Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
Speaker 1: from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my stories and the country skills that will help you
Speaker 1: beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
Speaker 1: part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best
Speaker 1: outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
Speaker 1: think I got a thing or two to teach you.
Speaker 1: My journey is a Coon Hunter Part two. We're back
Speaker 1: this week with more tales of coon hunting and coon dogs.
Speaker 1: The Bandidos we Chase are curiously smart creatures and their
Speaker 1: survival instincts of slipping away from hounds is about as
Speaker 1: legendary as it gets. To continue one struggle of my exploits,
Speaker 1: along with observations and lessons learned, are up next on
Speaker 1: meat Eaters of This Country Life podcast. But first, I'm
Speaker 1: going to tell you a story. About three years ago,
Speaker 1: someone sent me a want add for lack of a
Speaker 1: better term, that they'd seen on Facebook in some hunting group.
Speaker 1: The post had had a number listed and it said
Speaker 1: looking for someone to get coons off of Deer Lease
Speaker 1: in central Arkansas. Well like Doc Holliday in the movie Tombstone,
Speaker 1: when drunk Johnny Ringo challenged the earth Still Duel and
Speaker 1: they ignored him, prompting him to shout, wretched slugs. Don't
Speaker 1: any of you have the guts to play for blood?
Speaker 1: Doc Holliday calmly said, and they y'all say it with me.
Speaker 1: I'm a huckleberry. That's just my game. Well, that's just
Speaker 1: that's how I felt what I saw that ad I
Speaker 1: broke a nail tapping the numbers out on my phone
Speaker 1: to talk to the man and offered the services of
Speaker 1: me and my coonhound whaling. I talked to him, and
Speaker 1: in short order he'd sent me a waypoint on on X,
Speaker 1: And just like that, I had four hundred acres of
Speaker 1: private timber ground to hunt in the middle of agfects.
Speaker 1: It was too good to be true, all short growth
Speaker 1: hardwood timber, surrounded on four sides by rice, corn and soybeans.
Speaker 1: It had a drainage canals on one end and would
Speaker 1: hold water on about sixty percent of it That was
Speaker 1: about ankle deep, making it primo for crawfish, tadpoles, and frogs.
Speaker 1: Three house favorites of Ricky Raccoon and his kin good
Speaker 1: night Nurse. If I was going to draw on a
Speaker 1: piece of paper the perfect place to train it up
Speaker 1: and come in Coonhoun, that would have been the place.
Speaker 1: The coons were thick in there. And when I dropped
Speaker 1: Whaling in there the first time he treated a coon
Speaker 1: before kackied lick is behind. He tread so quick I
Speaker 1: thought he'd messed up. Now I can count on two
Speaker 1: hands and still have fingers left over the number of
Speaker 1: times that old Whaling has slick treed. He just doesn't
Speaker 1: do it. And if y'all don't know what a slick
Speaker 1: tree is, it's like striking out in softball. It is
Speaker 1: no bueno and a bit embarrassing. A slick tree is
Speaker 1: when a dog sets in tree in which is the
Speaker 1: way of saying, hey, boss, I found him. He's up
Speaker 1: here in this tree, and then you look and look
Speaker 1: and finally decide, hm, no, he ain't. That tree is slick,
Speaker 1: meaning there ain't no coon in it. Nobody likes a
Speaker 1: lion coon dog, especially the fellow he belongs to. Now,
Speaker 1: some dogs do it because they just can't figure out
Speaker 1: which tree is in and they gamble or they're they're
Speaker 1: just not good enough to decipher it and figure it out.
Speaker 1: The prey driving and the want of praise gets the
Speaker 1: gets the best of them. Old Whaling he ain't never
Speaker 1: been bad about that. He ain't never been bad about
Speaker 1: that at all. And I've heard Michael Roseman say he's
Speaker 1: one of the most accurate dogs he's ever seen. And
Speaker 1: Michael has seen a lot of dogs in his lifetime,
Speaker 1: and coon hunting and making lights for coon hunters is
Speaker 1: his business. So when he made that tree fifty yards
Speaker 1: from where I cut him loose, instead of getting on
Speaker 1: to him and making him go on, I checked the
Speaker 1: tree and there he was, the mass bandido, looking right
Speaker 1: back at me. Less than a minute in and I'm
Speaker 1: already looking at a coon. It was that way for
Speaker 1: quite a while. We were flat smashing the coons in there,
Speaker 1: and Whalen was getting some good training and experience, and
Speaker 1: so were the coons. Night hunt there three or four
Speaker 1: nights a week, and never fail to tree coons. It
Speaker 1: was more or less automatic. I'd parked my truck on
Speaker 1: the north end of the property, walk into the edge
Speaker 1: of the world woods, cut Whaling loose and he'd be
Speaker 1: struck and barking in pretty short order a few times,
Speaker 1: and y'all gonna think I'm crazy, But he'd strike a
Speaker 1: coon in the same place, or at least on the
Speaker 1: same couple of acres, And I believe in my heart
Speaker 1: that it was the same coon every time, because that
Speaker 1: joker would make a couple of dips and dodges in
Speaker 1: the woods before making a big loop and then a
Speaker 1: bee line right out of the timber into a flooded
Speaker 1: rice field and soybean fields across the county road. Now,
Speaker 1: let me tell you it's hard for a dog to
Speaker 1: catch up to a coon in a flooded field. They'll
Speaker 1: get in there and zig zagger around, and it's hard
Speaker 1: for the majority of dogs to gain ground on them
Speaker 1: because the rice is thick or the soybeans are thick,
Speaker 1: and they the coons, they'll just get away. Meanwhile, back
Speaker 1: in the woods, old tricky Ricky will pull some fast
Speaker 1: ones too, And in this scope of woods I got
Speaker 1: to witness seeing the coons that whaling was running on
Speaker 1: more than one occasion. I just happened to be staying
Speaker 1: in the right place at the right time to see
Speaker 1: the coons come ambling by with a hound in hot pursuit.
Speaker 1: Some folks think that when the hound is trailing and
Speaker 1: barking at a coon, that's he's always looking at him
Speaker 1: and running through the woods in front of him, And
Speaker 1: that's nearly always not the case. Even when I cut
Speaker 1: Wailing loose and he treed fifty yards in front of me,
Speaker 1: I seriously doubt that he ever saw that coon until
Speaker 1: he fell out of the tree and on the ground
Speaker 1: after I poked a hole in his ear with my
Speaker 1: twenty two. That coon was probably spooked up that tree
Speaker 1: by us walking in before I had ever cut Waiting
Speaker 1: off the chain. But Whaling could smell him because I
Speaker 1: was casting him into the wind, which means I had
Speaker 1: him facing into the wind when I cut him loose,
Speaker 1: and he just went straight to where he that coon
Speaker 1: had just climbed up in a tree and started treeing.
Speaker 1: What's really going on when the hound is chasing the
Speaker 1: coon is the dog is barking where the coon has been.
Speaker 1: And here's a short less on how that works. We
Speaker 1: all leave scent wherever we are, regardless if we had
Speaker 1: the buried o bomb for dinner or not. We are
Speaker 1: constantly shedding skin cells from our epidermis called skirf spelled
Speaker 1: s k e rf. Well, guess what soda coons and
Speaker 1: all the other little creatures running around and making a
Speaker 1: living in the woods. It's kind of like dropping bread crumbs,
Speaker 1: but instead of leaving a visual trail of gravity and
Speaker 1: fluence sign for the hound to follow, these bread crumbs
Speaker 1: of scurf are floating on the breeze in the microscopic
Speaker 1: particles that are affected by wind, humidity, temperature, and age.
Speaker 1: And by age, I don't mean the age of the animal,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about how long it's been since the animal
Speaker 1: passed through. There. The dog is following the scin with
Speaker 1: his head up for ways and down for ways, and
Speaker 1: while moving through the woods, and depending on how the
Speaker 1: scin is flowing, he could be several feet away from
Speaker 1: where the coon actually walk, just catching scent enough every
Speaker 1: few feet to make sure that he's going in the
Speaker 1: right direction and staying on course. This is called drifting
Speaker 1: the track, and that's what whalan does as compared to
Speaker 1: a ground and pound style of hunting, where the dog
Speaker 1: has his nose literally on the ground smelling for every
Speaker 1: bit of scent that as he moved through the woods
Speaker 1: following the coon. My old Buddy Rex had a dog
Speaker 1: named Shadow that was absolutely excellent at this and that
Speaker 1: was his style, and that's the way he hunted. He
Speaker 1: could sniff out some coons that had been traveled through
Speaker 1: a long time before. But the drifting style dogs are
Speaker 1: usually faster on the track than the ground and pound types.
Speaker 1: But those dogs make fewer what we call loses on
Speaker 1: the trail by staying as close to the scurf plume
Speaker 1: as possible. Now, the first time this happened that I
Speaker 1: saw coon that the dogs were chasing, I was hunting
Speaker 1: with a new friend of mine named Michael Crosby. Michael
Speaker 1: was looking to get his first coon hound, and I
Speaker 1: took him along one night to give him a dose
Speaker 1: of what it was all about. We cut Old Whalen
Speaker 1: loose and he was making a big loop down through
Speaker 1: that four hundred acre block of woods, and as he
Speaker 1: started back towards where we were, he struck in barking.
Speaker 1: I looked at my garment and he was over three
Speaker 1: hundred yards away, but pointed back towards where we were.
Speaker 1: Michael and I stopped and would cut her lights off
Speaker 1: and listened. I was explaining what was going on as
Speaker 1: it unfolded. I was talking soft and giving him the
Speaker 1: play by play of what I assumed was going on
Speaker 1: by how Whalen was barking while still listening to Whaling.
Speaker 1: He was more or less coming straight to us, and
Speaker 1: I told Michael, you know, if we're quiet and still,
Speaker 1: he's liable to run that coon right over the top
Speaker 1: of us. I was joking, but I was also thinking
Speaker 1: how cool that would be if he did. All of
Speaker 1: a sudden, the conversation kind of died out as Whaling's
Speaker 1: barking picked up and got closer, and I could hear
Speaker 1: something coming toward us from about thirty or forty yards away. Wait. Now,
Speaker 1: I ain't scared of the dark, not in the least,
Speaker 1: not in one little bit. But standing in the middle
Speaker 1: of the pitch black woods at ankle deep water, hearing
Speaker 1: something weighing towards you will heighten your situational awareness. I
Speaker 1: switched on the red lens of my son's spot light,
Speaker 1: and I looked toward where that racket was coming from,
Speaker 1: and sure enough, here comes the coon. We didn't move
Speaker 1: an inch. That joker looked like he was out for
Speaker 1: a Sunday stroll, not even trotting to amount to munch.
Speaker 1: Every now and then he'd we'd we'd see him break
Speaker 1: into a short lope for a few yards and then
Speaker 1: go back to actually just walking with a purpose. He
Speaker 1: got to a little log that was laying in front
Speaker 1: of us and hopped up on top of it and
Speaker 1: walked the length from one end to the other before
Speaker 1: jumping off the ground at a forty five degree angle
Speaker 1: and heading due east. And we watched him go slap
Speaker 1: out of sight like he wasn't late for work, but
Speaker 1: if he wasn't careful, he might be cutting it close.
Speaker 1: Two minutes later, here comes whaling, barking his brains out
Speaker 1: about ten yards further away from where that coon had
Speaker 1: just come through. He was down wind and drifting that
Speaker 1: coon scent as it settled according to all the environmental
Speaker 1: factors that affects it, like I just talked about, you know,
Speaker 1: wind and humidity, all that Whaling stayed on that coon's
Speaker 1: track until losing it one hundred yards or so from
Speaker 1: where it came. By us no idea what happened. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's just like the world opens up and swallows them whole.
Speaker 1: They just disappear, but we lost it. Other times it's
Speaker 1: like when Rex Whiting and I were hunting in that
Speaker 1: same spot one night, and Rex was training a tree
Speaker 1: and walk up pup named June that he was running
Speaker 1: with Whaling. Now, basically the same scenario played out, just
Speaker 1: like it had when Michael Crosby and I were in
Speaker 1: there a few nights before Whaling and June struck a
Speaker 1: track and it looped back toward where we were standing.
Speaker 1: The only difference is this time the barking was a
Speaker 1: whole lot more excited, which usually indicates that the hounds
Speaker 1: know they're close to the coon. They're either actually seeing
Speaker 1: or hearing it running, or the scent it's so fresh
Speaker 1: and hot that it's easy to follow, which actually can
Speaker 1: sometimes work to the coon's advantage. But it appeared that
Speaker 1: it was like the same song second verse from the
Speaker 1: other night, and I'd already told Rex about it. I
Speaker 1: remember saying, we fixed a look at this coon, and
Speaker 1: he immediately turned on his red light and out it too,
Speaker 1: And I grabbed my phone out of my pocket and
Speaker 1: I started videoing. Sure, as I'm sitting here right now
Speaker 1: telling you this, we saw that coon coming and could
Speaker 1: hear not only the barking and Whaling and jumble with
Speaker 1: their feet splashing coming close behind. They weren't far away
Speaker 1: when that coon ran past a big tree, stopped right
Speaker 1: in front of us less than ten yards away, ran
Speaker 1: back a few feet and laid down as flat as
Speaker 1: a flitter. He looked like wiley coyote after a steam
Speaker 1: roller had run over him. And both of those dogs
Speaker 1: ran within the feud of embarking and raising sand like
Speaker 1: they was about to catch him, and they kept going.
Speaker 1: That coon got up like he'd been taking a nap
Speaker 1: on the couch and just loped away. Whaling and June
Speaker 1: had gone twenty five or thirty yards past where that
Speaker 1: coon had stopped, and then they came roaring back to
Speaker 1: pick up the scent. Whaling opened up and took off
Speaker 1: with June ride behind him. That coon turned east, just
Speaker 1: like the one had done a few nights ago, and
Speaker 1: after a hundred yards or so, the dogs lost him again.
Speaker 1: Now I can't swear that it was the same coon
Speaker 1: from the hunt before, but he ran that whole circuit
Speaker 1: just like the other one did. They struck him and
Speaker 1: trailed him almost identically, and he looped around and came
Speaker 1: back to that same two acres where the one before
Speaker 1: it does. Then that coon turned due east and disappeared
Speaker 1: just like the other one. Now I can't swear it
Speaker 1: was the same coon, but I saw him both and
Speaker 1: it looked just like him, and that's just how that happened.
Speaker 1: My journey is a coon Hunter, Part two. For a
Speaker 1: fellow that's been a coon hunting for the better part
Speaker 1: of forty two years, one would surmise he's had a
Speaker 1: bunch of dogs during that time, and normally they'd be right,
Speaker 1: but in this case, in my case, I've only had
Speaker 1: three For the past thirty two years. My career has
Speaker 1: limited the amount of time that I could dedicate to
Speaker 1: training and being able to properly care for a dog
Speaker 1: the way a hound should be cared for. They need space,
Speaker 1: and they need hunting. Being on call and involved in
Speaker 1: cases and such was a limiting factor over a large
Speaker 1: portion of that thirty two years, and only in the
Speaker 1: past five years or so have I been at a
Speaker 1: stage in my job that I could dedicate the proper
Speaker 1: amount of time to do it. So in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 1: I decided it was time for me to start looking
Speaker 1: for a hound to my own. I wasn't going to
Speaker 1: be real particular about the bloodline or the breed for
Speaker 1: that matter, although I've always leaned toward tree and walkers.
Speaker 1: That was my first coon houn in my teens, and
Speaker 1: even though my second one was a blue tick in
Speaker 1: my late twenties, I never lost the preference for walkers.
Speaker 1: My dad was a walkerman, but his dogs were used
Speaker 1: for running codies. I remember taking my city mouse girlfriend
Speaker 1: at the time, Alexis, down to dad's house to meet him,
Speaker 1: and when we got there you could hear his hounds
Speaker 1: over in the pen barking and raising cane. I introduced
Speaker 1: her to my dad as we walked in the door,
Speaker 1: and she asked him, what is all that barking. He said,
Speaker 1: that's my cold dog's barking. She asked him, well, what
Speaker 1: kind of dogs are they? He said, they're running walkers.
Speaker 1: She scrunched up her nose and said, running walkers. They
Speaker 1: need to make up their minds went they're doing. He
Speaker 1: laughed and loved her from that very moment. I had
Speaker 1: never even thought about the paradox of that name until
Speaker 1: she said that. Anyway, I was looking for a walker dog,
Speaker 1: and for six months I made phone calls, I sent
Speaker 1: texts and emails, and I scoured over the internet looking
Speaker 1: for a dog that would suit me and what I
Speaker 1: was after. And what I was after was simple. I
Speaker 1: wanted a dog that would mind and tree coons. I
Speaker 1: wasn't after a particular style of hound like. I didn't
Speaker 1: care if he was a dog that drifted a track
Speaker 1: or if he was a ground pounder or a combination
Speaker 1: of both. I wanted to be able to turn him loose,
Speaker 1: have him treat me a coon and come to me
Speaker 1: when I called. I had no interest in competition hunting.
Speaker 1: I got nothing against it, and I loosely follow it
Speaker 1: due to so many of my friends that I know
Speaker 1: and hunt with that do enjoy it. Now, there's a
Speaker 1: strategy and skill in competition hunting, and the handler that
Speaker 1: knows the rules best will win a competition even when
Speaker 1: his dog may not be the best dog in the cast.
Speaker 1: And that's cool. It involves the human element and the
Speaker 1: bond that's created between a handler and a hound. The
Speaker 1: handler has to know the tendencies and habits of that
Speaker 1: dog inside and out to be able to listen to
Speaker 1: him and tell what's going on just by the different
Speaker 1: barks or tones of different barks, and make his call
Speaker 1: to the judge based on his observations. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of skill in that. Me. I ain't that good at it.
Speaker 1: And me went in a competition hunt with whaling rests
Speaker 1: squarely on his shoulders, not my brain. Michael Roseman, Rex
Speaker 1: Whiting and I would hunt together and we'd use all
Speaker 1: the rules of a competition hunt, and they'd keep a
Speaker 1: running tally in their head of the time left in
Speaker 1: the hunt and what everyone's score was. Heck, I couldn't
Speaker 1: even keep up with my own, much less everyone else's.
Speaker 1: It was fun, but it just wasn't my thing. If
Speaker 1: it's your thing, you should see what Alan Gingrich and
Speaker 1: Trevor Wade and all those folks over at United kennlel
Speaker 1: cl Over doing. You'll find them online at Wwwukcdogs dot com.
Speaker 1: Then just search up to coonhout events. They've got a
Speaker 1: lot going on and there's always room for more participation,
Speaker 1: and these folks will bend over backwards to help you.
Speaker 1: So to get back to my journey, After six months
Speaker 1: of looking, I found a dog that interested me. I
Speaker 1: was scrolling through Facebook Marketplace and there was a picture
Speaker 1: of a six month old tree in Walker puppy for
Speaker 1: sale with an address that was forty five minutes from
Speaker 1: my house for two hundred and fifty dollars. Something struck
Speaker 1: me about the picture. I can't tell you what it
Speaker 1: is to this day, but there was something about that
Speaker 1: dog that called to me. Up to this point, I
Speaker 1: had looked at well over one hundred pictures of dogs
Speaker 1: on the Internet, and talked to a multitude of people
Speaker 1: on the phone or through texting about a jillion dogs
Speaker 1: that I never laid eyes on. But I had never
Speaker 1: been drawn to going and looking at one till now.
Speaker 1: I called the number, I talked to the lady and
Speaker 1: made an appointment to go see the dog. The next day,
Speaker 1: she informed me that the address on the Facebook ad
Speaker 1: was wrong and that they had moved nearly three hours
Speaker 1: away from me instead of the forty five minutes I
Speaker 1: originally thought. Okay, I was still going to look. I
Speaker 1: couldn't shake the image of that hound out of my head.
Speaker 1: When I pulled up and saw him, I knew he
Speaker 1: was the one that I'd be taking home. When I
Speaker 1: found out his name was Whaling, it solidified it for me.
Speaker 1: For half a year, I had fretted and worried about
Speaker 1: finding a dog and having one reason or another not
Speaker 1: to even commit to going and look anyone. Now, after
Speaker 1: learning at the last minute that I'd be driving two
Speaker 1: hours further away, I hadn't been deterred. Pulling up to
Speaker 1: the address and seeing the dog in the subpar of
Speaker 1: living conditions he was being housed in. I didn't really
Speaker 1: know if I was going to be buying him or
Speaker 1: rescuing him, but I knew I was leaving with him.
Speaker 1: Come to find out, he was rescuing me. It was
Speaker 1: Thursday in March twelfth of twenty twenty. I had made
Speaker 1: it back to the outskirts a little rock when I
Speaker 1: got a call from Alexis saying through her job, she'd
Speaker 1: learned of a possible exposure to the COVID virus earlier
Speaker 1: in the week. This was when all that started. They
Speaker 1: were instructing her to go home and we had to
Speaker 1: report our family's possible exposure to my employer in Bailey School.
Speaker 1: Now Bailey was in the first grade. Alexis had called
Speaker 1: the school and they said that we'd have to come
Speaker 1: get Bailey and do that whole quarantine thing that was
Speaker 1: just starting to get so popular. Then it was all
Speaker 1: the rage and everyone was doing it. I would have
Speaker 1: never thought that Bailey wouldn't get back to her class
Speaker 1: that year. I also would never have thought a dog
Speaker 1: could have meant so much to us in such a
Speaker 1: short amount of time. Bailey was doing her classes online now,
Speaker 1: so she was free to roam around with me and
Speaker 1: our new hunting hound. So while elementary school was basically
Speaker 1: out for Bailey, coon hunting school was in for her
Speaker 1: and Whalen. The rest of that spring and summer was
Speaker 1: spent taking that dog to the woods and turning him
Speaker 1: loose and just seeing what he'd do. Bailey went with
Speaker 1: me on a bunch of those trips. She like riding
Speaker 1: the four wheeler and watching and learning what Whalen was
Speaker 1: doing and asking a million questions. And I are while
Speaker 1: unknowingly tried to burn the retinas out of my eyeballs
Speaker 1: by shining her coon light in my face every time
Speaker 1: she looked at me. I bought a metal diamond played
Speaker 1: a dog crate for my truck that attracted the attention
Speaker 1: of a guy that happened to be driving by one
Speaker 1: time who stopped and introduced himself, And that was Rex,
Speaker 1: who is now like a member of our family. He
Speaker 1: introduced me to Michael Roseman, who is now like family
Speaker 1: and who I'm going hunting with tonight, all because of
Speaker 1: a dog. I've been to the ears of those boys
Speaker 1: and several others in the training of old Whalen, and
Speaker 1: they helped me beyond measure in the development of this
Speaker 1: dog from coonhound to coon dog. And there's a difference,
Speaker 1: a big difference. He was born a registered purebred coonhoun,
Speaker 1: but he earned the title of coon dog by being one.
Speaker 1: I took him religiously every opportunity that I had that
Speaker 1: didn't interfere with anything related to my family. Alexis leaves
Speaker 1: for work early, so she goes to bed early, and
Speaker 1: I worked from home and I set my own hours.
Speaker 1: Bailey goes to bed early, so when they hit the hay,
Speaker 1: I usually hit the woods with this dog. The best
Speaker 1: advice I ever got was from my dad, who passed
Speaker 1: away twelve years ago, and I mentioned it earlier in
Speaker 1: part one of my journey as a coon hunter, when
Speaker 1: he said he could always tell which dog out of
Speaker 1: a litter that was going to make the best because
Speaker 1: it was the one that got hunted and messed with
Speaker 1: the most. You can't take that literally, because some have
Speaker 1: more natural abilities than others. He meant when all things
Speaker 1: are equal. The pup that gets hunted will be better
Speaker 1: than the ones that are still sitting in the pen.
Speaker 1: And that's simple and straightforward. But his message was more hidden.
Speaker 1: In order for that dog to get better, I had
Speaker 1: to take him out and give him the opportunity. In
Speaker 1: doing so, I was outside, and I was getting better.
Speaker 1: My dad taught me a million things about trees and animals, hunting, fishing,
Speaker 1: taking care of dogs, and the whole time he was
Speaker 1: really teaching me how to take care of myself. I
Speaker 1: just didn't know it. It worked the same way with
Speaker 1: old whaling. All I really did was give that dog
Speaker 1: the opportunity to make choices, both good and bad. When
Speaker 1: I cut him loose, the good choices were praised and
Speaker 1: the bad ones were corrected. The maturation of a hound
Speaker 1: is very comparable to that of a person when you
Speaker 1: think about it. A dog lives a week of their
Speaker 1: life for every day of hours. Imagine if it was
Speaker 1: the other way around, we wouldn't live long enough to
Speaker 1: see how good a dog could be, or have the
Speaker 1: opportunity to learn just as much or more from them
Speaker 1: as they do from us. The core of my law
Speaker 1: enforcement career was during my hiatus from owning a coup.
Speaker 1: Now I saw more tragedy and ugliness during that time
Speaker 1: of my life that I'd ever imagined one person could
Speaker 1: I live with that? And dealing with those memories or
Speaker 1: not dealing with them, has led me to where I
Speaker 1: am now. I used to hunt alone a lot when
Speaker 1: I first started out training Whaling. I'd go five nights
Speaker 1: out of seven, slowly implementing what I desired for him
Speaker 1: to do and corrected the things that I wanted him
Speaker 1: to stop. I had a lot of sitting on a
Speaker 1: log in the woods in the dark time, and while
Speaker 1: I was watching Whalen's Tracker, I was thinking about stuff.
Speaker 1: It allowed me moments to talk out loud with my
Speaker 1: dad and talk to the Good Lord too. And my
Speaker 1: journey as a coon hunter is still going on, just
Speaker 1: like my journey and my faith as a husband and
Speaker 1: a father, a brother, and a friend. That old dog
Speaker 1: that a Lexus follows around the house with a vacuum
Speaker 1: like she's hot on his trail has been an important
Speaker 1: factor in helping me do all those things by making
Speaker 1: me slow down and pay attention to what was going
Speaker 1: on around him, so I could get a clear picture
Speaker 1: in my head of what he was doing, and in
Speaker 1: doing so, I started to pay attention and see what
Speaker 1: was going on around me. That, as Barney Fife would say,
Speaker 1: was very therapeutic. The rest of us would say therapeutic.
Speaker 1: So that's your challenge this week. Find your whaling and
Speaker 1: give yourself the opportunity to have that sitting on a
Speaker 1: log in the woods in the dark time, whether you're
Speaker 1: literally doing that or on your dinner break at the office.
Speaker 1: If you're on your dinner break at the office, you're
Speaker 1: probably gonna want to leave that coon dog at home.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying, Hey, I hope y'all have enjoyed these
Speaker 1: episodes about coon hunting and it ventures me and whaling
Speaker 1: to wonder how and have had. I got a lot
Speaker 1: more stories about him and chasing those river bottom bandidos
Speaker 1: that I'll share later, but like I always say, that's
Speaker 1: another story. Thank you so much for listening and sharing
Speaker 1: our show with others. You folks are simply amazing, and
Speaker 1: I appreciate you allowing me some time during your life
Speaker 1: to talk about mine. It don't matter where you're from
Speaker 1: or where you are, We're all alike. We can sit
Speaker 1: down and have the noon meal and I can call
Speaker 1: it dinner and you can call it lunch, but it's
Speaker 1: still gonna taste the same. This is Brent Reeves signing off.
Speaker 1: Y'all be careful.