June 27, 2025 • 22 mins
On this episode. we're going behind the scenes of Brent's first ever solo hunt film. He's out in Kansas with his good friend, Jeff Writer, along with Jeff's decoy dogs, hunting coyotes. Brent shares the inside scoop on the challenges that arise in filmed hunts, and how this particular one went. He also learned that what he thought he knew about coyotes may have been quite the opposite. He's talking about coyotes, decoy dogs, and predator control on this week's episode of 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.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I want you to stay.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Awhile 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. The Kansas count project.
Now here's a little insight on how my first solo
video project went that we just finished filming. Now it'll
(00:51):
head to the editors who will take the pile of
footage we assembled over three days and try to tell
the story visually that we set out to tell during
the planning of the project. Months from now, after a
whole bunch of work from the folks you never see
or hear about, we'll post it for all to see
and hopefully learn a little something and enjoy it. Only time, Hotel,
(01:15):
I got a lot to say, so let's get to it.
My first solo video project for me Eater took place
a little less than a month ago. Now that project
immediately followed the South Louisiana Fishing trip and a hog
hunt in Texas I talked about a few episodes ago.
(01:37):
I've been a busy boy over the last few weeks,
and now, after a couple of nights at home from
the Texas trip, I was making tracks toward Kansas to
leak up with my friend Jeff Ryder. Jeff's a fellow
ar Kansas and a longtime friend now. I talked about
him in episode two twenty nine, dedicated to hunting with
decoy dogs back in July twenty twenty four. If you're
(02:03):
not familiar with what a decoy dog is, I highly
encourage you to give that one a listen. But I'll
go over briefly here for those that are new, or
for you folks with bad memories or the select few
who are too lazy to move your finger about three
times and listen to it for yourself. But decoy dogs
have been an effective tool and predator control for a
(02:25):
long time. As a matter of fact, there are still
folks who've historically been called government trappers and hunters that
are still working on predator numbers. Folks who are state
or federal employees or contractors tasked with reducing the number
of predators on the landscape with kyotes being one of
their main targets. Now, you're probably gonna hear me say
(02:48):
kyote and kyotey interchangeably, and it's just the way I
was raised. But that's what I'm talking about. Forever, I
thought the role of coyote number production was to benefit
cattle ranchers and deer populations. So with that info simmering
in my back pocket, I set out many moons ago
to fill my friend Jeff doing the work of the
people in saving Kansas burghers and booners one code at
(03:11):
a time. Now, in a way, we were, but just
not to the extent I was led to believe by
word of mouth and my very unscientific research and observations.
All that info would come out with a meeting schedule
for the final day of shooting with the wildlife biologists
from Kansas State University. Now, more on that enlightening meeting
(03:33):
and conversation a little later on.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Now, here's how decoyed dogs work. We set up in
a territory that offers cover and terrain suitable for coouts
to operate in, which is just about anywhere, and start
blaring cody sounds over a predator call the coute hears
the sounds, comes to investigate, and while approaching, the dog
(03:58):
sees the coyoute and gives chase. Now, if the cootie
is aggressive enough, it will engage the dog by chasing it,
and the dog will come back to where we're sitting
and someone will take the shot, reducing the predator population
by one. It is quite the spectacle, and to those
who are interested in seeing how two canines and one
(04:19):
domesticated and one not interact with one another, it's pretty amazing.
But before we get into that, we've got to get
to Kansas and link up with the production team and
our host, the ever clean shaven Jeff Ryder. I've known
Jeff for quite a while, and he's as good a
fella as they make. His disdain for anything related to
(04:41):
onions and a poor choice in music leaves a whole
lot of room for improvement, but we can't all be perfect.
I saw him contemplate a felony once in a cafe
where a waitress brought him a cheeseburger with onions. He
didn't say anything to her. He's a gentleman above all else.
But the the rest of us heard his sad tale
(05:02):
of woe endlessly over that whole trip onions nearly started
civil unrest on the plains of the Sunflower State. I
also remember driving home with him late one night, after
nearly a week of little sleep and lots and lots
of driving over the vast Kansas Prairie.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Chasing old wily coyote.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I was sound asleep in the passenger seat when all
of a sudden, the Beastie Boys were blaring No Sleep
Till Brooklyn at full voluble within the confines of the
cab of that truck, a song and genre of music
that would have me choosing a dentist apartment.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Over listening to a complete track.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
I bolted up right in the seat, glared at him
in his big, dumb, smiling face, and told him, won't
you ever play that again? And I tried to go
back to sleep. For those that are wondering, he did
not listen. But a couple of weeks ago, when I
pulled into the place where we were all staying, Eyes
and Dave Gardner, two veteran cameramen who I've worked on
(06:04):
several projects with during my time at Meat Eater, were
already there, putting equipment and cameras together. That we'd be
using for the next three days. Isaac had made the
drive over from his home in Missouri, and David flown
down from Montana, rented a car brought the majority of
the equipment that we'd be using. The amount of stuff
(06:25):
needed for a professional production may have gotten smaller in
size as far as cameras and sound gear goes over
the years, but the number of hard cases and redundancy
has more or less remained the same.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
It's it's a lot of the stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Some don't realize the depth of planning of a production
crew goes to a preparation for a film and a
hunt like this. I know because I was one of
them that didn't. Back when I was doing it. I
bought the best camera in tripod I could afford, couple
with the best shotgun Mike I could attach to the camera,
and we headed to the woods and what ever happened happened,
(07:02):
And whatever happened, I was hopefully paying enough attention to
have the camera pointing in the right direction to document
the event. Now that's still basically what we do, except
everything is planned ahead of time for what we're going
to try to film to fit a story agreed upon
that hopefully the cameras will capture and support our narrative.
(07:24):
Several online meetings of me pitching the idea to the
office last year had this project ending up being about
a hunter's relationship with his dog. A lot of my
content is about hundred dogs, and that relationship is a
solid narrative throughout them, all different environments being the stage
on which the same story is told again and again.
(07:46):
Nuances of the relationship being described on how the human
dog interaction plays out in the hunt is what I
find entertaining in education. I never grow tired of seeing
a working dog work in conjunction with the goal, whether
it's fighting a squirrel or a coon and a tree
and the dog is telling you I promise he's right
(08:06):
up there, just keep looking, or a shepherd moving cows
from one place to another at the direction of a handler.
I dig it, and I love witnessing the correlation between
the man and the dog as much as the interaction
of the dog and whatevery game is being pursued.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
In this case is colotes and I just gave.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
You a brief on how it works, with a more
detailed version of that to be depicted in the footage
we were fixing.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
To try and capture.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
I couldn't think of a better hunter to be with
than Jeff and his dogs to showcase in this project.
Countless hunts from him years ago still played vividly in
my brain as I drove toward where we'd all meet,
and I couldn't think of a better place to do
it than Kansas, even though Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri have
been great locations as well from back in the day.
(09:00):
Just something about the Kansas Prairie that speaks to me
on a level like no other when it comes to
this kind of honeing.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Now, maybe it's.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Because it was the first place that I witnessed the
decoy dog work for jail. If I had to bet, though,
I'd say it's because the sunsets in Kansas they're as
good as they get anywhere. And when I think about them,
I always see the horizon and in the frame of
windmills and missing a couple of blades, and it sets
(09:28):
motionless as the sky fades from blue to orange, and
you can seemingly see forever. I was in the right place,
with the right people. There was only one problem. It
was raining like a Cowpeean on a flat rock. It
had been raining off and on all spring, deluges of
(09:49):
rain and storms. It seemed to be on a tighter
schedule than we were. Almost a year of planning had
come down to go time, and it was raining buckets.
Day one was an absolute wash, literally and figuratively. We'd
be in Kansas for five days. Day one and day
five would be travel days getting there and then getting
(10:12):
back home. That left us the middle three days for
hunting and for getting the required shots outside of the
hunting location, like sunsets and sunrises, birds and creeks, landscapes,
drone shots, interviews, and the multitude of other film and
photographs required to complete such a project. It's a lot
(10:33):
of stuff, but we were ready. We were well prepared.
We all knew what our individual rolls were, and the
shooting schedule was our playbook. Everything that we could control
was accounted for. The only two things we had no
control over was the weather and the kyotes.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
On this trip, they were going to be hard to
work with.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Three hours before dark, the rain tapered off and we
hit the ground running guns, cameras and dogs. My old
high school agrid teacher always said, boys, you got to
make hay while the sun shines. It sounded cool, and
I was probably a lot older when I figured out
what he meant by that. You have to take advantage
of an opportunity when it presents itself well. The break
(11:26):
in the weather was our first opportunity, and we were
chomping at the bit to get started. Coats like tickets
to den in and hang out during the day, and
during this time of year, the mating pair will have
a litter of pupps in a den. Naturally they'll be
more protective and aggressive than other times because.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Of that fact alone.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Before we go any farther and I get accused of
separating mommies and daddies from babies.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
That's not how nature works. They ain't people.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Their will to survive is what makes them protective, as
any parents should be. That same wheell is also what
makes them slip into your farm and snatch a calf,
a lamb of gold, a piglet, or your pet out
of the backyard. The ones that do that, I would
come to find out two days later, are the very
(12:14):
ones we normally encounter on such a hunt. I'm not
purposely bearing the hook to keep it from you. I
just want you to learn about it like I did
from a more trusted source than me. So back to
that first setup. We walked north through an old barn
lot and stopped at the edge of uncut pasture that
(12:36):
was more prairie grass than hey.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
I can't imagine it looking much different from when.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
The first European settlers started making wagon tracks in that
part of the country. Jeff walked out about thirty yards
to set that pradator call out. There was a fence
line to our left, also about thirty yards that ran
north the direction we were facing straight up that fence.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
On the west side of it was a thicket you could.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
See on all necks that was pretty substantial, about five
acres worth of boat arc trees and briars and thick
fever that looked like a coat had designed it himself.
We sat there facing the north, and there was a
gap in the fence at about ten o'clock on.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Our left, about fifty yards away.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
The wind was blown from the front right to the
back left. According to Jeff, the colts had more than
likely come from the north out in front of us,
or from the left, which was west, and entered that
gap where they could see the prairie and see what
was making all the racket called Jeff at echoing across
Kansas was a cody hal and a challenge to the
(13:40):
local inhabitants, and then a simulated fight between two adult couts,
and rounded it out with the artificial sounds that mimicked
cody puppies in distress, all of which would make the
hair stand up on the back of your neck and
give you the creeps, but were a hundred times more
pleasing to my ears than anything beastly boys ever released. Normally,
(14:03):
we'd sit in a spot no more than fifteen or
twenty minutes trying various calls, with Jeff working a pattern
of gradual intensity, hoping to ramp up the predatory and
territorial instincts of the couts, drawed them out of the open,
building layers of curiosity and anger upon layer until they
finally broke out and they opened. I'd watched him do
(14:24):
it a million times, and I'd safely bet that more
times than not it worked. This was the first time
in over a decade that I would be sitting side
by side with my friend Jeff on the plains of Kansas,
waiting on a cow toy to show up.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
And this time it would be no different.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
I was getting itchy to leave to make another stand
before dark when Jeff said, I think I saw something
across from the prairie over into that thicket by two hundred.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
And fifty yards up the fence. I didn't see nothing.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
I kept a watchful eye of that fence row for
what seemed like forever, and I remembered what he he
said about the gap, and as I shifted my gaze
to the left, Jeff said, there he is three o'clock.
A joker had done just what Jeff said he was
going to do. He crossed in front of us where
he saw him. Then he followed that fence line south
(15:16):
and walked into our set up, exactly where he figured
he would. He was right on top of us, and
had we been there just to whack and stack coats,
that hunt would have ended right there. I swung to
the left and had him in my sights. Dave and
Isaac started rolling their cameras and Jeff seek the dogs
to engage the coat who was staring at us from
(15:39):
an easy fly cast away, But the dogs didn't see
him immediately. They were looking straight forward. He was on
the left, and the coat faded further to our south,
trying to figure out which one of us was making
the sounds that had.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Brought him out in the first place.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Now this is all happening at the same time, a
mirror matter of seconds, and he got down wind enough,
just enough to catch a bit of human sit And
when he got a snow full of that, he little
shuck and bamoosed back into that thicket, with Jeff's dog
right behind him.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Finally he saw it.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Now, you think that that would be the end of it,
with the coyote beating feet out of the country, But
like most things in nature, it's not always what it
appears to be. Spook deer don't run near as far
as you think, and needed the coyotes less than one
hundred yards away. We heard some fisticuffs break out between
Jeff's dog and the coyote. Nothing vicious, mind you, or
(16:40):
that lasted very long, more of a meaningful exchange of
ideas from two folks who are never going to get along.
Sometimes this will lead the coyote back into the game,
but it's only a remote chance if they get awhiff
of human sent before they engage with the dog, and
right along with what the law of averages would say,
he didn't come back out, but we had done what
(17:04):
we had set out to do. We made a stand
we called in a colt that we could have taken
at any point. We just didn't get the dog action
we were looking for for our project. It wasn't a
colt shooting show. It was supposed to be a colt
decoy dog show and we were just getting started. We
deal with rain off and on for the next three days,
(17:25):
so our hunting time got limited by the weather. In
that time, we made about half of the stands that
we wouldn't normally have done. By hunting from daylight until
around noon before it gets too hot, you can feasibly
make three stands an hour, which comes to about fifteen.
Another five hours in the evening will put you at
thirty stands a day. Not that hard to do when
(17:48):
you're not having to drive very far, and we didn't
because Jeff had easily half a million acres of private
land that he had permission to hunt on, access gained
over thirty years of helping farmers with the code issues.
I'm not going to reveal how the filming ended because
i want you to watch it when it comes out
next year. I will tell you this that we had
(18:10):
some crazy cool hunts, and I missed some shots I
shouldn't have, and I made the shot of my life.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
On the final hunt for the final day.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
But I also want to share with you the name
of a new friend Jeff and I made on this
reunion hunt of ours, Doctor Drew Ricketts, a professor at
Kansas State University. Drew's specialty is wildlife biology, and he
is the extension specialist for wildlife Management and predator Control,
which means, if you have problems with predators on your land,
(18:42):
Drew is the guy you called who can teach you
how to deal with issues like that.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Now, I like that.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I like the idea of passing the knowledge down for
someone else to do it instead of doing it for him.
It's like that old shampoo commercial of how the good
word gets out.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
You tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends, and.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
After a few of those, everybody knows how to deal
with the problem. Before you know it, it ain't a problem.
No more on theory outside of how it works anyway,
Drew was invited to be a part of the production to.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Bring some learned knowledge into the mix.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
The best part about the whole thing, Drew is a
decoy dog hunter himself. Drew added a lot of great
information to the project, and we're already planning a more
in depth interview podcast about what I'm fixing the lightly
touch on here.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I found it fascinating, and I hope you do too.
Give me a.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Show of hands out there as to how many of
you have seen the meme on social media that shows
a coute on top of a pyramid of deer fons
that says during dinning season, studies show the female codes
average killing nineteen phones each to feed their offspring. And
(19:59):
then it ends with keep doing the workfellas, which is
an encouragement to keep the coltes and check. Now that's
an activity I fully support, but not for those reasons now,
because those aren't facts, not even close, and I always
thought they were. Doctor Ricketts, Jeff and I talked at
(20:21):
length about how he came to the conclusion that that
meme was bogus. Guess what he showed his math, He
showed the work he did, how he got there, And
I'm going to sneak peek it here for the folks
that are curious and make the non believers mad with facts.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
It's one of my favorite things to do.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Simply put, there there aren't enough deer in Kansas to
make that math work. The actual figure of farm loss
to colts isn't nineteen falls per year. It's zero zero
point six y five falls deaths per could. That's like
(21:03):
a half a deer a ratio. If anyone out there
is old enough to remember that Andy Griffith show. Now
is when you say poor ratio any anyway, zero point
six y five is a long way from nineteen as
a matter of fact, which is what I like to
deal in when I can. It's eighteen point three to
(21:25):
five deer away from facts. The deal is that couches
do cause a problem, and the couts that respond to
cause during dinners season are the ones most likely to
cause their problems on farms, ranches, backyards.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
And deer leases.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I'm going to wait neck deep into that subject and
a lot of others pertaining too, these interesting creatures and
how they affect the landscape. When doctor Ricketts and I
sat down and discuss it in detail very soon, I
think you'll be surprised at how the numbers really shake
out on these curious animals.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
I know I was.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
They're very interesting and I learned a lot and I
think you will too.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
But that's a wrap for this one.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I appreciate y'all so much for listening to all of
us on the Bear Grease Channel until next week.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
This is Brent Reed 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.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
I want you to stay.
Speaker 2 (00:13):
Awhile 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. The Kansas count project.
Now here's a little insight on how my first solo
video project went that we just finished filming. Now it'll
(00:51):
head to the editors who will take the pile of
footage we assembled over three days and try to tell
the story visually that we set out to tell during
the planning of the project. Months from now, after a
whole bunch of work from the folks you never see
or hear about, we'll post it for all to see
and hopefully learn a little something and enjoy it. Only time, Hotel,
(01:15):
I got a lot to say, so let's get to it.
My first solo video project for me Eater took place
a little less than a month ago. Now that project
immediately followed the South Louisiana Fishing trip and a hog
hunt in Texas I talked about a few episodes ago.
(01:37):
I've been a busy boy over the last few weeks,
and now, after a couple of nights at home from
the Texas trip, I was making tracks toward Kansas to
leak up with my friend Jeff Ryder. Jeff's a fellow
ar Kansas and a longtime friend now. I talked about
him in episode two twenty nine, dedicated to hunting with
decoy dogs back in July twenty twenty four. If you're
(02:03):
not familiar with what a decoy dog is, I highly
encourage you to give that one a listen. But I'll
go over briefly here for those that are new, or
for you folks with bad memories or the select few
who are too lazy to move your finger about three
times and listen to it for yourself. But decoy dogs
have been an effective tool and predator control for a
(02:25):
long time. As a matter of fact, there are still
folks who've historically been called government trappers and hunters that
are still working on predator numbers. Folks who are state
or federal employees or contractors tasked with reducing the number
of predators on the landscape with kyotes being one of
their main targets. Now, you're probably gonna hear me say
(02:48):
kyote and kyotey interchangeably, and it's just the way I
was raised. But that's what I'm talking about. Forever, I
thought the role of coyote number production was to benefit
cattle ranchers and deer populations. So with that info simmering
in my back pocket, I set out many moons ago
to fill my friend Jeff doing the work of the
people in saving Kansas burghers and booners one code at
(03:11):
a time. Now, in a way, we were, but just
not to the extent I was led to believe by
word of mouth and my very unscientific research and observations.
All that info would come out with a meeting schedule
for the final day of shooting with the wildlife biologists
from Kansas State University. Now, more on that enlightening meeting
(03:33):
and conversation a little later on.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Right.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Now, here's how decoyed dogs work. We set up in
a territory that offers cover and terrain suitable for coouts
to operate in, which is just about anywhere, and start
blaring cody sounds over a predator call the coute hears
the sounds, comes to investigate, and while approaching, the dog
(03:58):
sees the coyoute and gives chase. Now, if the cootie
is aggressive enough, it will engage the dog by chasing it,
and the dog will come back to where we're sitting
and someone will take the shot, reducing the predator population
by one. It is quite the spectacle, and to those
who are interested in seeing how two canines and one
(04:19):
domesticated and one not interact with one another, it's pretty amazing.
But before we get into that, we've got to get
to Kansas and link up with the production team and
our host, the ever clean shaven Jeff Ryder. I've known
Jeff for quite a while, and he's as good a
fella as they make. His disdain for anything related to
(04:41):
onions and a poor choice in music leaves a whole
lot of room for improvement, but we can't all be perfect.
I saw him contemplate a felony once in a cafe
where a waitress brought him a cheeseburger with onions. He
didn't say anything to her. He's a gentleman above all else.
But the the rest of us heard his sad tale
(05:02):
of woe endlessly over that whole trip onions nearly started
civil unrest on the plains of the Sunflower State. I
also remember driving home with him late one night, after
nearly a week of little sleep and lots and lots
of driving over the vast Kansas Prairie.
Speaker 1 (05:20):
Chasing old wily coyote.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
I was sound asleep in the passenger seat when all
of a sudden, the Beastie Boys were blaring No Sleep
Till Brooklyn at full voluble within the confines of the
cab of that truck, a song and genre of music
that would have me choosing a dentist apartment.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Over listening to a complete track.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
I bolted up right in the seat, glared at him
in his big, dumb, smiling face, and told him, won't
you ever play that again? And I tried to go
back to sleep. For those that are wondering, he did
not listen. But a couple of weeks ago, when I
pulled into the place where we were all staying, Eyes
and Dave Gardner, two veteran cameramen who I've worked on
(06:04):
several projects with during my time at Meat Eater, were
already there, putting equipment and cameras together. That we'd be
using for the next three days. Isaac had made the
drive over from his home in Missouri, and David flown
down from Montana, rented a car brought the majority of
the equipment that we'd be using. The amount of stuff
(06:25):
needed for a professional production may have gotten smaller in
size as far as cameras and sound gear goes over
the years, but the number of hard cases and redundancy
has more or less remained the same.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
It's it's a lot of the stuff.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Some don't realize the depth of planning of a production
crew goes to a preparation for a film and a
hunt like this. I know because I was one of
them that didn't. Back when I was doing it. I
bought the best camera in tripod I could afford, couple
with the best shotgun Mike I could attach to the camera,
and we headed to the woods and what ever happened happened,
(07:02):
And whatever happened, I was hopefully paying enough attention to
have the camera pointing in the right direction to document
the event. Now that's still basically what we do, except
everything is planned ahead of time for what we're going
to try to film to fit a story agreed upon
that hopefully the cameras will capture and support our narrative.
(07:24):
Several online meetings of me pitching the idea to the
office last year had this project ending up being about
a hunter's relationship with his dog. A lot of my
content is about hundred dogs, and that relationship is a
solid narrative throughout them, all different environments being the stage
on which the same story is told again and again.
(07:46):
Nuances of the relationship being described on how the human
dog interaction plays out in the hunt is what I
find entertaining in education. I never grow tired of seeing
a working dog work in conjunction with the goal, whether
it's fighting a squirrel or a coon and a tree
and the dog is telling you I promise he's right
(08:06):
up there, just keep looking, or a shepherd moving cows
from one place to another at the direction of a handler.
I dig it, and I love witnessing the correlation between
the man and the dog as much as the interaction
of the dog and whatevery game is being pursued.
Speaker 1 (08:23):
In this case is colotes and I just gave.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
You a brief on how it works, with a more
detailed version of that to be depicted in the footage
we were fixing.
Speaker 1 (08:32):
To try and capture.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
I couldn't think of a better hunter to be with
than Jeff and his dogs to showcase in this project.
Countless hunts from him years ago still played vividly in
my brain as I drove toward where we'd all meet,
and I couldn't think of a better place to do
it than Kansas, even though Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri have
been great locations as well from back in the day.
(09:00):
Just something about the Kansas Prairie that speaks to me
on a level like no other when it comes to
this kind of honeing.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
Now, maybe it's.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Because it was the first place that I witnessed the
decoy dog work for jail. If I had to bet, though,
I'd say it's because the sunsets in Kansas they're as
good as they get anywhere. And when I think about them,
I always see the horizon and in the frame of
windmills and missing a couple of blades, and it sets
(09:28):
motionless as the sky fades from blue to orange, and
you can seemingly see forever. I was in the right place,
with the right people. There was only one problem. It
was raining like a Cowpeean on a flat rock. It
had been raining off and on all spring, deluges of
(09:49):
rain and storms. It seemed to be on a tighter
schedule than we were. Almost a year of planning had
come down to go time, and it was raining buckets.
Day one was an absolute wash, literally and figuratively. We'd
be in Kansas for five days. Day one and day
five would be travel days getting there and then getting
(10:12):
back home. That left us the middle three days for
hunting and for getting the required shots outside of the
hunting location, like sunsets and sunrises, birds and creeks, landscapes,
drone shots, interviews, and the multitude of other film and
photographs required to complete such a project. It's a lot
(10:33):
of stuff, but we were ready. We were well prepared.
We all knew what our individual rolls were, and the
shooting schedule was our playbook. Everything that we could control
was accounted for. The only two things we had no
control over was the weather and the kyotes.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
On this trip, they were going to be hard to
work with.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Three hours before dark, the rain tapered off and we
hit the ground running guns, cameras and dogs. My old
high school agrid teacher always said, boys, you got to
make hay while the sun shines. It sounded cool, and
I was probably a lot older when I figured out
what he meant by that. You have to take advantage
of an opportunity when it presents itself well. The break
(11:26):
in the weather was our first opportunity, and we were
chomping at the bit to get started. Coats like tickets
to den in and hang out during the day, and
during this time of year, the mating pair will have
a litter of pupps in a den. Naturally they'll be
more protective and aggressive than other times because.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Of that fact alone.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
Before we go any farther and I get accused of
separating mommies and daddies from babies.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
That's not how nature works. They ain't people.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Their will to survive is what makes them protective, as
any parents should be. That same wheell is also what
makes them slip into your farm and snatch a calf,
a lamb of gold, a piglet, or your pet out
of the backyard. The ones that do that, I would
come to find out two days later, are the very
(12:14):
ones we normally encounter on such a hunt. I'm not
purposely bearing the hook to keep it from you. I
just want you to learn about it like I did
from a more trusted source than me. So back to
that first setup. We walked north through an old barn
lot and stopped at the edge of uncut pasture that
(12:36):
was more prairie grass than hey.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
I can't imagine it looking much different from when.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
The first European settlers started making wagon tracks in that
part of the country. Jeff walked out about thirty yards
to set that pradator call out. There was a fence
line to our left, also about thirty yards that ran
north the direction we were facing straight up that fence.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
On the west side of it was a thicket you could.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
See on all necks that was pretty substantial, about five
acres worth of boat arc trees and briars and thick
fever that looked like a coat had designed it himself.
We sat there facing the north, and there was a
gap in the fence at about ten o'clock on.
Speaker 1 (13:16):
Our left, about fifty yards away.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
The wind was blown from the front right to the
back left. According to Jeff, the colts had more than
likely come from the north out in front of us,
or from the left, which was west, and entered that
gap where they could see the prairie and see what
was making all the racket called Jeff at echoing across
Kansas was a cody hal and a challenge to the
(13:40):
local inhabitants, and then a simulated fight between two adult couts,
and rounded it out with the artificial sounds that mimicked
cody puppies in distress, all of which would make the
hair stand up on the back of your neck and
give you the creeps, but were a hundred times more
pleasing to my ears than anything beastly boys ever released. Normally,
(14:03):
we'd sit in a spot no more than fifteen or
twenty minutes trying various calls, with Jeff working a pattern
of gradual intensity, hoping to ramp up the predatory and
territorial instincts of the couts, drawed them out of the open,
building layers of curiosity and anger upon layer until they
finally broke out and they opened. I'd watched him do
(14:24):
it a million times, and I'd safely bet that more
times than not it worked. This was the first time
in over a decade that I would be sitting side
by side with my friend Jeff on the plains of Kansas,
waiting on a cow toy to show up.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
And this time it would be no different.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
I was getting itchy to leave to make another stand
before dark when Jeff said, I think I saw something
across from the prairie over into that thicket by two hundred.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
And fifty yards up the fence. I didn't see nothing.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
I kept a watchful eye of that fence row for
what seemed like forever, and I remembered what he he
said about the gap, and as I shifted my gaze
to the left, Jeff said, there he is three o'clock.
A joker had done just what Jeff said he was
going to do. He crossed in front of us where
he saw him. Then he followed that fence line south
(15:16):
and walked into our set up, exactly where he figured
he would. He was right on top of us, and
had we been there just to whack and stack coats,
that hunt would have ended right there. I swung to
the left and had him in my sights. Dave and
Isaac started rolling their cameras and Jeff seek the dogs
to engage the coat who was staring at us from
(15:39):
an easy fly cast away, But the dogs didn't see
him immediately. They were looking straight forward. He was on
the left, and the coat faded further to our south,
trying to figure out which one of us was making
the sounds that had.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
Brought him out in the first place.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
Now this is all happening at the same time, a
mirror matter of seconds, and he got down wind enough,
just enough to catch a bit of human sit And
when he got a snow full of that, he little
shuck and bamoosed back into that thicket, with Jeff's dog
right behind him.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
Finally he saw it.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Now, you think that that would be the end of it,
with the coyote beating feet out of the country, But
like most things in nature, it's not always what it
appears to be. Spook deer don't run near as far
as you think, and needed the coyotes less than one
hundred yards away. We heard some fisticuffs break out between
Jeff's dog and the coyote. Nothing vicious, mind you, or
(16:40):
that lasted very long, more of a meaningful exchange of
ideas from two folks who are never going to get along.
Sometimes this will lead the coyote back into the game,
but it's only a remote chance if they get awhiff
of human sent before they engage with the dog, and
right along with what the law of averages would say,
he didn't come back out, but we had done what
(17:04):
we had set out to do. We made a stand
we called in a colt that we could have taken
at any point. We just didn't get the dog action
we were looking for for our project. It wasn't a
colt shooting show. It was supposed to be a colt
decoy dog show and we were just getting started. We
deal with rain off and on for the next three days,
(17:25):
so our hunting time got limited by the weather. In
that time, we made about half of the stands that
we wouldn't normally have done. By hunting from daylight until
around noon before it gets too hot, you can feasibly
make three stands an hour, which comes to about fifteen.
Another five hours in the evening will put you at
thirty stands a day. Not that hard to do when
(17:48):
you're not having to drive very far, and we didn't
because Jeff had easily half a million acres of private
land that he had permission to hunt on, access gained
over thirty years of helping farmers with the code issues.
I'm not going to reveal how the filming ended because
i want you to watch it when it comes out
next year. I will tell you this that we had
(18:10):
some crazy cool hunts, and I missed some shots I
shouldn't have, and I made the shot of my life.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
On the final hunt for the final day.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
But I also want to share with you the name
of a new friend Jeff and I made on this
reunion hunt of ours, Doctor Drew Ricketts, a professor at
Kansas State University. Drew's specialty is wildlife biology, and he
is the extension specialist for wildlife Management and predator Control,
which means, if you have problems with predators on your land,
(18:42):
Drew is the guy you called who can teach you
how to deal with issues like that.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Now, I like that.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
I like the idea of passing the knowledge down for
someone else to do it instead of doing it for him.
It's like that old shampoo commercial of how the good
word gets out.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
You tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends, and.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
After a few of those, everybody knows how to deal
with the problem. Before you know it, it ain't a problem.
No more on theory outside of how it works anyway,
Drew was invited to be a part of the production to.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
Bring some learned knowledge into the mix.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
The best part about the whole thing, Drew is a
decoy dog hunter himself. Drew added a lot of great
information to the project, and we're already planning a more
in depth interview podcast about what I'm fixing the lightly
touch on here.
Speaker 1 (19:34):
I found it fascinating, and I hope you do too.
Give me a.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Show of hands out there as to how many of
you have seen the meme on social media that shows
a coute on top of a pyramid of deer fons
that says during dinning season, studies show the female codes
average killing nineteen phones each to feed their offspring. And
(19:59):
then it ends with keep doing the workfellas, which is
an encouragement to keep the coltes and check. Now that's
an activity I fully support, but not for those reasons now,
because those aren't facts, not even close, and I always
thought they were. Doctor Ricketts, Jeff and I talked at
(20:21):
length about how he came to the conclusion that that
meme was bogus. Guess what he showed his math, He
showed the work he did, how he got there, And
I'm going to sneak peek it here for the folks
that are curious and make the non believers mad with facts.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
It's one of my favorite things to do.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Simply put, there there aren't enough deer in Kansas to
make that math work. The actual figure of farm loss
to colts isn't nineteen falls per year. It's zero zero
point six y five falls deaths per could. That's like
(21:03):
a half a deer a ratio. If anyone out there
is old enough to remember that Andy Griffith show. Now
is when you say poor ratio any anyway, zero point
six y five is a long way from nineteen as
a matter of fact, which is what I like to
deal in when I can. It's eighteen point three to
(21:25):
five deer away from facts. The deal is that couches
do cause a problem, and the couts that respond to
cause during dinners season are the ones most likely to
cause their problems on farms, ranches, backyards.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
And deer leases.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
I'm going to wait neck deep into that subject and
a lot of others pertaining too, these interesting creatures and
how they affect the landscape. When doctor Ricketts and I
sat down and discuss it in detail very soon, I
think you'll be surprised at how the numbers really shake
out on these curious animals.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
I know I was.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
They're very interesting and I learned a lot and I
think you will too.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
But that's a wrap for this one.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
I appreciate y'all so much for listening to all of
us on the Bear Grease Channel until next week.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
This is Brent Reed signing off. Y'all be careful.
Host
Clay Newcomb
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