1-7-24 Small game hunting with Kevin Murphy Hour 1

On tonight's show, Jim and co-host Scott Cronin talk small game hunting with Kevin Murphy, Small Game Nation social media host.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
News Radio eight forty whas welcomes youto Jim Straighter Outdoors, the area's leading
authority on hunting and fishing. JimStraighter Outdoors is brought to you by Massioak
property's heart Reality. For the outdoorhome of your dreams, Call Paul Thomas
at two seven zero five two fournineteen eighty Lynden Animal Clinic, your pet's

(00:21):
best Friend, Sportsmen's Taxidermy. Visitthem at Sportsmen's Taxidermy dot Com. An
Roth Heating and Cooling, a familyowned business with over one hundred years experience
in the Louisville area. Wildlife HabitatSolutions. Check Jim and his team on
Facebook at Wildlife Habitat Solutions and SMIMarine. Getting your vote back on the

(00:41):
water in no time To join inon the conversation, call us at five
seven one eighty four eighty four insideLouisville and one eight hundred four four four
eighty four eighty four outside the Metro. Now sit back and relax and enjoy
the next two hours of Jim StraighterOutdoors on news Radio eight forty w h
A s We came from the WestVirginia coal mines in the rocky mountains in

(01:10):
the West TUIs China. I gota shotgun or rifle in a fool wheel
drive, and a country boy cansurvive. And we could skin a buck
and run a truck line, anda country boy canon surp. Country folks

(01:30):
can survid country boy cat and survivehundred thot cats. Good even me,
everybody. I hope everyone had agreat holiday season. I was out during

(01:55):
What I did best, I wasdoing a lot of honey with rabbit honting,
squirrel hunting with my new little squirreldog and got my co host,
Scott Crowned here with me. Scott, we were able to get out do
a little squirrel hunting. You gotto see the little dog and that was
a lot of fun for me.Yeah, we were able to get out

(02:20):
and capitalize on some of that huntingthat doesn't require as much much stress as
the deer and turkeys and waterfowl.We were able to get out and do
some small game hunting, which isreally the pathway to how all of us
that have some years on us kindof got our start into the outdoors and
enjoying hunting so much. So it'sa great way to get out and we

(02:44):
had some good hunts and got tospend some time together with not just each
other, but meet new friends andcatch up with some old ones. Yes,
sir, And to that point,we got a special guest tonight,
thanks Kevin Murphy. A lot ofyou folks are probably familiar with him on
social media, a small game nation. He is a diet in the Wold,

(03:08):
and that's putting it lightly small gamehunter extraordinary. I'll call him and
Uh, we're gonna talk small gamehunting tonight, all aspects of it,
something that is obviously very near anddear to my heart. That's why I
cut my teeth and Scott, you'revery much the same. We're I guess

(03:31):
you say, fanatics about it.And there's a lot of aspects to small
game hunting. And Kevin has traveledthroughout the country and really across the world.
A lot of you probably have seenhim on some of the Meat Eater
podcast episodes are on the television show. And so he's joining us tonight and

(03:53):
we're going to talk about kind ofall the aspects of small game Honey,
We're gonna talks, We're gonna talkhabitat, we're gonna talk about the traditions,
We're gonna talk about some of thechallenges that small game hunters have encountered,
and that runs the gamut from theinvasion of coats and the proliferation of

(04:15):
bobcats to the way some of theseasons overlap. How leasing of land has
had a very strong negative impact ona lot of folks ability to access property
to hunt small games. So we'vegot a great small game program on tap
party to see me again. Ourspecial guest is Kevin Murphy. Kevin's been

(04:42):
a member of the League Kentucky Sportsmanfor many, many years and he's a
great advocate for outdoor activities in general. So I think you really enjoyed the
night's program. I'm gonna go tobreak here right out of the box because
we got a lot of ground tocover. The break is presented by s
M I. Go see him.If you hadn't already got your boat Winter

(05:02):
Risse, you better get on itbecause kids are coming. As they say,
go see them. They'll take greatcare of you. Tell them,
Jimbo said you and remember you neverget soaked by my friends at s M
I. And we're back on JimStrator out Doors again. We're talking to
that Kevin Murphy Small Game Nation seriousand I do mean serious small game.

(05:28):
Hey, Kevin, thanks so muchfor joining us tonight. Hey, Jim's
got glad to be a part ofthis. I do love a small game
hunting in the state of Kentucky,Tennessee, New Mexico, Michigan, Maine,
just where I get opportunity to go. So yeah, I'm a I'm
a dog guy too, you know, I really that's a big part of

(05:54):
it. I like to have adog with me. See other people's dogs,
you know, the different type ofbreeds of dogs. But I'm a
just a diet in wool, adog hunter. I will go hunting,
you know, without a dog.I don't mind using somebody else's dog or
watch their dog work. But that'sthe two things I like. It's small
game hunting and hunting dogs. Wellthat's the reason we're almost like brothers from

(06:17):
another mother. That's driven my trainever since I was a child. I
like you, you know, I'vehunted grouse and would cock up north and
pheasants south West, quailed down inTexas and doves and what have you done
in Mexico And just you know,I've been hardbitten by ever since a child.
Kevin share with any is how allthis started with you? You know,

(06:40):
how you grew up? And tellus a little bit about it,
because of course I guess you weresame as me. When I was young,
we didn't have deer, we didn'thave turkeys, you know, we
cut our teeth on squirrel and rabbits. Tell us about how you got started,
if you would. Well, mydad he was a hunter and he
was a dog guy, and probablymy one of my earliest memories of hunting

(07:02):
is when I was probably like aboutoh, i'd say six years old,
maybe seven. I think we hada sixty six in Palla then, uh,
it might have been sixty five sixtysix somewhere right in there. Uh.
My dad had a couple of birddogs. He had a porner named

(07:23):
George, and I said her nameMax. He may have been a dropper.
I can't remember for sure because Iwas just a young kid. But
my earliest memory was going out withmy dad and he took me hunting and
it was snowing and we came toa little footbridge across the creek. You
know, it seemed like a riverto me when I was, you know,

(07:43):
small, and my dad he justwent across that that footbridge, no
problem at all. And I lookedat it and it just scared me to
death. And I remember my dadwaved his arms, says, come on,
I'm not coming back through here.You got to come across. And
I looked at it, and Ilooked at it, and I looked at
it, and I seen him goingfurther away with the bird dogs. And

(08:03):
finally I got down on all fourslike a coon and I cooned across it.
So I went across that footbridge.I never looked back. You know,
I've been I've been doing whatever ittakes to get across, you know,
I've been doing so and you know, and that's what humans do.
They go to the other side.Whatever it takes you figure out and you

(08:24):
get to the other side. Sothat's you know, that's what drives me.
But don't remember anything else about thehunt. But I just remember that
footbridge foot log. You know,it was like a huge outlog, you
know, probably like a foot wide, with a flat top and then a
rounded bottom and two rounded sides.It was pretty common to see things like
that. A long time ago.I haven't seen a foot log, and

(08:46):
you know, no tell them whenbut that was probably my you know,
earliest Honting memory. I remember goinghunting with some some friends, not being
able to carry a gun. Youknow, used to you had to be
like ten or twelve years old beforethey would even let you handle a gun.
You went on the hunts, youwatched, you kept your mouth shut,

(09:07):
you helped around with stuff, butyou didn't you didn't have the early
age like you know, the kidswe've got today that's killing you know,
a deer our turkey at five orsix years old. You know, that
was unheard of in my in mysocial group of cousins and all that.
We did not get, you know, our guns till we were like ten

(09:28):
or twelve years old. You know, I was exactly the same way.
And the odd thing about it wasonce I reached twelve, I got my
first shot gun in my first twentytwo up. Till then it was baby
guns and pellet guns, and likeyou're talking, you know, we carried
the rabbits, we carried the squirrels, we retrieved the doves. That was

(09:50):
our initiation. And then of courseafter that they kind of turned me loose,
you know, they said, well, if you're old about to carry
the gun, you go hunting byyourself, and so that kind of got
me started. Did you start withthe bird hunting, did you transition in
into rabbits and squirrels or had thatprogress? Well, like I said,

(10:11):
I had some friends and they hadbeagles and would hunt with them a few
times, just as an observer.And then my dad he got out of
the bird dog business because he sawthat there was less than less quail.
Even way back in the sixties,they flooded the lakes. I grew up
in Lyon County Eddieville, and hisbird dogs got old. He got rid

(10:33):
of them, and he traded fora mixed up her dog from his cousin.
My dad and his cousin they hunteda lot when they were kids with
three dogs. So that's what Ireally got into, is a squirrel hunting
with the dogs. My dad wouldtake a twenty two rifle. He had
a twenty two over a twenty gauge, sometimes just a straight twenty two,

(10:56):
and he'd always make me be theshotgun guy. Of course, Fanny Costs
bought me a topper twenty gauge oneChristmas twenty gauge twenty eight inch full choke.
It shot like a rifle, andI can remember one day day I
had it. And you know,you didn't practice when we were kids.

(11:16):
You just were handed the box ofshells. You went out there and started
hunting. There was no such thingas going to a skeet range where I
left. You know, you justwent hunting. But I was having trouble
hitting stuff. And I remember thissquirrel was running from a dad and he
was coming up the side the treeand I took a beat on him and
I shot him and I took hishead off. And then, you know,
I realized then what that shotgun hadthe potential to do. That.

(11:41):
You know, I didn't know awhole lot about chokes and you know what
shotguns do because we didn't pattern gunswhen we were kids. You know,
the shells were, you know,too expensive. I remember we could go
and buy a box of wandas ashell made in Czechoslovakia, and they were
clear, yallow plastic and you cansee the payload in there, the shot,

(12:01):
the wad, you know, allof it in there. It was
clear plastic. And then they wouldwork good at my single barrel. Then
I finally graduated to an Isca pumpa thirty seven, but it would not
they would not cycle him out.It'sica thirty seven. But like I said,
I was the kind of the designmajor shotgunner, and my dad would

(12:24):
shoot him in the head and theytook off running. I was supposed to
to shoot them, you know,running with no practice whatsoever. So I
have no trouble doing that now.But when I was ten or twelve years
old, it was a pretty goodtask for me to do that. But
it's all part of learning. Ohyeah, definitely. How about the rabbit
equation, How did that come intoplay? You know, probably we just

(12:52):
didn't have when I grew up,there was rabbits were kind of spotty and
stuff. Like I said, Ididn't do a lot of rabbit hunting.
We mainly stuck with squirrel hunting.Probably when I was about, oh,
i'd say eighteen nineteen, twenty yearsold, I got a pair of beagles
and they were just kind of likejust not that good to put it mildly.

(13:13):
They were some Warfield reds, andI rabbit hunted with some friends and
we do pretty good. And thenI got out of the rabbit hunting business
and really got into the rabbit huntingbusiness. Probably in twenty I retired from
a public works job. I wasa manager of water and sewer utility,
so I got out of that andstarted working at a rock for I think

(13:35):
I got a beagle hound first forsome squirrel dogs, so that I was
kind of like liking the ham partof it. And then I run into
some young kids at work and theyhad rabbit dogs, and then really got
into a twenty twelve twenty thirteen,I've been going up to southern Michigan.

(13:56):
I don't think I think I've missedone year since twenty twenty thirteen that I
haven't been up there. So wealways been able to go up third in
March after our season ends down here, and so you know, you keep
dogs three hundred sixty five days ayear, and we have such a short
season down here with our rabbit seasoncutting off on this end of the state

(14:18):
February tenth. Were up till likeI think nineteen ninety four. I think
that's when they changed that used togo all the way to the end of
the year, and then I don'tknow the rhyme or reason why they did
that, but they cut a rabbitseason back, you know, two weeks
almost three weeks in ninety four.It's been really detrimental. I think to

(14:39):
rabbit hunters with people like, hey, we don't have that limited amount of
time with a deer season overlapping.I forgot what year that they brought deer
hunting into Thanksgiving. That was prettymuch the death blow. I think the
small game hunting with dogs and familiesgetting together and doing that type of hunt
because I grew up with, youknow, the family going squirrel hunting.

(15:01):
My dad, my brother, he'snot a hunter, but he would hunt
Thanksgiving morning. I didn't bite friendsover. My dad might have a friend
come over and we would go outand go squirrel hunting Thanksgiving morning, then
come home and eat a big meal, and then I would go out again.
I don't do that anymore, butI was Christi's dear season now,

(15:22):
but it really interrupted small game hunting. I think that Thanksgiving activity of getting
together. Of course, I knowpeople get together now to go deer hunting,
but it's not the same as goingto field with hunting dogs, whether
there's squirrel dogs, bird dogs,or rabbit dogs, and having a fellowship
with people that comeing in and eatinga big meal. So, yeah,

(15:43):
you're exactly I grew up with thattradition as well my mother's side of the
family. My mother's a Huber,and they owned those orchards and farms over
in southern Indiana there in the andthat was a big family tradition every year,
was that Thanksgiving rabbit hunt, youknow, And I grew up around

(16:07):
that, and of course, I, like you, you know, Holidays
was a big time for me todo that hunt. And we'll talk a
good bit as we will sue theprogram tonight about some of those challenges,
like you mentioned about the overlap ofthe dear season and whatnot. Kevin,
what is your greatest passion at thispoint? Would you say? I know

(16:32):
you love all of it. Thatgoes without saying, but is there one
particular thing that you would say reallycharges you up at this point? Just
something I haven't seen before, youknow, Like just two years ago,
three years ago, I started goingout west to New Mexico with the long

(16:53):
dogs watching them run a jack rabbitdown out in the desert at forty and
I are you know, you're luckyif you catch one out of the four
rabbits that you get up, youknow they're jack rabbits. I call rabbits
and hair the same thing basically.But you know, I like seeing seeing
new dogs. I was over inuh Sweden last year and got to go

(17:18):
went over there. I was good. I got to go elk hunting with
a dog, which they're hunting rulesand regulations. The way they hunt it's
way different than what we what wehave. They're really not about killing all
that much stuff. And then whenthey hunt, they can only use one
dog at a time in Norway,so you can't even train a puppy.

(17:40):
You know, you can't even havean untrained dog out there with a trained
dog. So I fell in witha friend over there and invited me to
come over and spend ten days withthem. So we went, what bring
dog to thegel camp originell Ca.Yeah, you know there they what they

(18:03):
do is they trail them up andthen they bam or they run them by
you. So I got to dothat and the guy told me, sa,
man, we're probably not going tohave that good of hunt, said,
this is a young dog inexperience.He says. I tried to get
them to to let their train dogloose where you could see at work.
But you know, I'm over thereand a friend and not paying money to

(18:26):
do things, so I just goalong with the flow. But we went
across the border to Sweden. Meta Swedish hunter over there and he had
bred up a lot of dogs tomeet his purpose is to catch foxes.
We hunted a township area. Youknow, we're not hunting public land.

(18:48):
We ever got a moves. Igotta go on a quick break. I
want to continue that conversation here afterthe news if we can, Folks.
This break is presented by Massil Property'sHeart Realty. Paul Thomas is a broker
all kind of farms, vacation homesand wildlife properties for sale. Check them
out an mp H A r Trealt dot com. Then we're back and

(19:21):
again we're talking with it Kevin MurphySmall Game Nation and Kevin for the break,
you were talking about transition out ofNorway into Sweden. Continue on with
that little story there if you would, Okay, I will, But I'm
gonna answer your question. I likehunting with a good working dog that is
a great dog, doesn't matter.But he's a bird dog, a mountain

(19:45):
lion dog, a hog dog,deer dog, or whatever. I'm not
tied to any particular breed fan youknow, I like that boy or the
other, but I like a gooddog, whether he's a duck dog whatever.
But I was. We went overto Sweden and hunting with a guy

(20:07):
and he was hunting an area aboutthe size of LBL which is about one
hundred and seventy thousand acres. Itwas a co op that belonged to the
local township and they were able.The way I understood it is get the
resources off of it, like thewood and any minerals of that nature,
to put it into their tax baseto help pay for the schools, the

(20:30):
county roads and systems. That away, and he had like a lease
on it and he had a cabin. I don't understand how it all worked
out. I didn't have to geta license, he said. I was
hunting under his license on that onthat parcel of land, and we fox
hunted. He had a line offox dogs, some walker dogs that he

(20:52):
had bred up with some black andtans, and he had bred some Dobermans
into the bloodline the foxes. Notthe foxes, but the wolves were killing
these dogs because he could only turnone loose at a time, and the
wolf pack would come in there andtake his dog out. So he found

(21:12):
a very athletic dovermant branded into hisline of his dogs. And when I
was there, his one single dogwe had already killed I think two young
wolves by itself already they so hewas successful in doing that. You know,
they're not as large as the timberwolves that we have over here,

(21:33):
but they are you know, verycapable of killing you know, the local
game. And we went fox hunting. We would do like two shelves one.
It was like early shift. We'dget up at six in the morning
and get out, turn out atdaylight. We'd hunt at one o'clock,
come back in for a couple ofhours, take a nap, and then
leave out at dark and then huntto midnight. And we turned out four

(21:56):
times, and we dined the foxup the first morning and I crawled into
a den with a what he calleda den pistol. It was a ruder
single six that he could only putone shell in. It's time to be
compliant, and Uh, I crawledin there and took the fox out,
and then uh that night, UHwe ran one into another den and we

(22:23):
dug into it with fry bars andpigs and uh he had these little flusher
dogs. He would change his asone running fox dog up and then he
would have a flusher dog, whichis a den dog. And there's there's
two types of of of den dogs. One's a flusher and it's it is
bread to go in and whatever youhave in a den is to flush it

(22:45):
out. And then there's the brawlersthat go in and they locked horns with
whatever's in there and he will haveto dig them out. But he had
two little flushers. He had oneflusher and it was like a complete circle
around its belly on its hide,and a badger had tore the hide completely
off off into on the dog stillattached to it, but completely loose from

(23:10):
one from the belly button all theway around and you could see the scar
where he had it, and soback together and nursed it back to health.
But that was really an experience thatprobably a few Americans you know,
have ever been able to to goto and just people like me and you
you know they're dog people. Uh. He he really liked his dogs.
He took a lot of pride inyou know what he had he had done

(23:33):
with the dogs, and very goodhunter. I learned a lot from him.
We shot another fox. Uh.We had ran a couple of foxes
and they had got away from thedogs, and he turned a new dog
loose on the old fox trail,and we were sitting there talking and I
told him, said, I'm justgoing to walk with the road here about
a quarter of a mile where Icould see around that bend. And they

(23:55):
were sitting down there talking. Ofcourse, you know, I'm I'm new
over there. I want to takeit all in. So I'm that up
there with a with a double barrelshotgun, you know, uh, waiting,
just waiting, watching, And finallyin a in a far distance is
a mountain I could see from theprobably you know, twenty miles away,
pretty pretty good. I forgot whatthe elevation was of the of the mountain,

(24:15):
but I could hear the dog comingback, and I could hear the
bar get louder and louder and louder. I looked up, and here was
that red European fox coming up overthe hill and come right by me,
and I give it a couple ofbarrels of twelve gage and dispatch dead.
So we turned loose four times onfour hunting trips, and we got three

(24:40):
foxes. Which I thought was prettyoutstanding to be seventy five percent on a
predator, you know, trying totrying to outdo a predator. So you
saw Capricli over there, you know, that's the world's largest grouse, sir
up about fourteen pounds. You canimagine taking a turkey and cross it with
a pigeon. To me, that'swhat they look. And I was supposed

(25:02):
to go dog hunt with those anduse some type of like a norwegin Elle
camp some type of trend dog,but that fell through. I got to
go Mountain hair honting with I thinkit was a Lunderhound. Only fifty puppies
were born that year. It's oneof the rarest dogs in the world.

(25:23):
We rented about the sixteen kilometers,which is about ten miles. I saw
it one time, still in myhead, just plain as day. It's
about three quarters white with a quarterof it modeled brown, and it come
by so I said, you know, we got out and built up a
fire and turned the dogs loose,and it's kind of more like camaraderie and

(25:47):
just they're not too concerned about baglimits and catching something whatever. They just
like being outside. The people ofNorway all lean in Maine. Man,
I didn't see any heavy set peopleover there whatsoever. I mean, you
see people out walking from one villageto the next. I was out there

(26:07):
with the guy he was seventy fouryears old that had the rabbit dog.
His family was out walking. Hehad two three daughters and his wife and
their kids. People come by.There was one guy and he was like
seventy something years old, and therewas some big race somewhere he couldn't couldn't
go to, so he just decidedto race there in the little community that

(26:30):
we lived on. And it wassome kind of of co op land there
too. It was more like apublic land sitting there. I got a
honting license to Norway. I wasn'ttoo complicated. All I had to do
was show my hundred safety card andthat I was confident with a firearm.
Saw. I'll send him some matchresults where I shot in an f clash

(26:55):
match, which is a thousand yardcenter farm match off in like forty five
bucks. I think it's what thehunt license was for Norway. I have
a hunter's number now, so Ican always go back and use that number
and renew my hunting license. Sopretty neat experience gun wise, no semi
automatics in Norway, so you know, a little bit different than his country,

(27:21):
so you know, you're pretty muchit's going to be like a boat
action gun. My buddy had alever action gun. He was an American.
He married a Norwegian lady over there, and they kind of frowned on
him with his lever action, butit was legal to hunt with Norway.
Well, you've been fortunate enough.We'll do a lot of travels, that's

(27:42):
for sure, and we'll talk alittle bit more about that. I'm gonna
go to break. You're after break, I want you to tell people about
your desire to create the Small GameNation concept and that advocacy or you've done
to get people involved. So ifyou're with me through this break, we'll
tell people a little bit about that. Right after this, this break is

(28:04):
presented by S and I Marine thatare eleven four hundred Westport Road. Go
see them. They'll take great careof your vote, and remember you never
get soaked by my friends at SMI. Edwords back talking with Kevin Murphy,
with many of you folks probably familiarwith on social media, Small Game Nation.

(28:26):
Kevin tell us about small Game Nationand why you started it and why
you're passionate about being an advocate forsmall game honey. Well, I guess
it goes way back when, likein the early eighties, I finally was
old enough, I'd graduated college,had a little extra money, and I

(28:49):
got to go on a hunting trip, you know, peasant hunting trip up
into the Dakotas, and I'd getup early in the morning and go out
and goes world hunting. And timeI would go with some kids and they
would go raccoon hunting at night,so I'd go coonuting with them, and
you know, wherever I've been hunting, you know, whatever I'd go.

(29:10):
I always try to like small gamehunt too. When I was in Africa,
South Africa in twenty sixteen in thesummer, I was over there,
and I was there for about threeor four days. I started noticing,
Man, they've got gray squirrels overhere. They're probably a third smaller than
what we've got, but they've gotthey've got gray squirrels here. I said,
it would be a shame me comeall the way to Africa and not

(29:33):
kill a squirrel. So I toldthe pH is there, I said,
hey, I want to get asquirrel, and they just wouldn't give me
any bandwidth. And I mean Isaid a couple of days, said hey,
what do it take to get asquirrel? And finally he told me,
says, man, we have neverever had anybody that wanted to squirrel
hunt, and says, we don'tknow what kind of paperwork it would take

(29:56):
to get a squirrel, and wedon't really know anybody that would let that
you on their property to kill asquirrels. I had thought that they had
some Egyptian geese over there and askif we could hunt them. They had
never hunted though, So here Iam with a professional hunter out there,
and I'm just a novice waterfowler.I'll be a novice waterfowler to die.
But there was a local Rednecks ofSouth African and he had some kind of

(30:22):
decoys that he had painted them upto like an Egyptian geese. And I
remember I was taking the pH outthere and said, well, I says,
we need to sit up here,probably by the center pivot on the
windward side. And we had likeI think four or five decoys, maybe
six, and I said, look, we'll put them out there about twenty
yards twenty five yards and they shouldcircle around and come right into the into
the wind and lay right into them. And they did exactly like I said

(30:45):
there, and he was kind ofamazed, and he's, you know,
he had never hunted hunt him beforeor seen anybody hunt them. But like
I said, I've always had apassion for small game. I met Steve
Ranella at twenty twelve at the NRAShow Saint Louis, Missouri, and Steve
he told me, like a coupleof years ago we were talking. He

(31:07):
says, do you know why Ireally liked you when I met you.
I says, well, because Iknew about squirrel hunt and he says,
no, he says, you toldme that you you were predicting that we're
going to have a really good orlseason this year because the mask crop should
be on point because we had nolake frost and we had a pretty dry
spring where the trees will pollinate.So Steve, you know, he told

(31:32):
me, said that's why I kindof gravitated towards you immediately when you told
me that you were predicting that thisis the outcome of the squirrel crop we
were gonna have this year, whichyou know, ever since I was a
kid I started watching. You know, the food source for the squirrels is
you know that what makes a breakthem the mass crop. Yes, whether

(31:52):
hiccor, nuts, acrons, orwhatever, but that's that's you can't kill
them out. You know, youcould have unlimited limb living on squirrels and
it would not affect them whatsoever inmy opinions. But like I said,
I made a couple of episodes withhim on some things, and then I
just thought, well, I needto like bring attention to small game hunting.

(32:13):
There's a lot of skill involved,a lot of things to learn.
You learn a lot of woodsmanship.I'm a die hard twenty two guy.
I still pack of twenty two tothe woods. I just kind of think
it's sacrilegious to shoot a setting squirrelwith a shotgun, whether it's hickering that
season or whatever. I'm just youknow, I may get to that age
someday where I have to do that, but right now I'm still thinking away

(32:34):
and I'll give anybody a run forthe money. It's kind of funny a
young boy come up here and huntedwith me from Arkansas, and I've been
down there hunting with them the lasttwo years, and we'd be down there.
I've got a br semi automatic rifle. He's got an ar platform,
and we'll be it on a clearcut, maybe on top of his honey
vehicle, waiting for the dogs topush a deer out. And you know,

(32:57):
we're up above and I'm kind ofnew to this, trying to get
a feel for the terrain and thenwaiting for the dogs to push the deer
out. And he would like tosee it a lot of times before I
would, because you know, he'sused to that type of honey. You
know, I haven't really got agood feel. Two trips to Arkansas or
two seasons down there. That doesn'tmake me qualified as a deer dog guy.

(33:19):
But he was kind of giving mea hard time. And so when
he came up here to hunt withme this year, just a couple of
weeks ago, we went out thereand I poured it on his butt.
We go out there and we wentout hunting, I think four times,
and we killed thirty two squirrels.So I bet he only seen two out
of those thirties. You know,it's just what you get used to seeing,

(33:39):
you know. And he told me, he said, man, I'm
not. I've never hunted with asquirrel dog, you know whatsoever. But
I may pay for it next yearwhen I go back down there hunting.
But I sure got my money's worth. Every dog will have it today.
And I had my day when hecame up here. But you know,
I just wanted to share what Iknow about small game hunting and you know,

(34:02):
and it's more than honey. It'skind of like the way of life
with me because I like old cars, four wheel drives, wooden boats.
I like adventures, food, meetnew people, do things, and you
know, my world does not revolvearound getting a limit of squirrels, a
limit of rabbits or seeing what Ican kill or whatever. You know.
I like to cook do that,so you know, it's Murphy Small Game

(34:27):
Nation if you want to follow me. And I just like to show people,
you know what I do. Youknow, and I still feel like
I'm like sixteen eighteen years old.You know, I can't go all day
like I used to. I've hada a nee replacement. I blew my
shoulder out last year with a bicycletear and I'm like seven months into it.
I don't, you know, havefull strength back on that it hurts

(34:49):
me some days. I'm sore whenI get up. You know, I
get going, and I still keepgoing, you know, following my dogs
and making new friends. And that'skind of like like small Game Nations.
I made Little rabbit hunt video isas good as anything out there. But
you know, I kind of sawthat I don't want that to be monetary,
a business or whatever. Just thingsthat I could do that I could

(35:10):
share with people so well that people. That's what I found admirable about what
you're doing, because we need folkslike you advocating for small game hunting and
one of the Fords, like yousay, it's it's your tradition, it
gets in your blood. And youknow, I've hunted all the world just

(35:30):
like you have. And uh,I still keep coming back to small game
as my biggest passion because like you, I'm a dog man. I love
watching good dog work. I mean, there's just no more enjoyment than watching
beagles give a voice after a rabbit, or seeing that squirrel dogs up on

(35:51):
that tree saying here he is knockingout for me. You know, it's
just it's about it as good asits course bird dogs. All of is
part of it. So we'll talkabout that a lot more here in the
next Dire Kevin. But uh,I'll tell you what hats off to you
for being an advocate for folks thatpursue small game. We're gonna tell him

(36:13):
a lot about how to do it, habitat guns and all that coming back
from breaks, So stick with us. This break is presented by most O
Property's Heart Realty. Paul Thomas isa broker there. He is a hunter,
he is a fisherman. He knowsthe type of properties you're looking for.
Check out his listenings at mo Op h A r trealty dot com