Show Notes
Why do we hunt? Have you ever had that conversation with yourself? Maybe you have a well thought out explanation. Perhaps you have been asked hundreds of times and been able to explain it. Hearing other people’s story helps us build our own story. It causes us to self examine our values and our goals.
Kody Lostroh is back and he is joined by Justin Angelovich to have a lid back chat with Chris. Its a deep dive into individual humble beginnings and a look at this journey they have had as Houndsmen. Kody talks about how hunting with hounds saved his life and encouraged him after professional bull riding. Justin talks about growing up in a family of Houndsmen and having great mentors. Chris throws in with some stories of long ago, hitching rides, trashy dogs and early competition hunts.
All Houndsmen have individual reasons for hunting but, in multiple ways, we hunt for life.
Show Transcript
[00:00:00] The Houndsman XP podcast is fueled by Joy Dog Food. Joy Dog Food has a rich tradition of supporting the Houndsmen of America. Founded in 1945, Joy is proud of its history and the relationship it has built with the American Houndsmen. And in 76 years, there's never been a recall. Made with 100 percent American made, high quality ingredients.
Joy Dog Food has one of the highest calorie dense formulas on the market. For 76 years, this Made in America product has kept hunting dogs in the field day after day, season after season. And when we say Made in America, Joy has a long track record of fighting for American freedoms by being on the front lines against the animal rights movement and their extremist tactics.
Joy will fuel your hounds and fight for your freedoms, fueled by Joy.[00:01:00]
This is the Houndsman XP podcast.
Get that bird! Get that bird!
The original podcast for The Complete Houndsman. Let's get your cow to The podcast that represents our lifestyle of extreme performance. [00:02:00] Get up there! Get him! Get him! Yeah! Good boy! Hi Ranger! Uniting houndsmen east to west. north to south. If you're going to catch a cat or a lion, you have to have teamwork.
We take you to the wildest places on earth. So how many days a week can you as I can to be honest with you, anytime that I get I'm out there. Join us for every heart pounding adventure on Houndsman XP. I'll tell you like I tell everyone else, I'm going to hunt whether you're here or not, so you might as well be here.
Hey folks. Thanks for tuning into the Houndsman XP podcast. I'm your host, Chris Powell, and I'm excited about bringing this podcast to you. It's really a laid back podcast, but it's [00:03:00] really valuable too. I've got Cody Loestro and Justin Anglovich on the podcast this week. And we're just going to talk about what it is to be a hunter, where it started how you get, how we got our starts, tell some stories.
We're just going to lay it all out there and Cody Lowstro, of course, he never disappoints, but this is the first time you've ever heard of, heard from Justin and Justin's the new president of the United Houndsmen of Colorado. And Cody is the vice president. So it was an honor to sit down with them and just three guys with a cup of coffee.
We recorded this early in the morning and just bared our souls a little bit. Talked about what hunting means to us and hounds and all of it. So there you have it, folks. We're going to call this one lion hunter for life
button right here. Oh my goodness. [00:04:00] The recording is going, Cody's been talking up a storm since you've been and Cody's good anyway, Cody always comes through on the mic. So Cody, welcome back to the podcast, man. Hey, thanks for having me back. It's always good to visit with you. He got a little choked up right there, Justin.
Yeah, I know. I heard it. I'm emotional. I haven't seen you in a while, man. Yeah. Last time we were together, we were down there with shorty and eating that chicken and that salsa. You said, man, that's the best salsa I've ever had. I know. And I forgot to take some home. That was, I was more excited about that salsa than anything.
Yeah. Maybe next time. Now give me a good excuse to get back down there. Yeah. I always leave stuff when I go out there. I've left last time, the time before last, I left some tools out there. So I had to go back. And this last time I left a Honda generator sitting up there in the equipment yard when I was unloading my trailer.[00:05:00]
So now I've got to go back. There's worse things, the worst places you could be going to. You got that man. That, that place is awesome. Justin, welcome to the podcast. This is your initial trip down the gauntlet here on the Houndsman XP podcast. Thank you for having me. You bet. So pronounce your last name.
I'm not even going to try Anglovitch, Justin Anglovitch. Anglovitch. I should have shown a little bit of courage there and threw it out there. That's how, but I didn't know if, no, if it was Anglovitch. Oh, no. I've heard every rendition you could possibly imagine in the last 30 years of life.
Yeah. This is going to be a podcast where we're just going to We're just going to kick back a little bit and tell some stories and tell our, the title of this show is Lion Hunter for Life. And we're going to talk about the values of hunters, but we're going to talk about what hunting means to us on an individual [00:06:00] level.
And just a real quick backdrop on this whole thing, Justin just assumed the president's role, the United Houndsmen of Colorado and Cody is the vice president. So you guys are real gluttons for punishment. And it's like waking up every morning, hitting yourself in the foot with a hammer. You probably have some experience in that.
Just, yeah, yes. Yes. Yeah. I was watching this video. This is what's alarming. I was watching a reel on social media and it was this competition where it had these men lined up, like in a relay. And they had to run down and there was a 16 penny nail started in the top of a block of wood, a big chunk of firewood sitting on its end, like a big stump and a hammer laying there.
And the contest was to run up and take the hammer and whoever drove the nail in first won the contest. Yeah. I've seen this. [00:07:00] This is Symbolic of the kind of culture we're dealing with, trying to get to understand our hunting culture, because these men are running up there and they can't even, they don't even come close to hitting the nail.
It'd be a safe day to be the nail every now and then it would be a real safe in that crowd. Yeah, but I've watched. Over the years, we used to have people come here and to our place and we had a little outfitting business here where we took people on outdoor adventures and just real simple life skills that we take for granted, escapes your modern suburban man, trying to watch him.
Split a piece of firewood on me. It was dangerous. I was like, no, let's go through some stuff here.
So that's what we're up against. And Justin, I know that you pound nails, you've been nails for a living. Yeah. [00:08:00] Yeah. And Cody you're out there ranching and living that, that lifestyle. So we're just going to talk about what we do and how we do it and why we do it and what it means to us. And I'll kick it off here with the reason I wanted to talk to you guys about this is the other day I was going through a box of stuff that, that mom had saved for me.
I don't know if your parents are alive or not. But eventually you will get this box of stuff after your mom dies, you're going to get this box of stuff and you're going to go through it and it's going to bring back all kinds of things from your childhood memories. And a lot of it, you're going to sit there and look at and think.
Why in the world did she save this? I can understand, some of the letters that came, that, that were written back and forth when I was in the military and stuff like that. And some memorable pictures but she saved this [00:09:00] paper that I wrote when I was nine years old. And it said, it was like, the title of it is what age would you want to be?
And I picked the age 30 and then I had to list the reasons why I wanted to be 30 and there were a lot of things in their travel, have some freedom to, to go do the things. But one of the things, a real short sentence in there said I could hunt whenever I wanted to at nine years old. And it just brought it back to me.
It's like, why do I do what I do? And how much foresight did I have? And I think I had some pretty good foresight for being a nine year old because 30 was a damn good age, you're old enough. You're secure in your career. You got your family started. You do have a lot of freedoms and things like that.
But I pick, I also made it a point in that [00:10:00] paper. I could hunt whenever I wanted to. Have you guys, what's your early memories of hunting or wanting to hunt? Justin? Oh, I was, I've really been spoiled into it. My uncles, the Whitaker twins. Yeah. And so they're a challenge, right? And I've been spoiled into it, man.
I've been as fortunate as anybody could expect, hound hunting, especially I can remember one of the first ones. I ever went with them we got on the mountain and it was snowing bad, and it was almost blizzard whiteout conditions, and I'm freezing to death, I was probably 12, 13 years old, I thought it was the coolest thing on the planet, like I should have been terrified, but no, I didn't care, I was, we were there, we were doing it and I've been lucky in the fact that I've had friends.
I've had people around me who knew what they were doing and taught me how to do what they were doing. [00:11:00] And I've been able to learn from them and it just puts a sickness in you when it's in your blood. Both sides of my family all hunt and it's, I don't know what I would do without actually hunting something and following dogs rounds is, it's as cool as it gets, you've got this relationship with this dog, you've got this whole nother realm of hunting, which is spore and that, that story can go on for forever.
Decades, we'll never figure that 1 out, but it's unlike anything else, man, to be able to hunt and be able to follow dogs around. It's a special to me is. Most things, yeah, it's Cody, what's your earliest memory of honey, just hunting in general. Yeah. I grew up my dad was a big bird hunter, right?
He had a ducks and geese and upland birds. And so that's what I grew up doing as well. We had, we've always raised dogs and we raised [00:12:00] Chesapeake's when I was real young and You know that I remember sitting out there in a duck blind or sneaking up on a warm water slew in the middle of winter and going after these birds and it was always about.
It was always about the hunt, right? Like doing the things to put you in the position to be able to pull the trigger or not pull the trigger that pulling the trigger, it was always, it's always fun, especially as a kid, whether we're shooting targets or shooting, shooting birds or whatever we're hunting but the.
The funnest part for me has always been the pursuit. The pursuit was where it's at. And pulling the trigger and not pulling the trigger never really mattered a whole lot. It was about the experience. And I say that now looking back on it as a kid, you're always excited to get to the finish line.
But when I looked back on it, I realized I did enjoy the race more so than crossing the finish line. If that makes sense. Enjoy the process. And that's the thing, right? The people that love the process, and I talk about this a lot in sports and the other things [00:13:00] I deal with, but the people that love the process are actually the people that go the furthest.
If you just, if you're just worried about getting to the finish line, you're going to have limitations, but if you're in love with the process, there literally is no limit and that's maybe. Maybe a personality trait of mine. I don't know. I just, I get addicted to the process more than anything.
And, it's funny you brought up that letter you wrote that you wanted to be 30, so you could have unlimited time to hunt or whatever the thought behind that was. So my dad probably about a year ago gave me a letter that I'd wrote and I was probably eight or nine, maybe 10. And I don't even remember writing this, but it's for sure.
My, yeah. May take me there. I don't remember writing this. Yeah, and it's for sure my writing and I drew a picture to go along with it and everything, but I said, my dream is to hunt tigers all over the world and I legit do not ever remember writing that, but I'm like, wow that was in my heart before I even knew it was in my heart.
And obviously we're not hunting [00:14:00] tigers. But I think it was just the aspect of doing something, going after. Doing something that's really challenging that must've been with me from a young age. It's crazy when I think about that and I think about, my letter and the fact that I wrote that so long ago and how that, what is it about having that in dream when you're that age and then, for me, 45 years later and looking at how much I've invested in that part of my life.
And how that all came about, my earliest memories of hunting or bird dogs and seeing dead quail on the tailgate and things like that from my dad and my grandparents. But I always was just enthralled and consumed by the story and the process. Like you said. There are things about my first deer camps that I remember as far as the hunting goes, but a lot of the memories go back to getting ready for [00:15:00] deer camp.
I remember, the fact that I got taken out of school on a Thursday to go set up camp on Friday to hunt Saturday and packing everything and double checking my gear and, that sort of stuff. And I was always really consumed with other stories. I wore out pages of old hound hunting magazines and.
When I was into that stage of my life, but outdoor life, sports or field, one of the favorite things was when we sat up and we read before we could read, even, we would have dad read us stories from outdoor life or sports field, and just dreaming about that.
And I've always been into the mountain man movies when I was a little kid, In the seventies is when Jeremiah Johnson came out and I remember watching that movie and every time it would come on, we watched that movie when I was a kid. And just being, that's how I played. That's how [00:16:00] I, I we grew up with toy guns and setting up little mock camps and, we play in war and cowboys and Indians and we'd bring in game to eat, it was just part of it.
Yeah, and I think that's what, a lot of people don't realize about especially the hunting world, right? It's not just a thing you do, it is a legit way to grow up and live. Everybody grows up and lives, experiences the world in their own unique way. But the hunting world is that, right?
It's a, it's about really being in touch with our surroundings, right? Our world, the place we live in, like we're the culture anymore tries to separate humans from nature, right? They think we can exist separate from it, but that's not the case. We've been a part of nature forever and we always will be.
And that's something I guess the hunting community is a lot more in touch with. I agree with that. You talk about early memories there, Chris. And a playoff of what Cody's saying too is [00:17:00] my old man. He he told me I wanted a Red Ryder BB gun when I was little, and he told me I was going to earn.
This BB gun that I could do chores or whatever. He gave me a few quarters here and there. And when, so I did in my mind too, even now as an adult, I did mountains of work, but my dad's told me now, he's no, you didn't do very much work. He's I would come in and I would sneak money from my change from my pockets in your little jar.
And I kept a jar and I still remember this day I took this, it was a Folgers coffee can, and I walked into big R. And I poured that sucker out on the countertop and screamed from ear to ear and told him I wanted one of them BB guns and that lady sat there and laughed and counted every dime every penny and I got my BB gun and I think I ended up.
Actually having more than enough money, and so I got my pellets and everything, and when I tell you I went to decimating the populations [00:18:00] of varmints around the house, it was, I was daylight to dark outside with that BB gun for the longest time of my dad. Made me take one of the rabbits that I had got because of red rider BB gun.
It won't hardly kill a thing, it's not very strong, but I had killed this rabbit and I brought it to show him. He says, all right you get to eat it now. And he strung that rabbit up in the doorway of the back door of the house. I'll still remember this jerk that skin off there. And I thought that was the worst smelling thing on the face of the earth.
I'd never smelled anything like that. And if you've ever skinned a rabbit, they stink pretty good. And, we skinned that thing down, threw it in a skillet, had nothing but the rabbit for dinner, just, rabbit in a skillet right then, and Livin like savages. It was like, the best.
And for me as a kid, that's the best meat I've ever ate in my life. Now as an adult, I've been at some nice restaurants, whatever, but that stupid rabbit and that little house we had was the [00:19:00] best meat I've ever ate. And even to this day, I'm a business owner now and I go out and I turn what I can do with my hands in the money and all the time I think about.
That coffee can full of change, and hunting what it does for us as human beings, it gives us a connection with natural world and it gives us a sense of belonging that I think you see in today's society that people don't have on something, and then you have somebody that's so Transcribed Against something, whether it's whatever it is, some anti of anything else, I think they get that passionate and that obsessed is because they just they don't have any of that value that we carry through hunting in their life.
And so they attach themselves that passionately to something, even if it may be wrong or different or [00:20:00] whatever it is, and I think hunters and the people from the hunting community as a whole, we. We're so rooted in nature and hunting and our traditions. We've been taught by our families that, that it's just a different thing.
Do you think that there's some human behavior stuff going on there? It's I'm miserable and I want you to be miserable too. Do you think it's that deeply rooted in the people that want us to stop hunting? Yeah, society is in a really weird spot, and then we're in this instant gratification world, nobody's willing to build something, take it from, I have a construction business.
Nobody wants to build anything for themselves. I have plenty capable people that could. do what needs to be done will hire me to do a job because they don't want to build anything for themselves. The same comes with any of this stuff. People don't want to educate themselves when it comes down to something people don't.
They see the quick, snappy, emotional thing and they grab hold of it and they jump on the [00:21:00] bandwagon and ooh, look at me deal. And I don't know, man it's unfortunate. And the other thing is nobody's ever okay with something that they don't understand anymore. Yeah. Yeah. My, my earliest memories of like wild food go back to those quail hunting days with grandpa and my dad and I was just somewhere, this wasn't included in my box of pictures.
I've got to find it, but there's a picture of me standing there in pajamas with a little feet in the bottom of them, and standing there, I was probably just. Almost just above my dad's knee and he's holding quail, I remember even at that age, I remember looking at those quail and we baked them.
I remember they breasted them out. And the breasts were all shiny and red. And I looked at them and I thought those look like hot dogs. And then I got really excited, That's my earliest memory of eating wild stuff that, that was [00:22:00] actually gathered from the field and didn't come from a grocery store. Yeah. Yeah. And I think we all get those experiences, when we're young, it's almost Oh, I wonder what that tastes like. I wonder what that tastes like.
I've heard the same deal being a kid and eating every bird that I had ever shot just to see what it tastes like. And, how'd you pull that off? Did your mom fix them or did you fix them? Do you have a campfire? What's the story behind that Cody? Yeah, honest. I'd cook it myself. I'd have, I'd make a little fire or a lot of times we were sitting in a blind and we had a little portable heater.
And we'd cook them right on top of the, oh, man, that's awesome. Yeah. It's it's the stuff I did when I was younger makes me shake my head now, but I'm sure the stuff I did when I was younger really made my parents shake their head. Oh yeah. I remember one time my brother and I were back at the Creek and of course we had our fort set up and stuff and we were forging and we found an old coffee can when they were still steel and We knew this trick because of camp [00:23:00] and with our dad and stuff, we never took pots.
We would just cook the beans by the fire in the camp, why dirty a pot? You're going to, you're going to fix them in that can anyway. It'll work. We found an old coffee can and we caught a bunch of crawdads out of the creek. And we boiled those suckers. We didn't purge them. We didn't put them, any of that stuff.
It wasn't prepped, we fix those suckers and we ate them right there. And we feasted like Kings on these little red crawdads that were full of mud, and, but it was awesome. And I just it's one of those things that I look at. Modern society and germophobia and all this other stuff.
We didn't die. We didn't die. That was very fortunate of you. I'm sure you may have had a, had to make sure your TP was close to you for a while though. Yeah. Yeah. That's a whole different [00:24:00] story. That's yeah. Yeah, but it's, I've got a theory. And the thing that sparked this is Mike Thorman said something on a podcast that we were recording with him one time, and he summed it up real well.
He said, the farther people get away from the farm, the more they lose touch with the actual natural order of life and how the world works. And I got to thinking about that for one that he's absolutely spot on and. In 1800, 73 percent of our population in this country was directly related to agriculture in some way.
It was an astronomical overwhelming amount. And then as you go down through time, it keeps getting farther and farther away. And today we're at, [00:25:00] some people will say as high as three, other people will say as high as low as 1 percent of our. Of our country, of our society in the United States is true, has any connection to agriculture at all.
Yeah. It makes you wonder what happens when that number keeps going down. Like it's been going down forever. That's 1 percent feeding 99%. Yeah. You get Bill Gates developing our food in the laboratory. No, that's terrifying. Yeah. But the theory that goes along with that, even though we're there, when you drive through suburbia, there's a reason why you know the families on the weekend are out there manicuring their lawns and trimming their hedges and doing all this manual labor, because I still think deep down inside of them, they have this.
Instinct to be connected to the land. So they put that energy into their own little [00:26:00] yard there and competing with their neighbor for a better looking yard and trimming their hedges and doing, I think that is directly tied to a human beings instincts to work with the land. Yeah, I've seen you know what I noticed during COVID when, at the height of it, right?
When everything was shut down, people weren't working and this and that is the mountains where I am all winter long got so crowded and it wasn't with, hunters and this and that it was with people that had probably hadn't been in the mountains in years. And that's where everybody went, right?
When it hit the fan and there was really nothing to do, they went and wanted to reconnect with the wild, with nature. And I would have never expected that. Honestly, I figured the mountains would be, have them to myself basically. And it was just unreal how many people got out there and really wanted to be involved in the wild.
And, but you're totally right. I think deep down, we all [00:27:00] have that longing. We all have that connection for nature that That has been lost on some along the way, but, but everybody's got it down in there and I think a big part of that too is that people are getting stuck in the machine. Chris, they, they got to wake up, go to work in the morning, come home, see their family, pay their taxes, pay their bills.
And then by Saturday, they're slap or out. I don't want nothing to do with nothing no more. And I think people are losing parts of what. Make us who we are because they're stuck in that machine, they're worn out, but they've got the time and the energy to go to the mountains. I was, oh, yeah, they do, but they're just they're giving up on it.
That's what I've seen over here with some people that I know in different things is the machines chewing people up right now and they're giving up on it. They're just losing their, they're losing their motivation and they don't have the discipline to continue on. And so it makes it difficult.[00:28:00]
Yeah, I was in the flathead working during COVID and we were doing the construction work up there and stuff, but you would drive out to MacArthur lake or places like you couldn't find a campsite, those campgrounds, those remote campgrounds way back in the mountains were full. It was amazing.
And I always give everybody in the West a hard time. It's a day on the mountain that's crowded in the West is instead of seeing, two trucks, three, where are all these people coming from, and you drive down, you drive through the Jefferson Washington national forest in Virginia.
And if you don't see a dozen trucks or vehicles on the road, it's like. Where the heck's everybody at? It's crazy. It's all a matter of perception. Yeah, absolutely. I always think when I see extra people out there, I say, why aren't these people working? They should be working. I guess [00:29:00] I'm not working.
They're probably wondering why the hell I'm not out there. I'll be out hunting early in the morning, one morning, and it'll be five o'clock in the morning and I'll see somebody driving down an old dirt road that I need to be driving down. I'm like what are they doing here? Why are they out here?
That's the old houndsman in us, growl as the truck goes by, no sense in going up this Canyon, but then the part kicks in where you're like. I'm going to drive up there and I'm going to, I'm going to find a track that they missed and then I'm going to post it on Instagram and I caught it.
Cause I saw so and so up in that Canyon and I want him to know that's always a big thing here. If you catch a track behind somebody that drives up a road or something, it's man, you get on the radio and you make sure that everybody that's on the mountain that day, that's tuned into your frequency.
Everybody in your group knows it. So and so missed a track. Now we're all missing them [00:30:00] though. Oh yeah. I'll tell you a guy that doesn't miss him is your uncle, Josh. Josh? Have you ever seen him miss a track? Josh reads the ground better than he can read a book. That doesn't surprise me at all. That guy can read ground and he's tried to, he's got frustrated with me cause I've been trying to learn since I was little and I'll be like how is this track or what's that?
He's it's a skunk Justin Jesus. And I'll sit and I'll be like, wait. Or we'll argue over a track and I know he's always right but I have to argue with him because it's in the blood I guess but we'll argue over something and I know he's right even while I'm arguing with him but it's like how do you and he'll just glance at it walk by fast I'll get that far from it and still can't make heads or tails but yeah that sucker he can read some ground.
I've been fortunate to be able to follow him around. I don't know how much I've just been [00:31:00] awed or confused, but I think I've picked a thing or two up along the way. Not enough yet, but... Is Jason like that? Oh, yeah. Is he? Yep. Yeah, them two, they're... They're six in one hand, half dozen in the other. Whatever the other one is.
They share a brain, don't they? Oh, yeah. There is something about that identical twin thing, man, I'm telling you, it's like when they're in the womb and they're connected at the head or something, it's all the chemicals flow back and forth and that stays with you for life. Oh yeah, they look at each other and have a full sentence conversation and never open their mouth.
I'm serious. We'd travel, we'd go down to Mexico and do hunts down to Mexico. There'll be times, you need to say something without saying it out loud to one another, whether it's. Whoever's around or whatnot, and they'd look at each other and I'd look at them and I'd think, oh that's what that meant, and nothing to ever be said then, hour or two later, I'd be like, Hey yeah, you're right.
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Oh, man. Those guys ever feel that way with your dogs though, too. Honestly, like 100%. It seems like we're talking about humans being able to do that but people and dogs have that same type of connection where it's I know what he's thinking, he knows what I'm thinking. We hadn't said a word. Dogs are better at it than people are.
They like eighties over 80 percent of their whole communication method is non verbal, just being able to read body language in different things. And I think that's a place I remember the days when people would say, Don't pet that dog. He's a hunting dog, and you'll run that dog if you make a pet out of him.
And I think what we're seeing in the modern world as we get farther into this thing is that's totally baloney, that's bullshit with a capital B and an S [00:34:00] my wife, she's got a pit bull on a boxer here, and she communicates with those dogs on a level that. I can only dream about because just her interaction with them and the time she spends with them and them being able to read their body language, they know when it's time to go for a walk, they know if you rattle a plastic bag in the house, it's man, that means treat.
Just the way she moves they don't get excited in the mornings and some of it's routine. I get that. But even on a Saturday, they don't get excited in the mornings because it's like she's moving around and she's going to leave us. So there's no sense in getting excited here.
Yep. It's exactly right. Cody. I had a dog like that, man. And that's actually the dog that. Inevitably got me into hound hunting, I had a old [00:35:00] bird dog before all of this hound hunting stuff and that bird dog ran away, could never find it, and I was actually at the pound looking for that bird dog, and I was walking through, it's all glass windows through there, each little bay is a kennel for them, and I go past this one, this Goofy Brendel dog jumped up and starts jumping on the glass, barking at me, excited, spinning around in circles, and then I walk off and I hear that dog quit barking.
And so I go looking at all the candles and I'm on my way back out of there and I'm getting ready to leave and I walk past that dog again. That dog jumps up, starts barking and jumps on the glass and spins in circles and the lady that works there, she goes sir. I was like, yeah. She goes, I think you should see that dog.
That dog doesn't do that to nobody. And I had noticed there's other people and that dog's only barking at me. I was so confused. I couldn't, and I was, that dog I had lost, I had for, I don't know, like eight years. So I was a little heartbroken. I needed a dog. I didn't [00:36:00] have one at the time. So I'm like, all right let me go sit in this room with this dog.
So they take you into a little room with a bench and they let that dog in and that dog comes through there like a wrecking ball. Just plowed into me, jumping all over me, licking me. And she's sir, I don't know what's gotten into it. So this dog is just super excited to see you. Do you know this dog?
I'm like, I have no idea what this dog is, and I was hooked. I was hooked from there. And she was ended up being And I didn't know, did you do a 23 and me on her or what? No, I wish I had, she was probably all sorts of different types of things, but she, we were pretty sure she was a Kerr cross and.
I would talk into Josh and Josh one time is maybe try and hunt coons with her or something, and me and my buddy, we was, we had gotten us a little couple little chunks of land and we thought that was the coolest thing in the world, we had been trapping a little bit and stuff.
And so I just took the dog one time, and when I'm, I got to backtrack here a little [00:37:00] bit, but when I'm. Getting a story on this dog. Like, why is it in the pound lady tells me she's oh, let me look and she's looking through the paperwork. She says, oh she came in as a stray. And at this pound, they pumped our stomachs when they come in as strays and in her notes, she had that this.
Dog had cat remains in its stomach and I'm like, oh, goodness, I may probably make a hound, and so I I hunted coons with that silly dog. And that dog ended up being one of the best friends I've ever made in my life for over 10 years and that dog, she became my boat dog, my everything. I ended up naming her shadow because she'd never left me.
She was with me all the time, man. And I could sit and talk to my wife about going fishing the next day in a normal adult human conversations, not even look at the dog or say nothing to her, and. 4 30 in the morning, all you hear is that tail against the door. That dog was ready to go before the alarm went off.
She knew we were [00:38:00] going fishing that day. Even if I didn't tell her, she see me go put something in the boat the next morning. She was up bright and early. She knew it was ready to go. And if I ever charged my collars, that dog seen me charge a collar. Oh, man, it was like three o'clock in the morning that dog was up and had him go back to sleep.
I'm not, it's oh my gosh. Yeah. But yeah, that dog was and, like Cody said, we developed these. Intimate relationships with these hounds that other people don't, I don't want to take anything away from somebody that's got a nice yard dog, that's good with their kids and good with their family and would probably bite somebody that came through the door at the wrong time, I don't want to take anything away from those people.
But what those people also have to understand is that they're People like me and Cody and a lot of the other hounds and you've had on your podcasts. We've put hundreds upon hundreds [00:39:00] of intimate hours with these dogs, with just us and them dogs, and each dog I've got, I've had a few dogs, not as many as some, but I've had probably, I don't know, eight or nine in the last 10 years.
And. Every dog is completely different. Just like a person. They all have their personalities. They all have their niche that they fit into. They all have their interaction that you and them have that are different, and it's like having this odd little extended family, that's loud and argumentative and makes a mess everywhere it goes.
But it's a unique, it's a very unique relationship between two beings. More than it is a dog and an owner relationship when you spend all these, this time with these hounds, yeah. And I think what we see, you mentioned that connection there. I think it's really relatable, right?
Like we see people that, that can't have kids or their kids [00:40:00] are gone or stuff like that, that have dogs that they're just as connected to them as they are, their kids or if they could have kids and that's. That's something that's general, generally, across the population is that connection to nature and connection to dogs, whether we all realize it or not, we all have it.
And just like your story there with your dog, that was your shadow and forever and your best friend honestly, these dogs. And chasing mountain lions, it saved my life when I was had to quit riding bulls and, this is something I devoted my whole life to. It's all I'd ever dreamed of.
It's what I ate, slept and breathed for my whole life. And then in an instant, basically it's gone. I can say with, a hundred percent certainty that. The dogs and pursuing, whether it be lions, bobcats, whatever it is, we're after saved my life because mentally I was in, I was a wreck, right?
Like I needed something to dive into again. That was difficult. That was, all the things that I'd loved about riding bulls [00:41:00] was there with the dogs as well. And, I guess I hadn't told that story often that, that legit, like when I retired from riding bulls, I was a wreck.
Like I didn't, it was bad time for me mentally and the dog saved my life for real. That's interesting. Something healthy to dedicate your time to. Yeah. And I want to get to, tie this over to hunting, but I can relate to that because being in the Marine Corps and, serving in a combat theater and then going into law enforcement there was a guy by the name of Gil Martin that wrote a book called emotional survival for law enforcement.
And he talks about a thing called the hypervigilant roller coaster and the cycles that. Person that works in an environment like that goes through, where you hit your highs and then you go down and you dip into your lows and how your [00:42:00] body needs time to, to adjust to that. And it's a great book.
I recommend people read it just for their own personal, even if you're not in law enforcement. But anyway, same thing, Cody, it was. My opportunity to get back in the, the right mindset. And that's what it's done for me my whole life. It's, I'm not going to say an escape because that sounds like that, I was using it.
It was something that I had to do. It's, and I knew that deep in my soul that I had to go hunt. I had to go spend time with my dogs. My dogs aren't asking me, Are your bills paid or, they're not putting the demands on me that society does it, even your wife does at times.
And it was just, it's always been a healthy thing for me, even to the point when I'm not spending the time that I feel like [00:43:00] I need to, like right now, we're in a law, everything's locked down with. With deer hunters and things like that, I get guilty because I'm not out there hunting with my dogs and because I feel like it's my obligation to them for me to fulfill my side of the deal.
I keep you, I take care of you and it's painful for me to walk by and look at them and say, yeah, not today. We can't go today. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That's what they love to do, too, right? You're helping them fulfill their purpose in life, and they're helping you fulfill yours. That's an amazing partnership.
Yeah. And that, that segues into what I really want to ask you about. Justin, say what you're going to say. I don't want to skip over you here. Have you got something to add to that? I was just going to say on top of that too, it's another really hard aspect of it is retiring the old good ones. I did [00:44:00] that this last year.
I had an old dog. He ended up going blind and dying from cancer on me. And he made me into a lion hunter. He showed me, he taught me more than anything, anybody, because that dog put me out there in the woods and showed me how to do what I was doing and to sit and retire that old dog.
He could hardly get around. He was pretty much blind. He'd hear me load them other dogs up and even today, it's gut wrenching to me just to think about that dog standing at that gate, and he'd try and bark, but he couldn't hardly bark no more and just not being able to take him out, you have that same feeling like you said, it's oh man I'd do anything and his last lion hunt, I actually, Packed him in and we got fortunate and we had a short race kind of deal.
And he was able to get one more last lion in, he only went about from where I could shorten him up to, he went about 500, 600 yards. And boy, it was everything he [00:45:00] had to get that five, 600 yards and then back to the truck again, but you could tell that whole time that dog, if he could grin, he was grinning, Cody got to see the last bear that.
One of the best dogs I ever had tree in that jazz female, and we were together on that one, took some good pictures there. I got some great video of it. And then when I had to put her down, I packed her ashes back in to that tree. And spread them at the tree. That's how much these dogs mean to us.
And that's how much they own of us. They've got ownership of our emotional being and who we are as people and they help shape us and our views and different things like that. And I think that's a big part of what is missed on the non hunting public. Is that part of that relationship that we as houndsmen [00:46:00] actually have and how much they mean to us, that wasn't a difficult tree to get to, but it was still the effort of everything involved of.
Making sure that she stayed the last place that she did her job. And that's what I want to segue into is that part of it, because we've talked about like my wife's dog and your fishing dog and different things like that, but why do we feel like we need to take this hound and then go catch a lion or a bear or whatever we're pursuing?
What is it about that? Because there's a lot of people out there that have these great. Fuzzy, warm feeling stories about this relationship they've got with the dog. But what is it about hunting with the dog that changes the game for us? What do you think, Justin? They. This been said before, but you can't force these dogs to do this.
This is as much [00:47:00] what they want to do as it is anything in the world and to watch that. I think it's watching that dog go out there, especially when you start your young 1, and it runs around like a. Doofus and dogs take off barking and it stands there and looks at you and goes, what is going on?
Yeah, you've been yelling at me for the last two months for barking in the yard Like what are they doing? And then you go from that to seeing that dog flip the switch That's what we call it and takes off and that switch goes off in their brain and that instinctual drive that chase nature takes over to watch that.
It gives me goosebumps talking about it now because I think it's some of the dogs that I have now that are good solid finished dogs that I watched split that switch that I watched grow and change into that and then. You get to see them play their role as a being, it's, this is what that thing is meant to do. It's like a destiny type thing and you get to see [00:48:00] that dog go out there and do what it's been bred to do what it's just. primal instinct is and it's amazing man to see these dogs and it's some of the Grittiest toughest things I've ever seen happen in the world has been behind dogs in the mountains, tough country long races everything else in the world I'm ready to just call in a helicopter and get me out of there And i've got dogs that are like no way we are going to pound this thing until we can't move You know that old dog that I talked about That dog All the way to the end would go to every ounce of his being to be able to do that and it was because he enjoyed it.
It was because it was what he wanted to do and to see that it's special man. It's something else. It's yeah, it's almost one of those deals where it's like. If you're trying to relate to this, you've got that [00:49:00] dog that always brings you a Frisbee and they want you to throw it, imagine taking that Frisbee away from that dog and never throwing that Frisbee for that dog again, denying that dog that opportunity to do it.
And that's drawing a picture for people that might be having trouble connecting the dots here of what our dogs mean to us and the way they're bred to do that. But I think it's also Something that, that we, as people can relate to, it's like having, what would have happened if, somebody walked in with an ax and smashed Beethoven's piano every time he started to play it, or when Einstein started to try to, write his math equations, people just came in and erase the chalkboard and handed him a baseball, it just doesn't fit.
It doesn't fit. And I think that. In a culture where we see [00:50:00] so many videos and there's dogs out there with their own freaking Tik TOK pages and channels and stuff, that people should be able to relate to this side of it and why we do what we do with our dogs and what it does for the dog.
Yeah, I think, it really comes down to purpose and passion, whether it's human or dog, right? Like we all. We all have passions. We all, and I'm big on, on purpose and passion, right? I think we should follow our passions because that reveals part of our purpose. That's why we're here and whether, whatever your views are on God and everything, like personally, I believe, we were made a certain way and we were made to fulfill different purposes in life. Have you ever read the purpose driven life? I've read parts of it. I don't think I ever finished that book.
Yeah. Just curious. Yeah but that's part of these dogs like their existence to write like legit. This is their purpose. And just I use myself because it's an easy [00:51:00] example. But, my purpose was to be a bull rider my whole life, like legit. That was why I had the desire and the ability to do what I did.
And that fulfilled that part of my life. And the dogs are the same way. If they don't get to fulfill their purpose and pursue their passion, they're miserable. And I think that's the big connection, right? And people can understand that when they're living in that purpose, right?
For pursuing their passion. They are legit. They're human beings, right? They are living, they're enjoying life. They're doing what they're created to do. And that's the connection there, right? Like it's just, these dogs were legit, legitimately built for this reason. And that's their existence.
It's what they love to do. I think when people deny their pets, their dogs and I'm talking to the non hunting public, when you deny that dog, its ability to fulfill its purpose, I think you're selfish. I think you're extremely selfish. You wanted, and we were seeing tons of this stuff, [00:52:00] working dog breeds are hot.
They want to have a Malin wall and it's you live in an apartment in downtown, wherever, and you want a Malin wall because it's cool because it's trendy because it's, they make good tech talk videos and you've seen these dogs jumping up walls and doing all this other stuff, but that's a terrible fit.
And the same thing goes for our hounds. You can't simply take. A dog that's got hundreds of years of purpose bred genetics instilled into it to react a certain way and satisfy those natural genetic driven instincts by teaching it to play fetch it. And when you have that expectation, more than likely what's going to happen is you're going to become frustrated with the dog because when you can't fulfill its drive and its purpose, it's going to try to fulfill it on its own.
And this yog terrier I've got [00:53:00] here is a perfect example of that. If he doesn't hunt, if we don't go on our, our little forging, adventures around here, then he's going to find something to do. And that could be killing the cat that could be killing the, whatever he's going to find something.
But when you channel the energy and satisfy that primitive instinctual drive then man, it's a beautiful relationship. I know with my dogs during the season, those are the most well mannered, decent, no problems dogs. But during the off season, especially now, right before our season started, they've had a whole summer.
Yeah. Oh yeah. I have my two, I call them my Alcatraz dogs. Those are the two I've got to lock down. Like you can't believe, like I about need a net over a six foot kennel for these two because by this time of the year. All I want to do is get out. All I want to do is go. Then when that season starts and we do [00:54:00] start doing that and we start training and everything else, Talk about leave the gate open.
And these dogs are satiated. They're satisfied. They're like, yeah, we're doing it. We're it's go time now, so they're content and they're everything else. But in them off seasons, man, that those dogs just, they want it to go. Like I've got a a pretty seasoned lion dog that By the middle of summer, she's chasing birds out of the yard, like she is just bored to death a Tweety bird land in the yard and she's going after it by the end of season.
You could probably walk a animal right through the yard and she just watch it go by, but once they get tired and they get. Bored because they're not fulfilling themselves. You definitely see it, and that just goes to show you the purpose behind these dogs and the drive behind them.
I wish I had the motivation that these dogs have. I'd probably be a millionaire, but it's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's something [00:55:00] that's been missed when people do look at hunting dogs as they don't think of it as a dog fulfilling its purpose. They picture it as a blood sport, right?
They think it's all about the killing when, us on this conversation, no, that's far from the truth. We got to do a better job of portraying that story. And it's been, it started right. Like with the blood origins, Lionheart movie and all that stuff. Yeah. But We've definitely just got to do a better job of showing that other side of things when it's not like I spoke earlier, it's all about the process, not the outcome.
Yeah. Brad Luttrell summed it up real well. He owns go wild, the social media platform for hunters and stuff. And he summed it up when he said, the part that's missing in our hunting culture is what you said. The process of getting to that point. It's not just the grip and grin. That's the easiest part of any hunt is actually.
Taking the animal, the process to get here. And I think that's what we see a lot in the hunting community when [00:56:00] houndsmen and hunting with hounds is misrepresented when they, you even see other hunters say, Oh, it's not fair chase, or it's too easy. You don't understand the process. I can take my rifle and I can set it in the safe.
For 11 months out of the year and go out and fire a few rounds, spend a day at the range and I'm ready to shoot that rifle. That's not the way it is with a hound or a dog when we're hunting with dogs. And that's a big part. That's misconstrued big time. Like I was saying earlier, we've spent hundreds and hundreds of hours with these dogs.
And the other thing that I think people have to get in their head, these dogs are not infallible. These dogs are a. Just a being that makes mistakes they, it's an animal as well, so when you're chasing one animal with another animal, there's all the mistakes possible in the world.
I've had wreck after wreck, I've had losses you can't imagine, my catch rate is nothing [00:57:00] like some guys and it's. And nobody's got a perfect catch rate, too. That's what a lot of people are really confused about. I don't understand that we've drove around for seven hours today, walked for five and then went home and didn't catch or see a thing.
And then when we do catch, we're not killing these lions. How many lines have you killed in your life? Just two, two, two. I've hunted for 10 years. I've owned dogs and hunted for 10 years. Cody, what about you? Yeah, I've killed a few in the last 15 years. It's but you look at trees, right?
There's hundreds of lions in the trees and a couple have been taken out and they were old males it's it's easy for us to understand that but a lot of people don't they think everything dies, right? That's far from it. Yeah. Yeah, like the lions that i've killed. I killed a lion on My grandfather's birthday, the year he passed away, we caught it on his birthday.
[00:58:00] And I took that line the year he passed away. And then I killed the first ever solo dirt lion that I caught by myself. And because that was monumentous, man, that was big deal. They're symbolic of something bigger than just exactly, just taking the lion, or, and I've been hunting lions since 1993, not as often as I want to But during that time walk, like Cody said, walked to hundreds of tree lions to take pictures to evaluate a lion.
I don't know how many trees we've walked to where we never even had a gun with us. There was no way to take that lion and there's been one lion that I've taken during that time. So this idea that it's a blood sport, like Cody said, and like the antis want to paint it as it's just simply not true.
It's about the process. Like Cody says. There's so much before it too, that [00:59:00] back to that fair chase side of things it's two different. Animals and whether you've got more dogs in it or not, you've got these animals that are infallible and a lot of people are that are not infallible, sorry, and a lot of people say, oh you got the GPS colors.
That's so I get the dog home that night. Yeah, that's what that's. And so he doesn't run seven miles chasing a deer like that. That's so I get the dog home that night. It's not. Yeah, it's a lot easier than it was for the GPS. You don't have dogs that chase deer seven miles. No, you can use a collar for that.
Yeah, man. I'm gonna have to talk, we're gonna have to talk after the podcast. Huh. Yeah. It's, and people think it's like some. I see anti hunters do this and I've noticed one just the other day. It was actually in a newspaper that there's electronic tracking devices. We didn't put it to the lion.
It's on the dog that probably. It may or may not catch that lion, and that's [01:00:00] so I can take him home and stick him in a warm dog barn and feed him that night. And I don't have to chase him all night across the mountain and everything else, it's for the dog's benefit. It's nice for us, but when we see people make comments like that, okay.
So this collar helps me catch a lion. I'm going to put this collar on you and I'm going to haul you three hours. Out into the mountains to a place that the lion lives every day. You've never been there before the lion lives there every day. So if this collar is an unfair advantage, you should have more of an opportunity to actually find the lion and take the lion.
Personally without a dog, right? That's what we're saying here. Yep. Exactly. Yeah. They're saying it's like some super hack that allows you to catch lions. Yeah. They're not built with artificial intelligence where we can manufacture a lion through the use of our electronic. Training devices, [01:01:00] it's crazy and when that person doesn't go catch that lion and I tone them and they don't turn around, I'm just going to start shocking them to giving them a little stimulation.
Yeah, I stopped looking at elk tracks. Yeah, it's in it. And. I don't know it's confusing and it's hard and us as houndsmen, we've just shook our head and walked away on it a lot of the times and because it's a deep conversation, there's so much more to it than most guys have to spit out at the gas station, when the one guy says, oh, why do you do that, or whatever, there's so much more conversation that needs to be had.
I avoid them. I do. It's you're not going to understand. So I'm not going to spend a lot of time here. And that sucks, and I'm in the business of telling people that we need to figure out our narrative and how to tell it, or somebody else is going to tell it for us. So I get it. It's a natural thing that it's man, I just want to go hunt.
I don't want, but I [01:02:00] think we all get the idea that when it's a good time and when it's not a good time, I saw. I saw a meme that's been circulating and of all people, it's a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio and he's saying I'm at the age where I avoid controversy. If one plus one equals five, if somebody wants to say one plus one equals five, I'm good with that.
And I just don't think that's the whole plan. That is the whole plan is to beat us down to the point where we don't care. And we don't tell our story and we don't. Have conversations like this and talk about, why we hunt and what hunting means to us and what a relationship with those dogs mean and what their purpose is and how important it is for them to fulfill their purpose, where we ultimately get to fulfill our purpose.
And, once we've gotten to that point where we can tolerate people saying one plus one equals five, we've [01:03:00] lost. And there's some things that are still, if some dumb ass wants to sit around and say one plus one equals five, five, it's new math go forward, dude, I get it. But when you're trying to tell me that what we do as hunters and houndsman isn't filling a lot of different.
Purposes for us, for our natural world, for the dogs that everybody says that they love, man, I'm going to fight that one until I can't fight it anymore. There are some things worth still fighting for. Yeah, we got to fight those battles, right? If it's. We sit back and say I feel uncomfortable in this conversation.
I'll let somebody else that's maybe talks better than me. Maybe hopefully I'll run into this person. That's cowardice, right? Like it's just you see something wrong and you don't do nothing about it. That's cowardice. And that's sometimes what I got to kick myself in my own butt to, to have those conversations that feel like they might be uncomfortable sometimes, because [01:04:00] if I don't, who will, I'm not, I don't want to be the coward in that situation.
And most of the time when we speak up, it actually ends up being way better than we ever expected. So sometimes we crash and burn, right? But that's life. Sometimes you get hit in the face, you just get back up and try again. But, I've found a really good spot lately to have those conversations is on planes.
Because I'm stuck to them people for a while. I got an audience around, they're gonna be eavesdropping whether we want them to or not. So hey, let's have the conversation. And they've, it's amazing though how receptive, we think a lot of the general public that doesn't know about hound hunting already has preconceived ideas when a lot of them don't a lot of right.
Are open to learning about it. And by without fail, at the end of every conversation, the people are in love with the dogs. They're amazed by the process and have a totally new understanding for how all this goes down. And they, obviously that's always the goal. They're always floored when it's like you show them all these pictures of mountain lions and [01:05:00] trees.
And you tell them, it's no, we didn't shoot it. We didn't shoot that line. Here's why, because, see the stripes on its legs. That's juvenile, blah, blah, blah, see the features on its face that's a female lion, and you start educating them. And then all of a sudden they're like Holy smoke.
This isn't what the TV commercial said, where these guys are. Ignorant and non informed and just out for the kill. And, when we had developed those skills to be able to talk to people like that, and it becomes easier. As you continue to do it the first few times, it's like asking a girl out on a date, you fumble all over yourself and then you just develop the skills.
It's like pounding nails for the first time. It's like getting on a bull the first time, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Yeah. Sometimes you're not really ready. It's just time to, it's just your turn, exactly. Exactly. And the other thing, too, is people have to [01:06:00] understand the ecological benefit to it as well.
Us as houndsmen, that is very selective hunting because we have that ability. We get to put that lion in a tree or on a ledge and look at it. Is this a wet female? Is this a, is this whatever, you know and we can make that distinction and we can decide whether this is the right thing to do there or not, and then the other side too, on a lot of private, people got to understand that these private ranches, they get hammered by lions when they're not there.
Hunted for an extended period of time and so these people that come in, they have an issue. They have human interaction problems. They have this. They have that. Those lines then need to be cold. So that coexistence. Is still there. And Hounds men play that role more than the boot hunter can.
And I don't want to take anything away. Anybody that, that [01:07:00] kills a lion on their feet without dogs, then you should be proud. But you're not able to look at that lion before you take it and say, Hey, that's a mature tom, and if you are, you're deadly close. But I, if not then. Maybe you shoot a wet female or maybe you do this, and you don't know and with the hounds we have the ability to be so precise and we have the ability to be so accurate and be good stewards of wildlife conservation and that's really what it is.
That's why it exists now is because it's it's the best method of take for mountain lions, especially, and it is. The accuracy in it is far and beyond what anyone else can achieve any other way. And people get upset about the dog aspect of it, whether they think, there's people on certain sides that think, the dogs are forced into this deal or it's a completely unfair chase and you have this magical GPS device, and whatever, it's not that, it's hard to [01:08:00] tell somebody that it's not that and.
Reiterate the fact of how important it is for ecosystems to do this. I've hunted a ranch that wasn't hunted for a very long time and we went in there and we took some lions out of it, and this will be the third or fourth year now, I don't know, but the, they had next to no meal deer on this ranch.
Very few, this is a very big ranch and you could cut all day and you'd see a handful of deer tracks and a few down by the house and whatnot. This last year that we hunted that ranch. It was, you couldn't go 100 yards without another deer track. It was deer all over this thing.
Everybody at the ranch, all the workers, all the ranch manager, everybody's the deer population has exploded. We have more deer than we've ever had, and that's because we harvested mountain lions there. We changed the ecosystem in a very healthy way. There's still plenty of mountain lions on this ranch.
And it's a much healthier ranch now for it on the [01:09:00] wildlife side. That first year, I think I cut one bobcat track. That last year that I was there, oh god, I cut 12, 15, I can't even remember. They were everywhere. And even the bobcat population came up, the snowshoe hares, they came down in elevation, like it was amazing to see all the changes in that ranch over the three years that I've been able to hunt it and see the game diversity pick up.
When it, when the first year it was absolutely riddled in lions, like you would not have wanted to walk with a limp at night on this ranch. It would not have been a safe place. It was a freaky amount of lions at first, and. And then now there's a few last lines and there's a lot more deer, there's more game all the way across the landscape.
And it just was healthy. It was healthy is what the ranch needed. It needed that management and underneath the. The model, that's a part of it. That's a big part of it. And if we don't have this, our model [01:10:00] has to somehow adapt to it, to that change. That's not good for anybody. That's not good for the wildlife.
That's not good for the hunting communities. That's not good for anything. I think you point out something that's pretty valuable right there. And tell them that kind of story about where you have progressed in your journey as a houndsman on a lion hunter, because when I was nine years old, I wasn't thinking about the North American model for.
Wildlife conservation. I wasn't thinking about management. I wasn't thinking about biodiversity. I went, genetic diversity. I wasn't thinking about it. I wanted to hunt, but because of the process of being serious about hunting, it's moved me to the point where. I made a whole career out of wildlife management.
I, I was immersed in the lifestyle and the culture and everything that went with it. I wasn't just a fan watching from [01:11:00] the stands. I wanted to be on the field, playing the game and become the, the best I could be on that field. And that included, take, you take a guy like.
Peyton Manning, reading the reason he was good is because he immersed himself into the culture. He learned how to read defenses and coverages and all this other stuff. And it made him great at what he did. He wasn't just a fan watching. He wasn't just some guy that sat back and thought.
Some, I like playing football and no he immersed himself. Cody is a world champion bull rider. You didn't get there just by watching PBR on TV and being a enthusiastic fan. Yeah, a hundred percent. It's a. There's people that want to be spectators and people that want to be involved.
And that's that's what you are. That's what we all are. And honestly we care more about this wildlife than people than the other side gives us credit for. The reason by far [01:12:00] that the North American model works is because of guys like us and. We talk about fair chase, unfair advantage, this and that, the, and we all know here the dogs 100 percent do not, it's not a guaranteed deal.
They do not give you an unfair advantage. It is just the best, absolute best way to manage. Wildlife like this, but you can argue the same thing, whether high powered scopes and scent blockers and all this stuff gives you an unfair advantage. It's all hunting, right? And it's all done with a purpose and just fly fishing and bait fishing are two different types of fishing.
They're both fishing. And I don't see the, maybe the fly fishermen think they're better than the bait fishermen, but I think they get along pretty well. And I understand that. And we need to understand that too. And they'd both stand up for fishing. As well, yeah, Cody's dead on Cody's dead on with that.
It's just, I don't know. It's difficult really. You got to experience [01:13:00] it, right? They got to experience it really. And there's so few of us that know what that experience is that it's it's difficult to put into words for somebody that hasn't experienced it. Yeah. It's like somebody trying to explain it, how AI works, artificial intelligence to me, that's, I haven't experienced it.
I don't know. It's scary. It's different. I, it's just a lot of different things. It's like getting on a bull, at 54 years old. I'm going to tell you, it's not happening. I wrote my first year at nine years old, but but there haven't been many since then. I can tell you that.
And there's, it's not going to start today or tomorrow. Yeah. Maybe one more time for you. Before you're done, you got one named Fu Manchu. Remember that? 2. 7 seconds or something. That's the time to beat for you. That would be that'd be a goal. 2. 7. Hey, that would be a hell of a podcast too.
We can make a big deal out of it, raise some money for charity. See if you can go. [01:14:00] Go longer than old Tim McGrath did. Oh, there you go. I told Cody the other day, I said, I need you to get an ambulance up there and ready and give me a vest and a helmet, and I got to get it out of my system, so I'm going to go up to Cody's and I'm going to jump on something.
Hopefully it's about a 300 pound calf, but I'm going to jump on those 300 pound calves come out of that shoot. That one black one you posted the other day, that thing was radical. He's going to hurt somebody. Cody. I would look like an astronaut off the back of that thing, man. Yeah, the breeding program on them, just like y'all in performance animals is it's amazing how far it's come and we'll get you set up.
Come on up. All right. I'll be out there later on. I, one last question, one, one last question. If they took lion hunting away from you. What would that do to you? Taking lion hunting away from me personally would be like taking away [01:15:00] part of my life that I can't replace that I can't put together any other way like I said, the lion hunting is not for me it's hunting.
We call it hunting. It does serve its purpose as far as wildlife management, but the process behind it the fulfillment of pursuing such a challenge. Is irreplaceable. Like I said, it, it saved my life and if it was taken away, I don't know.
I don't know. I honestly, I can't tell you it'd be like taking away one of my kids cause it's not the same, but it'd be taken away a big part of my heart. But you can't ever get back. Yeah, I agree with that. It's a lot of people got to understand for guys like us. And a lot of people too it's not a sport.
It's not a hobby, this is a lifestyle, we do this 24 7, 7, 365, I check dogs, manage dogs, doctor dogs, I [01:16:00] keep these dogs up through the year, I spend all my time getting ready to hunt, I spend all my time hunting, and then I wait to do it again, you take this away from us, and it, you might as well cut a hand off of me, and for me too, it's my family as well.
My family owns an outfitting business. They are renowned for lion hunting. For them to lose that where they live the amount of permanency that's already set for them. And for myself, I own a business. I have family in the state. It's for me to up and move to another state because they took it from us would be devastating.
It'd be uprooting an entire life just to get that chunk of me back, and for my family, they're, what do they do? What do they do from there? They're so set up. They're so established that to take this out of that, then like Josh, I think about Josh and Jason when we talk about this stuff, because[01:17:00]
those guys are is obsessed and sick in the head over it is anybody I've ever known anybody I've ever met live and breathe it every day. It's a constant thought. Every day. It's not a hobby. It's not just a sport. It's not just whatever. It's a passion. It's a way of life. And to take that away from somebody without knowing truly what it is, you see it on a ballot or whatever it is and you, I'm gonna vote yes for this.
That, that small little moment of thought in someone else's mind is a monumental change, is a life altering change for us and to get somebody to understand that is is my new goal, is my new drive right now is to get somebody to understand that, hey, it's not just a small minute thought for you it's an actual life change for me, and a lot of other people, In this state or in this nation or [01:18:00] whatever it is, so it's devastating.
It makes my hands tremble. It makes me sick to my stomach to know that the possibility of losing it is there.
Pretty powerful, Justin, pretty powerful. I think that's a good place to wrap it up. I don't think there's any questioning, why we get out of bed every morning. This is it and how important it is to us. And it's I skipped food. To be able to do this and anybody that knows me ever since I was a little bitty kid, food's always been pretty important to me, and not just eating food, but the process of eating it, and it's that important to me that I, we've all missed meals and spent nights on the mountain sleeping in a truck or wherever, because these dogs are out here giving us everything they got.
And,[01:19:00] being involved in that lifestyle and yeah, we've always said that just, and it's more than just, this isn't our golf hobby, this is us participating at the highest level that we can achieve that in something that doesn't have a league, we keep score with ourselves and against something that's wild and doesn't observe any rules.
And it, it wakes up that inner passion in those, prehistoric instincts in us. To contribute not only to our, to the wildlife, but also to our families and different things. Man I tell you what, I really appreciate getting you guys perspective on this great conversation guys. Yeah, definitely.
We appreciate you having us and you nailed it on the head, man. It's as important as eating and breathing. That means a lot. You let us come on and and share that story and give our take on it. So you've [01:20:00] done a lot of great things for. For this community, the whole houndsman world you're the man.
Keep it up. Appreciate it, Cody. Yeah. And one last thing, one last thing I want to say to Chris is I also want to speak to your listeners a little bit and let them know, you ate sheet United houndsman of Colorado. I was going to open that door for you. Okay. Yeah we were a Colorado. Based nonprofit organization.
We're structured around educating people around hound hunting. We have a community and set of members. And I'd love for that membership to increase. We need more people involved and I don't care if you're in Colorado or if you're not or whatever I want. I want hounds been involved, and Colorado is going to be facing some changes here in the future.
And we need backup. We need people on our team. We need support. Proposed changes. Yes. Proposed changes I should reiterate that, but but we need people. We need support. We need friends. We need community. And we're going to be doing some pretty special stuff here in the future.
You've [01:21:00] had talked about some future plans and I talked to about probably 3040 people a week on the phone. So there's a lot of irons in the fire. There's a lot of things going on and we need involvement. We need guys to step up, get yourself a membership, sign up as a volunteer, come to some of the shows or banquets or whatever it is that we plan to do in the next year.
I can't let too many cats out of the bag yet, but come by. Go to the website, unitedhoundsmanofco. com look at it, read it, become a member, show your support. We have an Instagram, Facebook you can find it through my stuff, Cody stuff. You look on the internet, you'll find it for sure.
And come help us out. That's the thing. I've watched Houndsman rise up to support children's hospitals, other Houndsman, all kinds of civic causes, different things in my lifetime at fundraisers and different things, military outreach programs. [01:22:00] And without going down the road too far, now's the time that Colorado needs our help and our support as a hound hunting community.
This is a paramount effort that's going to take place in next year. So you guys keep up the good work. We've, we're going to get more and more into that stuff as this whole situation develops. And, but just getting together and talking lion hunting and what it means to us and how important it is to us.
I think that was. I think that was valuable guys. Appreciate it. Wow. We appreciate you. Yeah. All right. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Houndsman XP podcast. Make sure that you're checking us out on houndsmanxp. com or social media platforms, all those different places. Justin, if I can get a logo from you I'll put a, I'll have a logo.
Put on our website so that people can access from [01:23:00] there to, and find out what's going on, keep up to date. You guys have got your own social media stuff going on there with the United Houndsmen Colorado. And glad to see that people are willing to rise up in these times and educate and do all that stuff.
So thanks for tuning in to the Houndsman XP podcast. This is fair chase.
