Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Rieves from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and the country skills that will help you beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast.
The airways have to offer.
All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate.
I think I got a thing or two, and teach.
You squirrel dogs. This week it's all about the squirrel haters. You know what I'm talking about. Squirrel dogs. We're going to talk about what a squirrel dog is and how one is trained, and the value of having a good one and a good one. It's just like money in the bank. You never know how important they are until they show you. And with that in mind, I'm going
to tell you a story. We had a little mountain cur named Prissy that was mostly white with a light brown colored hair on her ears and around her eyes. She was a feisty little ball of energy and had two speeds, stop and go. She was a young dog and a little over a year old at the time of this story. And I was young and too and
I couldn't have been more than ten or so. It was laid on a fall afternoon when I talked to my dad into saddling up Buck, his big buckskin horse that was the spitting image of the one Marshall Dillon road on gun Smoke, so I could go squirrel hunting behind the house for hour or so before dark. I'm small story. James aren't outsizs. Matt Dollon never heard of
gun Smoke. It's one of the longest running TV shows ever and it was set in Dodge City, Kansas in the eighteen seventies when dodging bullets, tumbleweeds, and stampede and cattle was what them folks call Tuesday. That show ran for twenty years, ending in nineteen seventy five, and followed the adventures of us Marshall Matt Dillon, all around good
guy and shooter of outlaws. He was a bachelor and showed favor to Miss Kitty Russell, the con hearted owner of the Long Branch Saloon, bost of Sam the Bartender, and all the saloon gals of sport morality that worked there. The Long Branch was an actual saloon during that time, and you can visit the real one now in Dodge City, just like my dad and I did in July two
thousand and one. We were on a journey through Cowboy Country, just seeing the sights, and found ourselves walking through those swinging doors of the Long Branch at nine o'clock in the morning. A lady in period clothes of the time welcomed us in from the trail and showed us to a green felt covered table. She asked us if she could get us something to drink. My dad said he'd have a cup of coffee, and I said, we'll just make it too. As she turned to walk off, she said,
the Cowboys, we are a full service saloon. I said, y'all serve beer. She said yes, and hard liquor. I said, well, bring me a mug of beer. My dad had the craziest look on his face and he said, son, it's nine o'clock in the morning. I said, I know, but how many folks from New Edinburgh, Arkansas do you think ever had a beer in a Long Branch saloon? Without hesitation?
He looked back at her and said, bring me one too. Anyway, me prissy and buck head off behind the house for a quick hunt, and pressy tree too real quick, and I killed both of them with my twenty two. She then took off and treated a pretty good way's away, and it took me a little bit to get to her. When I did, I slid down off buck and walked up to the tree in time to see that squirrel start running through the treetops. With Prissy and Meat in hot pursuit. It seemed like we went forever when that
squirrel finally made it to its den and disappeared. Now I'd been running and chasing that squirrel, looking up the whole time, circling trees and pulling vines. When that race ended at the den tree, I couldn't tell how I got there or which way it was back to where I dropped the reins on my horse. It was cloudy, starting to get dark, and I thought I was fixing
to have to spend the night in the woods. Prissy was standing on a big old stump, looking right at me with her tail waggon and panting with excitement and waiting to see what was next. For all I knew camping was next, at least since the dad came and found me. But I didn't want to be rescued. I always wanted to show him that I could make it in the woods and do anything that he could do, and all the things that he'd been teaching me my whole life. I was going to be embarrassed if he
had to come find me. But I was starting to get a little cold and a lot scared. I didn't know what else to do, so I looked pretty dead in the eyes and told her to go find Buck.
Now.
I said it twice, and on the second command, she took off like she was late for work, in a direction I was confident wasn't remotely close to the.
Direction of where Buck was.
I instantly regretted my decision of telling her to leave, especially since she was going to be my only source of heat for the night. And if I managed to lose Buck and Prissy on the same day, if I did make it out alive, my butt wasn't going.
To hold chucks.
After Dad got through with me, about one hundred yards away, Prissy commenced a tread. It was really getting close to dark now, so it's as fast and as safely as I could go, Towing my rifle and fighting through the bushes and briars. I headed in a bee line straight to where she was barking. I busted out of that little thicket ten yards away from her, and there she stood, in the fading light on a big old log, right beside buck, barking away to let me know where to go.
I loved her and petted her up, put my rifle in the scabbard, climbed up on that monster of a horse and gave him a little spur, and he turned and walked straight back to the barn where Dad was waiting on me. I'd asked her to tree squirrels, and she did. I'd ask her to find my horse, and she did. Not only did she find him, but she also told me out loud where to come find him. And her she did all that on her own. She was the heck of a dog. And that's just how
that happened. Squirrel dogs, Where you gonna get one? Facebook, Jenny Craigslist, No you can't. You can't find a dog there, But I'm gonna tell you where and how to find one. Find a place where coffee and biscuits are sold. Now, I ain't talking about under the Golden arches. I'm talking about that spot where the floor creaks when you walk in and the waitress calls you sugar, and the old men gather.
Talk to the waitress, ask.
Her who she hears that's a squirrel dog man. She's bound to have heard the name or two from all the tails she's overheard while topping off coffee cups where the old folks hold cord every morning. If she gives you a name, tip heavy and slip out the door and drive to the next spot and do the same thing again, and repeat it until you get the same name twice. When you do, that's your man. That's the cat that knows this business well enough that other folks
know it too. Now, seriously, if you personally don't know anybody, just google it. I did, and I found a ton of very useful information and names I recognized as being longtime leaders in the squirrel dog business. Talk to the breeders, talk to his clients. There's lots of stuff on the innerwebs about squirrel but there's no substitute for putting your
eyeballs in person on the pup you're considering. If you're gonna do it from scratch with no leads or suggestions from friends or hunting buddies, take your time and do your homework. If it works out like it or to, you're adding a family memory that you get to choose, unlike that crazy old Uncle Frank that you just got by default. Before I found my coonhound Whaling, I looked for six months and I talked to a whole bunch of folks about dogs, pedigrees, and just about everything you
can imagine. I put in the time and the research, and I got lucky. Lots of folks will go through several dogs before they find one that suits them. I was blessed with bringing home a coonhound that turned into a coon dog. Now there's a big difference in coonhound a coon dog, just like there is between a man that fishes and a fisherman. Whaling was born a tree and walker Coonhoun. His ability to learn and to sniff out old tricky ricky raccoon consistently time and time again
is how he earned the title coon dog. The same applies to any dog that has a specific purpose. Bird dogs, squirrel dogs, hogdogs, cow dogs, on and on. So we got an idea on how to look for a squirrel dog. What kind are you looking for? Cur feist hound, terrier the room you have to keep one will tell you that, along with how much walking you want to do. But you're looking for a dog that's got some smarts and the drive to get out and find a squirrel. Bigger
dogs usually range farther than the little ones closer. I've seen everything in the world tree a squirrel.
Here's an example.
Remember my old cow dog Luke that I accompanied on that trip to the vet when my truck was shedding parts, going and coming like a I talked about in episode four. Well, he was supposed to have been a cow dog, but he tree squirrels too, But it wasn't his main purpose.
And I'll tell you why in just a minute.
Luke could tree enough to keep you from starving slapt to death if you could shoot worth anything. But he wasn't a patch to the most famous bobtailed cur that ever drew a breath, Peanut. Peanut was a mountain cur. He had a yellow blanket back, four white socks, a small peanut shaped patch of yellow on his head. But he was also my daddy's favorite son. Just kidding, not really,
but let's get back on track. There's basically two kinds of dogs that tree squirrels, the ones that do it by sight and the ones that do it by smell. Now bear with me and pay attention just about any old fruit through ankle biting, yippity yapping dog will run a squirrel up a tree when they see it. That don't make him a squirrel dog. That's just a dog hunting squirrels. Remember there's a difference. And that's what more or less Lou was doing. They're just out there minding
their own business. When they catch some movement and squirrel, they take off in pursuit and run nut joker up a tree. Sometimes they bark, most times they don't. They're just out there jumping up and down and looking back at you for help or praise for them for saving your life by running that rabid creature up a tree.
Those dogs are just using their eyes. What you want is one that'll do both tracking dogs or scind dogs will use sight to a certain degree, but they're mostly using their nose to find where squirrel's been on the ground. That was peanut in a nutshell? See what I did there. When those dogs are hunting, they look like a MetalMan in a shooting gallery, just running back and forth in every witch away, But there's a method to their madness.
When they smell one, they'll follow that scind it left and determine which tree it's gone up and start treeing.
Tree.
It means the dog is usually reared up with his front paws on the tree and barking to let you know where he is and that he's found a squirrel. It's important that he barks in a good loud bark that you can hear. Sometimes the barking will cause the squirrel to take off through the treetops to escape, and that's when a good dog will use his sight to follow them from tree to tree as the squirrel tries to get to the safety of his nest or his den,
just like Chrissy did. I grew up hunting squirrels from horses, and I'd try to be the first one to the tree, jump off my horse and stand opposite of the direction my dad would be riding up on and getting ready.
More times than not, when he got there, the squirrel would jump back around on my side of the tree and I'd shoot him out now here, I am talking about shooting squirrels, and we ain't got our dog trains yet, So how do we train one well, the easiest way is to start out with a dog that it's bred to do that sort of thing, and the most popular breeds where I'm from are curved and fists or a mixture of both. Now you like a hunter's please save
you hate mail. You've got a proven squirrel dog, even though it looks like it ought to be pulling a slid in Alaska rather than tree and squirrels in the river bottoms, which reminds me of a story. So thanks Jack London looking squirrel dog for reminding me. I was in Alaska filming a hunt one time, and the folks we were staying with at our flying camp had a big old Golden Retriever that were always.
Running around outside barking.
It was my first time up there, and I was expecting to get monkey stumped by a moose or et by a bear at every turn. That dog wasn't helping me relax by barking constantly. I asked the pilot what that dog was barking at, and he said, he's outside tree and squirrels.
The devil, you say.
My fears of winding up in wolfscat were immediately gone. I borrowed as twenty two, went outside and commenced to working on them squirrels. I proudly hold the record in the Riz family of being the only want to shoot a treed squirrel north of the forty ninth parallel. Put that in your pipe and smoke at reeves. Is back to training. I promise a puppy from a proven family of squirrel dogs is a good head start. They're usually not cheap, and that can be downright expensive for one
that's one hundred percent finished and fully trained. But we're talking about a young dog and the first thing you want to do is to have him mind in you. You don't want to cut him loose without the ability to call him back.
That is no boino.
You also don't want one that's gun shy if you can't keep him around when when the shooting starts, that one squirrel or trip ain't gonna be enough to feed nobody. And let's face it, hunting squirrels is fun, but eating squirrels is funner. There's a million YouTube lessons and countless articles on how to keep your dog from being gun shy. Most of them teach introducing ever increasing noises over a
period of time. While that pupp is eating and his attention is focused away on a good thing like food, which is a good way to train me. As a matter of fact, our very own Tony Peterson wrote an excellent article called how to Introduce your Puppet the Gunfire back in twenty nineteen. You can find it on the media the website. While doing a little research on material to tell you all about, I found that article almost a step by step method of what my dad taught
me to do with our dogs. Tony, you on me twenty bucks. Now we've got our pupp he ain't gun shy. Now, so let's hit the woods. Squirrels like acorns, fruit and the berries that grow in the hardwood timber, and that's where we need to be. Now, hold on a minute. Squirrel food that reminds me of a story. I promised we're going to talk about training, but you got to
hear this story. I saw a squirrel eat a fried squirrel one time when I was a uniform officer at the state Capitol and the little rock I had taken my grub to work that was left over from the supper of the night before. I was on patrol and parked out of the way parking lot behind the state Capital to eat my dinner. Those city squirrels up there are bold. They ain't scared of nothing. I was sitting there, chowing down on the hind leg of a gray squirrel and watching alive one a few feet away from my
patrol car gnawing on a hick or not. We were taking turns giving one another stinky. And when I finished that leg, I chunked it at that up of the squirrel, just to let him know I come from a distinguished family of squirrel killers. That dude dodged it like a ninja. Then he picked it up and started chewing on it. The last time I saw him, he was running across that parking lot towing that leg in his mouth like a black lab with green head. Squirrels are savages, No
wonder dogs hate them anyway. Keep turning that dog loose where the squirrels live, and eventually, if he's got the drive and the natural ability, they're going across paths and he'll start seeing the light of his purpose and the reason you brought.
Him and cut him loop to begin with.
Hunting your pup with a proven tree dog will help even more. It speeds up the process. When they can see a dog operate and learn from the example that a tree dog is given, it is absolutely invaluable. Now, dogs ain't that smart? You say, they can't reason? You better sit down for this one Pardoner, My brother Tim and I were home from duck camp and squirrel hunting behind his house.
One morning.
We were walking through the bottoms with his squirrel dog, Susy. His old lab Zach was in told just for the fun of it, and we killed a few squirrels. By the time we got down to the bow, Susy had made a big circle and was walking up with us and Zack to a high bank looking down on the water. A pair of wood ducks blew out of there, and instinctively we both threw up our shotguns and fired at the same kind, killing both of them. It was the
thing of beauty, a squirrel hunting miracle. We were high five and last, and when Tim sent Zack out to retrieve the ducks, Susy stood right there where she had been all along, watching for the first time as Zach demonstrated his purpose in life. He was crawling up the bank with that first duck. When kuld chug she hit the water swam out and retrieved the other one, just
like she saw him do. Not only that, when she dropped that duck at Tim's feet, she wraared up on a big cypress we were standing beside and treated a squirrel and we got him too. And she did that solely on her own, by watching what Zack had done and reasoning that she could do it too, and she did. Everyone knows about Pavlov and his slobbering dogs, but it was Susie ringing mine and Tim's bell that day. Now,
taking care of a dog is a big responsibility. I was taught by my dad and I've continued that lesson with my kids. And if my dad was gonna feed one a dog of any kind, they were going to earn their victas in the woods.
I'm the same way.
My wife and youngest daughter not so much exhibit a. Rosie the jack Russell terrorist, as I referred to her. That's currently staring at me while I'm talking to y'all. That's all she does is follow me around, hate whaling and stare at me. She's been staring at me for twelve years. She reminds me better than any of my youngest and I hope that nerve wracking heifer stares at me for another twelve kind of got used to her. Now.
That's a pretty condensed version of squirrel dogs, according to Brent, and I didn't even cover the duel purpose and the importance they play in the family. Peanut and Susie, they weren't just dogs, they were family. Peanut lived for about twelve years, and when he died, we didn't have enough shovels to dig a hole big enough for all the folks that wanted to go with him. The good ones are special and their memories will make you happy.
Friend.
I appreciate y'all listening so much. I hope you'll come back next week. If you enjoyed it, share it with a friend. If you didn't share it with an enemy, that'll show them this is Brent Reeves.
Sign it off. Y'all be careful.