EP. 5 Josh Carney

In this episode we have on hog hunter and bear guide Josh Carney! With Blackwater outfitters Josh can put you on some big Maine bear. Go check him out https://www.instagram.com/bull.frog_outdoors/

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

All right, guys, welcome back to another episode of Don't Run with Lighthounds. I've got Josh Carney on here. He's the houndsman out in the Northeast. He runs Bears in Maine and then runs hogs in Florida. Uh we appreciate you coming on, man. Can you just go ahead and give me a little introduction and kind of tell me about yourself?

SPEAKER_02 0:46

Yeah, no problem. What's going on, buddy? Uh yeah, Josh Carney up in Maine. Uh from a guide. Run bears all all fall for a guide service and did a bunch of hunting down in Florida for about uh I think eleven, twelve years. That's what really got me into the dogs was Florida with the hogs, and then that turned into bear dogging.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

So you got your start in Florida.

SPEAKER_02 1:17

Yeah. No one in my family really dog hunts at all. Went we went down there on uh on a hog hunt, but like out of tree stands, shooting them over a feeder. Right. And I didn't we didn't I didn't kill one and my buddies did. So we ended up finding another place where they they had dogs and we caught them and killed them with a knife. And that was that that was that was the beginning of the end right there.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

That puts the old bow hunting to shame. Or rifle hunt sitting in a stand. Anything sitting in the stand they ain't got shit on none of dogs, man.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

Yeah, I used to love bow hunting until, like you said, I got hounds and that's I haven't bow hunted since really. I gotcha. So where did you grow up? Uh originally Connecticut, but all my family's up in Maine, so New England. But I'm from Connecticut originally. I went to school in Connecticut, but all my hunting I do up in Maine.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Okay. How old are you?

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Just turned 30. Okay, cool.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Nice. I uh I'm getting I feel like I'm I don't know, man. I'm I'm 37 now and uh it's weird. So like I work at the fire department and uh work we got guys like we just hired a 19-year-old kid the other day, and uh dude, it's it's such a different breed, and I'm sure that that's what the guys were thinking when I got hired. I got hired when I was 23. You know, I had a little bit of life experience, not much, but you know, I kind of I I had worked, you know, and was blue-collar before. We're hiring guys that have never worked blue-collar jobs and they want to be firemen, and it's like, what do you why are you here? Like, what do you want, what are you doing? Like, like I asked the kid the other day, I was like, what do you well so like what do you do for your like for fun? Like, what's your hobby? And he was like, Oh, I write nonfiction books and stuff. And was like, Yeah, dear God, like what it just, it's such, it's such a weird deal. So like now I'm I think about the talks that I had with the 35 to 40 year olds when I was 20, and I'm like, oh, this guy's old as fuck, you know, and then and now I'm there and I'm talking to 20 of them like these probably thinks I'm an old piece of shit, too. Like, it's just it's such a I don't know, man. It's weird getting older. And of course, everybody's oh, you're still in your 30s, you're still prime, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, nah, man, my prime was 25 years old, bro. I've got I was a different breed of human at 25-year-old than I am at, you know, 35 plus.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Oh, I hear you. The boy I hunt with, he just turned 21, so he's still puppy done. Yeah, me he me and him, we guide together. I work for his dad, um, Blackwater outfitters. But yeah, he he gives me hope for the younger generation, but them are hard to find.

SPEAKER_00 4:14

Man, there are there are still some out there. Like, I've had some kids come through that are like, you know, squared away, raised on a ranch, but like the majority of them I'm I are into like anime and video games and shit. And it's like I have, I just, it's such a different generation. And like I say, I, you know, I'm I'm sure that the guys older than me thought I was a puss whenever I got hired, and blah blah blah. You know what I mean? Oh, he's got tattoos and he's a you know, he, you know, whatever. He drives big lifted truck, like he's a dumbass. Well, now it's like well, at least I worked. Like I worked in metal construction before this, and I did that blue-collar job. Like, I I didn't never play no video games or nothing, but now it's like, holy cow, what a full-blown circle. Like those guys looking at a 20-year-old are probably just like, what do we do? Like, you gotta, it's almost like I'm just gonna retire before I work with these guys. Like, it's that bad. It's it's a it's weird, but that's been like my freaking dead set goal right now is to raise two men. Like, I've got these two boys, and one's five and one's three, and I am so I might be over the top with it, I don't know. But like I'm I'm like, there's no way that these kids are gonna be playing video games or be soft and blah, blah, you know. And I I told my wife, I was like, you know, it's one thing to raise them and then they turn out like you raise them, like, you know, um, say you put them video games in front of them and let them play on tablets, like that's what they're that's what's gonna happen to them, you know. I said, by God, that ain't gonna happen to me. I said, but if you know, if one of them, you know, you can't really control, like one of them might turn gay, you know, or something. And she's like, what? And I was like, listen, I'm okay with that. They just better be a hard ass. Like, I don't care, like if they're gay, if they want to do whatever. I was like, as long as they're tough as shit and they're men, then I'm you know, my job's complete. It's like this for stupid shit.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

You haul them with you all the time hunting, don't you?

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yeah, like I I uh like the hog dogging deal is is off season stuff for me. Um and I I uh I haul them as much as I can. Now, there's days where I get like a pretty primo piece of property where I'm like, all right, yeah. I want to knock out as many pigs as we can. I want to run two or three buddies, you know, and we're gonna we're gonna get after it. But like 95% of the time, yeah. Like today we went out and I had a guy at work that farms some country over here west of me. And he's like, man, we just cut wheat. There's I got I got he goes, like, we didn't harvest it, we rolled it. We got a guy that wants to buy them in rolls, and uh because I don't want them pigs getting in them rolls. I was like, Yeah, they'll they'll take the round bell part and overnight, you know. So we went out there this morning and pulled up one sounder and caught three, should have caught four. God dang, we missed a big boar this morning, made me. I mean, I've seen this on bitch. And uh, but anyways, it was pretty good. We caught we caught three out of the group and uh, you know, everything was good. We were done by 9 a.m. and had the boys with us the whole time. You know, I got another buddy I hunt with a lot, and he's got a he's got a young boy too that's five. And so it's fun. It you know, we it's obviously not optimal for numbers catching pigs because you know, inevitably we'll miss a few here and there because we're dragging boys through the woods or whatever the hell. But uh man, it's cool. It's cool having them in there. It's it's every time I'm like, God, what am I doing? Like, this is so cra dumb. Like I'm I'm getting dragged. The the older boy's pretty good, he gets around good, but the young, the younger one, man, he's uh he's hard to get through there. And uh but at the end of the day, they're you know, they get the hold the pig, do all the stuff, and they're begging to go back. So it's worth it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:19

You pretty much gotta be done hunting by 9 a.m. where you're at this morning.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah, it was I mean, I don't we've had a I honestly it's been seasonably um pretty nice. Like we actually had a real spring this year. Um like this morning it was 74 as you know at 6 a.m. when we dropped the dogs, you know, and it got we about nine o'clock, we dropped one more time on a different property, and it was you know 85. And uh and they got it, we got a good race, man. I wish we would have it was a it was a really good race. Like that that pig was doing some. There was a big creek around the property, like a super deep, real ass creek. Probably some people call a river, but I call it a creek. And uh man, I just knew he was gonna end up in it. Like I like he he went to it three times. Like he made a loop, went to it, looped back in towards the woods. Went back in. I was like, God dang it, get your like I just figured he'd end up there, that's where we'd catch him, you know. But by God, he made three or four loops in this little hundred-acre patch of woods, and we lost him. But it was like, it was one of those ones where you're you're uh you're like, God dang, if we pull this one off, it'll be pretty special kind of deal, you know. We run a run a straight line for 600 yards, that's cool. But like if they run uh two or three miles in a little 200-acre package of woods and they're making loops and figure eights and shit, like that's the one I'm like, okay, this will be this is the one you want to catch right here. That's some bitch is he's he's got it figured out. He's probably been ran before, and he ain't no little dumbass, you know.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

This is in Texas, right? Yes, sir. Yeah. See, I we me and my buddy, his family lives in Mariana, right there. Yeah, right just like that. Yeah, we were talking about that's that's some of the craziest hunting we've ever done, just because it's so much different than it's not that thick. You can see not even being able to see that good.

SPEAKER_00 10:16

You should try going about an hour west of there where my where our buddy Rusty Mayshore is at. It's it's about it's probably an hour west of Marietta. Man, it's even more open, and it's like what it's so weird because it's it's I mean, where are they coming from? Like, I don't even know where they live. Like it's we're out in the middle of just flat stuff.

SPEAKER_02 10:37

Oh yeah. Especially being from Maine, it's it's that's like it might as well have been a new country.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

That's it's pretty sweet out there. It is. It's got its it's got its pluses. Did you have you ran Indian uh any of like stickers, like the we call them goats' heads or spur, like the little sticker patches? You seen those?

SPEAKER_02 10:57

Are they the damn mesquite or whatever it's called?

SPEAKER_00 11:00

No, no, these are like little grassy uh little grassy thorns.

SPEAKER_02 11:07

I think the mesquite or whatever the hell it was called, they got probably briars. Well, it's a tree or a vine. Kind of like a mixture of both. It's got big ass thorns on it. I don't know. I just know that when you were going in them, they sucked.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yeah, well, there's there's several different you got mesquites and then you got a black locust tree. And a black locust tree is like the mesquite tree on steroids. They've got like two or three inch, four inch long thorns. Yeah. But then the briars is what'll get you, the viney stuff. Oh yeah. Everything we caught was in briars. Yeah, that's where that that's usually where you get them bait up.

SPEAKER_02 11:47

Oh yeah. Only thing that sucked about out there is we were hunting all that management land, so we had fallen it on foot, like the whole time. And and hunting pigs that get hunted, probably. Oh yeah. Yeah. We had a whole rally bait out there one night or during the day. The first like one of the first times we went out there had a whole rally of them bait when they they scattered. We don't we didn't catch too many out of there. Right, right. It's a lot, it is a lot different than anything I've ever hunted.

SPEAKER_00 12:19

So, like when you're in Florida, is it pretty rare to to get a group like that rallied?

SPEAKER_02 12:24

Uh I've had I just posted a video the other day. I've only seen a couple rallies get bade. I only hog hunted in the winter time, two or three months out of the year, but I've seen a couple pretty good rallies with big ass hogs in it.

SPEAKER_03 12:41

Like that video I posted, we had them bait in a cow pasture.

SPEAKER_00 12:44

That was I was about to say, it was in a wide open, wasn't it?

SPEAKER_02 12:48

That was the sickest shit I ever seen in my life, because there was probably 40 head of hogs and ten of them were 300-pound bars. Oh we ended up catching like three or four bars out of there and a giant boar hog, and then a bunch of just yeah, we I got a picture of him in the back of a trailer. A bunch of bull-ass shit. Catch hog got the catch-dog got caught right like above his eye, and it was all you know, sometimes it looks a lot worse than it is, especially. I thought his damn eyeball was flopping out. Right. The hog we caught was like a 300-pound bar. It was two of them. They were they rap there was a big rally and then they broke, and then the the dogs big two big ass bars standing right side by side. So sent the catch dog, he ran in there and caught the one on the right, and then the one on the left hit him on the side of the head and then tore ass out of there. And it looked like it cut looked like it cut his head, the his eye out of his head. So we got that hog tied, and he ran right to that the hog that just cut the dog ran all the way to a fence and got bait along the fence. So we walked that dog up there with his head all fucked up and everything, and turned him loose, and he ran in there and hit that one so hard he hit like the barbed wire and whatever that fence is, and you can just hear it stretch when he hit it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Had a big ass bar hog backed into a rock pile. That was a boarhog with one tooth on one side was like three inches. I'd killed a bunch of dogs before.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

You got into a herd of pigs that have been worked over and probably been before.

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 14:30

Yeah, I've always heard it worked pretty good. I I've I've never I've only caught oh no, I don't even think I've caught a bar. Like I I've been running the hogs just for this. This is my second season to try it on my own.

SPEAKER_02 14:43

And um I got real lucky with the hog deal, honestly. I got hooked up with the right people. I couldn't, you know what I mean? I got lucky with who I got hooked up with. That's what it takes sometimes, man. Yeah. Yeah, but definitely got even with the Bears. Man, I got so lucky getting hooked up with these boys, it's not even like life-changing. Well, especially because they're like family to me now, so yeah, it's great.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

You obviously proved you weren't a dumbass and you probably got some work ethic, otherwise they wouldn't have kept you around.

SPEAKER_02 15:19

Well, before I worked for him, he let me go hunt with him. And I used to stay up there in a damn tent, and one day we were hunting and it was raining like a bastard, and he was like, dude, come to the damn, come to the house. I got a cabin you can stay in. And then that's from there it kind of it just went. Then he hired me. Well, he didn't even I had to go get my guide's license first, so I had to go get my guide's license, and then he hired me. And like I said, now they're they're basically family to me. They are family to me.

SPEAKER_00 15:49

How old were you whenever you got hired?

SPEAKER_02 15:52

Well, I just got my guide license two years ago, but I've been hunting with them for at least another two, three years before that. I didn't get into bear hunting until I was like 24, 25 years old. Gotcha. As soon as I'd done the hogs for long enough in the winter, I was like, man, I need my own dogs and I need to do this all the time. And then up here, the only thing that's gonna give you that same adrenaline is a bear. Right, right. So then I yeah, I pretty much taught myself, I guess, for the most part, how to how to bear hunt. I just had a I had a catahula, and then I had a half catahula, half walker, and I would just drive around and sight dump them. Gotcha. That's all I that's all I had. I didn't know what to do.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

You gotta do what you gotta do. I was like me last year starting these hog dogs. I was like, you know, I have pretty good contacts to talk to, and but, you know, just like any old good houndsman, they'll they'll throw you a little tidbit of information, but they're not gonna fucking paint a golden path for you. Uh everyone I've ever talked to that was worth the shit, um, you know, would kind of just give you a little cookie crumb, and then you had to, you had to figure it out on your own kind of deal. So the last last year I was doing, you know, I would I would run feeders and uh cameras, you know, and I was like, man, I want to get the dogs set up for success on a few, you know, and I'd I'd watch the cameras and go dump them downwind and just let them, you know, try to set them up for success. And uh, you know, of course, you did that a couple times, and then my boys like, hey, you need to, it's time to, you know, go find them. You know, you keep doing that, you're gonna, you're gonna make the dogs, you know, not have to work for it, and then they're never gonna work for it kind of deal. And I was like, okay, yeah, you know, I get it. And you know, and I start and catch dogs was de, you know, was new to me. And apparently there's fucking certain ways to start catch dogs, and then some people just get catch dogs that just do their job right off the bat, you know. And uh so the last two years has been, and it's you know, I'll it'll take me another ten years to remotely know what the hell I'm doing with the pigs, but uh it's it's been a cool little journey as of late. Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

How uh do you ever get any long trails on a damn hog out there? Are they usually pretty hot?

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Not with not with not with my shitty dogs, no. I got you. I have been with guys that have dogs that'll do it. Uh like, you know, it might be what I don't know what you consider a long trail, but like I've had I've been around dogs that have gone um, you know, a mile, two miles before they get one kicked up. Yeah. I mean, that's fairly that's pretty doggy, right? Cur dogs? I've got so I've got one mainly plot dog and then one mainly cur dog. Like they're they're polar opposite the way they act, they're polar opposite the way they look. One's black and one's yellow. And they are they couldn't be any more different of a dog in the way they hunt, the way they sound, uh, everything. Right. Um, but it's actually kind of cool because together they make a pretty cool little team. Um yeah, that works, that works out, right. Right. But I've been with, you know, I've got buddies that got you know short enough hog dogs. And and honest to God, they run different shit too. Like one buddy runs straight curs and the other one runs straight hounds. And uh, you know, they might have a little bit of hound in them, you know, or a little bit of curve. Yeah, um but predominantly, yeah, predominantly like one's like, hey, I run hounds and I like to hear them talking and I like to I like to track, and then I've got a buddy that's like uh I like to wend them and catch more than you do with the hounds. It's always like the great debate. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 19:47

And see, I I enjoy listening to them. I like hounds.

SPEAKER_00 19:51

I like them open and uh I I've only ever had silent dogs with the deer tracking deal. Like I've had a handful of dogs, I've only had one dog that I've made, and he's nine years old this summer. Um, and he's if he's if you hear him, it's because he's looking at him and not looking at him running. He's looking at him stopped. You know, he's he's got him stopped occasionally. If he jumps one, like especially if it's uh say we haven't tracked a deer in a day or two, and we and he jumps one, he'll let out a fucking locate ball. But then you won't hear him again until it's until it's baited or over with, kind of dude. So I I I tend to like that better, but uh, that's all I know. I've known till I got this plot dog. Well, she is open. Now, she's not open on a cold trail or nothing, but like if she's hot on one, she'll she'll bark, yeah, she's open on the trail, and then obviously she's open if she's running one looking at it while she's running. Yeah, um, right. I don't I don't mind the running and barking, but like the other day they hit a hot trail and she opened up, and I it was one of those hot trails, like I could see the the hoof tracks, and I could like they when I saw the hoof tracks, I looked up and they were already at a full spread. It was like it was a hot trail, you know? And immediately she opens up, and I know that she didn't they didn't see the pigs because I could see them, you know what I'm saying? So I'm like, do the do the dogs know that oh shit, something's coming and they get a two, three hundred yard head start on the dogs, or or they like don't know that if a dog is, you know what I mean? I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 21:32

I feel like they definitely know we didn't catch those dogs.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

We didn't catch those pigs. Like, right. Damn it.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

If I strictly hog hunted, I'd definitely want silent dogs for sure, but yeah. I just don't they didn't really they don't really make the best bear dogs. Bear dogs, I guess. Oh yeah, probably not. I like it I like listening to them trail and open up and then listen to them get hotter and hotter and tell when they jump and you can hear it.

SPEAKER_00 22:05

Yeah, oh hell yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:07

Especially the best dog I ever had, Brap, he got killed two years ago by a bear, but he he really wouldn't bark.

SPEAKER_03 22:15

He really he was hot nose anyway. He wasn't no trail superstar, he wouldn't trail no shit off at all.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

But if he would get hot on it, he would like

SPEAKER_01 22:24

Squeak, like some just you know, yeah, you know, while he's running.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

And as soon as if he treated or bathed, you'd think it was a different dog in there because it would just go to a deep chop.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:36

But I would that he was a I like that dog. He was a damn good one.

SPEAKER_00 22:42

Hold on bears. Well, that one's so I I you know, every time I get somebody on, I kind of scroll through and kind of get my I don't know, like a little list of shit I want to ask you. Well, when I went through your shit, I saw the Jap dog and I saw that it didn't look like the other dogs per se. It looks like you know, typically you're running a lot of Brendel Blot cross-looking dogs, and he did not look like that. So tell us about that dog.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

He that was the really that's the dog that started it all for me. I had the first dog I ever got was a straight Catahula, but that was before I was, you know, hunting. Right. So when I like was soon, like I was talking about when I was like, as soon as I need, I was like, I need to hunt all the time. I need a dog that'll hunt bears. My buddies had just went and got a litter, they're half Catahula, half uh walker, and he sent me up to Georgia to pick them up. And then there's two pretty, pretty ass leopard hound looking ones, and then there was that little ugly bastard yellow one. And I said, I need a dog that I could chase bears with. And he said, Well, take that yellow male, and I was like, 10-4. So that was that's where I got Jap. And then he was a baby. Got home that spring with him, and he was only like five months old. But where I where I work at in Connecticut, there's just bears everywhere. Like they're you can't hunt them, you're not allowed to do any of that shit with them. But I'd take him out as a puppy, drive around the woods, and there's sure enough, he'd see a bear and I'd just dump him out the truck on him. And he'd he would he he was just a baby, so he'd only take it, you know, he'd get blown out of the water, obviously. But he'd run them for as long as he could, just barking his little ass off.

SPEAKER_01 24:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:30

And then did that for a while with him. Then I started going to Maine, putting him in with dogs that actually would run. And he'd yeah, he was he was pretty good. I caught a lot of hogs with him. He was definitely a better hog dog than he was a bear dog. He loved a hog. First year I brought him down there hog hunting. Took a couple times, but as soon as he figured out what we were doing, he he got he Yeah, that was definitely my best dog, probably one of the better ones I'll ever own. How old was he whenever you figured it out? Uh about a year and a half is when he was really like doing pretty good. Took a little bit to deer break him.

unknown 25:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:12

He did like a deer pretty good. But once you I got him deer broke pretty good.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

Okay. Yeah, I'm always curious on like some some guys have dogs that are just natural that like literally come out the womb.

SPEAKER_02 25:27

Right. He would take like in bears, he would want to take them. He would just he'd get he was only a baby, he would get dusted right off right out of the gate.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

But he wanted it.

SPEAKER_02 25:37

Oh hell yeah, he wanted it. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:40

That's hard. You can't teach that.

SPEAKER_02 25:42

Yeah, but once he got older, he would he would stay too, he would lay with it all day. Yeah. And he was way he was half curved, so you know, he would he was way faster than anything I got now.

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Would he tell me this would when he ran a track, was he head down or head up? Uh like you know what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

So, like Yeah, I know what you're saying. He wouldn't like sniff the ground up just grubbing at all and like go slow working the track. Like if he like so we hunt off bait a lot. Well, you're you that's pretty much one of the only ways to hung up here. And you you put him in a feeder or something, and he'll sniff around. And if it's gotta be pretty hot. If he as soon as he starts squeaking, like say he's trailing something went off and ate and squatted like within within a half mile. Full belly, laid up. Right. He would he would call silent trail all the way to it, and as soon as he jumped it, he would just let off Eagle's god-awful squeak, fucking squall, dude. He'd he'd do that every breath while he was running.

SPEAKER_00 26:44

So yeah, he would he bark on the track too.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

No, uh uh, no barking on the track too. If he but if he's if you heard him just it because it was so high pitched, and as soon as you heard that, I was like, Yep, it's his jump, boys back to you.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

Yeah, yeah, you know that sound.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

I just had him and I have a full I have a full uh Catahula. I would and she's pretty she's wicked fast, but she's real gritty. She likes biting on stuff. So I would get him to start a bear, like a pretty hot bear, and as soon as we get him close enough, I would he would be running it, and I'd I'd turn that like Catahula in there, and she was she was great for one that would walk. Oh my yeah, I got some videos of her doing that to a giant. And yeah, that's that's what I used her for for a lot for a while too. And she she did the same thing with hogs, and then we bred her, and the f we actually it was in Oklahoma. We we brought her out there because we were like perfect. If we if we get anything bay, then we can use her because she'll but she'll keep anything bade. She was real fast, real she loved baying hogs. We had that whole rally bait and sent her to it, and she ran up in there to them, barked, and then they came running right back to us. Screw this couldn't believe it. And I mean, I'm just I guess maybe them puppies did something to her. I don't know, but as soon as she had puppies, she she don't even she don't want to do shit no more with laying the couch or anything. Oh no, really? But even like bear hunting, like I always bring her bear hunting, but she rides in the cab with me. Yeah, and sometimes if you like if you leave the window down in the truck and say that bear comes across the road and we got six head of dogs packing in there and it's loud as fuck, she'll bail out the window, no no tracking collar on nothing. Me and my buddy Cole was sitting there one day during training season, and our shit came across the road, and we dumped some puppies in, and then it was just enough commotion where she bailed out the window and went in there right behind them. No tracking collar, no nothing. Now she's my baby, you know what I mean? She sleeps in bed with me. I'm like, damn, are you like are you kidding me? Like, we're gonna I'm gonna lose her. There's no way. Sat there for like an hour and a half, and then here she comes strolling back out, got tired of that.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

Now is she producing some good pups?

SPEAKER_02 29:16

No, she well, I say no. All of them, nothing. She only had one litter, and they were another another Catahula, and I gave them all away to the boys that would hog hunt them, and none of them are around now. But I really she's like 10 years old now, and that Jap dog I had was half Catahula, half walker. So I think the next time she comes in heat, as much as everyone's gonna cringe when they fucking hear it, I'm gonna breed her to a plot. Yeah, buddy and see what happens. I don't honestly at this point, well, I don't give a shit. We're gonna see what happens.

SPEAKER_00 29:53

It'll probably be pretty, it'd be pretty gritty, but we'll see, like when I so my my dear tracking dogs and a lot of the guys around me that run them over here in this, you know, in Texas and Southern Oklahoma really like like a like a cross. Like it's a half hound, half cur. You know, it'd be you know, it could be plot hound, it could be walker hound, could be July, could be, you know, whatever. Um but it's usually uh a little half and half because you want you want the best of the hound and you want the best of the cur. Like to get it. It makes a it makes a to me it's optimal.

SPEAKER_02 30:33

Either you're gonna get ones that are more hound or more curves. So if for bear hunting, you obviously want the more hound one because you're gonna want the more nose, but at the same time, you're gonna want all that extra ass in there too. Uh-huh. If you know what I'm saying, you know, yeah. No, like the hop nosed ones. The hop nos if they're hop nosed, I almost get, you know, they're gonna be rough and they're gonna be catchy. So them are the ones you send down to the boys that maybe the ones that can't take a six, eight-hour track. But right. She send exactly send that down there, and that might be just what some of them are looking for.

SPEAKER_00 31:11

I tell you what, it's been it's been cool to watch this. Man, I haven't figured her out yet. This yellow dog, like she uh so like I said, I got a cur and a plot running on the pigs. Well, they do exactly what you would expect out of each breed. Like the cur wins, she relays, um, but she doesn't have a whole lot of confidence right now. And she's she didn't have con when I when I the first year of her life, I put a couple pigs tied up or like in a pen around her, didn't want a damn thing to do with them. And I was like, uh-oh, you know, like this ain't good. But you know, I'm I'm pretty good about giving the dog way too long to prove itself. Yeah, yeah, me too. Yeah, I didn't know but she made it a year and you know, she was showing us some things, but there for a while I was like, eh, eh, probably not gonna work. But like uh, like you can just see it, man. It's it's cool because like she'll win and she will relay. And then the plot dog, she'll track, she'll win too. And shoot, she's rigged a couple times out of the box. Uh, but like it's it's funny, like you always hear what people say, and oh, you know, this dog hunt tracks, and this doesn't like I'm I've got proof. They both look completely opposite and they both do completely opposite shit, but they at the end of the day, they both do things that are that are good, you know, and together, I think it's badass. So it's like whenever guys are like, oh, I only run hounds, or um, I only run curves. I'm like, dude, have you ever tried a half curr, half hound? Or both in the mix? Like, I uh I mean, I think it's I don't know, I think it's pretty cool. Like today, for instance, um we had a rally and uh they kind of broke up and I had my buddy's two dogs on the ground, and uh they were they were working them, you know, and you could tell they kind of split, like they were bait for a second, and then when we pulled up to the with the truck, we probably got a little too close and they kind of boogered, but uh, you know, they split. Well, that the hound was rigging out of the box. We were downwind of where they were at, and uh, which she probably heard them and among other things, but she's just hammering out of the box. And I'm like, you know what? Screw it. I'll let her down. Well, I'm trying to I'm trying to influence the rig deal. I think that would be pretty handy. A lot of a lot of the stuff I do is roading, like we put the dogs in front of us and just drive roads or whatever. But if I could like get in the rig off the truck, then I won't have to waste miles down the gravel. And she, for some freaking reason, has really soft feet, uh, the plot dog. And man, I don't know what it is. We lose, I've lost, she's lost her pad three or four times since January. And I've tried putting all kinds of creams and shit on them. I don't know what to do, but like, I don't know, maybe just her thing, or maybe I don't know what the shit I'm doing. If anybody out there has a remedy to harden up a pad that's actually works and not some old wives tell they heard from a houndsman 50 years ago, uh I'd be all ears. But like uh her on gravel is usually not pretty good, like not very good. Like we were we hunted the last two days on gravel and her feet are shredded again. And I don't know, it's it's it's a thing that's like, God dang, she's she hunts really good, but I I almost don't want to pass down that trait to other dogs. I don't know. No, you know what I mean? Like if I bred her. Well, dude, you gotta have you gotta have three dogs for one dog, if that makes sense. Like the yellow dog, she's got big pads, big black pads, and they don't ever mess up. She's got little black pads, and I see that seem to me to be tighter. Uh, and they they fall off all the damn time. And I'm like, I want a bunch of puppies where I need three of them because everyone's gonna run their pads off every month, and I gotta run the next one the next month. Do you know what I mean? Um it's been uh it's been something I've been thinking about, but anyways.

SPEAKER_02 35:34

I've never I've never had that problem. I've never had a dog that had bad feet like that, so I never This is the only one I've had. The girl I used to hunt with, she uh I don't know if it hardens her feet, but I know her her dog used to get their pads fucked up a little bit. She used that bag bomb shit. I don't know if that's just to make it yeah, it's like a green, it's on a green can, so it's called bag bomb. I know that's what she used.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

It's something she put on before the hunt.

SPEAKER_02 36:06

Uh it was more, I think a lot of like once they once they tore their pads, she'd put that on there and it would heal it way faster. I believe.

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Oh yeah, I could be a little fucked up, but I feel like I've got the healing down. Like I I have been using this stuff called Silver Honey. I don't know if you use that out there where you can. I use Ventures. I use Ventures. Okay, it's the yeah, we've got that too. It's very similar. I think this I don't know if the Silver Honey is any better, but both of them work great. Yeah, it's the same shit.

SPEAKER_02 36:39

That's the but bears bears will fuck a dog up pretty good, but they don't like you know, a hog dog, like they just they get when they get cut, they get cut. It might not even be that bad, but there's a lot of fucking blood and a lot of staples going on. You like when Jeff he got killed, there wasn't hardly any blood. He got he got crushed and burned back twice. He broke his spine and yeah, way different. Like way different because I've seen some nasty shit with hogs, you know, and the dog be fine. It just looks nasty. Yeah, it's usually a fillet, yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's I haven't seen too many fill. I mean, I've heard of it, but I haven't personally seen too many fillets. Usually it's uh just pounding and there's holes everywhere, but nothing like not too I've only had to staple up a bear dog maybe I don't know four or five times where you know a hog you better have staple guns on your home. Yeah, every damn. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And bears are just so powerful, so when they get to slapping and grabbing and crushing, less less um, you know, superficial trauma and more long-term trauma.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

Right. With the with the bears, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:01

Exactly. But then be yeah, I used to have I used to be bad about not having more respect for them goddamn things. I'd get I'd think they ain't gonna do shit. Until we we once I got my guide license, and we'd we'd have to like before dog season starts, we have a bait season where people shoot them off them baits with guns and shit. So all night we'll be out there tracking tracking bears, wounded bears, and stuff. I was about to say, wounded bears. Oh hell yeah. And uh so Dickie, he's got the the dog squirt, he's he's three-legged. And up until like when I first started hunting with him, he he that was that's like one of the best bear dogs I've ever seen. Three-legged, he'd run all day, stardom run. But we'd use him as a tracking dog, too. And he'd go out there and every time, if it's dead, he's he's or not dead. If it's laid up, he's gonna find it. So before I like was all the way introduced on how shit worked, he was sitting there, you know, he's he's treated, it's middle of the night, you can't see shit. And we're walking in there, walking in there, well, he's he's growling, like he just sitting there growling, and I don't know any better. So I'm thinking he's got us. I walk in there, and Dickie's like, hey, is he growling? And I was like, Oh hell yeah. I said, You don't hear him? He's like, Well, he said, Whoa, whoa, he said, he's alive though. Yeah, he's not done. As soon as he said that, all the damn, all the woods started shaking, and that bitch blew out of there, and like that scared the living piss out of me. I was like, I was like, Yeah, we're gonna Yeah, that was fun. That was crazy shit. Tracking the bears at night when they're wounded, it gets gets sketchy every time. Man, I've been calling the track a couple. It's so thick where we can't even like a flashlight almost makes it worse. You know what I mean? You try to turn a flashlight on and there's just trees right there in front of your face, and you can't see sh you can almost see better with no fucking light on. That sounds like the only good thing about Maine is usually like down south, you know, it's thick as hell, and everything got thorns on it. Maine, you there's not you don't gotta deal with too many thorns. But when I say it's thick, it's so thick, and everywhere we hunt is swamp, so it's yeah, wet and oh my god, yeah. Yeah. Get a lot of walking bears. Like we don't they treat they treat half as much as we kill them in the road or walking. Right, right. Or in a hole. We had one get in a hole last year. That pretty good one. It was like 300 pound sow. First day of the week. We had it was literally the first bear we killed, and it was one of the better ones. Put a dog in there and they started walking it, started walking it, turned one of them ploths in there and started getting it, you know, getting it getting it stirred up. And then that motherfucker went in a hole, but it was a hole, like it was a tiny hole. And Dickie, so Dickie stand on the road, he sends me and Cole in there with the hunters. This is like our first one of the year. We go in there, and they're sitting there all raised in hell, and there's just a little hole, no bigger than a five-gallon bucket, and it's like, there's no way. There's no there's no way that bear's in there. Pull the dogs back, we're sitting there trying to look in and trying to look in. You can't see nothing. Eventually started like really fucking with it, and that bitch started like hoofing and blowing at us. 300 pounds cow. So now we're trying to trying to kill it, trying to kill it. Well, it slips out the backside, runs, we got dogs tied back, so then we turn them back loose. They run it like another, uh, they didn't run it very far, way less than a half mile. They pull up treat again. And we haven't never really seen too many go in a hole, and sure as shit, it goes from one hole to another hole. So now we got it in a bigger root ball, get in there with the hunter and killed it right there coming out of the hole shot right between the eyes. But that I forgot, I think it was 280 pounds, 300 pounds style, but right off the rip, first day, opening day with the first hunters. That was a good good morale booster.

SPEAKER_00 42:15

Heck yeah. So what so what's a big bear up there for y'all?

SPEAKER_02 42:20

Oh, well, you'll hear about the 500 pounders and all that, but but we're way up north. So, I mean, like the average bear killed in Maine, believe it or not, would be like 150 pounds. Oh, really? These are bears that yeah, but these bears live way out in the middle of the fucking woods living on acorns and shit and not eating trash bear baits. Yeah. So, like, yeah, exactly, not eating trash. Because down in Connecticut, there's 600 I I would even go, I would even go ahead and say there's 700 pound bears in Connecticut, but they just live off dumpsters and shit like that, which ain't too hard to get fat off of.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Where's the where's the jumbo bears come from over? Is it Pennsylvania?

SPEAKER_02 43:01

No, well, yeah, Pennsylvania, but North Carolina, if you're a little dog, yeah, Hyde County, Hyde County, North Carolina on the damn on the coast.

SPEAKER_03 43:10

That's where they kill little whoppers.

SPEAKER_02 43:13

But I mean, you will hear about like there's a 500-pounder killed up around where we hunt. I forget who killed it, but it was a it was definitely a 500-pounder. But those are that's a giant for me and a 500-pounder. I gotcha. Your trophy, a trophy would be like a 250-pound bear is like that's an that's a real nice one.

SPEAKER_00 43:32

Yeah, that seems to be more common. Like, you like I've talked to a handful of guys out west, like Arizona, New Mexico, and and uh, you know, up that direction, and then I've I've had a guy on that was up from British Columbia, you know, and 250 is about your seems like your average type good bear, you know what I mean? Like you're you feel like, you know, I gosh damn. I I saw some guys post a picture of a bear the other day, and I was like, dude, like they tried to stretch it out and it still looks small. And I'm like, God, you show it. That's a cub. Like that's yeah, there's no way that sucker was there's no way it was a hundred pounds. Like it's there's no way.

SPEAKER_02 44:14

Like bear the bear bear hunters, man, bear bear hunters are the ones that give us, they'd be posting some shit that's like, man, I'm all for showing that. To your buddies around a campfire, but fuck dude. Do not don't post that shit on social media. Especially because yeah, of course the dogs are tearing it apart. They're all fucking bigger than it.

SPEAKER_01 44:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:38

Like, I'm not I'm not talking shit at all. I'm all for the dog, man. But don't post that shit on social media. Like, show your buddies that you hunt with, or like whatever. Motherfuckers that you know are gonna look at that and not be like, cry about it. Like, don't post that. You just give them ammo, bro. Like, I we used I hunted in Vermont a couple times, and they have they have some of the most worst anti hunters I've ever heard. Like, we posted a video of a bear, a bear that we treed and freed at that. Like, let the bear live. And we I I fucked up and tagged it as being in Vermont because it was one of the first, it was the first bear we ever treed in Vermont. So I not knowing any better, posted it, you know, tag Vermont in it. And they had a whole Facebook group of people that were messaging me the wildest. Oh, yeah. I know exactly what you mean. Exactly. And I'm like, come on, I'll never make that mistake again. That's social media is the devil, but at the same time, it's bad.

SPEAKER_00 45:45

Yeah, it's real bad. People like telling me they want my kids to die and uh want my dogs to eat my kids, and I'm like, Oh, because you out there in the middle of the woods not bothering nobody, just wild. Like, of all the things, like you want me, you want my kids to die? Like, god damn, that's pretty rough. Like, I can take an insult. You want to call me a whatever, but like you want my kids to die?

SPEAKER_02 46:12

Like, yeah, it's so it's so so unfair. You guys are lazy, and it's like, all right, motherfucker, how about I let you come on a free home hunt and you just fucking cool? Just hold my pocket the whole time. Yeah. And see how, see how goddamn lazy I am.

SPEAKER_00 46:29

Oh, well, that I can like I can take the lazy shit too. Like, oh, you don't you don't want to hunt, blah, blah. And I'm like, Dude, it's so much more work than if you only knew like what it takes to go into this, you would. That's why there's not very many houndsmen. That's why I uh, you know, the deer tracking deal over here has gotten very big, and I'm sure it's getting big everywhere. But um uh, you know, you know every year I'll have one or two or three guys pop up, hey, I'm tracking deer this year, and then the next year comes by and they're not doing anymore. Or the last one year, maybe two years, and then like, oh, and then they just fall off the face of the earth. And I'm like, he's like, what happened to such and such? You know, I thought it was. I was like, because it's fucking hard, dude. Like, it's not some deal where you can grab your little remote control drone and go fly around and find the shit. Like this is labor-intensive, no hours of sleeping. It's like it's not there's a reason why there's not very many people do it. Like it there, it's not because uh people don't want to do it, they'd love to do it, but they don't want to work for it and earn it.

SPEAKER_02 47:46

Well, that's like last night, like around here. Like I'm down in Connecticut working right now, and you can you can hunt coons pretty much as soon as turkey season's over, all night you can run coons. So I'll take my I'll take some bear dogs out there and let them coon hunt and stretch their legs and shit. Well, there's so many fucking bears that inevitably they're gonna get a hair. Yeah, you're going on a coon, huh? Right, and this year, so this is the first year I didn't go down to Florida, like I didn't go to go down to Florida this winter and hog hunt at all. So this is the first year in like 12 years I didn't go down there. So the dogs that I have that are used to hunting all winter chasing hogs, they literally just been I feel so bad. They just Yeah, but it's nothing I could do, but you know, life gets in the fucking way sometimes, and you gotta do what you gotta do. But yeah, so they've been cooped up as a motherfucker. So I'm like, I have to get them out there, and they're not used to running at night at all. Like they never even haul running. They never run them at night, but I was like, fuck it, we're going out at night, I gotta get them running. So I put my best track up, my best start dog down, and sure as shit, he'll he yell on a bear, I'm pretty sure. And but it's the first time he's been out since last October, so it's like nine o'clock when we dropped him, and he runs all the two miles, gets in behind some houses, pull up in the middle of this fucking neighborhood, and there's houses everywhere, and he's like 200 yards raising hell. And I'm like, I really don't want to be screaming and trying to tone him out of here where all these houses are. Sure and shit, he goes back the other way. And eventually got him out of there about like midnight, one o'clock. But you know, long story short, like I didn't plan on going out there and getting stuck in a let bullshit, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

SPEAKER_00 49:33

But you let you let the homie out of cell block six, like he's out of prison. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 49:39

What am I gonna do? Tone him? No, hell no, I'm not toning them. Let him run this motherfucker. And then eventually, when he did, he took the bear right across the road, right in neighborhoods, and I was like, we can't we can't let him keep going. So just sit there right in front of him, catching in the road, and he's looking at us like, hey, I'm right by I'm right behind him now. Like, why are you picking me up? But I got till July 1st when I can get up in Maine, and there's a little bit better, a lot more woods.

SPEAKER_00 50:12

Yeah, that's that's good. No, I g I uh I get it. You wanna you want to keep the dogs hunting, but like my my poor deer tracking dogs, god dang, man. I I just I don't do the whole mock trail shit in the offseason.

SPEAKER_02 50:30

Um mock trail that that uh that shit I feel like if they're I don't know, that ain't the same as a real trail. Like none of my shit with none of that fake face or anything like that.

SPEAKER_00 50:42

My main dog would not even do it. No, that's kind of where I'm at. It's like I get it, it's good for that puppy, but like you can't I mean I I so my main dog that I started got going and all the things, like when he he was kind of a late bloomer, he was probably two two before he did it, you know, and and I was putting on mock trails and and he just fucking didn't care. And I was like, Well, I'm gonna call another one. Here's number four in a row, you know, like god dang. Like, I feel you. I feel you. Yeah, yeah. When I text the I gotta, you know, like I said, one of those one of those old hounds when I call and I'm like, hey man, what are you? He's like, Ricky, it ain't real. And I was like, Well, yeah, I drugged the damn thing. I made the blood trail, I stamped the hooves in the fucking dirt, I did all the things. He's like, he ain't gonna do it. Like, he did it a couple times to appease you, and now he knows his bullshit because he's seen, he's seen real deer trails, he's seen live deer. He's not stupid. And I was like, okay, you know, and then that kind of opened up, you know, to be like, all right, I've got to be open-minded here. Like I'm I've ran through a couple dogs, like I'm trying, I have got to make a dog. I'm I'm the type, man. If I uh if I get my mind set, like it's gonna take a it's gonna take something wild to get me to stop until I've achieved my goal, right? Well, absolutely. When I was doing that deer is tracking, man, I'm going out of my way. I'm driving to South Texas, shooting Axis and Black Buck and shit during the off season. Just I'm doing everything I can to get the damn dog going. And you know, if it wasn't for some of these older houndsmen uh that you know, kind of like it's got, you know, like I said, give me that little that little bread crumb, that little cookie trail, that little just something. Like, hey, you know, think about this. It's like, you know, don't don't call the dog just yet, you know. Uh right, right, right. So I it's one of those deals, but like I I have a mind made, I have a mindset, and I'm you know, thank God I stuck it out because the dog turned out to be he may be the best dog I ever owned. Um and there's not very, you know, it's one of those deals that I could have gave up. Should have gave up. God dang, I mean it wasn't doing it wasn't doing it, and then finally when the light switch flipped, it was like, holy shit, just woke up a day's demon.

SPEAKER_02 53:29

That's the best exactly as soon as that day, because it's it's so noticeable when one's one switch, you know, as soon as one flips a switch. Like, so the plots I got real lucky with the line of plots that I got where I got hooked up with a wicked old timer. Got got his you know, he's like 70 years old. He got his shit and he got his shirt from Vaughn Plot back in the when he was like 16. Sells them all high dollar, but I got hooked up with him at the right time where he uh I got two dogs from him. Well, I didn't even get them from him. He had gave he had two plots that some boy had that hog hunting on them, but he didn't like them because they were open on a track. Imagine that. Yeah, so I had been trying to get some plots, and he was like, Hey, someone this old boy that I that has my dogs is trying to get rid of them because they bark on a track, and I was like, perfect, I'll take them. And they were like two year two years old, but they're from Florida. All they'd seen is damn hogs, and they ran them on hogs, and they were pretty good on hogs. As soon as I started putting them on bears, like they were good, but they wouldn't tree. Where they would they would not fucking tree. And as soon as it started getting to the point where I'd ran them on enough bears and they just would not tree, would not tree. They'd chase it all the way to the tree and then just try to relay like they're hog hunting, you know. Oh yeah, I'll go get another one.

SPEAKER_00 54:56

My job accomplished, let's go get another one.

SPEAKER_02 54:59

Yeah, like that, and that ain't working. So for I'm like, these motherfuckers don't tree. Like they're not gonna tree, they're not gonna tree. I need to get some shit that's gonna tree. As soon as I'm seriously looking for some tree dogs, I turn them, they go in and they start when they started treeing. As soon as they treed the first time, like I walked in there and like they're up there, they're on the wood, fucking raising hell, peeling bark off that motherfucker. And I'm like, ain't no way. Like, ain't no way. Like, I can't believe they're treeing right now. Well, now them are the hardest tree dogs I got. Like, it's yeah, it's crazy to me. One of the they're so they're litter mate brothers, Smokey and Rocky, and they're totally fucking different. Rocky's got a way better nose. You can put him down and start him on one. Smokey, I mean, he's got he's got for a hound, he ain't got shit for a nose, but he's got a decent nose, but he not compared to his brother. But you can as far as like a a cut-in dog or something like that, you know, like a pack dog, right? If you can hear them dogs running and they're running a bear or whatever, if if you if you can hear them, you pull Smokey out of the box and hold him for a second. If that's some bitch turns his head, like you know, does a little head tilt. I don't care if they're 10 miles away. If he if he can hear them, he's cutting to him. Yeah. And he's he's a he's good, like that's a rough bastard. Like when he gets a stopper. Uh-huh. Yeah, he's fixing a bite something. It don't matter what it is, he's fixing a bite something. So, like you were saying, how dog some dogs that are different, they'll just compliment each other. Them two, them two's the perfect pair for what I could do whatever I want with just them two. That's fine. Just because of how you know I got one that'll start one pretty good. Like he nothing too crazy, but like an eight or a ten-hour track. I'm pretty pretty confident he's gonna scrub it up. And then as soon as you know there he's he's started and running it, turn his brother in there with him, and the two of them together. Yeah, I don't know if you've ever seen it where two dogs will feed off of each other. The two of them together will get real rough, real fast. The more wild it gets, the more they they fucking like it.

SPEAKER_00 57:22

Yeah, it's good and bad. It's so for for me on the deer tracking deal. If I run two, it's it usually ends up in longer races, broken bays, and fucked up dog bites.

SPEAKER_02 57:35

Yeah, see, because they're that's what they're not. They weren't like they were alright for hog hunting, but just like you said, that they would counterproduct everything. Because I got this dog Chucky, that's uh really my best nose that I got. He's not related to anything else I have. He was the first he was he's more like a backyard bred plot hound, but he's got a wicked good nose. He's wicked fucking rough. He's got he's scarred up from his head to his ass, almost been three-legged. But the only reason he got three-legged, three-legged is because I turned them other two plots in there, and then they get in there and get rowdy, and then he wants to get rowdy, and he ain't near as athletic bill as into, so he can't get out of the way enough. So he got he got cut in his front leg so bad that you can see the bone all the way to his bone. And uh I brought him to the vet, and they were like, Yeah, we gotta cut his leg off. So they scheduled to cut his leg off for like two days. The morning I'm supposed to take him to get his leg cut off, because he was like dragging his foot on the top of his paw, you know, like wasn't even using it. Um the morning I went to bring him, I was gonna bring him to get his leg cut off, that's when they started running not running around, but you know, throwing his paw out right away, putting weight on it, running, running regular, and I was like, I was like, we gonna hold off on this damn surgery. But so now he's he's got all four legs, but man, that damn sword does hinder him bad. He can't he wow that's the biggest biggest thing that fucked me on my bear dogs right now. If he was because he's young, he's only three years old. Yeah. If he was full blown four legged and didn't like he can't stay in the race rail, he'll he'll fall, he gets so slow just uh walking on that thing. But he's got so much you can't take that out of a dog. He's got so much drive and just wants to go the whole time. Like if you don't get in front of him and catch him, you ain't you ain't catching him. He's going. And then I got a bunch of young pretty much all my shit's under the I got them three older dogs and everything else is two years old or younger right now. And they just started cranking the end of bear season last year and then took all winter off. So now I gotta hopefully they'll just be right back where they were, but I got two English dogs that are young and two plot hounds, uh, four plot hounds that are about two, gonna be two and a half when I start running them here in a couple weeks. Okay. Two of them, and I got two that's never seen a bear yet. I just picked up this winner, so we'll see what they do. I got one that sure enough looks like he can run like a run like a track star. Yeah. But he's a fucking mean bastard. I ain't got him in the woods yet, but just run the dog pens. If I he's yeah, one of them fucking ignorant ones that likes fighting and shit. Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:48

My main dog, my main good dog, bro. He's he's as gentle as can be around the kids. But if a dog fucking shows teeth, it's game over. Like he's he's not, he don't play no games. Like I mean it's like to a fault, you know. It's like, God dang, can you just not? Like, can you just fucking stop? And it's not like a body break up, bro. It's not like a oh hell no, it's not like something you just go in there and and hit him with a shovel, but it don't work. Like you've got to you have to literally choke him out or that's the only way I've been able to get him apart is to choke him the fuck out. Uh which I'm sure that's pretty common, but it's like, God dang, man, like can you just chill the fuck out? Like, no, it's not necessary. Like, I get it, you're a badass. Like, calm down. Like, it's we don't have to prove anything anymore. Like, shit.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:48

Well, I had it, I had it pretty good before I went and got these two new ones. I'd have I'd have my pens split up where I could put I'd have five males that I could turn out all on the ground and they could all be like together. And everybody every time I post a story with all them some bitches like laying up, sunbathing or some shit. People say, How do you have all them fucking males in there about a fight? I don't know, you gotta get on their ass early about fighting.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:15

I don't yeah. Some guys say that you know, and I he was my first dog, and I didn't run any mails with him, but then I I got a male that I and I got him at a year old, and Huck was probably three. Bro, they hunted together, they were they were ranked, like two rank. I couldn't hunt them together because they've they'd be stretching the like a deer out, and the deer would be very alive, and uh and this wasn't good. It wasn't it wasn't good for business. Everybody's getting fucking wrecked. And uh, but one day, you know, they they got into a fight, and of course I'm at work, and uh my wife calls me and she's like, hey, Red and Huck are fighting. I'm like, okay, well, you know, do what you can, break them apart. She's like, babe, I I've I've hit them with a shovel. I pulled up my phone, I pulled out my pistol, I shot near them just to scare them. I've put water, I've got the water hose out, I've drenched them, I've stuck it in their throats. Like, they're not stopping. And I was like, God dang, like that's my two best dogs, is you know, and and oh yeah. I call I had to call a buddy, and dude, they went on for 30 minutes or half an hour before my buddy could get over there, and I get there and he's like, bro, I pull up to your house, your wife's in her robe out here trying to beat the dogs with a shovel. There's blood fucking everywhere, like they wheeze. Like, it's this is the absolute shit show. Luckily, he had he's owned pit bulls his own life, so he kind of knew what to do. But he kind of broke apart, and it was like, I mean, they were fucked up for a month. Like, I mean, just broke their teeth off. I mean, we don't know how many staples. Yeah, there was an if he wouldn't have shut up, one of them would have died, you know, and it's a miracle that one of them didn't die in that time span. But it's like but that being said, like that fucking game in them, man. That's that those dogs don't want to quit, man. And I think it I don't want a dog that's an asshole around the house, but god dang, man, like some of those asshole dogs are the the are the fucking wounds, yes, man. Yeah, yeah, like but they're the ones that you can't run other shit with.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:35

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:37

It is, it is what it is, but they're a solo dog, they're badass.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:41

But yeah, and then our problem is being guides, you got these people that are paying paying for once, and they don't even like, you know, you're trying to turn dogs out to start a starter bear off of the bait, and every fucking dog in your box is trying to get out. They don't even like you having to slap one in the face and tell them to get back. Like, like you know what I mean? You gotta kind of watch what you do the whole fucking time.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:06

Well, yeah, and you're you're you're displaying houndsman's ship for them that's never seen it, or maybe they have, but like you're what they're gonna think about every time somebody asks them about hound hunting. And if a vote comes through and they wanna ban hound hunting, they're gonna think about that time they went with you bear hunting. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:28

So you kind of gotta keep and we have a like up here, we have a limit where you can only put six dogs in on chasing a bear at a time. Which is so fucking stupid, especially during training season. Like, man, I need I need like six of my good dogs in there, and then I need to be able to turn three or four puppies into a tree, at least. There need to be some kind of rule for that, but because that's how I that's how I start all my puppies. I don't really have to uh you just bring them hunting and right that's pr that's pretty much a surefire way to show them. Like as soon as your dogs pull up tree and you're walking into a tree, turn them puppies out.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:04

Let them come in there with you. Will you do that? When you do that, will you come in on the track end so they have to like maybe possibly smell that pot trail?

SPEAKER_02 1:06:13

Yeah, I try to, but at the same time, there's you know, you got them. Not always gonna happen. Yeah, they're just go they're going to the rough. Either that or a lot of times, depending on how young you're trying to get them in there, if they're too Too young, you're another kind of just Yeah, you just want to go see a bear. There's no such thing as too young, but they're too young to be expecting something out of that. If they're under a fucking year old, man, in my eyes at least, I'm sure some people think differently, but if they're under a year old, you can't really be expecting too much out of them. If they'll go to a tree and start treeing, or go to a tree and be curious, or still some sort of come into something and they'll go like as much as it sucks, like I can't tell you the amount of times I've had a bear come across the road and pack the puppy in and it do great for a while and then come up hung up like two and a half miles in some shithole, then you gotta go in there and get them. That's why if you want you gonna buy a finished dog, that's why you're paying fucking top dollar for it. Because all that bullshit that comes before. Yeah. So like we we don't really have too much trouble with them trashing on deer, but moose, oh my fucking god. You want to talk about if you got if you got one that likes a moose, buddy, god damn, you got your work cut out for me right from the start.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:45

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:47

Hell yeah. You can smell them rotten, especially they're rut or something. They stink, they fucking stink, and they're slow and they're easy to bae, and they're like they're fun. If you're a young dog, I'm very fun. Hell yeah. But they're all you know, they're also dangerous as fuck. You get stomped, you get your best dog stomped out by a moose.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:14

I can only imagine. There ain't too much to trash on up there besides the the very rare occasional deer and moose. Moose is the fisher cats. We'll have them trash on fisher cats. We've had them last year. We had a damn good screaming tree. I'm talking I'm talking like that, sounded good. And we walked all the way across this little half-ass bog. Thank god it was dry and not still wet. We walked across this big ass bog and get up in there. We got pay-in hunters with us, and I'm looking up in the tree, and these dogs are absolutely hammering. And I could I see I thought it was a cub, but I was like, and then I look at it again, I was like, oh fuck, I saw this goddamn fisher can. I was like, Cole, we need to I said, just look up there. Take the hunters back now. You don't fuck up. Yeah, these motherfuckers got frisky on some big ass fisher can up there.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:16

I had uh I have this the the deer tracker dog, right? I I broke him off of pigs, you know, took a few, like he bait up some pretty good boars whenever we were deer tracking dogs.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:28

That's gonna be a fucking challenge, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:09:31

It's bad.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:32

You got hog dogs, you got your hands, you got your hands tied trying to break them off deer, because you got deer acting rats, and then if you want a deer dog, you got fucking hogs everywhere.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:42

Like I've got a you say that I've got a deer walking across my fucking yard right now. Um I'm looking at the pasture and I've got a pond dam and there's a deer walking across it, but uh there'll be a big walker across it. Like the tree. Oh, that's my god dang, and I've got I've had a couple guys on here and it's gonna happen. I've just the problem is, well, it's deer season here and it's deer season there, dude. I'm I'm stretched very thin near deer season here. So if I could do it, it would have to be later in the year. Uh but like I've had a handful of guys like, come on, man, come on, like, dude, you if I come for a weekend, do you know how much money I'm losing? Like it's uh Yeah, it's a big deal. So I've gotta if I can break free and like if there was a way to go in like January when it starts to slow down for me, then that would be I'm like I'm gonna do it. It's just a it's just a matter of time, but I'm gonna it's gonna have to be where I'm like, all right, screw it. I'm not gonna make any money this weekend, but it'll be worth the experience kind of deal.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:44

So yeah, it's definitely oh hell yeah, especially in Florida. I'm I didn't do as well as I did hogs, but at least five years of because a lot of times when it's deer season, they don't want you hog hunting a lot of these places where we're allowed to hunt. So we got I got some buddies that got some sure enough deer dogs, and that it's it's it's it's definitely different. Like you're it's not your average hound hunt. Like them deer get a good lead a lot of times. So until you get used to the fact that the deer could be like half a mile ahead, and when they come across the road, they're clearing the road in one fucking jump. Yeah. That takes a long time to get good at killing deer in front of a dog. It's definitely different. Uh I want to do it. Oh, it's definitely 10 out of 10. If you if especially if you like it, it's a lot more houndy than right, right, right. You know what I'm saying? They're they're open the whole time. It's just it yeah, talking. Like that's some of the best races you could ever listen to. Cause they just turn into a fucking pile of them and they're just all them open pines. We'd hunt a lot of Appalachia Cole up north in big pines, and you can see forever, and you'd listen to you know, 10, 12 headed dogs coming in there talking every breath, every step. It sounds damn good. I can see that being uh a rush.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:13

I've especially if you got couple of videos, and it's like uh, dude, I would love a passing shot, especially babe. Uh I don't know where it was, I don't know the story behind it, but like a dude shot like a hundred and eighty something ounce deer behind dogs, and that would be a freaking lifelong dream. You know what I mean? No, even like even a 130 worth of oh if I shot a spike, I'd be stoked. But I'm just saying, like, can you imagine shooting a freaking boon crocket behind dogs?

SPEAKER_02 1:12:44

Holy shit. Yeah, I feel you. Yeah, the first one I like, especially because you'll shoot well, at least for me, shit. I shot at 50, 60 of them before I finally hit one. I finally hit one. That first one you kill in front of the dogs, you're like, dude, like you said, low four point. Might as well find one. Might as well abandon one. Yeah, hell yeah. It's hard. They come across there full speed, like and a lot of times we just use rifles, semi, you know, automatic rifle, and yeah. That's that's that is some of the funnest shit I've ever done, especially because the deer dog is a big group thing. So yeah, the camaraderie behind it seems so badass.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:31

Yeah, that was a big part to me.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:35

Me too. That's my favorite part. That's why I do it, is for for that right there. Especially I mean, I like bear hunting by myself when I have to, but yeah, it ain't got shit when all three of us are hunting together. Because especially when we when we got hunters, and there's a lot of hunters in camp, we'll have to split up and go hunt. Usually me and Cole will stick together, but we don't get to hunt with old Dickie that too often. He'll take his dogs and go get his own. Is that the old man? Yeah, he's he's he's the OG. That he has taught me so much. Oh I we call him Duda. Oh Dicky Doo-Dah. That's so he's fucking ate up with it. He's he ain't no old man. He can't.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:17

That's the guy we gotta get on here.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:19

Absolutely. Honestly, he's yeah, that man, he's taught me more about a dog than he realized. Just yeah, I owe him everything. Honestly. He took me under his wing.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:32

You need to get up there to bear camp and pour him a drink and then just plug him on the phone and don't even tell him recording. Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:40

Because if you tell him, he won't want to do it. Exactly. Yeah, he's you already know him. Uh-uh, I already doing that shit. Uh-oh. Yeah, fucking baggage.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:49

He fucking kids recording shit. Gosh damn it. I get it. It is stupid, but guess what? Some people like to hear it. I fucking love hearing it.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:00

Like, yeah, he but he is a hell of a dog man for sure. He too he has taught me a lot. I don't know. Yeah, he gave me my only opportunity I've ever had. He took me in from nobody.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:11

Well, a lot of people don't have an opportunity to get with the old crusty son bitch like that. And why is it? Exactly. Like, I'm when I did the deer tracking deal, like I had some older dudes that I talked to, but like I didn't get to go. I didn't get to go with them. Like, I didn't get to go see it. They were just like, I'd call and I'd probably just annoy the piss out of them and be like, here's what I did today, sir. What do you think? And they're like, uh, you're a dozen, you know, like blah, blah, blah.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:39

It's like cool, but gosh damn.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:43

If I could just gone with them, you know, and and seen it and learned it. But they don't want to drag your ass with them either. No, you know, and I don't blame them. I don't I don't want to drag anybody with me half the time either. I oh yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:58

I can do it. But gosh damn, like those crusty guys, they've they've forgot more about hound hunting than I'll ever know. Especially just the little shit.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:08

Like I the first year I was guiding with them, I blew my transmission midseason, so I would hop in with either one of them. Even Cole. Some bitch is only 21 years old, but he, you know, forever. Exactly. He came out of the womb with the fucking dog. So even like he he he probably don't even know, but that he's taught me a lot more than most people without even thinking about it. But I'd have to get in one of their trucks when I had blown my transmission, like you said, just the little shit that they don't even think about, like, oh like trees and shit. Like look at look at this fucking stray fucking uh oak tree that's dropping acorns. That's where you can like when the bait oak and that's where they like. Yeah, like that and that's where we can get on a bear when the bait stop hitting, and you fucking keep all that shit in your head, and then all of a sudden you're the fucking old man. You're the crusty son bit for too long. Yeah, yeah, exactly. But there's two there's two I got you know, Cole, he's 21, but he's you know, he's been doing it forever, but he's 21 in dog ears though, too. Exactly, yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:20

But yeah, for sure. Those are the guys you gotta those are the guys you gotta have a mentor. I I uh you know, but you've also you've got to you've gotta go get you gotta go feed on the ground and figure the shit out too.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:36

Oh yeah, absolutely. They wouldn't keep me around unless I was fucking, you know, helpful in some damn way. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:43

Well that you gotta go out by yourself and just learn this shit by yourself. Be like, oh damn, like uh Dwayne used to tell me about this thing, and that makes sense now. Oh shit, you know? Or like I'll be yeah, I don't get to holler to a lot of people, but like um the deer trekking deal, I've gone and I've got one buddy north of me, Taylor Bell, and a couple times we have gotten to like we kind of covered southern Oklahoma. Now he's pretty much taking the shit over. I used to, I used to track all of it before he was around, but dude, he pested the shit out of me for a couple of years. He's a hand, he's been a houndsman longer than I have ever been, but he never did the deer tracking deal. And and uh, you know, it's funny he he got going, and of course, the sun bitch, he makes a dog first time, first try, you know, and but he like I said, he grew up, he grew up around dogs. And uh yeah, exactly. It's just regular shit. He had a head start, but it was like it was funny because he's asking me questions, and the next dude, I ain't shitting you. The very first season he tried to track for the public, he tracked more deer than I ever found in my in my ever in a year, and I was like, you motherfucker, like how in the hell? And then I'm like, Well gosh, he's a dog man, you know what I mean? He's uh he was raised as a dog man. I was not you know, I was raised around labs and shit. We had bird dogs, but like nothing, nothing where I grew up learning all those things, and uh yeah, exactly. And I'm like, and I was like a little bit jealous. I'm like, gosh damn it, this son of a bitch has come up. He's got a one-year-old dog and he's found more deer than I have with my four-year-old dog, you know, and then I was like, you know what? It's freaking awesome! Like he's asking me questions, and I kind of helped guide his path on because there's a lot of stuff that goes in the trailing with the deer stuff, like sign, like the shot sign, the deer, the deer's action, the deer's movement, the way the blood looks, the way whatever humans have done to that track after they shot the deer. Like, there's a lot that goes into it. And I did know that stuff, like, but I, you know, I learned it over time. So it's like I kind of I kind of influenced, you know, when what how long to wait or you know, what you should do. But then his his experience with dogs, it was like rocket speed. The son of a bitch is over here doing it like almost immediately. And I'm like, God almighty. And it's cool to watch, but like getting back to hunting with people, like there's a few times out of the year where it'll be like a weekend where we're both off. And he's like, Man, I got two tracks here, and I've got two tracks there, and we'll just tag up and we'll we'll go all day together. And he's like, All right, you drop your dog on this one, and I'll drop my dog on this one. Next one we'll drop both dogs on, because in Texas you can run a couple dogs, in Oklahoma, you can only run one, and there's gotta be a leash and a bunch of gay shit. Um but when we come to Texas, it's kind of wheels off. We'll like drop both dogs or whatever, and um it's I've had more fun just trailing with him and like picking his brain, and then and then now that I'm doing the hog dog and stuff, I've been hunting with a buddy over here west of me, Cody Hess, and uh he's pretty accomplished. You know, he's found he's he's a he's a hog dogger, you know, and it's it's been cool hunting with him the last two years because it's like you know, you see what a real uh a dog a proven dog does versus my dogs, and then like my dog might pull some wild hair out of its ass and get a pig bait by itself, and his dogs were off hunting another pig or whatever, and he was like, well, damn, you know, and it's it's cool to do it and then like be out there talking about doing it. That makes sense. Like, like what just what just happened? Like, what just happened right then? And you're like, uh well shit, the maybe this is what happened. Uh you know, it's just cool when you're able to talk about it while you're out doing it.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:47

Yeah, and it's but like when I came up, uh like if whenever I first started hog hunting, uh Mr. Andy, he would he had the dogs and I would just ride with him, and I was you know the one that went in there and caught the hog and shit. But then as soon as I started getting my own pack, and then it's like, yeah, now we both got dogs, and like you said, we'll split up and go hunt our own shit. As soon as you split up and you start catching shit with your own pack of dogs by yourself, especially when you're hunting with the guy that taught you how to do it. And yeah, and you can't beat that. And that's that's the that's the high of all highs when you're a dog, when you got dogs, your your your dogs start actually producing, and you can take just your dogs and do whatever you want with them. It is like you said, now you're the crusty old man. Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:39

Oh well, I ain't there yet. I might be with the deer team. Neither, but with the hog dog and stuff, it's it's funny because like uh the other night I went up and met Rusty, the guy that's west of you, uh west of your buddy in Marietta. And um his dogs are all half crippled and shit. They got on a Ray Cog a couple weeks ago, blah, blah. Let's go. So I bring my dogs and we go up there and you know, 30 minutes in, my two, and he had he had another dog that was got wrecked out several months ago and has been laid up for several months. He's like, I'm gonna bring him, and then you run your two and we'll we'll make some shit happen. I'm like, all right, cool. He's like, but my main dogs are they're laid up. They're not, they're pretty, they're pretty banged up. And I was like, all right, cool, whatever. So we go and we strike a pig and they run and they did, they made a good race. Uh it wasn't it wasn't nothing crazy. They probably went, I don't know, three quarters of a mile with it and then got lost and blah, blah, blah. Well, we're like, I'm like, damn it, man. You know, if we'd have had his dogs, we'd have caught that pig, probably, you know, and but then again, you don't know, like, you know, sometimes things are smarter. A lot of times they are, you know. And we uh we love dogs, went to a different spot, and um, we're road kind of, and his dog was kind of out of shape, so he went ahead and put him up, and I just keep kept running my two. Well, we get out ahead and they they hit a trek and uh come off the road and then they go, and I'm like, hey, I want I want to go look at that trail. Like there's a hog trail there. I like, I like I'm kind of big on if they hit a trail, like I want to go see what it looks like. I want to know, I want to know if I can see something that they smell. Does that make sense? Like I want to like so like there was a fence right there. Well, I'm gonna go look at that fence. Well, sure enough, I go up there and there's wet mud on the fence. And I'm like, oh fuck yeah, like this thing's come through here in the last hour, you know? Well, they go 400, turn around and come back, and I'm like, you worthless sons of bitches. Like, you know, and here I am with a a two-year-old and a three-year-old that have only been hunting for one year total, you know. Well, we uh I go and I'm like he's like, Well, what do you think? I was like, dude, I said, when I'm deer tracking and a dog stops, but I know they're trailing, like I will go to the end of that trail and kick that dog further down the trail. And he was like, Yeah, you know, and he he's the type uh he wants to sit back and make the dogs do everything. And I get that I get that. Like I totally understand that. But like when I've got a young dog, like I'll, you know, if they need me to come and like give them a little kick in the ass, confidence booster, 500 yards from the truck, like I'll I'll fucking go do it. I don't care. Like, I'm gonna go and try. So I went down there and we walked 400, 500, just me. I was like, man, just stay here. I'm gonna, I'm just gonna go kick these dogs. I'm gonna see if me coming down track will push them further. He's like, yeah, whatever. You know, he thinks I'm a goober, and I and I probably am, but I kicked him down and of course they went another 500 and uh hit this hit this low water spot, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Can't get it squared away, can't get it lined out. So I'm like, well, fuck, we ran the track a thousand yards. Like the hog was hog was moving pretty good, hasn't stopped. Uh, you know, maybe the track's older than I think. I don't know. I the the wet, the mud was shiny, so it looked wet. And you could you could tell by the way it crested over the bob bar, that bottom wire, that they were going that direction. You know what I mean? Um and and the and the deer and the dogs went that way. So I'm you know, I wanted to I wanted to believe them. Well, once I saw the way that mud was crested over the top of that low bob bar, I was like, oh yeah, for sure. That deer, that that that hog went this way. Well, we get back to the truck, and he's like, I got half a mind to go get some good dogs. And I was like, man, you don't have to do that. Like, that's late, like it ain't a big deal. My dog suck, and it just is what it is. He's like, nah, we catching a pig tonight. And I'm like, okay. So we drive, go load up his get his good dogs, and they're about half cripple. One's got bit by a rattlesnake, one's fucking fucked up by a pig, blah, blah, blah. And he's like, Where did where did you end up? Where did that, where'd your dog end up trailing? And I was like, well, she ended up, you know, half a mile this direction, blah, blah, blah. He's like, all right, cool. I'm gonna, I'm gonna dump these dogs downwind of where your dog finished. And I was like, I mean, you you do you, dude. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. Well, he kicked some dogs out, and no bullshit, they fucking roll right over there to that trail, and they run another 500 yards to the east of where my dog stopped, bam, bae's solid. And I'm like, oh my god, like this. I'm not trying to prove anything, and Rusty knows the dogs are young, so it's not like a dick measuring contest. Like, he don't care, and I don't care. I don't, I'm not embarrassed. It's not like I'm paid, I don't, it's not like I got paid hunters there, but it was crazy to see that difference, you know. Well, they're baited and they're uh whatever, eight hundred yards in the road. So we we start cruising in there, and he's like, Man, the dogs are pretty beat up. You think your pups would go to the bay? And I'm I'm like, well, fuck yeah. Like we can hear them. He's like, well, fucking dump them. Dump them. You know? So we dumped them. Yeah, yeah. Dump them in there. Dump the other two. Well, you know, we're we're downwind and they're they're baited at 500. So they they they stroke, they roll. Right in there gonna hammer it. Yeah, sit yeah. Well, it was funny because Rusty don't really give a shit about the Garmin too much. He's more like listening. Like it's one of those deals. Yeah, yeah. He don't even have the map card in his fucking garment, you know? Yeah. I'm watching, he goes, Are they there yet? And I said, No. He goes, What do you mean? I said, dude, when that fucking plot gets there, you're gonna know that she's there. He's like, what do you mean? I said, just stand by. Just wait. Just stand by. Well, by God, you know, about a minute later, she, or whatever, my name is that, but 30 seconds later, she gets there and it's yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo. And he's like, oh yeah, you're in line. She's there. I say, you can talk shit about them dogs, you don't like them, or nobody, you know, whatever you want, but gosh damn, they sound fucking good on a babe, boy. It's a whole different sound, you know, and it's there's a difference between the running, you know, open on a track and when she's looking at one, gosh damn, dude, it's a whole different, it's a whole different sound. So whenever you were talking about your dog, what uh that jab dog, you know, whenever he's on the jump and he's making that squeak, like it's a it's a you know, and I knew, and then he was like, oh yeah, you ain't lying. That that bitch is located, like there, she's there, yeah, you know. But it was it was funny. It was like you get to see what a hog dog is, and then what I've got that I'm trying to turn into a hog dog. You know, I've got I've got dogs that'll find pigs within a few hundred yards, but I don't have hog dogs. Uh so it was it was cool seeing that, and then and then letting them go in there and get bait and caught a decent little 180-pound boar or whatever. Uh and it was out in the wide open too. It was out in the wide open plow field, which is you know, it's at night, so it wasn't like you could see it. But you know, when we got there, I was like, are they bait up in that plow shit? He goes, Oh, fuck yeah. I was like, okay. That's that wide open country, you know, we were talking about.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:53

Right, right, for sure. Yeah, the biggest hog I ever caught in Florida was we didn't weigh it, but I bet that bitch was every bit of 375, big, big red bitch with big teeth. And that I had that Jap dog. I had uh no, uh-uh. Oh bar, okay, okay. Okay. It was a bar. But we had Jap and two of my hounds in there, and they went in there and they just blew out of there straight line and barking the whole every time. My buddy had let me tell his old an old dog that was a hawk, you know, sure enough hog dog, and he's like, tur turn her in there and see if she you know, because like I said, Jaff was bad about running a deer, and they just blew out of there dead straight, barking every breath, just getting with it. And I was like, it sounds good, but I was like, I don't know about that. He said, Turn Jesse in there and see what she does. So they're they had already they're leaving the country at that point. So I turned her out. She gets in there, gets right out of their track, and just goes the same way, which is way behind, way behind. I'm like, Well, she's taking the same line. Well, then some bitches pull up fucking treed, and they're like a mile and a half from me, and you could just hear it, it's just like you say, it's fucking going nuts. Jesse goes all the way to her when she pulls up treed, and I'm like, oh shit. I'm like, it's that's a hundred percent a hog if she's in their belly. And it's all hot, like just palm and flats, all sand, dry as a bone, dry as a bone, and then the one spot that's got this little like uh it's only like a hundred yards across it, piece of water. I'll go walking up there and it's it sounds as loud as I've ever heard anybody in my life. I peek up over the top and I look in there, and that sort of they have that sort of bitch sat down and all right in his face, just like he said, I'm like, God damn it. Usually the plots would catch any like if they got a date. No, hell no, they weren't catching that. So I call Andy. I'm like, I said, I need a catch dog. He's like, What do you got? And I'm like, the biggest fucking hog I've ever seen. Like, I swear to god, like he's a fucking giant. Well, I sat there for like 40 minutes waiting for him, and that was the coolest. Like, they sat there just right, like he he was trying to bluff them and run them off, and they were getting right back in his face right off their bay. I watched that for 40 minutes. Oh, damn, that's awful. Finally got a catch dog in there, and we caught it. And yeah, I literally I just got him back from the taxidermist giant red bitch with giant teeth. Not quite three inches, but just shy of three inches, big ass teeth on it. Oh hell yeah. He was a as soon as I came up over that hill and looked in there, I was like, oh my fucking god. That's a real guy. Yeah, the guy had a that's a big bastard right there. That's yeah, that's the biggest hog I've ever caught in my life with anyone's shit for sure. You got a video of that one, don't you, on your page? Oh yeah, yeah, I got a couple videos of him on my page. I got like I said, he was baited in there for 40 minutes. So I'll just yeah, I have a bunch of videos. And he was like red with that blonde on the top. Yeah, he was yeah, badass looking son of a bitch.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:23

Real deal.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:23

Did he have his nuts or was he a bar? No, he was a bar. He was a bar. So you got somebody down there that's hunting around there. Everybody. Everybody I know cuts hogs. Yeah, for sure. Like it. Hundreds.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:48

That's they don't they never haul a boar hog out of the woods, they cut them all. Yeah, yeah, that's if you got the hands to do it, a lot of times it's just me and the boys or whatever, and I've got it's just not gonna happen. Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:04

But yeah, we're all we're all young. Yes. Yes, mid-20s to 30-year-olds, we're cutting them. Yeah, um I get it. I totally get it. Especially out there in the swamps, I've been stuck in a tree more times than I can count, cutting them and jumping off them, climb up a tree, and that's some bitch not leaving. Yeah, I've been stuck in a tree for a long time before.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:29

What do you will you tie up a catch dog or what? Or will you even run a catch dog?

SPEAKER_02 1:35:34

So you no, we'll run a catch dog, and usually usually it's me because I'm the Yankee. They'll uh be all right, you good? We'll fuck they walk all the dogs out and they'll leave me alone for the session. Yeah, I gotcha. You're gonna turn the last man standing. Yeah, exactly. So a lot of times if you're in there and treat, you're by yourself. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:35:55

Deal with the consequences.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:57

Yeah. I've never been uh I've had my I've had my hands bit a couple times before. Like my I got my thumb bit pretty good last two years ago. Bit the top of my thumb off. Uh never really got I never really got cut cut like I've seen some of my buddies get filleted the fuck open.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:17

Yeah, no.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:18

But now I'm basically just full full-time bear dogs. I don't I don't I won't be able to hog hunt like I used to. Hopefully I'll get like one or two weeks a year, but it's pretty much strictly bear dogs from here out.

SPEAKER_00 1:36:32

Tell tell me about the tell me about the season and how all that shit works if somebody wanted to come bear hunting with you.

SPEAKER_02 1:36:40

Yeah, so we got we actually have some spots open right now if any like if anyone wants to do a hound hunt. Uh so hound season, um it's just the first two weeks of bear season is say like I think it's like August 25th. There's two weeks of hunting with which is just people sitting in tree stands over bait, which is honestly that's good for the hound hunting, because that just trains all them big fucking giant bears to not come till the middle of the night to the bait. And uh so opening day for for hound season kill season is usually like September 7th around that deal, and it goes all the way till pretty much the first of November. Um pretty sure we got we're pretty we got almost all of October open. Uh and you can you come it's a six-day hunt, you get your own cabin, full-time cook, you eat good the whole time. It's not like some bullshit. You get home cooked meals the whole time you're there. Pretty hard to beat, honestly.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:46

Six-day hunt. So getting a tag is it do you is it over the counterhouse?

SPEAKER_02 1:37:52

Yeah, over the yeah, over the counter. I think it'll cost you like a hundred and eight hunting license and a bear tag for out of state or like 180 bucks. 185 bucks or another.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:01

What are y'all what do y'all charge for what y'all do?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:04

For a fully got it's 3,800 bucks. Well, like I said, you get your own, you get a fully furnished fucking cabin with a bed. We got a full-time cook. You can eat as much food as you can stuff down your throat, all whatever you can. No booze, but every anything else but booze, we got soda, whatever. Bring your own whiskey, bring it over. We don't give a fuck what you bring. But and we're we're pr we yeah, whatever it's it's it's you can't go wrong when you come with us. We pretty laid back about whatever the fuck you want to do. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:38:41

I like that. Well, y'all so whenever during that, are y'all running at night or are y'all running near the day?

SPEAKER_02 1:38:48

No, no, no, right in the day daylight always. Gotcha. Just start at daybreak. And the only reason that's a safe day hunt is because you can't hunt on Sunday in Maine. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Which is fucking it's a crocus shit, but from where I'm gonna do it. Yeah, there's a couple places up there like that, right? Yeah, almost most estates around here are like that. But for a for a hunter it sucks, but when you're doing what we do, that's Sunday with no hunting. Yeah, yeah, you need that day off, boy. Especially because we got like I said, we got camps and all that, so you're doing laundry and getting everything. Like we're when I say you get three meals, three meals a day, we're not talking like fucking peanut butter and deliberate like you get steak, shepherd's pie.

SPEAKER_01 1:39:34

We all have it.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:35

Yeah, exactly. Like you're gonna be able to do it. Oh, yeah, not his old lady. We gotta we got an old cook, we call her Grant. Her name is Gloria, she's the best lady I've ever met.

SPEAKER_00 1:39:48

I ain't never met a lady named Gloria that can't cook good.

SPEAKER_02 1:39:51

She all she does is cook all day. It doesn't matter. She's getting up at three. She works harder than all of us in camp. She's up at three in the morning cooking breakfast. We get over there, hung over from the next day. You got a whole buffet, eggs, bacon, the whole whatever you can think of. We it's it's laid out, ready for you to go. Then she's got sandwich meat, you make your own lunch, bring with you, snacks, everything you'd ever fucking want. It's all inclusive. That's badass, dude.

SPEAKER_00 1:40:21

I wish I've got a, and eventually I'm going to. Like, I must flow down on the deer tracking, but god dang, dude, it's such a I make I make a pretty good little lick, you know, during deer season. And it's like, but that's when everybody else is hunting too. And I really want to go experience like what you're doing. I want to go do the deer dogs. I wanna, I wanna go to freaking Utah and Tria Mountain Lion. Like, I wanna do all these things, and I'm gonna, it's gonna happen. I don't know when. I'm still I you know, and I get I feel it's weird because like I've built I've built a little reputation or whatever around here, and and it's like I almost my wife's like, why do you answer the phone 24-7? You know, why do you do these things like well, gosh damn, like I've worked so hard for this reputation. I've worked so hard to make a dog. I've worked, I've done so much stupid shit to get to where I come. Like I'm gonna like I I feel like I feel like I yeah, man. I just I feel like I owe it to answer the phone and blah blah goddamn, she fucking hates deer season, dude. I'm on my phone. 24-7, dude. Yeah, but you love it. Like I love it. The problem is I'm addicted to it, but I'm also it's funny, it's like you're making money doing what you like and I love.

SPEAKER_02 1:41:51

But it's like, man, it's like yeah, as soon as I got my guide license and I started, yeah, like you said, once you start making money doing it, you're like, no, like, no fucking way. Because I never would have guessed in a minute. Hey, this was never part of the damn plan growing up, you know what I mean? You didn't think I was gonna happen. Hell no. So then now when you do it, it's like, man, this ain't bad. Like I might not be rich, but no, no, but I am the rich.

SPEAKER_00 1:42:18

Yes, yeah, you're rich, you're rich in a different form, and that's a fact. I wish more people would understand that the money. I got buddies that make a lot of money, man, but they're gone. They don't they don't hang out with the family, they don't get to go experience the shit that I do. And uh, you know, I make a I make I'm I'm just a whole broke ass fireman, but god dang, I'm rich and when experiences and memories, man. I it's a different ballpark.

SPEAKER_02 1:42:48

Yeah, shit you can't even buy if you wanted to, because if I wasn't doing what I'm doing right now, I'd be paying to do different things. I'd I would be fucking miserable digging holes all day, and then oh, I can't wait till fucking third week of September when I when I get to go up to Maine for a week and pay three thousand dollars to run my shit. There's no way I'm gonna miss it. Yeah, so yeah, as soon as I I get to do it, I get to July 1st till November 1st. There ain't a day that goes by that we're not hunting. Yeah, man, you fucking can't beat it.

SPEAKER_00 1:43:26

Yeah, I get it. Uh I'm right there with you, man. I hey dude, I I had a bunch of bullet points wrote down on shit I was gonna ask you, and I didn't even have to ask you anything. It was it was it was fucking great, dude. I I really I really appreciate you coming on. Sometimes I gotta poke and prod to get guys to talk, and yeah, gosh damn, that was easy. Like uh I wanna call you every other month and then do this shit over again. That was that was great, dude. I really appreciate you coming on.

SPEAKER_02 1:43:58

Yeah, get with me, uh get with me after bear season.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:02

Yeah, we'll uh we need to do a recap, like a recap of season after the after you're done outfitting and stuff, and we'll get you on and gosh dang it. I gotta I gotta I gotta get a bear in a tree. I gotta see it, I gotta see it with my own eyes.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:16

So tell you what, you if you can get out here July or July.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:20

Dude, July is July's open for me. July and August, I ain't doing shit.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:25

So August might be your best bet. We can't kill him, but his trade is. I don't care about killing him. Exactly. So I'll tell yeah, get with me. You come you can you come up here first, second, or right before bear season s actually starts, first or second week of August. We'll get on we'll get you on the tree.

SPEAKER_00 1:44:44

I might I genuinely might do that because it's uh it's too hot over here to do shit. And uh Yeah, you can get old doodah on a fucking podcast. I need to see old Dickie Doodah, and we needed to get a dick in-person podcast.

SPEAKER_02 1:44:58

I'm telling you, that's you'll have you wanna talk about a fucking funny bastard. That's exactly what you need.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:05

I'm gonna I'm gonna look at the calendar. Let's we gotta make this shit happen.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:10

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:12

Well, tell everybody about your Instagram handle and the outfit deal, and and then we'll close her down.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:18

Yeah, so you can f you can follow me at bullfrog outdoors on Instagram, and that's pretty much all I got is Instagram.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:26

That's the only way to go nowadays.

SPEAKER_02 1:45:28

If you if you want to come on a hunt in Maine, moose, bear, you look us up, Blackwater Outfitters, open masardis, we got camps, cook, everything. And the best part about us is we don't. I know y'all are from the south, but we don't fucking hire no fucking southern houndsmen to come up here and run our bears. You come on a main bear hunt, you hunt with main guys, with main dogs. Hell yeah. You get the full main experience.

SPEAKER_00 1:45:58

What about lobster? We get some lobster.

SPEAKER_02 1:46:01

Yeah, we can yeah, we could get some lobster. We're a little far from the coast, but you're closer than I am, brother. We're way closer than you are. Damn sure are. Usually the usually the hunters that come from the beginning of the year, they get lucky because it's lobster season and we get them pretty regular, but for sure. Yeah, if you guys want to re if you want a real main hunt, running dogs, you come to Blackwater Outfitters.

SPEAKER_00 1:46:30

Oh yeah, bro. Well, I think you're having on, man. I'm gonna I'm gonna hit the record stop button and then we'll talk about it. Yes, sir. Thanks for having you, buddy. Appreciate you.