Bear Hunting With Hounds in the Appalachians with Houston Valley Plotts

North American wilderness. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation who also bring you into some of the wildest country on the planet. Chasing battery. Hello, always walking down through here in a bunch of dogs free ranging and we'll look down and seeing the track what they took off. Well, we didn't really want all of them to go, but they're gone. Thanks for checking out the Bear Hunting Magazine Podcast.

I want to give a little bit of history, a little bit of background about this podcast and why I was where I was at and what had actually happened even that day and the day before. I just got back from being in eastern Tennessee. Tracy and Ben Jones. They are a father and son that have a long family history of hunting with plots and the Appalachian Mountains for bear. I'd contacted Ben several weeks ago and said, hey,

I'd like to film a hound hunt. He said, well, come on, and I said, well, I've got two days, and that's a short time to be on a successful hunt. But the day before I left was when they had the massive snowstorm over in eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina. We hunted for two days and it had some tremendous bear races and I really got to see some fantastic dog work. And we had a race that started at ten o'clock in the morning on the first day I

was there that lasted until nine o'clock at night. When Ben went in in the dark and pulled his dogs off of a off of a bear that was basically walking on the ground. I was war to the bone in terms of physical strength. Ben as a mountain man. He's twenty five years old, twenty four and he ge whiz. He can walk like a gazelle in the mountains. And I had a hard time, but an awesome time keeping up with him for two days. One day we had that long race. The second day we started out pretty quick,

found a bear. Two and a half miles in on foot leading dogs. We found a bear and the bear immediately jumped and ran into the bear sanctuary, and so the race ended. We caught the dogs off the bear and pretty much our hunt was over. Bear hunting with hounds is something that many people don't understand, and if you're listening to this podcast and you've never done it,

you probably don't get it. Bear Hunting Magazine our desire is to show all aspects of bear hunting, and bear hunting with hounds is the most traditional method to hunt bear in North America. All these guys, Daniel Boone hunted with hounds. A lot of historical hunters hunt with hounds. North Carolina, the state dog is the plot hound. The plothhound was developed and the Appalachian Mountains and its identity was formed around bear hunting. It's a super small world.

It's a it's a small niche of people that are committed to this really lifestyle. You can't just have a bear hound, and you can't just have two bare hounds. If you're gonna be a serious bear hunter, you've gotta have a pack of hounds. It's a year round process. It's expensive, and these guys devote a big section of their life to training and raising bare hounds. And the barehound is an exceptional animal that has to have a

unique set of characteristics. I mean, just really make it an exceptional Got my, somebody that didn't know my look out into the backyard of some bear hunter and see what their eyes perceive as a rough looking old hound. But let me tell you, if you really knew what that was, you'd look at that hound and you'd say, my goodness, that is an exceptional animal that has been bred for nose, for speed, for athleticism, for fearlessness. It's

been bred for for trainability and loyalty. It's been bred to have good solid feet so it can run for days and days. It's been bred for grit, the desire to in in, the courage to stay on a bear when a bear turns to fight. There's a lot of things that have to happen. So the barehound world is extremely complex and hard to understand. And here's the most important thing. The bare hound world and bare hunting with hounds is the lowest hanging fruit. And I want to

tell you why it's important to you. If you don't even hunt with hounds, and don't care to hunt with hounds, and maybe you don't even like hounds. But if you're a hunter and you want to continue to see our freedoms as hunters in the modern age continue, I will tell you that bare hunting with hounds is the low hanging fruit for the anti hunting community in this country, in this world, and their desire is to pick it

off and to absolutely extinguish it. Why does that matter to the guy that doesn't even like hound hunting is because in the long game, and that's why we've all got to turn our eyes towards is the long game. If we truly are concerned about the freedoms that our sons and daughters, grandchildren and great grandchildren will have long after we are gone, should this earth persist? Is that

we got to play the long game. And in the long game, if they pick off the low hanging fruit, then all of a sudden, the next rung up the ladder is the low hanging fruit, and they'll be after something next. And the anti hunting community has a strategy

of incrementalism. They want to pick us off one section at a time, and eventually there will be a generation of people that wake up and will be like Europe and where people can run around and hunt game birds raised on a farm, and the very thing that has given American hunters the identity that we have and the freedoms that we have, and the very thing that has made wildlife thrive in this country more than any other

place on the planet. North American model for wildlife conservation is the most successful model of wildlife conservation ever in the history of man. We have more big game than any place on the planet and it's because of conservation minded hunters. And bear hunting with hounds is a tool used by bear managers to harvest bear in a regulated way.

And even if you don't like hound hunting, even if you've been offended by hound hunters and states that you live, I petition you to give them a chance and just out of principle, just out of principle, support hound hunting. And I also implore the hound hunters to be respectful, to to respect property boundaries, and to respect other hunters in the woods, and to you know, clean up their game in a lot of ways. If we can all stand in unification in these certain areas, it's gonna mean

a lot. So Hey, that's a quick commentary. Why this matters to someone who's not a hound hunt. I think you're gonna enjoy this podcast. You're gonna learn at about bear hounds. You're gonna learn about the history of bear hunting the Appalachian Mountains, and I had a great conversation with Tracy Jones. Enjoy all right, Welcome to the Bear Hunting Magazine Podcast. I am in Greenville, Tennessee. Not Greenville, Tennessee proper, though we're outside of Greenville, Tennessee ten miles YEP,

about den miles south of Greenville, Okay. And I have been bear hunting with t L and Ben Jones for the last two days. I kind of put him in a bind. I talked to him about three weeks ago. Talk to Ben, and I'm going to introduce who these guys are. I've got t L with me here. But about three weeks ago, I guess I had contacted you guys and said I want to do a bear hunt and the Appalachians and you guys were hospitable enough to let me come up and hunt. But I only had

two days. And then the day before I got here, we had this real bad snow um, which according to y'all, could have been good, could have been bad, and uh, but I came up here, and man, I've had an awesome time. I really have, so thank you so much. Who I've got here in front of me is Tracy Jones, and so Tracy is uh, Tracy is a pastor here and bear hunter. Tracy introduced yourself, my son and I

live in Green County, Tennessee. My my papa, A lot of people knew him, Barry Taunting, He's well known with plot people. And then my dad, Terry Jones, was the bar hunter plots. And I have several other family members that were really good bar hunters and plot men, my cousin Charles Lowry and my cousin Rocky Lowry. And it's just always been a you know, a family thing and a lot of friends around us too. Yeah m hm. So, so you guys have been hunting plots since the nineteen fifties.

When when Barry, Barry, Charles and your grandfather started getting plots. Yeah, we don't know the exact date that he got his first plot. Um, my cousin Charles got a puppy from him in nineteen sixty five. So we know it pre dates nineteen sixty. Uh, Papa went on a bear hunt with Vaughn Plot, and if I remember correctly, it was

down in Gatlinburg before Gatlinburg was really commercialized. And sometime dearing that hunt, von Plot just convinced my my grandfather, who was hunting different things, he Kuna had mostly and had started treading some bar at night, I wanted to bear hunt, and uh, Vaughn talked to him in to giving Plots a tribe, but then he wouldn't sell him a dog. And so my path Bass started looking around trying to find a plot. And I'm not exactly sure where he got his first one at I don't think

he really remembered where the first one came from. Um early on he did get a plot out of Kentucky from a man named Benny Moore, but I don't think that was the first one, but that was an earlier one. Yeah. And so the strain of dogs that came from Barry and Charles Lowry was is this Houston Valley line? Yeah. Uh, Like I said, we know that he had litteral pups in sixty I don't know what those dogs were exactly where the Houston Valley line really got its start was

in the early seventies. Papal got a female pup from Gene White who had White Holla loots and they were very close friends. And if you look at the paperwork, Jeane basically was just getting starred in plots too. And jean had got the white Holla junior dog and it was out of some Kermit Alison dogs and uh, I

think some Williams bred dogs. And White Halla Jr. Was a dog my my papa really thought a lot of He hunted with him several times up in Canada and this female pup my papa got he her name was Jack. She got hurt and was physically unable to keep bear hunting, so he went back to Jean and they did a pup swap and Jeanne kept the Jap dog and my papa got a dog that is caught her on her papers. Her name was Roberta. They called her Polly around the house,

but Roberta became the foundation of Houston Valley plots. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's a good place to even jump in and describe some of the kind of a strain of hounds.

I think some people that listen to this may not be real familiar with hounds and even hound hunting over here, and so what what seems to have happened, And Terry tell me if this is Terry Tracy, tell me if if this is accurate, is that in these mountains, there would be guys that started bear hunting, they started getting good dogs, and they they bred good dogs to good dogs, and they typically these mountain people wanted to keep they wanted to keep dogs in the hands of family and

the fans, in the hands of loyal friends, and and keeping pretty tighten it for many reasons, one of which would be that if you sold dogs or sent dogs way off, if it was the if it was the best dog in the world world, you wouldn't really be able to have that much access to to breed back into it. But these guys wanted to they wanted to

keep their good dogs pretty tight. And and there's these so in the in in the different breeds, and especially the plot breed, there's these pretty tight strains of plots. So they're all registered plothounds. I mean, so there's in it's it's a breed just like a American border collie, I mean, you know, plothound, but inside of the plothound. It's almost like there's these real tight strains and Houston Valley is one of them, and there's all these others too.

But to me, that's really neat because just the the culture and the in the long standing history of breeding. I mean, you could look back at papers on your dogs and you hunted with a lot of those dogs, and then before you were born, probably there was a lot of dogs, but you would know the history of those dogs. You would know the characteristics of those dogs.

And so what you've got sixty years into this tight blind bread in some cases strain of dogs is is something that's really predictable from a breeding standpoint, and that it's gonna be I mean, you you breed dogs, you I mean, they're not all gonna be perfect, but you know what you're getting right um our pubs right now depending on what females bread to what male go back about I think twelve generations to Roberta, and uh, almost every dog that we've bred that we have now goes

back to Roberta. And so you know, that's our foundation that we work from. And the Jap dog actually became foundational for Jeans dogs and I think she was also really foundational for uh, some of the Polly dogs out of Michigan to the Jap Dog was and some other folks. And then later on Steve Fielder ended up with a pup out of the Roberta Dog and Big Timber. A lot of people are familiar with Cascade Big Timber and the Bronco Dog was really important in his breeding program.

So the Roberta Dog has a lot of influence in the plot breed that I guess some folks wouldn't pay attention to. You know, my grandfather, my Patha, was never into advertising and um, but in reference to the family type thing, I want delve into plot history because even among hardcore plot people that's so controversial that I just don't want in the middle that. Uh. There's basically two theories when you bullet all down to the bottom line.

One is pretty much the Plot brothers came over from Germany and they were never outcrossed on anything whatsoever and bred down with the family. Uh. The other theory, and what you're talking about is the origins of the plot breed, which which which which would have come from Germany pretty much eventually into North Carolina and then specifically the western North Carolina in the plot Bostom and then would have

been filter as a place it's a place of valley. Yeah, and then the plots would have been filtered out from plot Bosom, you know, pretty much around the clube now and uh, and they're the only let me let me say and again, if somebody that's listening to this that knows plots is the stuff that they know, we're bare hounds. But for somebody that doesn't have any context for that, um, the plot hound is the only is the only hound that isn't wasn't bred from like European fox hounds, Is

that correct? That's correct? And they were bred from German big game dogs and yeah, basically and in the in the unique thing about plots is that they were they were known as bear dogs. So in the bear dog world, there's all these different breeds of hounds from Walker, red bone, blue, Tick, English black, and tan. There's there's all these different breeds, which all those breeds were the sense of European fox hounds,

the plot was different. And and and all those breeds make fine bear dogs in different strains for sure, and people use them all over the country. But what's you what's cool to me about the plots is they they were known and developed their their identity as bear dogs. Sure, well, I don't consider myself a plot historian at all. You know, men like John Jackson and Bob Plot have written extensively on that subject. That would be the go to people there.

But but you have the theory that the Plot brothers, you know, came from Germany and they would have been basically pure down through the family lines until they start the field. Now to others, and some men still you know, view their particulars train as going back to the originals. The second theory, you know, just basically fundamentally, with a lot of twists and turns, would be that along the way the plot had X dog added to it here,

X dog added to it there. Then that's where the sort of the disagreements among the plot historians come in. And uh if I I mean I was raised with mountain people and in an isolated location. Um, it would be hard for me to believe that at some point a mountain family didn't add something here, something there, Yeah, or even something accidental, And I wouldn't you know the fact that was somebody that has the purest you know, theory.

But Mountain people are pragmatic people because uh honestly, because of poverty, and they couldn't afford to keep a dog that didn't carry its weight. Yeah, and they couldn't keep You have to keep a lot of dogs. If if you want a line of helms and you only want your own name on the paperwork, nor was every dog on that paperwork is yours and you're the only one. Nobody else has any influence and your dogs all you have to keep a lot of dogs, I mean a

lot of dogs. That's why, you know, this discussion came up really this week through a Facebook post. Somebody had asked the question, you know, where are the plots that are strictly lyne bred with no outside influences, And the best answer to that question came from Ray Brown. And you know, Ray is a very well known, well respected bar hunter and plot man, and and Ray said, it's not that nobody is breeding line bred dogs, it's that it's a family of dogs. A lot of people stick

with other words. It may have come from the same source, but the name on it will be Brown, or the name will be Weams, or the name will be Taunton, or the name will be lowry and so on. But if you go back far enough, it comes from the same source. They all came from the same place. Yeah, and there was very few originally registered plots that these things come out flow out. Well, the plot breed wasn't didn't become an official registered UKC breedingtel thin, That's right.

So it's relative relatively knew that that these dogs have had papers kept. And I know there's historical records of the plots keeping records of dogs and breeding and different stuff. But yeah, but let me let me take the conversation this way. I would like for you to describe and envisioned somebody that didn't know bear dogs characteristics of a bare dog because and I and I can or what

you're looking for in a dog. Because to me, my history with hounds originally started with coon hunting when I was in high school, had dogs for several years and really learned to love and appreciate the hound sports. We never even dreamt of running bear with these hounds. We just didn't. And and when I started understanding bare hounds, I realized that this is really an elite animal that's

being bred. And I believe I heard Steve Steve heard said it in in an article in Bare Hunting Magazine that he said, of all the all the animals that man has put his fingerprint of influence on in breeding, from cattle to horses to anything, he felt like that there was more things that had to line up right for a bare dog than just about anything. And there's it was an interesting statement because he talked about dog's

gotta have a super good nose. A dog's got to be a super athlete to be able to run and chase these beards. I mean we've been in these mountains, I mean steep as a cow's face, and these dogs put on twelve thirteen miles yesterday, I don't know, I mean running straight up and down right, So they gotta have they gotta have an incredible nose, which not every hound has. The variants and the hounds nose is a

broad spectrum. Some can smell this amount of scent and some can smell this, So you know, nose athleticism, uh tree, and when you're when you're running big game, that trees. And again this is for someone who doesn't know the sport a dog. There there are running dogs that all they want to do is run game and when that

game goes up a tree, they'd be done. But a tree dog has got to have that instinct to run the game, and when it goes up a tree, he's got to have the instinct to sit there and bark, I mean until his master gets there, until that animal comes down out of the tree. And so that takes a really special animal that and that's bred in. I mean even to this day. Inside of good bear dog lines, there are dogs that aren't good tree dogs. Maybe they'll run a bear, but there, you know, we get to

the tree, they're not that interested. So that's a dog that is not bread and and it's kind of left out of the breeding program probably in the future. But point being, there's a lot of things. What what do you guys after in these Tennessee mountains? What do you need a dog? What are the key characteristics? Well, before I start, you're asking for a matter of opinion, that's right. If you ask you know, a hundred bar hunters, you

are going to get variations. But for us, I think you start at the finish line and then work backwards. In breeding. Instead of looking at as instill of looking at the dog and looking at his paperwork. If you're considering it for breeding, you need to look at the finish line. In other words, the most important thing about a big gamehound is does it produce big game? And all the other variables lead to that. But you don't want pieces to o'clock. You want to know what time

it is. And you mean you want to be able to catch game, tree game. That's right if you If the dog is not a game catcher and it's not showing up on the the end, something's missing, something's not there. So producing game is the is it? You know the coon hunters like they have a big argument going on now about dogs at slick three a lot. Well, if you're playing a points game, some of that can be overlooked,

I guess. But if you're walking five or six hours in the mountains to a dog that has nothing, that's a big pointless Yeah, there's no there's no points up there, there's no scorecard. Does that make sense to absolutely? So producing is the number one. And what you're describing to is it is a dog that just has a natural ability.

I mean, inside of you turn out ten bear dogs, there's gonna be percentage of those dogs that just time after time after time and when you say get to the finish line, what you mean is at the bottom of a bear tree, or have a bear bade up or whatever it takes. I mean, or even cross into the sanctuary like today with it. I mean, that's not that dog's fault, that there's an imaginary line there right right, yeah, yeah, what what what he's talking about is today we had

a really good bear race. We jumped a bear a good spot and uh the bear head and crossed the across the road and went into an area that we couldn't hunt, and so they caught the dogs off the track. But if it if we'd have been able to run that bear, we probably would have got him. But we

had to pull him off. But right, yeah, yeah, But the traits that lead to the finish line, in my personal opinion, my viewpoint right it if not at the top of the list, right at the top of the list is drive desire mhm, because a dog could A house dog is extremely intelligent. Some of them are bird dogs. Some of those. One of the smartest dogs I ever worked with was an English pointer. But neither the house dog or the English pointer will run a bear. That's right.

But there so there has to be that innate desire that when it gets that cent of bear for whatever reason, and that in a code, it runs it m hm and it don't want to stop until it's over trade, bade, caught off, or whatever. So some people call it desire, some people call it drive, some people call it heart. It doesn't matter how smart a dog is if it has no drive. It doesn't matter how good of a

nose it has, if it doesn't have any drive. To me, drive, our heart is the engine that everything else is built around. And uh, I can think of one dog that I had that wasn't the grittiest dog. He wasn't the fastest dog. Um, he didn't have a super cold nose, but anything I turned him on, whatever it was, he just had no quit. And so he made up for a lot of not what I would call faults because he was sufficient. He just wasn't wasn't exceptional, but except from one area, and

that was a drive. And he was one of the favorite dogs I ever had. He wasn't flashy, nobody knows his name, but if you turned him on something, he meant to catch it. Yeah, And I think I think that that statement can be qualified to by saying or describing. I think people that have never beare hunted with the hounds don't realize how intensive a intense it is to treat or catch a bear. I mean, like you turned ten dogs loose on a red hot bear track and

that bear runs for twelve miles. In these mountains, there's gonna be some dogs that drop out of the race. There's gonna be some dogs that end up back in the truck. There's gonna be some dogs that end up sleeping on the side of the mountain because they just laid down. I mean, it's it's it happens, um and that happens to good dogs too, don't I'm not saying that there's a lot of bearables to that many many men. And by the point being there, there's there's certainly some

dogs that don't have the drive that others do. That's a fact. Yeah, And so that's what you're that's what you're looking for. To me, that's the number one quality, and without it you have you have no framework to build around. Yeah, that's probably a good quality of humans too, and it is make up but for a lot of stuff. If you've got a little bit of drive and well, I grew up in the time frame when boxing was something that that men watched a lot. It wasn't on

pay per view, it was a national sport. Everybody the names of boxers were household names. You know, everybody knew the people who were going to fight, and it was on regular TV and people would gather up in their living rooms and watch a match. And but I bring that up to say, it's just it's impossible to whip somebody who won't quit m hm, m hm, and a dog that just will not quit, yeah, is pretty hard

to beat. Yeah, yeah, what would what would be? Okay, so if we were going back from the finish line backwards, that desire would be a number one trait. What would what would be some of the other traits that you look for in a house. Well, if a dog is exceptionally intelligent, I think that's where some of your better trail dogs come from. You know, a dog can be an asset as a bear dog and not be your

main trail dog. Tell us what a trail dog is. Well, when somebody gets ready to start a bear race, normally they'll have a particular dog or dogs that they count on to start the track and trail it up when the conditions are not real good and get it jumped as the other dogs come along behind with the idea. The trail dog gets the bear up and running as the other dogs catch them from behind. M And you know,

different people in different areas hunt different ways. But traditionally through the mountains here men would have a dog or dog that were was their primary trail dog, and then the other dogs would be take some place in their pack, you know, some bay or somewhere. It's not that the other dogs couldn't run a track, but they're just something that separates a real top nots traal dog apart. And

I think intelligence plays a role in that. Uh if a dog's you know, if he has a mind to figure things out, Like you'll see dogs sometimes even running a bear that's already jumped, and they'll get in some rocks and for whatever reason, one dog will go right on through the rocks just litly split and another two or three dogs get hung up at the same place the other one went through and can't figure out how

to go across. Right, there's a reason that one dog goes through he has the mental capacity to figure out how to how to make it or he at one time, maybe pretty prior in his life. He figured it out once and so he had the intelligence to figure it out again. Yeah, and maybe he just stumbled on it the first time, you know. Yep. So intelligence, I think is a factor there. And then uh, of course the obvious things like endurance and stamina and how long they

can can go. That right there. To me as somebody who wasn't hadn't had a ton of history with the bare hounds until the last five years, that's what blows my is the athleticism and endurance that these dogs have to have. Have so much respect for bears, and and I think bear hunters guys are bearing with hounds have a whole different kind of respect in terms of these bears can run and run and run and run straight up and down mountains. I mean these mountains we were

in today and yesterday just unbelievable. So it takes a heck of an animal to overcome that. There there's a misperception among non hunters and and a misperception among hunt some hunters that using hounds isn't fire chase, and uh, nothing can be further from the truth. You know, a bear is fully aware that he's being chased, whereas other methods, which I'm not opposed to, legal methods do it. Yeah, but other methods that bear may not even be aware

you're anywhere in the world and then he's dead. Yeah. With the hounds, he has everything at his disposal. You're on his turf, you're on his home ground. He lives there twenty fires a day, seven days a week. He knows where everything's at. They have According to some research I've read, they really have a mapping capacity to remember where they've been and how things lay. They just have all the advantages. And a dog with endurance, you know,

gives you an advantage. I mean, like you said, they're incredible athletes, and so that endurance would play out in actual practical terms with having dogs that had really good feet like a dog. People probably wouldn't someone who wasn't

a dog person might not understand that. But these dogs run so far, running in rough terrain, rocky terrain, snowy terrain, they've got to have genetically predisposed feet that are tight, that their pads are thick, that they're you know, one of the guys we're hunting with today, Pat was showing me one of his dog's feet, and that dog had hair that kind of grew over the edge of the pads. In his mind, that was a good trait that made

it had tough feet. You know, um not all dogs are gonna be that way, but I gotta have tough feet, gotta have for this endurance. Trim dogs. I mean, these aren't big hounds. A lot of people would think bare hound, big hound. I mean, what would be the bandwidth of wait for your for Houston Valley plots. Well, for for our dogs, I prefer a male dog that doesn't go over you know, fifty or fifty five pounds, and a female I prefer not to go over forty five or

fifty pounds. And uh but then again, you know, a dog being a little larger than that, are a little smaller than that, He is not always a determining factor of it's endurance, true or it's drive. And sometimes a bigger dog that you wouldn't think could carry himself can run all day and um so, but that size, that size is usually pretty good for a dog being able to run day after day after day and not break down. But typically a bigger, bigger hound is gonna break down

a little faster and by that. I mean, these guys are hunting. I mean I think Ben said he's hunted every day since Thanksgiving and it's nowhere December today. Well, you know, the more the more weight a dog carries, and the bigger he gets, there's so many factors at some at some point there's a there's a breaking point there where that's just too big. He may keep up for an hour, or he might keep up for two hours. But that great, big, you know, pound dog, generally speaking

in the mountains is not being all day dog. Now, somebody listening somewhere it's gonna say, oh, yes, I have Rufus and he waited a hundred fifty pounds and can run for four days straight. And that's fine. But Rufus is an outliers to the rule. Yeah. Yeah, I've found that amongst the barehound guys that I've run into is

that they typically like the smaller dogs. And even in in long legs doesn't equate two speed because on a track it's not when you Well, that brings us into another characteristic tracy that I think is I know you're gonna list, is that you're looking for a dog that's got speed. Um, yeah, just to talk about that. Well, what I was gonna say was that speed doesn't come from having long legs or short legs. Speed comes from being able to navigate scent and move through that scent,

track it with head up. You know. Well, the discussion we're having right now about traits you like seems to be Uh, I don't. I'm not sure you would call it a cyclical thing, but there seems to be different factors during different time periods that everybody's after. I can remember years ago that everybody wanted something more gritty and

they started trying to breed. I've seen them even trying to breathe pit bull into the end of the hounds, and that was a huge train wreck because the dogs will get to the tree, and that that desire to catch something didn't stop at the tree and need to catch other dogs. That was a terrible train wreck here locally. Um, then, uh knows is something that seems to be something that points in time. Everybody's trying to find more knows, more

tracking ability, more trailing ability. Yeah, and then recently there's been a lot of talk, well at least among people that I'm familiar with, about speed. I want to be faster and fast is good. But when you and Ben I've discussed this, when you look at a hound's physical makeup, it's only going to be able to go so fast

because of the way it's built. If you put that in horse terms, there's a reason that the records in the Kentucky Derby and some of the other horse races are seldom broken because no matter how much money a billionaire has, and no matter how much access he has to the best trainers, and no matter how much access he has to everything he could possibly need to be breed a faster horse, it genetically cannot be done. It

tops out. And a hound is the same way. They can only get so fast, right in terms of just like foot speed in a race. Yeah yeah, yeah, So if you have it hounds that are fast enough to produce to me, they're fast enough, yeah yeah, fast enough to catch game. If you're catching what you want to catch, you have enough speed. Yeah, And I think too that may you know what I've seen in different places is

that that you know? I've heard somebody say speed kills talking about just an animal being able to track fast enough that they just just gain on a bear. I mean a bear's a bear is laying in his bed. He hears a hound, you know, five yards away open and he goes, man, what if the hounds coming after me? It doesn't actually think that, but you know, and and the hound's getting closer, getting closer. Finally that hound comes

within range of threatening that bear. The bear takes off running. Well, the ability of that hound to pick up that scent and overcome that bear. And again it's not foot speed, but it's it's ability for that hound to navigate the scent, navigate the terrain, you know. Um well, I mean, the bottom line is that dog has got to be fast enough to run the bear down and either stop it or make it so uncomfortable. What goes up a tree? Yeah, yeah, So the doll has to be faster than the bear.

He's gotta be yep, yep, gotta be well. And And like you said today, like you said a little bit ago, this hound, honey, is not a given. I've been here two days and we've yet to We've yet to see a bear in a tree. We've been we've been met with tough conditions. But before I got here, you guys were tree and bears. And I'm sure as soon as I leave this afternoon. You are gonna tree bears tomorrow. But it's it's tough. I mean, we ran a bear

yesterday for for miles. Uh the ready yesterday what you turn loose at nine o'clock or so, I'm not sure. And the last dogs were pulled off of it well after dark. Yeah, yep. So they're tough, super tough, and it's a it really is a fair chase hunt. I mean when you when you look at it that way, But I don't get exciting. I mean, you've been here two days. We're run you know. We've had one race

that lasted all day, we didn't kill it. Another one today that we run got off into the sanctuary, which is you know, a the imaginary line between where you're allowed to kill and where you're not. But I don't get excited about that because I mean, we've we've did this so long. I mean, the bottom line is sometimes the bad wine and if they didn't, what would be the point? Yep? Yeah, yeah, yeah, they do win sometimes. They do win sometimes, and I think that's part of

the fun of it. And uh, you said, well, if you had better dogs, you would have won. Well, you know, I'm no expert, but I've seen a few baron dogs and uh, maybe somebody had a dog somewhere that if we'd have had it here yesterday, we would have it would have made a difference. But yeah, I don't think. So, I don't know. I don't think if it's out there. I you know, there's some people with some great dogs. But you know, if dogs run one all day long, just how much more can you ask? Right? You know?

I said in a unique position at Bear Hunting magazine, and I've made some I have been for somebody that's not been in a bear hunding world very long. I've had the opportunity to hunt with some of the some of some some great bearhoundsmen all over the country. Um, and I can tell you they all get beat sure they do. I mean you you see obviously you're not gonna post a picture on Facebook of a you know, back of your truck empty and s you know there's no bearer. I mean you you hear the good stories.

You hear are the times when the dogs get did great and uh and if you're closer to these people, obviously you're here the good and the bad. Well, you and I are friends on Facebook, and I enjoy social media because I like to see one of the people doing hunting and other things. Sometimes I do purposely put on social media bears one US zero or the bear one today. I do do that because I you know, I laugh about it. I don't if I if if the dogs were junk and we can never catch anything,

I wouldn't be laughing. But I just know we got beat. And if you get beat by a great opponent, there's there's no defeating that. So I enjoy that. I enjoy the aspect that that it's not a give me and uh, it's a good day to me. If you're out there and you run upon an opponent that you know, it's a worthy of on it. You know, if you turn a dog loose every time you turn it loose, and the bear just popped up a tree, I would I

would grow weary of that. I get tired of that. Yeah, yeah, you know, I think the biggest, the biggest, Uh, just you talking about being able to be content inside of you know, not tryining a bear and it being difficult. You know, you grew up in these mountains in a time when it was really hard to trip a bear

because there weren't as many here we're living. And I asked you yesterday, I said, we are you in the heyday of bears and and Appalachian mountains and uh, And there's probably different answers to that, but no doubt there's a lot of bears here, and a lot more than there used to be. When I was a kid growing up, there was times when we might not find a bear for two or three days to even turn it on loose on. And so yeah, there's a lot more bear now than there was then. The trade off is we're

pinched a little tighter. There's still as much national forest, but they've closed all the gates pretty much. There's very few roads to drive, so access is foot only, and uh. I know to some people that seems like it would make it more fair to the bears. But the problem is, as you get older, there's not too many people pass say fifty or fifty five that can still handle the mountains with any speed anymore. You know about dog speed. I mean, the hunter's got to go there too. Where

the dog goes. You don't walk with the dog track for track, But the the end game is you've gotta be wherever he stops. And we had a lot more access to the mountains when I was a boy to be able to get certain places. And um, then so many people have moved in around the foot of the mountain from other areas that don't understand our culture, don't

understand their history, have no clue what we're doing. And uh, they'll buy say maybe an acre or two acres, and then they don't want anybody within earshot of them doing anything right that they don't quite understand. Whereas here's ago you knew everybody, yeah, or if you didn't know him, some guy you were with new them. And so we've started training out we got more bear but less access. Yeah, yeah, that makes that's a great that's a great description of it,

I think. Um, and and they you know you you talk to me the other day about bear sanctuaries, and that's that's that's a pretty neat concept. So in Tennessee, just to give a very general descriptions of the bear sanctuaries, they've got all this national forest, massive amounts of national forests, and they've blocked off these huge sections, I mean like thousands and thousands of acres that they say, okay, this is a bear sanctuary, so you can hunt bear here.

You can hunt bear here, but you can't hunt bear here. And you can hunt other stuff there. You can hunt deer there, you can hunt tune there, you can do other stuff. And what these bear sanctuaries have done has helped the bears. You feel like, well, I would like to talk about that. And let me begin by saying on this subject that I personally appreciate what the t w r A has done, say since the mid sixties.

Now I could be off a little bit in my timing and when their programs started and so forth, but from the mid sixties, which is just a little bit before I was born, up through the mid seventies when I was a kid, they wanted to get the barren numbers up and they implemented, uh, what I call a three pronged strategy. I don't know what's on their paperwork at the t w r A, but from a hunter's perspective perspective, it was this way. Number one, we only had one short kill season, and there was I think

two weeks in December. It was usually like December one two December kind of a deal, and we had a short kill season, obviously less barer kill. Number two, it was always a late season, and the idea behind it was that read seals would be laid up, so you kill less seals, so that helped with numbers. Then the third prong of that strategy were was the bar reserves.

And when I was a little kid, I can still remember riding with my Papa around the bar sanctuary where the bear we put into today, I rode with him and I actually nailed up the sanctuary signs around that sanctuary that some of them are still there in their little triangles, and uh, they're still there today. Well, the t w r A uh uh, several years ago now i'm gonna say pushing ten years decided that they wanted the barren numbers to be lowered. There was too many bear.

Now we have argued over that. Obviously there are more bear, but that's a different discretion than whether the too many bear. So the t w r A come up with the term cultural carrying capacity. And when I begin to look into that, they did an article on it and their magazine about cultural carying capacity, and basically that means there are too many bear close to too many people, the amount of a certain species of wildlife that the human

population will tolerate. Yeah, basically, yeah, cultural tolerance. Right now, we have a good reasonal director here where we're at. I like him a lot. I know the biologist, he works hard, but that term cultural carrying and pacity. And then an article in the magazine implied that the bear was just way overpopulated and need to be severely reduced, and they begin to implement plans to do that. So I asked them the question, the director and the biologist, Um,

what do you have a how many? I asked them how many bear are in the state of Tennessee. Well, obviously they don't know how many total bear are here, and there's no way to know, but they go off based off from what I could tell, primarily complaints that are called in that the wardens have to go answer. And then they had a research method where they would take sardine kins and string them down through certain areas, and however many kins were hit, they sort of tabulated

the bear population general population numbers. One bear can hit all those kins in a night, so our too, bear can hit all those kins. But you can't say ten hit kNs equals ten bear or whatever it's There are a lot of factors there. The bottom line is we don't know exactly the total number of bar in Tennessee. You could not know. They have started a new research method where they put up barbed war fence type enclosures and as the bear go in to get food, it

pulls hair out and they use that as samples. That's probably more accurate. And him personally, I don't go along with the idea that there are too many bear. But they implemented this thing where they brought in a lot more bow season uh, and I'm not against people bow hunting. They brought in shooting bar during deer season, you know, just if it passed by your tree, staying kind of thing.

They implemented longer hound seasons. The hound people really didn't want to kill that many more bear, but pretty much if we weren't willing to kill them, they were going to get somebody else to because they wanted the numbers lowered. Period. So I guess the point being, yes, there there are a lot more better than they used to be, but I doubt there'll ever be too many bear for a

bear hunter. It's a good way to say, you know, I think it's so interesting and so this really shows the really the heart of the modern conservation hunter is that we want wildlife to thrive. We are we are the best friend of bear. Well, that's the three pronged plan. And we were talking about they've done away with short seasons because we have an extremely long seasons now for kill UH. And they've done away with having only a late season because we're starting all the way in October now.

So the only prong of that plan left is the sanctuaries. And I've heard talk recently that they want to do away with the sanctuaries, which I I hope they never do. Now I'm gonna say something here. I'm not a biologist, I don't pretend to be one, and I didn't sleep at a holiday and last night. But from what I've read, UH sALS like to go back and raise where they

were born, same general area. I believe one of the reasons we have a stable bear population is because the bears that are are actually being born and raised are generational from the same places. And what we're killing is the overflow out of the sanctuaries. If you take away the sanctuaries, more or less, what you'll do is end up harassing bear in every location where. How can anything ever be a traditional um ground to raise the little ones?

What can they ever go back to? Where where can they get away from being run or tree or whatever? You know. I think those seals need places that they can go back to that they are familiar with and raise their little ones were there's no encroachment at all. Yeah, And so again the hound hunters saying keep the sanctuaries. Oh absolutely, hown hound hunters saying let's let's limit ourselves and say we will not kill bear in this big section section of ground. And I mean that those sanctuaries

cost us a bear today. And you guys, I'm fine with that. The bear one. Yeah, you just catch your dogs off of it and laugh and give him a thumbs up. Yep, you beat us today. We'll see you next time. Yeah, that's great. And so I mean I thought about it in these terms. If the way I view it is correct, and you're having generational den sights or den areas, areas where sALS raised their little ones.

If my grandfather was running those bear in uh late fifties, mid sixties with plots and now here I'm up in and me my cousin, Charles, my cousin Rocky, my cousin Terry, other family members, friends that have we've had for years. Our dogs are twelve generations, and to me, it's, uh, there's a lot of Appalachian I don't know, pride is

the worst, there's the word for it. But there's a lot of historical satisfaction for me to think that my dogs go back twelve generations to where we got started and the bar were running, are still the same offspring and the bear those dogs are running and you're you're running them in the same place. Yeah. I thought it was really neat this week just to hear you Ben's commentary and your commentary just on this area you're hunting.

I mean, really if you think, I mean you've been hunting bears since you were a kid, I mean decades of even that same mountain. I mean, you guys will probably treed bears all over that mountain that races all over it. You, I mean your grandfather. Uh, I mean, well you live in this valley, but you know you you just got so much history here that's not normal I mean most people. I mean that's I think that's something that's unique to this region of the country too,

is that there's I don't know. I don't see this in Arkansas. Well, papa's family came the Charlton's came in in the mid eighteen hundreds, and my dad's side of the family, uh, the Reeves side, his mother's side, came in very similar long time that the Crocketts came here. And I meant to Davy Crockett's family, and David Croctt was born in this same county where we're at here, in Green County, and his family owned a mill just about three or four miles over here on a creek

going in the river. And when that when the Crockett people come in, it was very similar times that my dad's family came in. So yeah, I mean we've been here in generation after generation after generation. Yeah, and a lot of history and and a lot of tradition. But like we were discussing earlier, some traditions are really good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah they are. Yeah. Well, hey, as we I want to give you an opportunity before we end to just say whatever you want about bear dogs and bear hunting.

But before we do that, you told me some neat stories and I'm trying to uh, you told me some neat stories about your grandfather, UM, tell the story about him coming into town. This isn't related to bear hunting, but this is just well our our strain of plots, Houston Valley plots, UM, originated out of where my grandfather was born. He was born in Houston Valley. So Houston Valley is the place. Yes, it's a place. He was born there. And uh, he was thirteen years old before

he ever went to Greenwood for the first time. All he had ever been to was a little country stores. And he said his he was shocked when he got the green Will because in his mind town was just a very large building, a bigger country store. He thought he was going to a bigger store. And he said he couldn't believe all the buildings in town. Huh, thirteen years old road in a wagon. Wow, that's amazing. That's amazing.

Any other Neat family stories. You've told me something that I as you were telling me, I was like, I wish I could have recorded that. Um. I can't think of what they would exactly offhand, but I remember when you told me that, I was like thirteen years old before he ever went into town, and that was just right down here. This place was really geographically isolated. You know,

the mountains kind of just isolated people. Well you told me this, you said, you said, the rich people lived down the river bottoms, the poor people lived up in these mountains. And uh, that's the ironic thing today about how much how expensive the mountain end is a local kid who wants to live here and work here and stay here. He can't even afford to buy a piece of property, hardly anymore. But the reason his ancestors were

here is because nobody else literally wanted it. Yeah. Yeah, And so now people are wanting to live in the mountains just for the recreational is the statics these mountains are spectacular. It was the worst ground possible for a farmer. I mean, you know, it goes to show you just how much our values system has changed. And and this is just a progression of society, I suspect, But I mean,

there was a time when aesthetics meant nothing. My dad's seventy years old and he tells me, he said, Clay, we used to not talk about views, and you know, in terms of land, like now you go buy a piece of land or you build your house in the mountains there in the Ozarks, It's like, man, I want a place where I have a beautiful view. Or land actually has more value if you've got a nice view and you can look down. And he said, well, used to not talk like that. People were a lot more dysfunctional,

and so you know, it makes sense. I mean this, this is tough ground to just live in. I mean, to walk up to your dogs, you gotta walk up the hill Ben at Ben's house. I mean, it's just you gotta put your truck and world drive to get his drive away half the time. I mean, it's just tough to live here. You know what I mean. Well, we have a lot of first world problems. Now our our kids talk about the career they want. When our forefathers,

I only wanted a job. I mean my path Ball worked at pet Milk Company from the time he was sixteen until he was sixty mh. And Uh, I was glad to just have a job. He didn't have the luxury of wanting a career or choosing a career. Oh no, the choice was work or not eat, and they preferred to eat. And he was happy and satisfied. He was one of the most content people I've ever known. And Uh,

the principles that came out of that. I mean just I could sit here all day and talk about the things that him or my dad are some of the other old timers you know, believed in. And just just one example, when I would help my my papile built fins, he wouldn't allow you put your hands in your pockets. I mean he could be down on his knees driving a staple in the barbed wire and you were just

waiting on him, you know what he needed next. And if he caught me one day with my hands in my pockets, and I mean just chewed me out rayly. And he was not that kind of person, he jim, he wouldn't want to you be wow. But it made him mad because he saw me standing there with my hands in my pockets. Because in his mind, if he had got caught with his hands in his pockets coming out of the depression, he would could have lost his fifties cent our job because so many other people wanted it.

And he didn't want me going to work. Just the perception, yes, of being at work and in your hands, did not put your hands in your pockets. If somebody was working, he'd say, watch me, watch me, watch what I'm doing, and have what I need next. Yeah. And then my dad was fanatical about taking care of equipment and stuff. I mean, if if he bought something twenty years later, it would be as good as shape as it was when he bought it new, because he grew up poor. Yeah,

and so those kinds of things. You know, I have had it much better than my grandpa had it. I had it much better than my dad had it. And uh, but I wouldn't trade I grew up for for anything. Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, Sometimes options aren't necessarily beneficial when you think about, like all the options that we have now, I mean options in terms of career, where to live. I mean, like like the prosperity of of where we live, the time we live in has given us a lot of options.

I mean even like what to have for dinner, who to marry, who to marry? You know, fifty sixty years ago, years ago, you knew three girls down the road and you married one of them and you were happy, and you raise kids, and you built a home and you had a job and you stayed married for seventy years. And now you can use e harmony dot com and get all the stars to line up and can't last six months. Yeah yeah, it's it's not about the process has the heart of the people, Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.

Options aren't always good. Options create options create a whole another set of issues, you know. But but no, and I'll steer it right back into the bearhound world and that as we close, and I'm gonna give you you can be thinking about this, I'm gonna say, tell us a good bear hunting story to end it with. But this one I was gonna say is that these mountain people that built these lines and strains of plots and

not just plots, any any line of bear dogs. Man, they didn't have the luxury of keeping a dog that wasn't producing game. They they didn't have that luxury. And so if they had a dog, that dog had a purpose. If that dog didn't fulfill that purpose, it was gone. And so they had these they they developed the foundations of these excellent lines of dogs that had all the stuff.

And then today, to me, it looks like it feels like that we're kind of maybe have the option to even make that some of those lines better by the options that we do have. Because you can have a litteral pups and This is what I mean. You can have a litter pups. That female has nine puppies. You distribute those puppies to different people, and you're able to stay connected to those people just through technology, even if they live a long ways away. You're able to get

reports on how they did. So you're able negotiate a little bit and breathed back into some better stuff. Maybe well back you're talking about breeding. Back several years ago, Steve Fielder, before Facebook, it was a thing. Steve Fielder had one of the first plot websites, plot dogs dot Com. I was still in Montana at that time, and I wrote a thing on there on Steve Fielder's website one time. It's pretty lengthy, but it was basically in praise of

a good dog, and uh, there's lots of talk. There was lots of talk at that time about who had the phenomenal that was the word that was being used, Who had the phenomenal dogs? Who had them because people were just starting to connect through social media and everybody wants to know what everybody else had. So I I wrote this thing that on and you know, in praise of a good dog, because to me, when you're breeding dogs, that you're primarily looking for. Is not a phenomenon just

by its very definition of phenomenon is rare. If it wasn't rare, it wouldn't be a phenomenon. Right, So if you have a lot of phenomenon, just's now it's normal. Now the title of your article A good dog, not a phenomenal dog, just a good dog right now. What you're looking for to me and breeding is consistency over a period of generations. Will your dogs catch what you want caught them? We didn't quite finish that conversation because people will talk things about like it's a dog's mouth,

does it have a good mouth. Now, I don't personally like a silent trailer dog because I want to hear the race. That's to me, that's the enjoyable part of hunting. It's here in the race. So even if a silent dog is producing more, I still want to hear it, which I don't particularly think think to catch anymore. But um, but if a dog has a great mouth but he's not catching game, then the mouth it's like having a

horn on a car with no engine. It's it's an add on, it's an extra, it's a it's good, but it's not the fundamental, but a lot of people are looking for the like a tree dog. What if what if a dog trees a D twenty barks a minute but can't catch game. But can't catch game? What I mean, what's the point of that dog? To me, he's useless. I mean he's completely useless. Yeah, and uh, you know, a bar dog. To me, we were talking about traits.

The tree aspect on a bar dog is not how many barks a minute he puts off, but will he stay tree till I get there? If he will stay treat until you get there, that's a good tree dog. So it doesn't matter if he's backed off the tree. I hear a lot of people talking about big game dogs and they say, well, he's not a real good he's not a real good tree dog. He'll back off

the tree and sit down and look up. And I mean I even come from a coon hunting background, and I'm kind of like, well, as long as he's there and he's barking, well, it doesn't matter if he's standing on the tree or not. I can't speak for ever bear hunter, but to me, I think some of that probably flows out of the coon dog vernacular. Rubbing tree dog and stuff. A good A good tree dog to me, Number one is one it stays till I get there. Number two is one who barks till I get there.

Don't have to be a hundred twenty barks a minute, but he needs to keep barking. If it's thirty barks a minute, but he will do it for six hours. If he's in a bad place, that's that's fun. Uh. But back and off the tree. I like a dog that stays back off the tree. A lot of bar dogs will back up a bank so he can look straight across at the bar and Uh. The good part about that to me, to some extent, is they stay

out of trouble. See, there's a misperception that bare dogs are ill, and that's totally backwards because if and I and I'm not opposed to conut, and I'm four cnut and I enjoy it. You and I've talked about that this week. But if you have an ill coon dog in today's world, you're and you're hunting a wood lot. If you have trouble at the tree, you can be there in ten minutes. If you have an ill bared dog at the tree, you might not be there for five or six hours, depending on how hard it is

to get to the tree. And if you've got an ill dog there, you just won't have dogs that are hurt. You'll have dogs that are dead. Yeah. Yeah, And so you cannot allow an ill tree dog to be part of your pack at all. He cannot be ill and a dog if you hunt in mixed packs, like if you've got buddies you hunt with are occasionally, you know, if you bar hunt, you're gonna end up hunt with a stranger somewhere and say he's got one it is

a little rough on the tree. You know, I don't want mine, you know, fighting back and you know you don't want jumping and running. If he's sitting back, he's staying out of trouble. Back up, stay there and I get there, stay out of trouble. And because you know, on these bear trees, there's usually not gonna be just

one dog. There's gonna be lots of dogs. So just for people that aren't used to this bear hunting, like, you're turning several a lot of dogs loose, but end us with a Can you think of an iconic bear hunting story from these mountains? If it's recent or old. Yeah. You before we get to that, you asked me if there was anything I wanted to say just in general,

can touch on that before the story. Um, I'm an observer of people, and uh, through social media, you get to observe a lot of people who who hound hunt. And there's a few things that if I had the opportunity to say to people who were in hound hunting. The one of the things that I would say is this, it would be relax and learn to enjoy the experience as much as you enjoy the final product. Mm hmm.

Because your life is so short, and if you spend your hunting career mad about something, frustrated about something, tore all the pieces about something, fighting with other people, you're gonna waste your life. And the whole purpose you're out there is to enjoy it. If it's not, I don't you're we eat the meat, but you can buy beef.

We're there for the experience. Yeah. So if you're if you are the person who's ruining your own experiences because you can't deal with every little thing that happens, you're never gonna you probably ought to quit houn hunt. Because I grew up around people. Some of them were wired up so strong that they hunted all their life, but I'm not sure they enjoyed it as much as other people. But my path ball man, he enjoyed hunting as much

as anybo there. There was better bar hunters than Barry trotting, but nobody enjoyed it more. So I think he was the winner. That's saying a lot right there. So learn to enjoy it. And the next thing I would say is this is, don't try to make your hounds an extension of who you are as a person in reference

to your own pride. Mm hmm um. I think there's some people that their whole life has built around what their dogs do, and what happens there is they end up again not enjoying it and to making life so difficult on their hounds that their hounds can't enjoy being hounds either. But you know, you're who you are as a human being, and what kind of person you are is gonna tell a lot. But the way you deal with others and the way you deal with hunting and so and then to go along with that is and uh,

maybe this is the pastor coming out in me. If you don't mind me throwing this out there, if it's not too far off ground is keep keep your your hound hunting in it's in its rightful place. Um prioritization. Yeah, uh, I know people are not listening to this podcast because they want to hear me preach at him. But there are some things in this life that are more important. Your wife's more important, and your kids are more important.

And uh, I've seen a lot of destruction and my grandpa he tried to help some people along these lines. You know, you if you, if you'll keep it in this rightful place and its rightful's perspective, you can have a balanced life where you enjoy your hounds, and your wife can enjoy you having your hounds, and your kids can enjoy you having those two. And uh, you know, I, I know it's foolish to say this, but I see these memes that these boys put on Facebook that it'll

show them throwing their girlfriend off a cliff. You know, she told me it was either mere in the hounds and you see her falling off a cliff. You know. I know there's probably some humor in that for a kid, but as a dad, if I look at that and that's my daughter going off the cliff because some some boy has that mentality towards my daughter. He's not the right guy. There's no perspective whatsoever there. And and I say that because at some point, if that's all your

life is, you're not gonna be happy with that. There's gonna know it will be no satisfaction for you. And that, Yeah, I'm glad you said that, because that's that's the the key to life is balanced and understanding the priorities. And I think it goes not just for hound hunters, but for anybody that is passionate about hunting, or for really passionate about anything. But guys that are passionate about hunting ten to be can be eccentric and so focused on

this one aspect of their life. That's great. You know, I'm glad you said that about the memes because I think that every time I would never in my life post meme or something like that. I mean, because obviously it might be funny, but there's truth behind what's being said and stuff like that. And and your family has got to be your family. There's there's a lot, there's a lot that's in line above that. But and hound

honey is all encompassing. I think that to somebody that's not been around the hound world, what what Tracy is saying is that it is true. Is that to have twenty hounds in your backyard and to hunt those dogs, and to breathe those dogs and care for those dogs, and to have them for decades kinda is can be all encompassing. It can dominate your life. It can in

family plays a major role in that deal there. And uh, which this is a totally different subject, but I'm reminded of it as we talk about these things, just random things, you know that I would want to say about the all matters. And I said this at the supper table maybe last night. UM, that states are trying to figure out how to get more kids in the hunting because hunting number hundred numbers are dwindling. There's very few bar hunters left in East Tennessee and western North Carolina MM

compared to what it was years ago. I mean, it's it's going downhill. They won't have to outlaw bar hunting. There ain't gonna be nobody left to do it. And uh, I believe that part of the reason for that is because kids are being raised too soft. And I believe hunters are partly responsible for that. The men and I

was raised around. I mean they they were good to me, and I tagged along with them, but they expected me, as a kid, you know, to participate not just in the shooting, but also in the work leading the dogs, handling the dogs, helping the dogs, feeding the dogs, taking care of everything, uh, you know, taking dogs into the

person who had found the track and so forth. And today what you see is the adults who are just obsessed with getting their five year old, six year old, seven year old kid in there to shoot their first animal, when that kid has no clue what's taken place in the in the totality of things, and once they've gone in and killed it, what's left for him. Yeah, I actually think we we probably are not building the kind

of kids that can be bare hunters now. Yeah. And it takes a certain kind of person, certain kind of mindset that can handle that day after day business of dealing with hounds and mountains and swamps and other things in the uh. Even and we're making things so easy on the kids, and we don't have any expectation for them to work hard and to do their part and to wait for the reward. Yeah, yeah, it's it's kind of the trend of modern culture. It's brought itself into hunting.

Is that. Hey, the way that we recruit these kids as we make it really easy for him. And I'm with you, but we've got to have a hunter recruitment. We've got to involve our kids. But oh man, I could do a whole podcast on how I've what I've done with my kids. And I think I've made some mistakes, but I think I've also done some things right. Um, But I'm a hundercent agreement with you on what you're saying. I mean, you got you gotta make it. It was honey was hard for me growing up. I know that

it was. My dad did not make it easy for us, and he kind of ran my brothers off from it in some ways. Um, But but that being said, it it wasn't his fault. I mean, it's just just this is an over an exaggeration just to prove a point. But the way I would maybe explain it is you got kids that have killed multiple animals that couldn't tell you what a white oak was. I wouldn't know a white oak from a popular They don't know anything about

the woods. They don't know anything about the game. They they are just handed to the end result on a platter by people who have worked their whole life to get there. It's a great example, and I think they need to be told when they're young. Son, this is important to our family. This is how we do our business. You help with the dogs, you lead, things, you feed, things, you take care of and at some point it'll be right, and I'll let you know when that's good. Well, hey,

I'll give this offer to you again. I think the one that I will mention is being the first bear Bend got to kill. Since we're talking about kids. Uh, we were living in Montana. I pastored out there, and in Montana that time, you couldn't kill big game until you were twelve. So we were gonna be moving out of Montana, uh in late fall, and the big game seasons were opening, and Uh he had turned twelve the previous December, so I was able to get him start hunting.

He killed his first mule deer, buck, killed his first elk. I took him pheasant hunting, and I had a nice English pointer. He went three for three on the first three pheasants had ever come up in front of him, and uh, obviously I was just tickled to death with that. And uh we moved back to Tennessee and we got back here and if I if I remember right, it was the last day of bear season. It was on a Wednesday, And I remember it was on a Wednesday because we went to church that night and most people

had already used their vacation. Up. The hunter numbers up on the mountain were, you know, pretty low, and it was just it was me and Ben and my pap Ball And at the time he was like probably seventy eight, seventy seventy eight somewhere right in there. I'd have to calculate that Ben was twelve, just getting ready to turn thirteen. And Uh. I was up on a place called Kennedy Cabin and I walked out a trail called the fires Gold. On the way out, I just had one dog with me.

I was just looking to see if we could find something to turn loose. On the way. I didn't find anything. Turned around and it's coming back and struck one red hot so crossed behind me. So I called on the radio and I told Ben to bring me. I just think we had maybe four dogs with us that day something like that, told him to bring me the other dogs. Well, my papal, who was in his upper seventies there, mid upper seventies, came with him leading dogs, and just us

three and UH turn loose. The bear went down off the Camp Creek side of the mountain. I won't go into a lot of details because the listeners wouldn't know what I was talking about anyways, but it made a huge loop around the side of the mountain, turn and came back and crossed not far from where we had turned loose, dropped on the opposite side of the mountain,

and Uh, we were still up on top. And just so happened that bear was going to try to cross the road headed towards North Carolina, and we had some brands that had come up behind us, and they were able to get block the road and get it turned and it went back up the mountain. They packed on a few dogs there and we got a tree. So we went down the road and came back up and Uh,

I went up to the tree. It was up on sort of a steep face, and I was at the base of the tree, and Ben had been brought in by my cousin Benny Laws and was with another man, I know Dolphins Cutaw. I was there. I know Bill Carter was there, and he was able to shoot the bear from the bottom and he shot it with uh. My dad had bought a Marlin lever action and thirty five Remington was his first rifle he bought in the

early seventies. And I don't know how many bad Daddy killed with that gun and several and so Ben was able to kill his first bear with that same rifle. And that was probably my favorite day I've ever been in the woods. Yeah, of any any hunting I've ever done. Just because my grandfather, me and now my son, we're all there together, you know, hunting the same dogs you know that I grew up with. That's great. That's great. Hey, thank you so much for hosting me the last two days.

I know if we'd, if I'd been able to stay a bit a little bit longer, we'd probably would have better two days. It's not much time, ye, thank you so much for having us. You can really impress just everything you guys are doing. So Hey, thanks for listening to the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. Check out Bear Hunting Magazine. We're the only print Bear Hunting magazine in the world

where our twentieth year Yeah, that's great. Yeah, coming into twenty nineteen, we actually haven't well it's the it's the it's the nineteen volume, but the twenty into the twentieth year Barren Magazine. And in this January February issue, which we got to print three days ago, that's why I was able to come on this hunt. I had to

get it to print, went to print on Monday. Is the story of Charleton's Houston Valley Cub, which was dog that just passed away a month ago, and we did a legendary barhound article on one of these Houston Valley dogs that was being and Tracy's one of their one of their favorite hounds, and just uh so, anyway, there's

an article about that. You'll be able to read more and uh so check out Barony Magazine, check out our YouTube channel as always saying keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live.