Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trot
Speaker 2: lining and just general country living. I want you to
Speaker 2: stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons.
Speaker 2: This Country Life is presented by Case Knives on Meat
Speaker 2: Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast.
Speaker 1: The airwaves have to offer.
Speaker 2: All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate.
Speaker 2: I've got some stories to share. First impressions. There's not
Speaker 2: a lot of things more impactful or long lasting than
Speaker 2: a first impression. It is, after all, what we use
Speaker 2: as an initial reference for anything we remain in contact
Speaker 2: with over a period of time. There's no lead story
Speaker 2: this week. The whole episode is a story, and it's
Speaker 2: about a dog some friends of mine have that just
Speaker 2: recently reinforced my need for patience and maybe even the
Speaker 2: little faith. First impressions we all have first in our lives,
Speaker 2: and the experiences can be as much philosophical and emotional
Speaker 2: as they are physical. First impressions we get from an
Speaker 2: experience from the basis of how that activity, person, or
Speaker 2: place is perceived for the rest of our lives. I
Speaker 2: can't tell you how many times I've talked to people
Speaker 2: who found out I was a duck hunter, only to
Speaker 2: hear you're crazy. There's no way I'd go out in
Speaker 2: the freezing weather and wait around in the water for
Speaker 2: something to taste like liver. I used to try to
Speaker 2: convince them that first, if they were eating a duck
Speaker 2: that tasted like liver, they wasn't cooking it right. And second,
Speaker 2: if I was only out there to get a duck
Speaker 2: to eat, I could raise my own, or easier still,
Speaker 2: go to the store and buy one already skint. But
Speaker 2: that wasn't the deal. I wasn't grocery shopping. I can
Speaker 2: do that a lot more comfortably pushing a buggy around
Speaker 2: Kroger while the store radio serenades me with the Marshall
Speaker 2: Tucker band as I negotiate the traffic down the aisles.
Speaker 2: But nine times out of ten, the person telling me
Speaker 2: how they wouldn't do any of that has done it
Speaker 2: at least once, and the experienced bias their judgment forever
Speaker 2: on how their next hunt would be. The percentage of
Speaker 2: people who tell me they wound up getting soaked from
Speaker 2: tripping and falling in the water because of the unknown
Speaker 2: leaking their waiters would be high in the majority. At
Speaker 2: least they tried it, but did they really give it
Speaker 2: a chance. Not Many people who tried baseball got a
Speaker 2: hit the first time they stepped into batter's box, and
Speaker 2: even then, over the course of their career, they only
Speaker 2: have to get a hit three out of ten times
Speaker 2: to be considered above average. Be hard to imagine applying
Speaker 2: that same standard to landing an airplane or crossing bob
Speaker 2: wire fences unscathed. I say all of that to say this,
Speaker 2: keep an open mind when it comes to new things.
Speaker 2: In first times. It's easy for us to go into
Speaker 2: a situation with preconceived notions of how it's going to
Speaker 2: turn out. If we expect to have a bad time,
Speaker 2: odds are we probably will. We're not willing the bad
Speaker 2: times to occur, just only seeing what we thought would happen,
Speaker 2: and when it does, confirming in our minds that what
Speaker 2: took place was destined to turn out that way. Oh
Speaker 2: how wrong that can be and usually is. You've heard
Speaker 2: me talk about my friends at the cash By Old
Speaker 2: hunting Club, Randall Whitmore, his brother Wade, and their lifelong
Speaker 2: friend Brad Clark. Wade lives in Houston, Texas now and
Speaker 2: doesn't get to visit as much as Randall and Braddew,
Speaker 2: who lived just east of the Old Man River in
Speaker 2: Tennessee and Mississippi. But the Whitmore brothers are direct descendants
Speaker 2: of what many consider to be one of the most
Speaker 2: knowledgeable and influential coon hunters of the region, the late
Speaker 2: mister Dick Whitmore. Mister Whitmore had a successful career in
Speaker 2: the advertising business and new dogs inside and out. He
Speaker 2: had some great dogs and a good friend and mentor
Speaker 2: of mine, Rex Whiting, used to hunt dogs for him
Speaker 2: in competition hunts, and mister Whitmore bought and sold dogs
Speaker 2: like the most folks do, trying one until they get
Speaker 2: a good idea of what they think that dog's abilities are.
Speaker 2: And if there's a better than average chance the dog
Speaker 2: will make a good one, he gets to state and
Speaker 2: if not, he gets traded to someone else. One man's
Speaker 2: trash is another man's treasure. Is no truer anywhere than
Speaker 2: in the hound hunting circuits. They're all different. It's like people.
Speaker 2: They all learn at a different rate, just like people.
Speaker 2: They all have their own personalities and idiosyncrasies, just like people.
Speaker 2: So when a dog is chosen to join the partnership,
Speaker 2: a partnership that some say goes back fifteen thousand years.
Speaker 2: They both need a chance to conform to each other.
Speaker 2: After all, the human isn't the only one getting the
Speaker 2: first impression.
Speaker 1: In this deal.
Speaker 2: I say all that to say this. After mister Whitmore
Speaker 2: passed away in twenty seventeen, the only coon hunting that
Speaker 2: was done out of the cash BYO Hunt Club was
Speaker 2: by guests when Randall, Wade, and Brad weren't there. They
Speaker 2: missed the lifestyle and the camaraderie of hunting together and
Speaker 2: enjoyed hearing about our hunts, And finally, a couple of
Speaker 2: years ago, Randal and Brad decided they'd go in on
Speaker 2: a dog together. They, along with Wade, had grown up
Speaker 2: coon hunting and had a strong desire to get back
Speaker 2: in it as participants rather than just observers. My friends
Speaker 2: Michael Roseman and Rex White and I would go hunting
Speaker 2: area near their camp, and Brad and Randall expressed interest
Speaker 2: in having their own dog on the first trip they
Speaker 2: went with us. After a long hiatus that invited hunt
Speaker 2: they accompanied us on wasn't their first impression by any
Speaker 2: means into chasing the mass bandido, but it would be
Speaker 2: their first since the passing of mister Whidmore. So the
Speaker 2: search began for just the right dog. They found one,
Speaker 2: a nicely bloodlined hound from Louisiana that belonged to a
Speaker 2: friend of mine. He was only starting to realize his
Speaker 2: purpose in life.
Speaker 1: When they acquired him.
Speaker 2: They knew what they were getting, and what they were
Speaker 2: getting was a very young dog that was the human
Speaker 2: equivalent of a toddler in his experience for Tree and coons.
Speaker 2: Our first impressions with him were good. He's a pretty
Speaker 2: dog in what seemed to be a good personality, and
Speaker 2: when he barked, you could hear him from a long wait.
Speaker 2: They bought the dog, and as it should be, one
Speaker 2: of them was designated as the handler, and.
Speaker 1: Brad drew the duty.
Speaker 2: For almost all the two years, and sometimes multiple times
Speaker 2: a week. I talked with Brad whenever he had a
Speaker 2: question in training for his and Randall's dog, Cash, named
Speaker 2: after the area in place mister Whitmore enjoyed the most
Speaker 2: around the Cash River here in Arkansas. It would be
Speaker 2: past ten PM and I'd be sitting on the couch.
Speaker 2: After the rest of Casa day, Reeves had retired for
Speaker 2: the evening, and I'd be talking to Brad while he
Speaker 2: was in the woods with his dog, trying to help
Speaker 2: him get an accurate idea of what the dog's potential
Speaker 2: was going to be. I tell you I had mixed
Speaker 2: feelings about him. After hunting with him multiple times over
Speaker 2: several months, I just didn't think he had what it
Speaker 2: took to be a dog you could cut loose and
Speaker 2: have the confidence that if a coon is out there
Speaker 2: that he'd find him. Now I have that with my
Speaker 2: dog Wailing, but I didn't always when he was first
Speaker 2: starting at nine months of age. I also wasn't expecting
Speaker 2: him to do anything, even though I secretly wished he would.
Speaker 2: I was happy if he just went out and explored,
Speaker 2: and I'd watch Cash sometimes just hang around us when
Speaker 2: we were all hunting together, not really doing much of anything.
Speaker 2: Sometimes he'd slick tree just out of sight, which means
Speaker 2: he'd just pick a random tree and go to tree
Speaker 2: and on it.
Speaker 1: Like there was a coon in it, even though there wouldn't.
Speaker 2: Now that's making a boo boot in the coon hunting world,
Speaker 2: this is a big deal. On the negative side, all
Speaker 2: dogs do it, some not as much as others, and
Speaker 2: we can never really truly know the reasons why they do.
Speaker 1: We only have an educated guess. And until we can teach.
Speaker 2: A dog to talk, or they can teach us to bark,
Speaker 2: we're never gonna know for sure what causes them to
Speaker 2: do it. All you houndsmen out there that just started
Speaker 2: hollering at your radio saying I know why they do it,
Speaker 2: You imbecile.
Speaker 1: No you don't. You're only guessing. You're probably right, But.
Speaker 2: Can we say one hundred percent no, we can't, So
Speaker 2: we have to use that and all the other clues
Speaker 2: we learned from watching the dog do his thing and
Speaker 2: stir them up in a bowl like ingredients in a recipe,
Speaker 2: stick it in the oven, and let it cook several
Speaker 2: months to see if this thing is gonna be worth
Speaker 2: eating if you allow me to continue to cook it.
Speaker 2: Analogy for all the non hound of people who listen.
Speaker 2: I was hoping, against hope that what I was seeing
Speaker 2: out of Randolin Brad's dog's cash was gonna taste better
Speaker 2: when it was done than what it smelled like when
Speaker 2: it was cooking. More times than I can count, Brad
Speaker 2: would say, be honest with me, now, is this dog
Speaker 2: worth keeping, and my gut always said probably not after
Speaker 2: the first six months with little to no progress, but
Speaker 2: my my heart just wouldn't give in to it. Folks
Speaker 2: need to understand that one of the concept of having
Speaker 2: a dog that you can turn loose that will focus
Speaker 2: only on a scent of one animal by passing all
Speaker 2: the others along the way, and find it and make
Speaker 2: sure it's in the tree they think it is, and
Speaker 2: then stay there and bark until their master arrives. Seems
Speaker 2: like what a dog would naturally do. That's just what
Speaker 2: they've been developed and bred to do. But a dang
Speaker 2: sure ain't no guarantee that they will or can do it.
Speaker 2: I wrestled with how to tell them with the football analogy. Look,
Speaker 2: it's fourth and forty and we're getting clogged. Let's punt
Speaker 2: forget this season and hope we could pick up a
Speaker 2: new quarterback in the.
Speaker 1: Transfer portal next year.
Speaker 2: Now, being a Razorback fan these past few years, you
Speaker 2: think I know when and how to say that, but
Speaker 2: I just couldn't pull the trigger on it until last
Speaker 2: We were hunting one particular night when the conditions were
Speaker 2: more in tune with bacon bread than trying to tree
Speaker 2: a coon. It was hot and we'd all gathered at
Speaker 2: the usual spot, Brad, Randall and me and Michael. We
Speaker 2: cut loose and treat a handful of coons. Heck treed
Speaker 2: the majority, wailing next, and Cash with none again. In
Speaker 2: the two years I've been hunting around him, I'd never
Speaker 2: seen him make a tree with a coon that we
Speaker 2: could find In the tree. We used thermals and squalled
Speaker 2: at the tree and trying to get one to look.
Speaker 2: We did everything but climbing ourselves and go from limb
Speaker 2: to limb looking for him. As we were parting from
Speaker 2: the hunt, Brad asked us both to think about whether
Speaker 2: he should keep Cash or talk to Randall about getting
Speaker 2: rid of him. On the ride home that night, Michael
Speaker 2: and I were in the truck together and we agreed
Speaker 2: to tell Brad find another dog. Cash just wasn't making
Speaker 2: any progress, and he'd had plenty of opportunities to do so.
Speaker 2: Brad started looking For a while later, Brad was on
Speaker 2: the list for a new puppy, and I was on
Speaker 2: that same list too, but the union didn't take and
Speaker 2: no puppies were going to be made for that cycle.
Speaker 2: Brad said, it looks like I was stuck with hunting
Speaker 2: Cash this winter. I like this dog anyway. I told
Speaker 2: him it only had to please him, and it didn't
Speaker 2: matter what I or anybody else thought. I still want
Speaker 2: to find me a good puppy, but I kind of
Speaker 2: liked this old dog, he said.
Speaker 1: Well, it's easy to see why.
Speaker 2: All through the summer, when I was sitting in the
Speaker 2: cool of my living room, Brad and Cash were out
Speaker 2: trying to get better.
Speaker 1: Night after night. He fought the.
Speaker 2: Heat and mosquitoes and the feeling of dread that when
Speaker 2: Cash treed, he may or may not have a coon.
Speaker 2: He gotten close to sixty coons by now, but he
Speaker 2: never treed one. When Michael and I were there, I
Speaker 2: believed Brad. He sent me pictures and videos of tread
Speaker 2: and having coons. The issue wasn't whether or not he
Speaker 2: could do it. He just wasn't doing it with enough
Speaker 2: consistency that would leave you to believe that he had
Speaker 2: the desire to strike a track and finish it at
Speaker 2: the tree and stay there until Brad got there to
Speaker 2: find it. Spend that much time with someone you enjoy
Speaker 2: being around, and you look over some things that you
Speaker 2: don't approve of, like a Lexus.
Speaker 1: Does with these hats I have strategically placed all around
Speaker 1: our home.
Speaker 2: Now. A few nights ago, Michael, Brad and I took
Speaker 2: our dogs, Heck, Cash and Whaling and we went hun.
Speaker 2: All three bede a coon and a big brushtop to start,
Speaker 2: then Whaling bade another one and another big brushtop. Then
Speaker 2: Heck treed one at the same time Cash fell treed
Speaker 2: four hundred yards away in a different spot. Heck had
Speaker 2: a coon, and believe it or not, fifteen other ones
Speaker 2: setting in four trees around the one he was barking in.
Speaker 2: Now I assumed it was just going to be another
Speaker 2: close but no cigar with Cash. And now I went
Speaker 2: with Michael to get Heck while I kept wailing on
Speaker 2: his leash. We had to come back this way to
Speaker 2: get to the truck, so Brad would be coming back
Speaker 2: as soon as he went and leased up Cash, who
Speaker 2: was barking it only Cash new. Brad eventually came back
Speaker 2: with a video on his phone and Cash on a leash.
Speaker 2: He said, I knew he was going to have one
Speaker 2: when y'all didn't come with me. He showed me the
Speaker 2: video and sure enough there was the mass banded himself
Speaker 2: safe and secure in the back of a hollow log,
Speaker 2: the only threat to his wellness being the train. Ball
Speaker 2: of Cash is barking echoing through that law. Are you
Speaker 2: sure that's a coon, Bradley, That of looks like a possum.
Speaker 1: Well it was a coon, but I had to aggravate
Speaker 1: hem missed my job.
Speaker 2: And even though I didn't witness at firsthand, I was
Speaker 2: proud of Cash and happy for Brad. On all the
Speaker 2: trips that we'd been together on, this was the first
Speaker 2: time he cut his hand loose and retrieved him from
Speaker 2: a coon he'd found, all on his own.
Speaker 1: I was sorry I didn't see it myself.
Speaker 2: The next night, Michael went off to a competition hunt
Speaker 2: with Heck and A a couple hours away, and he
Speaker 2: won it. Heck's now qualified for the UKC Tournament of Champions.
Speaker 2: Congratulations boys. Brad Randall and I went together and the
Speaker 2: hunting conditions where we were couldn't have been much worse.
Speaker 2: It was warm, it was foggy, and it was shying
Speaker 2: off and on, not the exact conditions you draw up
Speaker 2: for running dogs, and yet there we were, meeting up
Speaker 2: at a predetermined spot to decide on where we were
Speaker 2: going to go. I was trying to decide if I
Speaker 2: even wanted to cut weight and loose during our truck
Speaker 2: window the truck window powwow that we were having while
Speaker 2: the heavens soaked my left arm. Brad let me off
Speaker 2: hook when he said, if you just want to listen
Speaker 2: to Cash bump around the woods from your truck, that
Speaker 2: suits me. I just need to turn him loose for
Speaker 2: a while. Perfect because I was going home after the
Speaker 2: mont anyway, and by not turning waiting loose in what
Speaker 2: was surely to be an exercise in wet and muddy futility,
Speaker 2: Whaling and I could both just roll right up in
Speaker 2: the house as soon as we got home, bypassing the
Speaker 2: garage washing and drying that would get him in the
Speaker 2: neighborhood of being clean enough for Mama's house. Brad callar
Speaker 2: Cash up and turned him loose, and I smiled to myself,
Speaker 2: knowing that even though I was going to stay regardless
Speaker 2: of the outcome, Brent and Whaling could light a shuck
Speaker 2: for home whenever we took the notion. We stood in
Speaker 2: the mist and rain and talked about how dumb it
Speaker 2: was that we'd even driven over there to hunt on
Speaker 2: a night like that to begin with much less cut
Speaker 2: one of the dogs loose. It wasn't like it was
Speaker 2: the only night we had to hunt. We were laughing
Speaker 2: at our own folly. When Cash opened up less than
Speaker 2: three minutes after he hit the ground, I didn't think
Speaker 2: anything about it until he kept.
Speaker 1: Up the bargain.
Speaker 2: We all stopped talking and started listening and looking at
Speaker 2: the garm and handhelds that we.
Speaker 1: Were using to track the dog with.
Speaker 2: He was right on the bank of the creek, less
Speaker 2: than two hundred yards away, and bam, he fell treated
Speaker 2: his long unmistakable locate ball, followed by a series of
Speaker 2: chopping barksmen. He was convinced that when we got there
Speaker 2: we'd be looking at coon. We went to him in
Speaker 2: low behold when he was a kidding. There he was
Speaker 2: on the leafless limb, staring back at us, nicely done Cash,
Speaker 2: with high fives all around. Cash took off on another
Speaker 2: Cash and opened up again, working a track hard in
Speaker 2: the worst conditions around, with him getting worse with every
Speaker 2: drop of rain that fell. Ten minutes later and he
Speaker 2: treated again. Now we all looked at one another and
Speaker 2: took off after him. Randall handled Cash at the tree
Speaker 2: while Brad and I looked skyward for the coon in
Speaker 2: an ever increasing glass. That's his coat and rain I
Speaker 2: got him the most anticipated three words of any coonhut
Speaker 2: when your dog is the one bellied up to a
Speaker 2: tree telling the world there's a coon up there. And
Speaker 2: I saw him in a big old fork outstanding. We
Speaker 2: called it tonight. After less than thirty minutes of hunting,
Speaker 2: we went and had supper, reliving the night's events and
Speaker 2: talking about how much he'd improved from earlier hunts. The
Speaker 2: next night, I was home and Brad and Randall went
Speaker 2: again cash Tree three that night, and they sent me
Speaker 2: the picks to prove it. Here's where mine and other
Speaker 2: dogs different from Michael's. While I've entered whiling in in
Speaker 2: one hunting competitions, I get more enjoyment out of this
Speaker 2: pleasure hunting. I fully support competition hunting. Now keep up
Speaker 2: with who's who to some degree, but it just ain't
Speaker 2: my thing. Brad and Randall are the same. My first
Speaker 2: impression of that dog was good, but even though I
Speaker 2: had nothing to qualify, the second wasn't as flattering. Having
Speaker 2: seen the struggle and the aggravation that Brad and Randall
Speaker 2: went through for over a year of dog at effort.
Speaker 2: But if there's ever been a dog there was will
Speaker 2: to make such a drastic turnaround of improvement as a
Speaker 2: reward for the effort of his handler. It was the
Speaker 2: Coonhound known to the UKC Registry as Whitmore and Clark's
Speaker 2: Cash Money. I texted Randall earlier today to get some
Speaker 2: details for this podcast. I said, how old is cash?
Speaker 2: Randall's response caught me off guard a little bit, and
Speaker 2: it caused me to reflect in a flash on two
Speaker 2: years of interactions with that dog and those men. Maybe
Speaker 2: if you believe in the things that I believe in,
Speaker 2: a sweet coincidence or something much bigger. Randall takes it
Speaker 2: back and I quote he turned three on November three,
Speaker 2: my dad's birthday. Thank you so much for listening to
Speaker 2: me and old Clay Bow and the Bear Grease Channel.
Speaker 1: I hope all of you had a.
Speaker 2: Very merry Christmas and visit with the ones that matter most.
Speaker 1: Until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all
Speaker 1: be careful