1: it's the human attraction to fire goes beyond rational explanation
Speaker 1: of oh I can warm my hands. I mean that
Speaker 1: is something that has has from the very beginning been
Speaker 1: the thing that has caused us to be successful as
Speaker 1: a species as well. Yeah, absolutely, we have we have. Uh.
Speaker 1: I was reading in a book the other day Brint
Speaker 1: about this is slightly a rabbit trail. But I'm going
Speaker 1: back to this kind of like uh. And when I
Speaker 1: when I use the term evolutionary, I'm not. I'm not
Speaker 1: talking about there's a lot of stuff. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of good things inside of evolution. They are just science. Okay,
Speaker 1: sometimes we've been trained to think that, you know. Anyway,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of evolutionary stuff that goes with fire,
Speaker 1: with goes I read uh uh And apart a high
Speaker 1: apartment that has a good stuff or where we put
Speaker 1: our trophy homes is up on big hills. Wherever you live,
Speaker 1: there's probably like high dollar homes up high. It's that
Speaker 1: stems from our days when humans were in grasslands and
Speaker 1: to have any sort of elevation was biological advantage. Like
Speaker 1: we we developed this this sense inside of our genes
Speaker 1: are instincts that like to be high is better than
Speaker 1: to be low, because when we're high we can see anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm saying that a tree dog triggers these same things
Speaker 1: because what I do is absolutely irrational. Brand It makes
Speaker 1: no sense why I drove three and a half hours
Speaker 1: to come to this swamp to turn loose my dogs.
Speaker 1: I love it. Oh my gosh. The mosquitoes know it's
Speaker 1: And the whole point of this whole conversation is is
Speaker 1: that coon hunting may not be get something that's in
Speaker 1: people's wheelhouse, but we're gonna put it there as an
Speaker 1: option for people to to give him an access point.
Speaker 1: And that's what this whole conversation is about, Okay. And
Speaker 1: and there's uh to dive into the like practical aspects
Speaker 1: of like how could you become a coon hunter? I mean,
Speaker 1: let's talk about getting a dog? Where where could people?
Speaker 1: What kind of dogs are people using for coon hunting?
Speaker 1: Number one brand, Well, probably the most popular dog, and
Speaker 1: it's gonna be a tree and walker's. There's probably there's
Speaker 1: more of those used than than than anyone are there
Speaker 1: any other type. But you've got tree and walkers, and
Speaker 1: you've got red bones, um blue ticks, black and tans,
Speaker 1: plot dogs. There's leopard dogs that I'm not very familiar
Speaker 1: with those U English English dogs, um dogs. I think
Speaker 1: there are five or six U k C registered what
Speaker 1: they call coonhounds, and it's the ones you just named.
Speaker 1: People also used for coon hunting, sometimes curd dogs, but
Speaker 1: most of it is going to be those main breeds
Speaker 1: of hounds that you just described. So if you have
Speaker 1: a lab, it's probably not gonna make a coon dog.
Speaker 1: People ask me stuff like that, well I've got a
Speaker 1: I've got a blue healer. You think I could turn
Speaker 1: it into this? And it's like, well, probably not right.
Speaker 1: And it doesn't saying that they wouldn't run one up
Speaker 1: a tree. But as far as as having a dog
Speaker 1: that that if you're looking for a coon dog, that
Speaker 1: the ones that we just described there that are that's
Speaker 1: the area that you want to start picking from. And
Speaker 1: you know, there's a there's a lot of through you know,
Speaker 1: social media and and and the internet and other sources
Speaker 1: finding dogs are it's pretty easy, very easy, readily available,
Speaker 1: finding the right I bet we could right now on
Speaker 1: our phone, bright, I bet we could do a challenge.
Speaker 1: Could we in ten minutes find a registered litter of
Speaker 1: coon hounds within two hours? Right here for sale? Oh gosh, yeah,
Speaker 1: and we we could. That would be a good challenge.
Speaker 1: We could do it. The point is there, these dogs
Speaker 1: are readily available. Yeah, they're They're everywhere for sure. And
Speaker 1: is it's um in great abundance, you know. And you've
Speaker 1: got different different styles. All the dogs that are bred
Speaker 1: now are are coming from the competition world of the
Speaker 1: the characteristics. And he just found the litter of pups. Carson.
Speaker 1: We've got our buddy Carson over here and he just
Speaker 1: picked up his phone. You find a letter, Carson. Let
Speaker 1: me see, Okay, let me see. All right, So this
Speaker 1: is uh, this is this was posted yesterday at twelve thirty.
Speaker 1: This guy's got some tree and walker puppies. Where is
Speaker 1: this at? Do you know it's in Arkansas? Yep. Well
Speaker 1: there's not a place in our that you can't go
Speaker 1: be Yeah, yeah, because Carson id is good for the wind.
Speaker 1: So okay, so you you got your dog. And again
Speaker 1: we're just breaking this down bare bones, um, how you
Speaker 1: train a dog? Brow And again like we're just that
Speaker 1: you could have their books written about training coon dogs.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk about tons of tons of literature, tons
Speaker 1: of videos, the best thing in the world to do.
Speaker 1: Break it down as simple as you can take a
Speaker 1: dog that's bread two tree coons to a place where
Speaker 1: there are coons and turn him loose and you and
Speaker 1: see what he does. Now, you want to you want
Speaker 1: to be able to control that dog. You know, I started.
Speaker 1: I got my dog when he was six months old,
Speaker 1: and the first thing we did was bond as friends
Speaker 1: and show him I'm the boss. He needs to do
Speaker 1: what I tell him to do. That's the way you
Speaker 1: did with me too, that you and you've never done it,
Speaker 1: iss never took. So I wanted to up the ampage
Speaker 1: on your collar the next time, the next time we
Speaker 1: go train. Most dogs are started when they're about ten
Speaker 1: to twelve months old. Nine nine to twelve months old
Speaker 1: is the window when you're gonna start kind of hunting
Speaker 1: the dog. Yeah, and you're and you're talking about a
Speaker 1: process now and an investment not only in money, but
Speaker 1: in time, because there there are some of the greatest
Speaker 1: dogs in the world never started a tree and until
Speaker 1: they were two years old or older. So I mean,
Speaker 1: you're that's that's a lot of trips in the woods
Speaker 1: where nothing happened to the way you wanted it to happen.
Speaker 1: And we talked about it um a lot Nick and
Speaker 1: I do on our podcast and with Steve Fielder, is
Speaker 1: that the the best thing that you can have is
Speaker 1: patients when you're training one of these dogs. And so
Speaker 1: it's a it's a big investment. Uh and if if
Speaker 1: you're wanting to do it yourself, if I'm a puppy
Speaker 1: up to the finished, you know, it's a project and
Speaker 1: it's a it's a long grind. Now the thing to do.
Speaker 1: Somebody's wanting to get into it right away. You know,
Speaker 1: they're started dogs. You can buy started dog and to
Speaker 1: buy a dog that someone else has already put the
Speaker 1: time in getting that dog started where he's not where
Speaker 1: he's he's hunting for coons when he leaves you, and
Speaker 1: he's doing what what you want him to do when
Speaker 1: you tell him to. He's not running deer, he's not
Speaker 1: running pot tree and possums or bobcats or or anything
Speaker 1: bats or other than a coon. And uh, but you
Speaker 1: know those obviously they are going to be more expensive. Well,
Speaker 1: the so when you're talking about training a dog, you
Speaker 1: have this dog that has a natural instinct to tree coon,
Speaker 1: that dog also would have the same natural instinct to
Speaker 1: run a deer or so a lot of people don't
Speaker 1: understand that is that just because you have a dog
Speaker 1: that's bread to be a a coon dog to rae
Speaker 1: coon's does not mean that he's not gonna have that
Speaker 1: a similar desire to chase other games. So basically you're
Speaker 1: you're trying to whittle them away from off game. And
Speaker 1: so you you reward them for good behavior, and then
Speaker 1: you discipline them. And by discipline that could mean many
Speaker 1: many things, usually very light, which would be like no
Speaker 1: reward for bad behavior, reward for good behavior, zero award,
Speaker 1: or negative reward for bad behavior. And over the course
Speaker 1: of a period of time, like my scooter dog, he's
Speaker 1: ten months old. Over the last month, I think I'm
Speaker 1: seventy percent towards turning him on just coon like. He'll
Speaker 1: still run whatever, but he has learned that there is
Speaker 1: a big reward for tree and a coon. He because
Speaker 1: when he gets the tree, he sees my excitement, my
Speaker 1: praise of him. And when shoot a coon down, he
Speaker 1: gets to see a coon. When he runs a deer,
Speaker 1: he gets nothing. The deer runs away from him, he
Speaker 1: gets tired, he gets no reward for me. He doesn't
Speaker 1: get the smell at deer's fur. And eventually as he's older,
Speaker 1: I might find other ways to discipline him running a deer,
Speaker 1: but he usually it's positive praise. It's the positive that
Speaker 1: makes him go, man, why would I want to run anything?
Speaker 1: But and so just over time, it's almost like a miracle.
Speaker 1: Just your dog's pretty straight. They're inherent, Uh desire is
Speaker 1: to please you, you know. And I've always said that
Speaker 1: a dog is only if a dog is everything is equal,
Speaker 1: and you've got a well bred dog that knows what
Speaker 1: he's supposed to do, or he has the desire to
Speaker 1: do what what he's bred to do. The limiting factor
Speaker 1: for that dog is the man that's handling him, or
Speaker 1: the ladier whoever is the isn't handling that dog. Because
Speaker 1: if you cannot explain or communicate to that dog what
Speaker 1: you want him to do, then it's not his fault,
Speaker 1: it's yours. So and that has always been something that
Speaker 1: that when I'm correcting a dog or praising a dog,
Speaker 1: is he understanding what I'm wanting him to do? And
Speaker 1: if if when he's treating, when he treats a coon
Speaker 1: and we see the coon and he knows the coon's there,
Speaker 1: whether I knock it out to him or not, and
Speaker 1: I love him up and I praise him, and he
Speaker 1: you know, he's the best boy ever. And we were
Speaker 1: doing a little I'm petting him and praising and rubbing
Speaker 1: him and everything there at the tree, and then we leave.
Speaker 1: I mean, you can tell them his demeanor. He's ready.
Speaker 1: I want I want to experience that again. I want
Speaker 1: to do that again. Or if he goes somewhere we
Speaker 1: can't find the tree, or we we he treats and
Speaker 1: we can't find the coon, and it's uh, maybe it's slick.
Speaker 1: What's called a slick tree where you can look on
Speaker 1: every limb and there's not a there's not a dog.
Speaker 1: He missed him, you know, he missed it. He treate,
Speaker 1: But the coon wasn't. You just go up there and
Speaker 1: you put your lead on him and you drag him
Speaker 1: and you pull him away, you walk away and you
Speaker 1: turn and loose again. And in that experience, he maybe
Speaker 1: the scent was not. For whatever reason, he's got to
Speaker 1: do a little deductive reasoning that what happened just then
Speaker 1: was not as fun as when we saw the coon
Speaker 1: and the coon got knocked out, or I was praised
Speaker 1: on the on the previous and it's repetition. It's the
Speaker 1: same thing every time, every time you go. And it's
Speaker 1: not it doesn't happen in a month, like I said,
Speaker 1: it could be years, you know, a year and a half,
Speaker 1: two years. However, wouldn't you say you typically expect to
Speaker 1: see I don't want to paint the picture too negative,
Speaker 1: even though what you're not negative but too extreme. I mean,
Speaker 1: you like, your dog is a year old and he's
Speaker 1: already treating coon's right, so now to get a finished dog,
Speaker 1: you're gonna get that two year plus. But I mean
Speaker 1: like you're already having a ton of fun and excitement
Speaker 1: with a year old dog that's tree tree and coon's
Speaker 1: on his own. Well, so I don't want to sound like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's two years old for your doing anything,
Speaker 1: and it's all what what you watch, how you look
Speaker 1: at it. You know, every day every time that I go,
Speaker 1: he doesn't tree a coon every time I take him,
Speaker 1: you know, but if he does what I tell him,
Speaker 1: if he hunts like I want him to hunt, if
Speaker 1: he because you know, I've got no control over whether
Speaker 1: or not coons are coming down and crawling around on
Speaker 1: the ground. I can't control that part. The only thing
Speaker 1: I can do is try to prepare my dog the
Speaker 1: best I can, take him to the place where I
Speaker 1: think they are at the time they are, and turn
Speaker 1: them loose. But if if that dog does what I
Speaker 1: want him to do when I turn him loose, that's
Speaker 1: a it's a positive thing, you know. And when I
Speaker 1: get him back at the end of the night, and
Speaker 1: I know he's been out there and he's tried, and
Speaker 1: he hadn't run deer, and he hadn't treated uposs um,
Speaker 1: and you know, he he hadn't disobeyed me when and
Speaker 1: when I called him back, maybe he was getting close
Speaker 1: to a road, you know, and I I give him
Speaker 1: a tone on the collar, um, and or I called
Speaker 1: him verbally, you know, and and and he come back
Speaker 1: to me. You know that those are all positive, positive things.
Speaker 1: And when he gets back to me at the end
Speaker 1: of the night, I'm gonna love on him and pet
Speaker 1: him and praise him, you know, just like I would
Speaker 1: if he had treated coon. Because that progression every day
Speaker 1: is just your building the foundation, putting all that stuff,
Speaker 1: building that base layer of that. You know, I'm the
Speaker 1: dogs thinking, I'm if I do these things, I get
Speaker 1: the reward, you know. And then the the the gravy
Speaker 1: on that biscuit is when he's treeing coons by consistently
Speaker 1: love the metaphor brant, that's it man on that biscuit.
Speaker 1: The hunt is the the other thing that people. I mean,
Speaker 1: the main way that we would train a dog to
Speaker 1: brand is about taking it with an older dog. And
Speaker 1: I can't minimize that in anyway. Like the way I'm
Speaker 1: training my dog Scooter right now is taking her with
Speaker 1: a broke, finished coon dog. And so that dog begins
Speaker 1: to the young dog begins to hunt with the old dog,
Speaker 1: The old dog trees, the young dog comes in and
Speaker 1: it's like, hey, what's he doing? And and over time
Speaker 1: they kind of just merge into doing what a good
Speaker 1: dog is gonna do, just like they would merge into
Speaker 1: doing what a bad dog was doing too. If you
Speaker 1: had a trashy dog does running deer, your pub will
Speaker 1: start running deer. So there's the probably the hardest limiting
Speaker 1: factor for somebody that's never coon hunting, that doesn't have
Speaker 1: a connection to coon hunting is how are they gonna
Speaker 1: find somebody? And and that's just one of those, uh
Speaker 1: social challenges that somebody's gonna have to figure out. You
Speaker 1: know all over the country, you know, I was in.
Speaker 1: I was very fortunate when after I bought my dog,
Speaker 1: I'd had him maybe three or four weeks, and I'm
Speaker 1: outside of my driveway cleaning out my my dog box
Speaker 1: and a man that I'd never met in my life,
Speaker 1: Rex White, and drove up in my driveway and said, Hey,
Speaker 1: what you're gonna think? He said. The first thing he
Speaker 1: said to me is you're gonna think I'm crazy. Well,
Speaker 1: I didn't think he was crazy then, but I do
Speaker 1: now it's confirmed. But he said, there's two kinds of
Speaker 1: people that live around here where we live, and that
Speaker 1: is duck hunters and coon hunters. What kind of dog
Speaker 1: you putting in this box? I said, the coon dog.
Speaker 1: And from that conversation right there, we have become really
Speaker 1: good for hims. It turns out, you know, he's got
Speaker 1: an older dog, just what you're talking about, an eight
Speaker 1: year old dogs. All you had to do is have
Speaker 1: a dog box in the back of your and that's
Speaker 1: all it took. And I was fortunate enough. And that
Speaker 1: just shows you how willing people are. I mean, they're
Speaker 1: out there, but it's not I say that statement to
Speaker 1: say that it's not impossible to do it by yourself.
Speaker 1: You know, it's just gonna be harder. And and Rex
Speaker 1: not only is there, his dog is not only helping
Speaker 1: my dog, he's helping me. You know, he's helping me
Speaker 1: read that dog and telling me through his experience. This
Speaker 1: guy's got tons. He's been hunting forever. Hey, when I
Speaker 1: when I started training mules, I didn't know much of anything.
Speaker 1: And I watched YouTube videos learn how to train a mule. Okay,
Speaker 1: that could only take me so far. And my friend
Speaker 1: Darren Wiles, who's Darren's probably in his sixties, he was
Speaker 1: coaching me through, just like over the phone, different things
Speaker 1: about my mule. I'd tell him what was happening. He'd
Speaker 1: tell me this, and yad. We went back and forth. Well,
Speaker 1: one day Darren said, hey, i'm I want to come
Speaker 1: over and I'll help you work your mule. I watched
Speaker 1: Darren Wiles for five minutes in that round pen with
Speaker 1: my mule, and bam, I got it. Really, it wasn't
Speaker 1: what he taught. It wasn't like do this and do that.
Speaker 1: It wasn't like a technique. But I watched his demeanor
Speaker 1: with that animal. I watched how he demanded its respect
Speaker 1: I watched his posture and I was like, oh, that's training.
Speaker 1: I get it. And that translated a whole bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1: I say that to say I have been with a
Speaker 1: houndsman before that. The same experience happened, like I'd just
Speaker 1: been turning dogs loose, Like when I in phase one
Speaker 1: of Clay Newcomes coon hunting career from age fourteen to
Speaker 1: age twenty one, I was just taking coon dogs quote
Speaker 1: unquote and just turn them loose and they'd go trick coon.
Speaker 1: I'd go shoot it out, and we just did that
Speaker 1: as much as we could. I never had great dogs.
Speaker 1: When when I was an adult and got back into
Speaker 1: coon hunting, I went with Danny Drummond, my friend Danny
Speaker 1: Drummond in Northwest Arkansas, and uh, just a couple of
Speaker 1: things he told me to do, and it wouldn't have
Speaker 1: even been anything specific. It was Fern when I was
Speaker 1: training Fern, and Fern was running something that the old
Speaker 1: dog that he had wouldn't run. And I didn't know
Speaker 1: if I should go discipline Fern because we knew it
Speaker 1: was off game. And he said, I'll just let her
Speaker 1: run and I said really, and he said, Jesus, a
Speaker 1: pup she's eight months old. Just let her run, and
Speaker 1: you know that that trash track, as we'd call it,
Speaker 1: fizzled out, and Fern came back and went and treat
Speaker 1: a coon with the old dog. Eventually, you know, like
Speaker 1: the old dog treat. And Fern was there and I learned, Okay,
Speaker 1: you don't have to demand perfection. This is kind of
Speaker 1: a long term thing. And he was like, I like
Speaker 1: it that your dog was running anything, and I said, oh,
Speaker 1: really okay. And then the next time we went, Fern
Speaker 1: absolutely burned the hair for a deer and he said,
Speaker 1: I like what your dog just did. And I said
Speaker 1: really and he said, man, she ran that deer like
Speaker 1: she meant it. And I said, okay, got it like
Speaker 1: it like he he liked the desire, and he said,
Speaker 1: you can. You can work with that her running a deer.
Speaker 1: Later once she starts treeing coons and you start praising
Speaker 1: her for that, and she knows that life is good
Speaker 1: when you tree coons. And point being going with somebody
Speaker 1: can mean a lot. You can learn a lot. The
Speaker 1: exact same lesson. I got that exact same lesson from Rex.
Speaker 1: He told me. He said, look, he said, the hardest
Speaker 1: thing to do to teach a dog is to go hunt,
Speaker 1: he said. If you got one that'll go out there
Speaker 1: and do that, you're you're way ahead of the game already, said.
Speaker 1: If he's chasing deer, it don't matter what he's doing.
Speaker 1: If he is chasing another animal out there, regardless of
Speaker 1: what what you want to do, you can teach him
Speaker 1: not to do that and stick to coons, he said.
Speaker 1: But if he's running running game out there, deer or whatever,
Speaker 1: he said, you know you've got something. You've got a
Speaker 1: place to start. So you're already ahead of the game.
Speaker 1: So you know, I think the main the main thing
Speaker 1: we wanted to do was introduce people to the idea
Speaker 1: that they could be a coon hunter, the idea that
Speaker 1: this is a family sport, the idea that the the
Speaker 1: game regulations are liberal. Anywhere you want a coon hunt,
Speaker 1: the game rags are pretty liberal. I mean like high
Speaker 1: bag limits, long seasons. Um. Your challenges are gonna be
Speaker 1: finding a place to hunt. But if you're in a
Speaker 1: place a lot of public ground, you can probably do
Speaker 1: pretty good. I pretty much have three farms that I
Speaker 1: hunt on private ground for coon and that has serviced
Speaker 1: me well for years. Three farms, one of them is
Speaker 1: three hundred acres, one of them six hundred acres, and
Speaker 1: one of them two acres. Okay, that gives you an
Speaker 1: idea the size farms that I'm hunting, and uh, all
Speaker 1: the those do me good. Plus my public land and
Speaker 1: like come down here for a weekend hunt with you
Speaker 1: guys on some of this big these big tracks of
Speaker 1: land down here. Um so the way, so this is
Speaker 1: not meant to be like the full resource of off
Speaker 1: of coon hunting, but you guys have that. You have
Speaker 1: a podcast brandts all about coon hunting. Tell me about
Speaker 1: that just a little bit. Nick Gilla Land and Steve
Speaker 1: Fielder and I uh do a podcast called The night
Speaker 1: Life Nation and it's all coon dogs, coon hunting, anything
Speaker 1: related to it. Competition. Steve is a oh gosh, I
Speaker 1: would almost said world renowned, but yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: that that wouldn't your nationally renowned absolutely because there's not
Speaker 1: much nobody else cares about coon's far and as far
Speaker 1: as I know, Steve is the only guy that has
Speaker 1: ran all the coon hunting registries a k C, p
Speaker 1: k C in the U k C that has worked
Speaker 1: all three places, and just a vault of information about
Speaker 1: competition hunting and and the lineage of legacy of historically
Speaker 1: great dogs and and good coon hunters, and just a
Speaker 1: wealth of information. He handles all that stuff and uh
Speaker 1: and and Nick is an accomplished a dog trainer and
Speaker 1: and hunter from North Carolina. He's just a good guy.
Speaker 1: He's just a good guy man and he loves to hunt.
Speaker 1: His mission. He's always talking about how can we help
Speaker 1: you know, the folks that are listening, and that's that's
Speaker 1: why we do. He came up with the phrase of
Speaker 1: you know, we want to do something that's that's educational,
Speaker 1: entertaining and help people evolve, you know, getting better in
Speaker 1: this in this business of of coon in the sport
Speaker 1: of it. And he's not a competition hunter. And you know,
Speaker 1: I've never been to a competition hunt. I look forward
Speaker 1: to going some you know and trying it out. But
Speaker 1: the joy of just having a dog and and going
Speaker 1: out and doing you know, hunting, pleasure hunting is what
Speaker 1: what drives us. And we in Nixon, North Carolina, Steves
Speaker 1: in in Florida, and I'm in Arkansas. And we put
Speaker 1: out this weekly show where we just put podcast Night
Speaker 1: Live Nation podcast where we just sat around and we
Speaker 1: talked about it, and we talked about uh, training tips
Speaker 1: and the progression of our dogs. We've all got three
Speaker 1: pretty young dogs that that we're training, and people have
Speaker 1: shown a lot of interest and following how how their
Speaker 1: progression is and the the techniques and stuff that we
Speaker 1: use to to make them better and and we it's
Speaker 1: just a fun family affair. Um. We usually tell a
Speaker 1: story at the end of the other podcast of a
Speaker 1: personal experience someone had, humorous or or otherwise. That is,
Speaker 1: you've never had anything funny happen? Dude, we got to
Speaker 1: close this podcast with me talking about my story. I
Speaker 1: think you know what story I'm talking about. God Bless America. No, no,
Speaker 1: I'm not closed. I'm just I just that's what I
Speaker 1: want to when when we do, we will cue the eagle,
Speaker 1: the eagle cry. Yeah. Anyway, it's it's it's yeah. So
Speaker 1: check out night Life Nation podcast if you have any
Speaker 1: interest in this kind of stuff, because you know, I
Speaker 1: think Brent, this maybe our hundredth podcast, maybe this one
Speaker 1: we're doing right now. And we've talked about coon hunting
Speaker 1: just a handful of times, So I mean, my are
Speaker 1: we're not trying to educate the world on coon hunting.
Speaker 1: You guys are and so uh if you if you
Speaker 1: have interest in becoming a coon hunter, this is these
Speaker 1: guys have a great resource. And that's just a palatable,
Speaker 1: family oriented podcast, a lot of fun, a lot of information.
Speaker 1: You listen to or three podcasts and you get the
Speaker 1: lingo of coon hunting. You know. Part of entry buried
Speaker 1: entry sometimes is people just not understanding stuff. Like we
Speaker 1: say the word treat, well, they don't know what treat is.
Speaker 1: You say a hot track, they don't know what a
Speaker 1: hot track is. You say a walker, they don't know
Speaker 1: what a walker. Yeah, and we say this or that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We actually did like three episodes where we did three
Speaker 1: a segment in three episodes of going through terminology of
Speaker 1: what they were, you know, competition terminology and just regular
Speaker 1: coon hunting terminology. So and we got in a lot
Speaker 1: of response came back that you know, that was people
Speaker 1: if people found it really helpful and it's it just
Speaker 1: inspires us to do more. Yeah, it's it's great. It's
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. Yeah. So yeah, that's uh, I've
Speaker 1: been enjoying it. Um. Hey, two things I want to
Speaker 1: end with. I want to end with the story and
Speaker 1: we're gonna build this story up because it was just incredible. Um. Secondly,
Speaker 1: always always want I feel this need deep in my bones.
Speaker 1: Two talk about why we do what we do, and
Speaker 1: we've already talked about part of the conservation aspect of
Speaker 1: coon hunting. Um Historically, though, did you know I'm gonna
Speaker 1: tee you up for a question. I'm gonna tee you
Speaker 1: right up. What is the most economically important fur burying
Speaker 1: animal of all time for North America? A fever bright
Speaker 1: see American bison, d coyotes? Okay, what is your answer?
Speaker 1: And the to repeat the question the most economically like
Speaker 1: which one has the most gross economic sales of all
Speaker 1: time in North America going back to the sevent hundreds
Speaker 1: when the French came over and start to trapping for trapping.
Speaker 1: Ready go teed um right up, you're exactly right, that's right.
Speaker 1: I would have thought beaver because you hear about the
Speaker 1: high prices that beaver bought in the West. Was the
Speaker 1: European expansion West was fueled by the beaver. But the
Speaker 1: beaver fur trade Brent Reeves was pretty much from about
Speaker 1: the late seventeen hundreds to about the eighteen thirties and
Speaker 1: in about fifty years they trapped those suckers out and
Speaker 1: then from then on it was raccoon pelts for a
Speaker 1: hundred years, from eighteen thirty to about nineteen forty, well
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty years to the nineteen eighties. From like
Speaker 1: the eighteen thirties to the nineteen eighties, coon hides dominated
Speaker 1: the world for markets. And so the reason that this
Speaker 1: is important information is that we are we're coon hunting
Speaker 1: for hides. People do eat raccoons, they do, we do,
Speaker 1: but it is not the primary reason that we hunt coons.
Speaker 1: We're hide hunting, and that is that fits inside the
Speaker 1: North American Mile of Wildlife conservation because there's multiple things
Speaker 1: that we're tapping into. We're tapping into an overabundance of
Speaker 1: a natural resource, which is scientifically. I read that in
Speaker 1: a research paper that uh, Mike Chamberlain sent me, Brent,
Speaker 1: because I've always said that, I've always said that coons
Speaker 1: are over the population of coons currently is unnatural for
Speaker 1: recorded history. That is true, absolutely, So we are we
Speaker 1: are tapping into from a like a depredation standpoint, we're
Speaker 1: trying to lower coon numbers. So that's number one, But
Speaker 1: then number two for high fur prizes aren't worth that
Speaker 1: much anymore, but there's still, uh, there's still traditional all
Speaker 1: usage patterns of coon hides. Like what I'm doing these
Speaker 1: days is all the coons that we take, especially during
Speaker 1: the prime winter months, I'm getting those hides tanned and
Speaker 1: giving away as gifts and oh, it's a it's incredible.
Speaker 1: I mean, the coolest thing in the world is going
Speaker 1: to be to have a buddy of yours that's a
Speaker 1: coon hunter and you get a full tan coon pelt
Speaker 1: for Christmas. For real. They're beautiful. Yeah, and so the
Speaker 1: the hides and and when we've talked about eating them
Speaker 1: and they there it's great meat um, and we've we've
Speaker 1: had it. A lot of people use it, but it's
Speaker 1: not the main reason we're doing it. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of animals that it is the main reason. I think
Speaker 1: sometimes people don't understand that or they might have a
Speaker 1: hard time with it. But don't You don't have to
Speaker 1: have a hard time with it, because this fits perfectly
Speaker 1: inside North American Mali Wildlife Conservation that we are removing
Speaker 1: meso predators off the landscape, but we're also utilizing it
Speaker 1: come mod at the off that animal. So coon hunters man,
Speaker 1: that's what we are, Okay, glad to be one story.
Speaker 1: I was coming here, Brent, yesterday, I was. I drove
Speaker 1: three and a half hours to get down here from
Speaker 1: We didn't even talk about our coon weekend. Kolbe has
Speaker 1: got to put in some background patriotic music. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, just a music bad Kobe a little yeah yeah. All.
Speaker 1: I hear there, it goes there, it goes it sounds good.
Speaker 1: Good job, do you hear it? Now? That's it. I
Speaker 1: was coming here, and I was in downtown Fayette Bulle, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: And now most of you never been there and probably
Speaker 1: will never go there, But imagine in your city the
Speaker 1: most one of the most busy intersections in your city.
Speaker 1: And that was on a major interstate that runs through
Speaker 1: this very populated area of northwest Arkansas. I got off
Speaker 1: on an exit to go wash my truck because I
Speaker 1: didn't want to come down here with a dirty truck.
Speaker 1: There's a construction crew working like right off the exit ramp.
Speaker 1: So there's just people everywhere. Cars almost not bumper to bumper,
Speaker 1: but you know, just people everywhere. I see a bald eagle,
Speaker 1: a bald eagle the size of a Cessna airplane. Swoop
Speaker 1: down out of a bluebird sky and pick up a
Speaker 1: freshly road kill fox squirrel. Now why there was a
Speaker 1: fox squirrel on the Interstate off ramp that I don't know,
Speaker 1: but it was a big, glowing orange fox squirrel. He
Speaker 1: swoops down right in front of my truck, picks up
Speaker 1: the fox squirrel, and then just flies off like a boss.
Speaker 1: Like the rockets are red glare. There was a guy
Speaker 1: right behind me driving a Toyota Tacoma. Sometimes when you're
Speaker 1: in like big cities and you see somebody that's driving,
Speaker 1: they give some indication of you have like a little
Speaker 1: bit of a cultural connection to them. He kind of
Speaker 1: like like hat tip him, you know. And this guy
Speaker 1: had a Toyota Tacoma. You know, I could tell this
Speaker 1: guy was, like, I mean, probably on the same page
Speaker 1: as me in terms of like just he digs the outdoors.
Speaker 1: Probably yea. And he pulled up right beside me, and
Speaker 1: he I knew he had to see because he was
Speaker 1: right behind him. And he looked at me with a
Speaker 1: big grin on his face, a big grin on my face,
Speaker 1: and both of us knew that we had seen something special. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you'll always have that, Oh my goodness. So the eagle
Speaker 1: story Eagle and the fox squirrels. Yeah, that's gonna be
Speaker 1: retold free. That will be on. That'll be a cave drawing.
Speaker 1: You should paint that picture. It's a world good quarters. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's gonna be awesome. Well, thanks, Brent Man. I hate,
Speaker 1: I hate that Nick had to leave. It was kind
Speaker 1: of an odd Oh we didn't know when he was
Speaker 1: going to get the call about this dog and he
Speaker 1: had to go. So and we don't wanta leave folks hang.
Speaker 1: And we think he's gonna be fine. He's just he's
Speaker 1: gonna he just got fixed up and and he'll have
Speaker 1: have him back here this evening and we'll he probably
Speaker 1: won't hut tonight and you know, go back home and
Speaker 1: get well and be good to go. Well, hey, we're
Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna hunt. We're gonna fry some fish and
Speaker 1: then we're gonna hunt again tonight aboutely all right, man,
Speaker 1: We'll keep the wild places wild because that's where the
Speaker 1: Queen's live