Trained by a Hound Dog with Ed Vance

go to Lacrosse Footwear dot com. My name is Clay Nucleman. I'm the host of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into the world of hunting the

icon of North American wilderness bear. We'll talk about tactics, gear, conservation, but will also bring you into some of the wildest country on the planet Chasing them m This is the third podcast in our Hound series and this is a very unique podcast because we traveled all the way out to Posey, California to meet with my now friend Advance Ed wrote a book called Trained by Hound Dog and it's an incredible story about his life as a lion

and bear hunter in southern California. Nevada, Utah, and Montana. I'd like to ask you for a favor, and that is to go and check out Ed's book. Look at it on his website Trained by hound Dog dot com. And if you enjoy hound stories or just epic hunting stories, you're gonna enjoy this very well written book. Bye bye, Ed, So check that out. I also want to draw your attention to a product and a company that I've used now for several years, and that is Northwoods Bear Products.

If you're baiting bear, this is an incredible commercial scent line of products that I've personally used. And go to Northwoods Bear Products dot net and check out all the stuff They've got got all kind of sprays, all kind of scents, powders. But my favorite thing that Northwoods makes is there gold Rush. Gold Rush. Northwoods gold Rush is a concentrated liquid that comes in small bottles and it's

a friar grease additive. So you get used fried grease or new frier grease or just oil even and you mix in this gold Rush in there, and it turns this friar grease into an extremely powerful scent attractant that sticks to bears, paws and they make bear trails. It's kind of a butterscotchy scent. It's an incredible product, and I've seen it draw bears and heard tons of stories about the drawing power of this stuff. So it's not

just something I'm telling you about to sell it. This is the stuff that we've used, and I use it every time I bait and every time I start a bait. So check out our friends at Northwood's Bear Products dot Net. Now onto Posey, California to Advances Home. The green Horn Mountains of southern California look like a steep, rolling savannah of grass and trees, many of which are some type of small oak. The mountains go up over seven thousand feet,

many as steep as a cow space. For this property, I call it lions and bears all over everything, all of all of this stuff that you can see. Add points to a bear hide hanging on the wall of his home. And that was one of the toughest bears that I ever got my dogs after. I mean I had others they were just as bad. Because there's right here I'm gonna explain to you, and I'm gonna show you where it started, where it went to, and where

it ended it come right here at this house. Advance is seventy eight years old, and he hunted these mountains for lions and bear in a twenty five year stretch from the nineteen sixties through the nineteen eighties. Today he can see much of his favorite hunting ground from the incredible view from his home. But I want to explain, I want to show you. We're gonna walk over here. We'll have to walk around a little bit in order for you to do to take in all of what

I'm gonna show you. Because Ed is a gifted craftsman with wood, brick and stone. His home he built himself. It's a mix of a timber framed bungalow style Western log cabin, ornate with saddles worn cowboy hats, bear hides in a mounted mountain lion killed before the hunting band in California. It's clear to see that Ed is meticulate, master of everything that he takes on, and at one period in his life his entire focus was hunting lions and bears with hounds. This particular bear that I got

out after it was in Uh I mentioned in the book. Um. I started him in October and it was just at the crack of dawn, and I had I couldn't find a bear by driving roads, so I got uh. I had two hunters with me, and uh, so we stopped, and I says, I want to walk up a canyon and see if I can get a bear started up there. And I'm gonna show you where this is at. You see this bridge right in front of us. So you see a lone tree standing up there, all by myself.

From that tree, if you went straight down into the canyon, you see the ridge on the other side, straight down into the bottom. That's where they started this bear. I went up there and then and they struck this bear h and this ridge. You can see where that lone tree stand and you can see the ridge that it's on, and that ridge follows and keeps going. And then he gets right up to a point they pulled him out

of that canon. He came out of that canyon, crossed onto this side of that ridge, and he skirted that ridge almost on the top all the way around. And then where you can see that one high point, he turned and he went to the opposite side of it. Now there was no roads to speak of it, so I was following him on foot hmm. By the time

I got to there, I could hear those dogs. It was placed called Portuguese Pass, and Portuguese Pass is the furthest ridge that you can see as far as you can see, and he's just about to go over, and I thought, if he goes over that, so there's a big valley in between that it's called bull Run Basin. The other side is called bull Run Basin. I was north of that high point that we're talking about, which is from right where that point is out to where

it started. Yeah, it's only like maybe three miles through the air, but we weren't going through the air. We were going on ground, and it's different. It's different. So I got around to the other side of that and I heard those dogs headed towards Portuguese Pass. I had five dogs on it, I recall, and they were really hammering that thing. And I was suspicious of what bear this was, because I I didn't know at the time, but I called him two other times and let him go,

and he was a non treable bear. You're gonna bay him out. That was it. So as far as you can see, they just he just about got over that far ridge and they were then he was he was moving and and these dogs were hitting it as hard as they could, and that he is like extremely steep and rough. And then I lost hearing of them. Now we're gonna have to walk to another spot. Well, we're gonna want to show you where this thing ended up at. In the meantime I had to. I had these two

guys that where I was. I had him here on a bear hunt, and they were waiting for me at my pickup. I had a CB radio and the pick up. Walk up on this little dog here a little bit. I can show you a little bit further. Get right up there in that opening it if it's shinna nice to be living in a spot where I can take and look at places like this and say, well I know what had happened because I was there and it

did happen. Now we look straight ahead of us, and we can see him rounded mountain and on this side has been burned. And I mentioned to you that at the transition between the trees that have been burned, which were lower as the ones above, those dogs were on that side. You keep in mind, they started over here, they went around that point, and when they did that, I lost him I had no idea where they were. I was no I was. I was up on this from where you started swoops down Portugue passes in there.

I was up in that area someplace, and I could hear my dogs going down on that hillside, which is several miles from there too, and I could hear him for several miles and then they disappeared. So I came down through all of that. And it's late in the afternoon. I'll keep in mind this started or about six in the morning, late in the afternoon, which would be about I'm gonna say about three o'clock. I crossed this road right here, the road that I'm living on, but I

was about four miles up. When ED got to the road, he cranked on the CBE radio and heard the voice of a good friend that he didn't even know was in the area. Asked me, He says, let me come and get you. And I said, do you have you heard my dogs? And he said, yes, your dogs the last I heard. And he says, your dogs are done on White River by the campground. Now I'm gonna show you what White River Campground is. That he wanted to come and pick me up, and I said, no, I

want to just go across the country. I'm just gonna keep it's all downhill, and I can travel pretty fast going downhill. And uh, as long as I know that that's where they're at and anything. From this time, you've already traveled twelve fourteen miles close to that through through air miles, and so you're going down in these steep valleys and ravines and up mountains. Yeah, because where the bear was started was at the five thousand foot elevation

in Portuguee Passes seven thousand. So they almost got he almost had. You had to. You had to lose elevation and gaining yes, yes, back and forth, back and forth. The road. If you look right down in the bottom the canon, you see a dirt road down there. And

when I got there, those dogs. White River was about five miles from there to the north, and those dogs and they were coming this to the south, about halfway between that ridge that you're looking at in the bottom of the canyon, which is about a thousand foot drop in elevation below where I was at, and he started he started skirting going this way. He's going southwest. I followed that ridge and knowing that if he gets on

this side of it, I'm just gonna lose. Those doctors are gonna go down and nothing but private land, and I can't get into that stuff. So not halfway between these two points, which is gonna be about a half three quarters of a mile, he was getting close to crossing over, and I got to where I could drop down, and I came head on onto him and we walked right into each other. When he saw me, he spun and I had this. They weren't behind him, they were

all right alongside of it. They're right on and yeah, I got Mike shot at him, and I was almost at the bottom between those two ridges. In fact, there's some ranchers said they was listening to the whole thing, and I shot and killed him right there. So how many miles it is, I don't know, but I do know this. I had twenty minutes to get the hide off of him, and it was gonna be dark. I don't have a clue how many miles that is. It has to be in straight line air miles, fifteen air miles.

But we're talking about starting to five thousand foot in the elevation, going up and down until you get to seven thousand foot and then going up and down until you drop down to buy elevation. And that's what it took to stop that whole race. That's an incredible feed for the dog, has been an incredible feat for a man. This bear is the only bear hide that Ed still

has in his home. Ed wrote an incredible book that you're gonna hear about inside of this podcast that tells many of the stories and tales of his twenty five years of hunting California, Utah, Nevada, and Montana with a pack of hounds. Welcome to the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast We Are This is gonna be a really neat episode. I'm in the home of a man that's become a friend of mine today really um, but I feel like i've I feel like I know you after I read

your book. But I'm in the home of of Ed and Lynette Advance and we're in Posey, California, which Ed, I would not have known where Posey, California was until I learned that you lived here. But it's an incredible and beautiful place just south of the Sierra Nevadas, or

we're in the southern Sierra Nevadas. Is that on the southern southern tip of the Sierra Nevadas, in a mountain range known as the Greenhorn Mountains, and uh Sekoyan National Forest and Sequoya National Monument is um right on these Greenhorn Mountains. UM, a place that a lot of people really don't know about. In fact, there's people that, um, we've met that live in the valley, the San Joaquin Valley. They've never even gone up into these mountains and they

have no idea what's up here. Um. Well, this morning we started off in I mean we were in Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California. Seven seven h seven lane going one way, seven lane traffic going the other. And we drove two and a half hours. And I mean we're twenty miles from a gas station. I mean we're more than that. We're in really you're forty miles away from the gas station. The only thing that um, the closest little town is

a town called Glenville. It's in Current County. We're until Larry County, and um, there's not much difference between the two counties actually, but um in Posey, all that we have in Posey as the post office for somebody who doesn't or did not know much about California. California is an incredible state for wildlife and and and really has an incredibly rich history and hunting and and that's why I'm here is uh so Ed wrote a book called Trained by a hound Dog. The book was released back

in November. And the book is is basically a collection of stories about Ed's life as a as a houndsman, hunting mountain lions and bears in these mountains right here where we're at. And uh. And so that's what I want to talk to you about today, is I want to I want people to get a feel for for your history and hound hunting and and uh. And in

doing that, we're gonna talk about the book. And and we just did a I didn't know Ed, wouldn't have known Ed, but several months ago it was probably Lynette that contacted me just through Bare Hunting magazine and said, I'd like to send you a book that my husband wrote. And I said, well sure. And I get a lot of books, and I really do a lot of people. A lot of people write books, and I read a lot of books, and uh, when I read this book, it I could tell that the voice of this writer

was someone special. I really did. And uh and I as I as I read the book, I thought, man, I'd like to I'd like to meet that guy. And uh and and it just so happened that our family was coming to California, And so I looked up where Posey, California was, because that's on your Trained by Hound Dog website, and it was just a couple of hours out of where we were. And so you graciously said, yeah, come onto the house, fed us lunch, and here we are.

I've got my whole family here and uh and we're here with you and and and so anyway, thank you for hosting. Welcome. We're sure happy to have you here. Um. I hope that this will turn into a um a long term friendship, and I'm sure I will. You know, I wanted to say something about these mountains here. Um hm. During the during the years of the Bounty for Mountain Lions and a lot of people have no idea of this, there was a there was a California state line under

that lived here and his name was Howard Builton. And I wish that I'd have known Howard. He died just about the same time that I started hunting these mountains. But had he been alive when I was doing this, that guy that had a hard time getting rid of me, I'm sure that. But I was really surprised when I moved here and talked to guys that had hound dogs that there was hardly anybody other than the long time residences that even knew that this guy even existed here.

But he did, and and like to say, he was a full time line uner for the state of California, and uh, I think he was. I checked his record, and in his final years of as a state lion enter, he was actually killing about fifteen lions a year, which you know, that's quite a few, actually, and that's some places, you know that the where you have snow all the time to catch your lions. Fifteen lions might not sound like a whole lot to some of those people, but

here it was predominantly bare ground trailing. And uh so you couldn't just go and roam around these seals looking for a line track in the snow because it just wasn't it wasn't there. And so the dogs that they used had to be pretty good quality dogs. The hunters had to be totally dedicated, and uh that's what I found in this part of the country. I've seen some places it was pretty easy to catch lions as compared

to others. When I was in Montana, it was definitely one of the easiest places because it's it's like it's snowed almost every day and every time that she'd find a line track is just about counting on. It was one very old, you know, but that and then the bear population in in this part of the country is um really good. It's far better than people would have

thought it was. Um. The entire Sierrara Mountain Range has been and and the Coast Range both have been noted forever for having the a lot of a lot of bears um and a lot of large bears to go with it. And the reasons for that was basically because the winners were short, growing seasons were long, and there was either oak trees or oak brush that's covering all these hills and uh, those happened to produce acorns, and acorns bears love them and they get fat on them.

So so it's it was an area that very unique. But at the same time, a lot of people in this part of the country, they say that they use a term that posey California was Tillarry County's best kept secret because nobody seemed to know where it was at. And in fact, even at the county seat, we've had to talk to people out of the building department and some of them didn't even know where we were and we're in their county. But anyways, no, it's it's a

beautiful place. Um. Four seasons, Winner is the shortest, Summer is the longest, and a lot of beautiful scenery to go with it. Ed, give us a give us a kind of a run through of your well, just let me let me just start off with this, when did you start hunting with hound and how did you get into it? And why? Because you didn't grow up in

a family that had hounds. I mean that was when I first started reading the book that caught my attention because a lot of time, most of the time, somebody that's in hounds is introduced to it or there's some pretty close connection to them that was able to get them in. But it's almost like you started running hounds just this was your own. Yeah, you know, I always as a kid, I grew up in a suburb for

the town by the name of Glendale in California. And in those days, of course, the population wasn't what it was today. And I kind of like the act like I was hunting him, because if it right from our house, you just go off in the hills, they're just covered with brush, and uh just kind of make believe, you know. But over time I drifted away from that, and then I found myself working in an assembly plant for Chevrolet

in Van Eys, California. Yeah, and directly across the line from me was a a guy by the name of Sherwood Barrett, and uh he was from Georgia, and and sure what he he was a Mormon, and he told me, he says that he left Georgia and he's on his way to Salt Lake City and because he wanted to live there, but he had to get go someplace and

earn some money in the process. And so he was I was putting gas lines, gasoline lines on these cards as they passed, if fifty something an hour, and so we'd get a few moments every now and then to visit. And he started telling me about chasing these hound dogs in the Oki Pinocchi Swamp in Georgia, and uh, it really caught my interests. I mean, it really did. And

they're on ragged coons. Yeah, and uh so, anyways, he teld me these stories about this what he was doing, and it just really got my interest, and so I asked him, I said, Sherwood, where would you Where do you go to buy these dogs? And he told me, says he could have like outdoor Life. They had these guys advertising him. I didn't know at the time that most of those guys were selling dogs. Nobody wanted, you know, and people like myself and buy him because I didn't

know what I was buying in the first place. So anyways, I started with that and what was your intention? Was your intention to run? I just wanted I like dogs, and I liked the idea of hunting and as honey with dogs, dounding it good. So you would have been in your early twenties probably at this time I was. I was just I just wanted some hunting dogs. I was like twenty years old, and nobody in my family

it had never even heard of it. And so I ordered a dog from him, and I got a red bone hound and us nice looking dog actually called him Buck. He seemed to know his name. So I got this dog and I didn't know where to go hunting, so I took off and it went up and in the in the mountains up by Ventura, which is just covered with brush, and I actually have a terrible place to try and hunt dogs. And I never caught anything with him.

And then I started meeting different guys that had hound dogs and they weren't doing any good either, And uh so I pooled around with those different fellas and and the dogs that they had and the couple of dogs that I had, and eventually I learned that what these dogs were chasing was not anything they could climb a tree at all. But the guys that are hunting with they were just fooling themselves about, you know, what they're really but they were after, but they were probably chasing deer.

They were chasing deer, It's what they were chasing. Know. So time went by, and the next thing I knew, I was introduced to a guy out of Utah by the name of Willis but Toff, which was a very well known government hunter and had caught hundreds of lions, unbelievable numbers of lions. I mean it had really caught

them too as well. And so I got with him and hunted with him a few times, and I bought a few dogs from him, and uh from there I started learning about the difference between hunting dogs and taking dogs hunting and kitchen stuff and uh so, then from there I ended up losing a couple of these dogs too, too tenady poison, which was terrible, terrible situation. And that was in Utah. And then I ended up meeting a

I it lived. It was he worked for a big farm out of Wacoe, California, and he said that the people told me that he had a hound and he might sell because of his age, and uh I got in touch with him. The guy's name is J. D. Reynolds, and he had this red tick count that he said he would sell, and I bought him, and I couldn't believe what I had bought. I went from from not catching anything to speak of to every time I put

that dogs filled on the ground, he caught something. And he didn't run deer, he didn't run coyotes, and he caught bobcats and raccoons and foxes every time he hit the ground practically. And from there I started learning the difference between good dogs, mediocre dogs, and dogs that just aren't any good. And uh so on the book that I titled the title Trained by a hound Dog, that title was really thinking about this dog, this red take down, which we called Bow. And uh like I said, he

was six years older than I got him. I was working as a carpenter framing houses in Thousand Oaks, California, where framing houses there as a carpenter was more like an athletic contest than it was anything else, because it is all peace work and and and you didn't get paid much for the for what she did. And if you're gonna have any money at all, you're gonna work like you're fighting fire from the moment you got there until it was time to go home, which I did.

And I'd take and load Bow up on Friday nights, and I'd head off from Ventura, California to the Green Worn, which is where we're at right now, and which is where Bow was read actually trained. He came from Arkansas. He was a red Dack count um out of the Elbert Vaughan stock of English Towns, which eventually became the over one Blue Ticks, But in those days he was still dealing with registered English dogs, and which is the

same thing basically, just different colors. And I think that first year I'd get off work and I'd drove all the way up here, which was three and a half to four hours each way, after working all all week. And I think that first year I had Bowen and I bought a a plothound. I called him Pat, and he was like two years old when I got him. Bo wouldn't run a line at all. He wouldn't I'd find a line track was fresh, and he wouldn't pay

any attention. But Pat had been on some lions. I got Pat from Willis put Off in Utah, and he'd been on these lions, so he he was eager more eager to try and trail. And and then bow was Bo didn't care. And I think I caught on Friday night hunting Friday nights and Saturday right out a hundred animals that first year. And that was driving four hours each way to go after putting in five days of slave labor type work, you know, which it was very

impressive to me. And it was basically bobcats and foxes with so they tree, these foxes and these little oak trees they do three here. That's called a great cross fox and um there are a lot harder to tree

than the bobcats are and um. But then two and then in the summer months, you had to have something that was really good too to be able to even trail any of it, because the trailing conditions got really pull are very dry conditions, very difficult for most towns to be able to to catch much of anything in the summer months. And uh, but it didn't seem to make any difference that dog would do it. And so that anyway, that's the the title of Trained by a hound dog was that I was taught by a hound

dog named Bow. He taught you what a what a good dog was supposed to do. He what not only what is supposed to be, but I was able to use him to take younger dogs and train him. And uh and I and and the experience that I had had prior to this, I did learn that one of the things that hownd Under doesn't want to do with his dogs is get him in bad company. And up until I had gotten Um introduced to Willis, buttop most of the hunting that I did with anybody was his

old dogs and bad company. And uh, bow was he was straight, he was a clean dog. And from there I started um having other dogs, and you started really searching across the country I did for for hounds. You would have been now, so you're still in your early twenties, and that's when you set out to try to get a sustainable pack of hounds. Yeah, I was about twenty five years old. I guess when I got Bow, maybe twenty six at the most. What year would that have

been in the sixties. Yeah, I think I got Bow in sixty three sixty four. He was born in ninety He was born in Paragould, Arkansas, and which is where Albert lived. But Elbert didn't have him, but Elbert owned the father to him. And now you went and spent some time down there. I did because j D. Reynolds, this guy in Waco that I got it, got the

dog from. He was from Para Gould and he grew up with Albert Vaughan and j D told me that, uh, if I was interested in that line of dog, it would probably be a good idea for me to take off and go back and visit with Albert, which I did, and uh I stayed with Albert for I think it's about three months. And UH, ever wanted to hire me. He ever worked in a shoe factory, and so that was pretty full time for him. And he didn't have the finances or the time to be able to taking

all these wild coon hunts and stuff like that. But he he's figured that he could make enough money to pay me something and give me room and board, and I'd stay there and I'd take his dog to these to these con huts. And but I I wasn't. I didn't. I didn't want to do it. I just wasn't cut out for that. Uh. And I love these mountains here and there of course paregold Organsas just out on the flat lands. And but I did learn this. He had awfully good dogs, and he really did, There's no doubt

about that. And while I was there, I was able to pick up a puff from him, which was not easy to do um at the time. And I called him Sailor, And Sailor was was out of a female that he called Lula the second. And I did learn at that time from the Elbert that of his blue ticks, which he had a number of different families of them, that those that have that came out of the the stock of dogs who was sired by a dog called Floridy Curly, which was owned by a guy named Jake

Size and Coffeeville, Mississippi. Um, he got a dog dog named Curly, and out of that and from there he got a female called Lula. And and I learned that anything that came out of Lula was going to be pretty hard to beat, especially if it came to speed. And I took, of course, Sailor. He was out a little of the second. Elbert also told me that UM in breeding, his experience would he had a lot of it in breeding in families of dogs, he said, to duplicate.

If you're trying to duplicate a dog, he said, the chances are you'll see the duplication and grandparents before you'll see it in the parents two generations now, yes, yes, And and I could see that UM sometimes with the in breeding with these dogs, that the grandchildren would be more likely to be like the grandparents. Then the children would be by the parent itself. And of course, now Lula the second happened to be excuse me. Lula was

Sailor's grandmother. And as time went by, Sailor kept getting better and better and better, and finally he passed up Bow. Of course, Boat had a few years on. He was getting a little old, but he still did. Sata was getting faster and faster and faster, and he died at the age of seven and a half. Um through heartworm

treatment is what took him out. In this part of the world, it seemed like with the guys that had dogs that could catch bobcats regularly or foxes, it usually would take half an hour to get him to go up a tree anyways, under good trailing conditions. When Saylor got to Worry was about five years old, I was done with the bobcat hunting because I was I was full time guiding then and it was just lions and bears, and I didn't have a need or and interest for

chasing bobcats. But I would still have to hunt the dogs loose to um to hunt to find lions because or bears because we didn't have snow over conditions to find tracks that way, and and they get on a bobcat. Well, I didn't want dogs out there wearing themselves out. Jason a bobcat when I'm out there trying to find a lion um and come to find out these thirty minutes forty five minute bobcat chases started getting shorter and shorter and shorter. And the last two years of that dog's life, UM,

he would catch thirty five forty bobcats a year. I don't remember. I didn't keep track to the foxes. But um, if any bob jacket still on the ground three minutes, he was on the ground a long time after he jumped it, and most of them would be within a minute, two minute and a half. And that you know, and I'm not bragging, I'm just thinking facts, dot is how fast that dog? And that was that you got? Yes? And then I ended up with the um a granddaughter of sailors who was killed at a very young age,

UM accidental death. And this was in Montana, and it appeared as though that she had that speed as well, that most dogs wouldn't have. I just I couldn't. I just couldn't find anybody that or hunted with anybody that had dogs you could run that fast. It just it was just everything was a one dog grace once it was jumped. But anyways, from there, UM, I stayed in California until we got drun out of here. UM let me,

can I back up a little bit. So what year so you got interested in hounds, you got a good hound, started treeting some bobcats and foxes when you were by this time your mid twenties. And then when did you start outfitting for Barren Line? Because that's what the that's what the book is primarily about. It's talking about your years as an outfitter. Yes, I started, Okay, I started advertising.

I'd hurt my back really bad in framing houses, and I I just couldn't um, I couldn't keep doing it, So I left Ventura and I moved to this area where we're out here. That was in um nineteen sixties six. When I moved here. I've been keep in mind, have been hunting it for about three or four years, traveling back and forth. But I moved here full time. Started running some ads in the magazine, uh like Outdoor Life magazine,

and I was I was so poor. I was poor as a church mouse, as a sayings go, you know, and uh living in the back of my truck at the same time. But I anyways, I uh renting an old shock, moved into that started advertising, and uh, I started getting some customers. And you said a little bit of add in the Outdoor Life, said Barren Mountain Lion. The hounds in California fifty dollars a month, fifty dollars a month from one tall and inch to add and

I wish it was just it was. It was just about broke me to have to pay that advertisements, you know, but you paid or you didn't get any any others.

And it started to grow from there, you know, and then I ended up having a U. I guess people started knowing a little bit a bit about me being there, and uh, I knew this guy lived up at Sugar Low Village and he said that he knew a guy that worked for the La Times, and he talked to him about what I was doing, and they wanted to know if they could come up here and I'd take him lying under they run an article in the Los Angeles Times, so you know, I said, well, yeah, okay,

let's do it. And this was obviously time was a little more favorable to hunt lions in California, was what. It was a little more favorable back then the bounty had the bounty had been taken off, that was in and I wasn't against them taking that bounty off. I didn't think they needed to do anything like that. Um, and the lion population, according to bounties, numbers of bounties

annually had dropped significantly. UM. You know, because it's like there were years that they bounty four hundred lions in a year and now they were down to like a hundred lines a year. That's for the entire state. So they really didn't need to be paying people to do this. There's guys are gonna do it. Anyways, he's doing it

for fun. So anyways, these guys came up, the guy named Dewey Lindsay, and with him was this photographer that worked for the He's a freelance photographer and he worked for UH basically worked for a national geographic And here I am twenty five years old with about three three hound dogs and UH I got these high powered professionals from Los Angeles come up here. I want me to catch a line. They said, I only got three days

to do it. In Well, the pressure was really on because trying to trying to you know, there's one thing to catch a lion. Were you just out there hunting and you run into him and you catch him as a as they become available. But if you're gonna do this as as a profession, and you've got people coming in and you're gonna you're on a no catch, no pay, which I was that those days. No catch, no no catch, no pay you. If you didn't catch you, you didn't get paid anything. Was that common back then or is

that just something that you wanted to know? No, that was calmon. That was the way it was everywhere, Um, all of them through the Mountain States. Everybody, no catch, no pay. You had to show for these people around and pay for their food and sometimes drive a couple hundred miles each way to an airport to pick them up and take them back. And uh, if you didn't catch them a line, you didn't get paid anything. So the business, the pressure was on, you know, and uh

made for some good outfitters, didn't it. It separated him, It truly did. And I caught him a lion on the on the third day. And you're just dry ground line hunting. So you're just roaming around freecasting the dogs. At that I didn't know. I wasn't using horse. What what I would have to do is I just had to go places where I knew that lions would frequent and and you know they're they're kind of a a strange animal in that, Um do you find lions that

would cert use certain areas and airs close by? They wouldn't even go and bother over there. And um, so I would go to these places where I knew that it either caught lions already or I had seen lions. I was really looking for some place where I could find a lion track, knowing that I hadn't already caught the thing. And uh so, anyways, we ended up catching the line and they they ran this story in the what's we called West magazine to the Los Angeles Time,

it's a weekend magazine. Through that ad it it generated quite a bit of business for me. And uh next thing I knew I was, I was so so dull gone for me, hurting for money so bad that I'd coast home. I'd find when I'd be driving home, I turned the motor off so I didn't burn the gas going downhill. It And the next thing I knew that I could leave the motor running and you were kept some may lines. You could leave the motor running when you go down the hill. Yeah, yeah, I was really

getting rich. You know, I'd like to say this too, that that was during the years that I did all this. Um, I wouldn't trade the memories of that for anything at all. I mean, it was just something that was just really important to me, and I've cherished those memories. But I'll tell you what, I was so poor. It took every penny that I made to feed those dogs, buy new ones if I needed to buy a dog. UM pay

for gas. Trucks didn't last very long in those days. Uh, seven many thousand miles on a truck that I was driving news By one brand new, and then seventy thousand miles later it was pretty rough shape. So so anyways, from from there, UM, I stayed in California, UM doing the line in the bearing and I took the I started hunting bears in northern California. I'd run into a guy and his two boys one day on a dead

end road down here, this is in Current County. I just called a lion and as a young guy with me. His name is Roy Stevenson. He's still a good friend, and he retired out of Current County Fire Department, and uh he was with me. He was it's on his sixteenth birthday. He told me. He says, he wanted to go go hunting and see if maybe we catch a

line together. And it was it was December, I think, and we caught this line, but we got a flat tire in the process of trying to stay with the dogs, and uh, we were just about ready to leave, and we're right at the end of the dead end road anyways, at the end of the road, couldn't be five feet away from us, and uh, I looked down the road and there's these two boys down there with four hound dogs and asked Roy Stevenson. I said, do you know

I know those kids? He says, I've never seen him in my life, and uh there was a friendship that is still going on today. The two boys is Bobby Bridges and Gary Bridges. They lived in by Reading and their father Jim Bridges, who has now passed on. We hit it off really well, and uh so the next thing I knew, I was up there taking bare hunts and Shasta County and Jim Bridges was giving me a

hand at it. And I ended up buying three of those dogs that we're standing at the end of the road that day from Jim, and all of them one full dogs outstanding dogs. Um to say the least I would say, to say they were good dogs wasn't really much of a compliment. Um, there were acceptionally good dogs. And so like I said, Jim, of course he's he passed on. Unfortunately they were They were all Timber followers. Jim was one of the actually one of the finest men that I think I've ever known in my life.

You could believe anything he said, and you can't find any of him that you can do that with. And if he said a dog was was a good dog, it was a good dog, and it was a good dog by his standards. And his standards were quite a bit above when a lot of guys standards for good dogs were. UM. But it was just a wonderful friendship that developed. And the and the Bears UM at that time in these Green Arm Mountains, which is where we're at, the Bear Pole place, was was very poor and necessary.

They had had a from what I understand, they had had had a drought, a severe drought in the late nineteen fifties. And they said that the Bears went clear to the San Joaquin Valley in those years. And in those years they were using the poison called ten eight to kill ground squirrels and everything else. And ten eight is a kind of a poison that if a ground squirrel eats it, and something comes along and eats the

ground squirrel, it's gonna kill that thing too. And I kind of think that between the drought and the widespread poisoning ground squirrels in these mountains that had just about wiped the bear population out for a long, long ways away. And it wasn't until about nineteen sixty eight, which would be about ten years after that drought that we started finding that was super good. How long did you? Just to give an overview, so you started you started guiding

in what year and ended in what year? Okay, I started guiding in nineteen sixties six, late nineteen seventies. I quit guiding. I didn't quit hunting. I quit guiding. Yeah, and um, I was in Montana when I quit. So you guided for about fifteen years or so? Close to it? Yeah, yeah, close to it. I know in your book you talk about you talk about and this is one thing that intrigued me, was you hunted on horseback a lot? Um?

Was that one of your favorite ways to hunt ed was hunting on horseback with the dogs free range and out. I did enjoy that. It was, you know, the easiest way to hunt dogs, just to turn the dogs loose and let him run down the road in front of a pickout and the fallen in a truck, which is very and then in common today, but in lion hunting sometimes with what I was doing, see how I couldn't catch lines that just my leisure. It didn't make any difference. If I was out there and called a line, I

didn't have any anyone with me. I didn't do me any good. I didn't get paid anything, and I was full time doing this, so I needed a paying customer to be with me, and a paying customer had to be there when I caught it. I mean I could catch I could catch the line the day after the guy left, and it didn't do me any good because he left and neither took his money with him when

he was when he left. You know. So during those years I had to go wherever the lions were at, and and it's like most of the hunts were like one week hunts, and during that week period of time, I had to come up with the lion. And if I didn't come with the lion. I just got to I got to pay the bill all by myself, you know, And that did happen very often? Did you catch? Most

most people live? You know, I was running of I thought a pretty high percentage, and I'm talking, I'm you know, I've I hear guys give their their percentages, and sometimes you you have to question whether there's any truth to that, um, because of weather conditions and things that can happen to

you while you're hunting. But on the both the line, the both line and barrens, I was hitting pretty close to UM, which meant you if you had if you had a guy on a line hunt and you're gonna he's gonna give you five days or like in this case with the newspaper, they gave three. Um, you didn't get much time to do that. So you better know where there's one at. And so to do that, I had to stay active, actively king, even if I had nobody with me. Well here comes the horse now, okay.

I drive Rhodes. I look for tracks alongside the rose walks some trails, but you can only walk so far. UM. Then there's other areas that you know that are pretty decent for having lions in them. Um, But it didn't do you any good to go way back in the back country. If you're gonna take what we used to call them dudes, take them in there to go catch a lion, because you had to get them in there too,

you know. So so I would take an i'de use the horse to scout to constantly look see if I could find a line if I caught him, and make sure I let him go, um, but try and keep tract of it so that you could hopefully find it again, which wasn't all that often. I seemed like I'd guessed lines, let them go, and I never even see their tracks again. They're just gone. You know, I don't know what you weren't.

I guess that's obvious. You couldn't use the horse when you had clients with you, So you were using that horse to be mobile to find lions for when people came in. Basically, yes, but I did use them on occasion, um. If as an example, Um, there's a place that I used the horse every time I went there, and that was up out of a place called Johnsondale. There's a

trail they're called a rent contrail. It was very good for having lions in it, but the Forest Service would lock the road getting to it, which meant that you had a two and a half miles behind a locked gate before you could get to the rent Cotton trail and it was all up hill get into it, you know. So so you had to use horses to do that, and I did. I did use horses to take guys in there, and it was almost always you could find you could find something going on in there, lines, hanging

out in some place in that you know. Um, But anyways, um, how many did I catch is compared to driving roads? I caught more driving roads mm hmm, just because you can travel fast, just it's an efficient way to hunt. It is you can travel much fatter. You're looking for an actual track, dirt track in the road, that's right, Dusty Rhodes. You try and find these roads of where the roads are just powder on them, you know, And did you get where? You were really good at seeing

a track? I mean, I know what I'm hunted with these guys out in Tennessee that that are there looking for tracks crossing gravel roads and places where bears skid down banks, you know, and leaves and they can see things a lot of people wouldn't see. They're they're really trained to see like that. Yes, yeah, it's like I

used to tell people. I said, you know, I could walk right through her or deer not even see any of them because I can't I see their track, but I can't look up because I'm just looking down so much that I just automatically look at the ground. You see what's in the And you still find yourself doing that today when you're out. I do theund right here on our property. But do I'm just looking at the ground see with the what kind of tracks? Any tricks

for finding line tracks with your eyes? I mean anything you look for did they cross and I'm sure they crossed in certain places or is it just totally arbitrary where they cross? You know what lions um they They seemed to use trails. They're obvious to you. You get to the point to where you could you could you find a line track. You're walking up a canyon, you find a lion track and just go in a certain direction.

You look off in the in the distance. You can just about say if this line has gone that far whatever that is a mild or whatever it is. The chants is are he went right through there and and you almost you can predict where he was. Yes, you almost always right, just just by trailing so many of them, you know? And would you so you you outfitted for line and bear? What was your favorite? What was your favorite to chase with your hounds? I love chasing bears.

Did you more than lions? Oh? That's hard to say. Um, I'll tell you what I liked about about the lion hunt. I really did enjoy catching a lion where the dogs would start with a track that was almost nothing where they doubt they and you have to have dogs that had good cold noses to where they've done. You find a line track in the dirt and you point at

it and they stick the nose down there. They couldn't smell it, but they they knew you were pointing something out and they started looking and they find a twig that had touched that animals side, and they could smell it on that twig and they'd bark. And you look at the ground where they're at, and there's that lion's track m hm. And you start from that, and maybe ten miles later you're looking at the lion. That to me made it all worthwhile. That was that was hunting dogs.

That's not that wasn't hunting lions. That was taking dogs and seeing them at their very finest, and I just love that. Um. I know, there's lots of lines that I'd caught people that I had taken in the past. After writing this book, they'd asked me about it, and I forgot all about it because they were they were, well, we call it pop ups. You know. You you cut the track and it was fresh, the line wasn't very far away with you, So that was the easy one.

Those are these just pop ups. You know, you forget about them. But those ones that where you get out out to those things. Then you go all day long just working, sometimes in the summertime where the dogs just just taking both of you. You gotta find the track to help the dog and the dog and take the track a little ways where you couldn't find it, and next thing you know, they turned that thing into a movable track, and like save later you're looking at it.

One thing that you did, and this I noticed inside the book, was you did some incredible athletic feats. In my mind following these dogs. I mean, we we talked earlier at the beginning of the podcast about a hunt where you probably went twenty five miles by foot in a single day in these mountains. I mean, were you a exceptional I mean what what? Were you a really

great athlete? And no, as a matter of fact, is as an infant, I had to birken Elisis and they've figured that I would um never be able to do anything athleticalized. But then i'd also it learned that your lungs can repair, and apparently mine did. And you know I would go places that following a hound dog. I wouldn't even think of going there. But it was because

the dogs and I were doing this together. This wasn't a situation where let me put it like this, for the numbers of lines that I caught, I left a lot of Let a lot of them go, just let them go. Same with bearn I let hundreds of bears go. I mean hundreds. I don't mean one hundred, I don't mean two hundred. I mean maybe like three hundred treed bears. Just let them go. One day. We caught five bears one day in Montana, which is against a lot of

chase a bear in Montana, but we did it. Anyways, and we caught five bears, separate bears, not traveling together, no cubs, let every single one of them go. Um. It was all about dog hunting. But in order for me to do this with these dogs, I had to take people along that would pay me to do it, and to do that, they had to shoot it. So so we did that. But anyways, I've lost my train of thought. What was your question? And just being an athletic feat to do what you did, and you had

tuberculosis as a kid. I did. Now there's a lot of times, you know, I keep telling myself, no pain, no gain, you know. And but if I if I could hear those dogs, I'm going to him. And there was one time in my entire career that my dogs treat a bear and I didn't go to him. I started to go to him, but had two guys with me. This is up in Shasta County, and they treat a bear in his place called hell Soul. That's with the

name of that canyon. M And that canyon is so steep that you had to hang on to stuff as you're going downhill, otherwise you're gonna just start sliding and you go all the way to the bottom. M hm. And from where the where we started the bear they dropped off into canyon is about feet in elevation to the bottom of straight down and treated about a thousand feet up the other side. And we started going down to these dogs, and I had two guys with me.

One of them is really heavy set, and I knew that he was never gonna get there, and I really wasn't too happy about going there anyways myself. But the dogs were just blowing the top out of this tree and across the canyon from where we were standing to where those dogs are actually try and we could not have been a thousand feet through the air apart from each other. But at the same time, we were about a thousand feet in the elevation down and another thousand

feet in elevation back up. And uh So I asked these guys, I said, done, what's gonna happen. If we get to the bottom, you're gonna be able to get back to the up to this top, because if you can't, there's no sense going down there. And they told me, they says, we'll never make it. So I started yelling and if fired more rifle a couple of times, and it's really surprised me. I remember how many dogs I had, and it probably I usually I usually had about four.

I like to during the embarrass season, I like to have no less than three, and usually about four. I'd rotate. The dog could catch dogs. You can catch bears with three, four or five hounds. Yes, um, I'll tell you a little about my philosophy on that, and which was the same as some few other guys. Um. But anyways, the dogs came to me, and I was totally shocked that they. Quentin came across that cannon. But as we got out of there, you know, and it comes to numbers of dogs.

Willis Betof he's alliant. He was a guy she's went to gut. He was a government hunter, but he also guided people as well, and he he trapped for coyotes. He uses dogs for lions and bears. Stop killing lions and bears. And he told me early on, he said, if you have three or four dogs that can't catch a bear, you don't need more, you need new ones. And I found that to be true. If you got four dogs and they can't catch bears, you better start looking for new dogs or help for some of them.

You might have a You know, now when I say three or four dogs, yeah, three or four. If you've got three or four dogs and they can't, you need new ones. I'm talking about three or four dogs where all three or four of them are bear dogs. Where you've got one dog. There's a lot of guys got that. They have one dog that's good, and then then the rest of them is just a bunch of dogs are just following, you know, and they catch the easy ones. But whenever they get up to add when pretty soon

they get started strung out. And um, you hear one dog he falling behind, another one's falling behind. And then after a little while you hear this one dog all by himself, and he, yes he is. He's the guy doing all the work. Well that's where you need to keep him. And started looking for replacements for the other ones. But you don't good bear dogs. You can do the job, you know. Um, And but they don't all make good bear dogs, you know. When you're talking about these guys,

like you said in Tennessee on these gravel roads. Um, there's a there's a method that is very popular today. Sata was the very first dog that I had that would do this and that's strack a bear out of the back of a truck. Yeah. Yeah, And and and Saylor would when he started doing that. The hound hunters in this part of the world, they didn't believe it. They they didn't believe that dog could do that. And um, but he did. And and then Bo was doing it

as well. Um. But they strike a bear track that the bear hadn't even crossed the road, but the track would be maybe five ft away from the road, you know. But they and and they strike the thing and then you let him go and they didn't up catching the bear. Yeah. But prior to those years, Um, there was a guy up in Washington State by the name of d. Moss. I think his first name was d. He had plots, all plots and he worked for Zayrah called Simpson Timber Company.

Was Simpson at the in those years, they had professional bear hunters killing bears on Simpson ground. What they were doing and what the bears would do, they would don the Douglas fir trees. They would they would um strip the bark off of them to go for the cambium layer of the trying they kill the trees. So Simpson, Simpson Timber Company, their solution must kill all the bears. And D. D. Moss was one of those guys. And

and I had heard that he had dogs. They would strike a bear off the box, you know, they put them on the box, you know, and drive the roads and they start them like that. And believe me, that's a whole lot simpler than taking it. That was new technology back in the day. Yeah. Now that's that's like, that's the way most a lot of these guys hunt. I even I've even been told that you guys got dogs will strike lines that way. They'll strike line tracks off the truck. You know, dogs that they learn how

to do it. And they're good smart dogs, you know. And and they'll they'll pick up on that. They started learning on their own how to do it, you know. But in the back, in the back then, you know, in the earlier years, prior to the sixties, I'd say, prior to the seventies. Actually, um, nobody's had dogs that could do that stuff. Um, except for just a few. Yeah, you know, like I said, I had a couple of guys. Probably weren't giving him much of a chance to do it, either,

were they. They probably weren't giving him much of a chance to do it. I mean, you know, it's like if you if somebody knows that a dog has that capability, he's probably given it opportunity and paying attention to it when it's on the box. And if you never did it before, you just think the dog's barking maybe or right,

you know, you just you just didn't know. But yeah, I I caught a line one time, just not too far from the Alice where we're at right now that um I mentioned it in this book and all right, um it's on Santa Crete fire Road. And I found the lions track a couple of days before on the far south end of it was about I think that rose like feen miles long, and uh, but it's an old track and I it worked it myself with trying to dogs couldn't smell it, and I got about ten

miles of it. And then I so you followed the actual tracks of the lion with yours, and I pointed out to the dogs if they could smell it, they bark, they try and find it, you know, but you know you're taking like some of these dogs. This is I'm being very honest and serious about this. You find a lion track in a dirt road, and the track was made when the road was wet in the mud, and it's not wet now it's dry and it's hard, and you've got dogs. You can stick the nose down in

that thing and smell that lion's track. They're smelling and responding to attract It is probably four days old, maybe a little older than that. Now they can't trail it much at all. They smell it, they can't trail it, but at least they're identifying it that I know that he was here and you're looking there and you see him with they're barking, and they're sticking their nose down in the dirt track that was mud, that this is

now hard solid. So I would take and and and try and work the dogs and and see if we can get something out of it. You know. Well, anyways, I got to the point that I figured it. I got up here to this um telephone ridge, and uh, I thought, you know, I think I'm pretty caught caught up to that line pretty close, which that's about eight

miles I guess from where I first found it. And uh so I got this friend of mine, Joe Bryan, who um he's another fireman, good friend, still friends and and uhh I mentioned Joe in the book Joe Hund'd an awful. I didn't have dogs, a terrific hand or a very good hand anything, horses, dogs, it didn't matter. He just tell him to do it, and he would

do it, and he would. He's very helpful. And uh I called him over and I said, I think I found this line, and he's up on telephone ridge and I said, if you want to go with me, Uh, I'd like to have you go along. I want to come around from the north side and and drive in to the south and and started looking and that lion apparently met usine the road because you're driving down the road and the dog just exploded in the back of

the truck. And uh, this was before I had dogs who were striking bears and stuff out of the backs of truck. But they just exploded. And uh the road was hard. You couldn't see tracks of anything. And I said, well, whatever it was, it's fresh. And I know that these dogs in the back, I know what they what they look for when they what they chase, and if whatever it is, it will climb a tree. So let's find out and we dumped the dogs out, and it wasn't any time at all, and they had that line up

a tree. You know, you had trailed him with your eyes for eight miles you had, yes, you knew which direction was going. You came in from the other way and just caught him red hot. I'd find his track, yes, I'd find his track where it stepped into the road, and then he then you'd lose the track. He had no idea where it was at. And all you knew is that he either went below the road or above the road. So that from that point i'd take a dog.

One dog, just one dog gets gonna be out there with me and and and at that time it's either said or a bow, and both of them is extremely good at coal trailing. And just walk the road. Don't get him excited or anything. Uh, you don't want him

casting out going long ways from you. But start walking the road and just looking, and um, you see the dog over there and smelling of a twig, and his tail starts wagging and he's checking it out more, and pretty soon he's running his nose out about a foot or a little more on a twig, smelling to see

what he's he's not too sure what he's smelling. Pretty soon they throw their head in the air and they let out a ball, and you know you're you're going the right direction anyways, you know, So from that point you just keep going. And like I said, I was able to do that. This line was I was lucky. The lion was at five thousand foot elevation. That roads at five thousand foot all the way, and it was just traveling heading north at that same elevation, and that

road just happened to be there. And so anyways, we ended up catching the thing. Is there any part of the book that you'd like to tell people about? I mean, is there is there was your favorite part of the

book for you? That just a story? As we kind of start to wind down here a little bit, well all the stories that I put in there having to be kind of favorite, you know, And I guess the thing for him to do is get a coffee of the book and read the thing you know that will tell But you know, there there is something that I'd like to say that, um, I have a hundred hounds since well I hundred with Jim Bridges one UM one time up in Susanville that we called a baron let

it go, of course, and but I didn't. I haven't had hounds since the late nighties. And um, I kind of burned myself out between myself and my dealings with politics, and politics went all the way down into fishing game departments, very political, and in some cases you find yourself on the outside of the good old boys club, and which is something that unless you're in it, you don't like it.

And I want to know part of being in it. Um. I got involved in the Montana fishing game of tagging mountain lions, and myself and a fishing game bologist up there named Jerry Brown, we got together and Jerry made the proposal to the Fishing Game department to start um tagging lions for research. And I was all for that, and I quit guiding to do that, and I learned a bad side of politics. Mm hmm. Some bad stuff goes on there on, you know, when you've got to

Jerry Brown was a viologist. He's a good guy. He was really a good guy. But when you've got a biologist, it's in charge of the the special of what they call specialty animals of the State of Montana, which were grizzlies, moves big orange sheep and eventually the Mountain line. I guess they've got in there when uh, you're conducting a study for them and you asked them what are you doing with this information? And they tell you nothing. And then they asked you, why is it that you're not

tagging more lines? And you tell them, well, we're using tranquial liners, which in the beginning days I didn't. I caught a number of lines without tranquilizers, but that was clear back in the sixties in California. When they tell you go ahead and start the thing anyway, I said, well, the line is up in this country. The most of them retreat pretty high, and uh, I don't want a door to the the line to watch him falls sixty to his death. And they say, go ahead and do it anyways.

And I asked the question. I said, what do we do what we tagged that one? And they say, well, what this is really all about is too full the general public into believing that them is efficient. Game Department are doing a lot of things for the good of the animals, but down deep inside, all they're doing is trying to fool the general public. M I heard that out of this state of California, and I heard that in the state of Montana, and I quit him when the when I was told that, I said, I'm done,

and uh so I gave it up. But Jerry Brown Um and I started that Mountain lion tagging program in that state. It was like five I think, is what it was. Does this day you can't even find that study. I've I've looked on the internet to find out if there's anything any record of that particular study of lions, and I find nothing. Mhm. But what I can find is where they took my information and published it along with the map showing every place that I was catching

lions and releasing lions. And when they did that the following year, it was standing room only in the area that I was hunting. They came as far away as Florida, dount lions in an area that I was trying to do a study in. So this is what I got to say about to the guys with the hound dogs. Be careful who you vote for. Yeah, be careful what you say. Your videos are beautiful, don't put them on the internet. They're using them against you. What happened in

California also happened in Oregon. Then it happened in Washington State, also the Panhandle of Idoh. You can't chase bears with with hound dogs in the Panhandle of Ido either. The day's coming. If you're not careful, they're gonna take your hunting privileges away from you, your hound dogs, just just like here, just like they did here. All you'll have his pets. That's all you'll have. And uh so what do we need to do? Yeah, first off, careful who

you vote for. Make sure you know who you're voting for. Yeah, Like I say, the these videos, I can certainly understand. You know, back when I was doing this, we didn't have videos. If you had anything of moving, you had to have a movie camera and and you weren't taking that hunting and what you weren't going to take that hunting. No, you had to have a movie camera with you and and and in order to do that, you also had to have the knowledge of how to use that thing.

Otherwise you got nothing out of him. You know, today we've got um handheld telephones that give you just beautiful videos. Yes, go ahead and get your videos, just keep it to yourself. You put that thing on the Internet. These detectionists are seeing that and they're gonna use that against you, just like they did here. Yeah. Um, I feel sorry for the guys that I love this sport so much, and yet at the same time they've got shackles on them. They got a short lease put on these guys for

those hound dogs. And it's a wonderful sport, it truly is. I just like say, I, I cherished my memories, but I got spoiled. I was spoiled. I truly was. I got to see the best of it. You know. When I started, uh, Mountain Lion was a bountied animal. Podcasts were non protected. Some places the bears are non protected. You could just catch as many as you want, do whatever you want or with them. And today you're lucky

if you don't. Yeah, some places you've got to get in a drawing just to be able to to go hunt them. Yeah, you know, well we it really is a it's a wildlife management tragedy. It's a cultural tragedy really that they've what they've done in California with hounds. And I think it's important that we're here and that we're talking about this, and that you've written a book about all these things that people can no longer do. And I think I think people are so well. Human

nature is shortsighted. Human nature thinks about today and tomorrow and not further ahead oftentimes, and and and currently, I think there's somewhere around seventeen states where you can run big game with hounds in the United States. I believe, I believe they're seventeen somewhere in that range. And whether these guys know it or not, their rights are currently

being plotted against as we speak. And and so even in places where that it's not as threatened, it is absolutely threatened by the current culture of this of the world of the in specifically this country. And you know what I say to people, ed, is that we have to get a whole lot smarter. We wrote an article in Barony magazine the other day about not posting bay up videos of hounds and social media and all this.

I'm in a percent agreement with you. The one thing that I know that I can do as a houndsman is clean up my own act. If I could say it that way, I mean some of the bad apples inside the hound hunting community that have given people a bad name by being poachers or by being this or that, and there's there's gonna be there's gonna be bad characters

in any sport, any sport. There's bad characters in tennis. Uh. But but I think about if we're being if we're being scrutinized, then Clay Nukem better be on his best behavi of your all the time. I mean we're being scrutinizing on the way we care for our dogs, were being scrutinized on you know, everything. So it's like, man, I want to make sure that I'm doing everything right.

And then part of what we're trying to do at Barony Magazine is that if I believe that, if if we don't create the narrative and tell our narrative, then the bad guys are gonna tell the narrative for us. And that's part of the reason I wanted to come talk to you is to is to uh. I mean, hound hunting is an incredible sport. It's an incredible heritage that we have in this country. I mean, jeez, are hunting culture was founded on hounds. I mean George Washington

had hounds, Teddy Roosevelt loved hound hunting. I mean we have this rich, rich history, and if our generation, my generation doesn't do something different and get a whole lot smarter, a whole lot wiser, a whole lot more savvy when it comes to how we handle social media and Internet and all this different stuff, we will lose it. And that's what then, and what we're saying is, hey, let's let's be smart. Let's let's not lose it, and let's

tell our narrative scientific base. This is conservation base. Bears are thriving in North America. Mountain lions where there's good habitat are thriving. Hounds are management tool that that we used to manage these animals, and it's a beautiful and amazing thing, really is, you know, I want to I want to add something here that what we're talking about. Yeah, we've had outlaw hunters is what we kind of dubbed him, you know, and I'd have to say that it's not

all their fault. Um. In the twenty five plus years that I did this, I did this. This wasn't a hobby to me. I was in the woods um um a dozen years there. I made my living from that. If I had two nickels to rub together, it was because somebody gave me that for taking them hunting, and if they gave it to me for taking the hunt, and it's because they got the animal that they were hunting for, or they didn't give me the two nickels,

you know. But over all those years I hunted California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho in Montana, and and all that time, which is like thousands and thousands of days, I think I only saw three three game wardens three different times. Now, the woods were left wide open for the outlaw hunter to do anything he felt like, and he did. He did do anything he felt like. He didn't have anything to worry about. Nobody's gonna nobody's gonna catch him. Big predators were just not on the right. Do you think do

you think it's different now? And I mean, because I would think that it would be different. I have no idea what they're doing. They kind of turned a blind eye to it, that's what you're saying. They just didn't care. They didn't care. Yeah, but eventually that there's some people came along. They did care, and they had money and they had a lot of spare time too, and they really don't like doing what we were doing. They didn't like that idea. You know the same people though, the

anti hunting community. Yes, right, but yet these people also have the ability, through through money, to take and by legislators to introduce bills to stop a guy with his hound dogs. Well, it's been a pleasure to talk with you, and and people can people can find this once you tell us where people can find your book. Okay, UM, it's I have a website and it's by the titles of the book. You go www Trained by hound Dog

dot Com. You can purchase the book there, or you can go to Amazon and you can purchase it on Amazon as well. It makes no difference where you purchase it. Amazon will cost you more money. And I mail every one of them, so it doesn't matter. They all come out of this house right here. And uh so that's the place that she can go and it'll it'll enlighten some of you too. Um, other things we've not talked about. And UM, I'd sure like to see. Um a lot

of these protection is stopped. I really do. I I have no interest in going any myself, but I never forgot how good it is to do it. So they can go to Trained by a Hounddog dot com. And this is uh, two hundred and something page book. How many it's about two eight seventy some photos, beautiful photos. And I just want to say that I was really pressed with this book. Obviously I wouldn't be here if I if I was not, but thoroughly enjoyed the writing style,

the storytelling aspect of it. I felt like it had just the right amount of of of human story but also hound dog story and hunting story and excitement, but also kind of this you really got a sense of of you as a young man, just kind of given all that you had to this dream that you had to to live the kind of lifestyle that you wanted to live with your hounds, and uh, and I admired your diligence and just you're starting from zero and becoming

really a master houndsman over those years. And uh, and boy, there's so much I wanted to talk about, you know. I wanted to talk about some of the the physical endurance things that you did chasing these dogs and staying out way after dark and uh, you know, coming in after fifteen twenty miles a day on foot and coming in hours after dark and cold. I mean, just some of the stuff that you did physically, I felt like was just incredible and not a lot of people are

are doing that kind of stuff these days. But no, I just well, and like I said at the beginning, that your your voice inside the book is strong and and it's clear to just for me to perceive that you're a man of integrity and and uh, just I I really thoroughly enjoyed the book. So I i'd really encourage everybody to get it supported and then in this book and you'll enjoy it for sure. It's a it's a great book. And uh, thank you so much for having us up today. Oh hey, I'm glad that you're here.

You got a wonderful family. I'll tell you that, thank you. This is really good. Thank you. I welcome to the opportunity to do this. And I will tell you this that don on that book, I've did the best I could to make it to where it didn't it's out like a how great I am type of a book, and no bragging or anything like that. I brought a lot of other individuals into to the book, people from past that I never knew, but I knew about him and I I knew the true side to the to them.

I know that not everything that gets written down is honest. I can tell you this from my point. Every single word that's in there is true. UM, no exaggerations, and UM, I think you'll find it interesting. There's some other hound men that, UM, you never knew and never heard about that. Um, the way that they did things, the dogs they had, UM, I never I never was color blind. I'll tell you that.

I I had a saying that I would tell people when they'd asked me about different breeds of dogs, and I'd almost always tell him that I never saw a good dog that was the wrong color. And uh and I really meant that. And I mentioned other brought other guys into the book. Charlie Tamp he lived like Ben Lilly and M got some photos of Charlie. I mentioned, UM, Howard built and he was a California state line hunner. I never could find anything that was ever written about

Howard Builton is a lion hunter. But Howard Builting had to be good. I could go by his record, and I could tell that he caught too many lines to be anything less than good. And uh. Um. But anyways, I entered out a lot of that killed six d something lines of California. Well, no, J Bruce, Um he had recorded kills of six hundred and six hundred sixties something. Those are not bragging stories. Those are stories that were documented.

It took a set of ear is off of a lion to before we went down on a piece of paper. But J. Bruce was one of the He was the very first aid line hunter. But M Charlie lived like a bad person. I mean he didn't have a house. He just lived out there wherever you, wherever he stopped, that's where he lived. But he still called lots alliance and they did it while walking to do a No no GPS, no four wheel drives, no horses, none of that.

He just won't. And well, but so I put that in the book and because I think it needed to be in there. And hopefully, um, if you ever get the book, you'll read it. And if you do, I'd like to hear it from you and see what you think about it. Yeah. Yeah, so if you get a book, send uh send it an email and give him a review on Amazon. But uh, well again my pleasure to be here, ed, thank you so much for having us,

and uh we have it. We have a saying at the end of every podcast that we say alright, alright, I'll say it, but I'm gonna slightly amend it for this one because we're talking about lions. But keep the wild places wild because that's where the lines live. Okay, all right, all right,