Canines are our passion. They are our addiction. They are our way of life right down to the very core and without them we would be lost. The canines of this world really are something to behold. They assist us at work, they accompany us at home, and they perform for us in the field. No matter where we go, they are by our side. Canines really are a ride or die and for that we are grateful.
This podcast will showcase working canines of various breeds and disciplines as we search for those canines and their handlers who are always striving to be the best at what they do. Those who are always grinding. Those who are always pushing the limits. Those who are always dogging. Join us on our adventures as it is sure to be a wild ride. I'm your host, Bryce Matthews. And I'm your co-host, Stephen Basham. And this, this is Semper Doggen.
Welcome back to another episode of the Semper Doggen podcast. I am your host Bryce Matthews and I am flying solo today. Little Basham couldn't make it down here and we got a pretty exciting episode for you guys today I think. This was, this is fresh off the press. I mean we literally just got done hunting. Just got done running some coyotes down here in Kentucky and I've got the man of the hour with us today, Mr. Dalton Hillard. How you doing today buddy? Good buddy, how about you?
Buddy, today was great. It was a good hunt. Yeah, we was in coyotes pretty much all morning. It was fantastic. It was. Able to bring my fiance and my boy down here today. They were able to experience it. Got to see my first box dump. We're going to get into that here in a little bit with the greyhounds where they caught him. It was just, it was a good day. It was, yeah. We was in action pretty much from start to finish. So guys, Dalton had been posting on Facebook for a couple years.
Some videos really that got me intrigued were of his decoy dogs with the coyotes. And I started watching what he had going there on social media and I reached out to him a couple years ago and asked me if I could come down and hunt. He was like, yeah, absolutely. For whatever reason, it never happened. We never got that taken care of. The things just didn't align and I didn't make it down.
But this year I reached out to him again and I said, hey man, I've seen you've been running the greyhounds on the coyotes and I still want to come down and come hunting. And he was super gracious, let me come down. Came down a couple weeks ago and ran with him. We ran some coyotes. We just weren't in the right position at the right time to get him caught. Yeah, we, I guess about hit one with the pickup. Hit one with the pickup.
Sucker made a left when he should have made a right and we about run him over. But it was an awesome hunt. And I told him, I said, look, I really want to come back. I said, I want to see these greyhounds get dumped, run across the field and snatch one of these yokes up.
Because it's an interesting dynamic when you've got the trail hounds that get them jumped and then you've got, once they're running, you know, through the woods and across the field, then we've got to get in position to get the greyhounds where they can see them. It's about the box and it's something that has to marry together with perfect timing in order for everything to come together. And it's a work of art really. It is.
Yeah. It's, I guess the greyhound deal for me was I run them decoy dogs and I thought, man, I know this dog's fast enough to catch a coyote. I know he is. And I called him just to run the dog box and he had his coyote come out one time and I pulled it up there and hit my brakes and let him out and he ran that joker down. I thought, man, I got, I can do this. I know I can do this here. Yeah. So you've been in the game for a while, but go back to the beginning.
Tell us a little bit more about yourself. What got you started in the hounds? Because the transition to greyhounds is a pretty recent thing. So just go back to the back story. Tell us what happened. Yeah. So we, my granddaddy was a fox hunter. Fox hunted years and years ago.
We kind of, they kind of got out of that and started coon hunting and they did that thing and I did the coon hunting thing for a little while, but it just, I worked night shift and the coon hunting thing just wasn't my thing. So I bought some dogs from some good boys up and I guess it'd be up around where you're from up around Kokomo.
And I did it by myself for, I just hunted by myself for, I don't know, a year or two years and I knew there were some guys down around here that did it and kind of met up with my buddy Blake Fraley and he's like, hey, just come with us sometime. So I started going with them and heck, went with them probably two or three times and I was like, man, I got to have a dog in the race. I can't just go ride. I got to have my own. I know how that goes.
So I mean, I get on the internet, you know how it is, Facebook and start calling these guys. I'm like, hey, I'm looking for some dogs. And I went and bought some dogs from a guy and they were potlickers. They weren't worth 15 cents. And so, I don't know, kind of got to searching around for some different dogs and ran into a guy named Brent Springer.
He's up from Salina, Ohio, where he lives at and I bought a pretty good male from him and actually a really, really nice dog and just started buying and bought some puppies and started raising them and here we are today, you know. Yeah. So let's go back to the decoy dogs though, because that's what first intrigued me. When did you start running them? And for those who haven't heard, give the listeners an insight of what that is and what that entails. How does that work?
So the decoy dog deal was back in, I guess, 2015. I bought some currdogs. I saw the guy that got me interested in it was a guy named Stacy Warner. And Stacy Warner is a Big Paul dog and you can look him up on Facebook or whatever. And kind of got to talking with Stacy and I mean, I had bought a few currdogs. A couple of them didn't work out. One of them was a pretty nice dog. And Stacy's like, once you just come down and hunt with me, I'll show you what it's about.
So me and Courtney loaded up one day and we drove down to Texarkana and went hunting with Stacy and he showed us what it was about. And from there on, I mean, I was hooked with me calling coyotes. I mean, that's all I did back then was just call coyotes. I didn't run with no dogs. And then I got into the decoy dog deal and I had a dog named Hank. He was my very first real legit decoy dog. And I run him for, I don't know, two or three years. I wanted something more. The currdog was fine.
Currdog would go out there, bring it back. Yeah, so explain how that works. Break it down. So you're going out there and you're making a stand basically. You're still hunting. So you're calling a coyote. So you're pretty much starting to be, I don't know, right after the season here. So it'll be towards the end of April and hunt all the way up until September. You know, I mean, the coyote is, he's dominant. They're protecting their territory. They got puppies. They got little ones.
And that's the key is closer to the den you get, more aggressive you're going to be. You know, that's the name of the game, the decoy dog world. So I mean, I did that a little bit and I don't know, it's still to this day I love it. Okay, so you're getting out there. You're using an e-caller? Yep. Okay, you're using an e-caller. I'm a Garmin. Yeah, I'm using a Garmin. Okay, and you've got, so you're bringing the coyote out away from the den is what you're trying to do.
That's the name of the game. Bring them out into the field. Now, once you've got them out in the field, that's when you send your quote unquote decoy dog, right? Right. I'll stick them on them. I'll send them out there and they'll go out to the coyote, bring them back to me. That's just the game which I assume is back and forth, back and forth.
So the coyote is protecting its den thinking that the decoy dog is there to harm its puppies, invade its space and they're just protecting what is theirs. Right. And that decoy dog will go out and come back and slowly bring that coyote closer to you. Right, absolutely. And then what? Ain't nothing like a coyote moving five, 10, three, four yards from you screaming in your face, mad. He wants you out of there. That's what he wants. They're there to protect what's theirs, you know.
Is it the male that's protecting the den or is it the female? No, it'll be anything. It'll be the mama, it'll be the male, it'll be the helper females or helper males that are around. See, I don't know anything about that name.
So the way the coyote will be, you'll have your one dominant male, you'll have your one dominant male that does the breeding and then you'll have your female that carries the pups and then you'll have, I don't know, it could be one, two, three, four helpers that live within that family group of coyotes. I did not know that. Absolutely. Okay, so what are the helpers doing? Are they just protecting the area?
They have the helpers, I guess they say they help raise the young, watch the area or whatever, you know. Do you know, like off the top of your head, how old the coyote has to be before they transition into that dominant area or is it a deal where it's like a dominant coyote has a domain and he is king of kings until something happens to him? Yeah, I mean, I don't really know.
I mean, I know a little bit about coyotes, but when it gets down to that, there's a lot of knowledge out there about coyotes, where they act. I mean, what I know, I'm just barely scratching the surface. Right, but I mean, still more than what I know, what I would assume a lot of the listeners know.
Right, they're super, I always tell everybody to hunt a coyote, you got to respect a coyote because I mean, they're survivalists, they're going to live, they're opportunists and they can live off eating ants out there, you know, they're going to survive. Right. That's just the way they are. One thing that's kind of impressed me is like how smart these things are.
Very. And I've, so I've went and ran with a few buddies up in Northern Indiana for the last couple of years and I haven't got to get real serious about it. Just, you know, go cherry pick here and there and listening to them talk and then coming down here, you know, a whole, almost a whole state away and listening to you, it's like, it's almost, I mean, it's the same song and dance, it's just a little bit different territory. Right.
Yeah, a lot of guys, a lot of guys shoot the coyotes, a lot of run them and shoot them. We don't do that here. We strictly run the catch, everything we do either versus our hounds catching them or if I'm catching with the greyhounds, you know, because I'm the only guy down here that, well, I mean, man, I'm the only guy down here that has greyhounds, you know, that catches them like that, you know, but. So to me that is, that is the most pure form of fair chase. I agree.
I mean, there's, I don't know, there's a lot of uneducated people about running coyotes with dogs, you know, I mean, they just, they think it's, they consider it quote unquote dog fighting and it's not that, I mean, people were hunting coyotes with dogs before me and you was even a twinkle in their eye, you know what I mean? It's just, I mean, it's quick, it's a quick kill. I mean, if they catch them, they kill them, that's it, it's over with. Right.
I mean, you take a guy shooting them, they shoot one, blow his leg off, well, I'll catch that coyote eventually, you know, with a dog. Right. I mean, we caught one last year, I mean, a trapper, coyote got a trap, heck, he chewed his foot off. I mean, it's just, I get. Right. However you want to, however you want to look at it. Everybody has their own opinion about it. That's just part of it.
Yeah. And so, you know, you guys have heard Chris talk about on the Hounds and XP before podcast that, you know, bear hunting is a very extreme form of fair chase and lion hunting, anything with the hound, because that animal that you're pursuing has all of their senses keened up. They are on top of their game. They are in their own territory on their home turf. They're able to use all of their senses to try and outvade those that are pursuing them. Right. Absolutely.
Yeah. I mean, I may dump on a coyote and I mean, like, heck, I run one yesterday. I mean, I got a good turnout on him. I mean, and they run that coyote, took him through two or three ditches and I think they was going to catch him. That's, I mean, what, I mean, he had a chance to, he had a chance to make it, you know. Yeah. So, I mean, I'm. And the perfect example was the first time that I came down here, we run, I think, three coyotes. Right. And we didn't catch none of them. Right.
Those coyotes live to see another day. Yeah. And they can run, they can flat, they can flat move some ground. I'm telling you, they got a set of Nikes on them and they are laced up. They are. They can, that one of the day we caught was the, he was a running son of a gun. He was. And so that's super, it's just super intriguing to me, the whole dynamic and especially using the sit hounds and the sight hounds married together for one common goal. Right.
So walk us through a typical morning of a hunt. Like for those who don't know guys, I mean, they might not know anything about it. Like walk us through what your day looks like when you're going out coyote hunting. Cause it's a process. The Semper Doggen podcast is proudly presented to you by Froggy Bottom Outdoors. Froggy Bottom Outdoors is the newest outdoor and hunting supply, habitat management and livestock feed provider in the Midwest.
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I'll check my cameras to see what's been in and what hasn't been in. If there hasn't been nothing on it we'll just go to a block of woods and we'll send, we'll call them our jump dogs, we'll send two or three jump dogs in a section of woods. They usually get jumped, they won't. If they do get jumped we'll let them run it for a little while depending on where it's going or where we're at. If I need to catch it quick, I'll try to catch it quick with the greyhounds.
If not then we'll run it through the hills or through the flats or whatever. So we'll do that with the jump dogs and once we get the jump dogs, get them jumped and if he's in a spot where we can get some more hounds we'll pack them. We'll put some more dogs in there and get them packed and we'll have 10, 15 dogs or however many on them running the coyote.
And that's basically what it is and then if I get them out in the open field and he's coming to open field or a road or something I'll try to get positioned to dump my greyhounds on him. So with the jump dogs, what are you looking for in them as far as age of track? And you and I had this conversation in the truck today. I was like, okay is a five hour old track too old? What are you expecting of them in this sport? Man, I really don't.
It's hard for me to say because I really don't know the answer to that because my dogs, I'm making a rig of coyote off the bed of my truck. They know they can do it. Now I don't really know how old the track is that they're smelling. Most of the time when they jump them they're in the woods. So you're free casting these hounds? I'm free casting these hounds across the mix. You're not going out looking for a lot of tracks. You're free casting the hounds.
No, we're not driving roads, cutting tracks on roads. A lot of guys up north run the snow and they want to cut a track like that. Well we don't do that here. We run in the mud. We don't get much snow down here. So we run them in the mud and we just pull up to a block of woods and we send them in there. So to answer the question about how old the track is, I don't know the answer to that because like I said we're free casting them into a section of woods 99% of the time.
If we do see some out in the field or whatever, if I think they've been through there I'll go back and walk some dogs out there. If they hit it they hit it. If they don't they don't. It may be an hour, two hour old track. They'll still pick that up. My dog is still – the whole group of guys that I hunt with. There's a pretty good group of guys. They've been fantastic.
Yeah we've got some good group of guys we've been hunting with and them guys, the Fraley's, they've been doing this for man 30 plus years. They've been running cows down here. They've seen it all. They've done it all. There ain't nothing they ain't seen which is cool being around them guys because they've been doing it for so long. The stories and stuff they have. It's pretty awesome.
And today was kind of an interesting dynamic as far as what happened because we saw a lot of different scenarios play out. To start off the day we did right there at first daylight we went out driving around looking at the roads and I just got done telling you. I said watch out now. I said this boy in the back seat. I said he got eagle eyes on him. He does yeah. I said that sucker is going to see something here in a minute.
And it wasn't five minutes later and Colton is like hey coyote coyote coyote. And there it was kind of standing in the edge of a field. So we saw that coyote. We're pulling around to kind of get in position to get the trail hounds on him. And in the process of that we actually saw another coyote running across the field which is in a more accessible area. Right yeah we could drive right to where he comes across the road. So obviously that's the track I'm going to take. So we drive up there.
We get our trail hounds out. We put them on the track. Bam. Right. They're gone. They run them I mean what do you say probably. Four or five miles? Four or five miles yeah. Okay and then another interesting thing that I didn't realize the coyote would do as quickly as it did was it swam a river. Yeah oh yeah you put four or five six dogs behind one and he gets a chance to swim a river. He's gone. He's going across. You just take one dog two dogs. It's barely just bumping them around.
Them dogs just going to follow them around. The coyote ain't going to get no hurry. He don't care. But you get to putting some pressure on him and for us as fly as it is down here where we hunt at I mean you get to driving them trucks up and down the road. Them coyotes get scared. You scare a coyote one time. He's getting out of the country. You know we go up there and hunt around my farm. I've got some chicken houses.
You go up there and hunt well there's only one road around through there you know within several miles. So we go up there and hunt and that coyote would just run a three or four mile square. I mean that was running right there. You ain't got to park in one spot and talk about hearing a race. I mean you get a heck of a race. Yeah so you know that coyote swam the river. The dogs swam with him. Went on through. We were able to get another set of dogs packed into him.
And the trail hounds really ended up baying this coyote in the field. Yeah they had him in the field but kind of bumping him along a little bit. Right I mean he wasn't moving fast by any means. He definitely wasn't straight lining. Right yeah they definitely slowed him down. So we were able to get in position. Dump the box on the greyhounds. They went in and made a clean ethical kill. So that was scenario one. We saw the coyote out in the field. Put the trail hounds on it.
Trail hounds bait him up. Bring the greyhounds in to finish it off. Done. Quick ethical. Scenario number two was we had had some dogs in there free casting almost like us coon hunters do. You know you just when we're talking about free casting we're literally going to a block of woods. Dump the dogs. Right. A couple at a time. Usually your dogs that you know are better at trail dogs. Yeah your true dogs yeah. They're not going to bump around on deer and off game. Right. And they got one jumped.
Got it moving. And we were able to drive around and a couple different guys got some dogs packed in I think. Right yeah. And I think Chris and Barry had some dogs in there. Yep. And so this is where that most action packed coyote of the day came in at. Is Blake's dogs. Shout out to him. I mean those suckers were on his tail and they were moving. Absolutely yeah. That white dog he's got is a pretty nice dog. Yeah. I mean that sucker was moving across this field.
And we were able to get right in perfect position. Fly down this dirt road into the field a little bit. Which we had full permission to be hunting on. Y'all don't be burning us at the stake over this. Oh yeah they will. Yeah. So we're flying down here. We got to get parallel to this coyote. And these trail hounds guys I mean they are not far behind him. I'm going to say 30 yards maybe. 30 yards maybe yeah they're dogging him. And they're pushing him.
That coyote is running him for everything he is worth. Right. And we finally got to see the magic happen. Dalton whip that forward into position. We're not going to rag him for driving him forward. If it was a Chevy we would have been there three minutes earlier. But that's beside the point. Whip that forward into position. Rips the cable inside the cab. Wham there goes the side of the box. The greyhounds fly out. Bam bam thank you. Man the coyote is done. It was live action man.
It was live action. I was literally shaking when we were done with it. Yeah if you ain't ever done it. It's a it's man it's ain't nothing in the world like it. There ain't. It was the most intense thing I've seen. And Seth Hall I'm going to give you credit on this one. You told me whenever you see sight hounds work in front of you. You said there's no more exhilarating thing. And I will say that today that was probably true. Yeah. I just I don't even have words for it. Absolutely they are.
Those greyhounds meant business. Right. They had a job to do and they did it quick. Absolutely. It don't take them long. I mean all so my greyhounds about every one of my greyhounds come from one guy. I mean everything I've got from the most other than maybe three or four dogs. And I've got 30 hitting greyhounds here. They all come from one guy. And the guys ain't there in Austin. Double A's grey. Out there where he lives at them dogs are they got to be tough son of guns to make it out there.
I mean they are tough. They're tough dogs. Aaron has got some of the nicest greyhounds around. The thing about Aaron is he ain't if he's got something nice he'll sell you something nice because he wants you to have nice stuff. It ain't going to bum you on a dog. We're sure you're going to go over on a dog. I mean it's going to be you're going to buy the top of the line. If his stuff he's got you're going to buy it. That's what you're going to get. Right.
And he's going to raise another one and it's going to be the exact same thing. So I mean Aaron and his dad and his wife they've got the greyhound world figured out. They know it works. They know it's not going to work. And that's just the bottom line to it. I mean they've been doing it for so long. They know. Yeah. So go through here just a quick second before we get back into the third scenario of the day. Go back here and I know I just got a little animated telling that story guys.
I can't even explain to you how exciting it was. You'll have to post the video. Show them. I will. I'm going to post the video. Y'all be sure to go to the Semper Dog and podcast page. Check out the reel. It's going to be right there. You'll see this whole dump unfold right in front of you. But explain the setup to the listeners on how this works because I was confused at first on how the box dumps open. Just run through the setup of your truck. So my truck is a 2012 F-150. It's a crew cab truck.
So what I do, I've got a flatbed on it and I run, they call it a half jump box where the back hole is not a full hole which is a half jump. So you just put two dogs back there. So I run four grounds on each side. That's what I run. There are several different ways you can do it. Some guys do electric actuators and run electric in the truck with switches. Some guys run air latches. Some guys, and I prefer the cables. When you pull it, it's there. It's a tried and true system. It's there.
The only downside to it is if you care, you've got to drill holes through your cab of your truck. Which don't bother me now. I just drilled through the third brake light and take it right through there into the headliner. I mean, you can buy a new headliner for dirt cheap. So that's my setup. I've had air latches on a 2020 F-250 and it's just too slow. I couldn't tell you how many times I got out and ran waiting on the things to open. There's nothing fast about it.
If you want to do something like that, you don't want to drill holes, air is the other fastest way to do it. Just do air latches. So these cables guys, the way he's talking about here, he runs them through the third brake light. He's coming through this little piece of conduit and there's two literal cables hanging from the ceiling, the roof of the truck. One on the driver's side, one on the passenger side and they're mounted to a bracket where your rear view mirror would go.
If that coyote is on the passenger side, he's going to reach up and he's going to yank the cable on the passenger side. That's the door that opens. If they're on the driver's side, same thing. So it's a very simple concept, but it's something to me that I was like, I was just new to. I'd never seen it done before. Shout out to my buddy Daniel Petty. He rigged my truck out for me. He's the best guy in the business for doing that. It is.
All that stuff he fabbed up, the brake lines, all the brackets, he made all that stuff himself from scratch. Daniel does a great work. So we got that coyote caught with the Greyhounds. We got to do a box dump, catch them. Exhilarating. I can't emphasize that enough. It was amazing. It is pretty awesome. It's crazy coming here and hunting where my dogs, whenever I dump my dogs, they're full stride. There ain't no fences, nothing to worry about. They're gone.
Where you go out there and hunt with Aaron, well them dogs take two steps and they've got to jump underneath the barbed wire fence. It's crazy the numbers they catch, doing it as rough as the country is out there. It's pretty awesome. Ain't nothing like, a lot of guys don't like the Greyhounds, but you can't knock it till you try it. Man, to me, if I didn't have to have the Trailhounds, I probably wouldn't have as many as I got. I really, really enjoy the Sighthounds. It's fast-paced.
There's always action. You're always moving. That's just what I like. That's why I don't steal hunt. That was the first two scenarios of the day. The third one today, kind of like the second one, free-casting some dogs, they had one run, but the dogs were way behind. When I say way behind, guys, I mean I physically saw the coyote lope across the field, not moving fast at all, kind of loped into a patch of wood. We knew where he went. The dogs were several minutes behind him. Yeah, absolutely.
They kind of got pushed behind there a little bit. The coyote, for a minute, we didn't know where he went. Yeah, he just held up in a patch of wood there. There wasn't no pressure on him. This wasn't a big patch of wood? No, it wasn't. It was a little bitty small patch, but it don't take much for them to find some cover to sit down in. I think a lot of today was, heck, we had four trucks sitting on the other side waiting for them to come across. Right.
Because 90% of the time, that coyote comes right across some ditches there and across some rows in there. They go to the hills where it's tough hunting them hills. Yeah. That coyote just held up right there in that little thicket of woods. The dogs come in and it kind of got messed up there for a while. We weren't sure what was going on. Are they lost? Are they trying to figure it out? What's happening here? They bait him up a couple of times. I was over at hill there. We couldn't hear them.
But we never could figure it out. No, right. We never got eyes on them to see what happened. Right. Next thing you know, we go in there. We start walking in because we thought we had them bait up. The dogs just kind of blow out the back of the woods. They broke, yeah. We're like, well, we didn't see the coyote, but here go the dogs. Not sure what happened. We got a couple more dogs in there to help them out. They got him lined out.
Go through the country, and this is a prime example of the coyote being in his own territory on his home turf, knowing where he's going. And know exactly where they're going. That sucker made him run through the hills, through the thickets, across a couple of fields, and he made a beeline for what I would call a den. A den. Well, yeah, somewhere for him to get. He was in a huge hole in the side of a ditch bank. We ended up not being able to harvest that coyote. He made it home. We left him.
He's still home. Yeah. So we ended up pulling, I think, four dogs kind of out of the hole. They had him bait up there, and you could hear the coyote in there snarling. Oh, yeah, they'll growl at you. He was getting mad. So it was a confirmed catch. We just did not harvest the coyote. Absolutely. And he lived to run another day. If I were him, I'd drink a Gatorade, replenish my electrolytes, because he had his work cut out for him.
I'm sure while we was up there putting dogs up, I'm sure he'd come on back out and mosey it on down the way. Yeah, he gave us the peace sign. Yeah. He said, I'm out of here. Yeah. So that was the three different scenarios in which we run coyotes today. We did catch a fourth one, kind of fell in the same line as number three there that I just explained. But it was an eventful day with all the different scenarios playing out. Yeah, we caught two with the hounds and two with the greyhounds.
Yep. So it was just super, super neat to see that today. I've got some questions on the greyhound side of things. But we all know that canines can take us to some wild places. And some of those are only accessible by an off-road vehicle. No matter how hard you try to maintain your ride, something is bound to break on one of your adventures.
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Mention that you heard this ad on the Simper Doggen Podcast and you will receive a Simper Doggen approved listener discount. Okay, so me primarily coming from the coonhound world, I think I can expect, you know, eight to nine solid years out of a dog of performance. These greyhounds, what is the longevity of their career? Like explain to me how long you think you can use them. I don't know, I mean I've got, I guess Tiny, my Tiny dog, he's a big stag, he's a straight head dog.
I may be wrong, but I believe Tiny is going on seven or eight years old I think. I think he's seven, yeah, seven or eight. I mean, he still moves good. He ain't the fastest in the world, he's not, he's not the fastest dog in the world, but when he gets there, it's game over. All the playing stops. I mean, he's, you know, but so these greyhounds, what I've noticed since I've been following with them is, is like the guys out west, it's different for them.
Like 90% of the guys out west, they don't do concrete. They don't, they don't, I mean, their dogs are on, it'll be like lime, limestone, like just busted up lime. In the kennels? In the kennels, or dirt, you know, and that's what they do, you know, but it's dry out there. So them guys are telling me you don't want to put them grounds on concrete, you don't want to put them on concrete. And I can't do what y'all do because we get a lot of rain here.
You know, it's, that's a nasty mess, you know, to clean up. So I mean, I do mine on concrete. I mean, I mean, I guess it's danged if you do, danged if you don't kind of thing. You know, I had them, I had them over my farm at the barn and man, that just, I just, that style ain't for me. I just, you got to warm your dogs more. You got to, you know what I mean? It's just, or this here, this setup I got here now, you can keep them clean.
But what I've noticed about the greyhounds is, is they don't have no immune system. You know, I feel like they, like when they get sick, they don't, they don't have the willpower to fight, fight it off. To me, they're like a sheep. They just layer and die, you know. That's crazy. Just the way their immune system is, they don't have no immune system. They get sick easy, they catch everything. This is my opinion.
I mean, everybody has an opinion about it, but from, from what I've experienced, I feel like they're just immune system is super weak, you know. So and I noticed it more this time of year in the winter months, where I don't get to like spray every day, you know, in the summertime I get to bleach and spray my pins out and keep it, you know, keep it pretty clean. Where right now I'm not getting to spray water much or bleach kennels. I'm just scooping and throwing it out, you know. Right.
So. So Tiny, he is a staghound. He is a stag. And you run several stags and, and quote unquote greyhounds, I guess. Right. And we just lump them into the greyhound category. Right. Yeah, they're just a greyhound cross, so they are mixed. I mean, that's all they are. So did you buy him as a, as a broke dog, finished dog? I bought Tiny from Aaron Austin as a broke dog. Yeah, sure did. He's, he, a lot of guys have hauled that dog and he's been the exact same ever since he's been a little puppy.
I mean, he's, he's got one job and one job only and he is the head dog. So I mean, it's what he is. And head dog out of 30 something greyhounds. Right. That you're housing. Right. Yeah, that's a big deal. I mean, I've got, I had a, had a super, super nice stag female that I bought from a guy named Mike Flax that out in Iowa and she was a dead shorthat dog. I mean, she was, it was, it was my wife's dog.
She was, I mean, she was, she's kind of a dog when she gets on a cow, you're taking a break stick or something to choke her off of one. I mean, she's, she was a real deal. And most of them, like she wasn't a fuzzy dog either. She was a, she was a slick haired stag. She wasn't a fuzzy dog. But most of the, most of them fuzzy dogs are just tougher than nails. I mean, most, about every one of them I've seen has just been stupid tough.
And so define tough, like tough as in willpower to run around, like run that, that coyote down until they catch it, like too exhaustion or tough to get in there and, and dispatch the coyote. Yeah. Not, not far as tough as the run. I'm talking tough as to, to take the bite, take the pain or whatever they're going to do to get that coyote. They're going to, I mean, they're going to kill us. That's what they're going to do. Right. So bottom line, that's what a stag, that's what them stags are.
They are, man, they're, they're, I like, I'm outlawed. I like them. I mean, I couldn't run all stags cause I don't, I mean, I don't think, I mean, there is some, I've got a female here now, I think can catch a good coyote, but I mean, I haven't seen, most of her toes are long. They get them long feet and they, I don't feel like that run is good. You know, they get them big long toes. Right. But that's, that's, it's prepped. I mean, when I look at a dog, that's what I look at.
I look at the first thing I look at them and I look at them, them grand, them feet. That's what Aaron, Aaron, his dad taught me. So when you look at them grand hounds, first thing you look at them feet, if they got cat feet, they're good footed. If they get them long toes, you're, I mean, it's a 50, 50 shot. You might get one that can run and more than likely it's not going to run very good. Most of the time it's going to be a slower dog. Right.
So like, when we look at your box, the couple of times I've been hunting on each side, you've got a mixture of some slick haired gray hounds and a couple of stag hounds. Right. Do you like running that mixture of, of slicks versus what you call fuzzies? Yeah. I mean, I, I mean, I do, I like, I mean, I like, I like doing that. I mean, it's, I feel like the mustags are my tougher dogs, you know, in my opinion. So that's, that's kind of why I do that.
I mean, don't really want my catch dogs to get, get eat on too much, but I got one out here that can, she's so fast. She's faster than everything else I got. And she, she kind of got chewed, she kind of got chewed on a little bit yesterday just because she ran off and left everything else. You know, that's how fast she is. I mean, she's, I mean, she's faster than anything. She's the fastest dog that I own here. So, so speed, like what are we, these are not hot blooded dogs. They're not racing.
They're not race dogs. So like when I originally thought of gray hounds, I just in my head had hot blood pictured and these dogs are not as fast, not as fast as the hot blood. Nope. Do they have the more longevity? I don't really know. I mean, probably do. Yeah. I feel like they do.
Yeah. Cause I mean, cause a lot of them guys that have the hot blooded, they've turned them over to hunting dogs and most of the time, because they got bumped on the track or they got hurt or something like that and they try to cross them over or whatever, you know? Yeah. So, okay. So then you have to put four on one side, four on the other side. You're typically carrying eight. Yeah, I usually carry, you don't have to. I mean, I just, I've got so many, I got to take them, you know, when I go.
So, but, but how do you, how do you make your sit? Like, okay, today I'm putting this four on this side. Is that just trial and error? Yeah, no, no, no. So I kind of, what I do is, is I got my one catch dog. I run my one catch dog and I run one, one dog is considered my head dog. I run one on each side and then I usually, usually run a couple of pups. So a couple of young dogs, I'm trying to get going. It's usually how I'll do it. So I've got, I've got four catch dogs.
I've got two for sure, two for sure dead shot head dogs. So I had three, but, and I've got some other dogs that fight the head and fight above average, you know, but if I'm hauling young dogs, I don't want them young dogs getting bit on. I want that, I want that head dog going to grab that head and let that pup kind of do his thing, you know? Right. That's, I mean, I've, I've hauled them everywhere. I mean, I can, I got some dogs there now.
I can just, I can haul four dogs total and be just fine, you know? I can haul my zip dog and that tiny dog on one side. I can haul Jack and, and my, my Emma dog on one side and that's all I need. All right. They do it all. You know, it's just, just four dogs, you know? Just personal preference. Right. So I've got so many dogs, so I'm trying to take as much as possible. Right. So, and when you talk about dogs, I mean, you hunt really hard. I do. I hunt a bunch, probably more than I need to be.
So you've got, but you have several, I mean, we're, we're over 50 dogs. Yeah. I've got 50 plus. Yeah. And the care that they're shown from what I've seen, the setup that they have is second to none. Yeah. Thank you. And I'm not just saying that cause I got you on the podcast. I'm dead serious about it. Yep. You know, they've got, they've all got nice clean living conditions. They've all, they're all clean water bowls. The feces is picked up. They got nice dog boxes to go to, to stay out of it.
You're taking care of 50 dogs and doing it at a high level. Right. So guys, if you guys saw anything about my Facebook post a couple of weeks ago, you saw that, you know, I challenged us hounds men to do a better job of presenting a good light to everybody else and to take the best care of our hounds as we can possible. Cause we owe it to them. Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, they depend on us.
When these, when we got done hunting today, we pulled some of these dogs out of the box, buddy, and they were whooped. They wanted nothing more than to go to a nice dog house, clean bedding and just relax. Yeah. I'll give them a little shot of Dex and keep you swelling down and we'll go again. They're athletes. Oh yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. You gotta, you gotta take care of them. They, they depend on us.
I mean, without us and, and if you're going to hunt as hard as you do, you've got to have dogs to rotate in and out, which is why you keep somebody headed dog. That's why. And then another reason why, I mean, my wife, she kind of, I think she likes it more than I like it. And I don't, she had a, that F-150 we hunted out of was originally her pickup. I've kind of, I've kind of been taking it over.
Yeah. But she, you know, she did a very, very important job today of driving another truck, her and my fiance road together and you know, they carried around all of the scent hounds and they were right where they needed to be to cut dogs off, to pack dogs in, to watch the coyote come across the road. I mean, she, she did a great job of being where she needed to be at the right place at the right time. Absolutely.
Yeah. And you know, I can go hunt through the week with the, with the guy that helps me out and my buddy Barry Ellis and him go hunt and we can catch more coyotes or just me and him or just me, him and Chris hunting or just whoever it may could be me, me, Chris and Charlie or whoever's hunting with just two pickups or three pickups and catch more coyotes than you do with running six or seven trucks down the road, you know. Why do you think that is?
Do you think that the, that amount of trucks, that coyote when they come out, when they bust out of the woods, they're looking and they're scanning? Oh yeah. That spooks them. They get spooky. And they get turned. Oh yeah. They turns them and they get spooky and they, that's, that's whenever they, they get to take out a dodge. They're, they're going somewhere where they're getting away from you, you know, it's just bottom line.
Right. So, but yeah, that's, I mean, that's the way anywhere, you know, I, like I go out to Oklahoma and hunt them guys are just ecstatic for me to get out there. When I go out there, I just take my trail hounds because them guys got so many girl hounds. I was like, well, I'll just come out and I run my trail hounds and let y'all catch coyotes. And it's a win. I mean, it's good for me. It's good for my dogs because the population of coyotes out there are so much higher than it is here.
Yeah. So let's, let's dive into that for a little bit. Let's talk about that. Like you said, you got to Oklahoma at least once, maybe if not twice a year. Yeah. Well, probably too much. Yeah. But the population out there is crazy high. It is higher. It's yeah. They got a lot of cows. Well, I mean, a lot more cattle, a lot of cattle and I mean, a lot more hay and I'm that's what a cow lives off of in the summertime. They live off eating grasshoppers and stuff like that mice and right.
So like, let's go through the dynamic of hunting out in Oklahoma. What is different in hunting in Oklahoma versus hunting in Kentucky? They're broke up in one mile and two mile sections. There's a fence every stinking corner you turn. I'm talking six strands of barbed wire. You climb like a, like monkey bars. I mean, I don't know how them guys get their fence so tight out there, but I mean, I'm 300 pounds. I climb like a, like you would a chain link fence, but that's different out there.
The fences and the way that their cover is, I mean, they'll have Mesquite, they'll have Mesquite though. I just have sage brush, tall grass. I mean, it could be, I mean, in their tree lines or, I mean, they ain't, they ain't probably 50 yards wide and some of them are, I don't know, a hundred yards long and you may go up in there and there might be six coyotes up in there. That's just, it's crazy. You just got to experience it.
I mean, then them guys out there, the way they hunt is completely different the way I hunt. Most of them guys that they're just running greyhounds only and they drive across everything. We're here for the most part, you ain't driving across nothing. I mean, cause it's, it's typically this time of year it's wet. You can't drive nowhere, you know, but them guys out there, they don't get no rain.
So they, they drive across, they drive across everything, drive through everything or whatever, you know. So they're going out basically just glass and looking for coyotes. Oh yeah. Yeah. And they're going to see more coyotes there now. I mean, you go out, I mean, just the way it is out there, there's, there's less cover. I mean, and I mean, there's just a lot more coyotes. Yeah. So coyotes are a super versatile animal. I mean, they're all across the country. Absolutely.
Where, where, if you had one place you could go to run, run your coyotes. Now let's, let's take scent hounds and your sight hounds. You got to run them as a pack. Where's the best place in the country you go to it? I don't know. I really know. I'll be honest with you. I mean, I feel like here is like really, I mean, now if you talk about just gray hounds, obviously out West, I mean, Texas out that way, you know, cause I mean, I see the pan handle. I mean, that's where all the guys go.
They go to Delhart, Texas. So they go out there and that's where they, I mean, them guys go out there and catch, I mean, they'll hunt a half a day and catch 25, 30 coyotes and a half a day of the gray hounds, you know, that is so wild. I mean, it ain't no secret. And do it day in, day out. I mean, the locals don't do it like that because I mean, they live there, you know, they'll go out and catch four or five coyotes.
So that part of Texas is to the coyote hunter kind of what the white river is to the coon hunter. Absolutely. I mean, it ain't no secret. I mean, I mean, you can see, you can look on Facebook and see the guys that live out there and watch them. And I mean, they put it all out there and like, I'm telling, telling them where they're hunting that. I mean, people know, you know, Kansas is up there in Kansas. It's minutes. That's good hunt up there. Well, it ain't, it ain't no spoiler alert.
Everybody knows where the coyotes go and everybody, that's where everybody wants to go, you know? Right. But I mean, just far as trail hounds and running the combo, I mean, I don't, I'm happy right here. I mean, I have, I mean, the coyote, the coyotes are kind of down this year. I mean, they've got this night season. It's been going on for two years now and they've kind of, it's, it's new. It's like anything else. It's new.
All these guys are buying these thermals and shooting these coyotes and they've made the thermals affordable. Everybody can finance everything now. It's day and age and hit. I mean, it has, we have slowed us down a little bit. I mean, we're used to, we could pretty much, anywhere we pulled up, we could go in there and jump a coyote. Where now we may hunt a section and we may not jump one now, you know? Right. It's this night hunt stuff. I mean, it's, it's like everything else.
Like duck hunt was whenever duck dance, it was a thing. Everybody did it for three or four years and they got tired of it. I mean, you just got to ride the wave. It's just part of it. So, I mean, and we all have a, we all have a goal. I mean, they want to kill cows. We want to kill cows. But you know what I mean? It's at the end of the game and we're all about hunting coyotes, you know? It's, it's awesome. And I've just really enjoyed my time coming down here. Let's switch gears for a second.
I want to talk about a couple other dogs you got. Yeah. You got a couple of Yacht Terriers. I do. Yeah. Let's dive into them. What are you doing with them dogs? Ah, man, a little, I won the first one I bought. I mean, I've had her for, I guess she's going on, she's probably seven or eight. I mean, I bought her from my puppy and, and I've kind of done everything with her. I've come in with her. I've, heck, I mean, me and her, me and that dog have been everywhere together.
I mean, I used to decoy, I take her decoy dog in, I've, heck, I take her and put her on these cows, you know, if a hound get baited up, I'll send her in there and let her, let her do her thing. And I mean, she, she don't call none of them. She's, she's just a fun dog. Heck, I mean, I'll ride around in the truck and heck, we just go terrorize whatever, you know? Yeah. So I mean, they're, they're just a fun dog.
Man, I've, I've looked at them for several years and I'm like, man, I don't know if I could house one of those things. Cause I don't, I mean, they are just into everything. You got to find one. You got to find a breeder that, and they're out there. You got to find you a breeder that that's breeding sense in them. Cause I mean, I've been around, I mean, I've been, I've owned probably 25 of them dogs and you see how many I got. I've got two.
Yeah. I mean, some of them was just, they're just, they're just too much. I mean, I got, I've got kids, I got two little girls, so they got to be, you know, I mean, they got to be family dogs first, you know, they got to be around my kids, my wife. So, but I mean, now we've, I've done everything with them dogs. If you name it, heck, I took her pig hunting, took her on a pig. I mean, I've done a little bit of everything with her.
Yep. So your trail hounds, what is, what are you looking for in that? Are you looking for a purebred dog, like a running Walker that is a hundred percent running Walker? Are you looking for a mixed up dog? Like what are you looking for? That's what I want. I want to just a hundred percent running Walker, but all these guys have bred these delights and stuff into them. And I understand it. I mean, it's, it is what it is, but I like that old Sheridan blood. I like that liquor blood, blood stuff.
I mean, I like all that Northern, all that stuff from up North, you know, I mean, I mean, to me, I feel like there's what I'm looking for there. They're there. They can drift the track. They can run track, drifting the track. They can, they got wheels. They can, they can put the pressure on a coyote and I ain't going to tell you the grittiest dogs in the world, but I mean, if they get one, if they get one bait up, I can hold pressure and I ain't got to have a dog to chew a coyote's face.
I don't, a lot of them guys, I mean, they want a dog that get up right on top of a coyote and fight him. I don't need, I don't need that. I ain't got to have that. I don't, I mean, I just want, if he'll pull hair and pinch a little bit and hold him there, I'm fine with that. That, that suits me just fine. Right. Cause you're bringing the Greyhound in.
Well that or I mean, I can, I mean, if I have to, I mean, I can take my 22 and pop it in the head, but I mean, heck, if I can, if I can catch the coyote and get the dogs from him, heck, we'll run them again. I don't mean, that'll make me no difference, you know? So you know, another thing that I thought was really interesting about today is that at one point the dogs kind of, whoa, excuse me.
When we were talking about how the dogs kind of got bait up there and we weren't sure if they had lost the coyote or not, the landowners down the road kind of come out in the road and we're talking to us and they seemed like very unaware of what was going on. But we were able to sit there in the middle of the road and explain to them what we were doing, how we were using the hounds. We had, we had a couple of harvested coyotes with us in the truck and they were super intrigued about it.
They were, yeah. They did not give us any grief over it. No, I mean, for the most part down in this area, we, I mean, we pretty much get along, try to get along with everybody. I mean, you have a few stories everywhere you go, which is, that's just part of, you know how it is. I mean, it's with everything, but yeah, they, they, they didn't know what we was doing. They was like, oh, did you, did you shoot it? And we're like, no, the dog's caught.
And they was like, oh, these are the workers, you know? It was pretty cool interaction. It was a cool interaction. It was a good chance for us to showcase us as houndsmen, being able to interact with those who aren't aware of what we're doing and to tell our side of the story. Right. Cause you guys have heard Chris say it a hundred times. If we don't tell our side of the story, somebody's going to tell it for us. Right. And we got a chance to do it ourselves. Oh yeah.
They was, they was, they was, oh yeah, we see them here, see them there. And they would just tell us where they see them. And I was like, sweet. Yeah, they were, I mean, they were giving us pointers where these coyotes were when they were going to work.
And you know, the next time they see a dog box pulled off on the side of the road and they got a couple of Greyhounds sticking outside of it, or they see a guy, you know, with a bunch of trail hounds in it, it's going to be a positive thought for them, like, Oh, these guys right here, you know, taking care of the coyote population.
Because the one gentleman, he even mentioned, he's like, you know, I've been trying to raise some land hens, but back on coyotes, so he was tickled pink, you know, that we'd had a successful day. Absolutely. Yeah. And that, to me, that was just, it was super cool to, to be able to harvest the coyotes, watch good dog work, have positive interaction and share our side of the story with those who weren't aware. All in all, it was just a good day.
Yeah. I mean, a lot of people don't know, understand the coyote hunting. That's that's fine. I mean, it's just, just part of it, you know. Yep. Simper Doggin and Hometown Hero Outdoors are proud to partner together to bring you the Hometown Hero Outdoors Hero of the Week. This week's hero is Ryan Heron from Central Indiana. Ryan is a firefighter who was able to participate in an early season duck hunt with Indiana's chapter of HHO.
The team found success during their hunt, but Ryan said that the best part was the brotherhood and camaraderie. He said, whether you're a veteran or first responder, getting a chance to share time pursuing your passion with those who have similar life experiences is priceless. Ryan, from Simper Doggin and Hometown Hero Outdoors, we would like to say thank you for serving and protecting your community.
Listeners, remember, if you have a hero of your own that you would like to recognize, please send their name in a brief description to simperdoggin at gmail.com and we will be glad to recognize them. If you would like more information on Hometown Hero Outdoors, be sure to visit them at hometownherooutdoors.org or follow them on Facebook.
But man, I just cannot thank you and your crew enough for letting me be able to come down and share this experience with you guys to bring my fiance, bring my boy. Oh yeah. You know, it's a family event. It is, and that's, I mean, I take my oldest girl with me, heck, me and her went, I guess the day, the next day the other season went down here, me and her went and we caught two off the bat and it wasn't easy like it was today.
I mean, I mean, those two cows there, I mean, I had to walk 700 plus yards with her on my shoulder that everything was thawed out and wet. I mean, it was, it's a memory. I'll never forget that and she never will either. Yeah. It's just been great. So, buddy, you got anything else you want to close us out with? I'm good, man. All right. Well, once again, thanks for having us down here. Guys, we appreciate you listening to the Simper Doggin podcast. We hope you're enjoying it.
Be sure to go on over and follow our sponsors. Give them a look on their websites, their pages, support those who support you. Join us over on the Simper Doggin podcast Facebook page. We've always got good stuff going on over there and we encourage you guys, invite you guys to post pictures, post videos of what you got going on. We want to see different types of hounds and dogs working, doing what they're bred to do. Right. You know, Dalton's been a big contributor over there.
We're getting a lot of these coyote guys over there and it's just been really, really good. So, buddy, I'm good if you're good. I'm good, man. All right. Well, until next time, we'll catch you later.