Sacred Pursuit - TL Jones

If we are to rise above the chatter, tell our own story and know how to defend our way of life we have to be intentional and intellectual. TL Jones has blessed the hound hunting community for years with his short yet precise speculative writings that make us think and reflect on ourselves and upon that which we love; hunting with hounds.

TL Jones is at least a fourth generation bear hunter from the mountains of East Tennessee. His grandfather Berry Tarlton is a notable bear hunter and breeder of plott dogs. Berry resided in the Houston Valley near Greenville, TN and his strain of bear dogs is known as Houston Valley Plotts. That lineage has been passed down in the family and now TL and his son Ben carry on the family legacy.

TL joins Chris on this episode to have a deep discussion about hunting, the perception of hunting with hounds and how Houndsmen can improve the often mischaracterization of the Houndsman and hunting with hounds.   

[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]

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So what do you think about our new pre-roll music there? It's catchy, energetic, gets me in the mood to [00:03:00] talk about all the things that are facing us as hound. Let's talk about the current issues of the day. I like it. Let me know what you think about it. The reason it was changed is because we had some harmonica music on there, and we had a Hounds man hit us up and say, man, get rid of that stuff.

And I was in agreement with him. I ran that for a few weeks, but we got some new beats going on there. Welcome to the Hounds Man XP podcast. I am your host, Chris Powell, and I'm bringing you a great show. I've got my longtime friend, you know him as TL Jones. You've read his stuff on Facebook. I'm sure I call him Tracy.

Tracy has been a friend of mine for a long time. We've stayed at each other's homes. We've hunted together. He's just one of those guys that makes you think. And I like having friends that challenge me, challenge my thinking. They're not just going through life, accepting it how it is, [00:04:00] but trying to figure things out.

And when I've got Tracy on the line, it, it provokes thought. Tracy is, you're gonna hear his story, but the reason I wanted to have Tracy on this thing was because of a particular post, and I'll read it, but it was about fair, chase kind of followed up on a podcast that we did with Boone and Crockett, and this is a next segment to get us thinking about fair chase and where we're at and why Hounds men have such a hard time talking about this.

In a way that is logical and justifies our lifestyle. Not that we need to justify it to anybody, so to speak, but in reality we really do. In this day and age, it seems like we've gotta justify everything we do, and this conversation will help you prepare for that conversation. When somebody challenges you and says, Hey, hunting with Hounds isn't really fair.

It's not really ethical. [00:05:00] This should all be put to bed after this podcast right here. And that's always our goal at the Hounds with XP podcast is give you tools, whether it's straining a dog, catching critters, or battling the ignorant public that might challenge why we do what we do. I'm pretty proud of.

We covered all. Heath is covering a lot of training stuff over on Wednesdays on the journey. We're talking to the top handlers in competition coon hunting On Friday. Seth and Chad are rolling out all kinds of crazy stuff. They just dropped one with a guy named the Python Cowboy. This guy's taking Donald Trump Jr.

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It's not just about the guests, it's not just about hearing that part, but we drop a lot of information in the pre-roll. You need to be listening to those. I hope you are. If you are, I'm gonna reward you for it. Thanks for tuning [00:08:00] in to listen to the Hounds Man XP podcast. We got a hot one here. It's a box shaker.

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All right, I've got my old friend, Mr. TL Jones on the podcast. Tracy, you've been up to a lot of stuff in the hunting community lately. You're writing for Bear Hunting magazine now. Yeah, I started that couple episodes ago, and I'm really enjoying that. Yeah. I couldn't ask for, I couldn't think of a better person that Colby could have got right in that article than you with your history.

Let's let's just introduce the, everybody to you and give a history of your family and where you're from and all that stuff. We'll just start right there and then we'll jump into to what we're gonna talk about today. All righty. Go ahead. I guess you want me to go back and give a little bit of the history [00:09:00] on how we became involved in hound hunting?

Is that what you're looking for there? Yeah. Yeah. We'll talk about, let's talk. I don't know how many generations pass your grandfather, y your family goes back and hound hunting or even your history in the Appalachian Mountains. But I thought we'd just kick it off right there and talk about all of it and and spin off of that.

Okay. My influence came from my grandfather, down here we call 'em papa's, but some places if you say papa, people are not sure who you're talking about. So that's grandfather to us. But my grandfather is, where I, mine was papa too, just so you know. Yeah. . Yeah, they're in Southern Indiana.

Has a lot of similar characteristics, I think. Yeah, for sure. For sure. So yeah your grand, your grandfather, your papa was going. We'll just start right there. Let's start right. Let's start with Barry. He told me that his dad was actually a hound hunter also. They hunted primarily [00:10:00] Fox and Bobcats.

, but I didn't his name was Spencer Hunter Charlton, but I never knew him. He passed away long before I was born. And, but I guess that he influenced his sons to hound hunt. And I think there was, just off the top of my head, I think there was eight or nine brothers and one sister in that family.

And at least, wow. I'm thinking at least three of the brothers were really hardcore hound people. , two of primarily coon hunted. And then my grandpa Barry, he coon hunted and of course po they possum hunted back then. Cause they mostly had possums, Coons were very scarce. He hunted different types of dogs.

I know. He had some great dogs. I've got a picture of him and three of his brothers. From October of 1954, which is really a great picture with a couple great [00:11:00] looking dogs. One looks like a blackened tan. The other looks like a red bone. , they have three or four coons in that picture. They lived in the mountains and the way they hunted, they didn't drive somewhere and turn out for 45 minutes or whatever.

They walked from their house. . And they would walk, they might walk all night long and not be back till the next morning. And they would hunt from ridge to ridge or holler to holler and like that. They weren't in any hurry, they, their plan was to hunt so they'd hunt all night long. And then of course to them, they were so poor that they actually, they ate whatever they caught.

, whether it was pop or coon or whatever. And. . In fact, my grandfather told me that if they would catch a live possum, they'd put it in a trap and fatten it up just like you would a hog and wait till it got big enough for the whole family to have a meal. . Oh man. Different times. And you're talking about East Tennessee?

Right there. I know exactly where you're at cuz I've been down there to your house several [00:12:00] times and bear hunting with you. And Ben and I even got the opportunity to bear hunt with your Papa Barry Tarleton. And I think it's worth spending a couple minutes just to bring on or to your grandfather.

He was somebody that made a big impression on me hunting with your family, having that opportu. Has made a big impression on me over the years both in the way I view hunting and bear hunting and the appreciation that I have for that region of the country. I've always been it's often overlooked the importance of the culture right there where you're at.

And even in American history, everybody wants to talk about the Rocky Mountain Man and the fur trappers of the Rocky Mountains and we overlook the deep, rich history of the region of Appalachia that, that we just, we overlook it. Yeah. It's one of the jokes that I like to say around folks is I love to watch an old Western, but I've never understood why they don't make Easterns.

They [00:13:00] should, because there are some fascinating stories in in the Appalachian Mountains and even along the sea coast, the New England Sea Coast, and all the way down through the Carolinas. Yeah. The frontier and the Native Americans and so forth. This, it's fascinating history and just as much wilderness as any place west.

It was the original wilderness, yeah. I'm working through a book by Allen Eckert again. It's a fascinating book. It's called The Frontiersman, and it tells the story of settling Kentucky through Virginia, which came right through your country, right there. And people that, that don't know that history it's every bit as exciting and I have never figured out why they haven't made a movie out of the book, the Frontiersmen.

So I think it's just a spillover. We've got some, last of the Mohicans and the Patriot and stuff like that but generally it's overlooked and it's unfortunate that it is. Yeah. You would think they would do something with the over the mountain men that left from [00:14:00] east Tennessee and went over to King's Mountain and defeated the British there, which really was a major turning point in the Revolutionary War.

Yeah I had, I think he was about my fifth or sixth great-grandfather that was shot in that battle Robert Severe. He he was the brother to the first governor of the state of Tennessee, bill, Tennessee. And that's named after your family Would be my uncle on my dad's side, yeah. Wow. Wow. That's something else.

My, it's, it is fifth or six. Great-grandfather, Roberts severe was shot there at King's Mountain and died nine days later walking home. Yeah. Wow. So a lot of fascinating history. My dad's family came into the area here about the same time the Boones came in and settle. And Daniel Boones, he was born in this county, but his family moved off the river bottom where they had their original farm, and moved about two miles from where I live now, and opened a mill.[00:15:00]

The mill flooded and washed them out of business, and then they moved on down toward Morristown, Tennessee and opened a tavern. So he, I, we lived within a couple miles of where Boone lived, where he exactly where he was born or where he lived. I thought he was born in Pennsylvania. I'm talking about Davey Crockett.

I'm sorry. Oh, David Crock Boone. I don't we're gonna get into the Boone and Crockett thing here in a minute. , I've got tongue twisted on that deal because just recently I had a guy take me to a tree and the mountains up here and show me where it was marked. Daniel Boone killed a bear here and has the date on it.

I saw that with my own eyes. And he what year was, would that have been? I don't know. I've actually got a picture of it on my phone, but I've been sworn to secrecy on the location of it. Cause I'm told East Tennessee State University's researching it right now to see if it's legit. Oh, okay. Okay.

So I'm waiting on the results to see, but I've been there. I took a selfie with it because he just don't it seems legit to me. I've looked at that, some of the other trees that have [00:16:00] been declared legit and I've seen this one. It's a massive tree on a creek bank. Yeah. I'm not even gonna talk, I don't even wanna know what type of tree it is cuz I don't want people out looking for it.

No they would ne they would never find it. So that's all the information I'll say, but that's right. I've seen, I have seen it with my own eyes and took a selfie of it. And if they ever squared up and make it legit, I'm hoping they will do something about working with the landowner there about to preserve it.

For sure. Let's get back to, let's get back to we're working down from there. You're, you've got deep roots in Appalachia. When I tell people, you know about Appalachia, I always bring you up because even though you've lived in Montana and you've traveled and lived different places.

East Tennessee has been your home and it's been your family home for a number of years. And like I said before, I was deeply impacted when I got the opportunity to come down and hunt with you and your family, but especially your grandfather, Barry Charlton. Think, yeah, Barry, [00:17:00] my grandpa Barry, he was a fascinating individual.

He was he grew up dirt poor. . And somehow out of that poverty, he developed a sweet spirit. . And he loved people and people generally loved him. And he didn't know a stranger. And, a lot of Appalachian people, especially mountain people, are shy about cameras. But my grandpa was just the opposite man.

He'd, if you had a camera, he wanted in front of it, . And he just, he loved and he loved to laugh and have a big time. And so he, he was coon hunting and he got to tree, tree and bears every so often. And during that time period, which I'm gonna say was in the late fifties, early sixties, some of the dates I can't be dead set on.

We know that he gave my cousin Charles a plot pup in 1965. So we date the beginning of Houston Valley plots from 65. But I know he had plots prior to [00:18:00] that. He met Von Plot. I've got a picture of him and Vaughn and Jean White and rub Kucha and Old Mountain. And here I've got a picture of them together.

Vaughn told my grandpa Barry, he said Barry, if you're going to bear Hunt, be serious. You need to hunt plots. And papa tried other things. And in fact, he had even ordered some pups. He told me from the Lee Brothers, he had a couple blue ticks he had shipped in from out west.

And he tried those. And, but after Vaughn convinced him he should try plots somewhere along there, he hunted with Vaughn and some other men down in Gatlinburg. Before Gatlinburg was Gatlinburg. Yeah. Know anything but a collar on the dogs. And he told me that they would assign ridges and you would go to the ridge you were assigned and you sat there all day just waiting to see if the dogs came your direction.

If you did, your responsibility then was to keep up with those dogs until you couldn't keep up with them any longer. And the next guy on the next ridge was supposed to go from there until they [00:19:00] killed it. So he tried to buy some dogs from Vaughn and Vaughn refused to sell him anything. He told me his first plot came outta Kentucky.

I've never been really able to verify what dog it was or where it came from. I'm not sure if it was even registered plot. . But in the early seventies, around 70, 71 right in there, he met gene White and. Jean, white and Papa became really close friends, and some people ask did your dogs, were they white hollow dogs then?

And the answer to that's no, because Jean didn't have a stock then either. He was just starting. Okay. And gene ended up with a dog named White Holly Jr. And my grandpa hunted with that dog on several occasions and just absolutely loved him. He thought he was what a bear dog got to be bragged on him often even into his old age.

[00:20:00] And he got a pup from Gene that he brought up to the house, a female pup. And the pup was doing real well, but a bear caught her and injured her severely to the point that she was healthy enough to, that she lived, but she wouldn't be able really to hunt anymore. Yeah, her doc, her name was Jack Jap.

J a p, I dunno if you'll, that was one of Jean's rude females, his stock, so to speak. So Papa took Jack back to Jean and traded it for a young female on her papers. That's called Roberta. Yeah. And Roberta was a good dog. According to my grandfather, I was really too young to know or remember. He loved her and kept her into her old age.

She eventually, after she got too old to bear hunt, she was a yard dog and a pup razor. And I even rabbit hunted her[00:21:00]

And but anyways they bred her and all the dogs that we have now, for the most part go back to her. There's, I think we're, I'd ha I've been thinking about this the last couple weeks. I'd have to recount. , but the last time I counted, I think we were 14 generations deep now. Amazing. And that was Charleston's big Roberta, if I remember that name right?

Is that right? Just Carlton's Roberta. Just Roberta? Yep. Just Roberta. Okay. That was her paper name. Her actual call name was Polly. Okay. I never even knew the dog's name was Roberta until I was probably I was about 10 years old and I was looking at the coonhound bloodlines. , I believe it was, I think it was a coonhound bloodlines or the mph u yearbook, one or the other.

Sitting there in my grandfather's living room. And I went through those books, I was looking at that yearbook and I saw a dog named Bear Pin Bronco and realized he was out of the Roberta dog and my grandfather at the [00:22:00] time. Yeah. We didn't know the filters personally at the time, but I talked my grandpa in into letting me call.

Hamman fielder. So I called Mr. Hamman and I was just a kid. I was probably like 10 or 12 years old. And talked to him on the phone and we ended up agreeing to buy a pup outta Bronco. And he brought it down to us and met us here on the north side of Greenville on the bypass. And we had a good long conversation with him and my grandpa and Hammond made friends and we got that pup.

And in the discussion we didn't know how he had a pup outta Roberta. And he explained to us that they had bought a pup or got a pup somehow from Oliver Smith who owned Big Timber. And that pup didn't quite make the grade for Hammond. And Oliver Smith had got a stud fee pup from my grandpa where we had bred Roberta to Timber.

So he gave his stud v pup to Hammond and Steve for the dog that didn't quite work [00:23:00] out for him. And of course, I think Steve now says that Bronco was maybe his all time favorite. I believe that's his view of the Bronco dog. But, and we had a litter mate to Bronco, my grandpa called Big John that he really liked a lot.

It was a good solid litter of bear dogs it sounds like. I was pretty young then and I have to be careful about talking about things that far back because, your memory only serves you so well. So I just, I share what I know for sure. I try not to get into details. It may be not exactly right, but Yeah, I know for sure Steve loved Bronco and I know my grandpa loved Big John and I couldn't speak to the rest of the litter.

And then you guys had a, you guys had a dog down there that was a descendant out of one of, out of that cross when I first started hunting with ya. It was the Man, what was that dog's name? Tracy. He was a really dark colored dog. Probably the last real good bear dog that your grandfather probably remembers.

Or hunted. [00:24:00] And Ben was just coming on and hunting at the time too. He, I've actually got him in. Do you remember which one that would've been? You're probably talking about the papa took a female to Wisconsin and bred her to male dog up there. Rock, no. Or That's right. Trigger. Yep. Trigger Tri Dog named Trigger.

And Pep had two males, one named Henry, and one named Doc. Doc is the one. Doc is the one, yeah. Doc was dark colored. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So Roberta was bred several times and she threw good pups out of different litters. . I referred to her as a blue hen. Horse people racing, horse people. They referred to a marere that those good cols as a blue hen, meaning it really don't matter what you breed her to, she has the genetic power to carry the load.

That's a new term for me. I'd never heard that before. I'm gonna start using it though. I like it. Yeah, sometimes you, [00:25:00] reading is both a science and an art and a mystery. You can know all the genetics you want to, but still you can't determine what's gonna pop out. It's just and people can argue that all they want, but it's factual. You can make what you think's gonna be the greatest cross in the world, and it might not be. And some, I've seen two dogs bread that I wouldn't own, throw an absolute phenomenal litter. So it's just the weirdest thing sometimes with breeding. But the blue hands you can have a dog sometimes that just carries the load.

They just have enough. I don't know what term to use, genetic power to just do it. Yeah. And she was that way and they eventually took a female outta her that we had and bred it to. Let's see how this worked. Let me think.

There was a guy down next to below Newport. Can't think of the name of the little community he was in right now near Dandridge. I think his name was Gant. Charles Gant. Yeah. [00:26:00] That's a name people should know. Charles Gant was really popular for a while for having dogs that were extremely gritty.

And my grandpa wanted to get some more grit in his dogs. And so we went down to Mr. Gantz on several occasions. I really enjoyed being around him because he was so blatantly honest. I've told people this story before. We were standing in his dog lot there one day, and he had a big male plot that had a curled tail, looked like a elk count, tail

It was his own dog out of his own stuff. And he just looked at it and said, that'd make somebody a good squirrel dog.

I'm sure he moved. It wasn't gonna keep breeding it into his dogs. He just didn't like, like it. But . So we, my grandpa got a male pup from him and it was a smooth coated dog that had a crook in its tail. And we didn't know at the time, it, we didn't know was it broken litter or what, but turned out to be genetic.

About about [00:27:00] three-four away, up the tail from the butt to the tip. It has a severe crook in it. And the more my grandpa looked at that and the more he hated it, and finally he decided he wasn't gonna keep the P at all. . So my dad said he wanted it, so he took it and actually dad would only keep one or two dogs at a time.

And he loved to look for tracks and there was, bear population was low then. And the men who went and found the tracks would only take one dog. . And once they found a track, they would actually, a lot of times leave the dog on a lead, let the dog track it up till they got it, jumped on a lead. I can't even imagine doing that down there in that country.

That is, yeah. That's a different breed right there. They were old school and tough and they just if you found one bear track every three or four days, they weren't gonna lose it. And Hector was dad's favorite dog and just good all the way around. And they bred Hector to , I think it was Roberta.

I'd have to look at the paper and I [00:28:00] can't remember off the top of my head if it was Roberta or one of her daughters. But out of that came a litter of really consistent dogs and looks and ability. My cousin Charles who is probably the unsung plot man of the family, not a lot of people know Charles, but he's carried a lot of the weight from the dogs over the years.

He don't like to be in front of the spotlight and he's real quiet and he just soon people not know him, he is a good plot. Is Charles Rocky's dad? Charles is Rocky's brother. Okay. Yeah. Okay. And Charles he knows the plot history really extremely well, studies the papers a lot, and has always made real good breeding decisions.

He bred his female. at one point to a dog that came from Curtis Walker that a friend of ours own outta Curtis's stock. And then West Virginia Plots. Yeah. Then Charles kept a mail out of that and bred in it to a [00:29:00] pup that Papa had at the time. And then most everything we have now is out of what we call the Dan and Anne Cross.

Anne was a real nice dog. Charles' Dan dog was real nice. And that produced three or four litters that were really uniform and heavy on the tree power. , they sent me one to Montana. That was about 14, 16 months old, something like that. I don't remember his exact age. He'd been started on Baron was doing good.

I took him out there to line hunt him. I'd been in college and I'd been outta Hounds for a while. Got to Montana and they sent me one and I showed him a cage coon. He didn't even know what it was. Wouldn't even bark at it. A friend of mine had a blue tick and we brought the blue tick over, got the dog barking at it, and he realized, oh wait, I'm not, I'm not gonna be in trouble for this.

I'll bark at it too. So like the next night I just took him down on the river and free cast him. He went and tree coon and shoot. It wasn't long until Ben was wanting to go to a night hunt. He had [00:30:00] heard me talk about 'em and I said I'll take you to one when we had to drive about three and a half hours over to Billings to go to a night hunt and got over there and it was a world qualifier, , I didn't even know it.

We were just going for fun, right? And got to the world qualifier and just as my luck always is, I drew out with a dog that had won the region the year before. Yeah. And but we played along and went, turned them loose. And when it was all said and done, I had 3 75 plus and no minus and took second in the regional.

The dog had coon hunted maybe a dozen times. Yeah. But I knew him, I knew that I'd hunted the dog enough. I knew ever move about him, and I just didn't take minus as what won he, he wasn't a coon dog probably that I, we beat that night. I just knew my dog a little better. Is that the same dog that you brought back here and you did some hunting with?

Is that the same dog that you hunted in the A C H A or the a k C hunt? No, that was a different dog. Okay. [00:31:00] I think that was, hi, wasn't that Henry, his dog? That dog's name was Hyde. Hyde. That's it. Yeah. Hyde. Yeah. Yeah. And that's when we started, when I got to know you and Ben is you guys were hunting outta Greensburg and came up through here and stayed with me and hunted that, that hunt up at Green.

Yeah, when I first moved back from Montana we're getting way off base here, but it's a little bit about how much I love plots. When I was a kid people would love to rag each other about what breed they hunt, and the more they rag me about plots, the more loyal I got. And I'm not color

I'm not colorblind. I know a good dog when I see it, and I will give a credit for what it is, no matter what it is. But and I've owned some other dogs, but I was what? I can't remember what year sizzling Heat won the World Hunt. 83, I think. 83 or 86 in that timeframe right there. Yeah.

I walked to the mailbox, nobody had a computer or a [00:32:00] cell phone or nothing back then. You didn't get any news about anything until you got it in the mail. . , you didn't make calls back then cause of long distance charges, right? Dude, making $3 and 25 cents an hour. Wasn't paying 15 cents a minute to call somebody.

Heck yeah, dad, dad made sure of that. So I walked down to the mailbox there at my grandpa's and checked the mail. There was the u KC bloodlines and had sizzle heat on the cover. And man you would've thought it was my own dog. I was jumping and carrying. I was absolutely insane, thrilled and applauded.

Won the world hunt. And I night hunted some as a teenager, but when I came back from Montana, I was aggravated that there hadn't been a plot. Won the world hunt since Bud. Yeah. Won the pkc. And I just told Ben, I said, I, we can win this thing. I said I'll have to adjust some dogs to breed some different dogs the way I want 'em.

But we can win this with a plot. So I began to look over who had what and what I wanted to [00:33:00] do. And you'll, if you're gonna win the hunt, you gotta read to, for the score card. 1988 was the year that he won it. Okay. Yep. I got a picture of him with Jim and Spud right there. I just looked it up.

All right, man. I was so excited. But that's how we ended up with the high dog. I was buying different blos from different people looking for some different traits. I'm not going to argue with folks, but the high caliber dog and a high caliber night hunt dog are not the same dog.

And different styles for sure. It's different. It's different emphasis. . And so I was going to do that, and then Ben got old enough to start going with me, and really, we just didn't en we just learned not to enjoy it anymore. And I just gave it up, but. It's a it's a fun game ben has taken over carrying the torch for the Houston Valley plots. Now, that guy, I don't know if I know anybody that hunts harder than Ben. Ben's a wild man. He wa I knew when [00:34:00] he was, I think I hunted with him the first time when he was 13 years old and I've never had a 13 year old kid be able to out walk me.

But he put, he punished me in the mountains and he's just been going ever since. Yeah. He really took to the big game hunting and the bear hunting and, Houston Valley plots now I think is coming on. 2015 I believe was the 15th, was the 50th year from 60. , we count it from 65.

And the three people most responsible for what Houston Valley plots are would be of course my grandfather, and then my cousin Charles, and then Ben. . And there's been other men hunt 'em just as hard as Papa and Charles. Like my dad was a hard hunter. Rocky's a hard hunter, but Papa and Charles made breeding decisions that worked out.

Yeah. So Papa and Charles and Ben would be the three people most responsible for what they are. Now I joke a lot [00:35:00] that I was born into a family where my grandfather was he was a heck of a man. My dad was a man's man, a Vietnam veteran, and really hardcore, and Ben's really hardcore, and I'm the fluky who got born in between all of them.

I think I, I'll tell you what, I think you're, I think you're the philosopher of the bunch and that's, I've always enjoyed talking to you and I've always enjoyed our relationship, Tracy, cuz I always feel like after I get done talking to you, I feel like there was value in the conversation that we always had.

The, I think anybody that knows you, you like to have fun and you like to joke and stuff like that but you're not a guy that just talks to be talking and that's the way I've always seen you. And so you're one of those guys that when you say stuff, it provokes thought. It it causes me to reflect and think about where I'm at.

And that's why I wanted to talk to you on this podcast for sure. We could do podcasts about your [00:36:00] family and Appalachia and we could talk for days about all that stuff. Yeah. But the thing that kind of ignited. This idea for this show was the thing that you wrote about Fair Chase, which that that's today's topic.

And then that, that inspired me to reach out to Justin Spring from the Boone and Crockett Club and do that show a couple weeks ago. And I had planned on, I'd seen their position on Fair Chase. It's been, I'm thinking that they came out with that or announced it about a year and a half ago, and just things came up.

I got sidetracked, I lost track of it and I, but then when you posted what you posted on Facebook then it reignited me to get after it and peel back the layers on that position. And also, , try to decide where we're at as a hound hunting community about that position. That's where we're at.

I don't know if it's a blessing or a curse, but I was born with a a [00:37:00] high degree of curiosity about the why things. , I like to know not just what I'm doing, why I'm doing it and what purpose it serves and what value it has in the long term. And truthfully, sometimes I wish I didn't.

Sometimes I wish I could just go along and do what was going on and not be thinking about other things. But that's just not how my mind functions. And we've got a real battle in front of us if we're going to preserve hound hunting, which is, and I'm more than glad to get away from our family history to this conversation.

But our battle for the future is going to be on the lines of this matter of fair chase. Agreed. Agreed. Yeah. And I think I wanted, I'm glad we talked about your family history, because it gives background and it shows people how much your family has invested in. What you've also coined this phrase, sacred pursuit.

It's sacred to your family. The fact that you can free cast hounds and do the things [00:38:00] that you love. So I'm glad we covered that because yeah, fair chase. And that is such a buzzword. We covered it pretty good in the original podcast with Justin, it was a w that is a term that was Coined or started by the Boone and Crockett Club.

And it's been a term that has been widely accepted. It's been used as a measuring stick. It's been used to to uplift hunting. It's also been used to cast doubts and shadows on hunting. So what's your thoughts on that? What, what caused you to to come up with that thing that you posted on Facebook?

Do you have it, do you have it handy that you could read it? Not without switching off of this thing. All I've got with is my phone and I would have to lose it. Do you, you go ahead and take care of that? I can do that cuz I wanna read it. I think it's good that people would hear it, but you go ahead and carry the ball there while I'm looking it up.

Okay. I [00:39:00] will. Did I lose you? Nope, I'm still here. I will just dive into that thing about the Sacred Pursuit. For the people who don't know me, I'm a pastor and I've been a preacher for about 32 years, but I'm not on this podcast to preach a message, but everyone, to me, should have a reason and a basis for how they live life.

And my reason and my basis for living life is my Christian faith. And so for me to live a life in harmony with my personal worldview, my way of seeing things has to come in agreement with the scriptures. So Genesis chapter nine in verse two is where I find that God first gave Noah and his family permission to kill animals for sustenance when they came off the arc and.[00:40:00]

If there are people on the podcast that are Christians and accept the validity of scriptures, they'll understand what I mean by that. But even if you don't even believe there's a God, you still ought to have some reason why you do what you do, except for the fact, I don't know what your basis would be now.

, if we live in a purely natural world where there is no God, and God doesn't exist, then all we're doing in hunting then is participating in the natural course of things. If that's the case, I don't see how anybody has any valid argument against hunting whatsoever. And if we're not in a purely naturalistic world, if we're in a theistic world where God does exist and the scriptures are a representation of his will for humanity, then we have his permission to hunt.

So the anti-hunt really has no argument to me. They [00:41:00] have no theological argument and they have no naturalistic argument. In the one case, we're following God's will, and the other case would be living according to the nature that we're in. So what we have with anti hunters is we have a lot of moralizer who have a certain way to view the world that they're trying to cram down our throats and make laws against our way of life.

And they have no basis to do it other than the fact they just don't like it. No, society should be based just on what you don't like. You shouldn't get to arbitrarily decide what I can do and what I can't do. Yeah, I think the new term for that is called virtue signaling. Where you take your own beliefs and you put 'em up on a pedestal and then you cast blame down below you on all the people that don't see things your way.

And Absolutely. I've got that pulled up. If I could take a second and read that Tracy. Think it. I think it's very fitting. So this is what you wrote on [00:42:00] December 17th, 2022. And I don't know how it hadn't gone viral. I know a lot of people have shared it and a lot of people have shared it without credit to you.

But this is what it says. It says, if it is the philosophy of fair Chase that we're discussing, I would make the argument that hound hunting is the greatest of all fair chase methods. It's the only method where the game being pursued is fully aware from beginning to end, that he's being hunted. He's not a buck mindlessly chasing a dough to breed half out of his head with lust.

He's not a elk bean dropped from 500 yards by a bullet. He has no sense of coming. He's not a bore being ambushed from above, entirely unaware of his enemy. Once a game animal hears the hounds, he's fully aware. All his senses are in play. The terrain is his home and he holds all the cards, and [00:43:00] often he uses these things to escape.

I'm not against other methodologies. I support other types of hunters. Just don't tell me that hound hunting isn't ethical or fair chase. Yeah, I think that's very difficult to argue against. I've tr I've I'll admit something. When you post stuff, I look at it pretty hard and I try to find places to find holes in it, because that's the way I.

Resolve where I'm at when I listen to other people and or I see what other people are writing. I judge that against where I'm at. So when I read that, by far the most profound description, you summed it up there in, in a few paragraphs, what guys like me have been trying to say in 300 episodes of a podcast, Tracy.

So I'd really like to dissect it out a little bit, flush it out a little bit. Sure. And talk about, the fair [00:44:00] chase deal. I know you listened to the fair chase. Episode with Boone and Crockett. And I want to say this before we get too far down the road, I value the work that the Boone and Crockett Club has done.

At the time they formed in the 1870s, wildlife was in real trouble in North America. In just less than a hundred years, we saw vast buffalo herds disappearing and market hunting was running rampant. And some of the things that they've done has been invaluable. There would be no wildlife on this continent, or it would look a lot different than it does now.

So everything we're enjoying in 2023 is because of the work that was started in the 1870s by the Boone and Crockett Club. And I think our, my biggest my biggest. Issue with Boone and Crockett on this particular issue is the way that they have defined fair chase for me[00:45:00] and they are looked at as an authority in the overall hunting community.

And we'll get into some of my concerns here in a minute but that's where I'm at, Tracy. So you just take it away and describe, tell us what your thoughts are. First of all, I agree with what you said about the Bo and Crockett Club initially in getting the animal populations back to where they needed to be in the work that it took to do that.

So I don't wanna discredit them or just seem as if we're a, an enemy to that. And your phone though, we're a, we're a friend of that , but in reference to,

in reference to their influence. They need to be careful that they don't throw one group under the bus trying to protect a larger community, because that's a slippery slope. If you allow, say, trappers to be thrown under the bus, [00:46:00] then you allow hound hunters to be thrown under the bus. Then who's next?

Who's next. And that's one of the positions that I have with even Justin on the podcast. It's most of our crowd isn't really concerned how, I don't know very many ho I don't know many Hounds men that taking relief back your day, , we're getting hooked back up to Bluetooth here.

I don't know many hounds men that are really overly concerned about whether or not they have a, they take a mountain line or a bear that they're gonna enter into the Boone and Crockett record books. Most of it is all about fair chase. It's about Hounds, it's about stuff like that. So my biggest concern is not whether or not it's not whether or not I can enter a big game animal in the Boone and Crockett record books.

It's more about if the wrong people bring this up in the right meetings in front of the wrong people, we could lose the ability to use tracking equipment. I think the use of our GPS tracking equipment is grossly misunderstood by the Bo and Crockett Club.[00:47:00] And I thought of think that the wrong people, the animal rights movement could use that to take that ability away.

So that's my starting point on the topic. I actually think you have to step way back in front of that if you're going to get down and dig into the root of the matter. And that is you've, at some point you've got to ask. Why is morality applied to hunting at all? That's interesting. What do you think?

What are your thoughts on that? Think about it just for a moment. In nature. In nature, if a bull elk fights another bull elk to breed a cow, and one bull kills the other one, nobody calls that bull a murderer. , if a pack of wolves drags down a moose calf and eats it alive, nobody refers to them as murderers.

, if a coyo runs in and steals a mill from another cow that he's bigger than nobody calls him a thief in nature, in, in [00:48:00] nature. There's no morality. So if man is just another beast, if we descended from the apes and we came from some primordial pool of soup somewhere, and all we are is j we're just another being within.

Nature and there's no higher power, there's no God. And then nobody anywhere has a right to have anything that's moral. None at all. There is no moral morality. If there's nothing beyond us, it's just mi makes ripe. And at some point somebody is gonna have to tell me, when you're making up all these rules, what gives you the authority to make up a rule for me?

Why does society have the right to band together to make laws against or for anything at all? Period. And most of these anti hunters and the woke type people that are a part of that [00:49:00] whole thing there, they're absolute God deniers. They are totally naturalistic. If I say to them I believe there's a God, and this book is his word and this says I can hunt.

That's a joke to them, right? So let me play their game. All right? Let's assume we're all just naturalistic. We're just here. There's no God. First of all, that's absurd on a philosophical level because nothing would make sense. Even your words and definitions would have no meaning, but I won't go that route.

But I, let's say I sat down with this group of anti hunters and I asked them, okay, why are you against me hunting? We believe it's wrong. Why is it wrong? It's just wrong. We don't like it. But why is it wrong? They don't have any place to go. , there, there's no way for them to describe why it's wrong rather than right.

And what I don't understand is how come they view man as intrusive on nature if all man is as a part of nature? . [00:50:00] So if we're just part of nature, there's no difference in me going out and killing something. Then there is a wolf killing something or an eagle taking a trout. We're just participating in it.

Do you believe in wildlife rules and wildlife management rules and laws that govern honey? I do, because I have a reason to. , I believe that God established three branches of authority. He established a home, he established the church and he established government. And as long as government is used appropriately, I believe that it honors God.

So yeah, I believe that from that perspective. But these the naturalist who believes in no higher power and believes in nothing along those lines, he doesn't have a leg to stand on in his environmentalism. , because what he's telling me is not to be who I am. I'm a savage beast, born to a savage mother, living in a savage world, and yet all of a sudden I'm supposed to play by [00:51:00] some ethics and I wanna know why.

What ethics does the wolf play by? , they wanna reintroduce the wolf. Why do I want the wolf to be reintroduced? All he does is take the deer. I might eat right if there's no, if there's no God, and we're just totally naturalistic, it would be really to my best interest to annihilate the wolf.

I don't want any competition. I don't see any reason to have any competition, anything standing to my way from feeding myself has no value to me whatsoever in a naturalistic world. So they're bringing in all these moral I ideologies. What's wrong to. But they don't have any re See, here's what I don't what are they basing their moral on?

What is their moral code based on? That's, I think that's where, if I'm picking up what you're putting down, Tracy the moral code, without fiber, it's nothing. They're with nothing to back it up. There's [00:52:00] nothing, it's just, it's arbitrary. It's relative, it's one group of people imposing their will on another group of people.

. . And they ha they really should not be able to do that. A perfect example was like in Wisconsin, they, in re they reintroduced the wolves in Wisconsin to the point to the men up there getting their dogs killed by the wolves. Now they're using that to say the men are mistreating their dogs by turning them loose to hunt where there's wolves.

And then if the men were to kill a wolf, then that would be the most awful human being, whoever lived, even if he was defending himself. That's all based off a philosophy of life they have, which has absolutely no foundation whatsoever except for propaganda. If it's a truly naturalistic world and there's nothing beyond men and beasts, and we're here by blind chance and accident, we're just part of what's taking place.

And if a wolf pack runs down a deer and kills it and eats it alive, that naturalist stands there and claps and says [00:53:00] wonderful. That's what wolves do. . But if a man who's just a beast runs with a pack of dogs, he's just part of the pack, he's running with and kills a bear, he's awful and cruel and evil.

Why? Why are you superimposing a set of moral standards on a man if that man's nothing more than a glorified eight? I think we need to get somebody like, yeah, I can't argue, I can't debate the topic with you. Not adversarially anyway, cuz I agree with it. But in the case of fair Chase, when they, when the Bo and Crockett Club came up with that, I'm one, I'm not again, I'm not casting blame, they're the ones that coined the phrase.

I think, don't you think that they probably felt that hunting the methods for hunting, riding rail cars across the prairie and pot shooting buffalo from the rail car things like that. Somebody at some point said, Hey, we gotta put some breaks on this thing and define what ethics are in hunting and what fair chase is in hunting.

All right [00:54:00] let's do that and, but see what we're doing as we do it. Just as a reminder is, We're just beginning with the assumptions that man should have ethics that are not natural. You see what I'm saying? You I think when the original people involved with that, with the Bo and Crockett begin to apply ethics to hunting.

I'm for that. And I believe there's a basis for that. And they become the apertures of those ethical things and begin to put within the minds of men what Fair Chase was. . So my question to anyone, bud and Crockett, club, Pope and Young, or anybody who wants to deal in ethics and morality, my question is, first of all, what's the basis?

All right, we've already discussed that, so I won't go to that. The next thing is, as you define it and apply it, who gets to do it? Exactly. . What, okay. Who does get to do it?[00:55:00] Inevitably the state does it because the state has all the guns to enforce the rules. , everybody else is in theory and philosophy.

The state actually, George Washington said, government is forced. So the state eventually makes the rules because they're the only people that can enforce the rules. . So what we're looking for is who influences the state, and that's why we're talking about the Bo and Crockett Club.

By their own testimony on that podcast, they have state arbiters, people who make decisions and implement policy, call them and say, what do y'all think about this? Okay. So that's good because the government is asking hunters what their opinion is, and I'm glad for that. . So it's important to us when they answer that question, not to dismiss our point of view as they answer it and make their definitions a fair chase.

It's extremely important that hunters not work against other hunters. [00:56:00] Yeah. Yeah. And that's exactly, if you're going, if you're going to be the person that is the go-to, then you need to be able to speak objectively on the things that you're talking about. And right now with that position, I haven't looked through this year's legislative, all of this year's legislative proposed legislation.

But every year there comes a bill or a fish and wildlife rule that pops up in these committees that is gonna restrict the use of g p s and. Tracking four hounds, and it's always said that it gives the hunter an unfair advantage. It's being twisted by the people. It's being twisted by the animal rights groups who their main goal is to eliminate the ways we can hunt.

They don't just come after, don't bear hunt. Don't lie and hunt. Don't do anything with your dog. They look [00:57:00] for ways to subvert the whole thing by, okay, you can hunt, but you can't use a tracking device. You can hunt, but you've gotta keep your dog in a climate controlled condition. You can hunt.

But if you have more than this many dogs, then you need to be registered with U S D A as a certified breeder. Those are all things they're trying to take our ability away from us to be able to. To hunt effectively and to do the things that we need to do effectively. In the case of the Bo and Crockett Club, it, and state wildlife managers are supposed to be promoting issues that adhere to the North American model for wildlife conservation.

And so the first tenet of that, we talk about who is the voice. The first tentative of the North American model is that wildlife is to be held as a public trust. [00:58:00] And that's getting harder and harder to do in 2023 with the number of hunters that are remaining. We're carrying the torch, or we're carrying the ball for millions and millions of people that don't hunt.

And that's becoming a very difficult place. So where do we, where do we allow that voice to come in and stuff like that. Yeah. You were gonna say something? You and I are specifically concerned about preserving hound hunting Yes. And the dogs in other what realms? Yes. All right.

The first place we have to start is with hunters who use other methods because there's too much of a propensity for those other groups to want to throw us under the bus. Evidently, there's some mindset among other hunters that says, if we will sacrifice the hound people to the anti hunters, they will be satisfied with that and leave us alone.

But that's not how a predator works. Once the [00:59:00] anti hunter. takes care of us and eliminates us. They move to the next group of people. , which frankly I think their next target will be bow hunters. I think bow hunting would be next because if you just watch even Facebook, the number of deer that are shot that have to eventually be lost or tracked down, and now they're putting it on Facebook themselves.

Through, through dog recovery. If you're an anti hunter and you watch 300 deer have to be recovered by a dog and they're logging how many they didn't kill, that's easy to take in the court of public opinion and denounce bow hunting. So I think they're setting themselves up to be next.

Yeah. We just recently had a landowner who, deer hunts in the state of Indiana post on Facebook. That all coon dogs, he posted a picture of a sign. All coon dogs beyond this point die, and this guy is supposed to be a hunter. So I saw that. Yeah, that's . Let's, that doesn't work.

Let's go back, let's go back and defend ourselves along the lines of what I wrote in that Facebook [01:00:00] post that you mentioned. Yep. Absolutely. All right. Let's say I'm talking to a bow hunter. I'm talking to a steel hunter. I'm talking to a spot in stock hunter. I'm talking to somebody that loves to hunt but doesn't use dogs, and their complaint is that dogs are an unfair advantage.

Okay, so where I wanna start is this. Let's talk about fire chase on the most basic, simple terms, and here's what it is. The fairest of all fire chases the unarguable. Undisputed un, with the inability to argue against would be a human being. With nothing but his bare fists and teeth, not even any clothes, because clothes are manmade now.

And he all, he has to be naked too. It has to be naked. Yep. So you need a naked man or woman, whatever you, whoever wants to go hunting and all they're allowed to use are their hands, their feet, their teeth, whatever they naturally are born with in nature. Now, [01:01:00] can I pick up a rock that's cheating?

If we can find a species out there for you to hunt, they can fight back with rocks. Yes. It would be fair. Okay. All right. But with humans having thumbs and dexterity and the mental capacity beyond the other creatures, that might not even be a fair fight. We're, what we're doing with fair Chase is doing the fairest hunt possible.

So that's naked. and with fists and teeth. That's absurd, obviously, but that's where you would've to start. So when the bow hunter begins to add to his repertoire of things he's going to carry in the woods, he's going to add of course his bow and arrows. That's going to give him an advantage of distance.

. Cause he could reach out much further with that than he can his arms. And then he is going to get him a pair of binoculars. And whereas you and I might borrow the nose of a hound, he's gonna bar borrow the eyes of an eagle. , he's gonna be able to see things that he never [01:02:00] would've been able to see before.

He gets a spot and scope. Now he can see three or four miles to a sheep on a ridge that he never would've been able to pick out without it. The boots on his feet. They talk about hunters, using vehicles. Some dude in Tennessee wants to go to Montana and kill an elk. He's already drove a $75,000 truck.

2,500 miles, but he is aggravated that I will drive one another mile around to where dogs are treat. He's already used that. Then think about a guy who goes on a safari. He doesn't go to Africa butt naked with fists and feet. He's gonna fly in a multimillion dollar airplane across the water. He's not gonna swim over there.

So that's an advantage. . Yeah. He lands, when he lands, he's picked up in a land rover or some kind of, vehicle that takes him out in the bush. There's an advantage cuz he is not walking to where he is going on his feet. And even if he did walk, he'd probably wear a $300 pair of [01:03:00] boots.

So he gets to where he is going and there he's got his guide, which is usually, some British dude. And then they'll have some. Some Africans, a couple porters, two or three porters to carry his stuff for him. , then he'll have a couple trackers. Those trackers are hunting his game down, finding his game.

That literally all that dude has to do is be quiet. They're hauling him where he needs to go, taking him where he needs to be, setting him up for the shot. And then if he messes things up, they'll protect him so the animal don't get him. And that guy's upset because I've got a collar on my dog. The amount of equipment and even a gps that a back country person would use, in the cell wire using the Bob Marshall.

He's not using his own innate natural honing, homing instinct. He's got technology he's gotta watch it tells him what time it. The amount of money [01:04:00] and the amount of technology that ever Hunter uses is immense. . But for whatever reason, they're looking over at a guy with a dog and say, foul.

Foul. That's no good. That's absurd. It's a hundred percent absurd. It's hypocrisy at its absolute finest, and we need to fight back on that. When the guy says that dog's cheating, you need to look back at him and say, man, you've got seven you've got $7,000 worth of equipment on your person.

. Yeah, you start thinking about it, you look at some of the programs out there that give you satellite imagery and there's plenty of stuff out there both in YouTube and social media and on podcasts talking about using that technology to find natural pinch points and places where you're more likely to see more game and different things like that.

How can we, on one hand the rule makers step back and saying, Hey, A G p S collar on a dog is to locate game may not be fair chase, when [01:05:00] everything we're doing in this world is techno technology driven now, yeah, it's crazy. And if you go, and so that's just a technological argument and they're dead wrong about it.

They're dead wrong about the G P s, and we can come back to that later. But another thing they're wrong about is the game itself. They're saying it's not fair to the game to use a dog, but you've got to stop for a moment and just think about what you're saying. Stan Hunters are primarily using the methodology of not being detected.

They have to go undetected. And a spot stop guy. A spot and stop guy is primarily using the same methodology of going undetected, although he may move at times. But they're still counting on not being seen or smelled. Yep. All right. So for them to kill that animal with that methodology, that animal cannot know they're anywhere in the world.

, with the exception of long rain shooters, who an animal could look at him, 800 to [01:06:00] thousand, 1200 yards away and not in his mind, not feel any danger at all, because how could that thing over there bother him? . Exactly. There's no reason for him to run. There's no reason for him to be afraid.

Then all of a sudden, a 6.5 blitzes through his ribcage he sent, he sensed no danger whatsoever. So that's fair. Chase. Bow hunter climbs up in a tree 30 or 40 feet, gets completely above the animal. That animal and they say that's not really unfair. There's a reason you're up there, man, but besides the fact you just like to set trees, you know it's an advantage, , of course.

And it's an advantage. And you're getting above the wind currents and everybody above the eyesight, you know that. And you can name a dozen other things, so sure. Here's an out guy goes and turns loose a hound. The minute that animal realizes that animal is on his trail, he has every advantage in the world.[01:07:00]

So the hound to guy to me he's no better off than methodologies because the animal's now fully aware of what's going on. Then you have the topography to deal with. Yeah. And one of the articles I'd like to write for Bear Hunter Magazine, I wanna write one called life in the Hell Holds, but Cause a stand hunter or a even a spot and stock guy.

He has some say over where he's willing to go. Now he may be a Cameron Haynes guy who chooses to go the worst place. It was possible. Cause the dude can run 26 miles every day on his lunch break. Yeah, that's lunch on break. . But the average steel hunter or the average spot stock guy, there's just some places he's not gonna go.

He's gonna look at that and say that's where they live. I'm gonna hunt over here. But the hound guy. , he has no say on where he ends up at. And often a bear, a line, a [01:08:00] bobcat whatever. They're going to the worst hell all around and they're gonna stay in it. And if you're going to go in and harvest it, you're going in with them.

And then after you, if you do kill 'em in there, then you gotta bring them out of there. And and we did a podcast about that a couple weeks ago too. Yeah. Tech technology's not an advantage for us. Everybody has advantages and technology unless they're butt naked and bare fisted methodology is not an advantage for us because the animal knows he's being pursued.

And topography is actually to our detriment. Cause we don't get to choose where we go. So all of those are arguments to say to the other methodologies, y'all are just dead wrong and you need to stop throwing us to the wolves. and take up for us while we take up for you, unless I all defend each other.

That was gonna lead me into my next my next topic or thing to discuss here, Tracy. I know how you feel. I know what your heart is. And I think overall it's just Hey, [01:09:00] go hunt your deer however you want. This is, yeah. Just don't tell me that what I'm doing is wrong. Don't make me your sacrificial lamb so that you can be, you can extend your hunting season to five more days.

Things like that. Is that pretty close? Yeah. I'm for, and people need to listen to this.

I'm for legal methodologies whether I want to participate in it or not. I'm also for some illegal methodologies, Based on just philosophical principles, even though I don't recommend violating the law, for instance, it's illegal to run a bear with dogs in California, but I'm still for running bear with dogs in California.

Even though it's not legal to do it, I'm not saying you should go do it. Cause you should. You don't wanna be in jail and in court. But their law against town hunt is just wrong. , does that make sense? Absolutely. That's what we, that's what we talk about here all the time. Just bec [01:10:00] we've gotta continue to, we can't give up.

We can't stop pursuing the abilities to do those things. I'm all about restoring freedom and yeah. There, there's, yeah. I'm all about it. There's another thing I'll bring into this too, that I haven't really heard addressed much, and that is the complaints of private property owners ands being on their property and.

This is a touchy subject for several reasons. So first of all, I'll say I respect property Pro I, I respect private property ownership, and I'm personally not going on somebody else's property without permission, unless it's just an absolutely insane emergency situation. If my grandchild run on their property and was drowned in a creek, I'm not gonna go look for written permission to run over and get my grandkid.

Okay. So other than some kind of emergency situation, I'm gonna respect private property if it's at all possible. However, I think private property owners, especially in America, should [01:11:00] realize that there's a lot of us and we need to be kind to each other. If my neighbor's bull gets out and comes over on my property, which he has several times, I don't shoot my neighbor's bull.

I call my neighbor and say, Hey, listen, your bull got on my place. We're gonna try to put him back up. Just wanted you to know what was going on. , that's being a neighbor. If my neighbor's kid sneaks over to the house and goes fishing in the pond, first of all, he's gonna have permission if he asks.

Cause I'm not telling a kid they can't hunt, right? Or fish. But even if he snuck over and fished in the pond and caught some fish and I found out about it, all I'm gonna do is say hey buddy. Next time ask. Because I want to know you're up there. Yeah. I'm not gonna freak out and call the law and try to have that kid put in jail and bless the parents out and all that garbage.

If another group of bear hunters, I've got some property up on the mountain, if another group of bear hunters drive up through there and [01:12:00] they strike a bear that happens to be next to where we own property and they turn loose on it, I'm not gonna be mad about it. I'm gonna say, y'all have a, did you do good?

Did you catch it? Cause that's just being a good neighbor. . But what I don't think Americans understand a lot about private property is this, all of us in a certain sense are living on lands. Even if we pay the payments and the taxes on it, that used to belong to somebody that didn't wanna give it up.

And you talk about public land up here, like the Smokey, how many p families were displaced in the Smoky Mountains? Just so you can have a national park. There was a lot of families that didn't wanna move outta the Smokies, didn't wanna move outta places like Cades Cove that the government said, we're going to have this for the public benefit and y'all are getting off of it.

, road systems, everybody drives a road every day that used to belong to somebody else that didn't wanna sell it, but the government took it through imminent domain. So even though you should be protective of your property, you should also be [01:13:00] willing to share it. Cause frankly, all of us use land every day that somebody didn't wanna give up.

I've never met, I was in this business for a long time. It felt like I was a referee a lot of times between different landowners. And I've never found a landowner that didn't eventually need the help of his neighbor at some point. And when you start putting up your castle walls and thinking that you can be self-sufficient, it's unre unrealistic because sooner or later a tree is gonna fall from your property onto the neighbor's property, and you're gonna need your neighbor's help to fix the fence because your cows are gonna be over there, or his cows are coming over to your place.

And even in times of like natural disaster when we've had tail ends of hurricanes blow all the way up through here, through Indiana and all the roads are shut down, my neighbor can't get out. and the county's so swamped, the government [01:14:00] is so swamped that they can't do it, and the community comes together to clean up the community.

Yeah, it's totally unrealistic to think that we can live on these little islands and not depend on anybody for anything in these day, in this day and age. Even when they were settling that country that you're in right there. A neighbor was a valued commodity. Somebody that could help them mark hogs and or barter with down the road, maybe their wife spun wool and you, your son chopped firewood.

Were getting totally away from that in our country, that's for sure. Yeah. The only, that's not necessarily under the auspices of fair Chase, but I bring it up cause it's one of the arguments used against hound hunting by people that it's enc an encroachment on. It's just an encroachment on Private land.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, I think I would get out there too that if you're one of those guys that doesn't take time to, to get permission, and you're making it hard on me [01:15:00] because you are impeding and trampling on people's rights, and you don't have the common courtesy and the decency to be a man or a true sportsman or a sportswoman, and go talk to the landowner prior to just dumping a truckload of hounds on him.

Go find something else to do. I, we really don't need. Adding fuel to the to their fire. The Hounds Man XP podcast network is powered by Cajun Lights. All of your lighting needs for hunting can be taken care of. At Cajun Lights, they have three models of cap lights. I'm gonna run through 'em real quick.

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Hey, hold on there. We'll be right back to the show. Do not hit that fast forward button. We gotta pay these [01:17:00] bills, folks, and it really isn't even paying bills with this first one. It's just doing the right thing right now. Freedom Hunters just dropped their live auction. , and we'll put the link to that in the show notes.

We're talking about all kinds of cool hunting gear that they've got online to help raise funds for Freedom Hunters. It's in relation with their Jim Shockey classic that they're gonna hold this weekend down in South Carolina. You can find all that information out if you go to hounds mid xp.com or freedom hunters.org.

If you go to our website, you can hit or hit the link over there to Freedom Hunters, or you can go direct to Freedom Hunters and get all the information you need. That's Freedom hunters.org. Make sure you're bidding high and bidding often. A lot of cool stuff over there. Stuff you're gonna use anyway.

Stuff you're gonna need and maybe some things that you've always wanted that maybe you don't really need. [01:18:00] You can still get it right there in that auction. There's over 200 items on that auction. Check 'em out. The other one is Dogs are Treated. When's the last time you went to that website? Kevin and Nancy?

Were just with me out in Cody, Wyoming for Larry Anderson's memorial service. They drove all the way up through a blizzard. They closed the passes behind them to get up there at the Kalispell. They drove from Incom all the way up there to support another Homan. That's pretty, I pretty amazing that they would do that.

They're also sending out tons of gear to your field trials and your banquets and all those sort of things too. Tie outs and leashes and all kinds of stuff. They're just sending that out. I was in Michigan at the Michigan Bear Hunters Association. I'm walking down the line, dropping my tickets in for these raffle items.

And here's Dogs RRE gear. So sent a whole tile system out there. So two great organizations that supported your lifestyle. You need to check 'em out. I hope you haven't [01:19:00] fast forwarded through this ad and skip through. You need to support these folks. Freedom hunters and dogs are treated. All right, so we got interrupted there by let's just call it Life

That's right. . We got interrupted by life in that, that spirited conversation there. But I think we, I we've covered a lot of ground here, Tracy, but what's your final word on the Fair Chase deal how do we as Hounds men be effective? How do we affect change of that perception from other hunters?

I guess I that's really what I want to hear your thoughts on. I have several thoughts. One is this, we've gotta stop being ashamed of who we are. I feel like sometimes there's a sense among hound people that we've actually adopted the way other people think about us. What do you mean?

What do you mean? What do you mean by that? It's almost as [01:20:00] if we want to hide don't post any pictures don't openly talk in front of the state legislatures about hound hunting. Just try not to bring it up. And maybe the anti hound people won't know we're out here. And hiding only works until they find you. Yeah. And at some point they find you. And the very fact that you tried to hide gives this sense that you're ashamed of who you are. And I think we need to be proud that we're hound people. I have absolutely no shame in it whatsoever. I believe it's the greatest methodology on the face of the earth.

Not to discredit other methodologies, but just as much as a bow hunter like Fred Baer would call bow hunting. Hunting the hard way. . , I believe hound hunting is actually hunting the hard way. There's a perception among some people that all hound hunters are slobbish road men that sit in the truck and eat and talk on the radio and wait till a bear runs out in front of the truck.[01:21:00]

And you and I both know that there's not an ounce of truth to that for the people who are the actual hunters, right? If there's somebody who's an absolute slob, he's not a representation of the men in the woods who do all the work, and I can promise you this now, I'm not the example I'm trying to use here because I have had issues for years and I'm not the epitome of homan that people oughta look to as an example of what a homan is.

, but. I mentioned my son earlier. I promise you, I can take just about any bow hunter or any stand hunter or any steel hunter that you wanna bring any of them and put 'em with I could say Ben or I could probably pick out two or three other men, and if they hunted with them for a week, I promise you their idea of hound hunting would not be [01:22:00] that it's lazy slots.

They'd be walking bow-legged through my front yard wondering how they was going to get it in the truck the next day. Yep. Yeah. And there's thousands of other hounds men just like them. We get opportunity to talk to a lot of 'em. I think a lot of times what people see, if you're just, if you're driving down a mountain road bec, on a Saturday afternoon with your family, you're seeing just a very small part of what's actually going on.

The guy that you s that they see sitting in the truck. Maybe like your grandfather Barry was, he was 83 years old and he'd already done his time in the mountain mile upon mile in those mountains, and he just wasn't physically able to do that anymore. And we talk a lot about the value of those guys that are maybe past their prime and just physically can't do it anymore.

But they're still there because they love it. And so there's a [01:23:00] number of reasons. They may be sitting in the truck. They may be gutted three hours before that, . Yeah. There's a number of reasons for that. But, they could be, there's disabled people who just like to participate in the hunt.

There are men like my grandfather, who had paid his dues for years that still wanted to participate in the hunt. There are sometimes people who bring their whole families and somebody's in the vehicle watching the kids. Yep. So the people in the truck are not a representation of the guy in the woods who's literally, in my personal viewpoint, the closest thing to the David Crocketts and Daniel Boones in modern America that you can find it's hardcore.

The true Homan is a rare breed, and he is a hardcore individual, and there's just not many people who could keep up with him. And so he don't ha he has nothing to be ashamed of. The second thing that I would say about it is we need to be more proactive in [01:24:00] how we present ourselves to other hunting methods.

And I mean by that, don't ever take any bull crap off of them when a bow hunter, and I'm for bow hunting, so I'm just saying in defending ourselves, if somebody says something smart hell, hunting is the easy way. Don't just take that. , answer that back, challenge that, and go into some of the arguments about the technology and the methodology and the topography and the places that you have to go and let 'em understand that's not how this works and you guys are dead wrong.

I think you need to teach us how to do that, Tracy. You get told that. And then what is Tracy Jones? What is your reply to that? My reply to that is gonna be basically what I've already written and some of Facebook posts. And but the simple reply really is this.

It's say, Hey, listen, there's no way that I can, in words [01:25:00] get you to understand that you're wrong. But if you'll come and hunt with us for a few days, I want you to see firsthand why you're wrong.

And if they're not willing to come and experience it for themselves and see it. They're just not, they're just not what I would call an honest actor. They're just a mouth and they're not worth your energy to try to convince them that they're wrong. The fool's never gonna admit that they're wrong.

No, not at all. And the general public the statistics that the guy read on your other podcast about fair chase, what they, I think y'all said about 70% of the general public is favorable to hunting. They're not against it and so forth. So the die car, the diehard anti-hunt, they're really in the minority.

But we trade lock, they're in the majority. They're not a majority. They're a very small minority that just has big mouths and a lot of money. That's a big deal right [01:26:00] there. So the people we've got to deal with are the other hunters to make sure they don't throw us under the bus.

And really, your state legislatures, you need to be friends with your state legislature. I have my state legislature's numbers in my phone, and I can call them today. They'll answer the phone or call me back. I can talk to them people. You wanna be friends with those people because they're, who makes the decisions?

They're in the state of Tennessee, the governor appoints a council of people to make wildlife decisions. , your local hunting organization needs to know who those people are. Don't just show up at a generalized meeting because almost nothing's ever decided in those, except for who has the biggest mouth.

What you wanna do is make friends with those people behind the scenes. and we've had state legislature come up and hunt with us and those kinds of things. Maybe to give some insight to what you're saying. [01:27:00] I know firsthand, I've been in those Fish and Wildlife Council meetings and different things and they have the time when they limit people's time.

We're we'll open the floor up to comments. Everybody has two minutes. Yeah. And they've gotta do that to meet their obligations statutorily for making those rules. But I also know that after the meeting's up, the people sitting on that panel, They pull people aside and most of those decisions are not made in that room.

They're made through relationships and people that they trust. They may hear a valid point from, maybe they've never heard of Keel Jones before, and you get up and you make a valid point that peaks your curiosity. After that meeting, they're gonna go over here to, to Bob Smith, that they've got a long standing relationship with that d that may be able to validate what you said, and then they're gonna make the decision.

Yeah, that's a hundred [01:28:00] percent right. It's based off relationships and sometimes hound hunting people are not really good at the relationships and I'm, and I run the risk of making the people that I love most mad at me for saying this, but I'll say it anyways. Sometimes Hell hunting draws the hardest core of people.

. A lot of hound hunters, they're still the old school kind of people that would rather fist fight you as talk with you. And the reason we, the reason hound hunting draws those kinds of people is because it's so hard. If you don't have the die hard, rough neck personality, you're just not gonna make it in hound hunting.

Not the true hounds man. They're a rough bunch, but because they're a rough bunch, they're not always good at diplomacy. . Exactly. . And you've got, we've got to learn to train ourselves that we're in a different world now. We're not in the world where you face off with a dude and whoever whips the other one gets his way.

We're in a world where [01:29:00] two friends are going to decide whether you get the bear hunt for the rest of your life or not. And you need to make friends with those people for the right reasons. Not phony friendships, but friendships for the right reasons. and let them see who you are and come and stay with your family.

Come and hunt with you and invite 'em to hunt with you. And when you're, when their phone rings and you're on the other line, they should want to pick it up to see what you have to say. . Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's all about making investments. If we j if we all just went into this thing thinking, how can I invest myself today to make this a better future for us?

And sometimes that takes skipping a day of hunting to go to your local representatives, fundraiser or where he can see you. Those are all important things, and if everybody just did a little bit, we could do a lot. It's really just as simple as asking the question, [01:30:00] who in my state actually makes the decisions?

and how can I have an influence in their life when they make that decision. , that's how it really works behind the scenes and you know it as well as I know it. , that's how it works. . Yeah. Game wardens to me are extremely important because when that private council of citizens makes their decisions in the state of Tennessee, they do take input from the average citizen, but they also take input from the TWA and the T'S input is weighted heavier than the average guys.

You as the experts. With us you have the go, the game board whose boots on the ground and you have the biologist, the game wardens, for instance. They want the buyer population to be lower because they hate to be called out in the middle of the nut. They don't wanna talk to the farmer about the corn be eaten.

They don't wanna talk to the, there's a ton of stuff coming that comes out of that. And the [01:31:00] biologist, if he's more science oriented, he's more concerned about the nature, the natural aspect of it. , the right. , I can't the right word to come to mind. The I don't even know how to say it, but the biological aspect and the population numbers.

, population dynamics, total habitat management plans, how does this bear population fit into our management plan that interacts with ground nesting birds and fond mortality rates. And, you can go on and on with all that. And you need to, somebody in your state needs to look into the science that they claim to be using.

Like for instance, the T WRA here published an article in their magazine called Cultural Caring Capacity. , trying to prove that we had too many bears in the state. Based on their idea, there was too many bears in Tennessee. They wanted to implement more steel hunting opportunities to eliminate bears.

We were concerned that the bear top population would be [01:32:00] drastically lowered too quickly with extended seasons during the steel hunt. So I went and talked to the biologist and the regional director privately, because I wanted to talk to him without fighting with him. So in that conversation, I asked the biologist, I said, how many bear are in the state?

Obviously, there's no way for him to know. I knew he didn't know when I asked him. . So then I asked him, what methodology do you use to determine the numbers of bears in the state? And they were taken at the time sardine cans and hanging 'em up in a line and seeing how many were hit.

You and I know one bear can take all those sardine cans out in the night, so that's really not scientific at all. So the regional director didn't even know how they were going about it. And so I said so really you don't know the population. You don't have a scientific way to determine the population, [01:33:00] but yet you're writing a article to influence people to lower the population and then making these new laws.

When this, it is not really based on science at all, it's just based on perception. And so you have all these decisions taking place and. , you need to make sure that the science being presented is legit science. , and then get that to the people who make the decisions like the panel of private citizens, that the governor appoints.

I think to wrap it up, Tracy I you said something about relationships and finding out who makes those decisions. And one of those groups that is influential in that decision making just on their public policies and statements and their positions is the Boone and Crockett Club, along with many others.

So this whole thing started with a conversation about Boone and Crockett Club. What would [01:34:00] you like to see be the result? From this attention, we've sh we've put on their policy about fair Chase. What would you like to see as a result of that? If I could sit down in a private conversation with the gentleman that you had on your podcast.

The first thing that I wanna make sure that I didn't do was give the idea that I was anti Bo and Crockett Club. . Cause that's not the case. . This, the second thing I would want to do would be to impress upon him that if that group has that much influence on decision making, they need to make sure their policies reflect what's actually true.

And then I'd want to challenge him on the specifics of the garment deal. They're saying that the garment allows you, in his words, to. , locate the animal and drive closer to [01:35:00] the animal. Okay. What the garment doesn't do is get you from the vehicle to the animal. See the assumption that you can get closer and make it easier is only an assumption in a lot of cases.

, because I've told people this in some of the ridings I've done. I haven't found a Garmin yet that I can ride to the tree. I'd like one that worked like a witch's broom . I'd like to my Garmin on the bottom of my feet and it hover me off of the ground about 10 feet. And let me ride that sucker over these laurels and up sides of these mountains and around these cliffs to get to the trees.

That'd be awesome. That'd be truly an unfair . So that's not how that works. And and I know that's not how that works. It saves you some steps in the sense if you don't go to the places the dogs are not. But it doesn't make it any easier in getting to the dogs where they are when they're in a hard place.

So that's to me, just baloney, especially baloney in [01:36:00] this sense. And this is where I would want to say it, but I wouldn't want to offend the people who are making these decisions. He said there's only a hundred people allowed to be a member of that club. To me, that's hogwash. Yeah. You've got a hundred people making decisions for millions of hunters have an influence for millions of hunters, and it's an exclusive club to, I just find it preposterous in a, in an situation like the United States where I got a hundred dudes determining whether my Garmin gives me an unfair advantage or not.

. But if I'm talking to them, I wanna look at that guy sitting across the table from me and say, I heard you went on a safari last year. Yeah. You take a plane over there? Yes, sir. Did you hire guide? Yes, sir. Did you have people carry your stuff? Yes, sir. Did you have trackers? Yes, sir. Then I'm gonna look and say everything that you hired people to do, me and my dog do here.

I carry my own pack. [01:37:00] I walk on my own feet, I'd find my own tracks. And when that dog trees, that thing, I don't have porters getting me to the tree. I don't have somebody holding the shooting for me. And the scrap, in fact, it is so difficult to hunt here in East Tennessee and Western North Carolina, east Mountains.

There's not many people who do it past the age of 60. I can attest to that. They can still go and sometimes they can get to a tree, but most of the time you get past 60 around here and you're pretty well done for Yeah, time's are ticking for me. That's for sure. So that's what I'd want to address with those people.

You got all this influence with these state game people calling you. You've got to be wise in how you do it and make sure that you're not sacrificing us for your good. Becau and the reason is cause you're just wrong about the way we go about our stuff. [01:38:00] Yeah. Yeah. My, yeah. I think that's well put, Tracy, I was gonna add some stuff, but I don't know what I could possibly add to that.

So I would like to add this to the end of it before we hang up, if you don't mind. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Go ahead. I would like to add this, and I don't say this with any sense of arrogance because I don't claim to be a Daniel Boone or David Crockett. I don't even claim to be a Barry Talton or a Terry Jones.

I was the least of the hunters in one family. I'm certainly not the greatest of hunters among those that are listened to this podcast. . But what I would say is this hound hunting as a methodology is by far the greatest methodology on the face of the earth. It is superior to steel hunting. It's superior to Stan hunting.

It's superior to spot and stalk. It is fair chase. It is the epitome of fair chase. We have nothing to be ashamed of. We ought to have hats, t-shirts, [01:39:00] brochures and everything under the sun saying, hound hunting. This is how fair Chase really happens. And present our viewpoint from the perspective of how we actually see it, rather than letting the way other people see it be imposed upon us.

And I don't like the word sport, it's a totally different subject. From my personal philosophy of hunting, I don't view how hunting as a sport. And the reason is because I don't think something that ends in the death of a creature should be considered a sport. To me, football's a sport. Baseball's a sport is a sport.

Hunting ends in the death of a creature. To me, it's a sacred pursuit. And that's the reason I use that word. I view for me, personally, hunting as an interaction with the creator who created the world that I exist in, who created the animals that are in the world, who placed me among them, who gave [01:40:00] me the directive to participate in hunting and taking that meat and using that for my own consumption.

And it's not church that's a totally different subject, but it is an interaction with the God who made me. And when I harvest an animal, I don't stand and rejoice and give high fives and show gang symbols right. To me, I've pulled the trigger on a life that's now ending. It's not the same as a human life, but it's a life.

And my heart is in gratitude to the creator who gave me the breath to be there and gave the animal in that situation that I can then have that for meat or whatever. And that to me, that is a sacred pursuit. It is not a sport. And I believe that's the right way to present that to the, that 70% who's not against hunt.

That we're not out here high fiving each other and doing back flips and[01:41:00] getting our little macho, machismo off cause we're hunters, right? I think interact in the natural world and. It's sacred to us. In fact, I personally, if I'm ever put in a place to have to sue over this, I'm gonna sue on religious grounds that it's part of my religious freedom.

Interesting. I think the whole sacred pursuit topic, I think we can make another podcast out of that. I think it's valuable. I like the message. I really liked liked that when I saw it come coming off of your posts and stuff, it makes a lot of sense. We used the term lifestyle just because sport is something that I played football in high school.

I'm not playing football. I didn't play football pa, past high school. And being a Hounds man is a lifestyle. It. Dogs don't feed themselves, they don't care for themselves. They don't, they don't train themselves. They don't get themselves to the, you've gotta be invested in this thing in a way that, [01:42:00] that is a lifestyle.

And it not only affects me, but it affects my family, it affects my finances. You've gotta be all in. If you're gonna be effective, it's gotta be a lifestyle for you. Yeah. I heard Steve Ronella one time giving a defense for farm hunters who basically, groomed their piece of property to farm deer.

They named their deer, Mr. Buckeye, long time, Uhhuh, and then they go out, shoot that animal. And his defense of that was the man hours that it takes to cultivate that property, to harvest an animal. . That's a good defense of that methodology. And I could say the same thing about hound hunting the man hours and the investment that it takes to be a houseman.

To me is unparalleled with any other methodology. Agreed. No argument here. Tracy, we say we wrapped this one up. You and I have talked, I don't even know how many [01:43:00] months of conversation we've had between us over the years, but we sure can't cover it all in one podcast. And but I really appreciate you coming on and people can find your work in Bear Hunting magazine.

Are you a regular columnist there now? Yes, sir. Great. Is that's a regular column and is it called Sacred Pursuit? Sacred Pursuit is the name of call and I write some stuff on my Facebook page along these lines. But I will warn people that if you send me a Facebook request and your anti-religion, You'll probably end up mad at me.

, just be wire. Just be wire. If you go there you'll get both. Yeah. Tracy, I appreciate you joining us on the Homan XP podcast. I appreciate every one of you that is listening. Make sure you're checking out our website@houndsmanxp.com and until next time, this is fair Chase.

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