Bear & Hounds Outfitter

As the Maine season comes to a close, Heath talks bears, cats, guiding, and hounds with Outfitter, Kirk Rogers. Kirk gives the run down on how his season went, the good and the bad. They hit on some great topics. 

• Client success
• Mountain bears
• Mixing packs
• Old school bloodlines
• Running trash 
• And much more

There’s nothing like having a good conversation about hounds and hunting. Don’t miss this episode of the Journey.  

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[00:00:00]

Welcome to the journey where we are going to talk about a lifestyle with dogs and throw in a few life lessons along the way. Whether you're a hound hunter, a bird dog enthusiast running setters, pointers, retrievers, or a flat out running dog junkie. This podcast is for you. I am your host, Heath Hyatt. A certified law enforcement canine trainer with over three decades of personal and professional training and handling experience.

It's time for me to pay it forward. So grab your leads, lace up those boots, and come and join me on this lifelong process of teaching, training, and learning called The Journey.

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Let's just get started guys today. We go take a trip back up North. I like it in Maine. I've always liked it in Maine. I've made several trips was up there this summer. Just had Brandon Mitchell on. I follow this fella on Facebook and Instagram. I keep up with his stuff. I really admire the dogs the videos that he puts up.

And, if you want my opinion, which doesn't matter for much, what a dog should look like, you pull his stuff up. This is what I like to see in a dog. Decent legs, not overly heavy. Color doesn't matter, but it does matter. Nice blanket back, red heads just some phenomenal looking hounds.

So today we got Kirk Rogers on [00:03:00] and he's with Baron Hound Outfitters up in Maine. How's the weather up your way today? sHe's in the forties. Yeah. It's been cool, 28, 29 in the mornings. It's bear season's over, deer season's here. Down time for the dogs, but for me and them recoup and maybe I'll get some deer hunting in and maybe I'll get a little coon hunting in with a couple puppies and just mess around and let them have a Have the deer season off and move forward into cat season.

Yeah. Let's and I know you said you were in your downtime trying to recoup from, month and a half of hard hunting. So when did you, when did your season start? When did you first start having clients? How did that work out? And it looked like, through your social media that you had a fairly decent season.

We had a good season. It's how season starts like the second week of September. And I had Four guys came over from the country in Norway, and they brought two hounds, [00:04:00] and we had a hell of a ten days hunting. They they can go through the woods, not much of a language barrier, there's just a little bit there every once in a while, but We killed them a pile of bears we did kill several big ones first one we treed was over 500, and treed him in a 25 foot dead spruce.

Top busted off and had a bunch of long walks and we had some short walks, but in that country I hunt you can I think 1. 8 was the longest walk to a tree and I think the shortest one was 450 yards and through the season with clients I had some other guys with hounds come up and run and some succeeded and some found it a little rough and needed their dogs a little bit more in shape but we all in all it's you know When you go to a different ground, you expect different things.

Yeah, that's right. I was going to ask you what the guys that brought [00:05:00] hounds in what was the main difference? Was it because they weren't in shape or just different country? I think it was, I think it's a little bit of a different country when you get up over 2000 feet to 2500 feet in the mountains, you start getting into a lot of rock and boulders and ledge and all that mixed thick spruce you can't walk through.

And then when you get on top, all that stuff is wind damage, so you have a lot of fallen blowdowns and you need an athletic, agile dog to get through that. And one, one, one fellow that came up from Western New York there. He he said he thought my dogs were part kangaroo because standing against the rock I don't know about a six foot boulder Two of my dogs just gracefully jumped right up there and just started licking my buddy's face, And he's that's what it takes in this country.

And I'm like, that's what it does,

And I want to get [00:06:00] into your dogs and a little bit, I want to, talk a little bit more about your season and hunting what and I know you're hunting a bunch of young dogs. We'll get to that. What any hunts that really stood out to you with your clients, what anything that, that, that kind of sticks out in your head that was either memorable or This is a, not the way the things are supposed to go.

Cause we know we get both varieties of that. Oh, they ain't perfect. They don't walk on water. I did have a couple of crash races, and you're going to get that, and we did mix up a few dogs and, we had a little couple training incidents, but that's going to happen, and I don't consider any dog a hundred percent broke.

There's just pressure and competition, and. And you're gonna get that with young dogs. My buddy Shane walked the dogs into the beach and I said I'll man the road, in case they dump over on the other side. I can pack them up. And he took four dogs. He took three bitches and one young male dog and walked the beach.

And he said it was [00:07:00] the best day of the whole season for him is because he sat on a rock and listened to him cold trail, jump. Go off the face of one mountain, down in, across a big stream, pull up on the next mountain to 2, 900 feet, made a hook, and come right back down and treed right on a bench right beside a hiking trail.

And it put us only at 6 uh, for a hike. But he said, I listened to the whole thing, I listened to the dogs bait up for 15 20 minutes and then move a little bit and tree, and he was pumped up. And, I think he was a little more than pumped up. He was wound up a little bit. And I had two, two races.

Cause in that country, you're going to get them. You're going to listen to them trail out. And the next thing they're up on, it's gone over the mountain. You drive around, they're either still running bayon or the tree. So you don't get that. But we had one day, uh, just him and I, him and my buddy Shane and I, and a client, and we dumped him out on a bait and they went out and [00:08:00] then he checked the camera and we.

Baited it was like, yeah, 3 o'clock. It was Monday morning. So we dumped them out, and they went out trailing, and they come back, and they got down in the beach, and they started trailing good, and we let them go out. I think it was 1. 1 mile, when they jumped, and then it was instantly caught, and they just walked and baited.

Shane goes back in, because he wanted to delete the card on the camera, and comes back out and says, I messed up. He said, that was 3 a. m. Sunday morning. Now, I'm not saying them dogs took a crack at all, I'm just... They had enough scent to move them out and get them into the beach where that bear was probably feeding.

And we listened to the whole thing. We listened to them bay, and bay, and then settle right down and just nothing moved. And then they went to treeing, and they were two and a half miles away. And it was just one of them days, and you never get that in that country. And we got to listen to the whole thing, and then when we pulled up to a gated road to hike in, we got away from the river about three tenths of a mile, and we could hear them.[00:09:00]

A little over a mile hounded on the side of that mountain and we listened to them the whole way in and You'd have thought they were 300 yards from you. They found it so good. Now that elevation it puts you in a lap, doesn't it? Yeah, and you know when I had some other good hunts where you and a young dog stayed right up with them faster Older dogs that I can't say older one's gonna be one just turned three and the other one's gonna be three in December They probably ran five miles and we listened to quite a bit of that race that out into a big bowl, came smoking right back parallel to the road and they caught it and on the GPS it was just a, just one triangle so nobody was really in front, nobody was behind, and then they just 15 minutes of bane and they treat it, and you just appreciate that when you get them to listen to the whole thing, especially when they've covered that much ground.

So how many days a year do you get, do you actually hunt? How many you think? Well, I try and hunt as many days as I [00:10:00] can in the summertime training, which this year we had so much rain. But I try and hunt every day of training season, which is July and August. And then. Pretty much every day during kill season.

There's another, I think, 42 days in kill season. And then during the winter I, I cat hunt just about every single day, from good conditions to poor conditions. And that's basically, I think that helps the young dogs, the puppies, learn how to cold trail, and you see it quicker. It brings it out of them.

When you can, I like to put them on a few coons, put them on some cats and then switch them over to bear in the cold trail. And just seems to be easier once you've worked it, once you work them on 20 cats during the winter, I don't really care about killing another cat. Dogs caught one a couple of years ago with 42 pounds, that's a monster cat, but just go run and have fun.

We, I do that pretty much [00:11:00] at least three to four days a week all winter. The cats, the bobcats, and that's middle of December, end of December till the end of February. And and then it's downtime, but I just, I don't use any leashes. I take leashes to a tree. I'll tie him back training season.

And just, if the bear's comfortable, the dogs are comfortable, I just start unhooking and I tell them, we're done here. Let's leave it. I hit the tone button and let's go. Now I do have a couple that want to sneak back and you got to give them a little juice. But I've walked in on bait up there during the summertime and just started catching dogs and toning them back to me.

And I got a couple that don't want to quit and I got to get a little electricity on them, but it doesn't stop them. Then I just hook them all up, bail walks off, I sit down, I let the adrenaline come out of them dogs for 10 or 15 minutes, I hook them all, and I said, let's go, and all six right to the truck.

Yeah. I think, [00:12:00] it shows when you spend a lot of time with them. Yeah, I think you're explaining something a lot of people don't let happen is, you've got to let that prey drive Dissipate, you can't just do it when they're still in that state of mind. So I think you're taking that break and letting them calm down as a huge plus.

aBsolutely. Even if you get to a tree and pet them all up and you're there for a half an hour, taking pictures and videos, it's just like you, just like during kill season, the bed is in the tree, he's already dead if you pull the trigger. He's caught. It's the hunt's over. I want to get pictures and videos and you get some of them.

You can take a thousand pictures to get one awesome picture. Yeah. And that means a lot to me, yeah. So how many... You can fall back on that. I'm sitting here scrolling through a bunch of your pictures now. Just looking and, there's [00:13:00] quite a bit, you've got some really good, and I noticed it, I was, you and I talked a little bit before, but like in most of your pictures, you only have three or four dogs.

I've seen five in a couple of pictures. That's all you need. Yep. I got six dogs and I got seven actually, and I might run four today and give the other three a day off or hold them in case they need to pack up, pack a couple in. If you're feeding the right three or the right seven or six, you only got to run three or four.

That's right. And it's just, it's ground time and you can see when they need a break. You can see when that dog, you're going to give it, he's going to give you what he can give you, but if you run them five, six, seven days a week, you can see they need a day off or two days off.

And then it, the whole game changes again. You can see it in a step and I've been feeding that a nutshuck like you are, and as a matter of fact, I just ordered a pallet. I got to pick up the first one [00:14:00] next week, and I add supplements to my feed, and it doesn't matter what I ever fed over the years, whether it was Carina or black gold I add supplements.

I I believe in that canine super fuel. I got a few dogs that need a little more fat in them, so I'll add that dine. Thank you. I'll give them a little splash of B12. I'll mix some canned dog food in. So they'll eat, cause canned dog food, it really isn't no nutrition. It's a lot of moisture and they need water.

They need that to recover. Yeah. And I think the best out there is that a nut shot. Yeah, it's it's good stuff. I seen that you commented that you were going to get another pallet. What blend are you feeding? I ended up getting 35 bags of the 2616 and I got 30 bags of the 3025. Yep. Yeah. And, I just, the protein you have to watch.

You can see it in the [00:15:00] dogs during the summer when it's hot. They just can't burn all that protein. I'd rather have a little bit, I'd rather have less and more fat. But you never get that combination. That 30, 25 is about as close as you can get, but the 26, 16, if I got to add some dine, if I got to add whatever, but I faithfully put that canine super fuel in the dog food daily with water.

And where do you get that from? I, oh, I ordered it online. It used to be able to get an eight pound container for 93 bucks, but now it's down to two and four pound containers. But it's definitely a supplement that I add, when you're running every single day, this year I had fellows bring their dogs, so I give my dogs a day or two off, watch theirs, and then pull out the whole steam heat afterwards, that's all,

yeah, so how many clients did you run this year, do you know? I had 26 total, [00:16:00] and we killed 24 bears. One guy was looking for a real big bear. One guy had to go home. I take it back, 27. We ended up treating a big bear in New Hampshire. The guy had passed during the week. Other clients had taken.

He killed a big bear with me last year, 450. He had a blast. He's coming back next year. And then had one that had to go home. Emergency. He had to fly back home. Oh. I wish he'd stayed, but he's coming back. I told him just come back next year for nothing. And then I had another client looking for a big bear.

Everybody's always looking for a big bear. If you got them, you can get on them, but then big bears don't stay on baits, and we did a lot of walk hunting, and you're getting on 100, 150 pound bears, 200 pound bears, but trying to find that monster is, that's a unicorn, if you ain't got them on bait, I've been lucky a couple of years ago, we rig struck and treed one and it was a 600 pounder, Last day of the season, [00:17:00] we got lucky that way, off a rigged strike.

But I've had some I've struck off the rig. We had that one this year. I went into the bait and I got a 250 pound bear and dogs went in, cold trailed and went out of there fairly decent and covered a lot of ground. And we ended up treating one over 500. I don't know where he come from. If he was coming to the bait and it made a turn or what, but that's the joy of running a bait sometimes.

Yeah. I'm sure the client didn't mind that at all, did they? No, he he was pretty wound up and then we killed, oh, let's see, I think we killed four that had white G's on them this year. Oh, yeah, I commented on one of those because you, that's a rarity. You don't see a lot of those.

No, and when we got lucky, I had Katie Gilley shot a bear. It was a 160 pound bear. Last year she shot a small bear, her first bear. Matt, her husband Matt, I get my lobsters [00:18:00] off during, during bear season for for the client. Huh. And we just worked out a deal that way and Katie was going for a grand slam this year.

Last year she killed a bear, had a white bee on it. Wasn't a big bear, but it was her first bear and she was happy to take it. This year she got a nice bear. And we rolled it over and I was like, two in a row, she had white on that one. And then she went on to, she killed a cow moose a week or so ago. So she's on her way to her grand slam, which is a turkey, a deer, a moose, and a bear named.

Oh, nice. And we did kill one that was like 350, 380. tHat had a lot of white on his chest. And and then we actually, we killed one. I had a first time client, he killed a bear. Bear was coming down the tree when we got in there and things get wild west and he took it and It had a New Hampshire Nuisance bear tag in its ear and a white bee.

I said you just hit the unicorn [00:19:00] 140 pound bear, but you know had a beautiful coat and some of these bears we killed this year No fat on them And then we'd get ones that had 60 or 80 pounds of fat on them, 8 inches of fat. You think they just hadn't hit the food source good yet?

I don't know. They were hitting baits and then they're in the beach and back and forth. And you're thinking the donuts and nuts are going to put them on. Then they're getting in the beach nuts and they just, we had so much rain. So walking the beach, and this is just my analysis of it, is Any other year, you're walking the beach and you got, whether you're walking the beach for the egg corns, you can see where the bears are just raking and digging everything up.

Because you have a loose leaf pack. This year we had so much rain, the leaves were packed, everything's laying on top, so they didn't have to paw for it, they just went around like a vacuum cleaner. Walking through the beach. Normally, you're looking down through [00:20:00] the hardware and you can see that stuff that's turned up.

This year, you couldn't see anything, so you had to be on it. You had to be on it, but I just hunt my dogs loose. And I hit the tone button every once in a while on them. Just, I want them checking in and let's all just work together. And, I get some certain spots I like to walk and I like to walk them in a certain way.

I like to keep them in check and that's just the name of the game and years of doing it. Yeah, no, it's that, it's we kind of hunt site. Of course we can't bait here, but we early season, we do a lot of rigging because the bears are out checking the berries going to, timber cut and moving.

And then after, after the food starts falling, it's, you put your boots on and go, cause that's what you're going to do. Yeah, exactly. And you need a good pair of boots when you're doing it. That's right. Yeah. So just a little bit more about your outfit. Just, so how long have you been guiding and are you only doing [00:21:00] bear hunts or do you cat hunts too, or you just cat hunt just for pleasure?

I strictly hound hunt for bears. I don't take any bay hunters and I'll take a few guys that cat hunting, I'll just have clients that have come bear hunting that want to just come and get, cat hunting is. It's all about conditions. And then you got to have that guy that wants to kill a cat or wants to gum cat hunting, he's got to be able to take that time off when you call and say, we got conditions, I don't push that.

I just, there's this Paul Laney's, probably the most successful in the state of Maine. He is a hardcore cat hunter, but he's in a big, bigger snow belt than I am, but he travels. He travels with us. No. And he's got a list probably a mile long, right? I just do it because I like to do it.

And I just, it's just more training for the young dogs, and I'll rotate everyone. Then you get that one that's exceptional because a real cat dog is born. He's not made, but my thing about it is just, you'll get that exceptional [00:22:00] dog that is a cat dog and you're going to go through a lot to get that one.

It doesn't mean they're not a super bear Hound, but. I the cold trailing aspect is, that's just a big thing with me. It just, it brings that nose out at a young age. And I watch your videos the same thing. When I go feed my puppies, when I start feeding my puppies, when they're five weeks old, I have always have a piece of bear hide in my freezer with a fat out and I rub the fat.

Right on the bowl, and feed him. And then when I take him outside, I'll do a drag, and they get a feed bowl at the end. And then all they have is a hide at the end of it. And I do the tall grass. I'll get some hot dogs, a Vienna sausage, and I'll just broadcast toss them.

Out in that tall grass, and walk them puppies, so they get the nose in the wind. And I just watch that pup that's got that, picking that, picking his head up. And all of a sudden he's come up with a [00:23:00] piece of heart dog. That might be the one I want to keep. They can pick it out of the wind.

They're usually going to make a rig dog. aNd I've been fortunate with these dogs. I can put any combination up on top of the box or outside of the box. I like them on top, but I don't know if that's the nostalgia thing, they strike just as well out the side, but I think you reach a little more.

They reach a little bit more ground when they're up higher. They pick that out of the wind. Yeah, I agree with that. I like my dogs on top. In fact, my box is set up where they can't stick their heads. They can stick their noses through a four inch slot, but that a way I can shut my box up.

But my dogs, I like them up top. Yeah. You just watch how, they work. Yeah, that's right. No if it wasn't. If I had a lot of ground and a lot of dirt roads and minimal people, I would have a strike cage on the front just to [00:24:00] watch them, just to watch them. But with that being said, with all the liberals out there, I, there's always a right place and the right time for that, right?

It's like certain videos up, some should, some are fine and some should never be on. That's right. It's just, there's too many people against it, and I try and, if I end up on posted land, I just, I knock on the door and just tell them, this is a walk of shame. I don't want to be here, I don't want to interrupt your day, I just want to go get my dog.

Yeah. And 99. 9 percent of the time, they say, go ahead, and I'm, I'll invite them if they want to go, and some landowners will go right in and take pictures and bring their kids, and, Some just say, go ahead and, have a good day and thanks for asking. And in the truck, I go. Yeah. So if I got to hunt country that you're going to end up going for a long walk, I'd rather go for a long walk.

It's always good for your heart, isn't [00:25:00] it? Yeah. It's good for the hot knees. After you've roofed for 30 years, my knees are, I had to get stem cell shots with my knees last fall. Kirk, I wanted to ask you and I know the answer, but I want our listeners. So when you're cat hunting your younger dogs and you're, and I know you run off baits, do you ever have them switch over to cats?

Let's see, they rigged and ran three cats this summer. And I see the cat, I don't, you can't chalk them for that. During the winter, I'm finding tracks, putting them on tracks, walking them on tracks. And if you run a cat during the summertime, you run a cat during the summertime.

And you can figure that out real quick, can't scold them for it. But now when you go to hunting season, when you're allowed to bait, you don't see that, that much at all? Oh. Three years ago, I went to a bait, I come out of the bait, it was just, I [00:26:00] didn't have anybody hunting with me that day, other than I had a spot one client, and I come out, and I said, there is an absolute monster on that bait, and I dumped him, and they went right in on that bait, and I didn't have no camera on it, so I didn't know what time, and they went right out of there screaming, and I knew I was done.

They run for about a half an hour and then they were treed. I'm like, I'm not calling that a 600 pound bear by no means. I walked in there and they had a big cat treed. So by the time I got them picked up, out of the woods, back in the truck, that bear had come out from behind the bait and he was headed for the mountain.

So I ended up dumping him. I get, rig struck it. And I never check for tracks. I never look. But I just happened to see the track, in the mud across the road. They ended up a mile and a half, stayed up for two hours, and they finally treated it. And they treated it in about an 18 inch spruce tree, about 15 feet off the ground.

It was a mile and a half, pretty much straight up. If they hadn't run the cat, we'd have probably had him beside the road. Give him a little head. [00:27:00] They had to give him a sporting chance, give him a head start. Yeah, they gave him a head start, and they, yeah, they threw me under the bus on that one because we never get out of the truck till 8 30 that night.

Oh Yeah, and my buddy Shane called me and he's like, how you making out and I go we got a big bear bait up right now and they treat him I said, we'll see how long he stays and he says I'm on my way He left the job site go 40 minutes home Then he drove over an hour and a half to my truck him and his buddy Grabbed my GPS and packs and they hiked in I already had two packs with me and by the time they got there We had it By the time they showed up, I couldn't roll him over to skin him anymore.

We were trying to, two of us were trying to pull him with leashes and we couldn't even move it. So we ended up standing in court and packed him and headed off the mountain at four o'clock and then we got back to the truck till eight 30. iT makes for a long day, doesn't it? It made for a long day.

And I am so glad it rained the next day. Cause I put the Hunter off [00:28:00] till Wednesday. That was a Monday. Give you a chance to recoup. Yeah, and that's the last thing I want to do is kill a bear that big and have to pack it out on a, on the first day of the season, get to get your legs and back used to that stuff.

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lEt's get over to the dogs a little bit. Um You, you're running walkers and I'll, at first I got to ask, and I don't know, you're breaking up really bad. Okay. There it is. It was echoing, but now it's good. So did you not have a dog go missing last year? A couple of years ago I did.

And you never did find him? Never did find him. And then. He his brother, it was the same cross, different litter and they were 7 months apart. So his younger brother got killed on a Wednesday and he went missing on Friday. I walked into the country, with a beep box trying to beep and the GPS had gone dead and I was getting so much bounce and hollering and screaming and just trying to get close.[00:30:00]

I just, there was one spot I just could not get up over, and I needed to get up over onto that Appalachian Trail. And I just couldn't get up over it. And hiked out, and I said somebody's got him. So I contacted wardens, park rangers, everybody, and never found him. Never found him. Do you think a hiker picked him up?

That would be my guess, I had, so 15 to 20 years ago, I was at a store and I had my dog. They used to have a, had an eight foot bed truck with a four foot lengthwise dog box. It went right out to the bed, but it was only four feet long. And then I had a tie down board behind that. And I had three dogs tied out and woman pulled in and every day, she was from out of state.

She was a hiker. And she made some rude comments to me, and I was just pumping gas, and I looked at her and just calmly said, You ever seen a fat marathon runner? And by the time I [00:31:00] got done pumping gas, she'd come out and she apologized to me, and said that was probably one of the best analogies that a person could ever get.

And I said, Look, they're athletes. I treat them like athletes. And I just try and address that to anybody that has something to say, some dogs are gonna get run down a little bit. aNd you just gotta, you gotta address that situation. Get some weight back on them. That's where that dine is 47 percent crude fat comes in, add it to the dog food. Try and get a little meat back on them. Give them two or three days. Yeah. And I think you, you do some things, now we're talking about dogs, you do some things that I do, and I don't think a lot of people, I don't know, the guys that I hunt with are not very good at it, but they'll run their dogs five, six days a week, three or four weeks in a row.

When I see my dogs are getting run down, or I see that they're, if I see they're not performing like they should, I give them a [00:32:00] couple days off. As much as I hate to, and then I'm not hunting for a couple of days. That's why I try and rotate and I'll run three today and four tomorrow, mix them up and that way I always get dogs to hunt, but you've got to give them that day off.

They need it. yOu can only push them so much and I don't think I could, I'd push myself all bare season, six days a week hunting and we had some long days, we're blessed with a few short days, but. I don't think I could have pushed myself one more week. I'd worn myself out that much and now I'm back ready to go hunting again.

But you got, you definitely got to take care of them dogs and treat them like athletes. They need fresh water. They need, wash their pans, their dog food pans. If you get your dogs on a chain, I, when I feed mine, I throw mine back out on the lawn, but I bleach them twice a week, dip them in a bucket of bleach and water and scrub them [00:33:00] down.

Cause, a dog on a chain, that dish hits the ground, I feed all mine on top of the house, the dish hits the ground, the chain brings it by, it gets in some feces, then that's on the dish. And when you get that on the dish and it just adds up, or rain and mud around their yard, and I rake everything out daily, rake everything out and keep it, I treat the ground monthly, all spring, summer, and fall.

I just try and keep them as healthy as you can. Yeah. I think, cleaning most of my, mine are on gravel or pavers, I've got pavers in a lot of my pens which kind of makes like the concrete pad, but. Maddie she was this week, this weekend and this is something she loves to do and I'm not sure why she does it, but she loves to clean the dog bowls.

So she'll go down, she'll clean all the water buckets and she'll clean the water buckets and she'll go and clean all the food bowls. And she does that pretty [00:34:00] much every other weekend. She's got her hand in it doing that. There's nothing wrong with a nice clean dog bowl. And the buckets, I had a horse girl tell me, take a little bit of Listerine and dump it in the water bucket.

Like during the summer. Cause that helps with algae. Yep. I wash them out three or four times a week. Afloat, flushing out the old, day old water and putting in new, but a little bit of that helps with the algae. Yeah. No, and we do the same thing. We do the exact same thing.

So that's good. So what, those good looking hounds you're running. What's your bloodline? What, how did, where did you start at? Did you start with the same bloodline that you're hunting now? And how long have you been running dogs? When I was 16, 15, coming on 16, I bought two pups off Joe house and they were off in house Clinton, hearth ball and banjo bitch.

[00:35:00] And I acquired another one. I don't know. So many years down the road, it was very similar, but, and I did have a couple of straight off and leper. They were good dogs. I just a little too much hyperness for me. I like the Tom and Clint. And there was, there was some new England dogs here in Maine uh, guys in Vermont guys, New Hampshire, they'd get on and bought dogs off your house and some Harold Dickinson, loose fruit stuff and anyways, then dogs have been bred down through and, kennel names always change, you can trace that, I take the big generation papers and I start highlighting the house and try and highlight some more down through and see where I'm at, but predominantly that's, there's more house blood in these dogs and I just tweaked it over the years and, I took a little break there and I had running dogs for a long time too, coyote hounds but I never walked.

One dog, One type of dog the running dogs. Oh, and I never bred three dogs to run a dog I just my mind is just you breed a better running dog [00:36:00] or you breed a better tree dog and I mean it just No crosses ever going to be a hundred percent I'll cross half brother to half sister.

I got a couple puppies right now that is off an old bitch, off my old Taz dog. That was, he was in Bear Huntin Magazine, legendary deceased, and he was probably as good a dog as that I ever went to the woods with, not just because he was mine, he's just a machine. And I've got some dogs out here that are directly off him still, ten years old.

So I'm trying to do the best I can and breed back to something that's I got him in it, or my old fighter dog that went back to, that was off in Hawthorne, was off in Hondo. And right now I got a nephew cross, I bred the half brother, half sister cross, I bred real, real tight. And I got a bitch out there that's two bitches out there that are the same cross year apart.

They got three or four shots of [00:37:00] pads in them, three or four shots of Hawthorne. They got. I got Kate, which is double whip, a double rougher, and I don't know, it seems to work. You just, you gotta take him, you gotta hunt him. It doesn't matter if you go get the best pup out of world champion bloodline, if you don't hunt him and don't spend time with him, you're not, they're not going to know anything.

It's just like a kid. If you don't, if you don't help that kid along, teach him to tie his shoes, read a book, do his arithmetic, he ain't gonna be that smart. So you gotta spend time with him. I spend a lot of time with these puppies, all of them, and just taking them everywhere, I'm going to go to church before I throw them in the truck.

I'm going to go see my grandkids, I'll throw them in the truck. I'm just going to take them for a ride on a Sunday and ride around, look for cat tracks. They're on the front seat of the truck, they're in the dog box, they're in the house. anD if you can't take 15 20 minutes of the day and spend a lot of time, it's just, if somebody does that daily, you will see [00:38:00] the difference.

Yes. In raising, they don't learn nothing on a chain, they don't learn nothing in a pen. Yeah, I just on several of my podcasts, I've said five minutes a day works wonders. Absolutely. And one of the things I wanted to ask you, because you mentioned a dog so my, I had an old dog named Ring.

And he was the same in the he was in bear hunt. Steve Fielder done an article on him. In bear hunter magazine, so ring was a mixed up dog, but ring's top side was lipper and in course the other side went back to the ball and Barney, but I've always said this Kirk and I believe it that if you can get houses, Clint and your dogs, or you have it in your dogs, you will get a trail dog.

Absolutely. Absolutely. If you can get houses, see. Okay. First ball and banjo, Clint Tom, Tom, you're gonna have dogs [00:39:00] at frail, you're gonna have dogs at this. And I never put cameras on my base until a couple years ago, but I need young dogs. You go in, but it's all in condition. You can see a bear during the summertime off road.

It's 100 percent humidity and 90 degrees and be there 30 minutes and they can't even smell it on the ground. It's all about barometric pressure. It's all about conditioning, any moisture, that humidity I think eats up a lot of scent and does it quickly. lAst summer I had a rigged strike. You could feel the dog box almost coming out of the truck and I dumped him.

They had the bear caught 150 yards off the road, walked him another 150 yards and treated him. Went in, patted him all up, took pictures and video, brought him out, put him in the truck, drove down the road five miles, got the same exact rig strike, dumped him, and they cold trailed for a mile and a half. I believe it.

I can't smell that track. You can't smell that track. yOu gotta rely on them dogs, and [00:40:00] you gotta trust them. I've dumped him off the truck, and I can tell by the look in their eyes if it's junk, some of them won't come off the truck. And I'm like, then why did you just open?

We're not going to do this today. That's right. And I've had days that it's just textbook bang, slamming, rigged strikes. If your young dogs don't run junk, you're lying to yourself. I Want a gamey dog. Do I put up with the trash running? Absolutely not. But they're going to rig it.

They're going to run it. You just have to, you're just going to have to put a handle on it. And that's, that's going to, if, if you're a true houndsman, that is part of the process. Like I'm like you, I don't, I used to get tore up, torqued up when my dog was running jumps and now I don't care.

No, if you're out there, I don't have moose and stuff like you do. Our bobcat population is it's not the best either. We do have cats and I have treed [00:41:00] some here and there, deer, deer and coyotes are our main thing. And I've said this, I tell our group this all the time.

If you can't break your dogs off deer, then that's a problem because every corner you go around, every fence post you go around everywhere, they're everywhere. Our deer population is threefold what it should be. And, I take every opportunity to work on my dog, whether they hit it or not, whether they strike it or not, I stop my truck, I turn my young dogs out, and as soon as I see that behavioral change, very light stem pop, I get them, they come back to me, I pet them up, I put them in a truck, and I move on, and but I used to get tore up when my dogs run junk, and now I'm like, until that dog's, four years old, five years old, I know, Even if I break him or trying to break him that I'm still he's still gonna that gaminess that prey drive is Genetically programmed and I know that it's gonna happen [00:42:00] Hey You just got to get them on the right game and be able to read your dog Read what they're striking on you know so the third week of October Boom, I'm getting, there's coon on baits, that coyote comes through, and you got bears.

Yep. And, the third week of October, every bait was, fishers were showing up. jUst everywhere. Did they run one? Oh, yeah, they did. And I watched two of my, two of my dogs are gonna be three. In October? In December. I watched them just, they were going out trailing, there'd been a bear there, five hours.

Quiet as a fisher. And I was like I'm going to cross my fingers, but I just dumped all six in there. I said, they'll go, they ain't gonna bother with him. And then I'm, then after I dumped them two young males, I was like probably should have held on to them. And dog handler 101, and they get out and I see the other young dogs keep going.

And then I see my female and young male come right back, the ones that are going to be three and they come right back to the truck. And I knew I said I'm gonna let them finish it all. They finished [00:43:00] it. All right. They had a fish retreat. Also, it was only 500 yards and they got they got an attitude adjustment and away we went, but i'm just gonna I don't shock my dogs unless I see what they're running Exactly, you get on a sow and a cub and they're running circles and you think you're running a coyote That's right.

i'm not taking the game if a cat pops out. So be it I'm, just gonna let them finish that cat race whether they catch it tree it or they get out run, you know It's that's something I run during the winter. I'm not, I'm not going to push them to do it during the summertime, but if that's what they get on, then so be it.

I can tell you 15, 18 years ago, I ran every subspecies to a black bear you could run one morning. I am not kidding you. They came out with porcupine quills. Three young dogs come out with porcupine quills. They treat a coon. They smell like a skunk. They run a coyote, they chase a moose and they ran a deer.[00:44:00]

And all by 10 o'clock in the morning, you want to talk about coming on court? I was beside myself. My hunting partner says hunting partner says, I'm going home. I said he said, tomorrow's a new day. And he goes, I can't believe you just haven't totally lost it. If a man was going to have a heart attack, that'd have been the day to have one.

They were on fire. Oh, they were. And then they, I just, I get out with a cattle prod and struck it across the side of my dog box and they all cowered down and I'm like, it don't matter. They had electricity put to them all day long. They just get goofing up. And I went about two miles and they struck run and treat a big bear.

I petted him up and then it was like, I had no trash problems the rest of the year. I got another system. That's all at once. And I'm like, I'd rather had it all at once and then daily, but yeah. It's, that's just, I have a friend of mine, he says you'll tell the dad before you tell the good.

And I'm like, you, you just gotta be that way when somebody's asking me about puppies and[00:45:00] you've got great looking dogs, and I want a puppy. And I'm like, look, they don't walk on water. It's all in the handler. . You gotta be able to read them dogs and spend time with them. And,

and it's hard for me to send puppies, people I don't know that don't have, . It's just and I'll ship them all over the place. I got some that are supposed to go to Spain next year. I got a guy in Africa who wants four. He wants to fly me over. He wants me to bring four puppies to him and nice.

I send 'em to country of Georgia, which is Russia. thE boys that came in, nor from Norway, I think they're gonna want one or two, Idaho, some guys in Utah, Nevada, New Mexico. Want some. They don't walk on water, but just hunt them. That's all I can tell you is just hunt them. I think it's the hardest thing, um, for me is you got to put them in hands with people that are going to hunt them [00:46:00] and give them every opportunity to be successful.

And if you don't do that, then, you're not really being fair to the hound. Nope. nOt at all. Not at all. There's some boys in Michigan I don't know how many are out there, but there's they've got some, they've made some good dogs out of them. And one kid actually called me the other night and he says, for a young dog, which would be a little mate to my jet dog that got killed.

He said, she's just super cold nose. Now people may believe it. They may not. But When that jet was seven and a half months old and little Taz was 13 months old, I was using that jet dog to rig with. A molecule of bear scent, that dog would lose his mind on the box and you could let him off.

And I ain't saying he found every one of them. Sometimes they had to cut an older dog with it if he couldn't find it. But he'd find 80 percent of them and he'd just smoke that track and be free. And it was just a year we had a lot of egg corns and the bear [00:47:00] were moving. And they were crossing the roads, going to the river because that was pretty much the only water source, and everything else was dried up and it was just constant. I just put a lot of bears to him and he was just destined to be just, a legend. He got killed at two years old. Yeah. Matter of fact, I had a friend of mine, a lot guy from Danny Coger from West Virginia. One day and we struck a bear and I dumped him and they went.

80, 90 yards and swum across, I don't know, 40 feet of water on the stream and started trailing. And he dumped in behind me and we ended up all run for half an hour and treed and the bear was trying to cross the road and we kept turning him and we must have wore him out turning him and he treed. I had a 200 yard walk and we got in there and he thought that was pretty good and he said, boy, this is.

Good young dog. They say he ain't bad for seven and a half months old and he just, his eyeballs got big as sauces and he's I turned my four year old in behind a seven and a half month old puppy. [00:48:00] I said, he's a rake dog. But, that's just trusting your dog, when they got it, I try and push them, but sometimes I do push them too hard, but you gotta watch them pups, they'll buck an ankle and they'll get full of fluid and then, that ankle's always gonna be swelled the rest of their life.

A little bit goes a long ways and might push them a little extra day or two, and then give them a couple of days off. And, you just, you got to do that. You just, you got to have that feel for it when you get them young dogs that are just rock stars. Yeah. Putting them in the woods is the main thing.

You've got to, you've got to put them in the woods, give them opportunity. liKe I said, all the dogs that you've mentioned, I've had dogs out of Loose Bruce and Hondo Lipper, Housebred and. Like a lot of the dogs, a lot of the same dogs that I have are, that's how they're, that goes back in their bloodline.

Starting with good genetics is number one. And I [00:49:00] really, like I said, I really liked the looks. I guess what size what size are you looking for? What are some characters we've got over the cold night? We know that we got to have a trailing dog and you've got to have, how much grit do you like?

How much size do you like? What are those things that you're looking for in a dog? I like leg, I like a leggy dog, but I like an athletic dog. You know what I mean? I like them females that, 38, 50 pounds, 40, 45 pound females. Perfect for me. Males 58 to 68 pounds. I don't like anything bigger than that.

60 pound males. Perfect for me, but it's the athletic, you can see it in when the, I call it when they're puppies, you can watch that dog float. he's just graceful when he runs, you know what I mean? That dog don't seem to hurt himself. And you'll have dogs that get a little bounce in the hip, and then the dogs that they're wore out at five years old, in the mountains.[00:50:00]

I Just, I want a dog that's athletic, agile, graceful when they move. And they just have to be that way when you're hunting the mountains, the flatter country swamps, a bigger dog is probably a better dog. They're a little bit bonier, a little bit tougher, I like the medium.

Medium, medium bill dog, medium bone. And as far as grit, you can't hunt dead dogs and a man can only afford so many vet bills. And I got enough, I got a patch of mountain, every year or two, I got to take one trip to the vet, cause it's beyond my capability, but hard bark and fast dogs that will put pressure on a bear is.

What I'd rather feed day in and day out, they get in there and they're 8, 10 feet from a bear and they're working on, they can get away from them. thAt thick green stuff had to get away from them. Bear might not catch them, but when he charges them, they run into them blowdowns and then they can't get away and they get, [00:51:00] I can't say they get run over, but you don't want to put the hematoma on the ribs or something from, running into a tree.

But and my dogs get caught, they get caught, they get holes. And some are more than you want. And I just want them to, respect, they got to have that brain. So they get a little respect for the animal. And one of the things you had said before is that the, and I know I've noticed this when, with my dogs, some of the lipper tighter, lipper bred dogs, or a little bit more spastic.

Do you see that? Yeah, I'd pass on that. Yeah, I just pass on it. I just

But I just, the house is chief, the Tom Clint. There was a dog down in Massachusetts Jim's high time ranger, which was at a white Beck's Clint, which was out of houses Clint. And he was a big [00:52:00] black and white dog and a strong built dog. And he threw a lot of bad dogs. And that's, I have a buddy of mine in Vermont.

He's probably got the heaviest of it in his dogs and, they predominantly come out black and white they trail good, they bay good, hard tree dogs, good rigged dogs, in Vermont they can't bait, so they're rigging all summer long and then, boom, fall comes and they're walking cornfields and they're walking apple orchards or they're walking the beach, and then dogs adapt well, but I got some of that in my dog.

It's just, I don't know I'm maintaining it and I just, I try and look at them faces and try and make a good draw for, I keep them registered because I want to just see, what I'm falling back on. Yeah. No, I can totally agree with that. I got a couple out here that I didn't [00:53:00] think they had to know, but hitting two, three years old, they just.

They really shine, as far as cold trailing, and, I don't know, I guess I have never been without a cold nosed dog so, so it's hard, you just keep hunting that dog and keep pushing him and, I go to a base and it's a four, five, six hour old track, I dump all six out. I dump eight.

Young dogs and all, they all need to grab a piece of the pie. And they just, they seem to work good together and it's like a swarm of bees once they all figure that track out and they don't stand on their head and I can't have it. I can't stand a dog that stands on his head. That drives me absolutely nuts.

thEre's an outgoing track, find it, grab it and let's go. And you got them bears coming in and out and in and out and in and out all night long. But there's that one outgoing track and I've been fortunate enough that they grab it and they go and they. If they come back in the road, the bears walk the road.

So I'll walk them down the road, road them? Walk them? [00:54:00] Pick it back up, or you'll watch them zigzagging back and forth the road. They got it. They just start opening, but I got a couple that when I start walking them down the road, they'll hit that track and they'll open back here, back there.

But once they get it out of the road, they just doop, and away they go. It's just like a swarm of bees, they just all, they all pull and yep, that one's got it. Let's all go and they just work it and get it going and the game on. But like I said, they don't walk on water.

They have their days just like anybody. Nobody's perfect and dog game either. That's right. Kirk, with that, is there anything you want to leave us with? Like I said, I. Glad to hear you guys had a good season. And like I said, I've really admired the dogs from afar. And, um, I appreciate you to get a chance, come up next fall.

I May take you up on that. And I like to go hunting. Yeah. You we'll definitely get some hunting in. [00:55:00] I don't know. I like hunting with different people. Yeah. I hunt all summer by myself. I got one or two young guys that go with me. And my buddy goes with me and me, none of them may want to own any dogs other than a coon dog or a beagle.

That's about all. I run all summer and then fall, I get plants and I like hunting with some other people and seeing the dogs work and... Yeah, we may have to do that for sure. Oh, you're more than welcome. More than welcome. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your hunting with us and the dogs with us.

Like I said, it's so funny that you're running. You've got more of it in your bloodline than I do right now. I've, mine's filtered out through I've lost some older dogs, didn't get them bred and I've lost some of that bloodline, but I really like what you're running.

That's been in my bloodline for, almost 30 years. So I can see some of the exact same things you're saying. And that's very That's very [00:56:00] interesting to me that's the same dog that you're still running. So I really appreciate, I like hearing that, I like hearing the stories and the dogs and the bloodlines and the traits that those dogs throw with those blood, different bloodlines.

So I appreciate it. I'm sure our listeners appreciate it. So I can't say enough thank you for helping us teach, train, and learn. Yeah, more than welcome. Anytime. Anytime. I tell anybody that reaches out to me, just give me a call,

I've been a member and supporter of Go Wild for over a year now. Man, how time flies. Their social 4Hunters by Hunters. And if you've followed me for any length of time, you know that I'm in the woods or on the water, if I'm not working. And yes, some ask, do you work? Unfortunately, I do. It's a place that I post all of my [00:57:00] trophies, no matter how big or small.

Mine, mostly small. I get tips, tricks, tactics, and advice from people who eat, breathe, and sleep the outdoors. I log all of my outdoor adventures, including the time spent listening to the best podcast in the land, The Journey, hosted by no other than yours truly. So when I need anything outdoors, I just log on to the Gowild store, pick out what I need, and that's anything from hunting, fishing, camping, optics, outdoor wear, and yes, hound supplies.

I'm proud to partner up with the Gowild team. So let's get your journey started today, here on Gowild.

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