Ep. 271: Woof

put a positive spin on it. If you love dogs, if you love our fairy friends, stick around. That's a bet. That's a better way to put it. Yeah. I was gonna say, if you ask hate dogs and just f you don't hate him. But my brother the other day was asking me he was he was disappointed to hear. We were kind of talking about if everyone in your family, Uh, I don't want to use the word died, but like went away. I would say, if everyone in my family went away, I would go get rid of this dog,

our dog. I'd find someone that wanted a dog. And he just felt that was the most cutthroat, cold blooded thing you'd ever heard. Yeah, I've heard that. I heard that story through the grapevine, and I've personally retold that story at least three or four times. Sort of you tube run yeah, sort of like explaining who Stephen Ronnella is. Yeah, Well, what's your problem with dogs? You're just like extra work,

extra baggage. I don't like going a lot. I'm gone a lot, and it's just another thing I got to think about. Yeah, your kids and your wife, but they're in this situation. They've um gone to heaven. I don't want to think of something bad happening to him. We're talking about the situation in which I now have to take care of the dog by myself and always be gaming out wanting an do with the thing. I think. I think that's sad, because you donna need a friend.

If they're gone, will you still be here? I think you'd have a different relationship with your dog if it was a working dog, Steve, you know, if it was a dog that was doing stuff for you, it changes the whole dynamic. I almost just said you have had way more dogs and you'll ever have, but that's not true. But for most people in this room, I've had way more dogs than you will ever have. Okay, way more than you will ever have. You as an adult, have head way more dogs. As a kid, we had a

dog every two weeks. That doesn't count. We always yeah, but that doesn't count. To get word from a puppy. Let it grow up and die and go to the vet and euthanize it. That's owning the dogs. We had a dog one time. Here's how this dog came in our life. My old man was driving down the road to go rabbit hunting and saw a beagle walking down the road and called the dog into his truck. And we had that dog for years, and then he gave it to our neighbor. Did you turn it into a

rabbit dog? It did rabbit hum, but I don't think it ever got good. I think that's why he gave it to the neighbor. Another time, he goes and gets a dog and it would get it'd like to play thatch, so would take green tomatoes out of the garden. So my dad brings it to like he would bring things to like the farm, you know, like the euphemism kind of way to get rid of a dog. But this dog he literally brought to his friend's farm eleven miles away.

A couple of days later, we're eating dinner and I look out the window and here comes this dog named a Kayla. Here comes his dog streaking past the window carrying a green tomato in his mouth. That's something bitch found our house. And then it went like to the farm. That was that there was just never whatever he brought it and didn't come back. Oh, he was ruthless, was dogs. He had a cat, Maud, that had babies in his shoe and then ate the babies out of his shoe. Yeah,

I think about that, Steve. Did he wear the shoes again? I don't know. I don't know. I was very young. But then he had another cat that he tamed named fig the cat I told the story because he then he took it to a pig farmer to try to castrate, and the cat fought them all a lot of dogs, Steve, who all do we have joining us this morning for this lovely podcast? Why we have Ronnie Bam not my first employer, but my most um impactful employer that I

ever had. Thank you, Steve learned more from Ronnie. I still use Ronnie's tools that I stole from him all those years ago, especially like my tools that say Ronnie on him. So you posted a picture of making a birdhouse with Jimmy with a pair of yellow tin snips, and then I spread it open on my phone and I could see Ronnie on it. She had no you didn't care. I have your drift pin. Then I stole from you. I have tin snips. I stole from you. I think I have one of your tape measures. Yeah,

stuff great, great quality tools. Years later, I didn't get no Christmas bonus. I'm taking these tips. They never got a Christmas bonus. No, you paid us really well. Yeah, we tried to take care of you know. It was like in terms of when I worked for Ronnie. Remember one time, Um, I remember one time being in college and had spring break and then I played a week of hookie. So I took my spring break, played a week of hooky, and you sent us out of town to do a job and we and we worked eighty

hours a week down there. It was some crazy job when it was like they had to get something done during shut down or something like that. I remember coming back from that and I didn't do ship for months. You had money. Yeah, I was just like I'm set. Do you remember that time I sent you and Danny to go pick up a welder. Why didn't even tell this story? Now, okay, this is We're gonna tell a story real quick. We did a job for a guy

from West Virginia. I can't remember what Steady was from, but he was doing a job in Like and they were out of West Virginia and mill Rights out of West Virginia, and they contacted me for a support crew because they were behind, right, I think they were doing a job for am Way. Is that too much that I'm like they were doing a job for Amway. They called into Calvary they were fell behind in schedule, and

so they brought in T. L. I. Ronnie's company. Then somehow he got into a situation where uh, he couldn't pay Ronnie. So Ronnie has us come into the office. We always had to be there at six, which is hard because I used to drink. But he has coming earlier. One day, me and my brother Danny, and he says, here's what you gotta do today there and he already four grand. Yeah, and you're gonna take the welder, his welder, and you're gonna bring it back here to this shop.

But you had to go in early going before anybody showed up, and it'll just look like one of the crew. Once you had a hard hat on, nobody you could walk in and out of that building all day, big generator welder. Yeah, I still got it. So so we drove down there in the truck, hooked up the hooked up the welder to the truck, drove the truck home, put it round his barn, and Ronnie let us take eight hours pay. Always always a fair and equal opportunity player.

And the guy later called you right, I think said like you said something like I think we're even or whatever, like you put it together. Yeah, and you're honest. Morning another dog man, Johnny. If you're so insistent on the intros, I feel like you'd be like a little more, you know, like I'm like in your honest and you just sit there anyway. But that's all it takes is for you

to say, who's here? My name? I mean, I don't and I feel like I'm a regular enough guests that people like you know roughly who I am, what I'm doing here? Ronnie? Maybe would would you know, be deserved a little bit more introduction this morning? You want me to prow some more on there. Ronnie's the host of the Hunting Dog Podcast, the first hunting dog podcast ever, and he's been on The Mediator Show a couple of times, a couple of times, this podcast a bunch of times,

four times. I've been on your show and pioneered, pioneered having a hunting dog podcast podcast I did. I was even on The Wild Within with you, way back in the way back long show business career fills here, Phil, they can't see you look way younger than his voice, way younger. Thanks, that's not true, because they did a contest where you had to draw Phil based on his voice only, and people drew a young man. No one drew an old man. Oh I would have went forty

years old. Yeah, a very very scrawny looking nerd with a lot of with a very wimpy facial hair situation, which is true, that's the true part. Yeah. I had a shave halfway through the day yesterday. I'm jealous. You know what's interesting about that, Like shaving halfway through to day. Uh, my wife doesn't like my kids to put the same

clothes on that they had on the day before. But I always wear my clothes multiple days in a row, and I was pointing out that let's say the earth spun slower than it spins, and it took the earth forty eight hours to rotate. Would everybody go home midday and change their clothes. No, they would run. They would run those clothes twice as long without changing them. So to wear your clothes twice, there's no way. Would be like noon and everybody like, well, I got you know,

I gotta run home and change. I've had these clothes on for X hours. Do you know what I'm saying? I do? But nighttime just a natural reset point. It just makes sense. I take them all off, I throw them down to the ground next to my bed. I wake up and put them all back on again. Sometimes I wake up, put them all back on again, take them off, take a shower, put them back on again, and then come to work. Kids are generally just more

sticky and dirty in general. I think. I mean, I've been wearing this this, I even watched this pair of jeans and I don't know a couple of weeks. Now you know what I'm talking about. Yeah, it's got sticky bun residue all over. If your kids wore those jeans, you're right, Oh yeah, exactly. Well, there'd be um, I hate to say it, but there'd be some kind of poop on them. Hold of your kids until a certain age. I've got a two year old, so that, yeah, that's true.

But then I've got an eight year old. The poop problem with the eight year old is pretty much kind they were they wrap it up after a while. But you know what's funny is um anotherhing. I was telling my kids, like, you know, they're in that phase like poop stuff is funny, like people pooping their fans. It's funny. It's embarrassing. But yeah, I was like, you people that are people most inclined to have encounters with poop, Like I think you guys would be very accepting of it.

It's like a real part of your Yeah, like a couple of years ago, it is a daily part of your life to have it on you. But now you act like it's so disgusting and funny. You're like, you're it's a little too close for you to be dogging on. It's true, Like, wait, go ten years without having an accident, then come tell me how funny it is. Um Clay nucom newcomb Clay, how's your new show going? Man, it's going good. I know you don't ride an elevators ever,

but can you give me an elevator pitch for your show? Yeah, it's called Burgerase Podcast and it's a documentary style narrative storytelling podcast where we cover all types of stuff. So it's it's hunting, but it's also rural culture, a lot of a lot of fun stuff. Man, what was the

first episode? Tell everybody myth of the southern mountain lion so on that it's it's a it's an efficient listen as we say, it's it's always gonna be under an hour, and we interviewed uh to eyewitness sighting people that have seen mountain lions in the South. We interviewed a large carnivore biologist that so we got the real data of whether they're here or not. We interviewed a psychologist about why people see things when they really don't. And as fun,

it's it's a lot of fun. Man Um Hayden, Sam, how do these permatially name Salmon? I was right, Yeah, okay, you've never been on the show before. I have not, Man, you work here, though, I do tell people what you do. He fiddles with Phil's buttons. Yeah, he fiddles Phil's knobs up literally, not figuratively. See where it goes. Yeah, I had it sound and do audio engineering stuff. I get to do all sorts of auxiliary auxiliary stuff. And you

you tickle the ivories a little bit yourself. Oh sure do? Yeah, you bet. What's the fun fact about your last name? Oh it means it means fisherman in Syrian. Yeah, stomach is fish is fish in Arabic. Yeah, but you're not Syrian. I am serious. Talk got the Syrian last name? You're serious? You're Serriu. Yeah, yeah, you didn't just pick that because he'd liked to fish. Yeah, the su walk me through? Can you quickly walk me through your lineage? How how

it worked while y'all are in the America? Oh? Hell um, I just know that my great grandfather was at least half Syrian. I don't know if he was full of Syrians or not, but it comes from my dad's side and uh yeah Syrian name said say it again? Sam? I mean, I'm sure I've American eyed the hell out of it at this point. I don't know if there's like some sort of yeah, I have an article, Um, that was my dad's stuff. It's about his uncle being

shot and killed by a cop. I remember the cops name was Philip to me, but um, my dad's uncle, who my dad knew, Um, his name was spelled completely differently than mine. Yeah, my dad said, oh yeah, it was a split. Some of them were I on the end, and then some of them went A on the end and you just kind of chills, which start chills? Which version you wanted back in those days? You know? Kran is here? Of course have you heard from the KRN aside from asking Hayden about his last name? Now you

guys are tearing it up. Makes you glad if you're doing these intros and then bro, I bet what watch what? Watch the watch how Zippy Brodio will say something, Now what do you want me to say? There you go? Um, okay, now we all if you listen to our recent episode with Dr David Meltzer, dogs domesticated twelve years ago, our first domesticated animal by a long shot. It's with genetics

has become um. You know, people spend a lot of time thinking about it because it's it's we're able to answer long standing questions we've had about how this came to be. But we got around the dogs way before we got around a cattle. Sheet horses, pigs been our bodies for a long long time. What's funny here is how many people like didn't only recently got a dog? You were only recently got a dog? Or did you have a bunch before? Oh yeah, this is I mean, you've always had a dog? Mingus is my first as

an adult dog? Phil, I've got a dog. I never had a dog as a kid, but my wife didn't. She tucked me into getting one, uh after we got married, So I've had her for four years now ish. Yeah. Point being real experts here. Oh yeah, top top grade. Teren's got a whopper of a dog. Oh yeah, Charns gotta you've never had a dog before? No. I grew up in the city and my parents never allowed Uh yeah. I would go bring him into pet stores, asked to hold onto a dog, and then start crying and trying

to manipulate them, but they never fell for it. So this is your first dog? First first actual do get four pound dog? Uh? Couple a couple of corrections real quick, or one major correction, and I feel like I'm right. This guy is the guy that rowed in his pissed, and he deserves to be pissed. We had a thing about that, so card to explain. Now, who can explain this? Let me? I explain it once. I got sick of

explaining it even then. Normally, when you buy a fishing license, um normally to buy a fishing license, the license fee goes to those states fishing game agency. So you go down and buy a fishing license that winds up being dedicated funding for fishing wildlife management. It is. It's not like when you pay your taxes and they just do what. You know, your taxes going to a general fund and the state does whatever the whatever it does with it. Right, It's not like you can pick I'd like my taxes

to go to UH infrastructure reform. You know, it just goes into a general fund and they do their deal. Fishing licenses are different because their agency specifics. So you you buy a license, it funds the agency, and then there's mechanisms in place that make it the states that the de incentivized states from robbing that general fund, I'm sorry, from robbing that specific fish and game fund. We had a guy right in and saying that the Massachusetts never

used to require saltwater license. They require saltwater license now. And he was telling us how that saltwater license fee goes to the general fund where it can be diverted into all kinds of bs and doesn't stay specific specific. In Gloucester, everybody told me, I said that wrong. Another guy rolling and said that guy is quote completely incorrect. Explain crin. So guy number one from Gloucester, Gloucester called

Gloucester one, and then there's Gloucester two. Gloucester two says that in fact, all the money collected from saltwater licenses go into a dedicated fund and that a third of the money collected must go to improving public access. He goes on to say it would have taken you less than one minute to look up and fact check this issue before broadcasting false information on your podcast Salty And then he says he's a frequent listener, but he's right,

He's right. I don't know why, and when I was reading it, in the back of my head was like, we should probably look into this. My grand points out that she's checked it and had someone else check it and timed those people, and it took those people longer than a minute to check it, but not too much long. So the guy's right. So if he had said it would taken you not much longer than a minute, he

had been correct. Uh. The one thing, though, I called the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries and I'm waiting for a call back because I couldn't find where they stated that one third of the money must go to fishing access. Yeah, so I don't want to put that bit of unchecked information across to all of our podcast listeners just yet. When the guy when Gloucester one called his state tax Achusetts, which is fine, I should have been like I detected

by US, I detect a blind spot. Uh. A friend of mine, this is this is, this is something for your Ronnie here his specialties dogs, but he has he has a minor, his major's dogs, but as a minor getting in trouble to T s A. Um A guy, a guy wrote in a friend of mine. I want to say his name. He uh he he recently got caught by T. S A. He didn't mean to be doing this, but he had an unloaded thirty eight pistol in his carry on. I feel his pain. Thousand bucks got his gun back. Ronnie I lost mine, and tell

everybody what happened to you. This is a warning tale. Well, I had some I'll try to do it, not like my mom. I'll try to do a short version. But I had invertly taken the twenty two revolver and stuck it into my dry bag, and I was going out to Utah real quickly that inadvertently, well, it was like I had to move it somewhere. There was there was somebody coming to my kennel. I just didn't want to pistol lay in there. So I just kind of like

slam dunked it up into a shelf. Well, I actually threw it into my dry bag because you thought they'd see the pistol and be alarmed. Yeah, I mean they're coming over to look at dogs, you know, and like, why is this guy got a pistol lay not on the counter. So anyway, I looked at the weather report before my flight. I saw that was gonna be raining, and judging in the rain sucks. So I grabbed all my gear judging dogs. Yeah, and I grab all my ring gear and I stick it in that bag without

checking that bag. So now that bag, that's how it happened that bag has got a loaded twenty two pistol with a six inch barrel on it, and it's a large it almost looks like a cult pythe and almost it's huge gun even though it's a twenty two. And I had my first time I got that pre check where you don't have to take your shoes off, and

I was feeling all kind of smarty. I was like, looking at me, I got my shoes on, and and I'm kind of I'm leaning on that conveyor, you know, and I'm kind of judging the conveyor, like, oh, that's pretty good. Rollers on this conveyored lines kind of building up behind me. And then the guy looking up at the screen, he turns the screen so I can see it.

He goes, is this your bag? I don't go up there, and I can see everything but the serial number, and I I'm like, I even told the guy said I said yes, and it's loaded, because I'm like, I better just get it clear. And he said, well, we'll stay right there, and they diverted the rest of the line. You know, they had the people who didn't have to take your shoes off had to go on the other line.

They weren't they weren't happy with me, a little salty, and I was probably at that little conveyor stand there where you get your stuff back for ten minutes. All three different people came up and questioned me did they coffee and stuff? Right there? Right once? Once? Like the third person said, of you have you? Did you do this? Did you blah blah. They just had this pet bunch a bunch of answers, like if you you know, it's like getting those COVID questions nowadays. There's like three questions

they ask you. And she said, okay, well we're gonna take I don't know what do you mean? What kind of questions? Have you had suicidal thoughts? Oh did you have are you suffering from any family? Blah blah? Do you have anything against the airline? They all have the same three questions. It was a weird I can't I need, I need interject something you make me think of. I can't let it go on said we uh, maybe took

our kids down in the emergency room too often. And one day they like, what are the strengths and weaknesses of your marriage? I was like, oh my god, really is this where this is at right now? Oh? Yeah, that I that's the one thing that I hate. We've had to take our kids to the emergency room a couple of times and they they give you like a little scan. They look at both of the parents. They asked the kids very straightforward questions. And you want, you want,

you want to get mad. You're just playing into their hands. You want to be like, dude, mind your own business. But they're like, but if I say that, then that I probably get handcuffed or something. It's like a three year old kid and they're asking me, so, how exactly did it? So what happened? Explained to me what happened. They separated, They separated us to tell the story. Yeah, awful, it's the worst feeling. They didn't separate me. They just one one after the other came up and asked me

the same three questions. And then the late There was a lady police officer that worked at the Grand Rapids Airport. They have their own little office. Remember that office you talked about on the subway, Steve, that you didn't know when I got caught with a knife, like, but you never know, there's an office there. It was just like that the airport. It was like the secret door and there's this police department that I never knew existed inside

the airport. Always reminded me of that subway thing of you. So I go into you know, she puts handcuffs on me, and I gotta walk past everybody and we go out to this little little place for the police department. Is they coff you behind her in front of your back behind? Yeah, I started getting like weird itches. You couldn't No, I was just petrified. I could barely walk. I could barely walk. And they bring me into this back room and I'm

sitting down. She uncuffs my cuffs, then handcuffs my left arm to the wall, like to a short handcuff to the wall, and I'm sitting in a chair just like this, and and then she'd got a piece of paper and I got to write a statement, and I'm like, well

I'm left handed. So instead of like I always felt like, well you didn't think this through, because all they went and got like three other officers cuffs and made like a chain of cuffs instead of switching hands, instead of switching hands, instead of like okay, uncuff him, put his right arm on the table and let him right left. No, they went got like three other give me your cuffs, give me like a daisy chain of handcuffs and daisy chain.

So now I'm writing down what happened. She's got my wallet. She asked me what I was doing, and I told her I was going to do a dog I was judging some dogs out in Utah. And then she said what kind of dogs? And I told her bird dogs and her eyes lit up, and I was like, oh, I'm I might I might have it here, you know. But I thought for sure, like my life was over because if I had I assumed it was a felony, just because why wouldn't it be right? And turned out to be. I had a loot. I lost my gun.

It was a misdemeanor. But I did end up in jail. They had to give me over to Kent County Police. They took me to jail. I had to sit into drunk drunk tank for three hours until the sergeant came back to post. But like the funniest part of the story would be my daughter dropped me off the airport because Kelsey worked right right at forty Patterson and she dropped me off. And so two o'clock in the afternoon, I'm calling her up and she goes, yeah, Dad, what's up?

And I said, I need you to come get me. She goes, well, you're either in Utah or you had a connector in Atlanta. Well, what's what's going on? I go, no, I'm at the Kent County jail. I need you to kill me get me. And she's just like she was like, I'm like, hello, is this Mike says Mike hut and she's I'm like Kelsey. She goes I said, She goes, did you call my I said, don't call mom, don't just come to the Kent County jail. I gotta get back to the airport and get my stuff. So that

was That was a bad morning. But then he had a court date. I had a court date and I never actually went in front of the judge. My lawyer went in front of the whatever, the person that works with the judge, and uh, they did all their things. I sat out in the hallway both times I went to court. I don't know what they were talking about. So I feel I feel like I remember part of the story you're not mentioned where you then said your

lawyer like, what about the gun? He's like, forget about Well, yeah, once I realized I was getting them this. Once I realized there was a misdemeanor, I said, well, chance I get that gun back. That's like asking a doc if you don't have to take your heart medicine, do I have to keep taking this? Uh? And you didn't pay much money? Not? You know, not really you know that story about when we had a jet boil canist during it?

What was our initial fine? The lawyers four? And so this guy he paid half of a week for a jet ball canister. Paid he paid half for a pistol what you paid for a jet bawl canister. But he had an unloaded one. I don't know if that matters though, I don't know. I don't know about severity. But my

oh yeah, here's the other part that was funny. So I'm sitting in that room, locked up against the wall, and as I walked into that room, there's this little i'd call it almost like a closet, and there's a shooting sand trap, like so you can just charge the firearms and they're all ready for this stuff apparently. And I see my pistol like in this uh like holder right, and it's pointing in to the sand and I walked by and I'm sitting unlocked up and I see a

cop walk in there. Now this was like, you know what a top break pistol is. The back peep site comes up, it breaks open like a shotgun, right, and this cop is in there and he pokes his head around the corner. He goes, yeah, he goes, how do you open it? Things? I'm like, push up on the

back of for your site. He goes back in there, but thirty second goes thanks because he didn't want to go to his sergeant and go like, I gotta go to I don't know how to get the bullets out of it though, I don't know where the lever is. I got held up by the police and the anchorage report for shotgun shells. Oh, they took you away from the line, and you know that happened to me there too. You know, you gave me something. I forgot to take him out of my bag. But they were they knew,

yeah it happened. They were They were kind of like, I really like you dumbass, Now we gotta go through all these things. Was like, we gotta do through all this And obviously what you're telling us is like you went tarming and hunting, which is what I did and had like a bird shot. And then their their attitude was more that you've just cost us like a bunch of filling papers out we were going to have a cigarette break and now we have to take care of

your dumbass. Yeah, it was. It was. No, there was no serious questioning, you know, o question of legality from a listener. It's about our quid pro quid pro after Ukraine, the Ukraine scandal. It's hard to say quid pro quo because it got forever tied to the Ukraine scandal. Anyways, we're not scandal, the scandal that wasn't the scandal anyways. Uh, we're talking about sturgeon scandal, the sturgeon scandal that occurred in where are you any Wisconsin. Yes, biologists are like

taking you know, sturgeon row. Caviar is very valuable and there's biologists that extract the row and there's various just just crash course quickn't mind. Yeah, there was. They have

check stations when when these sturgeon come in. They had every sturgeon that spear needs to be checked, and there was there were some coolers that were at that check station that were specifically four eggs it were then going to processors, and then it looks as if maybe people that worked for the game and fish were then getting cured finished jars of caviare in return, and so you had this trade, you know, of goods for a finished product,

which became illegal. At the same time, there was also some folks that we did some work with, um Vic and uh Mary Lou that were similarly basically cleaning up eggs for people, curing them and then giving them back to them, but also holding onto a small portion of it for themselves. So again sort of getting paid by you know, holding onto it, which you can't do right. So so I don't think we've seen what's gonna come of it yet. I haven't heard any updates about that story.

But anyways, folks gotten in trouble for bartering, trading, selling wild games. Am I correct and saying though that this is just something that went on there. It wasn't like they were trying to hide it. It was just something like that's kind of part of the culture there. Certainly with Vick and Mary Lou, it was very very much like that. I think they had been warned in the past and it was just sort of like, oh no, we're just helping out the community, you know, And this

wasn't a black market. Yeah. I remember when I first heard about it. I don't know why I've talked about this. I first heard about it was like, oh, yeah, he was selling eggs to the Russians, which gets your hackles up, you know. Yeah, so you started rolling the Russians into something Russian mafia. Yeah, like, oh man, you know you're picturing like guns and whatnot, but I want to be And it was the neighbors by the Russians. I meant

his neighbors. I don't know. Guy rolled in about this though, considering that you can't barter, trade sell wild game with some exceptions which will not get into uh, he lays out this little conundrum he's in. They play. His town has a Tiddly Winks tournament um and a meat raffle. Now, he says, you'll know what I'm talking about, but I don't know what either of those things are. They have a Tiddley Winks tournament and a meat raffle in his town.

I can speak to meat raffle, but not Tiddley Winks tournament. You can run didn't you ever play Tiddley Winks when you were kidding? I use it like, um, you know, sitting around like like if I was if I caught Phil not working, he would be like, oh yeah, I'd be like, you spend the who day whistling Dixie down there? You might say you can spend the whole day down

there playing tilly winks. Tiddley Winks is an actual like game with these little plastic dick um saucers and you push down on, you flip the you flip them up. You make a move around the board tid winks. Yeah, somebody google that, don't we have a Jamie here kind of blank expression. No, I accepted it the game. I know it's a game. I don't know what it is. And I don't know how a town gets together to have a Tiddley Wink turnaments, But COVID just winds up

being a COVID story. COVID causes a cancelation of the town wide Tiddley Winks tournament meat Raffle put him and some close friends decided to get together anyway and have a private Tiddley Winks tournament and a private meat Raffle Tiddley Winks sounds worse every time you say it. So normally one of these meat raffles. So normally everybody, apparently everyone from the town. I'm gonna get one of these going. Everyone from the town goes to the butcher's shop. They

all buy meat. You bring the meat. It's a great idea. You bring the meat back and put it on the table, and then you sell raffle tickets, draw raffle tickets. Brodie's number comes up, like, I say, oh, I pulled the hat out number one. Bro He's like, my god, I'm number one. So then Brody goes up and he'll be like, damn, I'm taking the pork wine. That's a meat raffle. Okay.

Since they had to do the small scale version and all of his buddies hunting fish, they all brought game, wild game, and then had a sturgeon and then had a thing. So he brought down two pounds of smoked sturgeon and walked out with two pounds of vendison loin. Should he anticipate being arrested, that's a great question. I hope we don't. I hope our emails don't get subpoena so they can find out who he is tiley winks. I'm reading a Wikipedia page on it right now. You

wouldn't believe it. The small disks are called winks. Uh. There's a pot which is the target, and a collection of squidgers which are also disks. To shoot a wink into flight by flicking the squidder across the top of a wink and then over its edge. It's it's like something had of Harry Potter. Just gonna see that sounds sid Harry. This game has been was invented in eighteen eight. They got it nailed. Yeah, and and okay, I'm just

gonna finish with this tidty winks. And sometimes consider a simple minded, minded, frivolous children's game a strategic adult game wait for it. However, the modern competitive adult game of tiddley Winks made a strong comeback at the University of Cambridge in nine. Modern game uses far more complex rules and a consistent set of high grade equipment. So back in the day, if you had a child that was an academic, you just put him in the yard with a cup and some tiddley winks. He would just kill

some hours and you could get some laundry done. And as long as he learns how to fold his raffle tickets right, he will have plenty of meat from the meat raffle. He'll be fine. Got rolling in with a poem for Kevin Murphy. Who someone get ready to read the poem. I'll tee it up. And someone else has read the poem. You gotta read the poem. I read

it to my kids this morning. Okay. A listener had heard our episode with Kevin Murphy about trying to trail uh cotton tail rabbits out in the desert with dogs from Kentucky. Um and how and we heard this from Jake grib too, kind of our one of our resident dog experts that the dog lives at a certain climate,

certain humidity, certain foliage. It seems to become like accustomed to those things, and then it tracks and those things and when you move them, like you can take a dog from a wet place and move them to a desert, just throws him out of way, takes him while he's gotta kind of relearn all of his tricks, whateverything smells like and how everything goes. So this guy came up with he calls it an a fourism anecdote colloquialism, or whatever you choose to call it. Hit a grin. This

one's for you. Kevin Murphy. If on the morning breeze you can smell your dog's daily habit, it's a damn good day to go hunt. Rabbit explained that through Ronnie, if you can smell, No one likes that poem. I can't wait till we get that dial in here to tell people, to tell what people think is good or not. I thought i'd laugh track. No, no, no, we're getting in We're getting a machine where everybody in here has a dial they turned up and down to tell how

interested they aren't. Lights and light in the center of the table so people know when they're being born. Cream would have I would have cranked her. But um. Another piece of feedback that came out of our Rabbit conversation with Kevin Murphy is the guy wrote in about this interesting practice that takes place in the Lake Okachobe region

and the sugar cane fields. And we're right now kind of half watching some of these videos and it's fascinating saying that when they when they burn off the fields and then also kind of like they're harvesting, but also burning off the cane fields. It's common practice for local kids to come out with a stick in a in a sack or a pillow case and to fill those pillow cases up with rabbits that they just chase after and whap with a stick, just hit them like they're

like you'd kill a fish. And you watch this thing, it's like just just it's like a tap almost, and you kids run around handfuls of rabbits. I have no idea on the legality of it, like if they have a seasoned method to take I don't know, but it's but yeah, you can go online and find these these kids around these rabbits up. It's really interesting. I like the local legend stuff. What's the local legend? Well, look, legend is the best football players developed their skills as

small children chasing rabbits. Because there's so many pro football players, collegiate football players that are good that come out of this small region of Florida where they grow sugarcane and have this practice and you watch them run down the rabbits. It's it's athletic. Yeah, I can't. I mean, you know, I've seen plenty of rabbits running around and uh, I haven't really chased them, but I can imagine I could that I would not be able to run one down.

I'm looking at an NFL film, official NFL films. Uh looks like Travis Benjamin and Generes Jenkins. So Giants player and Chargers player. It looks like they grew up doing this and uh hunting sugarcane exactly, and then they're in the NFL. So there you have it. If it was just one person, that could be a fluke. But it's too Clay, tell tell everybody about this. This uh, this

this this raccoon dog. So a couple of weeks ago, or at least it came out a couple of weeks ago on social media, there was a coon dog in Tennessee. They got stuck fifty feet up in a tree and firefighters had to come rescue it. Do by that, Oh yeah, oh yeah it Uh you can watch the video, you can search for it. But Steve, that's pretty common. Um, there are in in all the hound world, there are dogs that are exceptionally good climbers that find themselves and

just advantageous situations for climbing a tree. Be at the tree, is leaning, or be at the tree is a species that has really grabby bark where they can just climb. And then some dogs are just incredible climbers. And so now I've never seen a dog up that high. And it's so the story was in Tennessee that they had to call the fire department to come get this dog

out of the tree. What's unclear to me is this dog must have treated a coon pretty close to the road or you know, somewhere where these guys could get to it. And then the video shows them lowering the dog out of the tree on some kind of pulley system and they yeah, so some human had to go up there, hook up the pulley system and then hooked the dog to it and they kind of used it was pretty it's pretty good. They it looked like a

chest harness on the dog, but it wasn't. It was a rope that they tied themselves and then they lowered the dog down. They didn't show that part. So I don't know how they got up there to set all this up. But I mean, a dog climbing that high, they do it all the time. Dogs get killed. Uh. Good friend of mine, Brent Reeves, he and his buddy Carson just this last fall had a dog get killed that fell out of a tree. But it's so it

happens chasing a raccoon. Well, they're just tree and you know, like they they don't they're not watching the raccoon go up the tree. But it's like I have a dog, one of my dogs, Steve um Jedi, you hunted with him. He's a tree climbing dude. Man, if there's a tree that has any kind of lean to it, I mean, he'll go up as high as he can't. What happens is they get up there and they can't come down. Then they fall. And now do you worry about breaking him of it? Clay? Do you try to break him

of it? You just let him have at it, you know, I don't. I don't know. You know, people might say you can break them of it, but I don't really know how you would do it. I mean, they're just so pumped up when they're they've treated this coon. They're jumping on the tree, embarking. And so it happens because in chasing lions, it presents a whole another problem. Oh yeah, you get up the tree, they're gonna get into skirmish and that's how we earlier we were talking about when

dogs hounds get killed by lions. It happens usually when a lion is not treed in like what you consider us a normal tree twenty feet up and a straight tree. It's like a blowdown or something, and it just jumps onto a you know, a a trunk that's only five six ft off the ground. You know, it's being supported by the anches or whatever. And then the dogs, you know,

bay it for a minute off the ground. But then the dogs quickly realize, oh, I can get on the end of that tree and run right up to that thing. And the dogs have no nothing in their heads says that that thing that I'm barking at can kill me, you know what I mean, They're they're not thinking that. So they go right up to it and they want to get closer to it and bark at it and

gets them in trouble. So yeah, when when I know that when Jake's dogs start climbing at all, and it's pretty amazing, like not even like grabbing like a cat would climb straight up the trunk like these dogs will actually go onto a limb, turn go to the next slimb, and turn, go to the next slim. Oh yeah, and he does not like it at all. And there's yeah, they there's there's consequences when they do it. Honest is he does he think that he can train them to

not climb. The guys that I was with in Washington, Bart George and his crew, uh they do it as well. If the dogs start getting up on the uh tree, they they punish him. If you can train them, you train them to cut the tree. You trained dog do anything, so getting them stay out of tree with no problem. You just gotta set up the situation. My comment on it is basically, just like a lot of times in a tree, you're not there for a long time. It may take you a long time to get to the tree.

So the dogs are they're unattended, not under you know, and just that desires watch Puss pushing them up the tree. You know. But you need that obedience set up in a yard situation. In the training situation, you'd have to simulate it as close as you could and correct the dog, because you're right, you'd never get there before the dog gets there. So yeah, backyard training Yanni's dog. You're just

talking about mangus, were you? Mm hmm? Um, A long time ago, we had Dave Simonette for Trampled by Turtles on the show. Mm hmm. Musician, we're talking about how we needed a theme song from Mingus. Mingus has his own theme song now by Trampled by Turtles, Short and Sweet, Short and Sweet, ladies and gentleman does Mingus by Trampled by Turtles talk about we're gonna use the we'll use ask them what you all be sick of that? Uh, Clay do your big apology and explanation about how you

messed everything up about fox hunting. Yeah, so we we talked about, we talked about I was talking about the painting on the ceiling in my office and I have a painting of an English fox hunt and I said that I put it up there because that scene no longer exists on the earth, and it's a it's like the Sistine Chapel. It's it's a painting overhead. Yeah. So all the other paintings and pictures in my office are

on the walls like a normal one. I put this one on the ceiling because my point was, and what I tell people when they're in my office, as I say, do you see that scene? And it's this beautiful old painting of a of a what I presume to be an English fox hunt, and I say that no longer exists on the earth. And probably in the heat of the moment on the podcast the other day, I probably said that scene exists nowhere else on the face of

the earth. That would have been a mistake. Yeah, yeah, And so so we had some really good feedback come in some people that kind of set the record straight. And also, you know, stand by my statement that that scene doesn't exist in that warm but here, Steve, here's just a quick rundown. So fox hunting became big in Europe, and like the fifteen hundreds, Germany was one of the

first countries in the nineteen thirties that banned it. In two thousand two, Scotland banded fox hunting with hounds, and then in two thousand five England and Wales banned fox hunting with hounds. And it's a pretty complex situation. A lot of it had to do with land related issues, but it was primarily fueled by anti hunting people just saying we don't like people chasing foxes with dogs. So in those places though, and I guess this is where

the clarity comes. They still have simulated fox hunts with scent which as a as a American houndsman, I'm not counting that as a fox hunt. It's like a Civil War reenactment they do with yeah, and so well, and and I don't want to take anything away from those people for doing that. Yeah, I mean, I I'm not cutting them down for having a simulated fox because these people hunt on horseback and they have big packs of dogs and they do these scent drags through the countryside.

So I mean, I think that's great. That is a far cry from what it was. And so but here's where I learned some stuff. Okay, I had several people contact me personally in Northern Ireland and in France, real fox hunting with hounds, like chasing real fox is still legal. Um. And and then I also had a bunch of people say, oh, Clay, you're wrong because there's fox in the United States. I wasn't talking about fox in the United States. We can run all kind of stuff with hounds. I mean, it's

we live. I mean this, we got some incredible rights when it comes to hound hunting in this country still to this day. And so I I know people in northwest Arkansas that do simulated fox hunts, and it's a it's an equestrian thing, you know. I mean they're riding horses fast, they've got hounds, they're doing scent drags, and there's probably real fox sense going on in the US.

But I was talking about Europe and my whole idea with you know, just this kind of guarding the gate thing is that they want to take this stuff away from us, and we can look at some of these places where they have and so my painting still is on the ceiling. So yeah, I like pugnacious. At the very end, Clay nucom other people rolling in saying they were mad at me about saying that fox hunters aren't hunters. I don't know. Yeah, He's like, oh, we're out there

for having a good time, loving nature all that. Another guy rolled in. He says he hunts at a place now and then these fox hunters they dragged that little smell through the woods and they all come riding after it. He said, you'll, he'll be out in the woods. He thought about being out in his tree stand. You'll, you'll be all wouldn't have forty hounds come through making a racket, followed by dozens of people on horseback dressed up in the red and green coats like the old English hunter's war.

It's quite something. You're out hunting in the woods, and that rolls through. As an avid hunter, I can tell you that the people involved in this fox hunt are so unrelated to nature and real hunting that it's insulted to call the fox hunt hunt. Obviously there's no real fox, but the people this sport attracts are also the last people that would ever know what to do with the real fox, or any wild game for that matter. It's all just a social status affair. Then you're pipe and

smoke it. Brodie Henderson, you know, my mom was into horses and she belonged to what was called a hunt and Saddle club. They didn't do any hunting there. I think it's like just some traditional kind of connection, you know. I think I hear what that guy's saying, but I don't. I mean, these people are on our side, I mean, if they, I mean, yeah, we can say. I think it's a pretty big stereotype. I bet there's some legit

folks and those bunches. Well, he points out that what one of these One of these fellers points out, not that guy, but another feller points out that we share enemies, right, radical animal rights community. Yeah, suburban sprawl habitat, having the your the rules of your life dictated by people who make stereotypes about you and don't understand what it is exactly that you do, but they know you. They don't want you to do it. So you're bound together by

your enemies. But I'll point out, I don't want to do that. I was gonna say, but I won't. I wasn't gonna say, but I shouldn't. I was gonna point out how we were friends with the Rooskis against the Germans that got us. But that wouldn't be appropriate. It wouldn't even be a good metaphor. But Patton wanted to go on and get them. Second Patton and my old man, they were ready to keep going east. Yeah, my old man thought we were halfway done with that war when

we quit. Um Clay, I'm with you. I think we should not generalize, you know, just off this one email that all these mounted fox hunters are not real outdoors folks, because I think, like you said, there's probably quite a few that are. Yeah, i'd like to see the guy that wrote dead email ride dead Horse. There you go. That's interesting. Good point, Ronnie, all right, Um, onto being better outdoors folks with our weapons. I wish I can remember.

Oh he says it right here. On episode to fifty two the podcast, Steve was talking about the most common firearm related injury was bird hunting. Um he and this guy agrees with him. He is a shooting instructor in the United States Coast Guard counter terrorism teams and teaches advanced marksmanship. UM. He wanted rite in to say that some of the stuff that he teaches in that sort of space can be you used for us as safety measures, you know, as hunters out in the field, and uh,

just with some other projects we've been working on. UM, you know, speaking of people getting shot or getting closest shot, it's really kind of hits home right now. But there's a thing that they teach when they shoot, when they go into close quarters combat, and that's basically when they have to start engaging multiple targets, they teach them to move their eyes first then the gun. That being so one is for safety, right, because that way your eyes and brain can look at the target and go yes,

that is a threat. I need to, you know, get rid of it because you can imagine close quarters. They got a bunch of their team members in there. It can be dark, it's in a house. You gotta be very careful about what direction you're shooting at where you're shooting, just like we do when we're out in the field, you know, up and bird hunting and there's whatever, ten people on a pheasant hunt. Um. And another advantage of that is he saying, is that it actually makes you

faster at shooting. A lot of people think that you want to look over or swing to your target with your gun, but if you do that, you will actually pass over the target and then have to come back and correct. Whereas if you go there first with your eyes lock on, then bring your target too, then bring your pistol or rifle or shot and whatever to the target.

You'll be faster doing it that way. You know what's interesting parallel there, uh is when you take out beginner hunters who aren't of customers shooting sculpt rifles, they have a very difficult time finding the d or whatever acquiring the target because they are looking through the scope, trying to get oriented through the scope and then searching for the thing. Once you get the knack of it, your eye never leaves the thing, the thing being your target,

your target. You're looking at a deer on the hillside and you bring your rifle up. You don't then look for it. It's just there, like your eyes on it, and everything is. The scope is coming to your eye, which is already trained on the thing. It's hard to do, but you just figure it out over time. You don't go like, Okay, I look through the scope, then I'll start staring all over the place trying to find the thing.

It's seamless i first, but you know he relates it to like getting tunnel vision, and you know you're getting real Like we always talked about the factor of lust and wanting to kill something and wanting to be successful as a hunter. And you know, you see the pheasant flush and you're so focused on that that you don't see your buddy that's in the line of fire. Right happens? It does happen? Does happen? I mean A really good example is if you shoot up like old old style

South Dakota blockers flankers and pushers. The flankers are only on the outside of the field in case a bird peels out. But sometimes right when it starts, these birds start coming up in the middle and they're like, well, there's nobody here, and they're shooting the other flanker or putting shot on him. And I've seen a guy get taken right square and a lip right here flanking the field and he says, I'm not flanking anymore this week. And it, I mean, it was pretty it was. We

had to get it out. We had to get the yeah mingus um, okay, more about dogs. While back, I don't know what episode it was that we were talking about blood tracking dogs and about how it's becoming a thing and more and more, states um. And a fellow rode in uh he he wasn't a member, he's not a member of the the United Blood Trackers, but he was saying that there's a lot of Facebook based groups that

provide volunteer tracking service. Is two Hunters, And what was interesting is that very high success rates for for these dogs to find wounded dear that you might not find later. What kind of numbers did they say in seventeen they went on five seven tracks, had two seven total recoveries. Just makes for a success rate of fifty four point four. You know not want to know here, and it would be really important to this is is that after like,

is that after you failed manually tracking? I would say typically, well, you'd have to know that because if you're just showing up off out of the gate with a dog, that doesn't impress me at all. I'll bet you though some people they're shooting one in the evening right at dark, they may just call the dog because we'll normal trailing.

I mean normal trailing is yeah, you know high if but if if that's you've exhausted your manual tracking abilities and then you're recovering of what couldn't have been recovered otherwise, that's impressive. Yeah. I mean my only exposure to this was in Idaho. They used a woman shot a bear right at dark. It was raining um and they brought in a teeny little blood tracking dog. That bear had only gone a hundred yards. I don't think we would have ever found it. It was buried in the brush.

We couldn't see any blood. So it was a pretty impressive and it it was quick. It was a couple of minutes that dog found. Hey, don't get me wrong, man, I'm not down on it. I think that they should loosen whatever restrictions are in place and make it that it's just the thing. I wish that, like every community had a community to help people with recovery. I'm not down on it. I'm saying if if you could up, if after you exhausted possibilities and you brought a dog

and then had a fifty of recovering, that's phenomenal. Yeah, I'd say that's more of the rule of the rule. I've interviewed three three trackers and they're coming into after they can't find it. Very rare. Would they just go in without any intel, just say hey, I shot, just come out with me. But would you say, you know, time we could find it. So it's almost always after a bad weather condition or inability to find anything. No blood thing always gets them. So when they get called in,

it's because usually of a lack of blood. Most people see blood that keep going, they don't, They don't look for help. And the dogs are able to now track from the dearest tarso gland, which is just like our thumb print, Like the FBI is not gonna mistake your thumb print for mine. A dog, well trained dogs not gonna I'm not gonna mistake that tarso gland smell. It's that dear's individual scent. I'm on that. I'm I'm on Bobby Ranilla and I'm chasing him across as air a

lot farm and I'll find him. It's funny mentioned because I got a nephew name Bobby, were knowing, I knew that. The other thing that would affect that statistic is how many of those deer didn't die? Like, so you got there. Yeah, so there's some percentage of those unrecovered deer that didn't die, which I would think would be pretty high. I think a lot of deers survive, you know what people you know, just flesh wounds, and so that makes it even a

higher percentage of dead deer that are recovered. And actually, as they've got numbers all the way through UH and the percentages are are every year, it seems a steadily increase Like success straight got up to sixty six mhm. Okay, yeah, ready take it away. Where would you go to recon fighting coons and dogs and barrels or whatever? I said, Well, okay, I listened. Believe it or not, I listened to your podcast.

Is quite often and every once in a while I hear you tell a story and I just cringe because it came from you. I know where, I know the source, but I know for a fact that I did not say it like that. But one of the reasons is when I sit with you anywhere, and this has been since the day you worked for me an eighteen years old, you like to engage and ask questions like I could start telling a story and go whoa wait a minute, wait,

so this guy? So you remember things and I was talking about and Clay, Clay, you got to jump in on this because you're the coon hunter. Um. Friends of mine told me this story that if you don't want your dog chasing deer, you put the coon dog in a barrel with a bunch of deer legs and roll it down a hill. Now, barbaric, silly, local legend, whatever

it is. I started googling this morning and there's a guy who uses doe urine in a in a cup on an electric fence and when the dogs going to smell the dog urine, the dough year and the dog gets a shock from the electric fences. Great, what, Clay, what what have you heard for old legends of breaking them from tress. They call it chasing trash. Well, if Clay doesn't have any, I got it. I've got one. Let's hear it. Go ahead. You know I don't have

anything beyond that. I mean the real world, like houndsman typically don't or at least a brand I'm around. Don't buy into that kind of stuff. It's a lot more natural. There's a lot of really pretty easy ways to break right, right. I don't even know if whatever happened, right, I just I just know, guys, I've heard of that same one Ronnie about you know dough y'arin electric fans. Well, I don't have anything, right, let me tell you one here.

It would work to keep the dog out of barrels. Though, dogs, you don't even worry about me chasing barrels. Yeah, never gonna happen again. I see a barrel, I go the other way too, Okay, from this same guys, I don't want to see who they are from way back, the same guys that you came away with the story about you fill up a barrel full of deer legs and rolling down the hill. And I was unsettled by this when I heard it from them, back when nothing would

unsettled me, but I was unsettled by this. They would also say that when they had one of their dogs kill a fawn, they said, what you do is you hang the dog up in a tree by its collar and whoop it with the fawn. That is brutal. Well, and I later thought that can't be true. We had a guy said I didn't put it on Instagram because it was too graphic. We had a guy send us

in a picture. He was very upset by it. It was like a high test collar and a high test lead, like the kind houndsman news, like those bright orange, real heavy freaking collars hanging from a tree, and underneath that collar was a stack of dog bones, telling you what. And he thought he's a hunter. He found it. He's like, this is insane. No one knows what happened at night. I don't know, No, I don't know. Bad apples for sure. I'm I don't know what happened that night, but I'm

assuming it's condemnable. But I'm just saying, like I heard that a long time ago. And we're and you know, we're talking about like, well, people us do a lot of things that they shouldn't do. Right right, Well you said you, Oh mine wasn't. My dad used to uh, his this is for you personally or no dog, No, his his bird dog. He was a gross center back when Pennsylvania used to have grouse, and that dog would occasionally chase deer and it was nothing as bad as

what we've already talked about. But he'd hang a piece of deer hide soaked in and dough yearn on that dog's collar. I have no idea if it like to make it sick of it. Yeah, yeah, it's just he did it. Who knows if. I don't know if it worked, but that was something he still talks about doing that to this day. I've had guys telling me about trying a skunk hide onto a dog to make the dog get sick of skunk hide smell, or just get so used to it they don't pay any attention to it.

I don't know. You know what's funny about you telling how I tell your stories and get him a little as Yet, there's a I can't tell the story because it's very very sensitive material. I could do it if I took my time, very sensitive material. But Ronnie had a story that happened to him I told my brother the story about what happened to Ronnie. A couple of years go by, he's drunk and he's telling Ronnie's story about what happened to me. And Ronnie's halfway through the stories, like,

wait a minute, that that's my story. That always happens at the fish check. Uh? Where were we? Keep going around? Well, where are we at? Oh? As far as the scandal, So it's like the Ukraine scandal. There there is in America. There are sporting dog groups, right, individual breed groups. One is Deutsch Drathar Deutsch Kurtzhar, which is a German short hair, German wire hair, and there's other breed clubs that they hold to the standards of the European testing system, which

is what NAVDA it's kind of based on. Explain NAVDA real quick well. Navda's North American Versatile Hunting Dog Association. And what we're looking for is a well rounded dog that does good work before and after the shot on land and on water. Like and you're a judge for NAVDA, right, Yeah, I've been judging twenty years for him, and so that's what we're looking for. But in the European test and I can't. Actually I did call a friend when I knew I was coming on. I did call a friend

in Germany. And what they used to do at least this is my understanding. Somebody can write in and straighten it all out and your German and I'm beam with an um lot over the but we dropped doom lot. It's actually been um anyway. So during a test they went they may not have a let's say, what they don't have. What's a version of a raccoon in Europe

um badgers. There a European raccoon, the European badger. So the dogs, because the dogs are always not the badgers and raccoons are like the same thing, but they're they're a geating bird eating ground eating critters that sure do you want to get rid of. So, because in Europe everything is on private ground, they wanted to keep the grounds as pristine as possible for the ground nesting birds in the rabbits, which are the game that they're hunting.

So the dogs were always expected to dispatch any kind of vermin, whatever, whatever they could catch in the course of a day. That if he came across the groundhog, if he came across a badger came across the raccoon skunk kill it eliminate the competition, eliminate everything so the hunter can get something with his shotgun. So part of their testing format on a test day, there's no way you could guarantee like you're going to run into a raccoon on a test day. They but what they would do.

There's a breed, a breed warden who also does the confirmation of the dog and make sure that this dog should be bred to that dog. It's kind of like that old school arranged marriages. They get very concerned with the coat on that dog versus the code on this dog or the furnishings they call it. There's a lot of they call the dog's color. It's furnishings. No, it's coat coat. Yeah, so when it has the big beard in the big fuzzy faces, furnishings, right, yeah, Rusty always

thought it was the testicles. Know, He's always going like, hey, how's that dog's furnishing. Oh yeah, it didn't have any furnish anyway. So so during like right now, currently, this is a friend of mine. Uh no, I won't even say what he's decorated for anyway, He's he's over in yourpe right now working for us. Yeah, and so he has a German breath. Well, I don't know if I I really I don't know how far we're gonna go

into that. But anyway, he told me that in Germany right now, if this happens in the course of a hunt and you're with somebody as a witness, okay, they that is still a desirable trait. So if you and I were out hunting and my dog even a feral cat, my dog dispatched a feral cat, I could say, like Steve, write a note to my breed Warden that you're a hunter. I saw, I saw Ron's dog do it, and it

would go. It would be duly noted in that dog's paperwork. Now, what they've done here, I can't speak for Germany, but when I started getting into the Versaill Dog world, I knew a lot of people that were in what's called the v d d g n A that's very in Deutsch Rat Group North America, and that's the group that the fellow from Alaska wrote the email from. Okay, Um, the best of my knowledge, that is still a requirement to breed. They want to make sure that your dog

will dispatch game. And they called a sharpness or hardness hardness. I think it's hardness like HD. What would most American upland hunters with dogs, I would think would consider that to be an undesirable trade. Well, I've always said they wouldn't have started if they had porcupines in Germany, Like I really think they would not if they had porcupines in Germany. That it's because porcupines are the worst thing for a dog to get into. My dogs have killed

raccoons to get a scratch on the ear. Go kill a porcupine and it's six dollars of emergency that you know, I'm taken out. So anyway, So that was part of the testing to the best of my knowledge, and to the best of my knowledge it still is. But you know, somebody can write in the controversy came up um in NAVDA. Nowhere in our testing do we test on for. But you are allowed in this one part of a one part of our utility test. We take typically a duck and we put like a long leash on it, and

it's called a drag. So the dog is over in the truck with the owner. I make a little feather pile, and I dragged this duck yards and the dead duck a dead duck, and I drag it into the woods and kind of hide it. And then I go behind another tree or something to stay out away from the dog. I blow my whistle. They call the owner. The dog comes up. Now, this isn't the dog's test of nose because a dead duck dragon in the grass. I mean, anybody, your dog at home could find that. We can try

it tonight if you had time. Um, But what this does is shows the dog's cooperation and obedience, like you have to go retrieve that. And in our rules, because we have a big background, we have a historic connection with Germany. Boat a winner held it started NAVDA. You know he came from that world, and we allow replacement

if the chapter will provide a duck. But if you are a person that wants to do it with a rabbit or a squirrel or a woodchuck, you could bring your own dead let's say, cold dead road kill or something you had in refrigerator the night before. Because a lot of the members from v D D G n A are also members of Navada, so they're practicing. These are people that really like to test their dogs. So they come to our venue and they test their dogs, and they go in their venue and test dogs and

their and their venue. There's a lot more of these drag which is the retrieve, and there's a lot of emphasis. There's an old saying that the Europeans want a tracking dog, little point and Americans want to pointing dog, little track. So their emphasis in Europe has always been on recovery of game. Like you are not allowed to go upland

hunting your duck hunting without a dog. You can in America, but not in Europe, not in Germany, and you can't big game hunt unless you have the resources of it's like a United Blood trackers, which they don't have there, but they always have. Like the hunting property that Ben

told me about it, they call it a reserve. Might be two or three farmers get together and let's say, okay, let's let's get a lesi to come out here and they can hunt and they can, you know, take some of the road deer or the red deer whatever is on the in that area. And you know, if there's ducks, they can hunt ducks. So those hunters are kind of

in charge of that piece of property. And so in Germany or in the vd d g n A testing, they do a lot more recovery, so they want they actually will drag a dead fox and they call it a fox in a box that dogs jump over like a box edge and retrieve a fox and bring a fox back a rabbit backup, you know. So that's where the that little miss up happened. We don't trained for it in our test, but at one portion of lar test you are allowed to bring in your own cold

fur god for that portion test. Nowhere else in the test can you substitute whatever the chapter would provide for you. Can you explain what you were telling me about you mentioned that in certain German systems where there's a person that you mentioned the arranged marriage thing. Yeah, you that you could have a dog and bring it down and and that dog would get stamped do not breed right if if the dog, if the dog failed, Let's say

let's say the dog did fail. It's hard dis test like this dog just can't close the deal on a skunk or a possum or whatever. They would stamp do not breed on their papers because you can't breed within the club without the blessing of the club. We're in America. You and I could breed your dog and my dog.

No one's gonna stop me. But in when you're in that club, of that breed club, the breed warden, like he sits at the throne of the breeding, he'll say like, Steve's got a dog that's um got a nice coat, maybe not a great undercoat, and Ron's got a dog that's coat would compliment that. Now they have to have all the hunting skills up there through testing. See oh, in that club, you also don't get to breed your

dog unless it passes these tests. We're Navada. You could fail your dog and still go to your neighbor and breed your German short hair to his German short hair. They could both and sell it as a German short hair. But they don't have to pass the test to be bred. But if it's in the European judging system or or breed club system, those dogs not only have to participate in the test, they have to get a passing score.

So you don't have a bunch of you know, guys like me in high school breeding Basically, uh what in your mind based on uh, your experienced judge and dogs. If someone's gonna go this is highly subjective. I understand if someone's gonna go buy a dog, like I don't know what kind of dog to get. I want the most versatile dog I can find on the planet. You would say, the one that was near and dearest to my heart was a German wire head pointer, which is

the English version of Deutsche droth her so. Deutsche is German dropped her is wire hair, so German wire hare. That's always been my go to favorite dog. But that's not the kind of dog you run. No. I got tired of all the cats and all the deer and the fawns and the porcupines, and the dog fights, and because they're just too aggressive. They can be to aggress

shouldn't say too aggresive, they're aggressive, they're aggressive. Yeah, if there's a dog that's prone to, you know, even getting a fight with another dog, it's a dog that's got that. He's kind of like a hyper vigilant dog. It's almost like picture a bunch of guys that fighting m m A and going drinking with them. There's probably gonna be a fight in the bar that night, right, But if you went to the men tell you not, they tell you because it's all that aggression is released into the ring.

Yeah all that. Yeah, And what's funny is I went to an M m A fight one time and watched no fewer than three fights in the crowd, including one that sent a woman away on a stretcher. But then, meanwhile, was supposed to be that there's no it's all alleviated through the spectacle. I'm like, oh, you can't like a hockey game. You can't take the hard the hardness out of the dog, you know. So so the dogs I run, now, yeah they are. They're kind of known for not The

Italians are not. They don't have that type of testing system. They've never had it. The dogs just had to perform in the field for upland game. So generations, hundreds of years of that get a dog that really doesn't care much about you know. For now, it still happens, don't. Don't get me wrong. Bravo Bravos killed a couple of cats in his later years for some reason. I don't know why, but I would trust him around most domestic animals.

A broco Italiano still has that. They're just pretty. They're just not interested in for but the German wire hair or Deutsch strathire, or the German short hair or the German equivalent is the Deutsch kurtzher. Those animals are more prone to Like if you're out hunting in a feral cat scoots out of the grass, that's the last run for the cat. It's gonna be honest. What's the worst

kind of dog? Oh, there's no worst. It's really that gets down to breeding, Like if if what what I mentioned earlier, If so, there's not a kind of dog that people insist on buying, and then you, after all the testing experience you've had, you're just like you just you're wasting your time. I would say, I would say in every breed of dog, I could find you one

that would be adequate in the field. But there are breeds that haven't had the testing and and kind of lost favor with the upland hunter over the Like the one that everybody talks about is the Irish center. You know, real pretty mahogany coat, you know, just a friendly dog.

Back in the day. That was the upland dog in North America for for years, and then the popularity when the German dogs came over after War War two, the hunters started going for German short hairs and German wire hairs, and win Mariners, and and and the the breeders who are still breeding the ira center. They just lost popularity. And so right now to take an Irish center and put it in through our system, it could be done,

and it is done. But if you called me up and said, ron, I want a versatild dog and my wife wants Iras center, I'd say, let's get you one that you got a better chance of. Yeah, Brody, telling about your dog, Man, Oh, the English springer Spaniel. He's got big shoes to fill. Man, my dog was good and that dog just required very little training. But um, I went a year after that first one died. I didn't know if I was going to get another one. Got another Springer Spaniel, and uh, man, it's just it's

not his fault. It's like he's coming along. I shot a couple of grouse over him, pheasants, a couple of ducks over him last last fall, and the old dog would retrieve ducks. This one will not so far. Um, how old is it, Brodie, He's about sixteen months now. Um, give him time. Well, that's the problem. Is like I just you know, I go hunting for other stuff and don't dedicate enough time to training him, and so hopefully

he'll come along. I'm not writing him off yet. What do you think of the general name of the dog? What's the dog's name, Dusty? The name of the kind of daylish springers a flushing dog. So I don't have a lot of background with flushing dogs. There's three major types. The hounds that that Clay has, which for tracking, mostly for big game or raccoons, and then you have the

flushing dogs, which are in the retriever category. So you've got Springer Spaniels, Irish water Spaniel, Labrador Retriever uh chest Peak Bay Retriever. When those dogs are used, they're retrieving specialists, which is kind of funny. That doesn't pick up a duck usually pick up everything. He's kind of a whim. Well then that happens. There's no fixing that, right, Yeah, No, Usually maturity fixes that sometimes. Just didn't you ever know

kids that like like my daughter Jesse, she didn't. She was real shy and now she's on news every other Sunday, you know, doing a cooking segment. She was real shy as a kid just took her a while to find her voice, and dogs can be the same way. Yeah, I mean he'll he'll pick up he picked up grouse and yeah it was new and he was like, yeah, I don't know, maybe I'm not even supposed to you know, right, you know, if the first thing you shot form was

a duckling out of season, he might be good duck. Right. So those dogs don't point, so therefore they're not in the I don't judge Springer Spans with you. Yeah. Um, But as far as training the dog, it's all the same training. You know, the you just know in the process, like Brodie's job is to make sure that dog stays within shot on range, and the dog's natural range should be more cooperative, it should be more around you anyway.

And with the pointing dogs, you have to work on the steadiness of the point because of a pointing dog will find a bird and after a while he just he just he just can't handle it and he's gonna and if he gets into that bird before you get there, which could be to yards away, especially in the Dakotas or why hunting North Dakota, you can see a dog on point three hundred yards away. Well, if he can't hold his ship together, you're not get any birds. You know,

break breaks point exactly. So that's like our curses working at steadiness, and in a flushing dog, it's keeping that dog within let's say yards, You don't and they you know, you want him quartering back, which he does. What they do nice and is you always think, why are the birds always out there where my pointing dogs found him? Well they're also birds you're walking by. Because your dogs are already two hundred yards away from you. You You can't smell it on the ground. The flushing dog kind of

vacuums like everywhere you're walking. So a lot of people, it's very popular, will hunt with a flushing dog and a pointing dog. Oh yeah, Now the training comes into like when the when the two lines meet. But a lot of times that pointer could just be out there on the horizon or out there in the field hunting, and your flusher could be walking along a fence line with you and boom, take something right out of there. You probably roll your eyes and people tall you this

because I bet you everybody tells you this. But when you knew our dog, we had a really good dog, like a really good flushing dog growing up. Yeah, you had that white lab. Yeah she was great for rough grouse. But the only that made her good for rough grouse she didn't go far away, right she was, so she would run. She flushed birds. I don't know when she was flushing birds, but she'd just be like busybody and within twenty yards you no matter where you went, and

inadvertently kick stuff up. And it was very good at finding it, yea. So it wasn't that it's goodness was only that it liked to smell around and didn't go away. And if there was a thicket that you didn't want to go into and you waited for a minute, she'd eventually get bored and going there and look around and something comes busting out. Yeah, And like when you like grouse hunting by our house, Like if a grouse is on the ground and you just start walking by, like

that grouse's job is to sit. Like when he flies, he's gonna get taken by a hawk, right Statistically, that's how they're going to die the most. So his job is to sit. So if you're walking through the woods with your brothers and you're talking the girls is like they don't know, they don't know I'm here. But now you throw this other thing that's like, what, what's that a erratic footstep? Why? Why am I hearing footsteps over here?

Why am I hearing footsteps? And then that kind of unnerves the grouse and girls like I can handle three kids walking by me. But whatever that, you know, whatever that which is more like a coyote or a bobcat, you know that's of course they don't hunt like a dog does. But um so that yeah, yeah, duchess would be a real helpful again with the range though, if she did that fifty yards from you, you'll be hot.

If people want to hunt a flusher and a pointer, how come nobody's just breeding two of them together and coming out with the best of both worlds. You know, a lot of money right there. Business point. You know, I got a little English cocker spaniel right now, and I could breathe that with one of my broccles and see what happens. But I'm not thinking that would work because whatever whatever instincts gonna if the pointing instinct comes through in the dog, it's always going to point, at

least initially. And then if you were looking for that dog to just flush, and he kept the ranginus of the pointing dog. Well, then you're back out to unshootable birds. But it is real popular to hunt with a like a lab or cocker or springer um while you've got a pointing dog running out, you know, yeah, and there's a whole thing with like one the flushing dog honoring the pointer or vice. That's where the real high level trade.

Like you tell the one dog, if you see him point, don't go in there and screwing it up right right, So if you would, if you saw your dog point, you would call your your flushing dog to heal you go. He'd come right back to your legs. You don't want

to blow it. You don't want him to blow it. Right, But if you get close enough, now, if you're worth in ten yards of your dog and you know there's something there because you get to know your dog's points, all of a sudden, the tail gets loose or the body gets loose, or he might kind of look over his head and see if you're coming. That usually means the bird's gone or the birds starting to move. But his training is like I'm not allowed to move until

my boss gets here. So what you don't want is that little flushing dog running in on a pointing dog when you don't know the situation yet. But when you get to say, let's say ten yards, let the little flusher go. But now the pointing dog can get mad because that's his bird. So you've gotta have it's it's a struggle are there with these high test, well trained dogs. Do you ever see anybody that gets that. They're able to go in and hunt woodcock and real dense cover

and they whatever. Then the dogs like the pointer is, I'm only gonna work thirty yards, I'll still point. I'm working close. I've seen. But then you're going to open cover and the dog you're able to communicate to the dog, and then all he's he's out seventy eight yards looking for a pheasant out and open cover. It can can is it? Or is it one or the other? No, no, it should be both. In fact, in the NAVSA rules we don't implement it as much as we used to.

But what we would do, Let's say if we rented uh a forty acre or we had a lease on a forty year eighty acre hay field to use for the field and if there was an adjoining wood lot. So in our old rules were take the dog now that's hunting this field, Take the dog into the wood lot, and you should see the dog's range tighten up. So that's an expectation that is an expectation doesn't always come,

but it's an expectation, you know. And and honestly, I can't remember more than a half a dozen tests where I'm like, I don't worry, we got a little piece of woods, will walk through the woods to get to the next field, and I will make a note like that dog just wanted to get to the next field. Like and if there was a grouse sitting on the side of this wood lot, we weren't going to find it, you know. But it's something that we don't really set up for the test, but it is in our kind

of our judge's hand. It's something we can do if we opt to explain. Um, we we're talking last night as well, and you were talking about a thing that that that you guys trained dogs to do that is just completely This has not like like residential house dog owners, this is not on their radar. But but the what do you call it where they get up on the block. Oh,

I was talking about the program. My my friend justin to no no, yeah, but yeah, we'll talk to explain the program, but explain like what that's called, Like it's just part of the it's part of you guys take it as a matter of course that of course you can hunting dogs should do this. But you were talking about I don't know why any dog owner wouldn't want to establish this capability. It makes sense. Yeah, Well, we

referred to it as a calming touch. So when a when a puppy is young, um, when you're real young, it's a matter of maybe putting them on your lap and fiddling with their paws and fiddling with their ears. Most puppies turn them on their back and they're like, you know, they don't want to be under back, So you do the best. No matter how nice the dog is, the bets got to wrestle it right, right, there's those dogs.

So what we would do is, let's say, once you get this dog home and he's let's say, twelve weeks old, and he's you kind of gotta wait till they show you a little teenager nos in them. You know, if they're just walking around a little dopey. I mean, there's not much resistance. But what would do is take this dog up onto an elevated platform, whether it's your picnic table, a tailgate. And yeah, but you have in your in your shop, you have actual training table. The ramp right,

and that's used for a whole lot of stuff. So I just happened to use the ramp and the table um. But for a person, let's say when you got your dog home. Now, yours was four months old when you got it. You don't know the history of it. But let's say it was eight weeks from a breeder or a farmer had an accidental litter. If you were to take that dog and in a show where they call

stacking it, we call it a calming touch. You get it to sit up there, and you've got a short leash, or you kind of hold it by the leash, you know, hold it by its collar. You take your other hand and you run it down its back and up its tail and down its legs. You'll see a lot of dogs you you go to grab their lower leg and they pull their leg up, and they pull their leg up. Well, there's ways to offset that, like if they if you're having trouble letting them. They just don't want you to

touch their back left leg for some reason. You reach around and you take to the right back leg. You start putting pressure on that while you're it's almost like you're milking a cow. You grab their right rear leg and all of a sudden they put their left one down, and uh, they're like, they're like basically trusting you to give them a physical exam because you can't. You can't ask a dog do you get any ticks on you today? You can't ask a dog give a toothache. You can't

ask your dog do you have a ear infection? So you want your dog to be able to your hands should be able to literally, uh, stroke the tail, stroke the legs open, the lips up, pick his ears up, pick his lips up, count his teeth while he's standing there, while he's standing there. Now, that doesn't happen in one course, but it's something that like all people would benefit when they bring home a new dog. You know, uh, well, my brother is training llamas, like breaking and training llamas.

After you get to the point where you can just you know, they're very like they're not like a horse. They never become your friend. I'm sure someone will be like, oh, my lot was my best friend. But I mean generally they're they're not. They don't need that. They don't have that deep connection where they were. A lot of horses really seem to like appreciate a human presence like they're just they're a little more they're a little more wild.

It's safe to say. They're Yeah, they're they're not quite there. Um, a thing is working to the point. It's just funny you mentioned the feet. A thing is working to the point where you can handle his feet right, and it takes a lot. It takes a lot to get there where you're gonna approach it and touch its foot because it's like a sign of like, okay, we've gotten somewhere

that I can touch. And it's really all it is is let the dogs just gotta you know, get his composure and be like, okay, this is this will be over in a minute. And then after a while the dog really likes it. And you know what dog doesn't like to be competitive? Whose dog comes up and said, keep pet he keeps knocking your arm up. That same dog if I stuck him up on a cooler in your backyard and I want to start looking at his back legs. He probably yeah, away from my back legs.

So even in our in our testing, during a utility test or natural ability test, when a dog comes out of the water, we feel their coat, We count their teeth, and we look at their eyes set to make sure they don't have like tropical and tropic eyelids. And we for males, we also check for testicles to make sure they don't are not mon orchid or missing testicles, both

of them. And that goes into our notes. And that way, when somebody reads about a dog that they had sold to California, they're like, oh good, that puppy came out with odds teeth, two testicles, and a harsh coat. And and we get that on test day, like this dog, it won't let us look at its mouth. I mean, it's absolutely like a kid of a temper tantrum. You know, you can get bit actually if you if you're not careful, and that'll count against that dog. It won't count against it.

But if we can't get the tooth, let's say, we can't get the tooth exam done. No matter what, the dogs just ain't doing it ain't doing it. Then we'll put a note on the car and we'll come into you know, when the magazine scores are posted, it'll say tooth exam, um, dog too sensitive for tooth exam. Uh right, But that also tells you, as you're buying a dog later on, like, well, that's rare. It's rare that we

can't look in the dog's mouth. It's it's rare. It's it's a little bit of a rodeo while you're doing it sometimes. But I can always tell the people who did this calming touch their dog because dogs just stand there like just like a dentist. It's like, it's like, let what's I mean. I haven't been to the dentist with a kid in a long time. But what was your your kid's first dentist deployment? Oh, they're a little

freaked out by the littlest one, right. He had to go home with no toy because and come back a couple of days later. But only they happened his brother and sister got the toys and it burned him up so bad. A couple days later he got all picked up, went back in there and got taken care of. But picture if you'd have took here. He had had stitches a few times, so he didn't like he the minute he got an He's like, no, I bet you even smells like an asept because like, I know what goes

on here. We're gonna start selling something in my head. Right. But picture if you had a kid and you prepared this kid from a baby, like no, no, no, stop. Once they understand, like no, mom and dad just gonna look to see if that little if you did that over and over again, then you put him in a dentist chair. He's like, yeah, hey, my mom does that. It's it's such a simple thing to do with a dog.

Should you be would they should it be that? Um like in your mind, if it's properly trained, should it be that you could that it could have it could be limping because it's got a cactus thorn and its paw. It should stand out there and let you pull that. Yeah, and the one guy like have your body like restrain it and tape It's joshut happens a lot. Remember I sent you the picture that wooden doll that you're strapping the dog's mouth to get porcupine quills. I've taken porcupine

quills out of Bravo's mouth. He mouthed when he didn't kill it, and I just said sit and I just grabbed his big old lips and I got my leatherman out and started pulling. He just like, okay, a big deal, really, but other dogs you get bit oh that that had my brother's dog and they had it was like a group effort. I couldn't. I couldn't trim my my about like nail trimming, like Karen, can you trim your dog's nails? Or do you bring it to a place I do? I do everything on my own. And how how's your

dog do with it? Great? I mean that That's what I was going to ask you. Is the takeaway for you know, everybody, the one yeah, exactly for everyone, the one thing because I, um, you know, I got a Newfoundland. This is like moved Montana. Always wanted a dog, so I just like went for the biggest freaking dog exactly exactly as much as I do. Um. But the one thing, you know, I was like getting obsessed with reading training

books and watching videos online. The one thing that seemed to make the most sense to me, which wasn't exactly a training technique, but seems to be training is to touch that animal everywhere all the time. So I would stick my fingers in his mouth. I would, you know, touch its ears everything. You can literally take his ears and put a bowl in it if you wanted to. Yeah, yeah, I mean I give him hairstyles and I actually have tied his ears together, get like a little ponytail. Um.

It's terrible. But it comes to clipping nails now, people have to go pay, you know, a groomer to do to trimm the dog's nails because the dog just freaks out because you're trimming its nails. My dog has to be put under. That's how bad it is. Phil. We took her somewhere, they had her muzzled and strapped, and they still couldn't do it. So they actually gave her a we she was astray on the Fort Peck Reservation.

We don't know what her life was like before we adopted her, and so but like you can't go near her pause nothing. She's terrified. Yeah. Well, you know what's saddest thing they had to meet. One of the saddest things ever happened to me is uh, hang you left t l I that was sad. Remember remember and Miles Sab used to hang out out with that old guy

West Monsel. He was in his nineties and his wife passed away, and me and him were out messing around, driving to try to find some mushrooms one time, and he was he was eighty seven at the time, or maybe he just turned he's I think he's eighty seven, and we get we we stayed out longer, and we were playing out and staying out and and uh, he wanted me to drive and drop him off at the doctor. Okay, So now I was kind of weird, like, oh, what's

going on while he's got a doctor, you know? So I dropped off and he goes in there for a while and I just mess around wait from to come out. And we're driving home. I was like, what's what's going on at the doctor there? And he goes, I had to get my ton ails cut because my wife had always cut my tones. I can't reach down there, so you had to make an appointment at the doctor. I said, I cut your damn you know, he never had me

do it. I was like, I'll cut your tonils. I don't care going to the doctor to cut your tonils. Just beat alone and old man. Yeah, get a loving family and everything, but just maybe sad, ye to make you sad. Hearing about that, it kind of creeped me out a little bit actually, because because now you're thinking, I'm thinking, like you know that book I was trying to write, real men don't wear short socks or crocs, and real men don't, you know, go to get a pedicure.

And now I know guys that actually go get pedicures. It's not that he wasn't going to get a pedicure. He's going to a doctor to have his tone nails cut. Well, you know, he could have went to a pedicure place. He's probably not. He probably doesn't want to be that kind of guy. Or let's go, let's get back to dogs. Yeah, yeah,

I'll just feel sad about my friend by myself. Tell everybody about the Upland Institute project, okay, which we kind of been talking about without talking about it, right, right. So I have a very good friend that's a really well known dog trainer in West Michigan. I've known him off and on since he was really young, and uh,

he's been training dogs for thirty years. Him and I kind of reconnected when he moved close to me and with me being a judge and seeing all the different things that our training related issues during a test, like our upper level tests are a lot of obedience. Our puppy test is a lot of just natural natural mo ability. What do you what do you roll under? Obedience, steadiness, retrieving, healing, waiting, you know, waiting when we go do shots away from

the dog. Everything in that test there's a there's obedience portions of it like come on called falls in death, sure, primary will be right stay whoa um? So we're always sitting there kicking things back and forth about like oh I saw and he says, well, yeah, that's probably because

the person didn't do this before they did that. And I think back on my testing career, which I don't test my dogs very often, but as a requirement, you are required as a judge to test your dog every so often because they want to put you on that side of the fence. So you don't. You're just not to judge your whole life. You gotta go there and go like me and my dog are here. Guys, Guys, remember I might be watching you next year. You know. Hell man, you should have seen me my last test.

I was actually told that I was no longer a judge last January or no two januaryes ago. I said. Made they go, well, you went over your grace here. I'm like, oh, I didn't like. Yeah, we keep pretty good records. And I had to get a test lined up and I did, and it was bravo that big dog I have with a long tail, that big big broco. And we're not as in the test. But as a judge, I'm like, yeah, we're we're okay. I would be so unnerved in that environment. Man, we're not going to get

all fours today. We have a zero to four. But I said, I got twos and threes in the right spot. We're okay. Last part of the test, last part of tests, the easiest part. They launched a duck with a launcher, like a big giant sling shot. They launched this duck across a duck, a duck, expired duck, dead duck, out of a launcher a giant sling shot. Huh. It's like it's like a four foot sling someone saves the duck from when we save it from other things, or we

buy ducks like that. But anyway, every dog loves this. The dog. You know the birds up in the sky. You shoot the blank gun in the air to simulate the shot, which is another part of obedience. He's not allowed to leave until the duck hits the water out um, and and then you send the dog. And I'm like, oh, we're gonna pass. I'm gonna be a judge again. And Bravo just stood there on the bank and looked at that duck and I'm like, fetch, fetch, pitch it up.

He's not budging, he's not putting his toe in the water. And I'm like, this dog loves fetching out of the water. I take this dog goose and duck hunting right. He's like, ain't doing it. And I'm like, what am I gonna do? So that you know the judges there and they all know me because you know, you make friends over the years and their dogs harshly. And I also know that to pass this portion, that dog has got to get that duck out of that water. All my pleading is

going to bring my score down. But if I can get that duck to shore, I'll get a one. I'm pleading brings your score down, sure does? Oh yeah, here to make a way down if you can. So he just whisper plead. Well, yeah, I'm like I'm literally lit like I'm acting like I'm doing this on purpose. I'm stroking his back and like, good boy, fetch you, fetch I'm they're hearing good boy, good boy, and I'm gonna fetch you, fetch you and he's just like nope, nope, and they're like, what do you want to do it?

So I have a you have an option? Do you not have an option to take a rock? Okay, now, I already know my score is down there, but if that duck comes back to Shore by his job, I'm gonna just like it in school, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna have low numbers and you're gonna let me graduate in high school even if I got to d mindus. Okay,

it was just, you know, it was algebra. And finally, I don't know if it was the rock or what it was, but finally it was just like at that point, I'm going, really you Now, the judges like ron quitex so silly. I'm like I'm looking at Bravo and face like, really, you don't want me to be a judge again? You can't go out there and get that damn duck of me, and they're like, all right, rock calm down a little bit. I think I threw I can't remember if I threw

a rocker. Finally, he just went, we're doing into the pond and swam out, got the duck, gave it to me like nothing. He just I don't know if he was messing with me. I don't know what he's doing, but yeah it was. He watched you, uh, demean all those other dogs, and he's like, you know what, body, and hear you ruin enough dogs days where I'm gonna ruin your I hear you all the time, what your friends talking about it. Watch Watch how I can make you nervous. I really thought, I'm like, oh my god,

we are failing today. But anyway, project, Justin mcgrail and myself we started kicking around the idea of like what if I got a camera and kind of followed your process through a whole bunch of dogs. And it took us fifteen months to film it. We filmed it in four states because because Justin is a guy that um, he doesn't train dogs for testing. You know, he can do parts of it, but that's not he's he's trying and the dogs for a hunter wants to go wild

bird hunting with your dog. So he literally takes strings of dogs to Kansas, runs them Montana before the season opens in August, same thing. Him and I went to North Dakota and filmed in August, and all that was reinforcing that yard training and that field training we did

in Michigan. And we have real nice shots of like say, a bunch of sharp tails getting up and the dog just standing in the middle of the sharp tails just oh boy, you know, and he'll take a blank gun at that point and then he'll shoot the blank gun and dog stands through it. So that's the kind of style of training and his But but oh, it's very instructional. It in fact, it's not like look what the dog can do with the right training. It's like, how, here's

how you do. And and we show examples like day one, like here's the dog the first time on a woe post. It's almost like the first time you try to train your dog trimmy dogs nails. He's jerking. He gets on this woe post, which is a solid steak like a

horseshoe steak, and a little cable. First time he hits the end of well, he's bucking like a horse and he's he doesn't understand why, and you eventually when he doesn't, when he does give you what you want, which is him to just stand there, then you start overlaying a name to it, which in that case would be woe. It goes back like hell to you. Don't you don't start a dog. You don't teach a dog to heal with the word heal. You teach a dog to heal

with motion and a leash. Once you see the compliance, then you give the command a name. And I watched him. He would come on my podcast about every six months, so I get listener questions and the way he breaks down a question, it's like always like number one downloaded episodes. They just love the way he even and it's hard to, you know, look at someone's dog from an email because you're not you're only getting what he said. My dog doesn't pick up the bird. Sometimes it does, and he's

you know, he just breaks it down. And so we decided, Um, you know, I felt I was kind of confident from doing shows with you to watch the camera guy does, so I had I put myself in the job of the cameraman and followed him along for fifteen months, and I would we're really lucky that COVID hit so that shut my company down and I could go over to his kennel, I could go to Kansas, North Dakota. I had the whole year want to do whatever heck I wanted to and uh, and we were putting it together.

It's it's an editing, it's an audio right now, and it's it's coming out hopefully by the time this errors, it should be out. And it's called the Upland Institute dot com or that's a website and what how's it going to function? Like if someone wants the material, what do they do to get the material? They would they would purchase the material. They there right now on the website.

There's a trailer commercial that talks about it. And then there's in the beginning, we've got three three classes were offering. The one is called Foundation and Fundamentals. And that's when you were kind of talking about that you could do that with a lot of dogs. And that's what you're saying, any dog, dog, house dog, whatever, any dog would benefit because it's all that early stuff that expo. As you're

putting the foundation blocks underneath it. It'll go a little bit further into introduction to birds and introduction to gunfire. But you know, in the beginning, like crate training, tie out, stake, calming, touch come one called early exploratory walks. Those are things that every dog should do with their owner. And people kind of get in this habit of like they treat that puppy like a little kid instead of like a dog, and they tend not to expose it to enough stuff.

And then all of a sudden, the dogs six months old and goes to the dog parking dogs. You know, he's in a corner, you know, without the confidence. So um, foundation and fundamentals is like the core class. And then Brody you might know this little bit. Yanni doesn't do it, and I'm sure Clay doesn't do it in the hound world, but in the retrieving world, it's a thing called the trained retrieve. If your dog is a sloppy retriever or doesn't pick up game, or picks it up and drops

it fifteen feet from you. Um, there's a process to go through to clean up that retrieve and called the trained retrieve. And it's got sixteen different parts to it, you know. But so that that's a separate class. A person could buy that class um if they just like, say, I don't care for my dog Steady, and he's pretty good dog, let's me clip clip his nails and he's already create trained, but I wouldn't mind some better retrieving

out of him. So you could do that class. And then what piggybacks onto foundations and fundamentals is advanced bird work. That's where you would see a dog that not only would hold point, but learn to relocate on birds, learn to hunt with another dog, and back and honor another dog. It's like it's like an appointing dog world. If a dog's on point, another dog sees it. Ideally that dog is going to point the dog that's pointing the bird, he's like, oh, he's at work. I can't sneak up

on him. Let him get his work done. My dogs don't do that. I mean, if I can get it ready for a test, I could do it, but I don't. I don't hunt him that way, you know. I just try to get good, trying to be a better wingshooter than I am a dog trainer. To be honest with

you you mentioned Johnny's dog. I think the interesting thing about um, what mingus is supposed to do or what Clay's coon hounds are supposed to do, is a bird dog is supposed to He's kind of got to know all these things, right, Yeah, like just a lot of commands and stuff. Like the hound dogs they're kind of it's like they it's like, no, man, you got not that. Not that it's one thing, but all this stuff about sitting, healing, rolling over, shaking hands and all that's like not part

of the conversation. It's like, did you do anything like that Yanni with him or were you just trying to get him on a raccoon early on? Yeah? No, we still I mean I want him to be a good uh family dog first and get companion, so I try to be real harsh on him with like when we're running together, come when I call, Yeah, come, money calls. We did a lot of work on the what's the long rope called rope fancy terms. You do do some of that house dog stuff. Oh yeah, I guess because

it's your house dogs. Yeah exactly, Clay. You must have because I used to watch you did some of your YouTube's and one of your dogs is always on your you know, behind you during your podcast and during your YouTube stuff. Did you do a lot of obedience with your hounds? Very informal obedience training that that particular dog and and a lot of these dogs I'm hunting are just naturally pretty obedient and and you know, so informal training just by them being around me so much, you know.

So what that is is like dogs get certain things inherited, and that's called cooperation with a dog on our scorecard. And so cooperative dog isn't a real challenge to live with if they're cooperative dog and done a little bit of overlank sit when stay, or wait to give you a food bowl. But there's a lot of dogs that have a super high desire, like their desires at attend and their co operations at a two and so they're they're like, I hate that. I always analogize kids to it.

They're like that kid that can't sit down in class, always getting yelled at, always getting put in the hall. The teachers like, oh, we gotta put them on ridland. You know. That's kind of like there's bird dogs and hounds I'm sure that are much like that. They're almost like a it's like a three ring circus getting them in and out of the truck. And where I would venture to say that you could tell your home dogs to sit open one door and load one up if

you cared to do it. But I've never really spent any time with a lot of houndsmen a little bit. You know, there's there's there's a lot of variants in the hounds. Some of them are not and I've heard the term used biddable there. There there's some strains of hounds that are just they're just not interested in that. They're just not that good. Not to say it couldn't be done, but primaries, primarily it's an issue of function. We just don't use them that way, so we don't

need them trained that way. But I think even if you could train them that way, it did they would never be most of them would never be as good as maybe some of the bird dogs that have been bred for so long to be cooperative. I got a odd question for you, then we'll open up Membail has got specific dog questions. But first of all, you guys, where do people go find the well? You just you know, type in upland institute. And what's they'll find the website

if you do that. Yeah, www upland Institute dot com. That's the name of it. And it's available when people are listening to this, it's available, should be available. If if for any reason it's not available, you know, you can just put a email. There's an email sign up page and notifind me when it is. But it's like an ola carte transaction. You picked the things you want downloaded, right you you you pick the courses you want, and

you download it and it's yours for life. Ron. I'd like to commend you only what four episodes being on the show, you picked up all that knowledge. Is a photographer, it's well shot, it's pretty I'm like, I'm impressed he was taking notes there there. I did take notes, and I was always shocked with your your videographers in the field. And and I remember you told me to editing has got a big thing to do with it. It's all to do. You gotta still be good with the camera.

But when we started, like day one, when we started doing this, I went out and bought a GoPro and like called up my son in law, who he's an editor for another hunting company and he said, what do you goetta go pro for? I said, well I wouldn't. He goes, no, you need a movie camera. And I called up I think it was Rick or Garrett. One of them was real good. He got back with me and he told me the brand of camera that we shot in Montana. He said, that's you'll be able to

figure out how to use it. It doesn't have too many features, but it'll it'll be everything you need. So then I went out and spent a bunch of money on the camera. And then I was like, well, we gotta do this now, you know, because it's invested. I'm invested, right, and uh just just uh yeah. So there was a

secret to a lot of it. It's called the tripod, which you guys, we never carry tripods for the camera guys out there, but um, when whenever I could set something up because we kind of know what's gonna happen, but what you're doing instructional, so it's different, right, right, So we'll shoot off sticks like they'll shoot off sticks now and that on food stuff. But generally we like that kind of like um moving around like like like it's like with the body, you know what I mean yeah,

like it feels more human to human. You know, it has more of a like a present quality to it's free hand. Yeah, you don't call it freehand though, what the hell they call it? Yeah? Freehand? Sure, but can I see my dog? No? I mean Yanni never, he doesn't compliment made people buy anything. Well, I do appreciate that. And I also found out that I also found out that editors, well I just I'm saying he doesn't throw them around. Let me put it differently, Yanni doesn't run

around given compliments where they're not doing all right. Well, then yes it is if you get one. It was good visually, it's very pleasant to watch. It's well, he doesn't blow a bunch of smoke. No, okay this in now. I was told recently that I'm stingy with my likes on the Instagram. People know that he can anybody crop right now, listen. I like it because you don't run around just shine everybody up all the time. And when it was a compliment, you pay, you pay attention to

the compliment. It's an earned compliment. I feel good when you're honest. HiT's something like button on mine. Steve never, Steve never does anymore. Come on, don't know what I do. Let me get my other shot. I'm not that fond of the platform, but I should have said this, so we we were going to start an Instagram account for that, but that's not something I'm counting on. I'm advertising this in magazines and partners of mine and from the podcast, so all this information will keep coming up on my

Instagram count which is the Hunting Dog Podcast. Don't go to my name, go to the hunting Dog podcast. That's your handle that yeah, no underscores and the lashes the hunting Dog Hunting Dog Podcast on Instagram, and we'll put up notifications and clips and stuff like that so you can also get information from that. I'm glad you said Instagram. Here's my dog question. I kind of know the answer to it, but I just i'd like to hear you

say about it. Um our little dog will heal for me? Okay, and it will heal on command off leash or on a leash either. That's impressive. It does it farther away off leash? Sure? Because no, because I don't I don't have the ability to get its attention right, but it'll like it kind of knows. I'm talking about right unleash dead nuts. But it won't do the command for other people. But in like sophisticated dog training, I'm guessing that you

like do do you guys? Um? Do you guys view it that a dog should be that any handler should be able to come in and get out of the dog or is it handler specific? I I would say if somebody had a dog that was really well rounded, I could probably take him to a test and pass him. And healing is in the test, so he would probably acquiesced and saying okay, he's my owner today. But most dogs would act differently without their owner. But I get

it with the differently. But but like a properly trained horse, yeah, it's almost like horse are probably gonna I should ruin us by my sister in law. My understanding of a properly trained horse is that riders can be interchangeable. Yeah,

there's a style of riding. A rider should get on that horse, and it should it shouldn't need to figure out you know, it's like this means that, this means that, and the basics are squeeze the legs mean this, the rain like these basic commands that if you're a ride or you ride a certain style and the horse's right, you should be able to be functional with the horse.

But I always see dogs that they're just not gonna listen to most people, and then there's a person to listen to, right, And I think that just comes from them being a pack animal. Like somehow you've established yourself as to alpha and the dog kind of understands that, and like, well, when Steve tells me that, he means it. And if the kids try to do it, you know, I bet you you probably work more with a dog

than the kids do. Well. When I when it doesn't do what I say on that least, it doesn't go unnoticed, right, you know, like right, and that's how you snap you if you give it a little now you don't. I mean, I don't need to do anything now. I just need to like just give it a little jiggle. And she's like, oh, yeah, I'm good. I don't think she likes it. I think when I got around the least, she's like, damn it, this guy probably like that dog given given themselves. They

just feel like a horse they've given. If a horse had his choice, he'd be out in the pasture. He wouldn't be rolled can I think about it. They're like, really, I gotta care your dumb mess around all day, you know, and a dog to say, way, like if you did do nothing with a dog, the co operative ones are gonna be able to be lived with, and the wild ones are gonna drive it crazy. They're just always going

to be into something because there's no structure. It goes right back to kids, no structure, no foundation, you're dealing with problems down the road. Later on, Yeah, I had a guy to say something interested me the other day about kids, and we were talking about having rough dads.

He was saying that, you know, after spending his career in public education as an administrator and then having you know, his own family as well, he said, I used to be worried about being too hard on my kids, But after the things I've seen in my career, I realized that the people that are too hard on their kids have it just about right. That's kind of that goes with dogs. You gotta be there's a there's a point of you have to I'm the boss, you know, and

you're and you're not. I remember, um, yeah, you probably don't even remember this, but I remember you, uh and talking about because you had kids before I had kids, you know, tad older than I am, and U two dads. Yeah, and just your thing about um, I'm not here to beat your friend. Oh you'll do that later, but right now, this isn't about us be friends. Oh it's right when I would, you know, I would go on those rants

and rays. It's like when somebody's like, oh, I want my kid to be my their best friend, Like, well, then your kid doesn't have one, because if you're your kid's best friend, man, he's a lonely kid. Your best friend should be in a pup tent when you're twelve years old, sleeping in the backyard. Shouldn't be you. Yeah, yeah, my kids are my friends now. Yeah, because they weren't back then. They're like, may he finally likes me. I mean I didn't even go to sports games, you know.

It's like I didn't join I didn't join tennis. Why would I go to tennis game. I'm not interested in tennis. I wanted to join baseball. When I was a kid. My dad says, you're terrible. You can't catch or anything. And I'm like, yeah, but my buddy Rusty, he's in a little league and I want to go in Little League and he goes, all right, all right, fine, we're gonna get you, but you're going to every game and every practice. He never showed up to one. It was my job to get on my bike and go there.

And it was miserable. I have learned a lot. You kind to realize this, but I actually like picked up like a handful of I didn't have a ton of exposure to you and your kids because we were working and stuff or hunting or whatever, but I picked up a handful of like, um, it's hard to explain it, just like I recognized early on, like a demeanor the

way you spoke to your kids. Uh, I don't know, there's like like authority but understanding on equal footing but not you know, it was like it was it was you spoke to your kids in a deliberate sort of way. Yeah yeah, yeah, you know. There was not like sweet talking people know it. It was it was very conversational with them, like kind of like leveling with them. I picked up on that, you know, I like I noticed it even prior to having kids, that there was a it.

It didn't seem accidental, you know, it seemed like it was a developed way to deal with kids. I'll give I'll give Sue most of the credit because I was working on the road, but that way of I mean literally, i'd get compliments. I could take my three girls when they were ten or twelve years old to a dog test and I never had a They weren't climbing on anything, they weren't starting trouble. They're just they occupy themselves, you know that Just it's just the way you raise him.

It's funny how you wind up making it your own. Like my boy there, they were on a plane and he wanted to get water something. I said, we'll go up and talk to that moment up there and get water. You know, a while later she comes back. You have the nicest boy. You know, makes my weak But how many parents would have said, okay, I'll go get it for you. So you make him. You're gonna go out there and here's what you're saying. You're telling this and

get the thing. When I came to your house last night, all three kids go up and you haven't seen Ronnie in a long time, go up and shake Ronnie's hand. Yeah, you know, and you know the kids are so But I hope by the time they're eighteen, they'll do it without me, Like they'll you know, not embarrassing the people in the eye, and they'll shake their hand when they interview for a job. Someday. That's all. That's all you can hope for. Yeah, and alays got a dog question? Yeah,

can you teach an old dog trick? Seriously? Like in regards to let's say someone I've always wanted this. Like, let's say someone there's a there's a German short hair pointer that's a year or two old at the pound that was never it was just someone's house dog and they got rid of it. It's never kept chewing up the couch and and someone's like, man, I don't want to pay two tho dollars for a bread puppy, but I'm gonna get this dog from the pound and turn

it into a bird dog. Like can that be done? Oh? Yeah? The problem is if you adopt a dog, and I think Yanni could probably speak to it because he he adopted a hunting dog from a brand new one, but no idea what his background was, no background. So if you don't have the background, let's say on that German short hair like an older one it might come from what's called what we would refer to as a showline.

Like so the dogs were in the show ring and really not hunted for the last that dog's parents, grandparents, great grandparents, they just didn't hunt much. They're still gonna have instincts, They're still gonna be okay. But you could certainly get a dog from a pound. And I know there's a guy who rescues dogs where his wife does, and he whenever a like an English setter and English pointer or something shows up in the sporting dog world,

he takes it in and he hunts with them. They can they can learn obedience, you know, like their genetics don't expire and they can learn there and that nothing no genetics expire. The nose is going to be there the whole time. The love of birds, it's like like the big here's one. I again. I love analogies. My biggest problem is when people call me up, they'll ask those questions like can my dogs still do this? And

I never did it? Yes? And then the other one is I got this brand new dog, when should I get it into birds? Everybody wants to see their dog point a bird first, right, So my buddy says, oh, I gotta I got some quail or there's a hunt club over here. They'll let you go after a test and we'll bring your puppy out there. And I'm like, okay, that's fine, you want to see it once. But people overdo it and I keep in They're like, so, Ron, you're telling me I don't need to get my young

dog in front of birds. And I always tell him, you know, did your dad leave a Playboy magazine on the counter so you when you hit Pubert you would like it? No? I mean, yeah, I understand, right, you don't need to expose them that. The difference in the dog and a kid is the dog gets to be a teenager by the time he's ten months old, and a teenager takes thirteen years. But again, throwing that Playboy magazine in front of him, that's not what they need.

They need the shaking hands waiting to be released. They need opening the door. They need the structure, the pointing instinct and the love of the game is genetically in the dog. One last question, Yeah, what's the uh what's the advice you'd give to any new either new dog owner, anyone bringing home a rescue dog, A puppy, Like, what's the thing they need to get on? Uh? For for one? Always create training. You know if you a lot of people try to do without a create. Create training is

super important for a young dog. Okay, a create would be like a portable transportation create. You'll see him on airlines, they call him airline creates. Um getting a getting a puppy used to sleeping in that crate by himself learning not it helps him to not develop separation anxiety. Like, it's what training mean. He's comfortable in there. He's comfortable in there. Now his first day in there, he's gonna bark and squawk and yell and and it's just like the first time you put a baby in a crib

when they're old enough to cry. If you are putting them down for a nap and they cry and you're going and get him, what did they do? Oh? I cry? Mom comes get me. So if your dogs crying and out on the couch and just basically crying ourselves, it's

exact same thing with a puppy. You gotta you just gotta put the music up higher and let him cry himself to sleep, and then the next day he'll fuss a little bit more or a little bit less, and then after a while he's like, oh, that's where I go and it's not my time to be with people. And then later on you'll see it's real common if you have a crate in the house, Like if somebody comes over, you got a dog that you don't want.

Her baby comes over, you don't you know a little toddler tell a dog to go to create, but you'll find, like my wife's dog, You're like, where did dog go? And you look at the create doors open, he's in there, sleeping. It becomes his little Yeah, it's his place. Yeah, So I mean create trading and socialization being trying to do as much as you can with the dog. Get the dog in front of other people, let other people handle

it if they're willing. Um. Try to get your whole family, even if you've got young kids, try to get them all to do a little of this hands on stuff. So that dog kind of goes a little bit down the pack line. It's like, oh, even a little toddler has to look at my mouth. Jeez, what's yeah, I'll say, dog won't look my youngest in the eye. Right. He

tries to act like he does exist. It's like looks in the corner and I'll bet you somewhere along the line, your youngest just kind of grabbed his tail or something and he's like that thing. It's like, I can't bite him, but I don't. I can't. They can't make me look at him either. Nope, Nope, I can't bite him, but

I don't have to like him. Uh getty. Ron Bam Upland Institute Project Hunting Dog Podcast, Ron Bam, thank you, Thank you, and thank you Steve for having me come out and getting to spread the word with you anytime, almost anytime, anytime, anytime, anytime I can get ahold of Karin schedule me to come out, provide her was something that tittilates us, and you'll be on the show. We

could do a whole another one. It would be nothing to do with dogs, just all those fun all those things that have happened to me that are you see what we're working with here. You gotta wait till you fill up a thingful of subject ideas, and be warned, next time you here, we're gonna have our little dials with a light in the middle, so you'll be Ron. I'll probably break that thing. Oh yeah, it just depends on coming the door and it's gonna turn it to

full black. That's it, red light. Thank you, Steve, thank you, Johnny Brody, thank you everybody. Thank you, Phil, Good Clay, Nucomb, Nucomb, thanks for joining man Hey, thanks for having me pleasure. Good Clay. Yeah, Clay and I talked five years ago when I first started the podcast. You didn't know him at all back then. Now, Yeah, it's true. We go way back, all right, boys, see you all right, see you