Trained By A Hound Dog with Ed Vance

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
My name is Clay Nukeleman. I'm the host of the
Bear Hunting Magazine podcast. I'll also be your host into
the world of hunting the icon of the North American wilderness. Prepare.
We'll talk about tactics, gear conservation. We will also bring
you into some of the wildest country on the planet
chasing Fair. This week, we're going back to one of

(00:34):
our classic Bear Hunting Magazine episodes, our episode that we
did with Advance at his home in California. Advance is
a longtime houndsman, hunting both bear and mountain lion and
Ed wrote a book called Trained by Hound Dog. I
knew nothing of him. I read his book and I thought,

(00:55):
I gotta meet this guy, and so I went to
California and I met Ed van Ants. It's been a
friend of mine ever since. This podcast will go down
as one of our classic episodes. If you haven't heard it.
For those of you that are new to the podcasts,
I know you're gonna enjoy it. And if you've already
heard it, then you can check it out again. This

(01:16):
podcast is brought to you by our friends at w
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this podcast with Advance. The green Horn Mountains of southern

(04:18):
California look like a steep rolling savannah of grass and trees,
many of which are some type of small oak. The
mountains go up over seven thousand feet, many as steep
as a cow space. From this property, I call lions
and bears all over everything, all of all of this

(04:41):
stuff that you can see. Ad points to a bear
hide hanging on the wall of his home. That was
one of the toughest bears that I've ever got my
dogs after. I mean I had others, they were just
as bad. Because there's the right here, I'm gonna explain
to you, and I'm gonna show you where it started,
where it went to him, where it ended come right

(05:03):
here at this house. Advance is seventy eight years old,
and he hunted these mountains for lions and bear in
a twenty five year stretch from the nineteen sixties through
the nineteen eighties. Today, he can see much of his
favorite hunting ground from the incredible view from his home.
But I want to explain, I want to show you.
We're gonna walk over here We'll have to walk around

(05:24):
a little bit in order for you do U to
take in all of what I'm gonna show you. Because
Ed is a gifted craftsman with wood, brick and stone.
His home he built himself. It's a mix of a
timber framed bungalow style Western log cabin, ornate with saddles worn,

(05:45):
cowboy hats, bear hides in a mounted mountain. Lion killed
before the hunting band in California. It's clear to see
that Ed is a meticulate master of everything that he
takes on, and at one period in his life his
entire focus was hunting lions and bears with hounds. This

(06:06):
particular bear that I got out after it was in
I mentioned in the book. Um I started him in
October and it was just at the crack of dawn
and I had I couldn't find a bear by driving roads,
so I got uh. I had two hunter with me,
and so we stopped and I says, I want to

(06:29):
walk up a canyon and see if I can get
a bear started up there. And I'm gonna show you
where this is at. You see this ridge right in
front of us, So you see a lone tree standing
up there all by myself. From that tree. If you
went straight down into the canyon, you see the ridge
on the other side, straight down into the bottom. That's
where they started this bear. I went up there and

(06:52):
then and they struck this bear and this ridge. You
can see where that lone tree standing. You can see
the ridge it's on, and that ridge follows and keeps going.
And then he gets right up to a point. They
pulled him out of that cannon. He came out of
that canyon, crossed onto this side of that ridge, and
he skirted that ridge almost on the top all the

(07:14):
way around. And then where you can see that one
high point, he turned and he went to the opposite
side of it. Now there was no roads to speak
of it, so I was following him on foot. M hmm.
By the time I got to there, I could hear
those dogs. It was placed called Portuguese Pass, and Portuguese

(07:34):
Pass is the furthest ridge that you can see as
far as you can see. And he's just about to
go over, and I thought, if he goes over that,
so there's a big valley in between that. It's called
bill Run Basin. The other side is called bill Run Basin.
I was north of that high point that we're talking about,

(07:55):
which is from right where that point is out to
where it started. Yeah, it's only like maybe three miles
through the air, but we weren't going through the air.
We were going on ground, and it's different. It's different.
So I got around to the other side of that
and I heard those dogs headed towards Portuguese pass. I
had five dogs on it, I recall, and they were

(08:17):
really hammering that thing. And I was suspicious of what
bear this was because I I didn't know at the time,
but I caught him two other times and let him go.
And he was a non tregable bear. You're gonna bay
him out. That was it. So as far as you
can see, they just he just about got over that

(08:39):
far ridge and they were then he was he was
moving and and these dogs were hitting it as hard
as they could, and that he is like extremely steep
and rough. And then I lost hearing of them. Now
we're gonna have to walk to another spot. Show you

(09:00):
where this thing ended up at. In the meantime, I
had two had these two guys that where I was.
I had him here on a bear hunt, and they
were waiting to inform me at my pickup. I had
a CB radio in the pickup. I walk up on
this little dog here a little bit, and I can

(09:22):
show you a little bit further, get right up there
in that opening. It's kind of it's kind of nice
to be living in a spot where I can take
and look at places like this and say, well, I
know what had happened, because I was there and it
did happen. Now we look straight ahead of us, and

(09:46):
we can see him rounded mountain and on this side
has been burned. And I mentioned to you that at
the transition between the trees that have been burned, which
were lower as the ones above, those dogs were on
that side. You keep in mind they started over here,
they went around that point, and when they did that,

(10:11):
I lost him. I had no idea where they were.
I was no I was. I was up on this
from where you started swoops down Portugee passes in there.
I was up in that area someplace, and I could
hear my dogs going down on that hillside, which is

(10:31):
several miles from there too, and I could hear him
for several miles, and then they disappeared. So I came
down through all of that and it's late in the afternoon. No,
I'll keep in mind this started at about six in
the morning, late in the afternoon, which would be about

(10:52):
I'm gonna say about three o'clock. I crossed this road
right here, the road that I'm living on. But I
was about four miles up. When it got to the road.
He cranked on the CBE radio and heard the voice
of a good friend that he didn't even know was
in the area. Asked me. He says, let me come
and get you. And I said, do you have you

(11:12):
heard my dogs? And he said, yes, your dogs the
last I heard. And he said, your dogs are done
on White River by the campground. Now I'm gonna show
you what White River Campground is. That he wanted to
come and pick me up, and I said, no, I
wanted to just go across the country. I'm just gonna
keep it's all downhill, and I can travel pretty fast

(11:34):
going downhill, and uh, as long as I know that
that's where they're at, and anything from Louisa this time,
you've already traveled twelve fourteen miles close to that through
through air miles, and so you're going down in these
steep valleys and ravines and up mountains. Yes, because where

(11:54):
the bear was started was at the five thousand foot
elevation in Portuguese passes seven thousand. So they almost got
he almost had. You had to you had to lose elevation,
and yes, yes, back and forth, back and forth the road.
If you look right down in the bottom the canon,
you see a dirt road down there. And when I

(12:15):
got there, those dogs, White River was about five miles
from there to the north, and those dogs and they
were coming this to the south, about halfway between that
ridge that you're looking at in the bottom of the canyon,
which is about a thousand foot drop in elevation below

(12:36):
where I was at, and he started, he started skirting
going this way. He's going southwest. I followed that ridge
and knowing that if he gets on this side of it,
I'm just gonna lose Those Doctors're gonna go down and
nothing but private land, and I can't get into that stuff.
So not halfway between these two points, which it is

(12:58):
gonna be about a half three quarters of a mile,
he was getting close to crossing over, and I got
to where I could drop down, and I came head
on onto him, and we walked right into each other.
When he saw me, he spun and I had this.
They weren't behind him, they were all right alongside of it.

(13:20):
They're right on it. Yeah, I got Mike, shot at him,
and I was almost at the bottom between those two ridges.
In fact, there's some ranchers said they was listening to
the whole thing, and I shot and killed him right there.
So how many miles it is, I don't know, but
I do know this. I had twenty minutes to get
the hide off of him, and it was gonna be dark.

(13:42):
I don't have a clue how many miles that is.
It has to be in straight line air miles, fifteen
air miles. But we're talking about starting at five thousand
foot in the elevation, going up and down until he
gets a seven thousand foot and then going up and
down until you dropped down to Bud elevation. And that's

(14:03):
what it took to stop that whole race. I think
that's an incredible feed for the dog, has been an
incredible feat for a man. This bear is the only
bear hide that Ed still has in his home. Ed
wrote an incredible book that you're gonna hear about inside
of this podcast that tells many of the stories and

(14:27):
tales of his twenty five years of hunting California, Utah, Nevada,
and Montana with a pack of hounds. Welcome to the
Bear Hunting Magazine podcast we Are. This is gonna be

(14:47):
a really neat episode. I'm in the home of a
man that's become a friend of mine today really um,
but I feel like i've I feel like I know
you after I read your book. But I'm in the
home of of Ed and Lynette Advance and we're in Posey, California,

(15:08):
which Ed, I would not have known where Posey, California
was until I learned that you lived here. But it's
an incredible and beautiful place just south of the Sierra
Nevadas or we're in the southern Sierra Nevadas. Is that
on the southern southern tip of the Sierra Nevadas, in
a mountain range known as the Greenhorn Mountains and Sekoyan

(15:33):
National Forest and Sekoya National Monument. Is um right on
these Greenhorn Mountains. UM a place that a lot of
people really don't know about. In fact, there's people that um,
we've met that live in the valley the San Joaquin Valley.
They've never even gone up into these mountains and they

(15:55):
have no idea what's up here. Um, well, this morning
we started off in I mean we were in Los Angeles,
Los Angeles, California. Seven seven seven lane going one way,
seven lane traffic going the other. And we drove two
and a half hours. And I mean we're twenty miles

(16:17):
from a gas station. I mean we're more than that.
More than that we're in Really, you're forty miles away
from a gas station. The only thing that um, the
closest little town is a town called Glenville's in Current County.
We're until Larry County, and there's not much difference between
the two counties actually, but um in Posey, all that

(16:40):
we have in Posey as the post office For somebody
who doesn't or did not know much about California. California
is an incredible state for wildlife and and and really
has an incredibly rich history and hunting and and that's
why I'm here is uh So. Ed wrote a book
called Trained hound Dog. The book was released back in November,

(17:03):
and the book is is basically a collection of stories
about Ed's life as a as a houndsman, hunting mountain,
lions and bears in these mountains right here where we're at.
And uh. And so that's what I want to talk
to you about today, is I want to I want

(17:24):
people to get a feel for for your history and
hound hunting and and uh. And in doing that, we're
gonna talk about the book. And and we just did
a I didn't know ed, wouldn't have known ed, but
several months ago it was probably Lynette that contacted me
just through Bare Hunting magazine and said, I'd like to

(17:45):
send you a book that my husband wrote. And I said, well, sure.
And I get a lot of books, and I really
do a lot of people. A lot of people write books,
and I read a lot of books. And when I
read this book, it I could tell that the the
voice of this writer was someone special. I really did
and uh and I as I as I read the book,

(18:08):
I thought, man, I'd like to I'd like to meet
that guy and uh. And and it just so happened
that our family was coming to California, and so I
looked up where Posey, California was, because that's on your
Trained by Hound Dog website and it was just a
couple of hours out of where we were, and so
you graciously said, yeah, come onto the house, fed us lunch,

(18:30):
and here we are. I've got my whole family here
and uh, and we're here with you and and and
so anyway, thank you for hosting. Welcome. We're sure happy
to have you here. UM. I hope that this will
turn into a um, a long term friendship, and I'm
sure I will. You know, I wanted to say something

(18:51):
about these mountains here. UM during the during the years
of the Bounty for Mountain Lions, and a lot of
people have no idea of this, there was a there
was a California state line under that lived here and
his name was Howard Builton. And I wish that I

(19:13):
had have known Howard. He died just about the same
time that I started hunting these mountains. But had he
been alive when I was doing this, that guy that
had a hard time getting rid of me, I'm sure that.
But I was really surprised when I moved here and
talked to guys that had hound dogs that there was

(19:33):
hardly anybody other than the long time residences that even
knew that this guy even existed here. But he did,
and and like to say, he was a full time
line uner for the state of California, and uh, I
think he was. I checked his record and in his

(19:54):
final years of as a state line unner, he was
actually killing about fifteen lions a year, which you know,
that's quite a few actually, And some places, you know
that the where you have snow all the time to
catch your lions, fifteen lions might not sound like a

(20:15):
whole lot to some of those people, but here it
was predominantly bare ground trailing, and uh so you couldn't
just go and roam around these hell was looking for
a line track in the snow because it just wasn't
it wasn't there, And so the dogs that they used
had to be pretty good quality dogs. The hunters had

(20:38):
to be totally dedicated, and that's what I found in
this part of the country. I've seen some places it
was pretty easy to catch lions as compared to others.
When I was in Montana, it was definitely one of
the easiest places because it's like it's snowed almost every day,

(21:02):
and every time that she'd find a line track is
just about counting out. It was once very old, you know,
but that and then the bear population in in this
part of the country is um really good. It's far
better than people would have thought it was. UM. The

(21:23):
entire Sierra Mountain Range has been and and the Coast
Range both have been noted forever for having the a
lot of a lot of bears um and a lot
of large bears to go with it. And the reasons
for that was basically because the winners were short, growing

(21:44):
seasons were long, and it was either oak trees or
oak brush that's covering all these hills, and those happened
to produce acorns, and acorns bears love them and they
get fat on them, so so it's it was an
area that very unique. But at the same time, a

(22:07):
lot of people in this part of the country, they
say that they use a term that Posey, California was
Tillarry County's best kept secret because nobody seemed to know
where it was at. And in fact, even at the
county seat. We've had to talk to the people out
of the building department and some of them didn't even

(22:27):
know where we were and we're in their county. But anyways, no,
it's it's a beautiful place. UM. Four seasons winn is
the shortest, summer is the longest and a lot of
beautiful scenery to go with it. Yeah, Ed, give us
a give us a kind of a run through of

(22:47):
your well, just let me let me just start off
with this. When did you start hunting with hounds and
how did you get into it? And why? Because you
didn't grow up in a family had hound I mean
you that was when I first started reading the book.
That caught my attention because a lot of time, most
of the time, somebody that's in hounds is introduced to

(23:09):
it or there's some pretty close connection to them that
was able to get them in. But it's almost like
you started running hounds just this. Yeah, you know, I
always as a kid, I grew up in a suburb
for the town by the name of Glendale in California,
and in those days, of course, the population wasn't what

(23:30):
it was today, and I kind of like the act
like I was hunting him because if right from our
house you just go off in the hills, they're just
covered with brush and just kind of make believe, you know.
But over time I drifted away from that, and then
I found myself working in an assembly plant for Chevrolet

(23:52):
in Van Eys, California, and directly across the line from
me was a a guy by the name of Sherwood Barrett,
and uh he was from Georgia and and sure what
he he was a Mormon. And he told me, he
says that he left Georgia and he's on his way
to Salt Lake City and because he wanted to live there,

(24:15):
but he had to get go someplace and earn some
money in the process. And so he was I was
putting gas lines, gasoline lines on these cards as they passed,
if fifty something an hour, and so we'd get a
few moments every now and then to visit. And he
started telling me about chasing these hound dogs in the
Oki Finocchi Swamp in Georgia, and uh, it really caught

(24:41):
my interests. I mean it really did. And they're on
ragged coons. Yeah, and uh so anyways, he teld me
these stories about this what he was doing, and it
just really caught my interest. And so I asked him,
I said, Sherwood, where would you where do you go

(25:02):
to buy these dogs? And he told me, says, he
could have like outdoor life. They had these guys advertising him.
I didn't know at the time that most of those
guys were selling dogs nobody wanted, you know, and people
like myself and buy him because I didn't know what
I was buying in the first place. So anyways, I
started with that. And what was your intention? Was your

(25:24):
intention to run lion? Or I just wanted I like dogs,
and I liked the idea of hunting and as honey
with dogs sounding it good. So you would have been
in your early twenties probably at this time I was.
I was just I just wanted some hunting dogs. I
was like twenty years old, and nobody in my family
it had never even heard of it. And so I

(25:48):
ordered a dog from him, and I got a red
bone hound and uh his nice looking dog actually golden Buck.
He seemed to know his name. So I got this dog,
and I didn't know where to go hunting, so I
took off and I went up and in the in
the mountains up by Ventura, which is just covered with brush,

(26:11):
and I actually a terrible place to try and hunt dogs.
And I never caught anything with him. And then I
started meeting different guys that had hound dogs and they
weren't doing any good either, and uh so I pooled
around with those different fellas and and the dogs that
they had and the couple of dogs that I had,

(26:35):
And eventually I learned that what these dogs were chasing
was not anything they could climb a tree at all.
But the guys that are hunting with they were just
fooling themselves about, you know, what they're really but they
were after but they were probably chasing deer. They were
chasing deer, That's what they were chasing, you know. So

(26:55):
if the time went by, and the next thing I knew,
I was introduced to guy out of Utah by the
name of Willis but Off, which was a very well
known government hunter and had caught hundreds of lions, unbelievable
numbers of lions. I mean it had really caught them

(27:15):
too as well. And so I got with him and
hunted with him a few times, and I bought a
few dogs from him, and from there I started learning
about the difference between hunting dogs and taking dogs hunting

(27:36):
and kitchen stuff and uh so, then from there I
ended up losing a couple of these dogs too too,
tenady poison, which was terrible, terrible situation. And that was
in Utah. And then I ended up meeting a guy
it lived. It was he worked for a big farm

(27:58):
out of Wacoe, California, and he said that the people
told me that he had a hound that he might
sell because of his age, and I got in touch
with him. Guy's name is J. D. Reynolds, and he
had this red dick count that he said he would sell,

(28:18):
and I bought him, and I couldn't believe what I
had bought. I went from from not catching anything to
speak of, to every time I put that dog's filled
on the ground, he caught something. And he didn't run deer,

(28:39):
he didn't run coyotes, and he caught bobcats and raccoons
and foxes every time he hit the ground practically, And
from there I started learning the difference between good dogs,
mediocre dogs, and dogs that just darn't any good. And

(29:00):
so on the book that I titled the title Trained
by a Hound Dog, that title was really thinking about
this dog, this red tick down, which we called bow
and Uh, like I said, he was six years older
than I got him. I was working as a carpenter
framing houses in Thousand Oaks, California, where framing houses there

(29:24):
as a carpenter was more like an athletic contest, and
it was anything else because it is all peace work.
And then and you didn't get paid much for the
for what she did. And if you're gonna have any
money at all, you're gonna work like you're fighting fire
from the moment you got there until it was time
to go home, which I did, and I'd take and

(29:45):
load bow up on Friday nights and i'd head off
from Ventura, California to the Green Worn Mountains, which is
where we're at right now, and Wish is where bow
was read actually trained. He came from Arkansas. He was
a red Dack count um out of the Elbert Vaughan

(30:07):
stock of English Towns, which eventually became the ober One
Blue Ticks, but in those days he was still dealing
with registered English dogs and which is the same thing basically,
just different colors. And I think that first year I'd

(30:27):
i'd get off work and I'd drove all the way
up here, which was three and a half to four
hours each way, after working all all week. And I
think that first year I had Bowen and I bought
a a plothound. I called him Pat and he was
like two years old when I got him. Bo wouldn't
run a line at all. He wouldn't I'd find a

(30:49):
line track was fresh, and he wouldn't pay any attention.
But Pat had been on some lions. I got Pat
from Willis butt Off in Utah, and he'd been on
these lines, and so he he was eager more eager
to try and trail. And then Bow was bo didn't care.
And I think I caught on Friday night hunting Friday

(31:11):
nights and Saturday right out a hundred animals that first year.
And that was driving four hours each way to go
after putting in five days of slave labor type work,
you know, which it was very impressive to me. And
it was basically bobcats and foxes with so they tree

(31:32):
these foxes and these little oak trees. They do three here,
that's called a great cross fox. And um, there are
a lot harder to tree than the bobcats are. And
but then two and then in the summer months you
had to have something that was really good too to
be able to even trail any of it, because the

(31:52):
trailing conditions got really poor, very dry conditions, very difficult
for most towns to be able to to catch much
of anything in the summer months. And uh, but it
didn't seem to make any difference, that dog would do it.
And so that anyway, that's the the title of trained
by a hound dog was that I was taught by

(32:14):
a hound dog named Bow. He taught you what a
what a good dog was supposed to do. He not
only what is supposed to be, but I was able
to use him to take younger dogs and train them,
and UH and I and and the experience that I
had had prior to this, I did learn that one

(32:37):
of the things that hound under doesn't want to do
with his dogs is get him in bad company. And
up until I had gotten Um introduced to Willis, buttop
most of the hunting that I did with anybody was
his old dogs and bad company. And the Bow was

(32:58):
he was straight as a clean dog. And from there
I started um having other dogs. And you started really
searching across the country I did for for hounds I did.
You would have been now, so you're still in your
early twenties, and that's when you set out to try
to get a sustainable pack of hounds. Yeah, I was

(33:21):
about twenty five years old. I guess when I got Bow,
maybe twenty six at the most. What year would that
have been in the sixties. Yeah, I think I got
bow in sixty three or sixty four. He was born
in ninety. He was born in Paraguld, Arkansas, and which
is where Albert lived. But Elbert didn't have him, but

(33:44):
Elbert owned the father to him. And now you went
and spent some time down there. I did because j D. Reynolds,
this guy in Waco that I got it got the
dog from. He was from Paraguld and he grew up
with Albert Vaughan and j D told me that, uh,
if I was interested in that line of dog, it'd

(34:07):
probably would be a good idea for me to take
off and go back and visit with Elbert, which I did,
and uh I stayed with Elbert for I think it's
about three months, and uh Ever wanted to hire me.
He ever worked in a shoe factory and so that
was pretty full time for him, and he didn't have

(34:28):
the finances or the time to be able to taking
all these wild coon hunts and stuff like that. But
he he figured that he could make enough money to
pay me something and give me room and board, and
I'd stay there and I'd take his dogs to these
to these cop nuts. And but I did. I wasn't.

(34:50):
I didn't. I didn't want to do it. I just
wasn't cut out for that. Uh. And I love these
mountains here and there of course Paragold, Organsas was just
out on the flat lands. And but I did learn this.
He had awfully good dogs and he really did, There's
no doubt about that. And while I was there, I

(35:11):
was able to pick up a pup from him, which
was not easy to do um at the time. And
I called him Sailor. And Sailor was was out of
a female that he called Lula the second. And I
did learn at that time from the Elbert that of
his blue ticks, which he had a number of different

(35:35):
families of them, that those that have that came out
of the the stock of dogs who was sired by
a dog called Floridy Curly, which was owned by a
guy named Jake Size and Coffeeville, Mississippi. Um, he got
a dog named Curly and out of that and from

(35:57):
there he got a female called Lula. Uh And and
I learned that anything that came out of Lula was
going to be pretty hard to beat, especially if it
came to speed. And I took, of course, Sailor. He
was out a little of the second. Elbert also told

(36:21):
me that in breeding, his experience would he had a
lot of it. In breeding in families of dogs, he said,
to duplicate. If you're trying to duplicate a dog, he said,
the chances are you'll see the duplication and the grandparents
before you'll see it in the parents two generations. Now, yes, yes,

(36:45):
and and I could see that um sometimes with the
in breeding with these dogs, that the grandchildren would be
more likely to be like the grandparents. Then the children
would be by the parent itself. And of course, now
Lula the second happened to be excuse me. Lula was

(37:09):
Sailor's grandmother. And as time went by, Sailor kept getting
better and better and better, and finally he passed up Bow.
Of course, Boat had a few years on. He was
getting a little old, but he still did. Sada was
getting faster and faster and faster, and he died at

(37:30):
the age of seven and a half. Um through heartworm
treatment is what took him out. In this part of
the world, it seemed like with the guys that had
dogs that could catch bobcats regularly or foxes, it usually
would take half an hour to get him to go
up a tree anyways under good trailing conditions. When Sailor

(37:56):
got to worry, he's about five years old. I was
done with the bobcat. I mean because I was I
was full time guiding then and it was just lions
and bears, and I didn't have a need or and
interest for chasing bobcats. But I would still have to
hunt the dogs loose to um to hunt to find
lions because or bears, because we didn't have snow over

(38:18):
conditions to find tracks that way, and and they get
on a bobcat. Well, I didn't want dogs out there
wearing themselves out, Jason a bobcat when I'm out there
trying to find a lion. Um And come to find out,
these thirty minutes forty five minute bobcat chases started getting

(38:41):
shorter and shorter and shorter. And the last two years
of that dog's life, um, he would catch thirty five
forty bobcats a year. I don't remember. I didn't keep
track to the foxes, but um, if any bobcat can
still on the ground three minutes, he was on the
ground a long time after he jumped it, and most

(39:03):
of them would be within a minute, two minute and
a half. And that you know, and I'm not bragging,
I'm just dating facts. Dot is how fast that dog?
And that was sailor that you got directly? Yes, And
then I ended up with a um a granddaughter of
sailors who was killed at a very young age, um

(39:29):
accidental death. And this was in Montana, and it appeared
as though that she had that speed as well, that
most dogs wouldn't have. I just I couldn't. I just
couldn't find anybody that or hunted with anybody that had
dogs you could run that fast. It just it was
just everything was a one dog grace once he was jumped.

(39:51):
But anyways, from there, I stayed in California until we
got drun out of here. Um But let me can
I back up a little bit? So what year so
you got interested in hounds, You got a good hound,
started treeting some bobcats and foxes when you were by

(40:15):
this time your mid twenties. And then when did you
start outfitting for Barren Line? Because that's what the that's
what the book is primarily about. It's talking about your
years as an outfitter. Yes, I started, Okay, I started
advertising I'd hurt my back really bad in framing houses,
and I I just couldn't um. I couldn't keep doing it.
So I left Ventura and I moved to this area

(40:37):
where we're out here. That was in um nineteen sixties
six when I moved here. I've been keeping mind, have
been hunting it for about three or four years, been
traveling back and forth. But I moved here full time.
Started running some ads in the magazine, like Outdoor Life magazine,
and I was I was so poor. I was poor

(40:59):
as a church mouse is a sayings go, you know,
and living in the back of my truck at the
same time. But anyways, I uh renting an old shock,
moved into that started advertising, and uh, I started getting
some customers. And you said, a little bit of ad

(41:21):
in the Outdoor Life, said Barren Mountain Lion the Hounds
in California, fifty dollars a month, fifty dollars a month
from one call a mench add and I wish it
was just it was it was just about broke me
to have to pay that advertisement, you know, but you
paid or you didn't get any any others. And it

(41:43):
started to grow from there, you know, and then I
ended up having a U. I guess people started knowing
a little bit a bit about me being there, and uh,
I knew this guy lived up at Sugarlow Village and
he said that he knew I that worked for the
LA Times, and he talked to him about what I

(42:04):
was doing. And they've wanted to know if they could
come up here and I'd take them lyne under. They
run an article in the Los Angeles Times, so you know,
I said, well, yeah, okay, let's do it. And this
was obviously time was a little more favorable to hunt
lions in California. It was what it was a little

(42:26):
more favorable back then the bounty had the bounty had
been taken off, that was in and I wasn't against
them taking that bounty off. I didn't think they needed
to do anything like that. Um And the lion population,
according to bounties, numbers of bounties annually had dropped significantly. Um,

(42:49):
you know, because just like there were years that they
bounty four hundred lions in a year and now they
were down to like a hundred lions a year. That's
for the entire state. So they really didn't need to
be paying people to do this. There's guys are gonna
do it. Anyways, he's doing it for fun. So anyways,
these guys came up, guy named Dewey Lindsay and with
him was this photographer that worked for the HES, a

(43:12):
freelance photographer and he worked for UH basically worked for
a national geographic And here I am twenty five years
old with about three three hound dogs and UH I
got these high powered professionals from Los Angeles come up here.

(43:33):
I want me to catch a line? They said, I
only got three days to do it. In Well, the
pressure was really on because trying to trying to you know,
there's one thing to catch a lion. Were you just
out there hunting and you run into him and you
catch him as a as they become available. But if
you're gonna do this as as a profession and you've

(43:54):
got people coming in and you're gonna you're on a
no catch, no pay, which I was it those days,
no catch, no no catch, no pay you. If you
didn't catch, you, you didn't get paid anything. Was that
common back then or is that just something that you
wanted to know? I know that was common. That was
the way it was everywhere. Um all of them through
the Mountain States. Everybody, no catch, no pay. You had

(44:17):
to show for these people around and pay for their
food and sometimes drive a couple hundred miles each way
to an airport to pick them up and take them back.
And UH, if you didn't catch them a line, you
didn't get paid anything. So that the pressure was on,
you know, and UH made for some good outfitters, didn't it.

(44:38):
It separated them, It truly did. And I caught him
a lion on the on the third day. And you're
just dry ground line hunting, so you're just roaming around
freecasting the dogs on your horse at that time. I
didn't know I wasn't using horse. What what I'd have
to do is I just had to go places where

(44:59):
I knew that lions would frequent and and that's you know,
they're they're kind of a a strange animal in that,
um do you find lines that would certain use certain
areas and airs I close by, they wouldn't even go
and bother over there. And so I would go to
these places where I knew that it either caught lines

(45:22):
already or I had seen lions. I was really looking
for some place where I could find a lion track,
knowing that I hadn't already caught the thing and h
So anyways, we ended up catching the line and they
they ran this story in the what's we called West
magazine to the Los Angeles Time, it's a weekend magazine.

(45:43):
Through that ad, it it generated quite a bit of
business for me. And uh, next thing I knew I
was I was sober, so dull, gone poor, hurting for
money so bad that i'd coast home I'd find when
I'd be driving home, I turned the motor off so
I didn't burn the gas tree going downhill of it.
And the next thing I knew that I could leave
the motor running and you were catching some eight lines,

(46:06):
You could leave the motor running when you go down
the hill. Yeah, yeah, I was really getting rich. You know.
I'd like to say this too, that that was during
the years that I did all this. Um, I wouldn't
trade the memories of that for anything at all. I mean,

(46:27):
it was just something that was just really important to me,
and I I cherished those memories. But I'll tell you what,
I was so poor it took every penny that I
made to feed those dogs buy new ones if I
needed to buy a dog, um pay for gas. Trucks

(46:50):
didn't last very long in those days. Uh, seventy thousand
miles on a truck that I was driving news By one,
brand new and seventy thousand miles later it was pretty
rough shape. So so anyways, from from there, UM, I
stayed in California, UM doing the line in the bearing

(47:12):
and I took the I started hunting bears in northern California.
I'd run into a guy and his two boys one
day on a dead end road down here, this is
in Current County. I just called a lion and as
a young guy with me. His name is Roy Stevenson.
He's still a good friend, and he retired out of

(47:33):
Current County Fire Department, and uh he was with me.
He was it's on his sixteenth birthday. He told me.
He says he wanted to go go hunting and see
if maybe we catch a line together. And it was
it was December, I think, and we caught this line,

(47:56):
but we got a flat tire in the process of
trying to stay with the dogs, and uh, we were
just about ready to leave and we're right at the
end of the dead end road. Anyways, at the end
of the road couldn't be five feet away from us.
And I looked down the road and there's these two
boys standing there with four hound dogs and asked Roy Stevenson.

(48:17):
I said, do you know I know those kids? He says,
I've never seen him in my life, and uh there
was a friendship that is still going on today. The
two boys is Bobby Bridges and Gary Bridges. They lived
in by Reading and their father Jim Bridges, who has
now passed on. We hit it off really well, and
uh so the next thing I knew, I was up

(48:39):
there taking bare hunts and shot to county and Jim
Bridges was giving me a hand at it. And I
ended up buying three of those dogs that we're standing
at the end of the road that day from Jim,
and all of them wonderful dogs, outstanding dogs. Um to
say the least I say, to say they were good

(49:00):
dogs wasn't really much of a compliment. Um, they were
exceptionally good dogs. And so like I said, Jim, of
course he's he passed on. Unfortunately they were. They were
all timber followers. Jim was one of the actually one
of the finest men that I think I've ever known
in my life. You could believe anything he said, and

(49:23):
you can't find any of him that you can do
that with. And if he said a dog was was
a good dog, it was a good dog, and it
was a good dog by his standards, and his standards
were quite a bit above when a lot of guys
standards for good dogs were um. But it was just
a wonderful friendship that developed. And the and the bears

(49:47):
um at that time in these Green Arm Mountains, which
is where we're at, the bear poplace was was very
poor and necessary. They had had a from what I understand,
they had had a drought, a severe drought in the
late nineteen fifties, and they said that the bears went

(50:10):
clear to the San Joaquin Valley in those years. And
in those years they were using the poison called ten
eight to kill ground squirrels and everything else. And ten
eight is a kind of a poison that if a
ground squirrel eats it, and something comes along and eats
the ground squirrel, it's gonna kill that thing too. And

(50:34):
I kind of think that between the drought and the
widespread poisoning ground squirrels in these mountains, that had just
about wiped the bear population out for a long, long
ways away, and it wasn't until about nineteen sixty eight,
which would be about ten years after that drought that

(50:55):
we started finding that was super good. How long did
you just to give an overview, so you started you
started guiding in what year and ended in what year? Okay?
I started guiding in nineteen sixty six, late nineteen seventies.
I quit guiding. I didn't quit hunting. I quit guiding. Yeah,

(51:20):
and um I was in Montana when I quit. So
you guided for about fifteen years or so close to it? Yeah, yeah,
close to it. I know in your book you talk
about you talk about and this is one thing that
intrigued me, was you hunted on horseback a lot um
was that one of your favorite ways to hunt ed
was hunting on horseback with the dogs free range and out.

(51:43):
I did enjoy that. It was, you know, the easiest
way to hunt dogs, just to turn the dogs loose
and let them run down the road in front of
a pickout and the fallen in a truck, which is
very common then in common today, but in iron hunting.
Sometimes with what I was doing, see how I couldn't

(52:05):
catch lines? That just my leisure it didn't make any difference.
If I was out there and called a line, I
didn't have any anyone with me. I didn't do me
any good. I didn't get paid anything. And I was
full time doing this, so I needed a paying customer
to be with me, and a paying customer had to
be there when I caught it. I mean I could

(52:28):
catch I could catch the line the day after the
guy left, and it didn't do me any good because
he left and he took his money with him when
he was when he left, you know. So during those
years I had to go wherever the lions were at
and and it's like most of the hunts were like
one week hunts, and during that week period of time,

(52:50):
I had to come up with the lion. And if
I didn't come with the lion, I just got to
I just got to pay the bill all by myself,
you know. And did happen very often? Did you catch?
Most most people live? You know, I was running. I
thought a pretty high percentage and I'm talking, I'm you know,
I've I hear guys give their their percentages, and sometimes

(53:13):
you you have to question whether there's any truth to
that um because of weather conditions and things that can
happen to you while you're hunting. But on the both
the line, the both line and bearns, I was hitting
pretty close to hum, which meant you if you had

(53:35):
if you had a guy on a line and you're
gonna he's gonna give you five days or like in
this case with the newspaper, they gave three. Um, you
didn't get much time to do that. So you better
know where there's one at. And so to do that,
I had to stay active, actively looking, even if I

(53:57):
had nobody with me. Well, here comes the whole snout. Okay,
I drive Rhodes, I look for tracks alongside the rose
walks and trails, but you can only walk so far. Um.
Then there's other areas that you know that are pretty
decent for having lions in them. Um. But it didn't
do you any good to go way back in the
back country. If you're gonna take what we used to

(54:20):
call them dudes, take them in there to go catch
a lion, because you had to get them in there too,
you know. So so I would take and I'd use
the horse to scout to constantly look see if I
could find a line, if I caught him, and make
sure I let him go, um, but try and keep
tract of it so that you could hopefully find it again,

(54:41):
which wasn't all that often. I seemed like I guessed
lines let them go, and I never even see their
tracks again. They're just gone. You know, I don't know
what so you weren't. I guess that's obvious. You couldn't
use the horse when you had clients with you, So
you were using that horse to be mobile to find
lions for when people came in. Basically, yes, but I

(55:04):
did use them on occasion. Um if as an example, Um,
there's a place that I used the horse every time
I went there, and that was up out of a
place called Johnson Dale. There's a trail they're called a
rent con trail. It was very good for having lions
in it, but the Forest Service would lock the road

(55:27):
getting to it, which meant that you had a two
and a half miles behind a locked gate before you
could get to the rent Cotton trail. And it was
all up hill get into it, you know, So so
you had to use horses to do that, and I did.
I did use horses to take guys in there, and
it was almost always you could find you could find

(55:50):
something going on in there, lines hanging out in some
place in that you know. Um, but anyways, um, how
many did I catch is compared to driving roads? I
caught more driving roads mm hmm, just because you can
travel fast, just it's an efficient way to hunt. It is,

(56:11):
you can travel much fatter. You're looking for an actual track,
dirt track in the road. That's right, Dusty Rhodes. You
try and find these roads of where the roads are
just powder on them, you know, And did you get where?
You were really good at seeing a track? I mean,
I know what I'm hunted with these guys out in
Tennessee that that are there looking for tracks crossing gravel

(56:34):
roads and places where bears skid down banks, you know,
and leaves, and they can see things a lot of
people wouldn't see. They're they're really trained to see like that. Yes. Yeah,
it's like I used to tell people, I said, you know,
I could walk right through her toor deer not even
see any of them because I can't I see their track,

(56:56):
but I can't look up because I'm just look came
down so much that I just automatically look at the ground.
You see what's in the still find yourself doing that
today when you're out. I do the ground right here
on our property. But do I'm just looking at the
ground and see what the what kind of tracks? Any

(57:16):
tricks for finding line tracks with your eyes? I mean
anything you look for? Did they cross? And I'm sure
they crossed in certain places? Or is it just totally
arbitrary where they cross? You know what? Lions? Um? They
they seemed him use trails. They're obvious to you. You

(57:40):
get to the point to where you could you could
you find a lion track? You're walking up a canyon,
you find a lion track, and just going a certain direction,
you look off in the in the distance. You can
just about say if this line has gone that far
whatever that is a mild or whatever it is. The

(58:01):
chances are he went right through there, and and you
almost you can predict where he was. Yes, you almost
always right, just just by trailing so many of them?
You know? And would you? So you you outfitted for
lying and bear? What was your favorite? What was your
favorite to chase with your hounds? I love chasing bears.

(58:24):
Did you more than lyons? Oh that's hard to say. Um,
I'll tell you what I liked about about the lion hunt.
I really did enjoy catching a lion. Where the dogs
would start with a track. There was almost nothing where

(58:46):
they doubt they and you had to have dogs had
good cold noses to where they've done. You find a
lion track in the dirt, and you point at it,
and they stick the nose down there. They couldn't smell it,
but they they knew you were pointing something out and
they started looking and they find a twig that had
touched that animals side, and they could smell it on

(59:09):
that twig, and they'd bark. And you look at the
ground where they're at and there's that lion's track. Mhm.
And you start from that and maybe ten miles later
you're looking at the lion. That to me made it
all worthwhile. That was that was hunting dogs. That's not

(59:34):
that wasn't hunting lions. That was taking dogs and seeing
them at their very finest. And I just loved that. Um.
I know there's lots of lines that I'd caught people
that I had taken in the past. After writing this book,
they had asked me about it, and I forgot all
about it because they were they were what we call

(59:54):
it pop up. You know, you you you cut the
track and it was fresh. The lion wasn't very far
away with you, so that was the easy one. Those
are these pop upportunity to forget about them, but those
ones that where you get out out to those things.
Then you go all day long just working, sometimes in
the summertime where the dogs just just taking both of you.

(01:00:16):
You gotta find the track to help the dog, and
the dog to take the track a little ways where
you couldn't find it, and next thing you know, they
turned that thing into a movable track, and like save
later you're looking at it. One thing that you did,
and this I noticed inside the book, was you did

(01:00:38):
some incredible athletic feats. In my mind following these dogs.
I mean we we talked earlier at the beginning of
the podcast about a hunt where you probably went twenty
five miles by foot in a single day in these mountains.
I mean, were you a exceptional I mean what what?

(01:01:01):
Were you? A really great athlete? And no, as a
matter of fact, is as an infant, I had to
Birkendulsis and they've figured that I would um never be
able to do anything athleticalized. But then I'd Also, it
learned that your lungs can repair, and apparently mine did.

(01:01:24):
And you know I would go places that following a
hound dog. I wouldn't even think of going there. But
it was because the dogs and I were doing this together.
This wasn't a situation where let me put it like this,

(01:01:48):
but the numbers of lines that I caught, I let
a lot, let a lot of them go, Just let
them go. Same with bears. I'll let hundreds of bears go.
I mean hundreds. I don't mean one hundred. I don't
mean to hundred. I mean maybe like three hundred treed bears.
Just let them go. One day, we caught five bears
one day in Montana, which is against a lot of

(01:02:10):
chase a bear in Montana, but we did it anyways,
and we caught five bears, separate bears, not traveling together,
no cubs, let every single one of them go. Um,
it was all about dog hunting. But in order for
me to do this with these dogs, I had to
take people along that would pay me to do it,

(01:02:32):
and to do that, they had to shoot it. So
so we did that. But anyways, I've lost my train
of thought. What was your question? And just being an
athletic feat to do what you did, and you had
tuberculosis as a kid. I did. Now there's a lot
of times, you know, I keep telling myself, no pain,

(01:02:55):
no gain, you know, and um, but if I if
I could hear those dogs, I'm going to him. And
there was one time in my entire career that my
dogs treat a bear and I didn't go to him.
I started to go to him, but had two guys
with me. This is up in Shasta County, and they

(01:03:17):
treat a bear in his place called hell Soul. That's
with the name of that canyon m And that canyon
is so steep that you had to hang on to
stuff as you're going downhill, otherwise you're gonna just start sliding.
And you go all the way to the bottom mm hmm.
And from where the where we started the bear they

(01:03:39):
dropped off into canyon is about feet in elevation to
the bottom of straight down and treated about a thousand
feet up the other side. And we started going down
to these dogs, and I had two guys with me,
and one of them was really heavy set, and I
knew that he was never going to get there. And

(01:04:01):
I really wasn't too happy about going there anyways myself.
But the dogs were just blowing the top out of
this tree and across the canyon from where we were
standing to where those dogs are actually tree, and we
could not have been a thousand feet through the air
apart from each other. But at the same time, we

(01:04:21):
were about a thousand feet in the elevation down and
another thousand feet in elevation back up. And uh so
I asked these guys, I said, done, what's gonna happen
If we get to the bottom, You're gonna be able
to get back to the up to this tough because
if you can't, there's no sense going down there. And

(01:04:43):
they told me, they says, we'll never make it. So
I started yelling and if iired more rifle a couple
of times, and it's really surprised me. I remember how
many dogs I had, and it probably I usually I
usually had about four. I like to during the embars season,
I like to have no less than three, and usually

(01:05:06):
about four. I'd rotate the dog. You could catch dogs.
You can catch bears with three, four or five hounds. Yes, yeah, um,
I'll tell you a little about my philosophy on that,
and which was the same as a few other guys. Um.
But anyways, the dogs came to me, and I was

(01:05:30):
totally shocked that they. Quentin came cost that cannon. But
as we got out of there, you know, and it
comes to numbers of dogs, Will's bet off. He's alliant.
He was a guy she's winning gout. He was a
government hunter, but he also guided people as well, and

(01:05:51):
he he trapped for coyotes. He uses dogs for lions
and bears. Stopped killing lions and bears. And he told
me early on, he said, if you have three or
four dogs that can't catch a bear, you don't need more,

(01:06:11):
you need new ones. Yeah. I found that to be true.
If you got four dogs and they can't catch bears,
you better start looking for new dogs or help for
some of them. You might have a you know, now,
when I say three or four dogs, yeah, three or four.

(01:06:32):
If you've got three or four dogs and they can't,
you need new ones. I'm talking about three or four
dogs where all three or four of them are bear dogs.
Where you've got one dog. There's a lot of guys
got that. They have one dog that's good, and then
then the rest of them is just a bunch of
dogs are just following, you know, and they catch the
easy ones. But whenever they get up to a bad one,

(01:06:54):
pretty soon they get started strung out. And you hear
one dog he falling behind, another one's falling behind. And
then after a little while you hear this one dog
all by himself, and he was, yes, he is, he's
the guy doing all the work. Well, that's where you
need to keep him. And started looking for replacements for

(01:07:16):
the other ones. But you don't good bear dogs. You
can do the job, you know. Um, And but they
don't all make good bear dogs, you know. When you're
talking about these guys like you said in Tennessee on
these gravel roads. Um, there's a there's a method that

(01:07:37):
is very popular today. Saylor was the very first dog
that I had that would do this, and that's strike
a bear out of the back of a truck. Yeah. Yeah,
And and and Saylor would when he started doing that.
The hound hunters in this part of the world, they
didn't believe it. They they didn't believe that dog could

(01:07:59):
do that. And um, but he did. And and then
Bo was doing it as well. Um, but they strike
a bear track that the bear hadn't even crossed the road,
but the track would be maybe five ft away from
the road, you know. But they and and they strike
the thing and then you let him go and they
didn't up catching the bear. Yeah. But prior to those years, um,

(01:08:25):
there was a guy up in Washington State by the
name of D. Moss. I think his first name was d.
He had plots, all plots, and he worked for Zirah
called Simpson Timber Company, which Simpson at the in those years,
they had professional bear hunters killing bears on Simpson ground.

(01:08:47):
What they were doing and what the bears would do,
they would do the Douglas fir trees, they would they
would strip the bark off of him to go for
the Cambian layer of the all the trees. So Simpson
Simpson Timber Company, their solution was kill all the bears.
And D. D. Moss was one of those guys. And

(01:09:09):
and I had heard that he had dogs. They would
strike a bear off the box, you know, they put
them on the box, you know, and drive the roads
and they start them like that. And believe me, that's
a whole lot simpler than that's taking. That was new
technology back in the day. Yeah, Now that's that's like,
that's the way most a lot of these guys hunt.

(01:09:30):
I even I've even been told that you guys got
dogs will strike lines that way. They'll strike line tracks
off the truck. You know. Dogs they learn how to
do it, and they're good smart dogs, you know, and
and they'll they'll pick up on that. They started learning
on their own how to do it, you know. But
in the back, in the back then, you know, in

(01:09:51):
the earlier years, prior to the sixties, I'd say, prior
to the seventies. Actually, um, nobody's had dogs and do
that stuff. Um, except for just a few. Yeah, you know,
like I said, I had a couple of guys probably
weren't giving him much of a chance to do it either,
were they. They probably weren't giving him much of a
chance to do it. I mean, you know, it's like

(01:10:12):
if you if somebody knows that a dog has that capability,
he's probably given it opportunity and paying attention to it
when it's on the box. And if you never did
it before, you just think the dog's barking maybe or right,
you know, you just you just didn't know. Yeah, but yeah,
I I caught a line one time, just not too
far from the alice where we're at right now that

(01:10:33):
um I mentioned it in this book and all right,
um it's on Santa Creek fire Road. And I found
that lions track a couple of days before on the
far south end of it was about I think that
rose like miles long, and uh, but it's an old track.

(01:10:53):
And I just worked at myself with trying to dogs
couldn't smell it, and um, I got about ten miles
of it, and then I so you followed the actual
tracks of the lion with your and I pointed out
to the dogs if they could smell it, they bark,
they try and find it, you know, but you know

(01:11:15):
you're taking like some of these dogs. All right, this
is I'm being very honest and serious about this. You
find a lion track in a dirt road, and the
track is was made when the road was wet in
the mud, and it's not wet now it's dry and
it's hard, and you've got dogs. You can stick the

(01:11:38):
nose down in that thing and smell that lion's track.
They're smelling and responding to attract. It is probably four
days old, maybe a little older than that. Now they
can't trail it much at all. They smell it, they
can't traill it, but at least they're identifying it that
I know that he was here, and you're looking there

(01:11:59):
and and you see them with they're barking and they're
sticking their nose down in the dirt track that was
mud that it is now hard solid. So I would
take and and try and work the dogs and and
see if we can get something out of it. You know. Well, anyways,
I got to the point that I figured it. I

(01:12:20):
got up here to this um telephone ridge, and uh,
I thought, you know, I think I'm pretty caught caught
up to that line pretty closed, which that's about eight
miles I guess from where I first found it. And
uh so I got this friend of mine, Joe Bryan,
who um he's another fireman that good friend still friends

(01:12:46):
and and uh I mentioned Joe in the book. Joe
hund'd an awful. I didn't have dogs, a terrific hand,
a very good hand anything, horses dogs, it didn't matter.
He just tell him to do it, and he would
do it, and he would. He's very helpful. And uh
I called him over and I said, I think I

(01:13:08):
found this line and he's a on telephone ridge and
I said, if you want to go with me, Uh,
I'd like to have you go along. I'm want to
come around from the north side and and drive in
to the south and and start looking. And that lion
apparently met us ine the road because you're driving down
the road and the dog just exploded in the back

(01:13:30):
of the truck. And uh, this was before I had
dogs who were striking bears and stuff out the back
of the truck. But they just exploded, and uh, the
road was hard. He couldn't see tracks of anything. And
I said, well, whatever it was, it's fresh. And I
know that these dogs in the back, I know what
they what they look for when they what they chase,

(01:13:53):
and if whatever it is, it will climb a tree.
So let's find out. And we dumped the dogs out
and it wasn't any time at all, and they had
that line up a tree. You know, so you had
you had trailed him with your eyes for eight miles
you had, yes, you knew which direction it was going.
You came in from the other way and just caught
him red hot. I'd find his track, Yes, I'd find

(01:14:16):
his track where it stepped into the road, and then
he then you'd lose the track. He had no idea
where it was at, and all you knew is that
he either went below the road or above the road.
So that from that point i'd take a dog. One dog,
just one dog gets gonna be out there with me.
And and and at that time it was either said

(01:14:38):
or a bow, and both of them is extremely good
at coal trailing. And just walk the road. Don't get
him excited or anything. You don't want him casting out
going long ways from you. But start walking the road
and just looking, and you see the dog over there
and smelling of a twig, and his dale starts wagging

(01:15:01):
and he's checking it out more, and pretty soon he's
running his nose out about a foot or a little
more on a twig, smelling to see what he's He's
not too sure what he's smelling. Pretty soon they throw
their head in the air and they let out a ball,
and you know you're you're going the right direction anyways,
you know. So from that point you just keep going.

(01:15:23):
And like I said, I was able to do that.
This line was I was lucky. The lion was at
five thousand foot elevation. That roads at five thousand foot
all the way, and it was just traveling heading north
at that same elevation and that road just happened to
be there, and so anyways we ended up catching the thing.

(01:15:49):
Is there any part of the book that you'd like
to tell people about? I mean, is there is there
was your favorite part of the book for you? That
just a story? As we kind of start to wind
down here a little bit, well, all the stories that
I put in there having to be kind of favorites,
you know, and I guess the thing for him to

(01:16:10):
do is get a coffee of the book and read
the thing you know that will tell But you know,
there there is something that I'd like to say that, Um,
I haven't hundred hounds since well, I hundred with Jim
Bridges one um one time up in Susanville that we
called a baron let it go, of course, and but

(01:16:32):
I didn't. I haven't had hounds since the late nighties.
And um, I kind of burned myself out between myself
and my dealings with politics, and politics went all the
way down into fishing game departments, very political and in

(01:16:57):
some cases you find yourself on the outside of the
good old boys club and which is something that unless
you're in it, you don't like it. And I want
to know part of being in it. Um. I got
involved in the Montana fishing game of tagging mountain lions,

(01:17:20):
and myself and a fishing game bologist up there named
Jerry Brown, we got together and Jerry made the proposal
to the Fishing Game department to start um tagging lions
for research. And I was all for that, and I
quit guiding to do that, and I learned a bad

(01:17:47):
side of politics. Mm hmm, some bad stuff goes on there. Um.
You know when you've got to Jerry Brown is a
silo is he's a good guy here, really a good guy.
But when you've got a biologists in charge of the

(01:18:10):
the special of what they call specialty animals the state
of Montana, which were grizzlies, moves, big orange sheep and
eventually the mountain line, I guess they've got in there
when uh, you're conducting a study for them and you

(01:18:33):
asked them what are you doing with this information? And
they tell you nothing? And then they asked you, why
is it that you're not tagging more lions? And you
tell them, well, we're using tranquial lives which in the
beginning days I didn't. I caught a number of lines
without tranquilizers, but that was clear back in the sixties

(01:18:56):
in California. When they tell you go ahead and start
the thing anyway, I said, well, the line is up
in this country. The most of them retreat pretty high,
and uh I don't want to door the line to
watch him fall sixt to his death. They say, you
go ahead and do it anyways, and I asked the question.

(01:19:20):
I said, what do we do? What we tagged that one?
And they say, well, what this is really all about
is too full the general public into believing that them
is a ficient game department. Are doing a lot of
things for the good of the animals. Put down deep inside,

(01:19:42):
all they're doing is trying to fool the general public.
M I heard that out of this state of California,
and I heard that in the state of Montana, and
I quit him when they when I was told that,
I said, I'm done, yeah, and uh so I gave
it up. But Jerry brown Um and I started that

(01:20:06):
Mountain lion tagging program in that state. It was like
five I think, is what it was. Does this day
you can't even find that study. I've I've looked on
the internet to find out if there's anything any record

(01:20:27):
of that particular study of lions, and I find nothing mhm.
But what I can find is where they took my
information and published it along with the map showing every
place that I was catching lions and releasing lions. And

(01:20:47):
when they did that the following year, it was standing
room only in the area that I was hunting. They
came as far away as Florida, dount lions in an
area that I was i to do a study in.
So this is what I gotta say about to the
guys with the hound dogs. Be careful who you vote for. Yeah,

(01:21:08):
be careful what you say. Your videos are beautiful, don't
put them on the internet. They're using them against you.
What happened in California also happened in Oregon. Then it
happened in Washington State, also the Panhandle of Idoh. You
can't chase bears with with hound dogs in the Panhandle

(01:21:30):
of Ido either. The day's coming. If you're not careful,
they're gonna take your hunting privileges away from you, your
hound dogs, just just like here, Just like they did here.
All you'll have his pets. That's all you'll have. And
uh so what do we need to do? First off,

(01:21:58):
careful who you vote for. Make sure you know who
you're voting for. Yeah, Like I say, the these videos,
I can certainly understand. You know, back when I was
doing this, we didn't have videos. If you had anything
of moving, you had to have a movie camera and

(01:22:20):
and you weren't taking that hunting and what you weren't
going to take that hunting. No, you had to have
a movie camera with you and and and in order
to do that, you also had to have the knowledge
of how to use that thing, otherwise you got nothing
out of him. You know, today we've got uh handheld

(01:22:40):
telephones that give you just beautiful videos. Yes, go ahead
and get your videos. Just keep it to yourself. You
put that thing on the internet. These protectionists are seeing
that and they're going to use that against you, just
like they did here. Yeah. Um, I feel sorry for

(01:23:06):
the guys that I love this sport so much, and
yet at the same time they've got shackles on them.
They got a short lease put on these guys for
those hound dogs. And it's a wonderful sport, it truly is.
I just like say, I I cherished my memories, but

(01:23:27):
I got spoiled. I was spoiled, I truly was. I
got to see the best of it. You know, when
I started, Mountain Lion was a bountied animal. Podcasts were
non protected. Some places the bears are non protected. You
could just catch as many as you want, do whatever

(01:23:48):
you want or with them. And today you're lucky if
you don't. Some places you've got to get in a
drawing just to be able to to go hunt them. Yeah,
you know, well we it really is a it's a
wildlife management tragedy. It's a cultural tragedy really that they've

(01:24:09):
what they've done in California with hounds. And I think
it's important that we're here and that we're talking about this,
and that you've written a book about all these things
that people can no longer do. And I think I
think people are so well. Human nature is shortsighted. Human
nature thinks about today and tomorrow and not further ahead oftentimes,

(01:24:32):
and and and currently, I think there's somewhere around seventeen
states where you can run big game with hounds in
the United States. I believe I believe there's seventeen somewhere
in that range. And whether these guys know it or not,
their rights are currently being plotted against as we speak.

(01:24:53):
And and so even in places where it's not as threatened,
it is absolutely written by the current culture of this
of the world of the in specifically this country. And
you know what I say to people, ed, is that
we have to get a whole lot smarter. We wrote
an article in Barony magazine the other day about not

(01:25:14):
posting bay up videos of hounds and social media and
all this. I'm in a percent agree with you. The
one thing that I know that I can do as
a houndsman is clean up my own act. If I
could say it that way, I mean some of the
bad apples inside the hound hunting community that have given

(01:25:34):
people a bad name by being poachers or by being
this or that. And there's there's gonna be there's gonna
be bad characters in any sport, any sport. There's bad
characters in tennis. Uh. But but I think about if
we're being if we're being scrutinized, then Clay Nukeom better
be on his best behavior all the time. I mean,

(01:25:56):
we're being scrutinizing on the way we care for our dogs,
were being scrutinized on, you know, everything, So it's like, man,
I want to make sure that I'm doing everything right.
And then part of what we're trying to do at
Barony Magazine is that if I believe that, if if
we don't create the narrative and tell our narrative, then
the bad guys are going to tell the narrative for us.

(01:26:18):
And that's part of the reason I wanted to come
talk to you is to is to uh. I mean,
hound hunting is an incredible sport. It's an incredible heritage
that we have in this country. I mean, jeez, are
hunting culture was founded on hounds. I mean George Washington
had hounds, Teddy Roosevelt loved hound hunting. I mean, we
have this rich, rich history. And if our generation, my

(01:26:43):
generation doesn't do something different and get a whole lot smarter,
a whole lot wiser, a whole lot more savvy when
it comes to how we handle social media and Internet
and all this different stuff, we will lose it. And
that's what then, and what we're saying is, hey, let's
let's be smart, let's let's not lose it, and let's

(01:27:03):
tell our narrative, scientific base. This is conservation base. Bears
are thriving in North America. Mountain lions where there's good
habitat are thriving. Hounds are management tool that that we
used to manage these animals. And it's a beautiful and
amazing thing, really is, you know, I want to I

(01:27:24):
want to add something here that what we're talking about. Yeah,
we've had outlaw hunters is what we kind of dubbed him,
you know, and I'd have to say that it's not
all their fault. Um. In the twenty five plus years
that I did this, I did this. This wasn't a

(01:27:47):
hobby to me. I was in the woods um um
a dozen years there. I made my living from that.
If I had two nicolas to rub together, it was
because somebody gave me that for taking a hunting. And
if they gave it to me for taking a hunt,
and it's because they got the animal that they were
hunting for or they didn't give me the two nickels.

(01:28:08):
You know. But over all those years I hunted California, Nevada, Utah,
Idaho in Montana, and and all that time, which is

(01:28:28):
like thousands and thousands of days, I think I only
saw three three game wardens three different times. Now, the
woods were left wide open for the outlaw hunter to
do anything he felt like, and he did. He did
do anything he felt like. He didn't have anything to
worry about. Nobody's gonna nobody's gonna catch him. Big predators

(01:28:52):
were just not on the Do you think do you
think it's different now? I had, I mean, because I
would think that it would be different. I have no
idea what they're doing. They kind of turned a blind
eye to it. That's what you're saying. They just didn't care.
They didn't care. Yeah, but eventually that there's some people
came along. They did care, and they had money, and

(01:29:12):
they had a lot of spare time too, and they
really don't like doing what we were doing. They didn't
like that idea. You know, the same people though, the
anti hunting community. Yes, right, but yet these people also
have the ability, through through money, to take and by
legislators to introduce bills to stop a guy with his

(01:29:35):
hound dogs. Well, it's been a pleasure to talk with you,
and and people can people can find this once you
tell us where people can find your book. Okay, um,
it's I have a website and it's by the titles
of the book. You go www. Trained by hound Dog
dot Com. You can purchase the book there or you

(01:29:58):
can go to Amazon, and you can purchase it on
Amazon as well. It makes no difference where you purchase it.
Amazon will cost you more money. And I mail every
one of them, so it doesn't matter. They all come
out of this house right here, and uh so that's
the place that she can go and it'll it'll enlighten
some of you too. Other things we've not talked about,

(01:30:22):
and I'd sure like to see um a lot of
these protection is stopped. I really do. I I have
no interest in going on any myself, but I never
forgot how good it is to do it. So they
can go to Trained by a Hounddog dot Com. And
this is a two hundred and something page book. How

(01:30:44):
many it's about two eight seventy some photos, beautiful photos.
And I just want to say that I was really
impressed with this book. Obviously I wouldn't be here if
I if I was not, but thoroughly enjoyed the writing style,
the storytelling aspect of it. I felt like it had

(01:31:05):
just the right amount of of of of human story
but also hound dog story and hunting story and excitement,
but also kind of this you really got a sense
of of you as a young man, just kind of
given all that you had to this dream that you
had to to live the kind of lifestyle that you

(01:31:26):
wanted to live with your hounds. And uh, and I
admired your diligence and just you're starting from zero and
becoming really a master houndsman over those years. And uh,
and boy, there's so much I wanted to talk about,
you know, I wanted to talk about some of the
the physical endurance things that you did chasing these dogs

(01:31:50):
and staying out way after dark and uh, you know,
coming in after fifteen twenty miles a day on foot
and coming in hours after or dark and cold. I mean,
just some of the stuff that you did physically I
felt like was just incredible And not a lot of
people are are doing that kind of stuff these days.
But no, I just well, and like I said at

(01:32:12):
the beginning, that your your voice inside the book is
strong and and it's clear to just for me to
perceive that you're a man of integrity, and and uh,
just I I really thoroughly enjoyed the book, so I
i'd really encourage everybody to get it supported and then
in this book and you'll enjoy it for sure. It's

(01:32:34):
a it's a great book. And uh, thank you so
much for having us up today. Oh hey, I'm glad
that you're here. You got a wonderful family. I'll tell
you that, thank you. This is really good. Thank you.
I welcome to the opportunity to do this. And I
will tell you this that don on that book, I've
did the best I could to make it to where
it didn't it sounds like a how great I am

(01:32:57):
type of a book, and no bragging or anything like that.
I brought a lot of other individuals into to the book,
people from past that I never knew, but I knew
about him and I I knew the true side of
the to them. I know that not everything that gets
written down is honest. I can tell you this from

(01:33:18):
my point. Every single word that's in there is true. UM,
no exaggerations, and UM, I think you'll find it interesting.
There's some other hound men that you never knew. I
never heard about that. UM, the way that they did things,

(01:33:38):
the dogs they had, UM, I never I never was
color blind. I'll tell you that I I had a
saying that I would tell people when they'd asked me
about different breeds of dogs, and I'd almost always tell
them that I never saw a good dog that was
the wrong color, and uh and I really meant that.

(01:34:02):
And then I mentioned other brought other guys into the book.
Charlie Tant he lived like Ben Lilly and got some
photos of Charlie. I mentioned um Howard Built, and he
was a California state line hunner. I never could find
anything that was ever written about Howard Builting is a

(01:34:23):
lion hunter. But Howard Building had to be good. I
could go by his record, and I could tell that
he caught too many lines to be anything less than good.
And uh uh. But anyways, I entered out a lot
of that killed six hundred something lines of California. Well, no,
J Bruce, Um, he had recorded kills of six hundred

(01:34:46):
and six hundred sixties something. Those are not bragging stories,
those are stories that were documented. It took a set
of ears off of a lion to before I went
down on a piece of paper. But J. Bruce was
one of the he was the very first aid line hunter.
But Charlie lived like a bad person. I mean he
didn't have a house. He just lived out there wherever

(01:35:09):
you wherever he stopped, that's where he lived. But he
still called lots of lions and he did it while
walking to do a No no GPS, no four wheel drives,
no horses, none of that. He just won't. And well,
but so I put that in the book and because
I think it needed to be in there. And yeah, hopefully, um,

(01:35:31):
if you ever get the book, you'll read it. If
you do, I'd like to hear it from me and
see what you think about it. Yeah. Yeah, so if
you get a book, send uh, send it an email
and give him a review on Amazon. But uh, well, again,
my pleasure to be here, ed, thank you so much
for having us, and uh we have it. We have
a saying at the end of every podcast that we say,

(01:35:54):
all right, all right, I'll say it, but I'm gonna
slightly amend it for this one because we're talking about
a lot ends. But keep the wild places wild because
that's where the lines live better. Okay, all right, all right,

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