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