Ep. 283: This Country Life - First Impressions

little faith. First impressions we all have first in our lives, and the experiences can be as much philosophical and emotional as they are physical. First impressions we get from an experience from the basis of how that activity, person, or place is perceived for the rest of our lives. I can't tell you how many times I've talked to people who found out I was a duck hunter, only to hear you're crazy. There's no way I'd go out in the freezing weather and wait around in the water for

something to taste like liver. I used to try to convince them that first, if they were eating a duck that tasted like liver, they wasn't cooking it right. And second, if I was only out there to get a duck to eat, I could raise my own, or easier still, go to the store and buy one already skint. But

that wasn't the deal. I wasn't grocery shopping. I can do that a lot more comfortably pushing a buggy around Kroger while the store radio serenades me with the Marshall Tucker band as I negotiate the traffic down the aisles. But nine times out of ten, the person telling me how they wouldn't do any of that has done it at least once, and the experienced bias their judgment forever

on how their next hunt would be. The percentage of people who tell me they wound up getting soaked from tripping and falling in the water because of the unknown leaking their waiters would be high in the majority. At least they tried it, but did they really give it a chance. Not Many people who tried baseball got a hit the first time they stepped into batter's box, and even then, over the course of their career, they only have to get a hit three out of ten times

to be considered above average. Be hard to imagine applying that same standard to landing an airplane or crossing bob wire fences unscathed. I say all of that to say this, keep an open mind when it comes to new things. In first times. It's easy for us to go into a situation with preconceived notions of how it's going to turn out. If we expect to have a bad time,

odds are we probably will. We're not willing the bad times to occur, just only seeing what we thought would happen, and when it does, confirming in our minds that what took place was destined to turn out that way. Oh how wrong that can be and usually is. You've heard me talk about my friends at the cash By Old hunting Club, Randall Whitmore, his brother Wade, and their lifelong

friend Brad Clark. Wade lives in Houston, Texas now and doesn't get to visit as much as Randall and Braddew, who lived just east of the Old Man River in Tennessee and Mississippi. But the Whitmore brothers are direct descendants of what many consider to be one of the most knowledgeable and influential coon hunters of the region, the late mister Dick Whitmore. Mister Whitmore had a successful career in

the advertising business and new dogs inside and out. He had some great dogs and a good friend and mentor of mine, Rex Whiting, used to hunt dogs for him in competition hunts, and mister Whitmore bought and sold dogs like the most folks do, trying one until they get a good idea of what they think that dog's abilities are. And if there's a better than average chance the dog will make a good one, he gets to state and if not, he gets traded to someone else. One man's

trash is another man's treasure. Is no truer anywhere than in the hound hunting circuits. They're all different. It's like people. They all learn at a different rate, just like people. They all have their own personalities and idiosyncrasies, just like people. So when a dog is chosen to join the partnership, a partnership that some say goes back fifteen thousand years. They both need a chance to conform to each other. After all, the human isn't the only one getting the first impression.

in it as participants rather than just observers. My friends Michael Roseman and Rex White and I would go hunting area near their camp, and Brad and Randall expressed interest in having their own dog on the first trip they went with us. After a long hiatus that invited hunt they accompanied us on wasn't their first impression by any means into chasing the mass bandido, but it would be their first since the passing of mister Whidmore. So the

search began for just the right dog. They found one, a nicely bloodlined hound from Louisiana that belonged to a friend of mine. He was only starting to realize his purpose in life.

After the rest of Casa day, Reeves had retired for the evening, and I'd be talking to Brad while he was in the woods with his dog, trying to help him get an accurate idea of what the dog's potential was going to be. I tell you I had mixed feelings about him. After hunting with him multiple times over several months, I just didn't think he had what it took to be a dog you could cut loose and have the confidence that if a coon is out there

that he'd find him. Now I have that with my dog Wailing, but I didn't always when he was first starting at nine months of age. I also wasn't expecting him to do anything, even though I secretly wished he would. I was happy if he just went out and explored, and I'd watch Cash sometimes just hang around us when we were all hunting together, not really doing much of anything. Sometimes he'd slick tree just out of sight, which means he'd just pick a random tree and go to tree and on it.

I was hoping, against hope that what I was seeing out of Randolin Brad's dog's cash was gonna taste better when it was done than what it smelled like when it was cooking. More times than I can count, Brad would say, be honest with me, now, is this dog worth keeping, and my gut always said probably not after the first six months with little to no progress, but

my my heart just wouldn't give in to it. Folks need to understand that one of the concept of having a dog that you can turn loose that will focus only on a scent of one animal by passing all the others along the way, and find it and make sure it's in the tree they think it is, and then stay there and bark until their master arrives. Seems like what a dog would naturally do. That's just what they've been developed and bred to do. But a dang sure ain't no guarantee that they will or can do it.

I wrestled with how to tell them with the football analogy. Look, it's fourth and forty and we're getting clogged. Let's punt forget this season and hope we could pick up a new quarterback in the.

the majority, wailing next, and Cash with none again. In the two years I've been hunting around him, I'd never seen him make a tree with a coon that we could find In the tree. We used thermals and squalled at the tree and trying to get one to look. We did everything but climbing ourselves and go from limb to limb looking for him. As we were parting from the hunt, Brad asked us both to think about whether he should keep Cash or talk to Randall about getting

rid of him. On the ride home that night, Michael and I were in the truck together and we agreed to tell Brad find another dog. Cash just wasn't making any progress, and he'd had plenty of opportunities to do so. Brad started looking For a while later, Brad was on the list for a new puppy, and I was on that same list too, but the union didn't take and no puppies were going to be made for that cycle. Brad said, it looks like I was stuck with hunting

Cash this winter. I like this dog anyway. I told him it only had to please him, and it didn't matter what I or anybody else thought. I still want to find me a good puppy, but I kind of liked this old dog, he said.

find it. Spend that much time with someone you enjoy being around, and you look over some things that you don't approve of, like a Lexus.

close but no cigar with Cash. And now I went with Michael to get Heck while I kept wailing on his leash. We had to come back this way to get to the truck, so Brad would be coming back as soon as he went and leased up Cash, who was barking it only Cash new. Brad eventually came back with a video on his phone and Cash on a leash. He said, I knew he was going to have one

when y'all didn't come with me. He showed me the video and sure enough there was the mass banded himself safe and secure in the back of a hollow log, the only threat to his wellness being the train. Ball of Cash is barking echoing through that law. Are you sure that's a coon, Bradley, That of looks like a possum.

going to go. I was trying to decide if I even wanted to cut weight and loose during our truck window the truck window powwow that we were having while the heavens soaked my left arm. Brad let me off hook when he said, if you just want to listen to Cash bump around the woods from your truck, that suits me. I just need to turn him loose for

a while. Perfect because I was going home after the mont anyway, and by not turning waiting loose in what was surely to be an exercise in wet and muddy futility, Whaling and I could both just roll right up in the house as soon as we got home, bypassing the garage washing and drying that would get him in the

neighborhood of being clean enough for Mama's house. Brad callar Cash up and turned him loose, and I smiled to myself, knowing that even though I was going to stay regardless of the outcome, Brent and Whaling could light a shuck for home whenever we took the notion. We stood in the mist and rain and talked about how dumb it was that we'd even driven over there to hunt on a night like that to begin with much less cut one of the dogs loose. It wasn't like it was

the only night we had to hunt. We were laughing at our own folly. When Cash opened up less than three minutes after he hit the ground, I didn't think anything about it until he kept.

with high fives all around. Cash took off on another Cash and opened up again, working a track hard in the worst conditions around, with him getting worse with every drop of rain that fell. Ten minutes later and he treated again. Now we all looked at one another and took off after him. Randall handled Cash at the tree while Brad and I looked skyward for the coon in

an ever increasing glass. That's his coat and rain I got him the most anticipated three words of any coonhut when your dog is the one bellied up to a tree telling the world there's a coon up there. And I saw him in a big old fork outstanding. We called it tonight. After less than thirty minutes of hunting, we went and had supper, reliving the night's events and

talking about how much he'd improved from earlier hunts. The next night, I was home and Brad and Randall went again cash Tree three that night, and they sent me the picks to prove it. Here's where mine and other dogs different from Michael's. While I've entered whiling in in one hunting competitions, I get more enjoyment out of this pleasure hunting. I fully support competition hunting. Now keep up with who's who to some degree, but it just ain't

my thing. Brad and Randall are the same. My first impression of that dog was good, but even though I had nothing to qualify, the second wasn't as flattering. Having seen the struggle and the aggravation that Brad and Randall went through for over a year of dog at effort. But if there's ever been a dog there was will to make such a drastic turnaround of improvement as a reward for the effort of his handler. It was the Coonhound known to the UKC Registry as Whitmore and Clark's

Cash Money. I texted Randall earlier today to get some details for this podcast. I said, how old is cash? Randall's response caught me off guard a little bit, and it caused me to reflect in a flash on two years of interactions with that dog and those men. Maybe if you believe in the things that I believe in, a sweet coincidence or something much bigger. Randall takes it back and I quote he turned three on November three,

my dad's birthday. Thank you so much for listening to me and old Clay Bow and the Bear Grease Channel.