December 27, 2024 • 20 mins
People put a lot of stock into a first impression. You can never make a second one, but as observers, we shouldn't be so quick to file the initial impression as the final one. There are lessons in this one that you can apply to just about every interaction you have and a realization that the most lasting impression, regardless of when it happens, can be the most important. It's time for MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to This Country Life.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trot
lining and just general country living. I want you to
stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons.
This Country Life is presented by Case Knives on Meat
Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
The airwaves have to offer.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate.
I've got some stories to share. First impressions. There's not
a lot of things more impactful or long lasting than
a first impression. It is, after all, what we use
(00:48):
as an initial reference for anything we remain in contact
with over a period of time. There's no lead story
this week. The whole episode is a story, and it's
about a dog some friends of mine have that just
recently reinforced my need for patience and maybe even the
(01:09):
little faith. First impressions we all have first in our lives,
and the experiences can be as much philosophical and emotional
as they are physical. First impressions we get from an
experience from the basis of how that activity, person, or
(01:31):
place is perceived for the rest of our lives. I
can't tell you how many times I've talked to people
who found out I was a duck hunter, only to
hear you're crazy. There's no way I'd go out in
the freezing weather and wait around in the water for
something to taste like liver. I used to try to
convince them that first, if they were eating a duck
(01:53):
that tasted like liver, they wasn't cooking it right. And second,
if I was only out there to get a duck
to eat, I could raise my own, or easier still,
go to the store and buy one already skint. But
that wasn't the deal. I wasn't grocery shopping. I can
do that a lot more comfortably pushing a buggy around
Kroger while the store radio serenades me with the Marshall
(02:16):
Tucker band as I negotiate the traffic down the aisles.
But nine times out of ten, the person telling me
how they wouldn't do any of that has done it
at least once, and the experienced bias their judgment forever
on how their next hunt would be. The percentage of
people who tell me they wound up getting soaked from
(02:37):
tripping and falling in the water because of the unknown
leaking their waiters would be high in the majority. At
least they tried it, but did they really give it
a chance. Not Many people who tried baseball got a
hit the first time they stepped into batter's box, and
even then, over the course of their career, they only
(02:59):
have to get a hit three out of ten times
to be considered above average. Be hard to imagine applying
that same standard to landing an airplane or crossing bob
wire fences unscathed. I say all of that to say this,
keep an open mind when it comes to new things.
In first times. It's easy for us to go into
(03:20):
a situation with preconceived notions of how it's going to
turn out. If we expect to have a bad time,
odds are we probably will. We're not willing the bad
times to occur, just only seeing what we thought would happen,
and when it does, confirming in our minds that what
took place was destined to turn out that way. Oh
(03:43):
how wrong that can be and usually is. You've heard
me talk about my friends at the cash By Old
hunting Club, Randall Whitmore, his brother Wade, and their lifelong
friend Brad Clark. Wade lives in Houston, Texas now and
doesn't get to visit as much as Randall and Braddew,
who lived just east of the Old Man River in
(04:05):
Tennessee and Mississippi. But the Whitmore brothers are direct descendants
of what many consider to be one of the most
knowledgeable and influential coon hunters of the region, the late
mister Dick Whitmore. Mister Whitmore had a successful career in
the advertising business and new dogs inside and out. He
(04:26):
had some great dogs and a good friend and mentor
of mine, Rex Whiting, used to hunt dogs for him
in competition hunts, and mister Whitmore bought and sold dogs
like the most folks do, trying one until they get
a good idea of what they think that dog's abilities are.
And if there's a better than average chance the dog
will make a good one, he gets to state and
(04:47):
if not, he gets traded to someone else. One man's
trash is another man's treasure. Is no truer anywhere than
in the hound hunting circuits. They're all different. It's like people.
They all learn at a different rate, just like people.
They all have their own personalities and idiosyncrasies, just like people.
(05:10):
So when a dog is chosen to join the partnership,
a partnership that some say goes back fifteen thousand years.
They both need a chance to conform to each other.
After all, the human isn't the only one getting the
first impression.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
In this deal.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I say all that to say this. After mister Whitmore
passed away in twenty seventeen, the only coon hunting that
was done out of the cash BYO Hunt Club was
by guests when Randall, Wade, and Brad weren't there. They
missed the lifestyle and the camaraderie of hunting together and
enjoyed hearing about our hunts, And finally, a couple of
(05:47):
years ago, Randal and Brad decided they'd go in on
a dog together. They, along with Wade, had grown up
coon hunting and had a strong desire to get back
in it as participants rather than just observers. My friends
Michael Roseman and Rex White and I would go hunting
area near their camp, and Brad and Randall expressed interest
(06:09):
in having their own dog on the first trip they
went with us. After a long hiatus that invited hunt
they accompanied us on wasn't their first impression by any
means into chasing the mass bandido, but it would be
their first since the passing of mister Whidmore. So the
search began for just the right dog. They found one,
(06:33):
a nicely bloodlined hound from Louisiana that belonged to a
friend of mine. He was only starting to realize his
purpose in life.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
When they acquired him.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
They knew what they were getting, and what they were
getting was a very young dog that was the human
equivalent of a toddler in his experience for Tree and coons.
Our first impressions with him were good. He's a pretty
dog in what seemed to be a good personality, and
when he barked, you could hear him from a long wait.
They bought the dog, and as it should be, one
(07:04):
of them was designated as the handler, and.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Brad drew the duty.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
For almost all the two years, and sometimes multiple times
a week. I talked with Brad whenever he had a
question in training for his and Randall's dog, Cash, named
after the area in place mister Whitmore enjoyed the most
around the Cash River here in Arkansas. It would be
past ten PM and I'd be sitting on the couch.
After the rest of Casa day, Reeves had retired for
(07:35):
the evening, and I'd be talking to Brad while he
was in the woods with his dog, trying to help
him get an accurate idea of what the dog's potential
was going to be. I tell you I had mixed
feelings about him. After hunting with him multiple times over
several months, I just didn't think he had what it
took to be a dog you could cut loose and
(07:55):
have the confidence that if a coon is out there
that he'd find him. Now I have that with my
dog Wailing, but I didn't always when he was first
starting at nine months of age. I also wasn't expecting
him to do anything, even though I secretly wished he would.
I was happy if he just went out and explored,
(08:16):
and I'd watch Cash sometimes just hang around us when
we were all hunting together, not really doing much of anything.
Sometimes he'd slick tree just out of sight, which means
he'd just pick a random tree and go to tree
and on it.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Like there was a coon in it, even though there wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Now that's making a boo boot in the coon hunting world,
this is a big deal. On the negative side, all
dogs do it, some not as much as others, and
we can never really truly know the reasons why they do.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
We only have an educated guess. And until we can teach.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
A dog to talk, or they can teach us to bark,
we're never gonna know for sure what causes them to
do it. All you houndsmen out there that just started
hollering at your radio saying I know why they do it,
You imbecile.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
No you don't. You're only guessing. You're probably right, But.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Can we say one hundred percent no, we can't, So
we have to use that and all the other clues
we learned from watching the dog do his thing and
stir them up in a bowl like ingredients in a recipe,
stick it in the oven, and let it cook several
months to see if this thing is gonna be worth
eating if you allow me to continue to cook it.
(09:30):
Analogy for all the non hound of people who listen.
I was hoping, against hope that what I was seeing
out of Randolin Brad's dog's cash was gonna taste better
when it was done than what it smelled like when
it was cooking. More times than I can count, Brad
would say, be honest with me, now, is this dog
(09:51):
worth keeping, and my gut always said probably not after
the first six months with little to no progress, but
my my heart just wouldn't give in to it. Folks
need to understand that one of the concept of having
a dog that you can turn loose that will focus
only on a scent of one animal by passing all
(10:11):
the others along the way, and find it and make
sure it's in the tree they think it is, and
then stay there and bark until their master arrives. Seems
like what a dog would naturally do. That's just what
they've been developed and bred to do. But a dang
sure ain't no guarantee that they will or can do it.
(10:37):
I wrestled with how to tell them with the football analogy. Look,
it's fourth and forty and we're getting clogged. Let's punt
forget this season and hope we could pick up a
new quarterback in the.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Transfer portal next year.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Now, being a Razorback fan these past few years, you
think I know when and how to say that, but
I just couldn't pull the trigger on it until last
We were hunting one particular night when the conditions were
more in tune with bacon bread than trying to tree
a coon. It was hot and we'd all gathered at
the usual spot, Brad, Randall and me and Michael. We
(11:14):
cut loose and treat a handful of coons. Heck treed
the majority, wailing next, and Cash with none again. In
the two years I've been hunting around him, I'd never
seen him make a tree with a coon that we
could find In the tree. We used thermals and squalled
at the tree and trying to get one to look.
We did everything but climbing ourselves and go from limb
(11:35):
to limb looking for him. As we were parting from
the hunt, Brad asked us both to think about whether
he should keep Cash or talk to Randall about getting
rid of him. On the ride home that night, Michael
and I were in the truck together and we agreed
to tell Brad find another dog. Cash just wasn't making
any progress, and he'd had plenty of opportunities to do so.
(11:58):
Brad started looking For a while later, Brad was on
the list for a new puppy, and I was on
that same list too, but the union didn't take and
no puppies were going to be made for that cycle.
Brad said, it looks like I was stuck with hunting
Cash this winter. I like this dog anyway. I told
him it only had to please him, and it didn't
(12:19):
matter what I or anybody else thought. I still want
to find me a good puppy, but I kind of
liked this old dog, he said.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Well, it's easy to see why.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
All through the summer, when I was sitting in the
cool of my living room, Brad and Cash were out
trying to get better.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Night after night. He fought the.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Heat and mosquitoes and the feeling of dread that when
Cash treed, he may or may not have a coon.
He gotten close to sixty coons by now, but he
never treed one. When Michael and I were there, I
believed Brad. He sent me pictures and videos of tread
and having coons. The issue wasn't whether or not he
(12:59):
could do it. He just wasn't doing it with enough
consistency that would leave you to believe that he had
the desire to strike a track and finish it at
the tree and stay there until Brad got there to
find it. Spend that much time with someone you enjoy
being around, and you look over some things that you
don't approve of, like a Lexus.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Does with these hats I have strategically placed all around
our home.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Now. A few nights ago, Michael, Brad and I took
our dogs, Heck, Cash and Whaling and we went hun.
All three bede a coon and a big brushtop to start,
then Whaling bade another one and another big brushtop. Then
Heck treed one at the same time Cash fell treed
four hundred yards away in a different spot. Heck had
(13:46):
a coon, and believe it or not, fifteen other ones
setting in four trees around the one he was barking in.
Now I assumed it was just going to be another
close but no cigar with Cash. And now I went
with Michael to get Heck while I kept wailing on
his leash. We had to come back this way to
get to the truck, so Brad would be coming back
(14:07):
as soon as he went and leased up Cash, who
was barking it only Cash new. Brad eventually came back
with a video on his phone and Cash on a leash.
He said, I knew he was going to have one
when y'all didn't come with me. He showed me the
video and sure enough there was the mass banded himself
(14:28):
safe and secure in the back of a hollow log,
the only threat to his wellness being the train. Ball
of Cash is barking echoing through that law. Are you
sure that's a coon, Bradley, That of looks like a possum.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Well it was a coon, but I had to aggravate
hem missed my job.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And even though I didn't witness at firsthand, I was
proud of Cash and happy for Brad. On all the
trips that we'd been together on, this was the first
time he cut his hand loose and retrieved him from
a coon he'd found, all on his own.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I was sorry I didn't see it myself.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
The next night, Michael went off to a competition hunt
with Heck and A a couple hours away, and he
won it. Heck's now qualified for the UKC Tournament of Champions.
Congratulations boys. Brad Randall and I went together and the
hunting conditions where we were couldn't have been much worse.
It was warm, it was foggy, and it was shying
(15:32):
off and on, not the exact conditions you draw up
for running dogs, and yet there we were, meeting up
at a predetermined spot to decide on where we were
going to go. I was trying to decide if I
even wanted to cut weight and loose during our truck
window the truck window powwow that we were having while
the heavens soaked my left arm. Brad let me off
(15:55):
hook when he said, if you just want to listen
to Cash bump around the woods from your truck, that
suits me. I just need to turn him loose for
a while. Perfect because I was going home after the
mont anyway, and by not turning waiting loose in what
was surely to be an exercise in wet and muddy futility,
Whaling and I could both just roll right up in
(16:15):
the house as soon as we got home, bypassing the
garage washing and drying that would get him in the
neighborhood of being clean enough for Mama's house. Brad callar
Cash up and turned him loose, and I smiled to myself,
knowing that even though I was going to stay regardless
of the outcome, Brent and Whaling could light a shuck
for home whenever we took the notion. We stood in
(16:38):
the mist and rain and talked about how dumb it
was that we'd even driven over there to hunt on
a night like that to begin with much less cut
one of the dogs loose. It wasn't like it was
the only night we had to hunt. We were laughing
at our own folly. When Cash opened up less than
three minutes after he hit the ground, I didn't think
(16:59):
anything about it until he kept.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Up the bargain.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
We all stopped talking and started listening and looking at
the garm and handhelds that we.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Were using to track the dog with.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
He was right on the bank of the creek, less
than two hundred yards away, and bam, he fell treated
his long unmistakable locate ball, followed by a series of
chopping barksmen. He was convinced that when we got there
we'd be looking at coon. We went to him in
low behold when he was a kidding. There he was
(17:30):
on the leafless limb, staring back at us, nicely done Cash,
with high fives all around. Cash took off on another
Cash and opened up again, working a track hard in
the worst conditions around, with him getting worse with every
drop of rain that fell. Ten minutes later and he
treated again. Now we all looked at one another and
(17:52):
took off after him. Randall handled Cash at the tree
while Brad and I looked skyward for the coon in
an ever increasing glass. That's his coat and rain I
got him the most anticipated three words of any coonhut
when your dog is the one bellied up to a
tree telling the world there's a coon up there. And
I saw him in a big old fork outstanding. We
(18:18):
called it tonight. After less than thirty minutes of hunting,
we went and had supper, reliving the night's events and
talking about how much he'd improved from earlier hunts. The
next night, I was home and Brad and Randall went
again cash Tree three that night, and they sent me
the picks to prove it. Here's where mine and other
(18:39):
dogs different from Michael's. While I've entered whiling in in
one hunting competitions, I get more enjoyment out of this
pleasure hunting. I fully support competition hunting. Now keep up
with who's who to some degree, but it just ain't
my thing. Brad and Randall are the same. My first
impression of that dog was good, but even though I
(19:00):
had nothing to qualify, the second wasn't as flattering. Having
seen the struggle and the aggravation that Brad and Randall
went through for over a year of dog at effort.
But if there's ever been a dog there was will
to make such a drastic turnaround of improvement as a
reward for the effort of his handler. It was the
Coonhound known to the UKC Registry as Whitmore and Clark's
(19:25):
Cash Money. I texted Randall earlier today to get some
details for this podcast. I said, how old is cash?
Randall's response caught me off guard a little bit, and
it caused me to reflect in a flash on two
years of interactions with that dog and those men. Maybe
(19:47):
if you believe in the things that I believe in,
a sweet coincidence or something much bigger. Randall takes it
back and I quote he turned three on November three,
my dad's birthday. Thank you so much for listening to
(20:10):
me and old Clay Bow and the Bear Grease Channel.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I hope all of you had a.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Very merry Christmas and visit with the ones that matter most.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all
be careful
Welcome to This Country Life.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trot
lining and just general country living. I want you to
stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons.
This Country Life is presented by Case Knives on Meat
Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
The airwaves have to offer.
Speaker 2 (00:27):
All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate.
I've got some stories to share. First impressions. There's not
a lot of things more impactful or long lasting than
a first impression. It is, after all, what we use
(00:48):
as an initial reference for anything we remain in contact
with over a period of time. There's no lead story
this week. The whole episode is a story, and it's
about a dog some friends of mine have that just
recently reinforced my need for patience and maybe even the
(01:09):
little faith. First impressions we all have first in our lives,
and the experiences can be as much philosophical and emotional
as they are physical. First impressions we get from an
experience from the basis of how that activity, person, or
(01:31):
place is perceived for the rest of our lives. I
can't tell you how many times I've talked to people
who found out I was a duck hunter, only to
hear you're crazy. There's no way I'd go out in
the freezing weather and wait around in the water for
something to taste like liver. I used to try to
convince them that first, if they were eating a duck
(01:53):
that tasted like liver, they wasn't cooking it right. And second,
if I was only out there to get a duck
to eat, I could raise my own, or easier still,
go to the store and buy one already skint. But
that wasn't the deal. I wasn't grocery shopping. I can
do that a lot more comfortably pushing a buggy around
Kroger while the store radio serenades me with the Marshall
(02:16):
Tucker band as I negotiate the traffic down the aisles.
But nine times out of ten, the person telling me
how they wouldn't do any of that has done it
at least once, and the experienced bias their judgment forever
on how their next hunt would be. The percentage of
people who tell me they wound up getting soaked from
(02:37):
tripping and falling in the water because of the unknown
leaking their waiters would be high in the majority. At
least they tried it, but did they really give it
a chance. Not Many people who tried baseball got a
hit the first time they stepped into batter's box, and
even then, over the course of their career, they only
(02:59):
have to get a hit three out of ten times
to be considered above average. Be hard to imagine applying
that same standard to landing an airplane or crossing bob
wire fences unscathed. I say all of that to say this,
keep an open mind when it comes to new things.
In first times. It's easy for us to go into
(03:20):
a situation with preconceived notions of how it's going to
turn out. If we expect to have a bad time,
odds are we probably will. We're not willing the bad
times to occur, just only seeing what we thought would happen,
and when it does, confirming in our minds that what
took place was destined to turn out that way. Oh
(03:43):
how wrong that can be and usually is. You've heard
me talk about my friends at the cash By Old
hunting Club, Randall Whitmore, his brother Wade, and their lifelong
friend Brad Clark. Wade lives in Houston, Texas now and
doesn't get to visit as much as Randall and Braddew,
who lived just east of the Old Man River in
(04:05):
Tennessee and Mississippi. But the Whitmore brothers are direct descendants
of what many consider to be one of the most
knowledgeable and influential coon hunters of the region, the late
mister Dick Whitmore. Mister Whitmore had a successful career in
the advertising business and new dogs inside and out. He
(04:26):
had some great dogs and a good friend and mentor
of mine, Rex Whiting, used to hunt dogs for him
in competition hunts, and mister Whitmore bought and sold dogs
like the most folks do, trying one until they get
a good idea of what they think that dog's abilities are.
And if there's a better than average chance the dog
will make a good one, he gets to state and
(04:47):
if not, he gets traded to someone else. One man's
trash is another man's treasure. Is no truer anywhere than
in the hound hunting circuits. They're all different. It's like people.
They all learn at a different rate, just like people.
They all have their own personalities and idiosyncrasies, just like people.
(05:10):
So when a dog is chosen to join the partnership,
a partnership that some say goes back fifteen thousand years.
They both need a chance to conform to each other.
After all, the human isn't the only one getting the
first impression.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
In this deal.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
I say all that to say this. After mister Whitmore
passed away in twenty seventeen, the only coon hunting that
was done out of the cash BYO Hunt Club was
by guests when Randall, Wade, and Brad weren't there. They
missed the lifestyle and the camaraderie of hunting together and
enjoyed hearing about our hunts, And finally, a couple of
(05:47):
years ago, Randal and Brad decided they'd go in on
a dog together. They, along with Wade, had grown up
coon hunting and had a strong desire to get back
in it as participants rather than just observers. My friends
Michael Roseman and Rex White and I would go hunting
area near their camp, and Brad and Randall expressed interest
(06:09):
in having their own dog on the first trip they
went with us. After a long hiatus that invited hunt
they accompanied us on wasn't their first impression by any
means into chasing the mass bandido, but it would be
their first since the passing of mister Whidmore. So the
search began for just the right dog. They found one,
(06:33):
a nicely bloodlined hound from Louisiana that belonged to a
friend of mine. He was only starting to realize his
purpose in life.
Speaker 1 (06:40):
When they acquired him.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
They knew what they were getting, and what they were
getting was a very young dog that was the human
equivalent of a toddler in his experience for Tree and coons.
Our first impressions with him were good. He's a pretty
dog in what seemed to be a good personality, and
when he barked, you could hear him from a long wait.
They bought the dog, and as it should be, one
(07:04):
of them was designated as the handler, and.
Speaker 1 (07:06):
Brad drew the duty.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
For almost all the two years, and sometimes multiple times
a week. I talked with Brad whenever he had a
question in training for his and Randall's dog, Cash, named
after the area in place mister Whitmore enjoyed the most
around the Cash River here in Arkansas. It would be
past ten PM and I'd be sitting on the couch.
After the rest of Casa day, Reeves had retired for
(07:35):
the evening, and I'd be talking to Brad while he
was in the woods with his dog, trying to help
him get an accurate idea of what the dog's potential
was going to be. I tell you I had mixed
feelings about him. After hunting with him multiple times over
several months, I just didn't think he had what it
took to be a dog you could cut loose and
(07:55):
have the confidence that if a coon is out there
that he'd find him. Now I have that with my
dog Wailing, but I didn't always when he was first
starting at nine months of age. I also wasn't expecting
him to do anything, even though I secretly wished he would.
I was happy if he just went out and explored,
(08:16):
and I'd watch Cash sometimes just hang around us when
we were all hunting together, not really doing much of anything.
Sometimes he'd slick tree just out of sight, which means
he'd just pick a random tree and go to tree
and on it.
Speaker 1 (08:29):
Like there was a coon in it, even though there wouldn't.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
Now that's making a boo boot in the coon hunting world,
this is a big deal. On the negative side, all
dogs do it, some not as much as others, and
we can never really truly know the reasons why they do.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
We only have an educated guess. And until we can teach.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
A dog to talk, or they can teach us to bark,
we're never gonna know for sure what causes them to
do it. All you houndsmen out there that just started
hollering at your radio saying I know why they do it,
You imbecile.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
No you don't. You're only guessing. You're probably right, But.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Can we say one hundred percent no, we can't, So
we have to use that and all the other clues
we learned from watching the dog do his thing and
stir them up in a bowl like ingredients in a recipe,
stick it in the oven, and let it cook several
months to see if this thing is gonna be worth
eating if you allow me to continue to cook it.
(09:30):
Analogy for all the non hound of people who listen.
I was hoping, against hope that what I was seeing
out of Randolin Brad's dog's cash was gonna taste better
when it was done than what it smelled like when
it was cooking. More times than I can count, Brad
would say, be honest with me, now, is this dog
(09:51):
worth keeping, and my gut always said probably not after
the first six months with little to no progress, but
my my heart just wouldn't give in to it. Folks
need to understand that one of the concept of having
a dog that you can turn loose that will focus
only on a scent of one animal by passing all
(10:11):
the others along the way, and find it and make
sure it's in the tree they think it is, and
then stay there and bark until their master arrives. Seems
like what a dog would naturally do. That's just what
they've been developed and bred to do. But a dang
sure ain't no guarantee that they will or can do it.
(10:37):
I wrestled with how to tell them with the football analogy. Look,
it's fourth and forty and we're getting clogged. Let's punt
forget this season and hope we could pick up a
new quarterback in the.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Transfer portal next year.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Now, being a Razorback fan these past few years, you
think I know when and how to say that, but
I just couldn't pull the trigger on it until last
We were hunting one particular night when the conditions were
more in tune with bacon bread than trying to tree
a coon. It was hot and we'd all gathered at
the usual spot, Brad, Randall and me and Michael. We
(11:14):
cut loose and treat a handful of coons. Heck treed
the majority, wailing next, and Cash with none again. In
the two years I've been hunting around him, I'd never
seen him make a tree with a coon that we
could find In the tree. We used thermals and squalled
at the tree and trying to get one to look.
We did everything but climbing ourselves and go from limb
(11:35):
to limb looking for him. As we were parting from
the hunt, Brad asked us both to think about whether
he should keep Cash or talk to Randall about getting
rid of him. On the ride home that night, Michael
and I were in the truck together and we agreed
to tell Brad find another dog. Cash just wasn't making
any progress, and he'd had plenty of opportunities to do so.
(11:58):
Brad started looking For a while later, Brad was on
the list for a new puppy, and I was on
that same list too, but the union didn't take and
no puppies were going to be made for that cycle.
Brad said, it looks like I was stuck with hunting
Cash this winter. I like this dog anyway. I told
him it only had to please him, and it didn't
(12:19):
matter what I or anybody else thought. I still want
to find me a good puppy, but I kind of
liked this old dog, he said.
Speaker 1 (12:28):
Well, it's easy to see why.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
All through the summer, when I was sitting in the
cool of my living room, Brad and Cash were out
trying to get better.
Speaker 1 (12:37):
Night after night. He fought the.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Heat and mosquitoes and the feeling of dread that when
Cash treed, he may or may not have a coon.
He gotten close to sixty coons by now, but he
never treed one. When Michael and I were there, I
believed Brad. He sent me pictures and videos of tread
and having coons. The issue wasn't whether or not he
(12:59):
could do it. He just wasn't doing it with enough
consistency that would leave you to believe that he had
the desire to strike a track and finish it at
the tree and stay there until Brad got there to
find it. Spend that much time with someone you enjoy
being around, and you look over some things that you
don't approve of, like a Lexus.
Speaker 1 (13:20):
Does with these hats I have strategically placed all around
our home.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Now. A few nights ago, Michael, Brad and I took
our dogs, Heck, Cash and Whaling and we went hun.
All three bede a coon and a big brushtop to start,
then Whaling bade another one and another big brushtop. Then
Heck treed one at the same time Cash fell treed
four hundred yards away in a different spot. Heck had
(13:46):
a coon, and believe it or not, fifteen other ones
setting in four trees around the one he was barking in.
Now I assumed it was just going to be another
close but no cigar with Cash. And now I went
with Michael to get Heck while I kept wailing on
his leash. We had to come back this way to
get to the truck, so Brad would be coming back
(14:07):
as soon as he went and leased up Cash, who
was barking it only Cash new. Brad eventually came back
with a video on his phone and Cash on a leash.
He said, I knew he was going to have one
when y'all didn't come with me. He showed me the
video and sure enough there was the mass banded himself
(14:28):
safe and secure in the back of a hollow log,
the only threat to his wellness being the train. Ball
of Cash is barking echoing through that law. Are you
sure that's a coon, Bradley, That of looks like a possum.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
Well it was a coon, but I had to aggravate
hem missed my job.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
And even though I didn't witness at firsthand, I was
proud of Cash and happy for Brad. On all the
trips that we'd been together on, this was the first
time he cut his hand loose and retrieved him from
a coon he'd found, all on his own.
Speaker 1 (15:01):
I was sorry I didn't see it myself.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
The next night, Michael went off to a competition hunt
with Heck and A a couple hours away, and he
won it. Heck's now qualified for the UKC Tournament of Champions.
Congratulations boys. Brad Randall and I went together and the
hunting conditions where we were couldn't have been much worse.
It was warm, it was foggy, and it was shying
(15:32):
off and on, not the exact conditions you draw up
for running dogs, and yet there we were, meeting up
at a predetermined spot to decide on where we were
going to go. I was trying to decide if I
even wanted to cut weight and loose during our truck
window the truck window powwow that we were having while
the heavens soaked my left arm. Brad let me off
(15:55):
hook when he said, if you just want to listen
to Cash bump around the woods from your truck, that
suits me. I just need to turn him loose for
a while. Perfect because I was going home after the
mont anyway, and by not turning waiting loose in what
was surely to be an exercise in wet and muddy futility,
Whaling and I could both just roll right up in
(16:15):
the house as soon as we got home, bypassing the
garage washing and drying that would get him in the
neighborhood of being clean enough for Mama's house. Brad callar
Cash up and turned him loose, and I smiled to myself,
knowing that even though I was going to stay regardless
of the outcome, Brent and Whaling could light a shuck
for home whenever we took the notion. We stood in
(16:38):
the mist and rain and talked about how dumb it
was that we'd even driven over there to hunt on
a night like that to begin with much less cut
one of the dogs loose. It wasn't like it was
the only night we had to hunt. We were laughing
at our own folly. When Cash opened up less than
three minutes after he hit the ground, I didn't think
(16:59):
anything about it until he kept.
Speaker 1 (17:01):
Up the bargain.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
We all stopped talking and started listening and looking at
the garm and handhelds that we.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
Were using to track the dog with.
Speaker 2 (17:10):
He was right on the bank of the creek, less
than two hundred yards away, and bam, he fell treated
his long unmistakable locate ball, followed by a series of
chopping barksmen. He was convinced that when we got there
we'd be looking at coon. We went to him in
low behold when he was a kidding. There he was
(17:30):
on the leafless limb, staring back at us, nicely done Cash,
with high fives all around. Cash took off on another
Cash and opened up again, working a track hard in
the worst conditions around, with him getting worse with every
drop of rain that fell. Ten minutes later and he
treated again. Now we all looked at one another and
(17:52):
took off after him. Randall handled Cash at the tree
while Brad and I looked skyward for the coon in
an ever increasing glass. That's his coat and rain I
got him the most anticipated three words of any coonhut
when your dog is the one bellied up to a
tree telling the world there's a coon up there. And
I saw him in a big old fork outstanding. We
(18:18):
called it tonight. After less than thirty minutes of hunting,
we went and had supper, reliving the night's events and
talking about how much he'd improved from earlier hunts. The
next night, I was home and Brad and Randall went
again cash Tree three that night, and they sent me
the picks to prove it. Here's where mine and other
(18:39):
dogs different from Michael's. While I've entered whiling in in
one hunting competitions, I get more enjoyment out of this
pleasure hunting. I fully support competition hunting. Now keep up
with who's who to some degree, but it just ain't
my thing. Brad and Randall are the same. My first
impression of that dog was good, but even though I
(19:00):
had nothing to qualify, the second wasn't as flattering. Having
seen the struggle and the aggravation that Brad and Randall
went through for over a year of dog at effort.
But if there's ever been a dog there was will
to make such a drastic turnaround of improvement as a
reward for the effort of his handler. It was the
Coonhound known to the UKC Registry as Whitmore and Clark's
(19:25):
Cash Money. I texted Randall earlier today to get some
details for this podcast. I said, how old is cash?
Randall's response caught me off guard a little bit, and
it caused me to reflect in a flash on two
years of interactions with that dog and those men. Maybe
(19:47):
if you believe in the things that I believe in,
a sweet coincidence or something much bigger. Randall takes it
back and I quote he turned three on November three,
my dad's birthday. Thank you so much for listening to
(20:10):
me and old Clay Bow and the Bear Grease Channel.
Speaker 1 (20:13):
I hope all of you had a.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Very merry Christmas and visit with the ones that matter most.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all
be careful
Host
Clay Newcomb
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