Show Notes
There is no doubt that money is a dominating force in everything. When the money dries up, companies go out of business. We are seeing unprecedented times in a world where a social media influencer with no real skill can become rich. Money drives politics and policy makers. Money is important but when is it too much?
In this episode of the Houndsman XP Podcast Chris and Shorty sort out the complicated and controversial issue of money and its influence on hunting, particularly how it affecting houndsmen. Shorty spent has spent a lifetime in professional rodeo. Chris and Shorty talk about the comparison of rodeo and hound competitions. Topics discussed
- How does rodeo effect ranching
- How does competition coonhunting effect big game hunters
- How has rodeo sustained ranching
- Will competition coonhunting sustain the average hunter
- Is the sudden influx of money going to hurt or help us
- Mountain lion hunting stories
- Much much more
Join us for this in depth and controversial conversation about money; what it is doing to our lifestyle and where it will take us.
Show Transcript
[00:00:00] The Hounds XP podcast is fueled by joy Dog, food joy. Dog food has a rich tradition of supporting the Hounds man of America. Founded in 1945, joy is proud of its history and the relationship it has built with the American Hounds man. And in 76 years, there's never been a recall made with a hundred percent American made high quality ingredients.
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Joy will fuel your hounds and fight for your freedoms fueled by joy.[00:01:00]
This is the Homan XP podcast.
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The original podcast for the complete hounds.
The podcast that represents our lifestyle of extreme performance. [00:02:00] Missed you? Yeah. Good boy, ranger Uniting Homan across the globe from east to west, north to south. If you're gonna catch a cat or a line, you have to have teamwork. We take you to the wildest places on Earth. Yeah, sir.
How many days a week can you spend? Every minute? As much as I can, to be honest with you. Anytime that I get I'm out there. Join us for every heartpounding adventure on Hounds xp. I'll tell you, like I tell everyone else, I'm gonna hunt whether you're here or not, so you might as well be here.
Welcome to the Homan XP podcast. I'm your host, Chris Powell. What do you say? We catch up with Shorty Gorum. Where's that guy been? He's gonna tell you where he [00:03:00] is been and what he's been up to. Shorty's spent his whole adult life in professional rodeo and ended up with the PBR R and doing the biggest shows that they had.
Everything from the World Championships in Vegas to the Fuel the Beast Tour to, just all kinds of stuff. So he is seen a lot of stuff from working those local rodeos, moving all the way up to the big leagues. And we're gonna talk about something that's a pretty hot topic in the hound hunting community right now, is money ruining our sport.
We're gonna dive into it, folks. We're gonna talk about every aspect of it, in my mind. Hound hunting sports is similar to rodeo and professional bull riding, and we're gonna overlay those two together. We're gonna compare 'em and dive in and talk about what money is actually doing to our sport and what does it hold for our future.
Hounds XP also made a big [00:04:00] announcement this past week. We built our own dog box. I've always wanted to custom build a dog box that had all the bells and whistles, all the things that I needed in a dog box, and I think we've hit it. Check out the competition Extreme by going to hounds xp.com. It's in a banner right at the top, right at the top of the page.
You can find it right there, A live link where you can check out all the details on this dog box. And if you order in the month of May, it will be ready to ship June 1st, and you will get free shipping if you pre-order. Now. Check that out, folks. It is nice. We designed a box that we always dreamed about having and it's available to you.
Check 'em out@houndsmenxp.com. Pre-order in the month of May. And get free shipping. We're gonna have 'em one hand. It's like a custom box [00:05:00] that you're not waiting weeks for. This is a box shaker. Folks. Let's get into this conversation with shorty. See what that guy's been up to.
Yep. No doubt about it, man. You look like you're a cave man. Got all scruffy beard on there and stuff. Yeah. Yep. Just lazy man. Lazy. What you been doing? How are things in New Mexico? Man? Man, they're good. They're good. Yeah. Y'all have been here right about 45 days now. And have you been there that long already?
Yeah. And you haven't fired you yet? Not yet.
That's, Hey, that's good things about absentee bosses. Yeah. Yeah. Do you run the dogs every day? Yeah, I do. They most I hadn't the [00:06:00] last I shouldn't say I hadn't, I've exercised 'em just down the county road. We're lucky there's only a couple vehicles come down this county road every day yeah.
And they're all, and they know the dogs are there and stuff now but it's been, we've got a bunch of snow and then we got rain and then snow and then a day off and then some more snow. So the roads are just terrible right now, so I heard they're a mess. It's a mess out there right now. Yeah. So just exercising 'em on the county road and which I don't advise to everybody unless you have a county road.
We do. Yeah. Tell everybody where you're at, shorty. I don't know if anybody Plug, plug the ranch and stuff. Yes. Take a minute. I quit the government gig for a job opportunity here in Northeast New Mexico, Folsom, New Mexico to be precise helping take care of the ranch here.
It's a cow calf ranch at the time. And plus we hunt elk, mul, deer, antelope, bear and lions. And Turkey. Don't let, yeah, we just, Turkey season we were a hundred [00:07:00] percent. And our second season on the turkeys, a hundred percent we're already sold out for next year. So going good. You guys got there, you got Miriam's and what else?
You got? Any Miriam's? Do you have any Rio Grands there? No. Rios, no. Nope. Those are down at the South Texas Ranch. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cool stuff. So you're, are you heading up the guide and outfitting side of it? Is that what you're doing? Oh, just taking care of it here. Yeah, we have a guy Levi, that he takes care of, he oversees all of it in South Texas and here but just kinda, yeah, making sure all the animals are good and healthy here, watching over things and trying to catch Panther every now and again.
Yeah. Yeah. Do you miss the PBR stuff, man? I don't know. It's like when people ask me, do you miss being a game warden? I'm like, no. No, not even a little bit. No. It, I'll tell you what, I miss my friends. That's what I miss too. Yeah. Cuz [00:08:00] you, shoot, we were damn near half the year on the road together, so you just made so many friends.
It's it was like a second family. So I do miss them. But the road and the waking up. Sword stuff. No, I don't miss that a bit. Yeah. Yeah. So what's your day look like out there now? I pretty much get up every day, take the dogs out go, go look at some country, see if we can find some lion sign and if we can then we'll and it's good sign and right spot on the ranch, and we'll try to get a line hunter in here.
Otherwise just go hunt the dogs and catch what we catch and come back to the house and get chores done the back half of the day. Yeah, at least they get to hunt, hunt the dogs from whatever time I get up until about noon out here. It's mostly everything is you have to wait until shooting light to turn the dogs loose, yeah. Yep. The reason I thought we'd talk about, have you seen all the stuff going on at especially it's been going on a long [00:09:00] time, but Josh McKaylas has talked about it. I was on their podcast last week and talked to 'em about money in the Coonhound Sports, and I thought we could have a, I always wanted to ask you and talk to you about what your opinions were about money in the Hound sports, because I look at it a lot like rodeo and and the r the way Rodeo has anchored itself an American culture and everything, all that rodeo money gives more exposure to every guy out there on a ranch working somewhere as far as. And I'm talking everything from tires to Lucas oil products to clothes, to, there's a huge impact there that, that brings to the ranching culture.
Or am I missing that? It just brings us a whole Western culture, and that's the thing that, that and I think I was fortunate, like I, I worked [00:10:00] 27 years in the industry and gotta see it go from pretty much no money to now. What was it like, what was it like when you first started, because you were doing smaller rodeos and stuff, but what kind of things did you see?
It was, there's $500 added rodeo. That means there were $500 added money to the purse. Yeah. Guys were showing up left and right and it, in the end you didn't, Phil was a heck of a lot cheaper then, but you couldn't go, you couldn't get down the road. Hitting $500 added rodeos nowadays.
They just don't pay enough to pay for the fuel. But so it went from people scraping by. The elite of the elite were, we're making a living at it. Everybody else was just trying to scrape by to now your best bull rider in the world at the end of the years, bringing home about probably a million and a half to 1,000,007.
So got to see that huge leap. But it, it does well for the whole western industry because it brings light to that [00:11:00] lifestyle. There's not a lot of people in this world right now that know that hound hunting exists. If it were ever to get to, the point where it's on national TV and whatnot, then all of a sudden that brings a whole new A whole new avenue for people to make money through marketing, through sponsorships, through all that stuff.
And it's quite frankly, there's some rough times that I've seen, just different things. But anyways they'll be some rough spots in it, but when they, when the end goal is met, it's better for the sport. Yeah. Yeah. So what were those early rodeos like that you worked? Were you working, did you start out at fairgrounds and Yeah.
With a rodeo company and just traveling around? Yeah. I was lucky. I knew enough people that I worked for several, I worked for two or three different rodeo companies right off the get-go. And, but yeah, I just got in with the rodeo company and went, and hell, I think starting [00:12:00] out I was making $150 performance and.
And loving life, and and when they went to, did you work, did you have to dress up like a clown back in those days? I guess we didn't have to, but we still did. We still wasn't making bag pants and all that stuff, right? Yeah. Yep. Oh yeah. You went all the way from that to being in Las Vegas.
Yeah. Yeah. But that was the end goal. Yeah. It's just starting out like Yeah. I knew starting out that's where I wanted to go. That was my goal, was to get there. I just never hear any ranchers or, guys that are competing at the local level that are still hitting those 500 addeds in the rodeo circuit.
I never hear 'em griping and complaining that there's too much money in rodeo these days. But you hear that enhancement. No, but and the thing is, They can't have the small events without local sponsorships. Yeah. And, so with the national level gaining more notoriety[00:13:00] I feel like those sponsors feel that their money is better spent, even if it's at the lower levels.
It's spent better now because of the notoriety that, that the sport's getting. Do you think that, what have you seen as far as like when something happens in the PBR r it has a trickle down effect all the way to that local event, whether it's safety equipment or, I don't know, fads, equipment, all that stuff.
Any of it. Yeah. And it just, the better the sport gets, the better the equipment gets, the better the equipment gets, the better Everyone all the way down the line gets to to benefit from, it's, that's just and you're seeing it now. Guys are in the coon hunting world from what I understand.
They're using these thermals and stuff that's just gonna get better and better. And the more they're spending doing that, the more, the better the technology's gonna get for what they need. And then it's gonna trickle on down to where it becomes cheap enough that not you guys that out there competing for, pickup trucks and stuff, can't [00:14:00] afford to buy it.
Sure. Yeah. And I don't care if you, I hunted with a guy the other night that hasn't entered a, has not entered a competition hunt in probably 10 years, and he was packing a thermal with him. There you go. Yeah, I would, so I would be, if I put my. I'm looking, I'm gonna be, I've got a company that's actually, I've purchased a thermal from them cuz I want to try it out.
It's a pretty cool unit. I'm not gonna let the cat outta the bag on what it is. But it's a pretty cool unit that I'm not only gonna use for, training dogs, but I'm also gonna use it for spotting hogs and things like that when we go down to do our side hound hog hunting and our night hog hunting and stuff.
So I'll keep you informed on that. But, it's just the reason I wanted to bring up the rodeo thing is because I think there's so many dag on parallels on what we're seeing and when that [00:15:00] big money, when PBR R and the N FFR and all that stuff gets that kind of traction, there's a reason why Lucas Oil products wants a.
Their name on the wall and Cooper Tires and whatever beer Coors Beer, and, all those companies want their name out there. Companies do that because they know it's a big draw and they know their name's gonna get seen. So they've got a lot at stake when people come outta the woodwork to try to shut down rodeo.
That's, you think Rodeo would've survived without that kind of sponsorship? I don't know. They've fought tooth and nail with, but I don't know. I don't know that it would've survived. No not to the level that it has now. It's a hundred percent the sponsors. Without not be where it's at.
I'm thinking back in the old days, whether if it would've survived or not. I don't think so because there's not enough There's not enough money [00:16:00] just with the entry fees alone to justify risking your life. But there's always, you're always gonna have that barnyard stuff. Heck, I remember the first steer I rode, and it wasn't the last steer I rode, but it was close, but we were just little kids and we saw cowboy movies and it's ride that steer, sneak up there and hop on that sucker and hang on.
I lasted for about a one second count and I was on my butt, but, and the horses and stuff we had, when they got bronie, that was the funnest time of it. And you, everybody felt like they were at the rodeo then, so you'd ne you'd never take, you'd never take that out of it, but no, you wouldn't.
But it, it wouldn't row because it would be, yeah, nothing local rodeo. And but you know what when you're looking at the whole thing and I know there's other sides to it too, and we'll talk about that in a minute. And we're gonna tie this into, the part about Hounds Man and how sponsorships and different stuff affect that.
When you're looking at that kind of money being involved [00:17:00] and politicians run 'em where they can get money, that's what that's what keeps gas in their tank baby is, and when the C e o or the, the executive vice president of Coors Beer can call up legislator Joe down the road and say, Hey, you need to think about this cuz we're pumping a lot of money into your campaign and a lot of your buddies campaigns and you're the whip, so you need to get your party in line and get this thing straightened out.
Yeah, no that's big time stuff right there. And I think that. Definitely it's gonna be it's gonna get there. I have a good feeling that the sport is gonna get there and there's gonna be some bumps and knocks on the way is all I'm saying. And everybody's gotta be patient because can't make everybody happy right off the get go.
They were talking about a, and we're talking mainly about, I want, we want, I'm gonna talk about how I think that ties into every houseman in the United States here in a [00:18:00] few minutes. But or give my opinion on it, but the million dollar, they were gonna have a million dollar hunt. And they just simply couldn't get there because just trying to go too fast. We saw, we just had our first a hundred thousand dollars hunt two years ago. And now, that's become a more common place and there's just a, you gotta walk before you can run and, Still the TV will be the next step in my opinion.
Get TV on these events. Good TV that can go on RFT v rfd or Cowboy Champ like that. Because believe me, your sponsors know where their dollars are going and to go throw enough money at an event to have a million dollar event without TV coverage. They, they know when they're buying sponsorships, whether it's be for the Super Bowl or whatever, they know exactly how much money per second that it's costing them.
Yeah. And, and. And what they're getting out of [00:19:00] it has to has to offset that, obviously. So I wonder what that matrix is. I wonder how, what, how they figure their return on investment because everybody knows what Coke is and Coors Beer. Unless you live under a rock, you know what a Chevy truck is.
So what's their draw to make sure that they have their name at a NASCAR event? Everybody there knows what a Chevy truck is. Why would they waste? I wonder why they'd spend that money. And I think it's probably a lot of, it's like a brand loyalty type of deal, just, and I don't know all the sponsors in nascar probably ever, but I could just tell you through growing up in the rodeo business, I'm gonna wear wranglers.
I'm gonna wear a yachts, I'm gonna drive on Cooper Tires. Yeah. I'm driving a Ford pickup and there's just certain things that, those were the people that I grew up watching or, they were they've built brand loyalty with me just because I grew up in the rodeo [00:20:00] world.
They were always sponsors of it. They still are. And so that brand loyalty, I think pays more than getting you to get up and go grab a coke that day. Heath was badmouthing Fords today. So What, how many miles you got on your Ford shorty? Oh, like 350,000 hunting miles. Yeah.
Yeah. 350,000. You still got the same three quarter ton white Ford? I do, yeah. Yep. Yep. Good one. Yeah it's been there, done that. But yeah, we won't get in the truck today, but I'm good. Yeah. Four door Dodge. Cause I grew up, rodeoing Rodeo is more like a dodge loyalty type deal. And then boat ride Oh.
For it, so oh, no. Yep. No doubt. But doubt. I'll make, Hey, I drove a Toyota. Yeah. You can't knock anybody for that. That's just smart. Yeah. The ranch structure, some of the ranch structure Toyotas yeah. Yep. If you wanna get back, you jump in [00:21:00] the Toyota. Yeah. No the whole deal with the, I just,
I don't know what drives people to make comments about money ruining things. I think some of it is they just feel like, and I'm as nostalgic as anybody. We, I talked to Josh about this on the pod, the Fuel By Joy podcast we did, when I was at, when I was a young youngster 10 of my first hunt when I was 13 years old, competition event.
And that was 41 years ago Now the guys that were there,
your local club only had four or five, maybe four events a year, and those guys hunted didn't travel, they didn't get up and down the road you might see 'em at Shelbyville or a couple counties away and hunt like that. But for the most part, they were just hunters that, that showed up.
It's kinda like the local rodeo deal. It's a county fair in the west. [00:22:00] You got, Billy Bob, bronc, rider from the triple Y ranch that's gonna show up and compete every year until he is broke up or he can't do it anymore. Yeah. And that's the way these coon hunters were back in the day.
And now it's a l it's different. We're more mobile these days. We got paid handlers, so some of it I know comes from. Just nostalgia of man, back in the day, it was better and to, in some ways it was, it was a lot of fun going and there were, it wouldn't be anything to draw 75 people to a local U K C event, and have 75 entries. And it was a lot of fun. Yeah. Yeah. And that's, simple that just, like I said, I miss my friends. 10 years from now, I'm not gonna know anyone rodeoing hardly at all, whatever. And I'm gonna say, yeah, it was better when I was rodeoing because, you know why?
Cuz those were great memories for me. It doesn't, sport hasn't, taken a taken off or done better for the [00:23:00] sport as a whole. But those are my memories and those are, I think that's what people want to hang onto is that, Man, it was so good. It was so fun. We did this, we did that or whatever.
But you can't, in my opinion, bad mouth of progress because what's happening is in gonna end up eventually making it a a better sport. And right now heck, I think the more publicity that, that coon hunting can get in the right light, it's is, it's gonna be better for all pound hunting because people don't understand it.
But if we can get it on mainstream tv, something like that, then the average show can get to, to understand it. And now when you go over there and you say, Hey, I see you got, a couple hundred acres, can I, Hey, I saw what you guys do on tv, that's gonna open some doors. It's gonna be better.
It tells a bigger story. It gives us an opportunity to tell a bigger story. Cuz if you show up [00:24:00] just like with a podcast, that's what we do here, that's what we're trying to do here. What's what we've always tried to do. You tell that story of it's not just some guy in a truck with a dog, a vicious dog that kills stuff.
This is a guy that has kids. This guy loves his dogs, he takes care of his dogs. We've, you and I have done podcasts on how to care for dogs and different things and so it's about telling that bigger story in a way that the world is never gonna see it if we don't. Exactly. And so from strictly the future of our freedom to be able to continue to do this, the hi days of hiding are over because if we don't tell the story, somebody else is gonna tell it for us and they're gonna not gonna tell it in a way that's gonna keep us out there hunting.
That's exactly right. And that's the thing you gotta do. And. And there's gonna be some learning experiences even with that, I can tell you personal experiences, those the people that'll tell you the story for you they can twist [00:25:00] it on you in a hurry and it ain't good. And we've, we have a good story with hound Hunting and Coon Honey in particular.
And I'm with you. I think the time for Hayden's over let's go. Yeah. And like you said, you gotta walk before you can run, but I think it's going in the right direction. Yeah. Now, some of the parts that do concern me is, with this money I told Josh the other day, this came up in the conversation.
I was like, I've been keeping track. I kept track for the first 200 the first 200 competition hunters that I talked to after we started the podcast. And I asked them all the que different, I asked them all the same question, if. Competition, Coon hunting went away. Would you still hunt? Would you still be a homan?
And 75% of 'em have said no. So that raises a question in my mind. So are you in love with hunting? Are you in love with hounds? Are you in love with competing? And so I think we've developed a culture here [00:26:00] with the money, and it's created this draw where, a 22 year old kid can make good money handling a dog for the right, right handler.
If he's a good handler, he can make good money. And, but with that, how many of those people are gonna stick with it? Right now I'm up 75% said no. There's a solution for that though. And something That team roping did a long time ago, which was brilliant. Barrel racing has followed suit and some somewhat, but team roping developed a numbering system where you are, somebody will watch you rope, whatever, and they number you one through 10.
Then, because it's a team are open, obviously there's more than one. So there's two guys. If they have a number 10 roping, you can have two number fives roped together, or four and a six or whatever. But, and some of 'em are capped at a certain heights, a number.
No matter what, nobody likes going and not having a chance to win. [00:27:00] So create a numbering system for this deal where your local clubs, you don't have to compete against this guy or you get a so many point slide. If this guy's over a certain number or whatnot, there, there's a way to do it.
It's just gotta be discussed and looked at and broke down and create a system to where Yeah, but then you take away you, you did you hit your mute button? I did not. Oh, okay. I maybe I just started talking and cut you off. I'm sorry. Yeah, but everybody wants to hear that psych story, the guy that, that raises his own dogs and hunts his own dogs and goes and wins it all.
You know that homegrown boy, j guy just goes out there with all the big wigs and, that's the American sports story. Yeah. And those will happen naturally, like they will along the way, as you go. But and the good thing about it, they're just, they're organic. When they do happen, they don't come on along all the time.
But it's fun when they do. But I tell you what the. [00:28:00] Looking at the other side of the deal is your breeders are gonna end up being the ones that really benefit from this, that I think that are breeding dogs that can win day in and day out. They're gonna start getting some serious, and I know they already are, but I it it's just, it's gonna get better for the guys that are really serious about breeding and producing dogs that can win every day. I always say it, man when people are spending $1,800 for a doodle and the only expectation of that dog is not to shed hair on the couch, right? Why are we expecting puppy prices to be still 1980s, 200 bucks a piece when you can raise that dog.
And if you do, if you know what you're doing and you've got a good pup then you can set the limit for where you can, how much money you can win with that dog. Yeah. Yeah. And the more money there is out there to win, the more money they'll, they're willing to pay for pups. The o the other thing I worry about though is, with so much emphasis on [00:29:00] Hounds have changed so much, even since, really since the year 2000, last 20 years, the style of dogs and different stuff like that, they're just, it seems like that a lot of these dogs that are winning and come from breeding programs that have been bred to fit a scorecard, instead of do the job that we need 'em to do.
So I do worry about, the influence, where are the guys in the West gonna draw from? Back in the day it was, Bertoni sold dogs to the Del Br or Dale Lee, and he was an English breeder from back east here. Brett Albert Vaughn. There were a lot of people back here, back east that were selling dogs to Western Hounds Men.
Is you think the western breeding programs are good enough now to sustain it or, yeah, I do. I do, but does there need to be a different breeding program? That's the thing. Here's the thing. If [00:30:00] if you don't like the hounds fit in the scorecard, change the scorecard, make it to where it's more advantageous for a different type of hand, like the perfect hand, whatever you're thinking.
But what you'll see, I think, is that, I think it's just a needs thing, shortie. The needs that you have. Yeah, I know I've hunted with you enough to know you run multiple dogs at one time and you expect 'em all to pull the weight and do their part and be together. And you don't wanna be chasing 13 hounds in 13 different directions.
That's all I've been doing few days. But, the competition dog, they expect it to be by itself, independent, under a coon somewhere. And I don't, there is a tendency to breed a dog a different style of dog than what we hunt in the Rocky Mountains in the wintertime, yeah. I've tried to dispel that a little bit with a couple. I've got three of my dogs out of two grand night champions. They're one of 'em a [00:31:00] platinum P k C champion in the Rocky Mountains right now that are just excelling on lion honey. Correct. I think it can be done. And I, but it is a fear.
It is a fear that if we keep breeding,
there isn't anybody that I know that would buy a horse off the track that at Kentucky Downs and expect to work cattle or ride trail on it in the Rocky Mountains or have a good time on it. R no, I, yeah, animals definitely get specialized and and, that's been obvious in the, just in the bull riding industry in the last 20 years where they've taken it, blood riding.
But I think, but don't you think it could, do you think it could still be used though? Cuz I know that they, you come back here like you take Dock Bar. Dock Bar was a track Bread Quarter horse. And how many cow horses do you know that have Dock Bar in their pedigree? Oh yeah. Probably a pile of them.
Yeah. [00:32:00] Down somewhere way back in there. Just cause he was bred so much. But no, and we had the same concerns with like in the bull riding was, they're gonna, they're gonna take the buck out of 'em cuz they're starting 'em too young or this or that. Or all they're breeding for is this type of spinner or whatever.
But there's always concerns and they'll change as the game changes. But I can tell you right now, the bulls back when I started these guys, they, the bulls wouldn't have a chance of bucking these guys off nowadays. So while the cowboys level game changed, so did the stock contract tractors happen to breed for the perfect bull And that's where I think this deal's gonna go is with these coon competitions and stuff and they're, you're gonna have to have a dog that's.
Near perfect every time in the very near future. I think in order to go win day in and day out against these big time guys. Guys like John Strickland he seems to be [00:33:00] dialing in on that. That guy's winning more than anybody I know right now. Either him or his dogs are and we're getting closer and closer to it.
I don't think we'll ever get to the, The perfect town that, that's unbeatable. I don't think we'll ever get there. As soon as you do, thank you you can or you will, or you have you're done anyways. And that's same goes with all animals or whatever. As soon as you quit trying to make the perfect one, you're going backwards.
Are you using OnX maps while you're out running your hounds? I know I do. There are all kinds of features within OnX in that app that allows me to mark den trees. It allows me to mark terrain features. It keeps me from floating my hat on those deep stream crossing so I can mark those shallow places where I can cross streams.
I use it all the time, whether I'm east or west. And the east property is chopped up into smaller chunks. And when a dog gets through the country, I can actually look on OnX, dial it [00:34:00] in. See who owns that property and plan my route in and out of there to retrieve my hound when I'm hunting in the west.
Same thing. All the terrain features are included on OnX maps and I can plan my route. I don't always have a choice of where my hounds end up, but I can always depend on OnX to get me in and out of there as quickly and as easily as possible. You can save 20% on your next purchase at OnX when you go to OnX maps.com.
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Here's a bull riding question for you. [00:35:00] So I've watched a lot of the, I like watching old bull ridings and stuff and of course the most well known bull of all time was bodacious. And how do you think he would stack up today with today's rider? He'd still be pretty tough just cuz the Styley bucked.
And at first he wasn't bad. He was kinda long and strong. Going away from you a little bit. Had some forward movement to him, but then there toward the end, he learned how to do that hop, skip deal and he'd throw his head back at you. And even if brush your face up. Yeah. Tough. That was why they didn't want to get on him anymore is cuz if you were riding him correctly to ride a bull, he could still hit you in the face.
And he'd still be a tough one. He'd still be dangerous. He'd be, yeah. Tough. But but yeah, that's, All you can say on him, but go, if you go watch videos from the nineties and that now of the greatest bulls of those days, they wouldn't even be like, a lot of 'em wouldn't be first Round Bulls today [00:36:00] changed that much.
Oh man. Cody TROs been, he's breeding some bulls up there. I see. Yeah. Oh yeah. He has for quite a while, does a good job. And he's focused on his breeding program and it's pans out for him. In fact, you wanna own a bucking bull. He has a sale every year, yeah. Yeah. I can always tell when the sale's coming up, cuz he's doing a lot of, he's doing a lot of social media promotion.
Gotta do what you gotta do, man. Yep. Have you talked to Cody? No. Not he's, is he back from Africa? I don't know. I don't know. No, he's last I talked to him, he was leaving the next morning to go to Africa. That's right. I forgot you told me that. Yeah. So when he gets back, man.
Yeah, we gotta catch up with him. I want, I wanna hear about his trip. Yeah. Yep. We need to catch up with Josh and Jason too. They just made a trip to Arizona, so I'm not talking to those guys anymore. Are you mad at 'em? [00:37:00] I'll talk to Jason, but I'm not talking to Josh. All right. No, you guys are practically neighbors out there.
I'm gonna be out there in a few weeks. I'm going, I'll be a good time. Got the plans changed here a little bit for me, but we're back on top now and we're powering through it and getting stuff back in order, but there you go. I guess taking it back to the subject at hand about money I understand some of the concerns, but I think a lot of times it's a deal where, I've watched with my own personal experience.
I always found money to do the things that I wanted to do that I really wanted to do that were really important to me. I could have worked overtime shifts, I could make more money, I could, do this and save and different stuff. But I think a lot of times it's just a there's a spike of jealousy that Yep.
There's a 22 year old kid out there riding home in a brand new truck when old Blue is standing out here behind the barn. And I know that dog could [00:38:00] perform like that, but I ain't got the money to go. Yeah. So it's turns into an excuse. Yep. And I'll tell you what, not only, you might not have the money to go, but I guarantee you one other thing, that guy probably outworked you.
Yeah. And that's what happens more times than any in any sports or any competition is the guys winning usually outworked you. That's the truth. There's no doubt about that. And there's another aspect to it too. If that dog is good enough and you make a good enough splash in your local events, then the community's too small.
Somebody's gonna be basically calling people not Yeah. For people not to know about it and for them to be calling you and saying, Hey, I either wanna buy your dog or I wanna pay you to take that dog and do this, but this is the condition I'm gonna, I'm gonna own the dog, or I'm gonna be partners on the dog, or something like that.
Yep, yep. And that happens, and I've done that many a times. I'd be at a bull riding somewhere, a smaller bull riding [00:39:00] that we did or something. And I'd see a bull and I'd call one of those big guys and say, Hey, there's bull over here. You need to look at, you can fit the deal. There's, and that, that's gonna happen in, in the coon hunting world too.
It's gonna make everything get better for. For everybody if you just give it a chance. Yeah. I think there's so many parallels between what we do and rodeo and bull riding and all that stuff, it's right there in front of us. It's a good model that we could learn a lot from you.
PBR R'S already done it, yeah. And N FFR and all, what was the other one? N P R C A P RCA still, is that still going on? Yep. Yeah. Yep. They have their Wrangler National Finals Rodeo in December in Vegas every year. Yeah, that's right. Yep. So it's already been done. It's already been figured out.
We just gotta quit trying to reinvent the wheel and look at it, and man, you make it important and you bring the money to it and money is [00:40:00] power and money is influence. And that's what. Keeps you anchored and secured into the future. And I was talking to somebody the other day, NASCAR has done that all the way down to my nephews racing, go-karts.
Look at the money that's in racing, kids racing go-karts. Yep. Tires and oil additives and tools and helmets and race suits and all of it, it all comes down from the top. It all comes down and creates a market at your own individual level. Yep. That's what we're looking at.
And then it doesn't only market, the dogs or whatever, but heck, some kid that can't afford to go very much or very far, goes to his local deals and starts kicking butts. Same thing's gonna happen. Somebody's gonna call one of those guys and say, Hey, you need to look at this kid as a handler.
You bet. It's Yeah, I just think it's just gonna get better and better, and I'm excited to be here and be able to watch it. That's that's one of the things that, and[00:41:00] when you bring on, we just brought on OnX Right? As a sponsor, and I can tell you that was like a year long deal to get that done.
Because OnX wanted a vet Yep. Whether they wanted our na, their name attached to Hounds Man xp and this lifestyle, this sport, this community of people and Right. So when you start getting national brands like that, now they've got a stake in this game now. So when there is an issue, or they're gonna, they're gonna do some cool stuff coming down the pipe.
They're gonna help us move this over into mainstream that way. When people are saying, oh, hound honey didn't fair chase. It's wait a second. I can tell you something different and this is why, right? Yep. And OnX is great, and if you don't have OnX, you should, I can just tell you that right now.
And being a new bee out here in this part of the world, I've literally used OnX multiple times [00:42:00] every day just trying to find out our property lines and neighbors. We've cuts some cut up little places here and there, whatever. But marking also every bit of line tracks, I see every line scratch. I see all that stuff I market.
But the other benefit of it is is using it to identify your neighbors and or potential hunting properties, cuz you can get on there and you can see who owns it and then look those people up and. And try to gain access to their land. Yeah. And it's even you talked about being out there but being back east here where the properties are smaller.
And we do get more and more absentee landowners, either from Indianapolis, Louisville or Cincinnati that come out here and buy property. It's a pretty handy tool to Yep. To be able to get their information and make contact with them and say, Hey, I'm hunting the property next to you.
And those tunes are ravaging. Your food plots and your [00:43:00] Turkey nest and all that stuff. It'd be just a walk across the fence is a problem. Fight. Nope. Come on over. Come over and kill as many as you want. Just don't be there during my deer season. That's fine too. Yeah. But yeah.
It is handy. I do, I use it a lot, yep. Yep. I think as we keep going down this road, it's inevitable, it's, we're not gonna be able to stop it. And so I just wanted to have a conversation, see what, pick your brain, see what you thought about it and compare it to that, what we've, what you've seen in rodeo since you've been in it for so long.
And yeah, no, I think they're on a, they're on a big parallel, and the good thing is there's people that have watched it and, and rodeo or bull riding didn't create it, it already been done in NASCAR and golf and the way they structured theirs. So you don't have to reinvent the wheel to be successful.
Just ask questions when questions need to be asked. Yeah. Yeah.[00:44:00] Tell us a, tell us about that big Tom line. You guys caught out there, I think is the first one you caught on the ranch, wasn't it? No, I'd caught some before in the years previous, but yeah, I had only been here, oh, I guess I'd only been here about three days.
No, it was four days, but it was anyways, first day I got to hunt, we had a little snow right here and I, and snow's not my thing. I really don't enjoy hunting the snow, just to be quite honest. But anyways we had a hunter here in camp and any, anyways, I got up and drove out the front gate and made a left hand turn and I left the house at three 30 that morning at 3 38.
I had a good timeline track found and so I went and tried to cut around it and, Do what you're supposed to do. Get that track shortened up as much as I could. And I've got a couple pups. I didn't wanna shorten it up too much, so anyhow, turned out on it and it went through a big old herd [00:45:00] elk and yeah, nail grace, didn't you?
No. Didn't have an elk trace, thankfully. No kidding. You don't have to wait till it happens to push the trigger.
Yeah, just push the button beforehand and anyways, no, I kept everything under control there. It was good, but but anyway, hadn't got just big old losing the elk, so made a big circle and couldn't find it going out of there. I missed it, to be honest with you. It crossed the road and smelt tracks and I didn't see it.
And it may have been underneath elk tracks, I'm not sure. But anyhow, so I just free cast dogs and. Wind started hunting and they picked it up and trailed it a couple miles down the rim and jumped it on the rim there and got it bait up in the bluff. And anyhow, about the time, we got plenty of pictures and stuff, whatnot, about the time we were gonna try to take him.
He jumped off the rim, went down tree in a tree, which we were gonna end up down there inevitably. But it was not a fun place to go. But [00:46:00] anyhow then then my hunter, which happened to be the ranch owner the son and so he tries to shoot it with a six creed mower suppressed six creed, more nice gun.
Anyways it, he has light primer strikes and it won't go off luckily I had my pistol, which I always do anyways. I had my pistol and he's a heck of a shot with it, with a pistol. So I handed him that and. That was a good shot. Saw the video. Yeah. And that was that 155 pounds, six years old.
And the game warden, when I was checking him in the game warden, I told him he was six years old. And that game warden, he said how do you know he is six years old? I said gum recession measurement. He said, do what? I said, yeah. I said, I, man, I just got off the job. I worked for Wildlife Services.
I said, but since 2016 I've been doing a bunch of mountain line capture work for studies and stuff. And I said, by measuring that gun recession, you can age him. He hadn't never heard anything like that, but after I [00:47:00] showed him, he was dumb game wardens. Not dead. Kevin Shady was going on when I knew how old he was.
Yeah, no kidding. How many lines do you think you caught when you were working for U S D A? Do you know? I can go back and look, but no give us an estimate. I have no idea. Yeah, I have, I don't know. I honestly, I never kept track thousands. No. We're shorty gorum lion catcher, right? No. Man, I appreciate It is good talk.
It's good talking to you. Yeah, get out here. I know you had some stuff come up and whatnot, but weather's getting prime out here now, so you better Oh, man, I'm ready. I am ready to roll. I'm telling you maybe you come down, maybe Josh and Jason will come visit us. I don't know. Like they haven't come and visit me yet, so they're homebodies man.
I've tried to, Josh backed out on this. Josh [00:48:00] backed out on me this year. He was supposed to be out here in April. April 1st. We were gonna go do, run around, do some different stuff, and started getting closer and yeah, he, he just he's done so much traveling and stuff. I respect him for it, he likes staying close to home.
He's got a lot of work, man. Those guys work. Holy smoke. They work. Yeah, I know it. I know Josh for some reasons. I, there's always pictures of Jason working. I think Josh stands back and takes pictures of Jason working. I got, he's the social media, a very stop. Josh isn't here to defend himself.
No, I'll be out in a few weeks and we'll go look at some country and have some good times. Sounds good. Good talking to you. And We'll talk soon. You bet. All right. Thanks for listening, everybody to the Hounds Man XP podcast. Make sure you check out our website@houndsmanxp.com and we're dropping new merch merchandise there and filling up that store.
Get [00:49:00] yours, look for our specials and shopping our sponsors too, man. Just like shorty was talking about brand loyalty. The sponsors that we've got are serious about our motto to preserve, protect, and promote this lifestyle. They put their names on it and they're there for ya. And check out our new OnX.
Code, it's H X P 20 and you can get 20% off of your OnX when you use that code at checkout for your next OnX subscription. So check that out. All right. I'm your host, Chris Powell, and thank you for listening to Houseman xp. This is fair Chase.[00:50:00] [00:51:00] [00:52:00] [00:53:00] [00:54:00] [00:55:00] [00:56:00] [00:57:00] [00:58:00] [00:59:00] [01:00:00] [01:01:00] [01:02:00] [01:03:00] [01:04:00] [01:05:00]
