Why Coon Hunting with Hounds Matters

American wilderness to bear. We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation, who will also bring you into some of the wildest country on the planet Chasing Battery. On episode fifteen of the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast, we go on a live coon hunt with myself and a good friend of mine named Jonathan Webster. We take my two plot hounds, Fern

and Jed here in the Ozark Mountains. We'll talk about the history of coon hunting, the cultural significance of coon hunting, the conservation aspects of coon hunting, the how to what we're actually doing inside of coon hunting, and then we'll take you along to a tree where we got a coon. How does this hunt time with bear hunting. These dogs of mine I got from a bear dog breeder, and these dogs their whole family history for a long ways back.

We're bear dogs, but I've trained them to be coon dogs and we have had a tremendous time the last four years hunting these dogs. You're gonna enjoy this podcast. It's something different. Stay tuned to the end. Don't knock it, tell you try it. Okay, Hey, we're a hundred and thirty yards directly below him. I'm not gonna lie to you. That's a rough piece of talk to him. Third to talk to him. Good job, good job yet. Welcome to the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. Tonight. We are going on

a coon hunt. The date, what's the day, Jonathan? So he's a fifth. Today is January and it is about six fifty in the evening, and we are we are loaded up and I've got with me a long time friend, Jonathan Webster. Jonathan, give us, give us just a little introduction of yourself. Oh man, I am really excited to be here tonight. Never been hunting before. Obviously we've been friends for a long time, but uh, I've never been hunting before, and really really excited. Left goals also being

on a podcast Life Goals Sam. Well, you know, it's kind of one of these deals where Jonathan and I've we've been friends for a long time, but we've we've never hunted together. And just last last week we were looking for some time to get together and I said, Hey, let's go coon hunting and he was like, tell me

when and I'll be there very very much like that. Yeah, and so this is a great actually a great opportunity to talk about coon hunting raccoon hunting, and what we're gonna do on this podcast is I'm gonna I'm going to talk about basically two separate things that about coon hunting, and I'll tell you what they are. And then we're gonna go on a coon hunt and we're gonna record. We're gonna record some of the kind of live action of the hunt. And uh, and this is the spiel.

We got dog collars for the dash of the truck. This is the spill that I give every single time that I take new people coon hunting. And I really really enjoy taking new people because it's a you know, if you're trying to take somebody deer hunting. Jonathan, first of all, they've they've got to have their own weapon. They've got to be proficient with that weapon. They've they've got to be prepared to deal with large amounts of meat if they kill a deer. I mean not everybody's

really prepared or ready to do that. They've got to have patience, they've that. You know, the seasons are more are aren't as liberal as say a small game season, okay, because like the deer seasons would be much shorter. A small game season, like coon season here in Arkansas is is nine months long. There's actually only three months of the year that you cannot hunt raccoons in Arkansas. I didn't even know there was a season. But yeah, I mean, yeah, I know plenty of people who as soon as it's

deer season, they just jet from work. You never see you don't see him for you know, ten days, and so I didn't even know, right, And so so this is a this is a great entry point for people to experience hunting. And you don't you know, when you coon hunt, it's a it's a it's safe in the sense of like I take a lot of kids coon hunting, and I tell their parents, you know, my friends, my my children's friends come coon hunting with me, and I'm like, hey,

this is safe. Friends, friends, your children's friends. Oh no, your children's y Yeah yeah, children's friends or friends children there, we gon go either way, take him coon hunting. And a lot of times people that have never interacted with hunting, I think that it's it's unsafe. They think that their kid is going to be running around with a gun at night, and I'm like, no, no, no, this is this is actually very safe. There only one gun. I'll

be carrying the gun. Um. And that's pretty unique to hunting because in most times hunting, everybody needs a gun butt in a not in coon hunting. And uh, and we'll describe exactly what we are doing. But it's a good entry level sport. And this is what I truly love about coon hunting, Jonathan. That's in contrast to my big game hunting, is that big game hunting is typically

a solo sport. Even even though even though I have all these people that I connect with on a relational level inside of bear hunting and deer hunting and turkey hunting and all these different things, when you go on a bear hunt, you're by yourself. Yeah, I mean, now you may be in camp with people, but I mean

we're actually out there hunting. You're by yourself, man, coon hunting I have taken last week, we took a group of maybe seven or eight people, three or four ladies, ladies that you would know, uh, that you would never expect to go coon hunting. My wife was there with us, and my kids were there, and there were seven or

eight of us. I think last year we went on what we called the Cousins coon Hunt, which was all my my wife, sister in law, and I think there was seventeen of us that went, and I mean it

was just a blast. You get out in the dark, you turn your hounds loose, and you're able to talk, you're able to converse, you're not you don't have to be quiet, you don't have to worry about your scent, and most types of big game hunting there's it's really there's really more stress involved because you gotta do a whole lot of things right right to kill a deer, to kill a bear, you know, there's a lot more

at stake. That's actually been an intimidation point for me, as someone who does has no real exposure or entry into the hunting world. To like want to dip atoe in it that knowing that there's like a lot on the line that I could mess up for somebody else's shot. So like that's something that, uh, that's that's cool, that

that's not a factor here. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's a term that that houndsmen have you used for I don't know how long, but what we're doing tonight is what you'd call a pleasure hunt, and that that phrase may not make sense unless you're a houndsman that you know, if we if we tree a coon or if we don't, it's really not the issue. It's not like we're out here trying to you know, three fifteen coons and sell the hides and make a living for

our family. This is a pleasure hunt. Pleasure hunt we're doing for fun, just purely fun. And obviously other types of hunting is enjoyable and fun, but there's something about turn to loose a hound at night that's a lot of fun. So here's what we're gonna talk about, Jonathan. There's two things I want to tell you about. I want to talk to you about plot hounds and this is I'm gonna talk to you like you're a ten year old. That's basically that's my hunting age. Actually that's

your hunting age. Well, when when these kids come with me, like the life has to be interpreted or or you don't understand it. I mean, it's like walking into an art gallery and if you saw that same piece of art out of context in somebody's garage, you might walk by it and not realize that that's a world famous piece of art that has some intrinsic beauty that is extraordinary.

So to me, on a coon hunt, you could be fooled into thinking that all that these dogs are just a diamond dozen and we just turn them loose, and coons are diamond dozen't and they just run out there and tryer coon and we go and shoot it and go home, and we were coon hunters. But actually it's a complex sport that takes a lot of dedication. It's taken decades and decades of breeding in these hounds to get them to do what they want. There's a lot of cultural value inside of coon hunting that I think

some coon hunters don't even recognize. And so we're gonna talk about We're gonna talk about ploth hounds and my specific dogs history of plot hounds and what they why I've got these dogs because this is a bear hunting magazine podcast, and I'm gonna tie these dogs into bear hunting, even though these dogs have never been on bear number two.

We're gonna talk about the way that we're hunting here in the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas, with with dogs and with hounds, and and we'll talk will weave in some of the cultural significance of of raccoon hunting, Okay, And I think we'll maybe start there is that in the South, raccoon you know, coon dog is kind of a culturally iconic and has this like special place in people's hearts in real communities. You know, coon dog, coon do oh man,

he's got a good coon dog. Well, at one time the coon hide was worth up to twenty five dollars in the in the in the seventies, even up to the nineteen seventies, a coon hide, Jonathan would have been worth twenty five dollars. That was during a time period when the average poor Southerner was probably making about three

dollars and fifty cents an hour. Oh Man, And I could I could be wrong in my I did some research a long time ago, and that's what I recall, but you knows, was a lot of money in nineteen seventy for somebody that was probably making maybe twenty five dollars a day. Okay, you get a couple of coons, you got you got a couple of days worth. You had a good coon dog that you could take out a couple of nights a week in the winter and

tree three coons, four coons, one coon man. You you might make a month's wage, you know at the salt you know, compared to what you're making at the sawmill from this coon dog. And so this dog all of a sudden had some real value in that family. He became like a working piece of equipment. And in in

the in the further you go back in history. In in American history, fur has been has gone up and down in value, but I mean back in the eighteen hundreds and all the way through the nineteen seventies when fur prices kind of plummeted because the anti hunting communities influence on the fur trade. So it's not that way anymore. It's no fur today. These coons that we're hunting there week, they they do have some market value, but they'd be

worth about probably two dollars of pelt. Wow, dramatic change. Yeah, and so these hides aren't worth money anymore now. In different parts of the country, Jonathan, they would be worth more like if you killed if you took a coon way up in some of the northern states, the pelt quality would be a whole lot better than the pelt quality here in Arkansas because of the temperature, it's just not cold enough here and so our coon's don't have

the fur density that northern colon would have. But you see where I'm going with the cultural value that came from a coon dog. Okay, And obviously it's kind of been a you know, there's a stigma and coon hunters that these are just like backwoods hillbillies, and you know they were and they were. These were people that were trying to scratch out a living from the resources that they had, you know, and that's what I that's what

I like about it. And uh So to be a coon hunter today is I think kind of a unique thing. And there's a strong coon hunting culture very much so alive all over the country where there's raccoons, and uh there's a big competition coon hunting culture, which I'm not really into, but I have competition coon hunted some but but that's that's not a focus the reason, and I want to jump right to the conservation side of why we do what we do. And this is what I

tell all the kids that hunt with us. Coon are they are nest predators. So one of the biggest challenges we have right now and Arkansas is that we don't have any turkeys, and coons are notorious nest predators, and turkeys lather eggs on the ground, and so by removing coons, you are given a chance for a nest of turkey polts to survive. Um coons are because they don't have value anymore, that very few people hunt them and trap them.

And so basically there is an unnatural amount of coons in almost every place as compared to natural coon population patterns that would have been here pre civilization, pre European civilization in North America. So basically, by having farms, and by having trash cans, and by having chicken coops, and by having all the things that we've done to this place, there's a ton of coons. You know. It is fascinating

how hunting works on a conservation level. That's one of the that's one of the first things that I remember you saying about hunting was that was the history of Boone and Crockett, I believe, and incentivizing taking older males out of the population. And and I had no idea about that. I had heard many times on wherever, you know, hunters called themselves conservationists, and that I never understood that.

But that's cool to see that. It even goes to like, I don't know, it's a raccoon of varmat, of varmat level arm there's my knowledge. You know, there's a there's a tenant of the North American model for wildlife conservation, and it's called non frivolous use. So these would be like the ethics of the North American model for wildlife conservation that basically our whole hunting culture in North America is built around, and people do this and they don't

even know. People have this built inside of them and they don't even really know where it came from. But non frivolous use, which means that any one of these hunting dads out here would say to their kids, if you shoot it, you're gonna skin it. You're gonna use it. You're gonna eat it. Now. With coon, we don't eat coon. I have eaten coon, but typically you're not eating eating coon.

Coon is a predator. Typically we don't eat predators. Okay, typically for you can it's like they're edible, but that's not We're not killing this coon for meat. We will. If we kill a coon tonight, I will skin it and I will use that hide for personal use. I get the hide tanned out if it's a nice hide, and give it as a gift or use it in some way. Um. But even if we didn't, we would still be justified because we just need to kill coon's. We just need to kill coons a population. Yeah, yeah, Yeah.

This guy that we're hunting on a piece of private land out here, and I texted him just a minute ago and said, hey, we're gonna coon hunt it on your place tonight is exact words where get them all? I mean, this is a landowner that's trying to manage for turkey. He's trying to manage for quail. Quail or ground nesting birds, and coons are varmints. They will find

and get into everything. They'll destroy turkey, gigs and nest, and so there is a massive conservation aspect to coon hunting aside from it just being fun and we enjoy it, and it's a cultural experience to go on a coon hunt, so there's a lot to it. Okay. So that's that kind of gives some history of of why we can number two plothounds. I want to tell you a story about treehounds. Most people don't understand treehounds unless they have some connection to the hound world. So it seems like

treehounds are different than plothounds. Well, okay, jumping ahead, plot hoound is a tree hunt. So a plothhound is a breed of dog. Okay, plothhound is a is a u k C registered breed of dog. And that's what I've got back here. I've got two registered plothounds in the back of my truck. Um. But these plothhounds are tree dogs. So tree dog would be a characteristic of a dog

that would describe its action and behavior. So when you're hunting a raccoon, what we're doing is we're turning these dogs a little and they are going out and going hunting and looking for where a coon this very night has climbed out of a tree and gone out about his business, walking down creeks, walking down ridge, just looking for acorns, catching, you know, whatever he can catch to eat or find to eat. And he's leaving scent right now. The coon that we're gonna tree here in an hour

leaving scent somewhere. And these dogs go out and find that scent. And when they find that scent, they have this instinct to trail it up. Now, what makes a hound hound, now, pay attention, young tenure over, is that a hound barks on the track when it smells scent. There are many dogs that are trail dogs that do not bark on the track, and they are typically not they're not hounds. Like there's cur dogs and fice dogs that are tree dogs. Okay, they trail stuff, but they

don't bark on the track very little. So the characteristic of a hound is that when he smells sent he lets you know he's found it, okay, and you have to train that or is that just that's just inside of him and has been for a long long time. Um, So they trail this. They're trailing this coon, trailling this coon er er, we're listening to him er or or all of a sudden, that coon knows he's being chased,

and he goes up a tree. The dogs get to the tree, and they smell up that tree, and they circle the tree to make sure he didn't jump out, and they decide that he's up that tree. A tree dog will stay at that tree and bark and tell his master gets there. That is in contrast to a running hound. Okay, so treehound barks at the tree, stays there,

and that is a beautiful, wonderful thing. I mean, like, I don't know what would be an example, Jonathan, is something that that you would just be like a contoisseur of that you would just be like, this is a beautiful thing. Oh man, I don't even know a good pay a good podcast. Yes, well, a tree dog is a beautiful thing because they're hard to come by, and not just because you've got a you know, a breed of dog like plot that's that are typically tree dogs.

It actually doesn't mean they're gonna be a good tree dog. Inside of that breed. There's gonna be variations. There's gonna be some dogs that are really strong tree dogs. Like when an animal goes up a tree, they start barking and they'll stay there for ten hours. Uh. Other dogs might you know, smell it couldn't go up a tree and might bark around there for twenty minutes and then

peel off and want to go hunting. But here's here's the Here's the thing about a running dog, a running hound is that when he smells sit on the ground, he barks. When he smells where that game has gone up a tree, He's like, well, shoot, he read up a tree. I guess I'll go find something. And and and so that's a pretty common typehound that people use for different things. For running foxes, for running coles, for

running game that does not climb a tree. You don't need a tree dog, right, And so these are tree dogs and that that is that is valuable. And these dogs, specifically our plothounds. And this is where I'm gonna tie plots. Well, I'm gonna tie this coon hunt back into bear hunting. Is that these dogs come from a long, long line

of bear and mountain lion hounds. Now have I told you that before I knew that you had gone to to look at a dog in like another state some months ago, and I assumed that there would be a reason for that some sort of pedigree or something. But right, well, so when you're talking about a coon dog, like there there's certain mammals that we chase with hounds that climb trees, raccoons, bears, and mountain lines. And there's some some characteristics that are

similar between dogs that would chase those animals like pretty much. Um, and and and there's in each of those species of animals that you're trying to trying to chase, there's going to be there's gonna be characteristics and a dog that you need really strong that you don't in others. Okay, and here's where I'm getting at Fern and Jedi, because my two plots male and female. Ferns four years old.

Jeti's two or three. I think he's coming on three. Um. All of their genealogy back for generations have been bear in mountainin dogs, a few of them coon dogs in Kansas. And I got these dogs almost on accident. I had written a legendary bearhound column, the very first one for Bear Hunting magazine. We started a column called the Legendary Bearhound Column because I wanted to include more hound content in the magazine, and I needed content that I could

create myself. That like I could be that I didn't have to go on a bear hunt a cow on the side of the road just did you look, Oh my goodness as a cow out in the ozark Um. I needed content that I could create, and so we started this legendary bearhound series, and I think we've made like we've written twenty five legendary bearhound articles. The very first legendary barhound article I wrote was about a guy named Steve Heard and his line of plots called Bluff

Creek Plots, and Steve Heard lived in Protection, Kansas. I called Steve Heard I'd heard about him and told him what I was doing. I said, I want to write a story about one of your old dogs. We wrote a story about a dog named bear Path Gunner. Remember that bear Path Gunner in the nineteen seventies was one of the was a national, nationally known bear dog that just people just knew about and wanted to breed their

dogs too, and he was just a great dog. Well, these dogs, both of these dogs right here in the back of my truck, have bear Path Gunner in their ten generation pedigrees. Like I don't even want to say how many times, but like forty times or something. Uh, and I somebody's gonna call me and say that was wrong. Basically, this is a line bred strain of plot hounds, which means they when they find a good dog, they want

it over and over and over in that lineage. And so these dogs come strong from the Bluff Creek and Shamrock line of plots. Okay, Well, I didn't want to bear hunt with hounds. Uh, we can't do it here in Arkansas legally, and I never have. And but I wanted to have my fingers in the barehound world. So I got dogs out of this real good line of bear dogs and I coon hunt them, because coons and bears are actually quite similar in some ways there for leg critters that run up trees when dogs chase them.

Bears are a little bit bigger, a little bit meaner. Where the similarities in. Uh yeah, um. So, like I've had a couple of litters of pups out of these two dogs, and those pups are right now in different parts of the country where it's legal to hunt bear uh. And they're they're being trained his bar dogs. So Fern and Jedi's offspring are being trained his bear dogs in different places. So, but plothounds are really cool because they're the only they're the only u k c. Registered hound

that didn't descend from European fox hounds. So there's multiple breeds of hounds. Walker, black and Tan, blue, Tick, English red Bone, all those dogs kind of descended from the same lines of European fox hounds. Okay, and a lot

of those dogs look quite similar. Well. Plot hounds or descendants of German dogs that came over by They were brought over by a young German boy named Johanna's plot seventeen fifty and as the story goes, he he brought five dogs over from Germany that were given him to him by his father, and the breed was never outcrossed

one time in three years. I had no idea that that was the legend, that they came from such a specific point in time, and yo, yeah, and and I mean it's more than it's it's a little better than legend because it that actually happened. Now, the thing about outcrossing that we won't step into because there's a big controversy. There's some people that are like, they have never been out crossed one time from those five dogs in the

history of the plothound, which is probably didn't happen. And then but there's other people who believe that probably most of the plotounds that we have today came from those dogs, and those dogs were developed and bread and the Great Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. Plot is the family name of this. It was Johannes's Plot. They had these dogs. There's there's a there's a range of mountains in North Carolina named after that family. And the plothounds is a

state dog of North Carolina. I had no idea, and and so bare hunting with hounds is big in the southern Appalachians and in North Carolina, and so like hunting these dogs. It's like, man, you get into the Appalachians and you start talking plots. I mean, this is like cult type devotion to the breed these guys have. Now, can anybody raise plothhounds? Where is it like the plothhounds? The Plot family is still involved. That's a good question,

that's a great question. Anybody can raise plothhounds. The Plot family is still involved. Uh, there's a lot of the Plot family that still lives in North Carolina. Huntings, plots, um and plots. The epicenter of the plot world is the southern Appalachian Mountains eastern Tennessee, where from North Carolina West Virginia, Virginia. That's kind of the epicenter of where the plots still are and some of these really good

lyne bred strains of dogs. Are any any thoughts or questions on that, Well, No, I had just no idea that I always wondered where the name Plot came from, and that it's a family name. Okay. So to me, that's what makes like this hunt have some uniqueness and complexity and kind of a story behind it, is that like these brindle dogs, one of them is almost black, the other one's brindle. There's a immense history behind it that's really unique and um and let me just describe

this to you and this will help makes sense. Bear dogs are these guys that hunt bear dogs over where all these strains, where all these strains came from, and especially back in the eighteen hundreds and in time periods when there wasn't much room for having a dog that didn't produce game. Dogs were like you bred the best dog to the best dog, and if a dog didn't couldn't tree a coon, couldn't chase a bear. You didn't keep him and you didn't breed him. Okay, like he

had to produce game. And so think about seventeen fifty two, what do we weout three hundred years? Um, just about three eight fifty We're gonna edit that part, Yes, almost three hundred years. Envision breeding the best dogs to the best time and time again. This would be very different than like just a dog breeder that's breeding, you know, Schnauzer's trying to get the physical appearance of a Schnauzer

to look a certain way. Like these, a bare dog has to be bred for athleticism, extreme endurance, grit, courage, the courage to stand and fight a bear if it turns and and and comes after the dog. It's got to be a tree dog. I mean, like I gotta have that tree instinct big time. It's got to have a cold nose. Like you can take a line of twenty hounds, Jonathan, and they all hounds are not created equal, and their ability to smell scent is not created equal.

So in a line of twenty dogs, there's one that's gonna be the best and one that's gonna be the worst. And so you're breeding for all these different characteristics that have to be present in this one dog to make it worth its salt. And back in the day, there was no room to have an average dog, and so

they didn't have them. So I mean they they fine tuned these lines with dogs down extreme in an extreme way and produced dogs like this right here and u Fern and Jetta and it's and I'm not saying that there exceptional dogs, but I am saying that they are the result of very very intentional breeding for hundred two

hundred years. That's it's that's I had no idea. And it's funny because it sounds almost just like what you hear about for racehorse breeding, just the intentionality and the extensive selection process that goes through and for such a long time. Yeah, that's what. I had no idea that that kind of I don't know, you think about like racehorses, and you think about kind of a noble, strong tradition and I was just totally ignorant to well, And it's

and it's not just plots. You know, all the other breeds like if if I was if I had walker dogs would be able to tell you similar stories. It would just be a different story. But I mean the plots aren't the exception. But the point is is that these old hillbillies in the mountains that have been breeding dogs for all these years are pretty dang smart, some of them. And uh, and there's a lot more to it than meets the eye, you know. And to me,

that's what's so cool about it. It's kind of this like hidden culture that the mainstream world doesn't really know about or care about. And uh and man, I'll tell you what, if there is one thing that I could keep and that I could pass on to my children that I just love and now, I love big game hunting. I mean, geez, Louise, I loved to bear hunt, loved a deer hunt. Man, I love to coon hunt. I have more fun coon hunting than almost anything I'd do.

And it's there's there, There is a there is a rare human pleasure when you can take a dog that you have raised and trained and partner with that dog to go out and acquire wildlife commodities, rare human pleasure. And all of the dog men know what I'm talking about. And man, that that is like to me, the essence of the freedom that really this country represents is that we and it's kind of been our cultural history is that we've got we've got a lot of wild lands.

We've stewarded our wildlife resources as well, and the hunters have the right to access that those wildlife resources. And uh and Jonathan, you you would, I mean you know it because you've heard me talk about it. But my goodness to hound sports are massively under fire right now. For real. I mean, like like for real, my kids when they're mage could have dramatically less opportunity to do what we're doing tonight than than I did. You know, and that that's really sad. I mean, it's like losing

a part of your culture. And uh, and so in in in any way it and and coon hunting is not the biggest target. The biggest target for the hound community is is mountain lion bear hunting. I mean they're wanting to snuff that out. But it's no different. I mean, if we lived out in Nevada, or if we lived in you know, in eastern Tennessee, we we probably wouldn't be coon hunters. We'd probably be bear hunting, you know. But the point is that it's a it's a really unique,

really fun, really fun hunt. We're gonna turn around here. I think I think we're gonna go back and and here's where we're gonna start talking about what we're gonna do tonight, is that we're gonna turn these dogs out and we're just gonna FreeCast them on the back side of a pond. And for whatever reason, coons are almost always around them to water. That's usually where you find them. Here you strike them is there around water. And these dogs are gonna run off and go hunt, and we're

gonna sit there and we're gonna listen. And when they first find a track and they bark, that first bark, we would call that a strike. I would say, oh man, Fern is struck. Okay, terminology will use you kind of struck. I'm gonna need you to use this terminology. Oh man,

I'm down. She's gonna be struck. And Fern when she strikes a track, she's kind of squally on the track at first, like she'll kind of squeal a little bit and bark, and it will be kind of an irregular bark, and you can you can tell how fresh that track is based upon the intensity of her bark. If she just screams out of there, just spurgargarder and just gets

further and further away. You know that they are really close to that coon if she just gets out there and it's just like you know, and you can tell she's just like she's just like grubbing out this track trying to find it and it's old, and you'll we'll hear just move down the hall of er and then at some point she will when they hit the tree, Jonathan, they will do what they call a locate bark, and it's extremely nuanced and hopefully we'll be able to hear it.

But a but a but a tree bark is when that five second period when the tree bark, the locate bark up, backing up, back up. The locate bark is that short period of time when the dogs have decided that the coon has gone up a tree and it's no longer on the ground, and that it's almost like they're excited that they found it and they let out a long, long, extended bark and then they go into

a chop. So like Fern, she'ld be trailing. This would be an example, Okay, she would be like, oh, oh, she's barking, and then she finds the tree and she goes long bark and then she well, well, well well she starts chopping. Nice. It's to the untrained here, it's just a dog barking. But too it's it's like, you know, like a conscissur of wine, you know, that can just take Oh, this is grapes from the from the heels of Sedona, roasted in the august sun. You know. It's like,

there's the locator bark. Yes, And all my kids are like masters and like calling Fern you know what she's doing, what she's doing. And all these little kids that we take hunting with us, you know there, I'm like, y'all listen for the locate bark, and I mean they'll be like, you're just located, and I mean they just get on it.

It's so much fun because it's it's it's just there's few things in life and in the natural world where you just have the patience to just give something your attention that's not a computer screen or that's not um something that gives you this like immediate gratification and you you kind of dissect it and and can call it and learn it and anyway something that we've really grown to enjoy and so you're gonna see these dogs go.

So we're gonna turn loose and we're gonna we will probably just kind of stand up here for a while and let them go down off in the hollow and hunt. We may walk off down there to them. They may tree within two yards of us, or they might tree five or six yards to us. But the beauty is we don't have any hurry to get to them. Was just take our time. They're gonna keep busy. They're gonna they're gonna once they we won't go to them until

they get treated. So we won't, you know, we we may hear them run and they hear them do a bunch of stuff, but we won't go to them til they get treated. These dogs will have these dogs will have tracking collars on so I will know where they're at at all times at garment tracking collars um and so we'll be able to keep track of them. We'll

know where they're at. And let's go, let's go tricking. Yeah, all right, you go get these tracking collars on them so we know where they're at all the time, so we can get them back anytime we need them back. They'll come back if I toning them we grab that is, we're gonna go down here. There's a there's a pond right up here, and there's a creek that flows out of the backside of that pond, and we're gonna turn

those dogs down this hollow. And my prediction is that they will strike down in the hollow about two yards from us, and they'll run it up that spur hollow back over there that way. Okay, this is where we want them to go. It's right here. So I'm just going to I'm gonna check and make sure that I got them both picked up on the collar. I do. They're both on the collar, So Jedi go get them. Whoop m hmm, don't get them, Jesus kind of joy. Barking,

there's a strike. It's possible that they just struck right there, but I don't think so. I think they were just babbling a little bit. Yeah if that, if they keep barking, they may have struck one. I think they just struck one. I thought she was just babbling. They ain't babbling, buddy, listen to him. They're burning it up. The dogs struck right off the leash and went about two hundred and fifty yards, fell in treed. Okay, we're almost directly belown.

He were a hundred and thirty yards directly below him. I'm not gonna lie to you. That's a rough piece of day right through here. Um, let's just see what it looks like. They got him, Jonathan, how you got him, Treed? They got him, Jonathan, you've turned your light on. It's a coon. They got him. Talk to him, Fern, good girl, good girl. Yeah at a girl, Fern, at a girl. It's him a dog, all right. We had to work for that one, didn't we, Yes, sir, well hold for you.

So you know that's what a tree dog looks like. You know how long they've been treated over here? Yeah, they're just working, man. They just they just stay there and tree. I mean, honestly, I don't know how long. I mean, I've never left him there all night because I've always gone to him. But in theory, they'd stay there until we got here. That's what you want, two

in or fifty years of strategic breathing. That's right, all right, Well, going on to your let's pop him out ty a tree just a little bit away from the tree that the coons up. Man, you're still happy, ask NB right here. You were coming here with fire in the hole. After this tree, we'd cast the dogs two more times and tree one more coon before we called it a night. To Coon's treed. It's ten. We're on our way home. Jonathan closing thoughts Perceptions of coon hunting go. Man. I'll

tell you what. There's something about seeing animals that are bred for one thing do that thing they're bred for. Like I had never seen that before in person. I had seen like videos of like rat terriers in England that would go out and actually uh get rats at like barns and stuff that guys would hire them for. And to see that in since seen these dogs just totally go for it, be totally enthralled. I mean you had to. We had to pull them down several times

when you were trying to get him away. That's amazing. It was amazing. And how I could through the woods too, Oh my goodness. I was telling you that I had never really been like kind of that off trail before. But man, we were going up bluffs and we were checking out the I mean, we're just going, We're just going for it, and it. I think those raccoons they got a little strategy and them to go into high places. Have some good mountains tonight. Yeah, we had two nice,

pretty uh adventurous walks to the tree. Indeed, I always always like it when they get back and hard to get to places, and so it was fun. The first tree they they they probably twohund fifty yards, but we had to scale a mud slick bluff that was pretty step. And then second when they went about four hundred five yards up a mountain, we had to we had to go to them. It was a lot more doable. Yeah, yeah, well, thank you for kind and this won't be I have

a feeling that we have ignited the houndsman. That's right, that's right. Hey, thanks for listening to the Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. Check out our website bear dash hunting dot com. Subscribe to the only print bear hunting magazine in the world, and check out our YouTube channel. We're putting up new videos at least every two weeks, and we're about to

jump back into our weekly vlog schedule. So what we're what we did through the hunting season was we did our bare Horizon season, which is our cinematic, polished hunting adventure conservation videos. And then when we run through all that content and all that, We're gonna go back to our weekly vlog, which Jedi, who's in the dog box right now, is always a part of in the global headquarters. So keep the wild hold on, hold on. Did you have a closely thought? Oh, I was just I finally

got to meet Fern and Jedi. I mean that's seen him in the in the Weekly pot the weekly YouTube videos so many times. And bo Jed's a different dog when he's after a coon, isn't it. Yeah, he could care less about the camera when you see him in the YouTube videos with those long eyes and just listening to you and giving contemplative and then not he was

jumping on that tree. Whole business. Yeah man, yeah, yea. Well, keep the wild places wild because that's where the bears live and the coons and the coons