The Dog Men

Recorded LIVE from Uncle Earl’s Hog Dog Trials; these are The Dog Men.

Houndsman XP host, Chris Powell, travels to the Pelican State, The Bayou Country, The Creole State, Sportsman’s Paradise, the one and only State of Louisiana to record this episode with two bona fide dog men. In seat number one we have the elusive, yet intellectual and philosophical Ed Barnes. Ed is the publisher of Tuskers Magazine, author of the Dog Man favorite book In Pursuit of Hog Dogs and bladesmith, making heirloom quality pig stickers and hog skinners. Raymond Plummer is second only in the seating arrangement. Raymond is working on 28 generations of catahoulas, author of fine poetry and master storyteller.

This episode of the Houndsman XP Podcast is one for the ages. 

www.tuskersmagazine.com

www.houndsmanxp.com

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This is the Homan XP podcast.

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The original podcast for the Complete Hounds. Men, we get your,

we're. The podcast that represents our lifestyle of extreme performance.[00:02:00]

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. So how many days a week can you spend At as much as I can, to be honest with you, anytime that I get I'm out there.

Join us for every heart pounding adventure on Hounds Man 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.[00:03:00]

There is a place where the spirit of the men and the dogs matches in Fitch right in to the Bayou culture. The Z deco music, the crawfish boils, hog meat on the grill and intense competition. We are going to Louisiana to Uncle Earls on this episode of the Hound XP podcast. I am your host, Chris Powell and I travel all the way to Louisiana.

To take in the atmosphere of one of the largest assemblies of hog hunters in the world. I call it Daytona Bike Week for hog hunters. We are going to Uncle Earl's hog dog trials, and I trove all the way down there to capture this rare interview. With the elusive yet intellectual and philosophical, ed Barnes, joining us for this conversation [00:04:00] is equally elusive, intellectual and philosophical.

And master storyteller, Raymond Plumber. These are true dog men. Ed is the owner and publisher of Tuskers Magazine. He's a master blade. His book In Pursuit of Hog Dogs is one of my personal favorites and favorites among hog hunters worldwide. I describe Ed like this. If Ernest Hemingway, Blackbeard, and Ben Lilly all got together and fathered a child, it would be Ed Barnes.

I knew the moment I met Raymond Plumber that I had struck podcasters gold. Underneath that straw cowboy hat was a man of 57 that was built like a college wrestler and a handshake, like an old time dairy farmer. As soon as he started talking, I knew that he was gonna be a guy that had a lot of knowledge and wisdom.

And with 28 generations of Cata [00:05:00] Hulas and his breeding program, he has a lot to offer for all of us. This conversation is lively, it is informative, and the stories may affect your sensitivities. Live from Uncle Earl's. These are the dog men.

Raymond was talking about feeding some Lemon. Lemon and white hounds. Walker hounds. Yeah. I was talking about growing up and they're actually being dog men, and the, and we were talking, you and I had about how they had, there may the hunting may be on the rise since covid, but the dog hunter is seemingly being banished.

Even in the upper echelons, what I've noticed in my state, the upper echelons of the conservation agency is really anti hunters. Yeah. They're not friends of the hunter. [00:06:00] And more than that, they're against the dog man. They passed a, say a regulation in Arkansas that you couldn't bring squirrel dogs onto the WMA in the spring of the year.

Because they were afraid that they were going to fetch a baby deer or falling to 'em. Statewide I blew it out to all of them. I said, I've hunted my whole life and I most of your squirrel dog breeds are fe dogs and small dogs. Not all, a lot of 'em. I said, but large breeds or small alike, I've never seen a squirrel dog fetch a, a fallen No.

Just never have. And so they banned them in the name of really, not the fact that they were afraid that they were gonna fetch a baby deer and we've got too many deer. Anyway. I just had this conversation the other day with somebody. What that comes from is a memorandum of understanding with the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

If they're gonna get federal dollars, then they've gotta shut that property down during certain times of the year because there's other lobbying groups that are lobbying for ground nesting birds and all this other stuff. [00:07:00] So talking about those lobbying groups like Delta Waterfall and Ducks Unlimited.

They're doing huge. They're giants. They're giants in the industry, and so they get, they got the money and they got the ear, and they got the influence. So that's a lot of the reason why they shut those WMAs down in the spring. The thing is when you hear it all the time with deer, I mean as dog hunters, me and Raymond are hog hunters.

We do not want our dogs chasing deer when we go hunting. Not for the benefit of the deer hunter, for the benefit of ourself benefit. Sure. We don't, we do not want that it, it impedes on our enjoyment of the hunt. So we're not doing that. We spent thousands of dollars to prevent it, to break 'em off of it.

Yeah. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. That's part of the training process. Yeah. There's nothing worse that. A day, have a day of hunt ru hunting run. Because you got trashy dogs. Yeah. We're not, and I got the trashiest dogs around. Yeah. We're not after that. Yeah. We're not just hill buddies that are [00:08:00] turning dogs looses.

Just hoping they'll chase something. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. We are at Uncle Earl's and what's what town's this in? We're in Winfield, Louisiana. Winfield, this is the 28th year that this has gone on. It's a huge event. How many dogs do you think are here, Raymond? Oh, Lord. That'd be a they're in the hundreds, I'd say for sure.

Yeah. I would guess if I was gu and I would guess that right now there's probably 600 dogs here. Probably. Probably. It's a huge event. It's a week long event. I call it Daytona Bike Week for hog hunters. Y you're pretty close to it. Yeah. Yeah. It's a week long party. We're celebrating the The future of hog hunting, but we're also celebrating the heritage that we have in hog.

That's right. That's because this is actually uncle Earl was actually a Louisiana governor, Senator. Senator, who who free ranged hogs and also hog wit dogs. And this is a celebration of his birthday. Since you mentioned that, what kind of dogs was it that he hog hunted [00:09:00] with?

Ver Louisiana. I would imagine it was catullus raining. You wouldn't have any connection with them dogs, would you? No, I'd say not. No. It'd be too fard back that I wouldn't know. But the, for me I've told a lot of people I'm getting up in years a little bit, but.

When I go see Jesus one day, I'll be feeding together a dog when I go. It's just that way. And it's ingrained in my life, my lifestyle. My kids, they all know, matter of fact growing up, they always beg, can we have some other kind of dog? Yeah. And no what's answer, but I've heard, yeah I've heard that same thing.

It's like we got dogs and the kids go to school and we got dogs at home. Everybody be talking. We just got dad's hunting dogs. I always had to keep some little ratty dog around for them to run around with. But I gotta do some introductions. So before we get rolling into this thing too far, so I got the one and only Ed Barnes Tuskers Magazine.

I don't think you need any [00:10:00] introduction, ed. I don. Yeah. Knife maker. Like a master bladesmith. I don't know. I won't, yes you are. I won't claim master blades smith. We'll claim it for you. We'll claim it for you, man. Not looking at your knives and stuff. Have you sold out this week or were they all sold before you got here?

Most were sold before I got here, but yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I enjoy making knives. It comes a close second to hog hunting with dogs. Yeah. You're just a renaissance man, though. I am a total renaissance man. Yeah. Yep. Write books, make knives. Yeah. Hog hunt hogs like simple things in life. Simple things.

Simple things done well. There you go. So you're a Ren Renaissance perfectionist. Yeah. I'm really not a perfectionist, but I like to do things well. Yeah. But you're the type of guy that everything you do just like you're, have you ever done that? I was looking at the pictures of the house you're building.

And you did that acid temp on the floor and stuff. Have you ever done that before? No. It's super easy. Anybody [00:11:00] wants to do it. They should just do it. It's not hard. Yeah. I always say like most things in life are really not hard. Especially, we live in a golden age where you can do, if you have a desire to do a little bit of research we have more information at our fingers, at our fingertips than anybody else in history.

Yeah. If you can't do something today, it's because you don't wanna put in the effort. The information is all right in front of us. We just have to grab it. Never seen anything like it. Yeah. And then sit into your, to your left and right across from me is Raymond Plumer from Arkansas Famous CATA Hula.

Yes. Now we have migrated up to Branson, Missouri. Boom. But you're from Arkansas? Oh, yes, sir. Grew up some in Louisiana. I've got family in Catula, Paris, Louisiana, and we lived down in Morgan Cities on the Gulf down there for a while. And but most of my region was in Arkansas yeah. Yeah.

And, CATA hula bloodline man died in the war. I'm just, [00:12:00] that's just the way it is. Have you ever had anything else? I've trained dogs shits and training. I've trained a lot of police dogs, all your breeds that they use for that, whether it's mountain walls or governments or shepherds or whatever, is the, the new dog that they're trying to make the best, police dog.

And so I've, and I've trained a lot of different types of hunting dogs, everything from Labrador, retrievers on down so I'm not mindless about the breeds. Yeah. Matter of fact, I'm a dog guy, with my dogs, I am, we live vicariously through our dogs, and if our dogs do well, we're proud, and if they do bad, we're ashamed and embarrassed, because that's a little piece of us as we've trained our dog and turned him loose out there.

And how he performs is a reflection of us. It's a reflection of our character, and and I like to tell people that a lot of, the dogs that personally that I keep can add, subtract, multiply, divide, they're cross trained, if I I do hog hunt a lot and and we love that and have done it for years and years, but I can also, where aside [00:13:00] from, and I'm not saying that a plot hand can't do that because Fair, not.

Do what? Say bear Not we'll be wrestling. We're pretty fit. Let's wrestle. We looks pretty fit. Let's wrestle. I keep a tree in genetic in my dogs. I believe that a dog that can tree is a smarter dog. I just, and I believe I can prove that but I can work cattle, I can catch wild cows.

I can work dairy cows, not jerk the milk out of them. I can hog hunt. With that same set of dogs, squirrel hunt. And I could tell you a story of doing those very things, and so it was like when my grandfather raised cattle with dogs, he could step to the porch in the days of open range and send old, left to the bottoms to gather the cattle.

Alright? Yeah. And he could go in and eat supper. He didn't have to worry in about 30 minutes or so, the cattle would be up in a lot. Two or three good cowboys, cuz I know, been there and done that. Without a dog. It could take two or three days to do that. What's that a, there there's a good dog on the grounds worth three in the saddles.

Exactly. Yep. [00:14:00] Yep. You said earlier, you said you were teasing me. You said, I owned a plot one time. I owned a Catahoula one time. Did. You did. But it wasn't a plumber bread dog. I betcha though. See, the thing, the thing is, Raymond's a cat of hula guy. Yeah. I'm a cross bread guy.

If it won't happen. But if tomorrow Raymond decided he wanted to be a walker dog guy, he'd be successful. He'd be a successful walker dog guy. Yeah. We have our favorites, but when a dog, when a guy knows dogs, he can switch from one to the next. And dogs in general are the same. And I think it too, in that it is the ability, the innate ability of the man to be able to look at a dog.

And tell what he can get out of that dog, what he can expect out of that dog. And if he can't do that, he better change games. Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree with you. I always say that dog men are born. You have to be born with a natural ability to see a dog and see his potential.

That does not [00:15:00] mean every dog you get is gonna be the greatest, but you can see the greatest potential outta each dog you come in contact with. A dog a lot of times is they learn off a repetitive response. Okay. A lot of people think that a dog don't like the u p s guy cuz he's wearing a uniform, has zero to do with it.

Okay? What it has to do with the nature of the dog, when the u ps guy's in a hurry and he comes flying up to your house, screeching tires and stops and jumps out quickly and runs to your door and your dog nature in him barks. And when he barks, the guy quickly turns around, drops package quickly, he turns around and runs back to his vehicle and gone.

The next day, the guy does it again and he does it again until finally the dog's waiting on him. And he knows and they think, he just don't like him cuz. And now it's not it at all. You've trained him to do that. He does the mailman that way. Does UPS man that way? You know what, let's talk about earlier today you were telling me about in hog dogs, lots of times we deal with dogs are on the skittish side.

And earlier we were talking, you were talking [00:16:00] about. Going up to a dog on the chain, who's on the skiddish side, and how to approach that dog and how that's gonna affect that dog. Sure. Why don't you talk about that for a minute? There are different natures and I'm gonna look at the Kahoo breed because even some of the books that are written, talk about a kahoo dog, mean Hoo, don't mean sometimes aloof and shy toward people.

Now they can be ours, ours was a little bit, yeah, they can be overt toward people or they can be a little shy or just not noticeable one way or the other. But if a dog, if you've got a shy dog, most of the time he's been trained to be shy. Okay? Now there is, people have different characteristics about him.

Dogs do too. Okay? Now, he can be a little antsy around people or whatever, but say for instance, if I've got a dog that is feigning shyness, okay? I will not tolerate it. I will not allow it. Okay? So one thing that I'm gonna do when that dog, if you walk up to a shy dog, oftentimes they'll lay down and roll [00:17:00] over and expose their belly.

That's a sign of submission. Okay. Of not dominance in the alpha order. Okay? So I will not pet a dog that lays down, rolls over on his back, expecting you to pet him. I'll stand there and he will roll around a lot of times until he figures out, wow, this guy's now petting me. And then he'll look at you like, Hey, what's wrong?

I'm here. If you stand there long enough, the dog will get on his feet. When the dog gets on his feet, then instead of hand down, which is a sign of aggression, come hand up under the dog's mouth and his jaw and rub him a little bit. And after you fill him, melt to that, then you can reach around there and pat him a little firm pat on the side.

He loves it and he will come back for it. But if you continue when that dog. I won't chase a dog. Matter of fact, the other day this lady was chasing her dog and I said, quit chasing your dog. And she said I've gotta catch him. I said, go the other way. Yeah. And she said, what? I said, start walking the other way.

That's right. And the [00:18:00] dog turned and followed her. See? And so by then the dog's coming to you, you're not chasing the dog. So they do learn off of repetitive response and things that you teach them. And sometimes people teach dogs things they don't unaware. They're teaching 'em, like you where'd you learn all this stuff, Raymond?

From doing Yeah. Ab absolutely. It's from doing, yeah. And it's funny, we were talking this morning, you were talking about that, and I had never really thought of it in those terms. But I do the same thing, like when I get a Skiddish dog, I'll go in their kennel and sit there for sometimes hours.

And I don't push the issue, I don't push myself on the dog. I wait for the dog to come to me. And then I'd never thought about it. And I had never done it on purpose, but like you were saying, when they do come to me, I pet them from the underside. Is it to come from the top side? Sure. It's a, that ties into that's why you get such good responses when you're hand, when you get a dog.

If you'll sit there and you'll hand feed it and you'll feed it everything that it eats [00:19:00] for the first week that you've got it outta your hand, then same thing that Raymond's saying, it's a non-aggressive pose. You're sitting in there on a bucket and you're allowing the dog to come to you and eat outta your hand.

What I want out of an animal, whether it's a horse new dog is the same thing. I want that animal formed to what I want them to be and I pick an animal that I think I can do that with, that I have the best chance with. I adopted some Mustangs from the Bureau of Land Management one time. Yep. And I got a five year old stud horse, still had his manhood about him and.

I took that horse, named him Nevada. Of course, that's where he come from. I taught that horse to sit, lay, and roll over on command. Okay. Used him for everything. If there was everything, anything he didn't want to do, that's what we camped out on. Yeah, that's right. You do. Yeah. You camp out on it till you get over that.

And he understands. You do the same thing with mules. A mule, the difference in a mule and a horse is this, and you've probably heard this before, [00:20:00] but say for instance, you load a horse in your horse trailer and you have a low fender bender, okay? You take that horse out of that trailer after being beat, bang ground back there.

He's not gonna want to go back in that trailer just as quickly. Yeah. The difference in the horse in a mule is the mules going to remember who put him in the trailer. They're a little different animal. But yeah. I do a lot. Yeah. Yeah. I've camped out in water holes.

Mule won't cross the creek. Wants to jump water. We used to go out and ride and we'd just let everybody else ride off and they'd say, Hey, you coming? I said, I'll be there eventually, but this mule is gonna walk absolutely through this water. If a mule doesn't want to do something, there's a reason why he doesn't want to do it.

They're smart and it involves his personal safety. That's right. That's right. But when you, when that mule figures out, and that takes time guys. When that mule figures out that his safety is your, in your interest you want to take care of him, then he begins to trust you. And then you'll get more out of him.

Yeah. But hey, we've skipped over a huge thing here. Oh, here. Yeah. And that's children. And All that relates exactly to [00:21:00] children. We can't go down that road. This isn't a parenting podcast. It's not a parenting podcast, but I always say dogs, horses, kids.

Look, I gotta tell if you want to if you're looking to buy a dog from somebody and his kids are running them up, stay away from them dogs. Hey, he can't train his kids. He sure as hell ain't training one dog. I gotta tell this story. We were sitting in a parenting class, my wife parenting class. Yeah.

We're we won't ask why you were there. You obviously did something wrong. I hadn't even started yet, ed. I got drug to it and I hadn't even started. So the church was having this parenting class for ex new expecting parents. And we go down there and we're doing this book and everybody's sharing their feelings and all this stuff.

And I'm just sitting there and I didn't wanna be there anyway. And All these people are talking about, oh, when I have kids, I'm gonna do this. And I really feel like it's important to do this. And finally the assistant minister looked at me and goes, Chris, you've been quiet. What do you think? And I said I think [00:22:00] training kids is probably about like training dogs.

You show 'em what you want, teach 'em what you want, reinforce it when they don't do it, praise 'em when they do good and everything will be fine. It's not that hard. Yeah. And I know we're steering away from a dog line here to, to children momentarily, but the wife and I you were a teacher, weren't you?

I was. I've been a lot of things, brother. I wore a lot of hats. But what have you done? We've owned some companies owned a reclamation company. I've built custom homes. I was a Stockton Bond broker, traded the long bond. I was a youth pastor, minister taught chemistry, physics, and biology.

And probably a few other things along the line. But we went into, We'd love children and the wife and I never thought our lives would go that way, but we ended up fostering children for 10 years. We had almost a hundred children come through our house in 10 years. Goodness. We adopted six, we had two biologicals, so we raised eight.

And then we had foreign exchange [00:23:00] students from Germany, Japan Taiwan. And I'm missing something cuz we had about six of those. But I've taught Qantas Club basketball, little league baseball, mighty might football. So for the kids in our town, I was either the coach, the dad or the preacher, yeah. And here's what it's the role model. Yes, sir. And we, of course, we we helped with junior achievement. We've done a lot of different things with kids. And what I find with children is this, They need a structure of rules. And if they don't have that, they reach until they do find something that checks them up.

Oftentimes the law and going up out of the law and different things. But if you set them a, I used to give them the Barney talk when they came into the house. We use the Barney five talk or the Barney dinosaur. No, Barney the dinosaur. I tell 'em, we use our manners here. It's please, thank you.

You're welcome. Yes, sir. No sir. Yes ma'am. No ma'am. All right. And if you don't know those, I'll rent you the Barney [00:24:00] tape and you can hear it. But that's what we use and they quickly go from not in a home where they came from, which things were very bad to using their manners on a regular basis. Yeah. And if you set.

They conform to 'em and then they can flourish because they know the boundaries. Then they're safe in that children are just like dogs. Oh my gosh, some metal's gonna, I'm gonna get all kinds of hate mail. You better explain this one. Yeah. So my ex-wife, like I used to, I might go discipline a dog and it might be pretty severe.

And then she would say that dog loves you. And I'm like, that dog loves me. And she couldn't understand that dog would love me and respect me and show me respect after what I'd done. Why? Why do you think that is? Why? Because dogs are packed animals just as humans are packed animals.

And we want to, we feel comfort when we know. The what's the word? We know [00:25:00] how things lie. Sure. The fear comes in the unknown. When we're not sure who is in charge, that's when chaos comes in. But when we know who's in charge and when we know the natural order of everybody, it sets everybody's ease at everybody's mind at ease.

So I would go get pretty rough with a dog and they would just show me all this love. It's cuz they know where they, it doesn't matter where they fit, they just want to know where they fit, i, and I'm gonna turn it back to dogs just a little bit more, but that's good. When I got a call from Roger Atkinson one time, and he works for the national Park Service.

All right. And he is the enforcement ranger for the Buffalo National River. Okay. I've eradicated hogs for them a lot of times in when necessary. Roger called me one time and he says, plumber, he said, we've had a, we've had a pot load of hogs. Dropped off here, or tu pot loads out of Texas up here in the middle of the night on the park.

He said, can you come get help, get on 'em. He said, if we don't get 'em quick, we'll never get 'em all. All right. So I show up the next morning [00:26:00] down at Deer, Arkansas south of deer down at the little place that probably shouldn't even have a name in the Grand Canyon country of the Ozarks.

And I'm Collaring dogs up. And the first dog off the tailgate that I collared up was a dog. I called Blue Boy and I let him down and he went about 35 yards over there from while I was calling the next dog. You don't like that blue dog? I loved him. And hey, there's no doubt to it. It, he loved me.

I tell you, he treated squirrel and he was just oh. And Roger, now he's con highly concerned about this hog problem. And he looks over and sees the old blue boy dog tree in the squirrel. And he says, plumber. He said, what's that dog in Newton? I said he's treating a squirrel.

And he said, Oh, he said, we're not gonna be any hogs today. I said, Roger is. I said, if there's hogs be bathed, we'll bait hogs. I said, boo boy, get out from there. Let's go. And he fell off. That tree bathed 30 something head of hogs that day. Roger couldn't have been more thrilled. But now if I'd have walked over there, because we're talking about the rules and if he knows what the rules are.

See, he was just [00:27:00] checking me if I'd have walked over there and popped that squirrel out on him. He'd popped the next one like popcorn. Yeah. And we'd have been squirrel hunting that day. Yeah. Because he would have, yeah. I took him down to South Arkansas on a section farm down that they'd had some hog problems on.

And 660 acres is there's, it's pretty good size, but it's not really big when you're hog hunting. You can get off of it pretty quick. And there was a deep creek, hurricane creek spelled hurricane, but if you're from the south, it's hurricane bordered it. And so the hogs had moved over and we didn't have permission to be on the other side.

And so we had walked and just really covered this section for 'em pretty close. And I had a bunch of young boys with 'em in their mid twenties and they, of course they wanted to carry their ars and all this. And I said no. I said 22 mag. We'll suffice, right? So they're all carrying 22 mags.

And so we're the backside of that place and it's getting late, about two 30 in the afternoon and they're hot and sweaty and done, warmed up. And they said, man, that's a lot of walking for not even seeing a hog. And I said boys, I said, look, I said if you want [00:28:00] to, obviously the hogs are not on this place.

And I said, and we can't fabricate a hog if there's not one here, it's just not here. I said, but if you want to, we can shoot some squirrels on the way outta here. And they said, with what? And I said with that dog right there. And they said he hadn't looked up a tree all day. They said, what makes you think he's going to now?

I said, cuz I hadn't asked him to. And they kinda couldn't believe that. And I looked at old blue boy, caught him. And I grabbed the limb on the trim and barked like a squirrel, said, get 'em son. They like to melted the barrels down on them. 22 mags heading back out there. They killed a sack full of squirrels.

Had a big time. They said, we can't believe that said, that dog never even looked up a tree till you told him to. But he knows the rules saying he knows he's able. We've worked on it. He knows how. So I'm glad you brought that up cuz I think, we get pigeonholed on what our dogs are capable of doing.

You look at these dogs that do all sorts of things and to think that you've just got a coon [00:29:00] dog, you've just got a deer dog, you've just got a coyote dog. Man, the right dogs can do a lot of different stuff and they can do it well. Absolutely. That's, like my grandfather, my great-grandfather, I mean at least in, I can only speak from Oklahoma, but back in those times they were not feeding.

A bunch of dogs, they fed one, maybe two dogs, and that dog could do everything. Let me speak to that a little Li here's the, here's what happened back in those days, and I think I'm one of the last dinosaurs in that era, but when we had post-depression years open range, you had oftentimes in my family, at least the.

A mom and a dad and 12 kids in a two room shack. Yeah. Okay. They couldn't afford to buy sack dog feed. Worm. Okay. They couldn't afford to feed a dog that didn't have a purpose and work. Okay. So where did they get that? They went to the bloodline man and bought that dog. Now that dog, [00:30:00] the bloodline man, didn't let any fence jumper breed his dogs cuz he had a product even with poor people that he could sell.

See? And if he what's a bloodline man? Lay that out. To me and of course there may be different definitions from different people, but sitting in the chair our family's raised cata hula dogs for generations. My grandfather and my dad now, even before them, but I was handed a pretty good set of dogs early on.

Alright. And we've grown that and we've bred that. Now we have over the years Outcross the time or two. Now I'm gonna probably upset some people okay. With this statement. Oh, don't do it. Don't do it. Too late. Too late. You gave me the mic. Okay. But I like upsetting people. But you know what?

Say for instance the catula breed, I don't believe the wives tales that are told about the making of a kahu dog. Matter of fact, modern science has disproved it. Okay? It came out of the red [00:31:00] wolf, Louisiana. And why? They say that Hernando, Desotos war dogs Spanish and the Red Wolff.

The red Wolff. You can genetically test a Catula dog today. I don't care if it's yours, mine, or somebody else's. And no wonder everything around here is going this. They're bringing in hogs for the they're two dog bay off right now, right in front of us trailer load. Not just hogs, but wild tuskers.

Good, good hogs. Yeah. But looking at a 24, 20 foot trailer full of. Tuskers right there. Yeah. And you can maybe hear the dogs in the background all sounding off. Guarantee it. Guarantee it. They're pretty, I'm wondering what the heck is going on. Pretty excited about it. But go ahead. But this, but the story goes for the Keta hooah breed.

And I'm just gonna tell you boys, it's not true. No it's not. You can genetically test them. They've never seen a red wolf. Okay? They've never seen a greyhound or a mastiff, which is all in the story that you'll hear when I grew up. They didn't just call 'em keta hula dogs. Now this is really gonna set the hair on some people.

Now that's a southern saying, and you'll have to look that one up. But, and I expect maybe you will. But when when [00:32:00] you look at where these dogs came from, they are a product of the southern states, the poor southern states post-civil war era when we had to have a dog to help put food on the table.

Catch fur at night. Keep the family farm safe from wolves, bears, bobcats, couch, whatever. Foxes, coons, barit from my chickens, from my cattle, from my hog, from corn, from those things had to protect them from the food. Sure, absolutely. Out of your corn crop, out of your garden, whatever, you had to have a dog to be able to do that.

And herd cows. Yes. Had to herd your cattle cuz you had open range. Had to go gather hogs in the spring of year cuz you had to earmark your hogs. That's right. My grandfathers both have a mark. I've got it in a book at the house that they had registered their mark at the county courthouse for their open range hogs.

In every spring you'd go gather those hogs, mark the pigs and you it, in Arkansas, there's Calhoun County, it's called Hog Skin County. It was illegal to take a hog out of the [00:33:00] woods without an earmark on him. If you did, it was theft. Yeah. It was theft and it was a bad deal.

Pig been killed over it. Okay. But the dogs were developed all across the south. You can go to North Carolina. Okay. A lot of people called them, oh this is making, gonna make some people mad. Oh my goodness. Do it. They lot make 'em mad. A lot of people called them Leopard krs. Okay. They called them Leopard krs.

The only people really that called 'em Catula. And I'm not saying that the folks in this great state of Louisiana didn't have a hand and mold what we see as a Catula dog today, cuz they most certainly have. Okay. But the Cata hula dog came from the Catula Lake region. Cata. Hula Parish, Louisiana.

Alright. But Florida with their cracker K, which are leopard dogs by the way. And y'all Okay. Have the same story about Hernando DeSoto and his war. North Carolina got somebody curling over here for BirdDog. North, North Carolina. Same story. A lot [00:34:00] of leopard spotted care dogs in North Carolina.

They've got the same folklore story. Who, which plot? LE's plot. Le or Plot's lip ship or whatever they called that thing. He was a leopard dog. The first outcross on the plot hound in the United States went to Georgia, was outta Rayburn Gap, Georgia. And it was a leopard spotted curved bitch. Yep.

Okay. And he had his own. If you read their book, the first one that there's a picture of. Sure. No, actually they probably not a picture of that first outcross because when they made that outcross off the plot dogs they made it to a leopard spotted Kurage outta Raven Gap, Georgia.

And the book in the family history plot tells that he already had in Rayburn gpp, Georgia an established working line of leopard's, potted K dogs. That's right. Same thing. If you really get down to it, the Catula, it is, the walker has been attributed to American as American dog.

But really I think the cat [00:35:00] is a more American dog than the, I think it is a true American dog. Now it, here's what I tell people. Now here's where we get down the weeds. Cuz the plot dog is the only plot. Breeders will tell you the same thing about plot. They're wrong.

That comes from Germany. They did. The Harian Hound is, the Harian hound came from Germany, but the original dogs, the, what we know is a plot today has no European influence. Yeah. But I would, I would, here we go, hands down. Here we go. Hands down the ha the, and I'm a fan of plot dogs, but hands down the cat, and I'm not a cat hula guy.

Hands down the cat hula is far more American than the plot is. Here's the thing. When God told Adam to name all the s we'll just drop back to the beginning. Okay. He didn't have it. He didn't say, that's a rhino Naru. That's a giraffe. That's an elephant. And that's a Louisiana catula.

Yeah. He did not say that it was a dog. Okay. God made a dog manmade. The Keta. Okay. Yeah. And he was developed. And how was he developed? Okay, here we go.[00:36:00] I can prove it. Okay. Now the bloodline men. Back in those days when it was important for your grandpa to have a working dog that was a meat dog, that served a purpose, he could afford to table scrap that dog.

And feed that dog. Okay? He had to have a purpose. All right, so for the bloodline man, what he, what was his job was he had to have a dog for one thing that had drive. No, I'm, you guys are gonna have me banished, but that's good. The dog, what we talk about all the time here as the most drive, and you'll see 'em here today, there's several of 'em.

Noticed them is a bird dog. The back when we had birds in this country, men genetically bred bird dogs. You say what kind? English pointers. German shorthair pointers, right? Or wire mouth pointers. All right. So they, those dogs had dry, they'd work in the field all day long. Flushing birds. All right, now, They had to have a dog that [00:37:00] had to have a nose.

So there comes the hound influence. If you look at a Keta hula dog if you look at my bloodline in somebody else's, you'll notice some of them have a little longer ear, like a houndy ear. That's cuz they got hound in them. You say what kind of hound? Every kind of hound. Yeah. Plot hounds, blue ticks, red bones.

All right. And we can even get into the genetic part of it. If you look. The hound breeds. Okay. The plot hound, obviously I used to have a plot. Yeah. One, I had the one and I have one cat Who but the, even if you're gonna bench show a plot, hound his ears. The problem with a plot hound is his ears don't reach the end of his nose.

And if a bench show judge is gonna judge that hound, that's one of the first things he's gonna do is grab his ears, pull it the end of his nose. If it don't come to the end of his nose or past, he's docked. That's how you tell how open they're gonna be. That's what we always do.

And the longer the ears are you talking about, they'll blue tick you Every time their foot hits the ground, they'll open. Okay. But I got those too. But we had to have a dog that not only had dry, but he had to have a [00:38:00] nose. So now if you look at the color palette of a Ketta hula dog there's what we call blue leopard, which is Merle. That's gonna make some people mad too. And then there's a red leopard. Okay. Now, where did those colors come from? If you look at. The blue tick hound, which was developed in the great state of Louisiana. If you look at the red bone hound, the red bone hound is the only member of the hound breed.

Now, he was bred out of blood hounds, but he's the only member of the hound breed that is web footed to the tip of his toes. Now, if you listen to folks in Louisiana, they'll tell you that the catula evolved in the swamps, and that's why he's web footed to the tiff of his toes. That's not true. Okay? That's not true.

That there had to be a genetic marker that come into those dogs that, that brought that web foot right? Comes from a red bone hat. I've heard all this about the Catula. Okay? All these things about the catullus you're saying I've heard of, it's funny because like my great uncle, one of my great uncles, Tom Barnes, [00:39:00] born in 1914, and he, he free ranch hogs in northeast Oklahoma, and I had, I was raised in Caterpillars at the time and I go by his house.

And he had Cat Hulas, but he didn't he didn't know them as Cat Hulas. Sure. He said they were stock dogs. Sure. He started, yeah. Since the time I was little, he started, he would describe these dogs to me. I didn't realize that I was up in my early twenties. I'm like, these are catullus.

And I was talking to him one day and I was like, oh, so you had Cat? No, I didn't, I never had catullus, I had stock donuts. I said, yeah yeah. I like if you can talk about the original Mountain ke the same way. Yeah, sure. There's people that say that the original Mountain Ke in Appalachia had stepped off the Mayflower, and never been anything bred.

That's absolutely impossible, to have happened. Mountain people and even just rural America wasn't wired that way. You weren't gonna travel. 50 miles to go breed your dog to [00:40:00] something. You could have a, you could have a famous dog of any breed back in those days and he might be famous for three counties.

Yeah. Not Yeah. The whole state or the United States. Yeah. Because we didn't have the internet back then. That struck the world, yeah. My uncle Tom but if you said Kerr so I would start, he didn't know Catula, so I would start laying out the other names cuz they got a million names.

Oh sure. And if you said Kerr, he was in his mid to late eighties, he would bow up and want to fight you if you said Kerr, but they were obviously cat hulas. And then we got to talking and he had bought 'em from Mr. Stodgill. Tom Stodgill. I knew him well. Yeah. And Stodgill used to travel and sell dogs and that's, It, I finally pulled it out of him and that's where he got 'em was from Stargell.

And I'm like, they're cat Hulas. He just s stock dogs, but where did they come from then? Okay. If they didn't come from the Wolf and they didn't come from the, that's they've got Bird Dog in 'em, they've got Hound in 'em, they've got Pit Bull in 'em. But let me dial it back and get the question out here.

You've got 'em in Florida, [00:41:00] you got 'em. Leopard Curve. We over in Georgia, Louisiana. They're all through the south. Where did they come from? Where was the, because those are all places of Spanish influence. So did the Spanish have here's where the original and I think maybe if you boil it down, what you're looking for is because of genetics.

Where did the Merl come from? Okay. Where did the Merl come from? It came from a French dog. The French Buone. Yep. Okay. Now Tom Starhill was a friend of mine. And he actually, Got a hold of a letter that was dated in the late 18 hundreds from a couple of Cajuns down south Louisiana. And they had shipped, imported a couple of French buone into south Louisiana.

Okay. Now these buone in France at that time, now if you look 'em up on the internet, they come in two colors. They'll come in a, a blue Merl or a black and tan. Okay? So that's why I mentioned the red bone bringing in the fail melon in [00:42:00] to make the red leopard dogs. Because red color had to come from somewhere.

And how many leopard curds have you seen that, that have black and tan marks a lot? Oh yes, absolutely. Oh yeah. Absolutely. And another thing, and you'll see that in my bloodline of Ketta dogs see a French buone has to, at least now we're not talking about maximum in the least, they have to be double delaw in the back to be registered as a pure bred French buone.

Okay. A lot of my dogs now, not all of them, but a lot of them, And it's a throwback. We'll have double or triple do cloth in the back. And that comes from the buone influence. Okay. Darn. So it's a mixture of dogs and what Tom did was he ordered a set. When he read that letter, he ordered a set.

He called me after the fact. He said, plumber, you're not gonna believe it. He said, now, if you look at the hurting dog, Which I don't think that a Keta hula really is. Okay. Because if you look at your herding dog breed, a lot of 'em are cly type dogs. Or shepherd type dogs. They've got a specific way of [00:43:00] herding and moving sheep or cattle.

That's not a cata hula dog. Okay. Cat Hulus are too rough on sheep. It's more of a prey drive, I believe, with a cata hula dog. Now it's way in my mind. In some sense in open pasture or wood lot situations is more effective. They're head dogs. It's than the heel dogs. And they will take a position if you say for instance, working cattle and you've got a head dog, one working the head, and you add one to the pack, he'll take his position and then before long, if you keep, you'll have 'em on both sides and the front, and they'll drive effectively.

But it's a different technique and a style. The French Buone works exactly the same way as a Catula dog. Okay. So let's fast forward to the modern day. If we're gonna, if we're gonna say that the leopard and the Catula. And even influencing the plot. The, when you said leopard like that, and that's a whole nother can of worms, like Exactly.

That's what I was gonna get to. Where did the tree come from? Because they're your dog's natural. Natural tree. Now here's what happened. See, when I was a [00:44:00] boy these dogs were multi-purpose dogs. Okay? They treat coons at night. Squirrels in the daytime made hogs where cattle did it all trucks.

We expected that out of them. Absolutely. All right. But with the change of demographics in the United States and prosperity, that's where I want to go. Yeah. We started getting away from the small farms. Yep. Okay. So things changed and suddenly there wasn't as much need for a Keah dog. And I watched it through the decades, the changing in the Keta hula breed.

Okay. And used to now you were talking about Florida and North Carolina, Georgia. All right. I used to, when I was a young man, I could look at a Keta hula dog or a leopard cur dog and tell you where he come from. Okay. I could tell you the breeder. Okay. Because they were breed specific. You could look at 'em and his has had a little different look than mine.

Mine had a little different look to somebody else. Sure. The Internet's kind of melded all that and it's more difficult to do. But you knew Chester wager, [00:45:00] did you? Chester. Chester wager. All right. I know wager dogs well, that's where they come from. Yeah. All right. Chester. The last time I talked to Chester, I think he was 82 years old and I asked Chester and he was from Bowbridge, Louisiana, and I said, Mr.

Chester, I said, where did you get your first? Cata Hula do. And he did, like you was talking a minute ago, he did not say, I got my first Cata Hula do from he said, I got a little black and tan cur bitch from my father-in-law that was working cattle on the Alaya River Basin and loading them on barges off the levy.

And he had some good cow dogs. He never called them a catula do. Yeah. And the ones he got to begin with weren't even leopard. They were black and tan. Okay. And now he went on to breed. He's one of the great influences of the catula breed today. I've even got a little wager blood in my dogs as one of the outcross.

We did do back in the, probably mid eighties, early eighties, oh probably [00:46:00] late eighties. We're sitting here at Uncle Earl's, probably half the, we're at a Catula event. There's more cat's here than anything else. 90% of the dogs that go in that pen are catula. And probably half of those go back to wager.

Probably yeah. At one point, but what Chester did, Mr. Chester was a fine man. He told me, he said, I took that dog, and he told me that he called her pups, that was her name, and he didn't say, I went to see if I could find me another Keta hula dog, the breeder two. He said, I got this searching for good cow dogs.

And he actually went over into Texas and found Mr. King over there that had a renowned cow, dog and Breader. Okay. And so in 19, I believe it was it, 79, excuse me, when they started the N A L C, that's when he, they all gathered their dogs and went down there and had 'em registered. That was the foundation Dogs for the National Association of Louisiana Catahoula.

So those dogs were bred by bloodline men for production for [00:47:00] work. And what now, what Chester did, because Chester was not a. Kondo guy. He was not a squirrel dog guy. He bred hard driving cow dogs. Okay, so in the late eighties, mid eighties, late eighties, early nineties, I saw a change in the cat hula breed as a whole.

And what that change was we saw more cow dogs that would not look up now. And I believe you've been a plot, man, dog. You'd know this, that there is a genetic in a dog that gives them the ability to think, to look up. Yeah. A lot of dogs don't know the world exists above their heads. Yeah. A lot of dogs maybe would track a coon, but they'll track all the way around the ground.

Never figure out he went up a tree. Okay. Yeah. I've got a, I've got a other dog. Yeah, I've seen other dogs, breeds of dogs that will track. But the tree, that's what separates the hound, right? And now those were good dogs for what they were, and there was a need in the market at that time for cow dogs.

All right. [00:48:00] Over the years then we, on the onset of the Bay Dogs. Okay. Now I'm at the biggest, right now we're sitting here at the biggest bay competition in the world for whole Bay dogs. And it has been a blessing of sorts, but there has been maybe a little bit of effect in a negative way on the Catho breed due to the Bay Pens.

I wanna get to that, but I ask, I gotta ask you this first. Do you think that the needs of different regions changed? The leopard cat hula, whatever, whatever we're gonna call it, do you think because of distinct needs in certain regions, it took that track more? Absolutely. Yeah.

More than other areas? Sure. It has to. If we stop, there's people who are stuck in history and want to keep a dog what it used to be. Which I have respect for that. I love history, but this is all fluid and we change from what we need for a [00:49:00] dog to do. Yeah. So if we stop that and freeze that in history, we're killing that dog.

We've got a dog. And that's one of the great things about a cat hula. Is a cat hula has made it from the 17 hundreds into the two thousands and is still rel relevant. They're able to mold and evolve to the need at hand because it's a K. Sure. And when you get down to the base of it, my great-uncle Tom, like I said, if you said cur dog, he was 89 years old, and he'd stand up and ball his fist up and want to punch you because Kerr used to mean that was a worthless. A Mong girl dog. Mong girl curtailed dog. Worthless dog curtail. But just as the dog, just as the dogs that we raised, that word has changed in its meaning. And when I say Kerr, a dog that can do what I need it to do, no matter what that is. Yeah. We've all heard that term, Manji Kerr.

Yeah. So there's a [00:50:00] term of, it's a term of endearment for a dog man. It's oh, he keeps good cur dogs. That means and with Ed in Oklahoma, his need for a specific dog is different than mine. See, because he hunts a different terrain. The outlay of the land's different.

The vastness of it's different. I hunt the Ozark mountain region primarily. My dogs, you can take a flat land dog that hasn't hunted the mountains and turn him out, and he may be a hog dog. But he humps up and down a few of them mountains and they'll jerk to walk two out of him pretty quick.

I'm in the, I'm in the foothills of the Ozark, so I'm pretty close to you. What in different regions a different need for dogs. And what we've done in this hog hunting industry is we've educated the hogs. The hogs that we see today are not the old open range hogs that we used to have.

Now we've got an, a European influence in these hogs. And a hog's very intelligent. And if you've got dogs that haven't got enough bottom end in them to run a [00:51:00] hog to a bay or what we commonly call a running catch dog, something that has enough bite power to stop a hog, a hog knows all I gotta do is run and if I run long enough, they'll quit.

Okay. If you've got the right dogs that they don't quit, see Yeah. But we've trained them to think that's the case because there's a lot of guys with. How should I say? Not as good a dogs out there that, that allow 'em to escape. And if you ever allow him to escape one time he's smarter next time.

That's right. And it ups the game, but Yeah. But I think of the word Kerr in a totally different way than, my great uncle. I think I, when I hear Kerr, I think intelligence where it used to, that wasn't the connotation that came across was intelligence, but Right.

Like my great-great-grandfather. I've got a picture with him and his horse, and his dog. And his dog was a colly type dog. And my one of my uncles, who knew the man and the dog was telling me, he's that dog was [00:52:00] amazing. He's that dog herded cows treats squirrels, bathed hogs. Yeah.

And to me that's what occurs. A dog can do anything where in the past, AUR used to be a dog, you'd do nothing. Sure. That's what they thought of it when you said Kerr, that's what I think the name is the same as the dogs have evolved. Yeah. And so if there is any evolution at all, it's in that.

Yeah. Let's talk, go ahead. I was just gonna say, let's talk about Bay Pen versus hunting versus what this event has done. One thing that the Bay Pens have done has brought up new interest in, say, for instance, the Cahota debris. Okay. And what, and kinda what I was talking about there a minute ago, the requirements of what it takes to make a Bay Pen dog is oftentimes totally different than what it takes to make a Woods dog.

Because here we've got dogs that are scored. To where you want 'em close to that hog, you can't get within a certain distance or they'll be [00:53:00] barred or docked, not barred, but docked on their points. They've gotta bay tight and they've gotta bark as fast as they can bark within reason and not take their eyes off that hog.

But in that, for my purpose, because I want a broad spectrum dog, I want a dog that we can take to any task. Okay. If somebody and Ed knows this, but there are people that specifically breed Bay Pen dogs for competition. Yep. And they do not hunt their dogs. All right. Now I've had, I've seen people bring dogs on a hunt that they bought that was a bay pin dog.

And he won't honey's way across the street, but he'll sit up on a hog half inch off his nose and throw slobber as fast as he can, yeah. He's got that part down. They br 'em to do that, and they're doing that part very well. But for me, I want that dog because if we're gonna pass on and see, and that's back to that bloodline thing.

If we're gonna pass on a finished product, a good product to [00:54:00] future generations, somebody has to be the conservator of the estate. Yeah. We've gotta, we've gotta watch and make sure we're keeping those good genetics and those things back in those dogs and so when I send a dog to somebody that's got my name on it it's very important to me.

It may, I may send it to a friend of mine or somebody else, or whatever, but if that dog doesn't work, he's got my name on him because I live vicariously through 'em. See, basically what we've, hog band evolved because hog hunters got, like we all do. If me and Raymond went hunting, we'd probably, maybe not the first time, but probably the fifth time, Raymond would be like, my dog's better than yours.

I'm like, no, my dog's better than. So that's where this sport that we're sitting at, that's where that came from. That's competition. That this, it's the same way with competition. Coon hunting Ed, to a degree, but not quite as far. So this came from okay, you think your dog's better than mine?

Let's set up a competition. Let's see whose is better, and we're giving competition. Coon [00:55:00] hundreds are hunting for a hundred thousand dollars every month. Yeah. Giving away I'm sorry they're giving away a truck every month. Yeah. In pros sport and stuff like that. I'd have to argue with you that, not to the extent that you guys have, but I don't, my point was this, I don't care whether you've ever entered a competition hunt or not.

If I raised this dog and I trained this dog when I was at, just starting out, John Ashby, and I would be out there hunting. And we'd be keeping score in our own heads, whose dogs did what and how they did 'em and stuff like that. Yeah. I'm not a competitive person. Okay. So I've got two, three guys that I hunt with all the time.

And like I said, I'm not a competitive person at all. So like when I go hunting and the guys I hunt with, we think of ourselves as more of one unit. Yeah. Than four different dudes who have four different sets of dogs. So I'm proud when we, when the dogs do good, even when they're not my dogs, because we've all [00:56:00] in our group, we've all had a hand in training these younger dogs.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. These dogs might belong to this guy and that guy, but we've all been hunting together the whole time and we've all each one of you just has a set of dogs you're responsible for feeding and taking care of. Yeah. We feed these dogs but we've all trained these dogs together.

That's right. And it's more of a, to me it's more of a community thing. So I, but I'm not a competitive person. But you come here, so what I'm getting at, so this evolved to see who's got the best Yeah. But anything like competition, coon hunting over the years, you get a competition with money involved and people are gonna start breeding dogs to the competition and not to the hunt.

Absolutely. And then after 20, 25 years, it evolves to where you get dogs that are bred to the competition to win money. And they've gotten [00:57:00] so far away from the original thing. I think it goes back to what you were saying about. Regionally it can happen, a different function or use for a dog.

And a dog maybe takes a little different direction, and I hate to say this, but one of the things that has really hurt the cata Huah breed is what I call the hobby breeders. And the curse of the Keta hula dog is they probably got the largest color palette of any dog breed.

Yeah. It's terrible. And so they can come and just this array of colors and then they have these beautiful glass eyes and things. And so a lot of people, they want a cata hah dog to look like a Keta huah dog, but definitely don't act like one. Okay. They want it to be like their French poodle that sit on the couch with 'em and watch tv.

I tell people to call a cat hula dog. A dog is like calling a game rooster A chicken. Okay. The fact is a game rooster is a chicken. He's just the most different chicken you're ever gonna run into. And if you've got a well bred cat hula dog, that's the way he is too. Yeah. You either give him a job or [00:58:00] he'll find one.

And typically the one he finds is the wrong one. That's exactly right. I've said that about Border Collies. I've said that about the Cat hula we had. And any high drive dog, if you don't find a job, they're gonna find one. That could be chasing cars, that could be chewing the killing your chickens.

That could be chewing the siding off your house. I've had it happen with all of them. You know that you don't get a job for 'em. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. A lot of people they don't think about that. They just want the dog, they want a dog and they, he's beautiful. I. And then they get this grizzly bear home and don't realize what they've got.

Yeah. And, what are we gonna do with this thing? He's just killed the neighbor's cat and Yeah. And or something terrible, and now we have to deal with that. Yeah. Pick a different dog. Exactly. Exactly. I just saw the dog for him, that French bulldog walking down through.

That'd be a great dog for, yeah. Yeah, the Bay Pen, it's amazing to watch. I don't discount the Bay Pen side of it, you, they've trained dogs [00:59:00] to stay six inches from a hog's nose and take a charge without making a loop. And that's amazing. But like I say, it's gotten so far, it's gotten so far from the hog hunting side that it's become its own thing.

Oh, it is. And not to discount this, because that has its own, can you still reach into that genetic pool and pull out what you need? Not really. If you did, it would not, I don't think it would be an immediate thing, unless it was just a freak. If you did pull out of something here and you wanted to turn it back to its original purpose, there'd have to be some breeding and training to gain back what we've lost or at least what we've changed the purpose of.

I, there's repurposed, there's pro guys down here who are gonna spend 10,000 in entry fees this week that do hog hunt. But they have, for the most part, they have their hog hunting dogs and their bay pen dogs, [01:00:00] competition bay dogs. There's a few, there's a few, not very many, but a few that will do both.

But you could take a bay pen, say we'll talk about a cat hula. You could take a, excuse me, a bay pen, catula dough, a woods catula dough, or some hobby breeder's, cat hula. Do. And set 'em beside each other and you can't physically look at 'em, tell the difference. No. No, it's only when you put 'em to, to purpose that you found out, and that's what's and that's where this sport is changing the last three years, is that, so today I helped a woman friend of mine run in the sportsman class. So used to this with just totally pros. Now you got the pro class, then you got what they call a woods class, which is guys who are gonna hunt them dogs, but they're also here to bathe them dogs.

And then you got the sportsman's class, which is guys who only hunt their dogs. They've [01:01:00] never been to a bay pen. And like on the sportsman, you can enter a sportsman dog for 30 bucks. A woods class or a pro class dog is gonna cost you 190. Yeah. So they're opening it up. They've realized this like kind of divide this split.

That's cool. And they're opening it up to where new guys can come into this, still have a function. They still want to come, they wanna see, I've always thought about, what would my dog look like? How would he be scored in a bay pen? Yeah. I've only been a hog gunner. Yeah. Now I can go to UNC Laurels.

Yeah. And enter that class. Yeah. That's forward thinking right there. Yeah. I'm, yeah. That's exactly what it is. And me and Pat and Jake have been talking about this for years, and that's where it comes from is that you have to introduce new blood into this sport, or it's gonna die just like fox pens.

It's just it's like Nas. You look at NASCAR and then you've got late models and you've got sprint cars, a sprint car. Guy's not gonna show up at Talladega next week and compete and win Yeah. And win. Yeah. [01:02:00] So there you go. So Uncle Earls has seen that need and made it, yeah.

They're thinking about the future and how to grow this sport or keep it as big as it is now. And to do that, you have to bring new people in. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It yeah. I'm sure there might be some Fox events that are as big as this. I've never been, this is the biggest dog event I've ever been to.

Yeah. Auto Oaks is Auto Oaks in Richmond, Indiana. The Coonhound event is huge. Huge. Yeah. They'll enter, 11, 12, I think the biggest year they had 1200 dogs or so. Yeah. Entered. It is, it's huge. This week we're running in the two dog. There was. 251 pairs. The one dog there was like 143.

Yeah. Dogs. But that's still impressive for, oh, it's huge for a, a hog hunting event. I think it's something that, that has a lot of value. If nothing else, just getting people together. Yeah. Hog hunting doesn't have the [01:03:00] ancestry that coon hunting or fox hunting has in America.

It's growing. Those, the, those sports are dropping while coon hunting or hog hunting's on the rise. I, and I don't know, I've not done the polling myself, but I've heard in the last few years prior to covid, at least that. The number one fastest rising dog sport in America was hog guns.

Yeah. Yeah. It's really put a shot in the arms at some of these hunters, that, that, wow. Now we've got something. And I will tell you this, ed could probably testify to that as well if you don't want to get hooked on it. Don't ever start track. Yeah, don't try. Yeah. Because it'll get in you and on you and then you can't quit.

It's like running Fox sounds in the open, Coyo dogs, running dogs. That's a dying sport because, it's not high excitement. It's, when, I haven't done it in a long time, but when I was a kid, it was a bunch of old men sitting around fire, sitting around a fire on the side of a dirt road drinking whiskey and argue about whose dog was in front.

Whose dog's in front. A [01:04:00] lot of new kids didn't get into that. It wasn't fast pace, it wasn't fast paced. Yeah. We used to have a Coke and coon hunting is on the wa. It's not that fa I know so many hog hunters right by my house that were coon hunters, younger kids, and they went coon or they went hog gun one time and they're done with killing dogs.

It's also our game departments are making, they're not making it easy but they know that there's a problem with hogs. So the wild hog is the number one enemy in Texas. And the expansion. Yeah, but they're not making it easy for us. Like I, you would think they would. That's why I said they're not really making it easy, but they understand that there's a problem and then they throw up a bunch of roadblocks to make.

In Indiana, you can't even, you can't hunt hogs with a dog. Oh. They throw up roadblocks constantly, but it doesn't even matter because, hog hunting is, we have a population of hogs and it's adrenaline. Oh, the adrenaline surge with hog hunting is like no other. Yeah. And yeah.

I'll tell you a little story real quick. I had [01:05:00] a several guys that from church that wanted to. Go hog or ask me actually to go to a high fence enclosure down in Texas and go hunting. I said, no thank you. They said we thought you was a hog hunter. And I said, look, if he don't have a dog throwing slobber in his face, I'll care nothing about it.

And so I invited them after they got back to go with me one day and we went over on off tab Rock Lake over there. And and I, a buddy of mine from eastern Arkansas, he's raised my bloodline of dogs his whole life was with us. And he's about six foot two and pretty skinny. But he knows my dogs pretty well.

And kinda like your buddy sitting hunt with you, and so we kicked out and we bathed three bore hogs early. And one of'em went in the cave. I'd crawl in the cave, cause he, they go to the hardest places, and when you're crawling into a black dark cave where you can stick your finger in your eye and can't see it coming, it's gnarly.

When you're hearing a boho in there grunting and dog crying and dogs crying and, so anyway, we got. We got the first three bore hogs killed. And we wasn't very far from the truck. And I told them guys, I said, man, for the old yards. I said, that's an amazing day. We're within a [01:06:00] good walk to the truck, three bore hogs, 10 30 in the morning let's call it good.

And I looked around and that old blue boy dog was gone called. And I said, did y'all see where that blue boy dog went? And one of them guys says he went over that hill right there. Last time I seen him, and me and my other buddy he says, oh, no. And we go and just lean into the wind and just barely You think that maybe you can hear yeah.

In the wind, it's he's way out there. And I said, oh no. So we had to go. I had a, another gentleman that he was just getting started hog hunting and he had bought him a couple dogs and he was running the video that day. We bathe the Ozarks are famous for having chain bluffs around the tops of the mountains.

And we'd made this hog on a west facing bluff. And it probably came out 20 foot from the face of the bluff and then down it dropped about four foot down and then went on down the mountain. But it's right at the top of the mountain. And he weighed about 350 pounds. I had no [01:07:00] desire to pack a 350 pound hog.

Oh, yeah. All the way on the mountains when they already had three. So I said, look, let's catch the dogs and get 'em outta here. Jerome says, look about that time, these hogs can be super fast. The hog jumps out and he gutted one of Jerome's dogs. Just boom. Just, and we had six dogs on him. He gutted.

One, just dropped his guts. And Jerome says, my God. And then he moved so fast, he hit another one of Jerome's dogs and he nutted him. Okay? One of 'em was swinging on the cord and out he is, he hit the third one of Jerome's dogs. Now we, I got three in there and he's got three. He smashed him up against the bluff, broke some ribs.

He's out. And Jerome says, by God, he said, let's catch them dogs. He's putting us outta the business. And so we jump up there. Now this Tim is videoing the hog breaks and runs down the bluff. Now I'm about one step behind Jerome when that hog turns around and comes back through my dogs like a torpedo coming back at us.

You don't ever [01:08:00] run downhill on a hog. You can't outrun one. I went up that bluff like a cat squirrel. I'm holding onto the rock face, and Jerome is a flatlander. And he went off that bench going downhill trying to get them long legs unwound, and that hog run him down. And now it was cold January. And he had Carhartt cover offs, blue jeans and thermals on hog.

Hooked him between in the straddle, threw him about eight foot in the air. Okay? He lands in the sack of his cell and I run down there and grabbed him. All right? And he's holding both hands over his crotch. I've done seen him nut that of the dog, and I said, boy, you all right? And he opens his hands up and blood runs out right below his right testicle.

It didn't get his testicle. And I said, boy, you better hold up. I said, you got a femoral artery in there, you could bleed out, right? Tim comes up there and I said, did you get that on video? He said, by God, no. He said, if my wife saw that, my kids would never get to go. So I said, you watch him.

Don't let him bleed out. I'm going to get the dog. And so I headed [01:09:00] down the mountain, come up the other side, we bathed the hog again. I'm not big on calling old blue boy off of a hog. Now I can call him off cattle, but he had never had called him off a hog. And so I called to him. And he looked at me, and when he looked at me, boom, that hog hit him.

And bud just immediately I pulled out and shot that hog, right? 20 eyeballs. Oh, Tom Stevens was sitting right beside me when I shot the hog rat. 20 eyes. You see the hole and the hog just round his head up and boom took off. And Tom says, you shot that hog rat, 20 nines. And he just ran off. I said, yeah let's go kill him.

And so we went on down and killed a hog. And I come back and Jerome is poking the guts back. And this is probably terrible for your podcast, but he's poking the guts back in his hog, Aaron, in his dog, an hour and a half podcast down the tube. And I said I walked up there and he says, boy, he said I know what you think of me now.

And I said, what do you mean? He said, That hog gutted one of my dogs. You didn't shoot him. He said that hog [01:10:00] nutted, one of my dogs, you didn't shoot him that hog cut me and you didn't shoot him. He said, but he cut that blue boy dog and you shot him quick. I said, Jerome, I said, good hunting partners are dime a dozen good hunting dogs.

Hard to find.

That's one of the best things like about hunting with a dog is if I'm hunting with a gun and I get tired, I'm finished. Let's go home hunt with a dog. You don't have that option. No, that's right. We are there from start to finish and we don't even decide when the finish is. Sure. That's right.

That's right. I care to stay. That ties into a podcast we just dropped this week called sacred Pursuit, where we talked about Fair Chase. Wasn't this week, it was a couple weeks ago. But with TL Jones, we talked about. People that want to say that hunt with dogs hidden fair chase. It's the fairest chase there is it's nature.

That's right. We're just standing behind nature a little bit. Yep. Sure. Absolutely. But guys, we'll better [01:11:00] wrap this one up, man. It's been a great conversation. It's been awesome. Yeah, we could get, I just pushed the record the button and let you guys talk. Yeah. We could go for hours, I'm sure. Oh, I'm sure.

I'm sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. But we appreciate, or I do Chris, appreciate you allowing me to come on Bet your podcast with you and hopefully I didn't get you too deep in the weeds with some of your listeners there, but no, not at all. These guys are all hunters. We'll, probably, it is what it is.

It's real life and we tell the truth on this podcast. So for sure. Yeah. Ed, we got playing. What's going on at Tuskers? Oh, we're gonna sit here for a couple more days and go home and rest for a couple weeks. Been out here all week. Yeah. Everybody needs to check it out next year. Like I, I always tell people, I told you Chris, like even if you're not a hog dog guy, if you're a dog hunter Oh yeah.

You come to Earl's, you are gonna have a fun time. It doesn't matter if you're a cow hunter. Sure. Bigler. Absolutely. Squirrel hunter. Dog people just like to get together, and yeah, we have fun. We tell Hunt and it's all the [01:12:00] same, we're all in the same boat. Yeah.

Squirrel hunter, hog hunter don't matter. Anybody that is a dog person that enjoys the dog hunting sports, I don't care if you're a duck hunter. You've got to appreciate the work ethic and the training and the effort that these men have put in women to put into their dogs and the dogs herself.

So what I always say is okay, so I'm a hog hunter. I run squirrel dogs a little bit. I don't care about hog. Like I'm after superb dogs. I just happen to judge my dogs off of a hog. Cuz I think it's a really good for where I live and what I've got to judge my dogs against. I think a hog is the best thing to judge them against.

What is a hog off for you? Oh I guess we're not gonna cut this off. We're gonna keep rolling. So what do you judge cuz that's too good of a question. Leave it laying. What do you, what does a hog offer you to be able to judge the quality of your dog? First and foremost, a hog offers me the opportunity to judge my dog [01:13:00] on drive.

Their heart, their gameness, how willing they are to. Stick with something that's hard for a long time. A squirrel. To me, a squirrel can't offer that. A rabbit can't offer that. A bear or mountain lion Mo could offer that probably. But where I live geographically, I don't have bear.

And lion in a population good enough for me to regularly go out and judge my dogs against that. But that's what I'm after. I'm not after a hog, I'm after superb dogs. I think what has happened though, ed, it a hog of swine is highly intelligent. And we have not only developed our dogs, but we've actually developed the hogs Oh yeah.

To be a greater challenge. Oh yeah. And so I tell people they can run like a. Yeah. Climb like a mountain goat fight like a grizzly bear. Horses are not the love in that. Yeah. The hogs that me and you chase today are not the same hog hogs that my grandpa chased in [01:14:00] 1960. They're a totally different species, and we've done that to 'em by not so natural selection.

Yeah. It, the hunting sport has driven the species to be what they are today. But so I'm vice president of the Oklahoma Dog Country Associa Association. So I go to a lot of different dog hunting events, be it bird dogs, squirrel dogs, rabbit dogs, hog dogs, coon dogs, box dogs, and the underlying factor in all those, all the, all in all those dog sports.

It's not really about the game like I, it. It's not really about the rabbit, it's not about killing the game. No it's about superb dog. It's about dogs that can do a job really well. So we're all just after superb dogs. Yeah. We just measure them against a different game. So if hog hunting becomes illegal in the next 10 years, am I not gonna have any dogs?

Hell yeah. I'm gonna have dogs. I'm just gonna find a different game to [01:15:00] measure those dogs against cuz the hog means nothing to me. I eat 'em, but I don't give a shit about a hog. Hey Chris, and if you don't mind, I'm on plug this just a little bit. I wrote a poem and you wouldn't think of.

Guy like me to write poetry, but I did write a poem. I'm read it and I think it, it encompasses a lot about what we've been talking about. Yeah. I called it old Blue. Imagine that he might like that dog a little bit. He might. He left his buddy bleeding out on the side of the mountain to shoot a hog.

Yeah, have to say the dog. No doubt. I can tell a few more along that line too, but it goes up like this. The last of the kids had left the farm. There was an echo in the house and a pretty lonely barn. Barnit had gotten into the chickens eggs. They were a few. The wife sang hymns from the lonely window view that ornery Longhorn Bull had torn through the fence and left for the other side.

The neighbors calves will now be sold for bucking stock, both far and wide. Wild hogs have come up out of the river bottoms looking for food [01:16:00] along the way. They gobbled up my corn crop and left only divots where there should be hay. Farming profits were down and laborers were few chores were piling up.

What's an old Cal Poke to do? What I needed was help for very little pay. Maybe a dog would work if I could just get him to stay. When asking around at the local feed store, a man's name came up that raised dogs of legend and lower ke dogs are the breeding. Only the bloodline man knew there were rumors of wolves, hounds, bulldogs, and maybe a BirdDog or two.

He sold his dogs to rodeo stock contractors, farmers and ranchers, and like he sold 'em for hog dogs. Coon dogs? Yes. These dogs were bred for grid. All right. Leaving the co-op with fresh directions on my mind. Thoughts danced in my head of the perfect dog that I would find. The stories were mangled with expectations and popping of gravel for behind the road was full of kettle guards, mud holes, switchbacks, and low water gaps.

Now to meet this firey eyed man dressed in cowboy hat [01:17:00] boots, wild ragging, chaps. Instead, I found him dressed in overalls, all bent and gray and old. All the dogs sounded the alarm. There were even more than I was told. The dogs were black, white, red, yellow, brindle, and blue. They had eyes of brown, white, blue, green, and amber too.

Some were bobtailed, some were long, some were fine made. Some were strong. But for all their differences, whatever they may be, all the dogs had an appearance of similarity. The old man had more passion and knowledge about dogs than any 50 men would. The solution to my problem ended up costing more than a spring and heifer should.

I was lucky he had just gotten him back because twice he had sold the dog, worked himself out of a job or so he was told, tied all alone. Out back at the end of a trail, stood a dog with two glass eyes and a half length tail. As for colors, he had more than a few blue black spots. Brown Brennan, white with more than Scard, two, isolated and lonely.

I knew Blue would be his name. One unleashed I called and he immediately came. [01:18:00] But blast, his modeled hide. He sank his teeth into my backside. He tore my pants like a flower sack. I guess it doesn't pay to turn your back on old blue. I went hunting and took old blue just to see what he would do. He rounded up a wild pig as mean as blue and twice as big.

The boy he round down was a Razorback with teeth so long that they curled back. They flattened 50 yards of brush, but blue had caught that old cuss. I killed that boy with a K bar knife. That dog was earning his keep. You can bet your life Blue treat ever coon from miles around every night to hollows echoed that beautiful sound.

He went, we went together the cattle, but they were nowhere to be found. No problem for blue. He just tracked them down that Longhorned bull thought he wanted to fight. He hooked it blue and spun and kicked with all his might. Blue bit that bull from head to tail. He sent him home with the other cows as well.

The fences are now mended. The whole trouble is now ended. Chickens are safe and eggs are plenty. If that egg sucking dog will [01:19:00] leave you, any corn is harvested. Hazing the shed, my wife says blues color is actually a shade of red. But that's great, man. That was awesome. Oh yeah. Plumber's like me when it comes to written word, he doesn't hesitate to get pretty long with it.

It's a lengthy poem. No, it's a good, it's worth every bit of it. It's good. I tried to really encompass a storyline in it that could be a little humorous, but yet have a lot of facts in it. There's a lot of, a lot going on. It's true. Yeah. Yeah. And so anyway. I appreciate you sharing that, man.

Thank you so much for allowing me to Hey. Yeah. And y'all ought to keep your eyes out for plumber's book that's coming out for too long. I will be with the great Ed Barnes here publishing a book look for it. Maybe it'll have some stories of legend and lore and some knowledge.

Yeah. Yeah. We'll try to encompass, a little bit about hunting in the ketta hooah breed, but You bet. But anyway[01:20:00] I appreciate it and yeah, we're live from Earls Great time. Yeah. Check out Tuskers magazine. Where'd they find that? At ed tuskers magazine.com. Tuskers magazine.com.

We've actually given away a couple of your books, have you? Yeah. On our Patreon drawings, we've sent those out. Good deal. And what's the name of that thing? In Pursuit of Hog Dogs by Ed Barnes. I'm Ed Barnes, one and only Ed Barnes. I'm in pursuit of hog dogs. I'm not sure I've quite found 'em yet, but I'm gonna keep going my whole life.

It's a great book. It should be on everybody's shelf. If you collect dog books, you should have in pursuit of hog dogs. It's got your whole life story in there. Pretty much. Most, a lot of it anyway. Today I'm working on that. Episode two. There you go. There you go. The evolution of ed ball.

Yeah. Still chasing hog. I appreciate it. All right. Thanks for tuning into the house next Pete podcast, live from Uncle Earls. We'll see you next year. You bet. We'll be here next year. Until [01:21:00] next year. This is fair Chase.

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