Speaker 1: Next thing I knew I was I was so so
Speaker 1: dog going for I was hurting for money so bad
Speaker 1: that i'd coast home. I'd find when I'd be driving home,
Speaker 1: I turned the motor off so I didn't burn the
Speaker 1: gas trop going down hill. That and next thing I
Speaker 1: knew that I could leave the motor running used to
Speaker 1: get home.
Speaker 2: And you were catching so many lines you could leave
Speaker 2: the motor running when I was riding down the road
Speaker 2: going down the hill.
Speaker 3: YE made it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Yeah, I was really getting riched.
Speaker 2: This is the story of Houndsman Advance in his twenty
Speaker 2: five years guiding and hunting lions and bears in California.
Speaker 2: He started as a suburban kid in the nineteen forties
Speaker 2: with no connection to hounds or hunting, but would go on,
Speaker 2: as he says, to be trained by a hound dog.
Speaker 2: Ed published a book by that title in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: and some time ago I traveled out to California to
Speaker 2: hear his story of struggle, per severance, and success firsthand.
Speaker 2: This story examines the drive of a young man to succeed.
Speaker 2: I really doubt that you're going to want to miss
Speaker 2: this one. My name is Clay Knukem, and this is
Speaker 2: the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant,
Speaker 2: search for insight and unlikely places, and where we'll tell
Speaker 2: the story of Americans who live their lives close to
Speaker 2: the land. Presented by FHF Gear, American made purpose built
Speaker 2: hunting and fishing gear as designed to be as rugged
Speaker 2: as the place as we explore. I'm in Posey, California,
Speaker 2: two and a half hours from Los Angeles, in the
Speaker 2: southern one third of the state, at the southern tip
Speaker 2: of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. It was a time when
Speaker 2: California was the place to be if you wanted to
Speaker 2: hunt big game with hounds.
Speaker 3: This place is gorgeous. This isn't what I expected.
Speaker 4: From this property.
Speaker 1: I caught lions and bears all over everything.
Speaker 4: All of the stuff that you can see.
Speaker 2: Advance points to a black hide draped over a couch.
Speaker 2: It's the only hide in this house. He's not going
Speaker 2: to tell me a story. He's going to show it
Speaker 2: to me.
Speaker 1: That was one of the toughest bears that I'd ever
Speaker 1: got my dogs after. I mean, I'd had others that
Speaker 1: were just as bad. But because there's the right here,
Speaker 1: I'm going to explain to you, and I'm going to
Speaker 1: show you where it started, where it went to, and
Speaker 1: where it ended from.
Speaker 4: Right here at this house.
Speaker 2: Ed's home sits on top of a scrub oak covered
Speaker 2: hill with a stunning three hundred and sixty degree view.
Speaker 2: I envisioned this is what the mountainous regions of Kenya
Speaker 2: look like. There are yellow, parched grasslands on big rolling mountains,
Speaker 2: Emerald green oaks with round canopies stand alone dotting the
Speaker 2: landscape like the dark rosettes of a jaguar.
Speaker 3: The hills flow with the smooth.
Speaker 2: Lines like that of a cat's shoulders hips and the
Speaker 2: swooping tail like the deep valleys. Fully wooded and steep
Speaker 2: rimrock bluffs break up the terrain in places. It's the
Speaker 2: kind of place you feel like you need a horse.
Speaker 2: This is some unusual and beautiful country. Ed points across
Speaker 2: a deep valley, and to the east is a long
Speaker 2: ridge that dominates the landscape.
Speaker 1: This particular bear that I got out after it was
Speaker 1: in it started him in October and it was just
Speaker 1: at the crack of dawn, and so we stopped and
Speaker 1: I said, I'm going to walk up a canyon and
Speaker 1: see if I can get a bear started up there,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to show you where this is at.
Speaker 1: You see this bridge right in front of him, So
Speaker 1: you see a lone tree standing up there all by myself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: from that tree, if you went straight down into the canyon,
Speaker 1: straight down into the bottom, that's where they started this bear.
Speaker 2: By my best guess, they jumped the bear three miles
Speaker 2: from Ed's back porch. This hunt took place in the
Speaker 2: early nineteen seventies, but the landscape doesn't look much different
Speaker 2: now than then there because that's been burned.
Speaker 1: They pulled him out of that cannon. He came out
Speaker 1: of that canyon, crossed onto this side of that ridge,
Speaker 1: and he skirted that ridge almost on the top all
Speaker 1: the way around, and then where you can see that
Speaker 1: one high point, he turned and he went to the
Speaker 1: opposite side of it. Now there was no roads to
Speaker 1: speak of, and so I was following him on foot.
Speaker 1: By the time I got to there, I could hear
Speaker 1: those dogs. It was placed called Portuguese Pass, and Portuguese
Speaker 1: Pass is the furthest ridge that you can see.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I see over there as.
Speaker 1: Far as you can see, and he's just about to
Speaker 1: go over.
Speaker 4: And I thought, if he goes over.
Speaker 2: That so there's a big valley in between that.
Speaker 1: It's called bull Run Basin. The other side is called
Speaker 1: bull Run Basin.
Speaker 2: Anyways, Portuguese Pass is seven thousand feet in elevation. It
Speaker 2: looks to be six or seven miles from where we're standing.
Speaker 2: But the bear keeps running and Ed was following the
Speaker 2: dogs by sound. This was thirty years before GPS, when
Speaker 2: you turn dogs loose with just a leather collar on
Speaker 2: their neck.
Speaker 1: And they were Then he was moving and and these
Speaker 1: dogs were were hitting it as hard as they could,
Speaker 1: and that is like extremely steep and rough. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: then I lost hearing of them. Now we're gonna have
Speaker 1: to walk to another spot over then I'm gonna shows
Speaker 1: you where this thing ended up at.
Speaker 2: We walked forty yards to the north side of Ed's house,
Speaker 2: and the panoramic story continues so far. We can see
Speaker 2: every rock step he and the dogs covered.
Speaker 1: So I came down through all of that, and it's
Speaker 1: late in the afternoon. Now, I keep in mind this
Speaker 1: started at about six in the morning, late in the afternoon,
Speaker 1: which would be about I'm gonna say about three o'clock.
Speaker 1: I crossed this road right here, the road that I'm
Speaker 1: living on. But I was about four miles up and
Speaker 1: I took my CBE radio and I to see if
Speaker 1: anybody was there. And so this friend of mine, it
Speaker 1: had been honey with me, he wasn't. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know he was going to be up for this David.
Speaker 1: When I triggered my mic on my CV radio, Lewis
Speaker 1: answered and he asked where I was at, and I
Speaker 1: told him. By then, the dogs had traveled at least
Speaker 1: ten twelve miles through this steep terrain that you're looking at.
Speaker 1: And I says, have you heard my dogs? And he says, yes,
Speaker 1: your dogs. The last I heard him, He says, your
Speaker 1: dogs are down on White River by the campground. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm going to show you a White River campground.
Speaker 4: Is that We got a walk.
Speaker 2: Now we walk to the west side of the house,
Speaker 2: and far in the distance is a long ridge. It's
Speaker 2: hard to imagine traveling this far on foot in a
Speaker 2: single day.
Speaker 1: He wanted to come and pick me up, and I says, no,
Speaker 1: I want to just go across the country. I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna keep it's all downhill, and I can travel pretty
Speaker 1: fast going downhill, And as long as I know that
Speaker 1: that's where they're at and I says, so I'm going
Speaker 1: to go drop down to on what's called bear Trot Ridge.
Speaker 4: This is bear Trot Fridge right to our.
Speaker 2: Right from Lewis this time, you've already traveled twelve fourteen
Speaker 2: miles close to that, through through air miles, and so
Speaker 2: we're going down in these steep valleys and ravines and
Speaker 2: up mountains.
Speaker 1: Yes, because where the bear was started was at the
Speaker 1: five thousand foot elevation and Portuguese passes seven thousand.
Speaker 4: Wow, So they almost got He almost had to.
Speaker 3: You had to go.
Speaker 2: You had to lose elevation and gain it.
Speaker 1: And many times yes, yes, back and forth, back and forth.
Speaker 2: This trek would have to push the limits of an
Speaker 2: elite athlete for a day's travel. But there's an ancient
Speaker 2: adrenaline download. When a man is following his hounds, emphasis
Speaker 2: on his hounds, it can produce a superhuman drive. Ed
Speaker 2: describes how he crossed a big valley heading towards the
Speaker 2: White River and he could now hear the dogs barking
Speaker 2: every breath, but this bear just won't tree. He knew
Speaker 2: this bear, and he knew that it wouldn't trill.
Speaker 1: He was getting close to cross and over and I
Speaker 1: got to where I could drop down, and I came
Speaker 1: head on onto him and we walked right into each other.
Speaker 1: When he saw me, he spun and I had.
Speaker 3: This far with the dogs behind him.
Speaker 4: They weren't behind him, they were all right alongside of him.
Speaker 4: They were right on him. Yeah, they're just walking, yes,
Speaker 4: but they knew.
Speaker 1: You don't a dog didn't dare taking and put his
Speaker 1: mouth on that bear.
Speaker 2: They knew with his three or four dogs swarming, the
Speaker 2: bear edge shoots as it spins, but misses the mark.
Speaker 4: And he took off.
Speaker 1: And if you'll see that farthest ridge that we can
Speaker 1: see over there in the in the distance, I got
Speaker 1: my next shot at him, and I was almost at
Speaker 1: the bottom between those two ridges. In fact, there's some
Speaker 1: ranchers said they was listening to the whole thing. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: And I shot and killed him right there.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: So how many miles it is, I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I do know this. I had twenty minutes to get
Speaker 1: the height off of him, and there's going to be dark.
Speaker 2: That's an incredible feed for the has been an incredible
Speaker 2: feat for a man.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 2: How far do you think you went?
Speaker 3: I mean really in miles?
Speaker 1: Actually, Yeah, there was a dirt trail and I was
Speaker 1: walking it twenty five twenty five miles, I think.
Speaker 2: Gaining I've never heard while I saw such a panoramic
Speaker 2: story where you could see such distance from the same hilltop,
Speaker 2: and I'd say, this is a good introduction to advance.
Speaker 2: I'd like to tell you how I met him. I'd
Speaker 2: say it was quite unusual for me.
Speaker 3: Several months ago.
Speaker 2: It was probably Lynnette that contacted me and said, I'd
Speaker 2: like to send you a book that my husband wrote.
Speaker 2: And I said, well, sure, And I get a lot
Speaker 2: of books.
Speaker 3: Ed, I really do a lot of people. A lot
Speaker 3: of people write books, and I read a lot of books.
Speaker 2: And when I read this book, I could tell that
Speaker 2: the voice of this writer was someone special. I really did,
Speaker 2: and I as I read the book, I thought, man,
Speaker 2: I'd like to meet that guy.
Speaker 3: And so anyway, thank you for host you welcome.
Speaker 4: We're sure you're happy to have you here.
Speaker 2: But it's an incredible and beautiful place.
Speaker 1: We're on the southern southern tip of the Sierra Nevadas
Speaker 1: in a mountain range known as the Greenhorn Mountains, and
Speaker 1: Sequoyan National Forest and Sequoi National Monument is right on
Speaker 1: these Greenhorn Mountains. It's the place that a lot of
Speaker 1: people really don't know about.
Speaker 2: Well, this morning we started often. I mean we were
Speaker 2: in Los Angeles, Yes, Los Angeles, California. Seven lane going
Speaker 2: one way, seven lane traffic going the other, and we
Speaker 2: drove two and a half hours, and I mean we're
Speaker 2: twenty miles from a gas station.
Speaker 4: I mean we're here more than that.
Speaker 3: More than that, we're in your wilderness.
Speaker 4: Really, you're forty miles away from the gas station.
Speaker 2: For all the negative press California he gets, this place
Speaker 2: is a natural wonder with an order of geologic and
Speaker 2: biologic diversity greater than any state. It's no wonder people
Speaker 2: flocked here. I wanted to ask ed how he got
Speaker 2: into hound hunting.
Speaker 4: You know, I always as a kid.
Speaker 1: I grew up in a suburb for the town by
Speaker 1: the name of Glendale in California. And in those days,
Speaker 1: of course, the population wasn't what it was today, and
Speaker 1: I kind of liked the act, like I was hunting
Speaker 1: him because of it. Right from our house, you just
Speaker 1: go off in the hills they're just covered with brush,
Speaker 1: just to kind of make believe, you know. But over
Speaker 1: time I drifted away from that and then I found
Speaker 1: myself working at an assembly plant for Chevrolet in Van Eys, California,
Speaker 1: and directly across the line from me was a guy
Speaker 1: by the name Sherwood Barrett. He was from Georgia, and
Speaker 1: in Sherwood 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 uh, because he wanted
Speaker 1: to live there, but he had to get go someplace
Speaker 1: and earn some money in the process, and so he
Speaker 1: was I was putting gas lines, gasoline lines on these
Speaker 1: cars as they passed through fifty something an hour, 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 Finok Swamp in Georgia, and uh, it
Speaker 1: really caught my interests. I mean it really did.
Speaker 2: And the next were down there, they're hunting hunting coons,
Speaker 2: hunting coons, yeah, yep.
Speaker 1: And uh so anyways, he tell me these stories about
Speaker 1: this but what he was doing, and it just really
Speaker 1: caught my interest, and so I asked him, I said, sure,
Speaker 1: where would you where do you go to buy these dogs?
Speaker 1: And he told me says, go to like outdoor life.
Speaker 1: They had these guys advertising. I didn't know at the
Speaker 1: time that most of those guys were selling dogs that
Speaker 1: nobody wanted, you know, and people like myself would buy
Speaker 1: them because I didn't know what I was buying in
Speaker 1: the first place. So anyways, I started with that.
Speaker 4: And what was your intention?
Speaker 3: Was your intention to run lion or bear?
Speaker 1: I just wanted I like dogs, and I liked the
Speaker 1: idea of hunting and a honeywood dogs sounding it could.
Speaker 3: So you would have been in your early twenties probably
Speaker 3: at this.
Speaker 4: Time I was. I was.
Speaker 3: I just wanted some hunting dogs.
Speaker 1: I was like twenty years old, yeah, and nobody in
Speaker 1: my family had ever even heard of it. And so
Speaker 1: I wed Heed a dog from him, and I got
Speaker 1: a red bone hound and his nice looking dog actually
Speaker 1: called him Buck.
Speaker 2: Buck was shipped in a wooden crate by rail from
Speaker 2: a kindle in Arkansas, and he paid thirty five dollars
Speaker 2: for the dog and another thirty five for the shipping.
Speaker 2: This first dog purchase coincided with a complete lifestyle change.
Speaker 2: Is Ed moved to the city of Ohigh in rural California,
Speaker 2: where he bought some horses and got a job working
Speaker 2: at a self service gas station or sixty to seventy
Speaker 2: hours a week to cover his expenses. But he was
Speaker 2: about to meet somebody that would change his life.
Speaker 1: So I got this dog and didn't know where to
Speaker 1: go hunting. So I took off and I went up
Speaker 1: in the mountains up by Ventura, which is just covered
Speaker 1: with brushia I actually have a terrible place to try
Speaker 1: and hunt dogs, and I never caught anything with him.
Speaker 1: And then I started meeting different guys that had hound dogs,
Speaker 1: and they weren't doing any good either, and so I
Speaker 1: fooled around with those, and eventually I learned that what
Speaker 1: these dogs were chasing was not anything they could climb
Speaker 1: a tree at all. That the guys I was hunting
Speaker 1: with they were chasing deers. What they were chasing, you know.
Speaker 1: So the time went by, and next thing I knew,
Speaker 1: I was introduced to a guy out of Utah by
Speaker 1: the name of Willis Butteov, which was a very well
Speaker 1: known government hunter and had caught hundreds of lions, unbelievable
Speaker 1: numbers of life. So I got with him and hunted
Speaker 1: with him a few times and bought a few dogs
Speaker 1: from him. From there I started learning about the difference
Speaker 1: between hunting dogs and taking dogs hunting and catching stuff,
Speaker 1: and so then from there I ended up losing a
Speaker 1: couple of these dogs to ten eighty poison, which was
Speaker 1: terrible situation that was in Utah.
Speaker 2: Ed wanted a dog that would treat mountain lions, and
Speaker 2: after a couple of years of messing around with dogs
Speaker 2: running deer, in nineteen sixty two, he drove seven hundred
Speaker 2: miles one way in his nineteen fifty one gmc three
Speaker 2: quarter ton pickup to meet a man named Willis Butov
Speaker 2: in Utah. Can you imagine driving a truck like that
Speaker 2: that far? Ed was in his twenties and had never
Speaker 2: treated a single animal with his hound. In the book,
Speaker 2: he describes arriving at Buttev's house visiting for several hours
Speaker 2: before he he asked the man, when was the last
Speaker 2: time you treat a lion? Ed wrote quote. He paused
Speaker 2: for a minute and appeared as though he was trying
Speaker 2: to remember back in time, and then he said today.
Speaker 2: Buttev had killed the lion that very day and couldn't
Speaker 2: remember it, and he had the hide saltan on the
Speaker 2: back porch. Turns out Buttov had over four hundred and
Speaker 2: fifty documented lion kills in Utah as a government hunter
Speaker 2: during the bounty years. He was the real deal and
Speaker 2: Ed was finally in the right place. Their relationship would
Speaker 2: last many years, and Ed bought several young dogs from
Speaker 2: him that never really worked out. A couple of years
Speaker 2: after their initial meeting, Ed made the trip again to
Speaker 2: Utah to hunt with Buttov, and while in the mountains,
Speaker 2: they got word that Buttev's father had passed away in
Speaker 2: sun Danced, Wyoming, And to kind of show you what
Speaker 2: kind of man Ed was, Ed volunteered to drive Buttov
Speaker 2: seven hundred miles one way to the funeral in his
Speaker 2: new four wheel drive International Scout in the dead of winter.
Speaker 2: Ed remembers they had to cover themselves with blankets while
Speaker 2: they drove so they didn't freeze. The entire trip, they
Speaker 2: talked about dogs. Ed was eating up every second he
Speaker 2: had with Buttov, and what Buttov didn't know is that
Speaker 2: Ed had taken out a thousand dollars loan with the
Speaker 2: hopes to buy one of Buttov's lead dogs, not a
Speaker 2: young one, but a fully trained lion hound, And on
Speaker 2: the fourteen hundred mile trip, he agreed to sell Ed
Speaker 2: one of his top hounds. Ed finally had a legit
Speaker 2: lion hound. But listen to this, tragically and literally, the
Speaker 2: first time that Ed turned the dog loose after paying
Speaker 2: one thousand dollars for it, it was killed by TIS
Speaker 2: eighty poison sodium flora acetate. This stuff was used to
Speaker 2: kill ground squirrels and predators in California, and dogs that
Speaker 2: would even find the dead carcass killed by the poison,
Speaker 2: they themselves would get poisoned.
Speaker 3: And was devastated.
Speaker 2: So he again was back in the business of looking
Speaker 2: for yet another dog. It was now nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 1: And then I ended up meeting a guy that he
Speaker 1: worked for a big farm out of Wasco, California, and
Speaker 1: he said that people told me that he had a
Speaker 1: hound that he might sell because of his age. I
Speaker 1: got in touch with him. Guy's names J. D. Reynolds,
Speaker 1: and he had this red tick hound 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 this from
Speaker 1: not catching anything to speak of. So every time I
Speaker 1: put that dog's foot on the ground, he caught something
Speaker 1: and he didn't run deer. He didn't run coyotes, and
Speaker 1: he caught bobcats and raccoons and foxes every time he
Speaker 1: hit the ground practically. And from there I started learning
Speaker 1: the difference between good dogs, mediocre dogs, and dogs that
Speaker 1: just aren't any good. So on the book that I
Speaker 1: titled Trained by a Hound Dog, the title was really
Speaker 1: thinking about this dog, this red takeown.
Speaker 4: Which we called Bo.
Speaker 1: Like I say, he was six years old when I
Speaker 1: got him. I was working as a carpenter framing houses
Speaker 1: in Thousand Oaks, California, where framing houses there as a
Speaker 1: carpenter was more like an athletic contest than it was
Speaker 1: anything else, because it's all piece work and you didn't
Speaker 1: get paid much. If you're going to have any money
Speaker 1: at all, you're gonna work like you're fighting fire from
Speaker 1: the moment she got there until there's time to go home,
Speaker 1: which I did, and I take and load bow up
Speaker 1: on Friday nights and I head off from the Ventura,
Speaker 1: California to the Greenhorn Mountains, which is where we're at
Speaker 1: right now, and which is where Bo was. Ray who
Speaker 1: actually trained. He came from Arkansas. He was a red
Speaker 1: de count out of the Elbert Vaughan stock of English hounds,
Speaker 1: which eventually to be canting the Elber Blue tich.
Speaker 2: If you're into hounds, you probably recognize the name Elbert Vaughan,
Speaker 2: who made quite the mark on the Bluetick breed. But
Speaker 2: the most compelling part of this story is the examination
Speaker 2: of a young man's drive to succeed, starting from absolute
Speaker 2: zero in the suburbs. It took him four years, a
Speaker 2: lifestyle change, thousands of miles of travel. He went through
Speaker 2: about ten dogs, countless dead ends, some of them tragic
Speaker 2: and out of his control. But finally he got started
Speaker 2: with this hound named bow Whatever you do in life,
Speaker 2: it's going to take some work and there will be pain.
Speaker 2: He had any of excuses to quit.
Speaker 1: I think that first year I'd get off work and
Speaker 1: I'd drive all the way up here, which was three
Speaker 1: and a half to four hours each way, after working
Speaker 1: all all week. And I think that first year I
Speaker 1: had Bowen and I bought a plot hound. I called
Speaker 1: him Pat, and he was like two years old when
Speaker 1: I got him. Bo wouldn't run a line at all.
Speaker 1: He wouldn't I'd find a line track is fresh, and
Speaker 1: he wouldn't pay any attention. But Pat had been on
Speaker 1: some lions. I got Pat from Willis Putev in Utah,
Speaker 1: and he'd been on these lions, so he he was
Speaker 1: eager more eager to try and trail. And then Boa
Speaker 1: was Bo didn't care. I think I caught on Friday
Speaker 1: night hunting Friday nights and Saturday right out one 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 of is basically
Speaker 1: bobcats and foxes with So.
Speaker 3: They'd treat these foxes and these little oak trees.
Speaker 4: They do tree here there.
Speaker 1: It's called a grave cross fox. They're a lot harder
Speaker 1: to tree than the bobcats are.
Speaker 2: Starting from zero, Ed was now on his way, and
Speaker 2: what would happen with Bo is that after Pat the
Speaker 2: plot started trailing lions, Bo joined him and the pair
Speaker 2: became an extraordinary team catching lions. But when you get
Speaker 2: into hounds, it starts a never ending cycle of always
Speaker 2: needing more dogs. So he hit the road again, driving
Speaker 2: to Arkansas to meet with the blue tick breeder Albert Vaughan,
Speaker 2: where he picked up some hounds that would become instrumental
Speaker 2: in his pack for years to come. Ed and his
Speaker 2: pack started treating lions and bears consistently, which led Ed
Speaker 2: to want to change professions and become a full time
Speaker 2: lion and bear outfitter.
Speaker 1: I started advertising. I'd hurt my back really bad in
Speaker 1: framing houses, and I I just couldn't. I couldn't and
Speaker 1: keep doing it. So I left Ventura and I moved
Speaker 1: to this area where we're out here. That was in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six. When I moved here, I've been keeping mind,
Speaker 1: had been hunting it for about three or four.
Speaker 3: Years, been.
Speaker 1: Traveling back and forth. But I moved here full time.
Speaker 1: Started running some ads in the magazine, like Outdoor Life magazine,
Speaker 1: fifty dollars a month for a one tolam inch ad.
Speaker 1: And it was it was just about broke me to
Speaker 1: have to pay that advertisement, you know, And I was
Speaker 1: I was so poor. I was poor as a church mouse,
Speaker 1: as a sands go you know, living in the back
Speaker 1: of my truck at the same time. But anyways, I
Speaker 1: rented an old shack, moved into that, started advertising and
Speaker 1: I started getting some customers.
Speaker 2: Ed bought a typewriter at a pawn shop and started
Speaker 2: printing out brochures for his lion hunts that he hung
Speaker 2: all across town. For a successful lion hunt, he charged
Speaker 2: five hundred dollars, and if they treat a bobcat, it
Speaker 2: was an extra fifty. It was now in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 2: and only three years prior, the bounty on Mountain lions
Speaker 2: was stopped and lions were being managed as game animals.
Speaker 2: Ed got his California guide license, which was nothing more
Speaker 2: than a formality, and he was on his way. But
Speaker 2: in the late fall of nineteen sixty seven, something beyond
Speaker 2: his control happened.
Speaker 1: And it started to grow from there, you know, and
Speaker 1: then I ended up having a I guess people started
Speaker 1: knowing a little bit about me being there. And I
Speaker 1: knew this guy lived up at Sugarloa Village, and he
Speaker 1: said that he knew a guy that worked for the
Speaker 1: La Times, and he talked to him about what I
Speaker 1: was doing, and they wanted to know if they could
Speaker 1: come up here and I'd take him lying under they'd
Speaker 1: run an article in the Los Angeles Times, so you know,
Speaker 1: I said, well, yeah, okay, let's do it.
Speaker 2: And this was obviously a time when was a little
Speaker 2: more favorable to hunt lions California.
Speaker 4: Yes, it was so.
Speaker 1: Anyways, these guys came up, the guy named Dewey Lindsay,
Speaker 1: and with him was this photographer that worked for the
Speaker 1: He's a freelance photographer basically worked for a national geographic
Speaker 1: And here I am twenty five years old with about
Speaker 1: three hound dogs, and I got these high powered professionals
Speaker 1: from Los Amps that come up here and want me
Speaker 1: to catch a lion. They said, I only got three
Speaker 1: days to do it. In the pressure was really on
Speaker 1: because trying to you know, there's one thing to catch
Speaker 1: a lion. Well, you're just out there hunting and you
Speaker 1: run into them and you catch him as a as
Speaker 1: they become available. But if you're going to do this
Speaker 1: as a profession and you got people coming in and
Speaker 1: you're on a no catch, no pay.
Speaker 4: Which I was at those days, no catch, no pay,
Speaker 4: no catch, no pay. If you didn't catch it, you
Speaker 4: didn't get paid anything.
Speaker 2: Was that common back then or is that just something
Speaker 2: that you wanted to.
Speaker 1: No, No, that was common. That was the way it
Speaker 1: was everywhere, all of them through the mount in states.
Speaker 1: Everybody no catch, no pay. You had to show for
Speaker 1: these people around and pay for their food and sometimes
Speaker 1: drive a couple hundred miles each way to an airport
Speaker 1: to pick them up and take them back. And if
Speaker 1: you didn't catch them a lion, you didn't get paid anything.
Speaker 3: So that's business.
Speaker 4: The pressure was on, you know.
Speaker 3: Made for some good outfitters, didn't it.
Speaker 1: It separated them, It truly did. Yeah, I caught them
Speaker 1: a lion on the on the third day.
Speaker 2: Third day, and you're just dry ground line hunting, so
Speaker 2: you're just roaming around free casting the dogs. No, were
Speaker 2: you on your horse at that.
Speaker 1: No, I didn't know. I wasn't using horse. What what
Speaker 1: I'd have to do is I just had to go
Speaker 1: places where I knew that lions would frequent and and
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're kind of a strange animal in
Speaker 1: that you find lions that would use certain areas and
Speaker 1: airs are close by. They wouldn't even go and bother
Speaker 1: over there. So I would go to these places where
Speaker 1: I knew that it either caught lions already or I'd
Speaker 1: seen lions. I was really looking for someplace where I
Speaker 1: could find a lion track, knowing that I hadn't already
Speaker 1: caught the thing.
Speaker 4: So anyways, we ended.
Speaker 1: Up catching the lion and they they ran this story
Speaker 1: in the What's we call West magazine to the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Time. It's a weekend color magazine, and through that ad,
Speaker 1: it generated quite a bit of a business for me.
Speaker 1: Next thing I knew I was I was so so
Speaker 1: dog gone for I was hurting for money so bad
Speaker 1: that i'd coast home. I'd find when I'd be driving home,
Speaker 1: I turned the motor off so I didn't burn the
Speaker 1: gas for it going downhill. But and next thing I
Speaker 1: knew that I could leave the motor running needs to
Speaker 1: get home.
Speaker 2: And you were catching some eighty lines. You could leave
Speaker 2: the motors running when I start riding down the road.
Speaker 2: That's right going down the hill.
Speaker 3: Ye made it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yeah, I was really getting rich during the years
Speaker 1: that I did all this. I wouldn't trade the memories
Speaker 1: of that for anything at all. I mean, it was
Speaker 1: just something that was just really important to me, and
Speaker 1: I cherished those memories a dozen years there. I made
Speaker 1: my living from that. If I had two nickels to
Speaker 1: rub together, it was because somebody gave me that for
Speaker 1: taking a hunting, And if they gave it to me
Speaker 1: for taking a hunting, it's because they got the animal
Speaker 1: that they were hunting for. Or they didn't give me
Speaker 1: the two nickels, you know. But I'll tell you what.
Speaker 4: I was so poor. It took every penny.
Speaker 1: That I made to feed those dogs, buy new ones
Speaker 1: if I needed to buy a dog, pay for gas.
Speaker 1: Trucks didn't last very long in those days. Seventy thousand
Speaker 1: miles on a truck that I was driving new, buy
Speaker 1: one brand new, and then seventy thousand.
Speaker 4: Miles later it was pretty rough shape.
Speaker 1: So anyways, from there, I stayed in California, Yah, doing
Speaker 1: the line of the bear, 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, and it was nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: it was December twenty seventh, I think, and we caught
Speaker 1: this lion, but we got a flat tire and we
Speaker 1: were just about ready to leave, and we're right at
Speaker 1: the end of the dead end road. Anyways, at the
Speaker 1: end of the road, couldn't be five hundred feet away
Speaker 1: from us. I look down the road and there's these
Speaker 1: two boys standing there with four hound dogs and asked
Speaker 1: Roy Stevenson. I said, do you know those kids? He says,
Speaker 1: I've never seen him in my life. And there was
Speaker 1: a friendship that is still going on today. The two
Speaker 1: boys was Bobby Bridges and Gary Bridges and their father,
Speaker 1: Jim Bridges, who's now passed on, and we hit it
Speaker 1: off really well. So next thing I knew, I was
Speaker 1: up there taking bear hunts and Shatta County and Jim
Speaker 1: Bridges was giving me a hand at it, and I
Speaker 1: ended up buying three of those dogs that were standing
Speaker 1: at the end of the road that day. Jim was
Speaker 1: one of the actually one of the finest men that
Speaker 1: I think I've ever known in my life. You could
Speaker 1: believe anything he said, and you can't find any of
Speaker 1: them that you can do that with.
Speaker 2: You never know when you're going to meet a friend
Speaker 2: that will stay with you for the rest of your life.
Speaker 2: Ed met the Bridges at the end of a dead
Speaker 2: end road. I really like Ed's qualification of a good man.
Speaker 2: He said you could believe anything he said, which puzzled
Speaker 2: me for a minute at how rare Ed implied this
Speaker 2: trait to be. But I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: just tell you what you want to hear. They may
Speaker 2: not lie to you, but they don't tell you the
Speaker 2: whole truth. And some people just aren't competent, and what
Speaker 2: they say is often flawed, not reflecting reality. It's not
Speaker 2: that they blatantly lie, it's just you can't really trust
Speaker 2: their judgment. It made me stop and ask what integrity
Speaker 2: really is. It's a powerful exercise to do a deep
Speaker 2: analysis of your personal integrity, and only you, with the
Speaker 2: help of God, can do that.
Speaker 3: I wanted to ask ed about horses.
Speaker 2: I know in your book you talk about and this
Speaker 2: is one thing that intrigued me. Was you hunted on
Speaker 2: horseback a lot? Was that one of your favorite ways
Speaker 2: to hunt ed was hunting on horseback with the dog's
Speaker 2: free ranging out.
Speaker 4: I did enjoy that.
Speaker 1: It was you know, the easiest way to hunt dogs
Speaker 1: is to turn the dogs loose and let him run
Speaker 1: down the road in front of a pick out and
Speaker 1: follo him in a truck. But in lion hunting, sometimes
Speaker 1: with what I was doing, see, I couldn't catch lines
Speaker 1: at just my leisure. It didn't make any difference. If
Speaker 1: I was out there and caught a line, I didn't
Speaker 1: have anyone with me. I didn't do any good. I
Speaker 1: didn't get paid anything, and I was full time doing this,
Speaker 1: so I needed a paying customer to be with me
Speaker 1: and a paying customer had to be there.
Speaker 4: When I caught it. Yeah, I mean I could catch it.
Speaker 1: I could catch the line the day after the guy left,
Speaker 1: and it didn't do me any good because he left
Speaker 1: and he took his money with him when he was
Speaker 1: when he left. You know, So during those years I
Speaker 1: had to go wherever the lions were at. It's like
Speaker 1: most of the hunts were like one week hunts, and
Speaker 1: during that week period of time, I had to come
Speaker 1: up with the lion. And if I didn't come up
Speaker 1: with the lion, I just got to I just got
Speaker 1: to pay the bill all by myself.
Speaker 3: You know, did that happen very often? Or did you
Speaker 3: catch most most people lines?
Speaker 1: You know, I was running of both the line, the
Speaker 1: both line and barns. I was hitting pretty close to
Speaker 1: ninety percent, which meant you if you had if you
Speaker 1: had a guy on a lion hunt, you didn't get
Speaker 1: much time to do that. So you better know where
Speaker 1: there's one at. And so to do that, I had
Speaker 1: to stay active, actively looking, even if I had nobody
Speaker 1: with me. Well here comes the horse now, Okay. I
Speaker 1: drive roads. I look for tracks alongside the roads, walks
Speaker 1: and trails. But you can only walk so far. Then
Speaker 1: there's other areas that you know that are pretty decent
Speaker 1: for having lions in them. But it didn't do you
Speaker 1: any good to go way back in the back country.
Speaker 1: If you're going to take what we used to call
Speaker 1: them dudes, take them in there to go catch a line,
Speaker 1: because you had to get them in there too, you know.
Speaker 1: So I would take and I'd use the horse to
Speaker 1: scout to constantly look see if I could find a line.
Speaker 1: If I caught them, i'd make sure i'd let them go,
Speaker 1: but try and keep tract of it so that you
Speaker 1: could hopefully find it again, which wasn't all that often.
Speaker 1: I seemed like I'd guess lines, let them go, and
Speaker 1: I never seem to see their tracks again. But anyways,
Speaker 1: how many did I catch as compared to driving roads?
Speaker 1: I caught more driving roads just because you can travel.
Speaker 2: Fast, just it's an efficient way to hunt.
Speaker 4: It is you can travel much faster.
Speaker 3: You're looking for an actual track, yes, dirt track in
Speaker 3: the road.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 1: Lions, At least where I was hunting them, they seemed
Speaker 1: to use trails. They were obvious to you. You get
Speaker 1: to the point to where you could you could you
Speaker 1: find a lion track. You're walking up a canyon, you
Speaker 1: find a lion track, and just going a certain direction,
Speaker 1: you look off in the distance.
Speaker 4: You could just about say, if this lion.
Speaker 1: Has gone that far whatever that is, a mile or
Speaker 1: whatever it is, the chances are he went right through there, and.
Speaker 4: You almost look, yes, you almost always right.
Speaker 1: And the and the bears at that time in these
Speaker 1: Greenhorn Mountains, which is where we're at, the bear pop
Speaker 1: place was very poor. They'd had had a drought, a
Speaker 1: severe drought in the late nineteen fifties. They said that
Speaker 1: the bears went clear to the San Joaquin Valley in
Speaker 1: those years. And in those years they were using the
Speaker 1: poison called ten eighty to kill ground squirrels and everything else.
Speaker 1: And ten eighty is a kind of a poison that
Speaker 1: if a ground squirrel eat and something comes along and
Speaker 1: eats the ground squirrel, it's going to kill that thing too.
Speaker 1: And I kind of think that between the drought and
Speaker 1: the widespread poisoning ground squirrels in these mountains, that had
Speaker 1: just about wiped the bear population now for a long,
Speaker 1: long waist away, And it wasn't until about nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: which would be about ten years after that drought that
Speaker 1: we started spinning bears showing up. Yeah, and the bears
Speaker 1: that we've would show up, they were adults, they were
Speaker 1: all and most of our big, big bears to boots.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: It weren't finding anything of females with cubs. They're just
Speaker 1: pretty good sized bears, and I think they just moved
Speaker 1: into here. But up until then, up until about nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: I was spending all my time for the bear on
Speaker 1: south in northern California.
Speaker 2: What Ed is saying checks out, because males will be
Speaker 2: the first ones to repopulate new territory. And interestingly, as
Speaker 2: many know today, California has the most bears of any
Speaker 2: state in the lower forty eight. The last half century
Speaker 2: for black bears has surprised biologists by how quickly they
Speaker 2: can come back.
Speaker 3: That's a good thing. And back to horse hunting.
Speaker 2: Ed had a really cool truck with a stock crack
Speaker 2: and the bed built in dog boxes that he hauled
Speaker 2: his horses and dogs without a trailer.
Speaker 3: I've been watting one of those ever since I saw
Speaker 3: his What was your favorite to chase with your hounds?
Speaker 4: I love chasing bears.
Speaker 3: Did you more than lions?
Speaker 1: Oh, that's hard to say. I'll tell you what I
Speaker 1: liked about about the lion hunt. I really did enjoy
Speaker 1: catching a lion where the dogs would start with a track.
Speaker 1: There was almost nothing were they'd out there, and you
Speaker 1: had to have dogs had good cold noses to where
Speaker 1: they'd done. You find a lion track in the dirt
Speaker 1: and you point out it, and they stick their nose
Speaker 1: down there. They couldn't smell it, but they knew you
Speaker 1: were pointing something out. They started looking. They'd find a
Speaker 1: twig that had touched that animal side and they could
Speaker 1: smell it on that twig, and they'd bark. And you
Speaker 1: look at the ground where they're at, and there's that
Speaker 1: lion's track, and you start from that, and maybe ten
Speaker 1: miles later you're looking at the lion. That to me
Speaker 1: made it all worthwhile. That was that was hunting dogs.
Speaker 1: That wasn't hunting lions. That was taking dogs and seeing
Speaker 1: them at their very finest, and I just loved that.
Speaker 1: I know, there's lots of lines that I'd caught people
Speaker 1: that I'd taken in the past. After writing this book,
Speaker 1: they'd asked me about it, and I forgot all about
Speaker 1: it because they were what we call a pop ups.
Speaker 1: You know, you cut the track and it was fresh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a lie wasn't very far away from.
Speaker 3: You, So that was the easy one.
Speaker 4: Those Areasi's pop ups.
Speaker 1: You don't even forget about them, but those ones that
Speaker 1: where you get out out to those things. Then you
Speaker 1: go all day long just working, sometimes in the summertime
Speaker 1: where the dog just just taking both of you. You
Speaker 1: got to find the track to help the dog, and
Speaker 1: the dog take the track a little ways where you
Speaker 1: couldn't find it, and next thing you know, they turned
Speaker 1: that thing into a movable track and like, say, miles later,
Speaker 1: you're looking at it, there is a tree.
Speaker 2: One thing that you did, and this I noticed inside
Speaker 2: the book was you did some incredible athletic feats. In
Speaker 2: my mind following these dogs. Were you a really great athlete?
Speaker 4: Ed No.
Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, as an infant, I had
Speaker 1: to berkulosis, and they figured that I would never be
Speaker 1: able to do anything athleticalized. But then i'd also had
Speaker 1: learned that your lungs can repair, and.
Speaker 4: Apparently mine did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know I would go places that following
Speaker 1: a hound dog. I wouldn't even think of going there.
Speaker 1: But it was because the dogs and I were doing
Speaker 1: this together. Let me put it like this, but the
Speaker 1: numbers of lines that I caught, I left let a
Speaker 1: lot of them go, just let them go. Same with bears.
Speaker 1: I let hundreds of bears go. I mean hundreds. It
Speaker 1: was all about dog honting. There's a lot of times,
Speaker 1: you know, I keep telling myself, no paint, no gain,
Speaker 1: you know, But if I could hear those dogs, I'm
Speaker 1: going to them. And there was one time in my
Speaker 1: entire career that my dogs treat a bear and I
Speaker 1: didn't go to him. I started to go to him,
Speaker 1: but I had two guys with me. This is up
Speaker 1: in Shasta County. They treat a bear in this place
Speaker 1: called Hellsol that's with the name of that canyon. And
Speaker 1: that canyon is so steep that you had to hang
Speaker 1: on to stuff as you're going downhill, otherwise you're going
Speaker 1: to just start sliding.
Speaker 4: Then you go all the way to the bottom.
Speaker 1: And from where the where we started, the bear, they
Speaker 1: dropped off in a canyon that is about fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: feet in elevation into the bottom of straight down and
Speaker 1: treated about a thousand feet up the other side. And
Speaker 1: we started going down to these dogs that had two
Speaker 1: guys with me. One of them was really heavy set,
Speaker 1: and I knew that Hugh was never going to get there.
Speaker 1: The dogs were just blowing the top out of this
Speaker 1: tree and across the canyon. From where we were standing
Speaker 1: to where those dogs were actually trim we could not
Speaker 1: have been a thousand feet through the air apart from
Speaker 1: each other. And so I asked these guys, I said,
Speaker 1: what's going to happen if we get to the bottom,
Speaker 1: you're going to be able to get back to the
Speaker 1: up to the top, because if you can't, there's no
Speaker 1: sense going down there. And they told me, they says,
Speaker 1: we'll never make it. So I started yelling and I
Speaker 1: fired my rifle a couple of times, and it's really
Speaker 1: surprised me. I don't remember how many dogs I had,
Speaker 1: and I probably I usually I usually had about four.
Speaker 1: I liked to during the embarrassed season, I like to
Speaker 1: have no less them three and usually about four.
Speaker 4: I'd rotate the dog.
Speaker 3: You could catch dogs. You can catch bears with three,
Speaker 3: four or five hounds.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I'll tell you a little about my philosophy
Speaker 1: on that. But anyways, the dogs came to me and
Speaker 1: I was totally shocked that they quit and came across
Speaker 1: that canyon. But as we got out of there, you know,
Speaker 1: when it comes to numbers of dogs, Willi's butt off.
Speaker 1: He's a lion. He was a guy of excuse, went
Speaker 1: to god. He was a government hunter, but he also
Speaker 1: guided people as well, and he's 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 4: Yeah, on that to be true.
Speaker 2: What Ed is saying isn't wrong. But as you take
Speaker 2: a wider look at America, every region is different, and
Speaker 2: in some places bears are harder to tree than others.
Speaker 2: My buddies and houndsmen in the East would find a
Speaker 2: reality out there that's way different, and they typically need
Speaker 2: more dogs to consistently tree bears.
Speaker 1: But you know, there is something I'd like to say
Speaker 1: that I haven't hundred hounds since well one hundred. With
Speaker 1: Jim Bridges. One on one time up in Susanville that
Speaker 1: was nineteen ninety five, we caught a bear and let
Speaker 1: it go, of course, but I didn't. I haven't had
Speaker 1: hound since the late nineteen eighties, and I kind of
Speaker 1: burned myself out.
Speaker 2: How long did you? Just to give an overview? So
Speaker 2: you started, you started guiding in what year and ended
Speaker 2: in what year?
Speaker 4: Okay?
Speaker 1: I started guiding in nineteen sixty six and in nineteen
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies I quit guiding. I didn't quit hunting,
Speaker 1: I quit guiding.
Speaker 2: Ed's story of struggles starting from zero and ascending to
Speaker 2: becoming an expert in his field is interesting and inspiring,
Speaker 2: But the thing that stands out to me is simple.
Speaker 2: It's just hard work to be good at anything. Everyone
Speaker 2: has challenges to overcome, and it's in those challenges that
Speaker 2: we find who we are. Challenge gives us identity. How
Speaker 2: we deal with those challenges determines what our name is.
Speaker 2: It's my hope that we never lose grit, determination, and
Speaker 2: drive towards the things that seem most out of reach
Speaker 2: to us. What I didn't hear inside of Ed's story
Speaker 2: was excuses. Today it seems like a lot of people
Speaker 2: have a lot of excuses, including me at times, but
Speaker 2: I refuse to let those things define me on a
Speaker 2: lot of inspiration from Ed's story, and I hope you
Speaker 2: have too. You can find this book by searching for
Speaker 2: Trained by a Hound Dog by d Vance.
Speaker 3: I really thank ed for this.
Speaker 2: Story, and don't forget California completely lost their rights to
Speaker 2: hunt lions and run bears with hounds. We can't ever
Speaker 2: take for granted what we've got. We're living in the
Speaker 2: glory days, and we've got to continue to fight for
Speaker 2: our rights.
Speaker 3: As hunters and conservationists.
Speaker 2: I can't thank you enough for listening to bear grease
Speaker 2: to Brent's This Country Life podcast Into Lakes Backwoods University.
Speaker 2: Keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.