EP. 3 Joel Barter

From bobcats to lions to bear to mule deer and more, Joel Barter is an avid outdoorsman with huge successes! This is another one you don't want to miss!

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

All right, everybody. We're back with another another episode of Don't Run with Lighthound. We got Mr. Joel Varter out of British Columbia. Hey buddy, why don't you uh introduce yourself and tell us about where you're at and kind of what's going on over there?

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Yeah, so like you said, I'm up here in BC. Um, I guess as far as the dogs go, I've been doing this for about 10 years now, about eight eight years or so with my own dogs, and then I uh hunted a couple years with a buddy and his dogs that kind of got me hooked on the game. So yeah, running bears and cats up here, um, lions, bobcat, wings, and um that's about it.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

We got the we got the aboths coming in hot boy. Yes sir. Oh, so where you're at, your your location, you do you mainly hunt on big public ground? Like tell us about tell us about the is it wilderness or how it's sanctioned, and then kind of kind of tell us about the rules and regulations on on the different stuff.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Yeah, so BC is an interesting place. Um on one hand, it's super nice. Like our um availability to hunt here, our regulations. There's so much opportunity for all the different game. Like um, as far as seasons go, when you combine the bear and the cat seasons, like I can run the dogs for 10 months of the year, right? The only two months that I can't uh chase something is July and August. Um, and I think there's actually a a fair season in August. I could be wrong, but uh you can run them on private land, I believe, in some areas. But uh yeah, basically from September 1st to uh June 30th, you're good to go for something around here. So basically cat season starts November 15th. Um I guess it's kind of split. Like where I live here on the coast, I live uh just outside of Vancouver on the southern coast here. Um, but I do most of my hunting in the interior, so I gotta drive like three or four hours to get into the interior. Um, it's just super nasty to run dogs on the coast. Like the terrain is just inexplicably disgusting around here. The mountains are so steep and the uh the undergrowth is just horrible to deal with. But technically you can start running cats and bears here uh September 1st. Um, so we do a bit of that in the fall, and then kind of full-blown cat season starts the middle of November up in the interior. Um, that runs until uh March 30th, and then the next day, our hunting season um starts April 1st for the year, right? So March 30th, cast season ends. April 1st is opening day of bear season, and then you got that until uh June 30th. And that's awesome. That's pretty long. So I was just saying it's it's it's rare that uh you meet somebody or like you know, live in a spot. I mean, for us down here, we can run hogs 24-7 for the most part. Right. Um, but to be able to uh run different games, you know, basically, you know, 10 months out of the year, I I feel like it's pretty rare for most of us. Well, yeah, and it's just too hot in the summertime usually to run dogs anyway. Sometimes even the tail in a bear season, we gotta kind of cut it short if we have a a hot spring or something like that. But you know, I talk to guys here and there that either just run cats, you know, if they live in a state where you can't run bears or vice versa, something like that. It's like I don't know how guys keep dogs if they can't run them all year, man.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

Yeah, it's a it's a struggle for me with my deer scracking dogs because it's it's three months, man. So it's that it unless you can my dog, my specific main dog, doesn't really he's not one to uh just go for a run.

SPEAKER_01 4:04

Uh we're not I live on fifteen acres and he can kind of do whatever he wants, but he's you know, we go I try to road him, he just looks at me like I'm retarded, like he's he doesn't go for it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:17

So October 1st or September 30th, whatever it is, uh whenever deer season starts, boy, it's like And it's usually wheels off the gray like immediately.

SPEAKER_01 4:27

Like the opening day is archery, and then it is full tilt for that first two weeks. Like it's for down here, most of your most of your white tail are kind of on their summer pattern still in that first week or two of deer season. So like a lot of big deer and a lot of you know, and of course it's archery only. So uh there's a lot of guys that are dying to get in the woods that opening week, and of course it's the hottest, uh we're the least in shape, the weather's the shittiest, like it's terrible conditions to start, and it's like every year I'm like I I can't wait for October, but I also dread that first couple weeks because poor dogs just dragging ass, you know. So right into the fire. Yeah, yeah. It's not like uh you don't get to just warm up to nothing. It's it's right after it, you know, and and for us, you know, it's September 30th, uh November 1st, you know, it's it's a lot of days are 85 degrees, you know, and and you're getting maybe so, you know, 65, 70 at night, you know, kind of depending on the the scenario. But it's uh you know, our our good weather for tracking and stuff doesn't normally get here until November and you know December is is great, but uh you know it's the nice part about up here is um like our general hunting season basically province wide. There's there's pockets of different things that open up at different times, but the general season for mostly everything kicks off. Um basically September 1st is is we get a nine-day archery season and then rifle kicks off for everything else. So basically September 1st, most things open up. And I don't do a ton of bear hunting in the fall because I am going, I'm pretty hardcore into everything, but we've got so much opportunity up here for so many different species. Um, so I don't do a lot of fall bear hunting, but it is nice because I kind of got a cart of dogs around me wherever with me wherever I go. Sometimes I'll go on a trip and the wife will take care of them at home. But a lot of the times my wife's just coming with me. So we're usually bringing the dogs around. So if we go deer hunting or something like that, um we usually run a few bears in the in the fall season, so it's kind of like a nice warm-up before the cats come. I'm not out there looking to tree a whole bunch of bears in the fall, but it's a nice, nice activity. If you're hunting slow, we'll go run a bear, get the dogs stretched out, and uh kind of gets them back in shape for November when we really like to go hard for cat season.

SPEAKER_02 7:04

Will those bears be pretty much hibernating by then?

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Or um, yeah, depending on the winter. I mean, we do cut bear traps. Like I've cut bear traps all through the winter, but typically by the time November comes, you're not really seeing bears anymore. I mean, do they do a true hibernation up there? No, no, definitely not. Like um you don't really come across them, but like I said, like we cut at least one or two bear traps usually every year in the in the wintertime, just grunging through the snow. Gotcha, gotcha. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you're not picking them up with the dogs. Like, I've I've never I've never gone on a bear race in the snow yet with the dogs, so like they're they're definitely banned up, but they will get out and poke around, right? Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. Do you have any like brown and grizzly bears around you or no? Uh not close to where I live, but in some of the areas I hunt, they are around. Um, I haven't got myself roped into a grizzly race yet. They're typically more in the um eastern part of the province, and then way up north, there's a ton of them. But man, they shut down our grizzly hunting, I guess, close to 10 years ago. We used to be able to put in for a draw and hunt grizzlies, and they shut that down, and the population's just exploding now. So they're definitely moving into new places and stuff like that. So I'm sure I'm sure they'll be all over the place in no time. But the areas that the grizzlies do hang out in are just flooded with them now. Like we get so many bear attacks every year. Yeah, genius conservation. Yeah, the liberals. Fuck, man. So tell me about that. So, like, I mean, obviously you you still get to run dogs and stuff, but like uh like how's the is it are you getting are you being attacked kind of like we are down here? Like it seems like every every few months we've got another bill in some state or some uh or for everybody, you know, uh, you know, kind of attacking our rights. Is that kind of something that's happening to y'all up there? Or yeah, yeah, it does. It seems to come in waves. Um there was one a few years ago where they tried to shut down basically all hunting with dogs, all cat hunting. Um, I believe bear hunting was roped into that. It was basically like all dog hunting, and and they basically tried to go for um most of the predators that are left that were able to hunt. And I think it was just kind of a normally when stuff gets challenged up here, because especially in BC, it's a it's a liberal government in BC is a our provincial government's liberal, and then it's like most places, right? Like in Vancouver, you've got the whole city of Vancouver doing the voting for all the whole province. Like, I think there's something like four million people in BC, and like three million of them live in Vancouver, right? So the voting base is deciding these things for everybody, and usually when stuff like that comes up and it gets traction, it just passes, and it's almost like there's no point in even trying to fight it. But miraculously, we I think they just tried to bite off more than they can chew with that one. And when you try and go after like all cat hunting, all bear hunting, the outfitters get involved, and a bunch of people got pissed off about it. So we were able to bat that one down. But uh unfortunately, I think if they start going for smaller pieces at a time, they might be able to whittle away at it. But on the other hand, like hunting in BC almost flies under the radar a little bit, so it's kind of like a gift and a curse. It's like we don't have a big population of hunters that will step up and fight for it, but it's also sometimes quiet enough that people sometimes it just kind of like I said slips under the radar a bit. Yeah, I like we don't have a big uh we don't have a huge community of houndsmen in in BC. It's more than I than I would have guessed before I got into this. Like before I got my dogs, you know, I thought hound hunting was an old school thing. I thought it was like something that people did in the States, and then something that people did like hundreds of years ago up here. And then once I got into it, I realized there are a lot more houndsmen in this province than I realized, but it's still not. Like if I had to throw a guess out there, I'd say there's maybe several hundred houndsmen in the entire province, and it's a huge, huge expanse of land, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:33

Yeah. So who who is who did you see first with like hounds?

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Did you did you run into some somebody or what what what was your first like experience with dogs and and running bears and lions? Yeah, so uh I worked with a dude for uh a few years kind of off and on. We worked for a few different companies together, and he would always tell me stories about his brother-in-law that had hounds. Um uh he lived on Vancouver Island, which is actually where I grew up, and so I knew he had hunted with him a few times, and we kind of kept in contact over the years, and I was bullshitting with him one day. We were kind of trying to put together a mule deer hunt together, and he had moved to the interior of BC at that point and got his own dogs. He had two or three at the time. Kind of mule deer season was winding down, and he was like, Well, why don't you come up here for a cat hunt? And I had never in my wildest dreams even imagined that I would get an opportunity to go, you know, front lines with a with dogs. It was just not something that I even factored in. And I was like, Literally, dude, you tell me when and where, and I will be there. Like, this is not an opportunity that I'm uh gonna miss. I was just so fascinated by it. And so we picked a weekend and I drove up there, and kind of a curse for me in the beginning was shitty conditions. Um, we went up there and I don't think it had snowed in like five days. There was snow on the ground, it was a pretty heavy snow year, but it was just like ice, right? Just two-foot snowbanks that were just crusted ice. And uh we didn't even have to go hunting, man. I swear I walked in his garage and I saw his dogs paneled up there, and I was like, Oh, this is this is awesome! Just watching the dogs. And we loaded up the next day and went out hunting, and we cut a lion track that was like a fossilized artifact in this ice. I don't know how old it was, but we were a long ways behind that cat. And he let uh he let his lead dog out, and I just saw that dog cock back and let out a huge ball, and I was like, buddy, this is my new cat. Like, I need to do this. And uh it wasn't even easy after that. I I went up there basically every weekend I could, and I remember um we hunted 22 days together before we ever treat a cat, and the first one we caught was a little kid. Yeah. So we definitely had to work for it, but I was just like so did he was his dogs were they like finished type dogs when you went with them, or was he kind of getting started too? He was kind of getting started, but he got pretty lucky. He was kind of um working with a book and uh uh a buddy lent him a finished female and he had bought a pup off this guy, and the puff was I think I guess he wasn't a pup. I think he was about a year old when he got him, but it was I think it was a dog that was kind of just sitting on a chain more or less, right? And he took he picked up this dog, and then Buddy lent him a a Finnish female for a little bit, and um so the puff's name was Judge, and dog actually turned out to be kind of a legendary dog in our little friend community here. But uh he took this dog out with uh with the finished female, put him on a lion, and they went and treated it, and then he gave the female back, and he was out driving around next time with his girlfriend and cut a lion track and put Judge out on it, and he just went and treated it. And he basically just never missed after that. And he was just one of those dogs with like the one in a hundred lifetime type dogs. He just had it, um, picked it up the first time, and and that dog was just a legend, man. Like he he trees lions, bobcats, links, bears, you name it. If they'll climb a tree, he'll put it up there and keep it there. He's just an absolute psychopath. I got some buddies that have landed on that gold mine. Yeah, no, pretty well to have a dog just do it. Yeah, no, he's a he's a special dog for sure. I actually uh kind of due to circumstances a few years ago, my buddy Bruce there he decided to hang up the leashes and got rid of all his dogs, and he approached me and asked if I wanted to buy them, and I wasn't really in a position to make it happen at the time, so I passed on him and he ended up selling them to a big outfitter up here. And then I think a year after that, that outfitter um went through some hard times. He had a bunch of wildfires around his place in Alberta there, and he ended up having to uh get rid of a bunch of dogs real quick, and he asked me if I wanted to buy them, and I wasn't gonna turn it up twice, so I ended up buying that dog off him. And uh I ran him for two and a half years, two and a half, three years or so, and then he's starting to get up there in age now, and he ended up getting attacked by bears a couple years in a row and almost getting himself killed. So it's kind of like he's kind of slowing down, he's losing it a little bit. Um, I talked to Bruce and I was just like, hey, listen, like he's starting to slow down, he's not quite ready to rip to retire, but Bruce was guiding for uh for links up north. I was like, listen, man, if you want to run him on links and and use him guiding and stuff like that, kind of semi-retire him. I was like, I'll just give him back to you. I know he's special to you, and and I think it just it felt like the right thing to do. So I just gave him back to him last year. Yeah. That's cool. It's real cool. Yeah. Yeah, it was a real pleasure to have him for a few years. Like that dog, I know he means a lot to Bruce. It's the first dog, and he's kind of a legend to him. He was the dog that got me excuse me. He was the dog that got me hooked on it. So I got done for a few years and spent time with him, and like I said, yeah, it just felt like the right thing to do just to send him back. That's cool. So tell us about tell us about the breed and and kind of what y'all are running. Yeah, um I like a real houndie dog. It was one of the things that really drew me to the dogs, was just Judge is uh he's a a night train black and tan um Ross Walker. I don't know what the Walker bloodline was, but uh he was a big block headed, looked like a Peterville um high fan, and I just got addicted to that style of a dog right away. So I got a a preference to the black and tan dogs. I got really obsessed with the Duncan line. Um honestly, man, I've picked all my dogs based on how they look. I don't really do too much research on them. I like I like a good looking dog. I know a lot of guys run whatever hunt the hardest or whatever style they like and whatever build they like. I've picked all my dogs just based on what looks good to me, and I've had pretty good luck with that. So I think I'll probably keep doing that going forward. But um yeah, I got four four black and tan. They're all crosses except for uh one's a full blood duncan right from from Calvin and Ken there. Um that's kind of what I like. I like a big dog. I I like all males. We do have one blue tick in the house. It's my wife's dog, she came with her um messing up my color scheme. But uh she uh she doesn't really hunt anymore. We tried her for a few years, but she was a ranch dog on my wife's property before we got together, and she kind of picked it up a little bit and then got to a point where every time we let her out of a truck, she finds a highway to run down. So she's kind of put on the bench now. Um so yeah, I got four dogs that work. Like I said, they're all all black dogs and some sort of a cross with either blue tick or red tick or walker. Um running the conditions that we have up here. I do like a bigger dog. Um ideally not too heavy. I got this one pup right now, Gator. He's two. He's real tall, real lengthy, just a big torpedo, and that's kind of what I like to see. Um we have some years where the snow gets real deep, and if you got a short, short dog, they don't tend to do that well. And then the other thing we battle is just an immense amount of dead fall up here. Um, big timber, big trees, and just lots of windstorms pushing those trees over. So when you get in the boss of match sticks, I think it's good to have a nice tall, lanky dog to kind of kind of maneuver through that stuff. I guess the alternative would to be a real small dog, but then they don't pan very pan up very well in the in the winter conditions.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Yeah. When you say when you say a big dog, tell them tell them what you mean. Because I I asked you about one the other day and you told me how big it was, and I was like, Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:08

Yeah, Bruce Banner, the house horse, he's uh I got one dog, he was one of the first puffs that I got. He's uh cast season he runs about 90 pounds.

SPEAKER_02 20:22

Yeah, I got somebody that runs big dogs like that, and I just every time I see him, I'm like, how in the hell do they even get around?

SPEAKER_01 20:28

But god dang they do, and it's it's kind of impressive. Man, he might get to the tree a little late, but he always gets there, and and I tell you what, that dog can run day after day after day, like he doesn't quit. He's got feet on him the size of snowshoes, but uh he makes it around, man. He you you'd swear he's part of bloodhound if you look at him. He's just got a book skull on him. I can see where some big old big old pads would pay off in the snow. Yeah, no, he's a good dog. I call him I call him Mr. Average because he's not particularly great at anything, but he doesn't suck at anything either. He's just Mr. Reliable, like he's never gonna blow your socks off, but he's also never gonna let you down. I'll take a handful of that shit. Right. Oh man, I well, you were talking about looks, and I've I uh I've had a couple dogs that looked good recently and and none of them worth a shit. They probably would have got rid of them a lot sooner if they didn't look the way they did. Right. Uh and you know, and inevitably I've I've gotten rid of them. But uh it's sure hard to to look at one that's that that fits your kind of bill. I mean in in the yeah, I just got rid of one and he wasn't really my style, but he looked good for whatever style he was. And uh anyways, I I held him for a while and tried him on deer and pigs and then he just he's just never gonna be like a he's never gonna do it himself. Like we'd go and he'd just kinda he'd be at the bays and, you know, he kinda you know, he tracked some deer this year and and uh but just you know never never really did it. Like he'd do the easy stuff and then he'd be at the you know he'd me too to the hog bays and stuff and then it's just like man I don't have I don't have I don't have time for that. I had a couple buddies at work who like what do you what do you so like what now? And I'd like I'll give him away or you know told him, you know, and they're like well you know what does that mean? I'm like well I just don't have don't have a place for a a me too type dog when I could potentially get a puppy and it'd be a and fill that spot.

SPEAKER_02 22:47

I don't have just a ton of room in my kennels I'll I'll probably eventually have more but at the moment you know I've got enough to house eight dogs and uh you know he's just he's just taking up a spot and I I may or may not have a little breeding coming along and I'm like ah this is this is a good time.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

We gave him almost three years and and that was it. So yeah that's enough for sure. I I will say this is my my uh my ugliest dog is the highest performer and I don't know if that's based on him being nervous that he doesn't look good enough to stick around but he's the smallest dog and he's definitely the leader of the pack and and he he's an absolute menace out there. My wife calls him the ugliest I can I can dig it. I I don't I don't blame you one bit. I uh got a little chip right now like she doesn't really I know she's bred right and I know where she comes from like everything's right. But uh she don't really look good I mean she's pretty for what she is but just not really much I mean it wouldn't be like I wouldn't pick her out of a litter, you know I mean but uh I I'm hoping I I think she's gonna I think she's got it. Um she's a dog that I've put I started her on the deer track in this year and and um she's one years old and was kind of doing some stuff that I was kind of impressed by and I'm like oh you know you're not the greatest looking dog on the planet but I'm I'm due for an ugly dog that fucking does it so I'm praying she's the one so the the deer dogs I'm assuming that's all they do is track deer? Yeah track wounded deer. So like in Texas you can't run like in Alabama and out the southeast you can you know just run well you know wild deer and that are not wounded and you can and you can you know do that. We don't in Texas you can only track wounded deer. So my deer dogs are specifically for deer because we run pigs are you know rampant as I'm sure you're aware uh we run over pigs almost every deer track so I I'm pretty hard about not letting them even look at a pig um you know from an early age I'll I'll try to break them off that pretty quick. And then there's there are guys that will well we'll shoot pigs and and train on pigs and then run deer and then um you know haven't had bad calls with it. To me it just don't make I don't know. I just don't want to I don't even want to open up that revenue because um they we see them every damn track last thing I need to do is go chasing a pig and and not not to say that I haven't I've been on deer tracks and had my dogs bay a pig before and you look kind of like a dumbass whenever you're always got them big you know and it's a big buck. Walk up and they got a 200 pound boar bait up in the creek and you feel like a dumbass. Oh yeah yeah yeah so we I try to specifically keep them on deer if that's if that's the route. Now that being said I've got a little plot town cross dog that I ran last year on deer and now she's a straight up hog dog and it was just she's kind of she kind of showed me that she didn't care about dead animals so I put her on live animals on pig pigs you know that's what we can run down here. And uh she's she's all about that and this year I can't like last year I had problems with her trashing on deer because I started her on deer now and put her on pigs and I'm expecting her not to you know I didn't I knew she was going to run deer. I mean it just is what it is. And uh but this year I can't count one time and she's trashed on deer and she's three years old now and uh it's been it's just it was she she kind of told me what she wanted to do. You know what I mean? She she she uh showed me what she wanted and and here we are and I mean she's not like some life out dog but she she'll she'll do good for me for now you know until I raise my uh I got pretty high expectations with my deer tracking dogs because I've you know that's what I've been doing longest and uh you know I get paid to do it and um it's uh to me is a pretty high uh line to vetote and you know the pig dog build is is for fun for me so even the little half ass shit dog for me is fun right now. I'm sure that'll change at some point. But for now I'm just enjoying it. Yeah. It's interesting how they some dogs will like you say they'll tell you what what game they want to chase or or run. It's it's interesting before I really had a grip on this game up here I did a bunch of reading and research and talking to people and all that stuff and I would come across guys that would have different packs of dogs for cats and bears and some of these dogs just wouldn't run cats or just wouldn't run bears and it was always kind of I was like damn like I don't know if I could keep a dog that wouldn't run one or the other just because I'm super limited what uh what I can keep here. I've got a small half a duplex you know we got me and the wife and the kids and five dogs and 1100 square feet and basically no yard race so it's a little crammed right now so it's just like if you can't do it both then um not a lot of tolerance for that but I've been really lucky all the dogs that I've got have have done pretty well on both. I mean they're coming along nice with the cats now and they're they're finished out real nice with the Lions we're still kind of learning with the boss cats and the links we had a really good year last year with the small cats and then this past season we uh we didn't even get one which was interesting and it wasn't for lack of trying but kind of had to take a step back. We ran quite a few bobcats and links at the beginning of the season which we like to run the links when the snow's shallow so they don't have the advantage with their big feet but uh it just got to a point where we went on so many runs and you know they they hammer on the track and they're they're ripping and then just you know nothing would ever free or we weren't finding the trees not locating properly and it just got to the point where I was like all right we just need to get back and to what we're good at and tree a few lions here and then yeah we tried to cover some bobcats and links tracks in there throughout the season but it's uh they didn't do too good this year. I don't really know what was going on with that. Wow. I that's what I that was kind of like my my next question was you know you're running multiple stuff so like are you only dropping dogs on a track that you cut or do you free cast dogs and kind of road them or or something like that. How does that work for you? Yeah in cast season we're just finding tracks um we we don't typically have any issue finding tracks like there's so many cats up here man um whether it's uh if you're not picky about what you're running like if you're going for a big Tom you can drive around for a long time and and not find a cat to run um you're being picky it can take a little bit but if you're just looking for for a cat to run I mean typically if we've got fresh snow on the ground you know it doesn't take us too long to to dig up a track usually nice sunrise we've got two three tracks we can kind of pick and choose if we want to go after a bobcat or go f go after a lion and you're not having to work too hard to dig up something to run um and then in uh bear season. Um my dogs seem to figure out in about the first two or three days of bear season um usually after the first good strike from the box they figure out again that when they bark I let them out of the truck and then they just start striking them every corner every crease ahead and uh there's a lot of yelling and uh a lot of button pushing and then it gets to the point where I I don't know man. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong but these dogs are so high strung like I I pretty much just end up roading one or two dogs at a time and leave the other two or three in the box just so I've kind of you know if someone's striking in the box and there's one out on the road then it's time to press the button right so um pretty much resort to roading at least one dog or all of them depending on how long the day's gonna be for bears but uh um yeah I just kind of play it by ear with with uh how the day is going but uh yeah I I haven't really been able to master the the strike dog yet okay so so do you have a do you have a certain dog that you will specifically put down on the road or could all of them do it and it's just kind of whatever you put down or do you do what's your plan when you do that? Just my young puff Gator he's the only one that well actually you know what up until this point I didn't really trust him to start a track because it's really only his second real bear season that we're just kicking off here. But I kind of did an experiment last weekend when we were out and I was like usually I've got two the same dogs on each side of the box but I usually just you know rode this side of the box or rode that side of the box and let the other dogs take a break but I I switched it up and I put Gator out with with uh big banner there because um they don't usually run together unless they're on a track. Like I usually don't road them together because they're on opposite sides of the box but Banner's a pretty calm dog like he's not super mouthy when he's out on the road. So I was like let's kick Gator out with Banner and see if he's able to kind of sort out or start a track and see what happens and it honestly wasn't five minutes we come around the next corner and there's a grassy patch and Gator's tail starts doing the old windmill there and he took off and Banner came in there with him and and lit up right away and yeah they went and treated bear so he did that a couple times last weekend so seems like most of the dogs are pretty capable of starting a track on the road now but once you get them all in the box it only takes you know so long before they start getting excited and start start caulking off in there so how do you how do you know whenever like how far does a dog have to get off the road when you know that it's like a decent track like when you feel like pretty confident like a 20 feet a hundred yards two miles like what what do you like I mean we're on a we're on a good track here. Dude I get ex I get way too excited on as soon as the dogs blow off and take off in the timber I don't know they usually don't make it a hundred yards before I'm dumping the rest of the box I get pretty easily excited but uh I mean if it's not a good track if it's if it's too old or something like that they'll just come back anyways and I'll take one out on the road again and keep going. But honestly most of the time they're most of them are out there on the road um and uh there's like there's so many bears around here we noticed last weekend kind of when we were driving through in the morning there's this this meadow that a lot of bears like to come down and feed in and um they were just picking up tracks from the night before and you know they print off a hundred yards two hundred yards try and work it out but if if they don't blow up and just absolutely take off screaming then I know we're probably not going to catch it and I'll usually just honk the horn and they'll come back to the road pretty quick and we'll go find a fresher one. Like especially with bears you're not fighting uh to find a good track to run so if they don't get super excited within a couple hundred yards I just call them back and we'll go find something better. That's that's that's probably very similar to like uh some of these guys down here that have really high pig populations like they want they want a dog but you know we'll do that and not and not go on a mile long track and then you know you pass up several pigs because they're they're cracking trailing too hard. So like a lot of guys down here don't use straight up hounds they'll use like a crossed up with a cur or or Katahua or something like that. It could be gravel it could be just a grass path or whatever but like my dogs are not I mean if they go if they go two three hundred I'm like this is a good track for us. Like you know it's it's hot enough that they're they're you know I don't know how long they're gonna take it but you know like a little hundred 100 200 yard little track off I'm not like I don't get excited but whenever they start doing a the three to four hundred yard mark I'm like all right this is something we're probably gonna jump more than likely uh yeah it's more than for me more than likely probably not gonna get stopped but uh we'll we'll give it a good two up and run and and we'll try our asses off but uh I've and that's something I'm learning with uh running the hog dogs. Because on the deer track I put them on a specific damn track. It's a specific hoof it's a specific deer at a specific location. Uh it's a little it's it's way different than just casting around roading around for any damn pig. You know what I mean? So it's been a it's been a change of pace big time for me and I've really enjoyed it because it's you know just like a it's just been the last couple years I've been watching my own you know trying my own dogs with it. So it's uh it's it's definitely interesting just just to see the difference because you you know if for you you're you're if if say you're doing a lion track when you're putting them on a specific track and you expect them to you know follow that track till they find it or tree it or whatever. You know when you're casting dogs it's like uh you know you're not you don't even see the sign. You're just letting their nose tell you when to go. You know what I mean? Yeah. So it's a little bit your your lion track is like my deer track and the bears are kind of like our pigs in my mind. Yeah it's funny like I always tell people that ask questions about it and they're like oh you know what's the difference between bears and and lions or cats and stuff like that and like personally I like I prefer cat hunting over the bear hunting. Um they're both fun. I love both of them for different reasons but I always tell people like bear hunting with hounds is kind of like a like a bar fight. Like it's just anything goes right it's just a fucking wild scrap and then cat hunting with the dogs is more like UFC. A little more technical a little more planning you know just a little more intricate and I kind of like the I love getting up early and going out in the dark and cutting line tracks and just the kind of the um the process behind it right I love being able to find a track and know what you're chasing and you know being able to pick if you want to go after a bait online or if you want to target a lynx that day or or whatever it might be. Whereas bears like it's just you know kick the dogs out and wait till they dig something up and then find out whatever you got when you get to the tree. But another thing too that I've kind of gone through in the last few years is kind of for the first I don't know five six years that I had my dogs I was just so wound up with trying to finish my first couple pups out and it was just like I bought my first like I guess I should say the first two dogs that I bought I ended up getting them uh out of Montana and uh it's kind of a long story but I ended up getting a finished blue tape and one of that dog's pups from a guy in Montana and uh the blue tape was a little bit older I think he was six or seven when I picked him up and he was just a lion dog. That's all he would run. I did get him going on bears after about a year and he ended up being an awesome bear dog too. But uh I got a couple puffs after that and it was just kind of like a race to finish out a couple dogs before old Ringo was was too old to do it anymore. So it was just like hunting as much as I could going out every day I was going out you know like after work running bears on Wednesday nights and stuff like that. Me and a buddy would go out like every Wednesday and and run bears after work and it was just like this super stressful thing to try and get a puff a couple puffs finished before Ringo uh was too old. And um he ended up passing away before I got any of my puffs finished and we kind of went through a dry spell where I thought they were kind of good enough to do it on their own. Like I I figured I could get away without getting another finished dog to lead them and we just tried to grind it out for a couple years on our own and it ended up just being a really um really frustrating process like especially in bear season we would go on you know tons of runs throughout the spring like I'm putting these dogs out on on hundreds of runs every spring and freeing like two bears in three months right so I'm like listen you guys are going on all these runs and you're hammering out there but nothing's ending up in a tree. So like it gets to a point where you got to stop lying to yourself and realize like hey these dogs aren't running bears all the time like they're clearly chasing moose and deer some of the time so I kind of went through this phase where I was going to actually stop running bears and just put them on cats something that's a little more controllable where I could see the tracks and check tracks at road crossings and stuff like that. But I guess the whole point of the the story is um it was just like a long kind of four or five years of trying to get these dogs finished and now that I've got to the place where all my puffs kind of are finishing out and they're trustworthy and reliable it's just kind of taking a lot of the stress away. When it comes to bear hunting especially like I'm just out there to enjoy myself now man. Like if we catch a bear great if not road the dogs as long as they come home tired I'm happy like if they go on a couple runs and they wear their legs out and they don't catch something I don't really care. I know they're chasing bears now they're all trash broken you know we get you know one or two a year where they might fuck around a little bit but for the most part they're doing real good. So it's just kind of just more stress free now and I don't really worry too much about cashing stuff. We do pretty good but it's just kind of it's nice to take the stress off and not just be so focused on like getting this dog finished and and hunting every day from dawn till dusk. And just the last couple years have been a lot more enjoyable than they were when I was younger and it's kind of like the blind leading the blind.

SPEAKER_05 41:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 41:19

You're basically telling my exact story. I was when I first started dude it was so stressful and I mean like you said like four or five years of just grinding you know and you know luckily my my good dog now which is he he's not gonna be the good dog for long he's getting old uh you know it took it took three years for him to like really do it and then you know he just got progressively better and better and better. But I you know I ran through a couple dogs before him that you know found a deer here found a deer there and but you know gosh damn you you see guts on the ground and you don't find a deer at the end of it you're left a dead deer in the wood that day. Like you know for now i if I leave a a gut shot deer in the woods now it's because Kyle's ran him uh green and ran him you know three or four or five miles and God knows what happened, you know? Uh so it's but at the time it's like you don't you know you're it's just a constant freaking struggle like I'm talking lose sleep. Like I lose sleep over it. I was just so damn I wanted it so bad and then you know when it finally happened boy I was grinding. Like I'm talking I'll take every single damn track. I you know I was I I didn't care what it was, when it was like I'm I'm fucking getting it. I'm proving this shit, you know and and and I did and it was you know it was good but it was like now I've reached this point where I'm like I have like I said I have super high expectations out of a deer dog and I I well because I know what he's capable of and uh but now I'm trying to you know for the last ever since I've got him he started showing out and doing his thing and then ever since then which you know it's been seven years ago uh I've been trying other dogs behind him you know trying to train trying to train trying to get one going trying to get one going and I've had zero success because I probably suck but uh it's been you know but it's it's it's okay because I've got the crutch. I've got the guarantee in the box like at the end of the day like it's it's all good but that you know that day is coming to an end and I don't know when I hopefully hopefully I get a couple more years but uh that that's been a it's been relieving to go and run the pig dogs and know that uh it's kinda like your bear dogs. Like if we go find one, we find one. Hell yeah. If we don't, I don't give a shit. Like I don't I don't lose sleep over it. I'm not gonna freaking shoot the dog 'cause he didn't do what he did that day. Like I just I it's enjoyable to to relax 'cause I'm not trying to prove shit now. I don't you know I mean I don't I don't have anything to uh I don't try to take measure with anybody. Like I got show you dogs so they run pigs and you know occasionally we catch one or two here and there. So it's I think the nice part about it. I think the nice part about it now is just like if we go out and we run a bear or we run a cat and we don't catch it, I leave the mountain that day going, well, something happened that I'll never know what happened, but there's probably a logical reason why they didn't catch it. Whereas before we just went out and we didn't catch it ever, and you're just left there wondering why the hell did we not catch again, right? It was just like we just always don't catch. So what's the problem? Now if we don't catch them, like, well probably you know, I'm not gonna know what happened, but there's probably a legitimate reason. Some days you just don't catch them, right? To get to that point in your life is like a shit ton of struggle. But when you get to that point in your life where like if we like I said, same thing. If we don't find a deer now, it's like, well, the motherfucker can't be found. Like, I don't, you know, whatever it is. Like, my either, you know, it's not because the dog, it's it's just it is what it is, my guys. I have full faith in in finding them. But to get from point A to that point B is is is crazy struggle. Or it was for me. Uh but gosh damn, I'm glad I I'm glad I stuck it out and got to that point because a lot of guys try and they give up in a year or two. And and I don't blame 'em.

SPEAKER_02 45:43

It fucking sucks. There's nothing that you know, when you're trying to start new dogs, you know, unless you just somehow buy a finished dog or end up with and get lucky and get you like a a natural dog, like I call a natural dog, some dog that come out the womb and just does its job.

SPEAKER_01 46:00

Um few and far between, right?

SPEAKER_02 46:02

Unless you get that dog, like you're not seeing progress for for me, it was two, three, four years, you know.

SPEAKER_05 46:11

And uh I think a lot of men give up.

SPEAKER_01 46:16

Yes, like you you when you're grinding like that, and you got a couple, two, three, you know, three-year-old dogs out there, and you're just thinking they should be kicking, and and you go spend the day on the mountain and you get your dick kicked in, and then you come home, you open up Instagram and you see some dude with four or six-month-old puppies that are just freeing hard on some cat or what you know what I mean? Like, we all have those days where these guys post a video, they got all these, you know, seven-month-old puppies and they're all hammering, and you're like, what the fuck am I doing wrong here? Right? I got a couple three-year-old dogs that just can't put it together. And like I said, like kind of in my situation, they were I think Banner and and Boone were about three, two and three years old when when Ringo died. So they I just had it in my mind, like, you know, they're so close, all we got to do is get a few consistent trees, and I think they'll pick it up. But we just didn't get those those consistent trees, and it just turned into if I still had a lead dog, it might have only taken another, you know, one more bear season or one more cat season to finish them off, but because I lost that lead dog, it ended up taking like two more full years to finish them out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 47:24

Well, speaking of that, tell me about your first your first successful tree. What what was it?

SPEAKER_01 47:29

And tell me about it. Oh man, so like the first one with my own dogs.

SPEAKER_02 47:36

Yeah, your own dogs. I don't give a shit about anybody else. Your your dogs are you raised.

SPEAKER_01 47:41

Yeah, well, the first the first successful tree I got was with with Ringo, the finished dog that I bought. It was kind of funny. Um went up to the interior, pressed snow, everything was everything was killer. Um, I had a buddy with me that was kind of thinking about getting into the game as well. And um that puff that I bought, uh, that was one of Ringo's puffs, he was a real late starting dog. He didn't really start doing much until he was about a year old. But we cut a nice fresh lion track going across the road and cuddled Ringo loose, and he goes off hammering down the down the mountain. We're watching on the GPS, and we could see him get to this road, and he hit the road and just went hell bent for leather down this road for like 300 yards and then pulled up tree. And I'm like, looked at my buddy, I'm like, Well, that's not good. Like it they don't typically just tree on the side of a road, from what I understand. And looking on the GPS, um we didn't have like property boundaries, but it looked like he might have been on it on it, looked like he was on private. And I was like, I think we've got a cat tree on somebody's property right now, and this isn't good. So we start ripping the truck down there, and you get to there was a Y on the road with a cattle guard in a gate, and I was like, shit, like he's for sure on somebody's property. I was like, we gotta get this dog back. So I'm like, we're not gonna bring any guns. I don't want somebody to walk up to us and have a gun looking like we're hunting on their property. So we left the left the rifle in the truck and we go sprinting down there. We got about 400 yards down the road, and I was like, I could hear Ringo treeing, and I was like, shit, like I actually think he's got this cat tree. It would be nice to bring Rebel, the pub, into the tree to see it. And my buddy was like, Well, do you want me to go back and grab him? I'm like, Yeah, that'd be good. So he ran back to the truck, and I go down to this tree, and true shit, Ringo's got this lion tree, the nice big female, right on the side of the road. And that was the first um first adult cat that I had ever seen in real life. So it was kind of like my first tree with my own dog was kind of the first lion that I'd ever seen other than a kitten. And I just stood there watching this dog that it was real low in the tree, it was only about 10 or 15 feet up, and I just sat there watching that cat in the tree just mesmerized. I was like, this is the best day of my life. And uh no sooner did I think that in a side-by-side team ripping up this trail, just blasting music as loud as they possibly could. They saw me standing there and they stopped with the music, just pound, and Ringo comes running over, and the cat jumps out of the tree, gone up the line forever. Yeah. We treated we treated it right on the snow line, like there was snow where we were, but right as you went over the hill, there was no more snow, and I just didn't have the experience to take the dog down on dry ground. And I still thought we were on somebody's property, so it was kind of game over. In the end, I don't think we were on anybody's property. So the side by side ripped off. He's like, You good? I'm like, Yeah, I'm good. And he goes ripping off playing his music, and my buddy comes walking down with his pup. I'm like, sorry, bro, the cat's gone.

SPEAKER_02 50:43

Oh god, that sounds about right.

SPEAKER_01 50:45

It'd be like finding your first deer and it'd be you know eaten by coyotes and the rack's broken or some shit. Like what the fuck. I mean, so how long did you get to sit there before they showed up? Oh, probably five minutes. I got videos and pictures and all that stuff, but you know, I'm standing there with no rifle, you know, one dog under the tree, and this cat's just looking at me. You know, when you're that new to it, it was it was I wasn't nervous, but it was just kind of like, huh, this is how you get yourself into these situations, eh? Yeah, yeah. You will, you'll continue to for as long as you run dogs, I feel like. Oh, yeah. So the the amount of times we find ourselves in the shit mess with no gun and nothing, just the dogs, and it's like that's what I explain to people all the time, people that ask me about them. It's you know, I find like pet owners, you know, they love their dogs for a certain reason, but it's just like I tell people, I'm like, like we go to war with these dogs every weekend, right? Like we're out there tracking apex predators, and more often than not, you get yourself in a situation where you're, you know, within yards of a of a lion or a a bear, nasty bear on the ground, and the only thing that's in between you and that animal is your dogs. And it's just like it you just develop a whole different level of respect and and love for those animals when you know they're the ones that have your back out there every day. Yeah. Yeah, it's I agree. It's it's like uh it's a rite of passage to get your first tree, I'm sure. And uh so after that, like that dog's that dog to you that did that, that wasn't his first rodeo, right? Like he's he's been there, but for you it was your first rodeo, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like so whenever later on down the line was was there ever a pup on the ground with him when he pulled that same shit off, like, and you were able to see that. Uh yeah, yeah, we did tree a few cats uh with Rebel later later that season. Um Rebel made us through that season, and then um the spring after that going into bear season, he ended up getting punctured. He had a stick go through his rib cage into uh through his diaphragm into one of his lungs, and he ended up uh passing away when he was a year old. So that was pretty uh pretty tragic for me. My first pup died right at a year old, and it was kind of right when he was starting to kick off and and do some stuff. So it was a little bit of soul crushing to go through that, but it was kind of also like that gut check where it's just like, hey man, this is a possibility in this game, and if you can't deal with that stuff, it's probably not not your game. So um, luckily in that situation, I actually had banner already lined up, and uh the day after Rebel died was the day that I picked up banner. So it was kind of like a a new beginning, a new puff, and and and uh carry on. Off you go down again, off you go down the struggle road again. Yeah, exactly. Start fresh and and keep running. But uh yeah, no, blowdown stuff, no joke. I've and I went to I've been uh El Cont every well for the last four or five years. I've gone Elkant in Colorado and some places are worse with the blowdown and uh dude. Well, I guess it was the the first year we went, um, I went with a bunch of guys at track here. And uh one of the guys brought his dog and uh you know, just in case we were, you know, wounded as elk or something, and it just kind of like we were I don't know if you how far you call. We were you know seven miles from the truck. It's wilderness, you which down here wilderness means you can't any motorized vehicle, it's either horseback or foot, right? So we're we're a good ways back, and and um, you know, dog just came with us and he can and and she was she was uh very well mannered. We'd be calling elk because she he he had her on the lead most of the time, but she was just with us, you know. Of course, you know as good as I do, it didn't matter uh what the shit you've got on or what you're doing, if the wind's wrong, an elk's not gonna come in. So it didn't matter if the dog was there or not. But we uh I guess it was probably the third day. I shot my elk day one, 30 minutes into my first elk hunt, which is yeah, stupid, right? Like absolutely just gum luck, you know. And it was a it was a funky goober drop times, you know, like spike broken pedicle type elk piece of shit, but I was glad to have them. And uh but anyways, that next two days later we went and we were going through that same area where I shot my bull and uh we were walking, the dog was off the lead for some reason, and um some coyotes jumped up. Well, she took off chasing those coyotes, and you know, just typical dog stuff, and she went blowing through that stuff and caught a stick right in her chest, dude, and luckily it was just a big skin tear and took the you know, about a perfect triangle right from her sternum down. And um, you know, I I can only imagine running dogs through that stuff. Like down here, we've got briars, they're little pokey things, but like you've got hundreds of dead evergreen type trees that are just basically daggers at every, you know, uh or swords everywhere. I can only imagine how much trouble you have with that. But we luckily I brought a little suture kit with me uh up there and we laid her down, she took it like a champ, and we, you know, fixed her up. But I I was when I was up there, I was like, dude, I can't fathom running any kind of game through this stuff, because that stuff is I mean, it's it's a dead, it's a dead tree that's hard as rock and and as sharp as a sword. Like I can only imagine chasing game through that. You're it's probably the majority of your injuries. Like, uh are you do you have more injuries with that or with like bear wounds? Like well, uh so it's funny, like bears are real hard on the dogs. Like uh uh we were I was gonna cancel my insurance. I got insurance on two of the dogs, and I was gonna cancel it uh about a month ago and just kind of save that money. Um, and then I looked at my wife and I was just like, listen, bear season's coming up in a month, and we have a bad injury basically every year. Um, somebody gets torn up real bad by a bear, so I was like, let's just leave it till the end of bear season and then we'll cancel it. But um, as far as like the dead full men, a couple years ago we were hunting cats, and um my Henry dog, I swear to god, this this dog needs a bulletproof vest and a and a fucking tactical helmet on him because if somebody's gonna get injured, it's gonna be him. And we were running this cat, we didn't catch it, and they come come out of the bush. And I see blood in the snow coming out of his paw, and they tear up their feet in uh snow all the time, but he was limping, and so I grabbed his paw, and in his heel pad, lengthwise across the heel pad, he had about a you know, a quarter to a half inch stick all the way through his heel pad, poking out both sides. And I just grabbed that, pinched that thing on the end, slid it out of his heel, and you know, he was fine after that. But I'm like, holy shit, like he just had a stick right through his paw, like two inches through his paw. And then the next weekend we were in the same area. Him and Judge were running this length, and Henry was relatively young at it at the time, and he was they were kind of taking turns leading the race. And I'm like looking at my wife, I'm like, Henry's kind of leading this race sometimes. Like, this is fucking awesome. Like, links are are the hardest cats to catch, as far as I'm concerned. So pretty impressed that he was smoking this thing. And we actually saw them uh run it across the road right in front of us, and so I'm I'm like, they are right behind this thing, like this is looking good. And they went another three, four hundred yards and hit a locate loop and pull up tree, and I'm like, fucking right. So we start hiking into the tree. We get to where I can see the dogs, and Judge is welded to the tree like he always is, paws up, hammering. Henry likes to sit back where he can usually see the cat or the bear, and and he likes to look at it and do a real fast trough. So he's sitting there doing that, and I walk up and I'm taking videos of the dogs and taking videos of the cat in a tree, and I look over and like I can see something like in Henry's eye, like just inside his eyelid. I'm like, he's got like a burr or something stuck in his eye, and I grab his head, and I was like, Holy shit, like he's got a stick in his eye, like right in between his eyelids and the bottom of his eyeball, there's a stick sticking out of his eye. So I call my wife over, I'm like, we need to get him like to the bet right now. And uh luckily we we know the the vet in that town, so we take him in there and drop him off. And um, it was kind of funny because I was planning on proposing to my wife at the next cat tree, and so that kind of ruined it. And uh so in the back of my head, I'm like, well, we'll drop Henry off at the vet, and then you know, they're gonna have to knock him out to date him and do all this stuff, so they're they're gonna call us when he's ready to get picked up. So we went back hunting and we ended up cutting a a bobcat track, and typically up here, you know, the sun goes down in the wintertime around four o'clock, so we don't really dump dogs usually after about two o'clock unless you're wanting to get a little rowdy. And we cut this bobcat track at 158. And I looked at my wife and she kind of gave me a smirk. She's like, It's not two o'clock yet. And so I said, Fuck it. I like her.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:54

I dumped yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:57

I dumped dumped judge and uh and boone out on this cat, and they made pretty short work of it. And we go down there, and it was a really ended up being a really cool, uh, gray, gray color faced bobcat. Like it was basically a lynx colored bobcat. And uh my wife shot it and uh yeah, proposed to her, did the whole thing, and then we went and uh picked up Henry from the vet, and uh the vet tech says, Well, you got uh you got a really lucky boy on your hands, and she walks out with Henry and she holds out a stick, and it was literally like a two and a half inch stick with a barb on the end that they were able to pull out of his eye with zero damage.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:37

Damn.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:37

Oh my god. Yeah, like I thought thought for sure like that this dog was gonna have no eye, but they gave us this steroid uh ointment that we had to put on his eye every two hours for a week, and the next day his eye was pretty red and a little bit swollen, and the day after that he looked totally fine and he was acting totally fine with zero damage at all. That's awesome. That's a that's a pretty cool story. So she was the one to say, Let's take this track, and then and then you proposed to her on that same track? Yeah, yeah, right at the tree after she killed it. That's just meant to be. Well, I just looked at her. I said, Do you want to do this for the rest of your life? And she said, Yeah. So now I get to hold her accountable to that every time I want to go hunting. Did you sign a piece of paper right there? That's the marriage contract, right? That was freaking awesome. Yep. That was a good day. So whenever you're now, like you now that you've got like finished type dogs. Um do you have any pups right now that you're starting with them? Or no, I'm I'm at a pretty comfortable spot, so I got um basically gators two. So I got a two-year-old, uh two, four, five, six, and then copper seven, but like I said, she doesn't run. So yeah, two, four, five, and six. So I got like a pretty good age bracket right now, and like I said, with the kind of uh base constraints we're living with in our our home situation right now. Um I'm not trying to get any more dogs. Legally, with the bylaw, we're only supposed to have no more than three dogs here, and we're at five right now, and we were at six last year. So we've been kind of playing the neighbor game and and uh trying to keep everything under cover. So until we move and get a little more space, I think uh I don't think there'll be any more dogs. But that being said, Judge did just knock up uh a bitch last month. So there are judge puffs coming soon. So I don't know. Might have to sweet talk the wife into something. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:55

I don't I don't blame you there. Sounds like that dude has uh earned his key.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:03

Yeah, yeah, for sure. But no, I like where I'm at right now. Like the age bracket's really good. I mean, for the first what was it? I think for the first six years I got a new pup every year. And I just got you know, puppies can be a bit of a nightmare sometimes. A couple of them didn't work out, but it was just kind of like there's always that excitement of seeing what this new dog is gonna do and what it's gonna be like. And now that I haven't gotten a new dog for uh the last year, it's it's been a a a little bit different. You just get so used to that that kind of excitement and anticipation of seeing what this dog's gonna grow into. But on the other hand, it is nice just having a solid, reliable pack, the four dogs, like saying before. You kick them out, you kind of know what to expect. There's not too many curve balls um coming my way these days. So the the comfortability factor factor is really nice. But uh I think if we do, we're we've been looking to move for the last few years. The housing market here has been super crazy the last uh little bit. But if we do get into a new place, I would I would definitely like to pick up at least one more. And five is a pretty good number for for what we do.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:13

Um you got oh, we're down to thirty-five now. like all kinds of different breeds. I had over 20 different breeds at one time too. That is fascinating. Well it's I mean it's a hundred hundred for your real day.

SPEAKER_04 1:06:11

Oh that that's what it was.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:13

Well you need to have a chat do I need to have a chat with my wife and tell her that uh that our life isn't so bad. Oh no you you got it great though.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:21

I probably but like you know like you were talking about earlier having that excitement of doing these things I am very blessed. I I live in the country I have plenty of land I have a lot of resources and uh my son and my brother in law all of us were you know stuff together so it's it was kind of I wound up with our back on the we wound up having to our thing because the rock comes the rough delta and our time we don't have to have four of up and commerce I like the puff and uh what I get to the the comfortable there's a lot of work going on wondering or where or anything like that. But uh I don't know after about a year of that uh it's like okay I need some chaos in my life uh I need to get some I need to get a couple of young dogs that are going to trespass and they're gonna run deer and dig armadillas up and they're gonna go to somebody's cow pastry raise their cows you know I need these things in my life.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:01

Yeah but um yeah you can only be comfortable for so long but I I find now now that I'm kind of settled in um I I met a guy who has uh a Leica and he's she's a year and a half now yeah and he's been really trying to get her going on cast and bears and so just this past cast season I invited him out quite a few times to see if she would run with my dogs. And so it's kind of like getting the a new dog in the mix is kind of exciting and you don't have to deal with any of the shitty parts of it. But uh it's been kind of nice hunt with him. We're gonna take him out the she can and see she didn't really have much interest in the cast this year but uh I don't know anything about Leikas um but from what he was telling me uh sometimes I guess they need a little bit of getting used to to run with a pack of hounds.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:50

Yeah there's the ones who should have been around are solo dogs mostly yeah she wasn't real interested in the chaos or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:58

Every time the dogs would blow up and take off take off on a cat track she would maybe go a hundred yards and come back to us. But even at the tree she was she wouldn't even really look up at the cat. She would just kind of mill around we shot a cat the last time we were out and we put all the other dogs back in the box and just let her kind of mess with the cat. And she was a little bit interested but not too crazy on it. So I was thinking maybe if we get her out on some bears and get on a good bayup or something like that and she could get a good a good look at a bear maybe she'll join in but it'll be interesting to see how that kind of dynamic progresses. Yeah I don't know a lot about them but it's like you the ones that I've seen is just a one or two dog type deal. That that's the same thing which is tough if you got one Yeah if you got one that doesn't want to start a track if he he's kind of getting run through the ringer right now 'cause she'll treat squirrels in his backyard, but she she doesn't seem to be interested in going after a bear or a cat on her own so I'm like I don't really know what to tell you. I can I can let you run run with my dog, but if she doesn't seem interested in that it might be a long road maybe that first uh on the ground bay of a bear might light that fire. Yeah I hope it doesn't if it doesn't then you can pretty much you know I mean if she's of age I would I would assume that she probably wasn't gonna do it but yeah how how old is she? Yeah I think maybe she's 18 months. Oh yeah yeah yeah still got some time yeah for sure I talked to I don't know maybe if I maybe if not all the dogs are out on a bear maybe just kick one or two out and let her try and go with a couple of them maybe she'll feel a little more comfortable. Does he have more than one dog or is it she's the only dog that that he has uh she's the only hunting dog that he has he's got a couple more house dwellers might be some of it too I've got a couple of dogs they're very independent and uh uh I've got litter mates out here right now that uh one of them is is it'll go with any dog that's around and if there's not a dog it's gonna go anyway that that yellow black mouth car I got from us uh he'll do no matter what uh uh completely different story like you described if I put her out with uh even if it's it can be older finished dogs it's gonna go about a hundred yards but she's gonna come back and she'll go the opposite direction she might go a mile deep by herself but she does not want to go with any other dogs it's interesting it's just not it's not something I'm used to like all all the dogs that I've ended up with are just they they have such a high prey drive it doesn't matter if they're together or solo or whatever it is like they just want to they want to run shit. Yeah. It's just a totally different dynamic that I feel kind of useless when we're out with them because I can't give them any advice on this breed that I know nothing about and this this demeanor of dog that I'm just not used to. Like my dogs are just little hellions right it's half the time I'm trying to hold them back versus let it go and then he's just got the opposite problem so it's different but I mean it's yeah it's gonna be an interesting learning process. But I hope she I hope she kicks off this fair season it'd be awesome to get her on get her on some bayups and stuff like that and actually you know get face to face with a live animal instead of trying to you know it never seems to go too well when you got a cat 30 feet up in a tree and you're trying to fucking hold the dog's face and make them look at something ever want to look up there right but uh so funny I can fucking see especially guys in the mouth just I can see Ricky holding it holding his dog's face and I know a fairybody has done it with hogs like the hog he's right there so the uh one of the first uh first few cats that I trained when I still had Ringo and Rebel like I said Rebel was a real late starting dog and I cut this cat track and let Ringo go and Rebel went like a couple hundred yards then came back to the truck and Ringo made pretty short work of it tree this song and so we go hiking up there me and Rebel and the cat's in the tree and I'm doing you know I'm holding this face you know bark at it right do something and he's just sitting there in the snow shaking because he's cold I'm like fucking this is not going well right and uh so I'm standing under the tree tapping on it you know banging on the tree trying to get Rebel to put his paws up on the tree and all of a sudden I'm tapping on the tree and I look up and above me the cat's now inverted facing down the tree climbing down the tree right above my head getting ready to bail and I look over a rebel and I just grabbed one hand on the collar one hand on the ass and I grabbed him and just threw him in that cat space and it bailed and I just fucking threw him right at that cat face with a barrel and all through the smell I was like now we're on him aren't we it it takes that sometimes you gotta get slapped in the face or swung up in the air wake up motherfucker this is what we're after.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:04

Yeah yeah that's funny I've that this little cur dog that I've been working with you know last year she was you know she was just like literally turned one you know come February when we start chasing pigs and you know at six months I showed her a pig on a you know had it hoveled and she fucking went the she ran she literally looked at it and ran the other direction.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:29

I was like oh my god and uh you know and then later on we had some pigs in a trap took her over there she literally could not give less of a fuck like I mean just zero interest and I'm like well shit you know and then and then I put her down yeah I put her up in the kennels and then we had deer season. Well then we went through deer season and now she's one years old and I'm trying to do I'm trying to start a hog dog, you know and uh I don't have I didn't have a a dog to start her with or anything. I could run her with my buddy's dogs which is super beneficial because like uh you know you if she goes and does something like their dogs are keeping us honest. Like we know that they're after a pig or she's chasing a deer or whatever. Like which she never did for some reason.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:18

She just always kind of you know once once she finally went to a bay and saw a pig she was you know was very very loose very you know she was 20 yards away and kind of like would bark and then look at me and then you know kind of bark bark and look at me and then kind of run a big loop you know and then you know it's kind of like oh god like here here we go I got this you know I got a another fucking dog but they gonna do it you know and I'm used to it so whatever and you know I took her with some other buddies and they're like yeah she's probably not gonna do it man and I'm like yeah you're probably right well you know towards the end of the season you know we I put her down with her sister I'm litter mate sister and we went out one day and it was the sister the two sisters and then not the mom but like an aunt like same same line same shit just you know she was finished that dog well they went and made a sounder like a sounder for us is like a group of pigs right well they bade a group we go in we got two catch dogs and I'm I'm with uh I'm with Michael Moore my buddy that you know has been doing this forever knows what the hell he's doing I don't know what shit I'm doing and uh he's got a catch dog I got a catch dog we get up to this group and they're you know it's chaos they uh they it it's it's what what do we call it they're rallying right so they're it's just it's just fucking mayhem and uh I was like what do you want to do? He's like I'm gonna drop this catch dog she's gonna catch one because it's his finish catch up and then you're gonna drop your catch dog and we're gonna pray that she catches one so he just Joey I guess he's calling me back. I guess he got off the call hold on a second yeah who knows how long we've been talking well it didn't sound like go ahead are you there Joel? Yeah Joel Joey every time you say that I'm like yeah yeah yeah where you lost me at um you said he had a couple catch dogs you didn't miss much of it so anyways drop two catch drop his dog catch pig drop my which was they're both his damn dogs but uh catch two well we look down and and the two sisters are 700 and they're baited again.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:03

So they basically the sounder broke they ran and they kind of stayed together well the sisters rolled with them and I'm like these are you know 11 12 month old dogs and I was like well gosh damn that she hadn't been doing this you know and then she went over there we went to that group we went over there and I think we end up catching one out of that group out of that bay right well we catch one out of that bay they fucking roll out again they another six seven eight hundred yards they bay up the sound there again so we we we go to that one we catch two pigs out of that one and they roll out a fucking game and it's just like they're just pow relay pow relay pow really and I'm like where the fuck did this come from? Like it was almost like she found her sister and game was on well you know uh we end up going down and they they had they finally the very last deal they caught a cup she caught a show which she had never seen like she'd never really caught one and she came back to me with a little you know 10 pound pig in her mouth and she's as happy as she can be and I'm you know I'm not mad at it at all. Hell we just we just caught six pigs out of one founder you know well and after yeah I was like we're you know what the light switch flipped you know and and I don't know what it was she was just maybe she's a little racist bitch and she was just with her yellow dog friends and she thought she could be cool you know and that's what she did.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:29

But uh since then uh you know we worked through the summer and found a couple pigs here and there. Well this year like she's she's finding her own pig now and and she's like the relay specialist like uh if as soon as you lay hands on the pig you know of course you know we we grab a pig we flip it we stab it or we tie it one or the other and if you're if by the time you're done stabbing her tying she's gone she's she's she's rolling out uh but if she's there by herself she's a real loose bae doesn't bark a whole lot she's there she's got the pig stopped but uh you know inside of a you know if you got a couple dogs on the ground you know she's there she's but she's just she's waiting for you to show up touch that pig so she can fucking leave and go do it again like whereas the the other dog that I have she's all about the bay like she's just hammering sounds beautiful uh all the things but you know as soon as you kill a pig she's still hanging out and Marge is 700 already trying to get keep up you know with that founder again so it's been it's been cool to see because last year you I thought I was gonna call her you know what I mean like it was one of those deals like I've you know had I not seen her roll with her sister that one day and seen that little glimpse of maybe possibility you know that she's gonna do it.

SPEAKER_01 1:20:59

And like I said, she's not some badass dog now by any stretch of the imagination but but there's possibilities now.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:07

It's not like I'm I'm dealing with a straight call like I've got a dog but you know she might find a pig she might not but like I know what she's capable of and and if you do get on a sounder you can bet your ass if you if a dog catches that pig or you catch that pig she's gone and she's gonna go try to run that sounder down again.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:26

Now I've yet to have her be successful solo on a relay. I don't know if that makes sense to like catch a pig and then she relays when we say relay like she leaves and goes and tries to find more I have yet to I have yet to have her finish one. I've I've had her gone you know several times you know a mile a mile and a half by herself relaying right uh she hasn't finished one yet she came back one of the first times we did this year she did she did a relay mile 1.4 miles or whatever it was and came back and surprisingly she wasn't gutted but I'm talking I put 20 staples in her belly and her side like she got whatever she finally stopped fucked her up pretty good. And uh and it was like gosh dang like we were so close there and in in like uh the last you know couple months we've been doing it she she she's always going and relaying but she hasn't stopped them yet and I'm I think the day that she does realize that she can keep going and and finish by herself like it'll be that'll be the life the the second light switch of her life like where she's she's the relay and the solo stop you know don't don't don't stop the trail race until you stop them again type deal. But it's you know I don't know fuck I don't even know what I'm talking about with big dogs but um it it seems like that would be the next that would be the next cursor. I don't know. But it's I'm looking forward to her stopping the relay by herself is what I'm saying. That's just what's so addicting about getting those new puffs, right? Like it's just that that uh that addiction of watching them hit that light switch and it's just like you get that new dog and you know they hit that age where they want to start going or you think they're gonna start going and then uh you know they drop a couple races and you're like ah fuck you know uh this I don't know if this is gonna happen, right? And then you hold on, you keep holding on through the struggle bus and then one day like you say they hit that light switch and they just take off hammering. And then for us it's like you know for me that first kind of light switch is when you know they're they're keeping up with the pack, they're hammering the tracks they're not dropping races and then that second light switch is when they start locating the tree on their own. Like I can probably remember each one of my dog's first tree where they for sure treed that animal by themselves and located that tree. Like that's the biggest day for me when when that puff locates a tree before the rest of the dogs are solo or whatever it is it's just like that makes every other shit shitty day worth all of every penny that it costs all the effort all the blood sweat and tears it's just like this is the best fucking day ever. And when you don't have those new puffs coming up it's like you don't really have that to look forward to right yep so you gotta have puppies I was about to say this is a sign.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:24

I think this is a sign for you get you a couple puffs.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:28

I mean like to here's your sign motherfucker if you don't know now you know there's gonna be a hundred countries listening to this and they're all gonna be sitting around thinking fuck he needs puppies man you're gonna get all this I'm gonna get some DMs after this yeah you're gonna get DMs after this get that fucking dog oh man get that bitch in heat yeah we're gonna get something going yeah that's curdog you got yellow oh go ahead yeah no go go I was gonna say that little cur dog you you're talking about that little yellow dog sounds uh just about like Rick the way he hunts like if he's by itself it'd be real loose and hanging out you know uh he relays uh does all these things and so I'm thinking you know maybe he comes of age and time is there.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:27

I hope so I hope so maybe we can introduce Rick to her yeah I don't I don't think he could go wrong with that that probably that dude is bad there's probably more dog than I probably more dogs than I need but no I agree.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:42

No he uh I like the relaying part that that's a seems like it's a I've heard people talk about teaching their dogs that by just squatting them you know and and I do it I don't give a you know just swap the dogs away tell them go find another one whatever but there's dog it's natural like you said like they just automatically I mean I don't either I'm doing a long time but I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:12

Yeah it was weird the first time there's those tricky things to to like like teach a d a young dog how to do right it's like it I can't imagine how you would teach a dog how to how to do that. It's kind of like us it's like you can run a drag if you want to teach a dog how to locate you can run a drag and put it up the tree but it doesn't take long for those dogs to figure out that this isn't real life and it's just a hide up there. You know you drag a drag a hide through the woods and they're smelling your tracks and the hide and it's just not the same thing, right? So it's like I went through that with some of my dogs where it's like they would run till the cows come home and they had no problem trapping but locating that tree they just couldn't pick it up and it's just like how do you teach a dog how to do that you know especially for for me like most of the time when it comes time to locate you know the dogs are you know hundreds of yards if not miles away it's not like you can just hop and skip to the tree and help them help them find it right so it's tough when you get to those situations.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:12

Yeah there's a there's a couple of guys that have tried to make the argument that that they have taught their dog to track. And they taught their dog to hunt and they taught their dog to run a track. I'm like really how do you know how to run a track how good is your fucking nose you know how good is your nose I mean like I I need to bring you into my program or something. I just don't like it it you can guide you know that's my my don't guide into what you want but like we were talking about that natural there's no replacement for And and like you said, it'll spoil you because you don't even have to really do nothing. Just take 'em hunting. If you get out of the way, you're not going to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:10

I got a story about natural instinct. It was it was pretty funny when uh when Banner was twelve weeks old, um, we went bear hunting, um a few of us that had dogs, and we were all kind of at the same stage, uh, me and a couple buddies. We all kind of had one finished dog. Um, none of them were hammers, but they were all kind of good at one thing and okay at the rest of the stuff. And um, and a couple pups, so we had uh Banner, and then my buddy had Banner's sister, Debbie, and they were both 12 weeks old, so we went out bear hunting, and um it was funny, we're driving roads, and then there was a couple older guys, they were probably you know uh in their 60s, and kind of we're we're driving around looking for the dogs to strike, and we would kind of pass them on two or three roads and kind of wave to them, and then I think on the third road when we passed them, um, we're like, you know, are you guys bear hunting? They're like, Yeah, we're looking for a bear, and we're like, Do you ever hunt with hounds? And they're like, No, we're like, You you guys want to check it out? And they're like, Fuck yeah. They're like, Sweet, follow us. So they just driving around behind us. Uh didn't take too long, the dogs strike, so we let all the big dogs out. They're running a bear up this mountain, and we're kind of watching the GPS paralleling the dogs on the road. They're you know, four or five hundred yards up the mountain, paralleling us, and um fucking big boar runs across the road right in front of us, a different bear. And we're like, holy shit. So we kind of stopped the truck, and we're just watching the GPS at this point. And um, I go to let the puffs out for a piss, and it was the first day that I had ever put one of the tracking collars on banner. He was way too small to wear it properly. I just wanted to get him used to it and just kind of feel feel what it was like. So I'd never had a collar on him before, and the puffs are out milling around having a pee, and we're just watching the GPS bullshit, and then all of a sudden I'd look at the GPS and fucking banner's 400 yards down the mountain where that boar just ran across the road. And I was like, holy shit, like he went after that bear, and we run to the edge of the road, and I hear him yelping down the mountain. Now keep in mind, like I said, revel had just revel had just died like you know, a month before that with the whole stick thing. And now my 12-week-old puppy's down the mountain yelping after a big boar just went across the road. So I go running down this mountain, and I'm ripping through the bush, and my fucking buddy, who's an absolute beast of a human being, comes running up beside me. He's got a knife in each hand, just sprinting down the mountain beside me. And we get up to banner and he's fucking stuck in this log jam, just 12-week-old puppy, just rolling around in this log jam, all hung up on his collar, yelping away. I'm like, holy fuck. I thought he was getting eaten by this bear. And then I was like, Well, there's no way like he was actually tracking the bear. Like, there's no fucking way this little puppy was doing that. So we grab him, scoop him up. The other race wasn't really panning out, so we scooped up all the big dogs and we drove them back to where that bear sailed off the edge of the road, and we dumped him on that, and they sure as shit followed his line exactly right down to the log jam that he was stuck in. Wow. Went maybe another 300 yards past that and treed that bear. Hell yeah. Oh yeah, ran his exact line. 12 weeks old, he went tracking that bear. I was like, this dog is is gonna catch on pretty quick. But it was a super awesome experience. We took those guys down with us, they ended up shooting a bear, and and uh we passed it up to the road for them, and they were like, Oh, like, you know, you guys want some money or something? We're like, no, no, we don't we don't want money. They're like, well, we gotta do something to repay you back. And like, just when people talk about hound hunting, like tell them tell them it was a good time. Like, you know, give us some good press up there because we need it. And they were just super appreciative, you know, never expected to ever experience anything like that. It was just like a a sweet day with a couple random dudes, ended up getting a tree of bear and take one home. It's pretty neat. That's awesome that you did that. Because you probably just made a a lifetime, you know, pro houndsman, even if he never has hounds, he's always gonna remember that. That's uh that's badass. Absolutely. Well, because we battle it with with other, you know, call them normal hunters, right? It's just like you know how it goes. A lot of a lot of hunters don't respect other people's way of hunting, whether it's long range hunting or predator hunting, you know, you know, oh, you're not eating a wolf, why are you killing it? Or you're not eating a coyote, why are you messing with them and all this stuff? So it's kind of nice just to interact with other hunters and show them what something that they're not exposed to is actually about, and you know, you never really know what it's about until you do it. So it's kind of a sweet experience to be able to show them that. Yeah. So I wish I could I wish I had that uh opportunity more often. Like I show a lot of people because I you know, every deer track that I go on, like obviously somebody's attached to this deer, it's not me, they shot it, so I'm I'm helping them. So I make believers of that deal, you know, daily during deer season. But the the the bridge between that and getting access to the hog dog and stuff is is I don't know how to I don't know how to make that bridge connect because I'll I'll have guys pay me to deer track but then won't let me come run pigs after season because it it affects their deer hunt. And I'm like, Yeah, you just pay me to run your deer that you shot in the ass two miles off your property, and you probably got killed on the neighbors a week later. But you don't care about the pig deal, and it I don't know how to bridge that, but I've I've um I've taken a couple guys that were interested, like they have big deer leases or they have own or they own property. I'm like, hey, what what are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 1:33:50

You wanna you wanna run some pigs on that place?

SPEAKER_01 1:33:52

You know, and recently I've had one or two take advantage of it, you know, like, hey, come on out, you know, we'd love to we wanna we wanna tag along and and they were like, you know, the first pig that they you know catch, and you know, of course they're going in and grabbing a pig. Usually I'm probably grabbing it or one of my buddies, and then they're they're doing the knife work and and to them, like the coolest shit on the planet, like dude, I had no idea it was like this. Like this is fucking awesome. And and you know, until somebody goes and experiences that first hand, they're always gonna think that uh dogs are chasing deer off. Or the other day we went to a property and there were some turkey hunters like don't don't uh don't flush our turkeys off the roost. Like, what the fuck are you talking about? Like you know, a dog's gonna climb up on the tree and flush your turkey out of the roost, like what the shit, you know. But it might be first hand experience like first hand experience for those guys with being like just a total game changer for their thought process on you know what they what they think or what they thought they thought about dogs and and chasing game or or whatever. So Yeah, and it's funny because I like I really like taking people out that haven't done it before because I remember what it was like, you know, before I had done it. And uh it's also kind of kind of nice because you get a little bit jaded to the fact like if we treat a small female lion or something like that, you know, it's definitely not as exciting as the first one used to be. But if you've got somebody with you that's never seen a cat before, it just kind of revitalizes that that uh that whole experience. So I love taking people out and you know, the odd guy that has has younger dogs that's starting out or something like that. But uh hound hunting seems to be one of those things where it's just like you you either think it's the best thing on earth or you're just not really interested. It's not kind of like some other things that you can do casually, you know, like you know, some guys are into this and the you know, go elk hunting once or twice a year or go deer hunting on the odd weekend or something like that. But when it comes to the dogs, it seems like you're either a hundred and ten percent or just it's not for you.

SPEAKER_05 1:36:04

I agree.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:05

There's been a lot of guys that are we've we've taken just like when they see how much we care and how like if I lose a dog on the the garment and I can't find them, like I'm I'm trying to figure out where the shit they're at. Like I don't I mean obviously 99% of the time they're fine and they're just you know in a draw or when we're we're down the we've got a river by us, and once you get down there level with that river, like you you lose all signals to fucking everything. And uh so it's pretty common you don't know where your dogs are at that time, but like I I'm a little bit stressed out.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:40

I mean, you know, kinda, you know, d depending on the situation, but like I want to know that so much as that at all times. That way if he is treated or bathed, like I can get there and help him. Like he's done his job.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:52

It's my job to know where the fuck he's at and then go help him if he needs it or or she needs it or whatever the situation is. And when they see that, it's like they fuck it. Damn, this is kind of like it's like a teamwork, and and uh, you know, you care for your dogs, they're not just a bunch of goobers, rednecks running around with you know, dogs that you think you can just trade in for the next dog? Like it's not like that, and they don't know that until they see it firsthand. Yeah. Do you guys have uh like if you gotta leave a dog out for any extent of time, do you guys have like predators or anything that you gotta worry about with that down there? Or is it uh relatively okay? No, not not for me. I don't um I'm probably speaking for Joey too.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:36

I don't it's I don't think we have we look there's lions around, but like I'm talking super rare for me.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:42

Yeah, it's it's the same here. Like you we we have like maybe one lion fighting a year in the whole state, one or two. And and most of the time it's the elusive Black Panther that jumped across the road in front of Mom all. Uh you know, it's like oh whatever. Damn somebody's outcast. But no. We are the apex president.

SPEAKER_01 1:38:05

Yeah, I was saying the more the the thing I'd be worried about is people I don't give a shit about. They can handle themselves with animals around here. I'd be more worried about somebody taking the dog or or shooting the dog because they get harassed and they're game or something like that. I'd be way more worried about humans. Yeah. Yeah. Here it's the opposite. You gotta you if I had a dollar every time someone has picked up, smashed up one of my dogs mid-race, and then I get a phone call saying, Hey, I found your dog. He's really cold and hungry. Yeah. Oh God. Let him go, motherfucker. Yeah. It's like, please, just drop him where you found them and let me finish this race. But yeah, as far as like leaving dogs overnight and stuff, like the wolves up here are just out of fucking control. So it's uh it's pretty tough. If if you gotta leave a dog overnight, it's it's a sleepless night up here, and we're usually able to get them back. There's been the odd instance where where they've had to camp out there, but with the amount of wolves, it's it's pretty nerve-wracking up here. Like honestly, even just on the runs, it's it's my my number one goal in life is to experience a a hound hunt uh where I don't have to worry about wolves because even on a good day up here, even if I haven't seen any tracks that day in cat season, um, there's a level of anxiety for the entire race where it's just like let's get this thing caught, let's get to the tree, because you just don't know where they're at. I was curious if they all had wolves because uh you know, you hear about those guys and like around Yellowstone and stuff, that like you know, those those wolves here are a tree, like they're gonna do it, and that's dinner. You know, they're you know there and smash a bunch of dogs in their territory. There's uh there's not a lot of days um cat hunting where I don't cut wolf tracks usually every at least every hour, if not more. Damn. Damn. That is why you've never met one at a tree, like met a pack or anything? No, the closest uh the closest I've come that I know of actually fucking they fucking ran a wolf last year. I sh I shit you know, dude. But I was yeah, fuck it, right? So we we were coming down the mountain and we were right at the snow line, and so I can't remember why, but I was roading dogs. I think it was towards the end of the day, so I was just exercising them on the road, and we were just below the snow line, so we're in the dry ground, and Boone's tail starts whipping around, he strikes up, takes off, the rest of them chime in and they take off. I'm like, shit, like we're on this race. And they take off up and over this mountain. We gotta go back out to the highway, drive up the highway, come in another FSR, cut them off, and we get in front of them, and now we're back in the snow. There's a nice, you know, two-inch skiff, and I'm kind of in line with where they're headed, and I see this big wolf track coming across the road, and so I start walking up and down the road, you know, two, three hundred yards on either side, and there ain't no cast track anywhere, and they're headed right for us. And I watch all these dogs single file come out of the tree line right on this wolf track, just hammering. I'm like, what the fuck are you guys doing? And it was a it was a big wolf track, too. I have no idea why they decided to lock onto that, but I'm not sure what would have happened if they caught up to it. But the only other instance I had was yeah, I guess so, but not for long in that country. But uh the only other instance I had was we were running a cat and they didn't catch it, and two of my dogs were backtracking, but luckily they weren't baying. But uh me and a buddy were up on a high point looking down in the valley, and we could hear wolves howling down there, and they were literally ha howling right on the line that the dogs were backtracking on, but luckily they weren't making any noise at that point.

SPEAKER_05 1:42:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:42:06

That's uh that's one of those horror story time bills where you you know, um like I've talked to you know, it's probably just been on Instagram or whatever, but um a handful of folks, you know, you end up you end up at a tree and dead dogs scattered everywhere because the wolf came through. Yeah, no, that would be that would be very hard. That's you know, that's obviously we don't have to worry about that, but it's it's similar to us like, you know The dogs get fade, treed, whatever it is, like it's like uh to me there's always a little bit of uh stress to get there to see what's going on and and make sure everything's good. So I guess I actually tried running uh I actually tried running those hog vests on a couple of them for a little bit, but uh they just didn't like wearing them. I d honestly didn't put that much effort into them. I roaded them a few times with the vests on and they were just walking all funny and shit like that. And I was just like, man, it'd be nice to have something on them that would at least give them a little bit of protection if they started getting chewed up, but at the end of the day, I you know I think if there was a a decent something you could do to to kind of mitigate that, I think somebody would have figured it out. Man, I keep thinking that somebody's gonna come up with like some pantyhose shit that's fucking bulletproof, like John Wick has in the jacket.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:27

They have it.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:28

They they do have it. It's happening? Well, okay. Here's I feel like it's gonna happen. It it's already all right. The military's got it used, and they can get the material. And I you know, I've I've talked to the guys who make all these fitness stuff. And well, the problem is there's two of them, and the problem is it's extremely expensive. I mean like the price with double. I mean we're between 250 and $300 for a really, really hard office. It's gonna make it like more perfect. That's what that's what I'm saying. If already throughout the course of a couple of years, uh, I really think that you would spell at least 50% of what they're already selling because half of us really care about our dollars. I would like to quite more. But uh and I don't know that funds are are limited to but there's some of us out here. We're gonna make it happen. If you gotta go cut somebody draft or all off a load of cancer or whatever, we're gonna make it happen.

SPEAKER_01 1:44:59

I know I would. We're talking about hunters here, right? Like fucking, we're itching to spend money on everything. You know, how you know most of us got a ten thousand dollar rifle to go out hunting with. You think we're not gonna spend six, seven hundred bucks on the vest? Yeah. To keep a dog alive for 10, 12 years instead of getting killed.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:17

And those vests last, man. I've I've got some that are 25 years old. Yeah, I mean, uh that that's true enough. I haven't ran them a whole lot in the past 10 years, but I got eight or ten good years out of them. And for a couple hundred bucks, shit, that ain't nothing.

SPEAKER_01 1:45:35

Yeah, it'd be nice to figure something out because like I said, it's just it it's so much fun when you're out there, but that underlying anxiety for every every cat race for some reason, and uh I don't know what the difference is, but once springtime comes and we're hunting bears, I don't worry about the bulls. And I know they're still there, right? They didn't go away, but I don't worry about them because I can't see their tracks, and I don't know where they are. But as soon as winter hits and I can see their tracks, it's just like it's it's so hard to to try and enjoy a race when you're just you know you're ripping those roads trying to stay tight to those dogs as much as possible. And then of course they're gonna tree something on a road that's snowed in and you can't get up it, and you gotta you know an hour and a half tight to the tree, and it's all you can think about the whole time. Like, sucks for my wife because I just leave her behind. It's just like I gotta get to the tree, and you know, if we've got people with us, or you know, we we bring out the kids all the time and stuff like that, and it's just like I gotta get to the tree and make sure the dogs are okay, and I'll see you when you get there. Because if we if we you know drag our ass and get there and somebody's hurt or worse, then I'm not gonna be happy about it. Yeah, then you're then you're gonna be blaming yourself for not getting there. Yeah. You know, touch wood, it hasn't happened yet. But I know people that have lost dogs to wolves. I know I've talked to people out in the mountain that have lost their whole pack of dogs, and I I can't even imagine that.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:59

Nope. That would be good. You get one dog, one dog's a big deal. You wipe your whole damn pack out.

SPEAKER_01 1:47:04

That would be that would be uh ground for like, do you start over or do you say fuck it, you know, because that's that's a shit kind of word. If I lost my if I lost my whole pack, I would definitely have to take a a a hard break and contemplate, you know, what would happen after that. I I honestly can't even imagine.

SPEAKER_00 1:47:26

It sucks. I've been there. Yeah. I I've really yeah. Um I actually I almost lost my whole pack twice, but I lost my entire pack. I had one dog that lived and he wound up well. He wound up uh passing away like a day later. And out of uh out at the point like the and uh that point I went on after that that's what I'll do. So I went from that after I had uh uh I went and got a couple of dollars to get my target. And then I had three full packs of dollars. I'll grow up three full packs. Uh depending on which I had some that were like a year old, year and a half old, and then a half of three packs. I I lost my mind.

SPEAKER_01 1:48:57

Uh I never got I never got a bit of an overcorrection, maybe, but we're here now.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:09

Well, like I said, I I I wound up getting it some stuff where we were uh creating a breed uh uh you know, or recreating a breed, and it uh wound up inheriting uh a bunch of that uh uh that wasn't what I wanted to do, but I was like if we've got several years of this product, I'm not going to walk away from it. But yeah, if I couldn't imagine somebody like uh if if we've only got five or six dollars uh that's why uh that's why I got uh unlike IM still today. Uh I gotta have 15 or 20 dollars.

SPEAKER_01 1:49:48

Uh uh it would be nice for sure.

SPEAKER_00 1:49:53

Uh there's that that makes up the majority of it.

SPEAKER_02 1:50:17

I know uh I know what that's like. Well, I got I'm gonna I'm gonna start to simmer down. You got any you got anything you wanna ask or story you want to tell before I drop this on you? Um no, drop it on me.

SPEAKER_01 1:50:35

Okay, so this is gonna be my closer for the from now on. Uh I just came up with it earlier, I don't know why, but uh from now on I want to close out like each segment and I want to know like what's your goal is with your dogs over the next year or two. Like what is your what's your plan and what's your goals? Like, because in my mind, if you don't have goals, then you're just fucking simmering, you're just sitting in the same spot. So like what would what we what do you think? Like, do you have a goal that you would set for the next year? Apparently my goal is to get a bunch more dogs now.

SPEAKER_04 1:51:13

I knew the answer to that.

SPEAKER_01 1:51:17

Apparently I know what I'm lacking those. Um if I had to if I had to think about that right off the top, I mean, I know the likelihood of getting more dogs in the next year or two probably isn't that great. Um, like I said, pretty comfortable with where I'm at as far as the the level of how they're hunting right now, but I know for sure that they need to work on the small cats, and I really enjoy chasing the bobcats and the lengths, it's a lot more technical, it's a lot takes a lot smarter of a dog to catch those cats consistently. And we caught a lot of them when I had Judge, and I know that was mainly because he's just such a good locating dog. So uh now that Judge isn't around, I'd really like to see the older dogs really hone in on the small cats and and work on locating those trees and and not just you know catching a couple of them a year where you get a you know, where they see one go up a tree, so we caught that one or they get lucky. It's like I I'd really like to see them start locating those small cats consistently to where I can put out on a bobcat or links and and reliably think that we're gonna catch it. I don't know how the hell I'm gonna get there, but um, yeah, that would definitely be something to work on over the next year or two.

SPEAKER_02 1:52:36

Yeah, I like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:52:37

I mean, uh when you when you talked about it earlier, I could tell it was like a desire, you know, whenever that's like my desire now is to go and catch pigs. Well, I could tell when they were talking about you didn't you didn't put very many cats up tree or it was uh like what the fuck's going on? Like I said, well it eased you up, right? Because like I said, you get you get to that point where with the with the bears and and the lions, I know if I got a good lion track when I dump the dogs, I'm like, we're catching this fucker, right? Like if we don't, something seriously went wrong. But when I put out on a boss cat or a lynx, it's kind of like, well, I hope we catch it. If we do, I'll be really stoked. So I'd I'd just like to progress to that point where it's just like, no, this is a good track, we're probably gonna get this one. Yeah. Uh what I've noticed with people that are genuinely trying to be better or or whatever, there's always there's always that next something like Joey's creating a dog breed or whatever shit. Like I'm trying to make a hog dog now.

SPEAKER_02 1:53:36

It's you know, you you've you've conquered the maybe not conquered, but like you've you've you've been successful with the lions and bears.

SPEAKER_01 1:53:43

Like I've I've been successful in deer, I haven't conquered it, I'll never conquer it. Like you're you're never gonna conquer any damn uh you know town type scenario. Like you're never if if you've conquered it, then you need to just quit and start something else. But in my mind, like you get successful at something, and then it's like, all right, I feel like I feel pretty confident with this, and now I wanna now I want to push towards this. So that's that's kind of what the kind of what my question was, because I uh I feel like you know, keeping it's it's it's similar to like to me in the fire service, which I'm a fireman, I know it's silly, but uh, you know, there's always like there's always something that I ask young guys, I'm like, hey, what like what's your what do you plan on doing?

SPEAKER_02 1:54:28

Like, do you want to like kind of be a fireman or do you want to like be the baddest motherfucker that shows up on the fire ground?

SPEAKER_01 1:54:35

Like uh that's something I'm kind of passionate in. And uh to me it's like you know, you conquer one thing and then like okay, so now I want to be really good at this. So that's where I'm steering my path, like towards the end of the segments from now on. That's gonna be kind of my uh my questions. But you were the first one, so that was good. I appreciate it. Yeah, that was yeah. I kinda I knew you were gonna say puppies because we just harped on your ass about it. Yeah. Well then once they once I uh once they conquer the ballcast and the links, then I'll get a couple puppies and fuck everything all up again. Yeah. I gotta gotta get that spark back in there. Yes, sir. That's cool, man. Well, I appreciate you coming on, Joel. I uh it was good and you know, we say it's always good to talk to somebody from a different freaking country and all the things. So man, I I don't know nothing about lions and bears, so it's always it's always intriguing to me to to listen to those guys. And I appreciate you coming on, man. Yeah, no, I appreciate you guys having me on. And if you ever make it up north, you'd be sure to give me a call. We'll get out for a run.

SPEAKER_02 1:55:43

We're gonna have to make that happen for sure. I I keep saying that with every guy I talk to, but uh you the your stuff sounds pretty damn intriguing.

SPEAKER_01 1:55:51

Uh and it and it can be up there. Uh it'd be up there at a time of year when it's miserable here and probably pretty nice there. So yeah, yeah, for sure. We'll we'll have to make it happen, man. Thanks for coming on. Yes, sir. Yeah, I appreciate you guys. Take care.