The Truth: Circle Points

Show Notes

On this Circle Points segment of The Truth, Josh sits down with sometimes friend, and all the time host of the Houndsman XP Podcast, Mr Chris Powell for a lively discussion. Josh gets back to the Roots of “The Truth” as he and Chris talk about bridging gaps, large predator love, as well as even re-visit one of the most controversial episodes Josh has done concerning raccoon contests. It’s a fun, possible fact filled, and always entertaining conversation that you won’t want to miss! Only on THE TRUTH, on the Houndsman XP Podcast Network!!

www.houndsmanxp.com

Show Transcript

[00:00:00] The truth on the Homan XP podcast Network is fueled by joy. Joy dog food has been in business for many decades, since the 1940s. They've never had a recall. They only use 100% American made products to bring you a dog food formula that is going to keep your hounds on their feet and performing at a high level.

Late round bound. The next bear race, the next cat race, whatever you got going, joy can keep your dog fueled up. I personally feed Joy for this reason. They are not afraid to get in the trenches and get in the fight. They will show up at a local. Meeting where people are trying to pass tethering laws or breeders' bills or whatever, and put their name on that and put their reputation on the line to support us.

So find joy dog food [00:01:00] on the internet. Find that dealer locator. Find a dealer near you. Go to joy dog food.com and keep those hounds fueled by joy.

Talk about losing stuff or whatever. In kids, my wife's just as bad. The other day I took my e collar off my yard. Yeah. And I just set it on a, in a box of stuff that I was gonna carry out anyway. Yeah. I couldn't find that thing for four or five days. I found it stuffed in one of my boots.

I'm like, what the, and there weren't, they weren't even my boots or a pair of boots that Jake left here when he moved out. It's like, how the hell was I ever gonna find that? With kids and wives, it's amazing the places that you find stuff. Yeah. I was losing my mind. It's just This is crazy.

I'll set that stuff down in the house and walk out and get distracted and then be like, where's my phone? Where's this, whatever. [00:02:00] But I literally thought I was losing my mind over that. E collar. Yep. I was just like, what the heck? When I, when you lose an e collar with a dog like your jog or bogan or something like that, it's important.

Yeah, it is. You need that thing. Yep. Bogan wears his for life, I think. I don't know if that dog's ever gonna be able to run around in public without one Awing. I'm with you, dude. I tough's actually pretty good until you get him to, if you take him to the woods, then. Jerry Mall was hunting with me one night and he's is that little dog hunt?

And I looked at my garment and he was like, eight 60. Yeah. By himself. Trailing off by himself. He's probably scorching a deer. Trying to Oh yeah. Find a possum to molest or, something. But I, he, yeah. He'll hunt. He'll, he worries me too. Especially this time of year. It doesn't like that.

That likes to be in the ground too. Yeah. Yeah. The ground deal. And then right now the coyotes are denin. And I've had more run-ins with coyotes this time of [00:03:00] year than any other time of the year. So are your coyote numbers up? Ours are up because I'm having more coyote conflict now in the last two years than I ever have.

And this is always this time of year. It's always when the females up, up. But, I hunt the same places. I've lived here for 35 years hunting pretty much the same place. Same 30 or 40 turn loose spots. I think our coyote numbers are actually down because we've got more red fox.

Yeah. And when you've got, oh yeah. So yeah. So if you got more red fox, our red fox only live in town. Yep. They do not venture very far outside of town. Or they're gonna get eight. You can be out hunting and it's nothing to see, four or five. Four or five red fox across the road at night.

Yeah. While you're out driving from Spot. And for, I'd say a couple decades anyway, it was just like we didn't have any foxes. Yeah. Never saw one. Yeah. And I know that like with our foxes, you never see 'em outside of town. We still have a good population, but always [00:04:00] within city limits of like little bitty towns.

But with all the coyote calling going on right now and how popular that sport has become. Yeah. I can't believe that our co because I see coyotes all hitting on the road and when you see coyotes hitting on the road, there are a lot of coyotes. Yeah. Cause they have to be pretty plentiful to get hit.

Cause they're smart, they're shot. They're not dogs. They're not like beer where you face, if there's three deer, you're gonna run over two of them. I drove to Louisiana a couple weeks ago and it was just, I couldn't believe the number of coyotes that were dead on the interstate. Yeah. And that's crazy.

And that's a mezzo predator thing. They're gonna come up when the Koons come up, when those mid-size predators are on the uptick. I think coyotes are gonna follow that same path. Yeah. And plus, we feed 'em plenty. Yeah. We do. Just the road killed ignorant white-tailed deer that.

I tell you, I hit a deer in my brand new truck. It had 460 miles on it. In which truck? The ranger? No, a new Nissan. We got the Nissan for work. A four door. Oh [00:05:00] yeah. Your truck frontiers. Yeah. And on the way back to super steaks, right in the middle. I 70. I've been dodging deer all night and I finally smoked one.

I'm over deer pal. I'm over. Yeah, I hear you man. I hear you. Everybody around here was complaining about a bad year for deer hunting. It's Because we had the c w D outbreak. Yeah. Again, and everybody's crying the blues and I'm just over there just yes. Oh, I always say, thank goodness, may, oh, it's just, if my out, if my outfitter friends would've heard the words that come outta my mouth when I hit that deer, we would not be friends anymore.

Oh, I guarantee it, man. I'm, I cuss 'em and it's just yeah. And cussing. They changed. They've changed coon hunting so much. Oh yeah. And one thing I wanted to talk to you about, actually, that's a good segue into what I was gonna bring up cuz you know you had the Wolf podcast Uhhuh the last couple weeks, which was awesome.

I thought that was cool and I got to thinking about when me and you first started discussing, [00:06:00] doing the truth and doing this segment on Houseman xp. It was about, which is Homan XP has always been about bridging gap. Bridging that gap between the Homan and the other sportsman, the Hounds man and the everyday suburbanite, all that stuff, you got figured out.

Yeah. And I think, like I said, I think it gets closer all the time. There's another gap to bridge. And we, the truth's kind of gotten away from that a little bit because we're so focused on these guys that are winning big and all that stuff, which is great too. Don't get me wrong.

That's the part that, that makes me interested. And I was listening to that wolf stuff and when they sat down and they hunted that trapper up and they laid the money on the table for that trapper to come get them wools. And I was just like, you know what that is. Bridging a gap and sometimes necessity is what does it.

Yeah. We've talked about the coon numbers and the coon killing contest and the trappers. I still haven't got, I still haven't stopped getting hate mail over that one. No, I haven't either. I haven't either. [00:07:00] But would you do it again? Oh, yeah. Yeah. My opinion's, my opinion, and the facts of the fact that's right.

It's You just can't. It's the truth. That's what we do. Yeah. On this show we tell the truth. And to think that trappers trapping culvert ditches along I 70 are gonna affect their coon hunting is ridiculous. Yes. You know that I've said that for years. There's a stretch of road here in my community that runs from.

It runs along the Ohio River and it runs from rising sun up to Aurora, and you always see 2030, it wasn't a, it's nothing to see 20 or 30 dead coons on that stretch of road in a month. Yep. Yeah. And the thing of it is, I've got another buddy of mine that's a trapper, and he could trap all of that.

Yeah. There's no way I could hunt that. That was just it. You, my dogs would be dead on that road. Yeah. I tried to get Daniel Cliffton. Who is a well-known coonhound trainer. Some of his best [00:08:00] dogs on the planet have come from Clifford's place. He doesn't go to Hunts but he gets smart pups, he starch pups.

He, he steals, sells dogs ready or real close to being ready to be in Hunts for good money. And he does it all the time. That's like Bub Blackwell. He's very similar Toub, except he's not gonna ever see a Casper. You'll see Bub very rare in a cash. Sure. He'll be with Austin where he's at a hunt.

But you'll see Cliffton at a hunt. But Laura Lee came from Clipper's, I believe. There's a whole bunch of them. There's a whole bunch of 'em that come from Cliffton, but he's a huge tracker. Loves to trap. Yeah. Still finishes his alt finishes, all his fur.

Has a real nice trapping shed with a full bar in it. And you're, there's a bar and a real nice bar and a big screen, and then he's skin behind you. Yeah. Don't mind the Kon grease boys. Exactly. Pour upo. Not exactly the most appetizing smell to go in and get you a pizza and a beer. But it's a skin And shed first and a bar second.

But just I wanted to get him on the podcast and he don't wanna do it. He's [00:09:00] one of those guys that, oh, I don't speak well or something, but he would do just fine. I'm still working on him, but I was talking to Cliffton and other trappers and probably, I'm just gonna guess I don't have these numbers in my back pocket, but in the county that I live in, there's probably, when trapping was prevalent, they're ca they're taking 10 to 12,000.

Koons probably. These trappers are, in 2013, the last year the fur boom was high and you didn't see any road filter? Nope. Either wasn't enough to get run over or they picked up? They picked them up and skinned up. Yeah. I got 18 bucks for Koons. Yeah, I average, I averaged 2250 that year. Green in 13.

That was right before the big bus and I trapped real hard that year. But everybody had, especially with dog crew, everybody had steel on the ground. And we went out that April and still treed the fire at record. And they were taken way more than one coon killing contest. That takes, say of 7, 8, 900 coon.

I've [00:10:00] seen the ebbs and flows of coon populations and with my background and wildlife management, as the enforcement side. But still, you had the experience with it. I can tell you, man The, we had years where the coon numbers were down, where we would walk up hollers and find dead coons.

Yeah. Yeah. From the distemper. Yeah. And that's way harder in It isn't, than it is. Oh man. That's way harder. And that and the thing that people, everybody crying about these coon competitions are actually helping. The coon population because distemper is a density disease. Yeah. It's transmitted through, population density.

So I would rather have, 10 raccoons in 200 areas that are healthy than have 20 or 30 that, that are gonna be spreading disease around. Cuz it, it'll come. Yeah. I mean it's common. It's just a matter of It always does. Yeah. And it and I'm surprised it hasn't hit yet. I really am. I am too.

Yeah. I'm surprised [00:11:00] we haven't just had a massive outbreak of distemper as, as thick as the Koons are, especially the way they're being fed now. You look at right here where there's a lot of corporate hog farms. The deer hunters with their feeders real small pockets of feet. I, me and Finley was hunting two nights ago and I pulled up to a little frog pond.

That's just got bean filled around it where I started. A lot of puff who's actually gonna cut a couple older dogs there was gonna send angel or Hazel and scent and there were seven coon in the bean field digging up old rotten beans. And there were five around this little frog pond. And this is when the sows are supposed to be in their dent, right?

Some kids. And of course we didn't turn two old dogs loose in the middle of that. I would took my pup back there last night. But there's 12 coon right there. And this is a 40 acre farm just right there. You know that, that's just right here by the house. Now it's surrounded by a lot of stuff. Yeah. But there's 12 coon that I can see with my [00:12:00] eyeballs on the ground if we'd have got out and shined around, who knows?

And that was all in about a two acre spot. One of those coons get sick. They're all sick. They all die. You nailed it in that podcast with Dan Braman, and I even said it in, the Wolf podcast that we just dropped with Foundation for Wildlife Management. Deer hunters never have enough deer.

All hunters never have enough elk, Coon hunters never have enough Koons and as hunters, we get so focused on that, that we forget. We forget that's not always the best thing, right? For sustaining wildlife, there is such a thing as too many and yeah I guarantee you that there are way more Koons that are killed with fly bait and Mountain Dew every year.

In life and some of these, and some of these live traps and barn live traps. Yeah. And then there ever [00:13:00] have been in, in a coon killing contest. Yeah. And here's the deal. If we don't step up and solve the problem, the farmer down the road, yeah. It's cool to go down there and start pups and have a coon up every bush, but if we don't step up that ag community so strong, they can sway opinions in legislative bodies.

You call the fish and wildlife and fish and Wildlife starts coming up with ways to kill 'em for us. Yeah. That's what they've done here in Indiana. We went from, no, no running from February 1st to May 15th to. Now we run almost year round. And you can kill Koons year round with written permission.

And you can, a landowner can take Koons anytime on any of his property. Yep. For any reason. Or I can if he gives me written permission. And we're all going to year round raccoon seasons, right now, Missouri extended theirs [00:14:00] last year. It starts in August now. No kidding. Yeah. It runs from August until I believe, October 15th.

And then stops again until November 15th. So there's a month between October 15th. No, but we're only a year or two away from having it year round. Yeah. We need a spring season at least. That way, we can help the deer hunters and we can help the Turkey hunters more. Yeah. Yeah. But that's coming.

I know that's right down the pipe, but if people were, would just understand the sheer amount of Koons that me and Finley kill, they would understand that. We're not gonna hurt 'em with one coon killing contest a year. When Georgia put it on the books that you could hunt, landowners could take coons year around.

Yep. A lot of these big farms and leases down there, the Turkey hunters were the ones that were doing that trapping and trapping Koons out of there. And it'd be nice if it'd be like the state would say, Hey, [00:15:00] If you want to trap Koons year round, then you need to give permission to somebody to koon hunt there.

That'd be the perfect world solution. Yeah. But that's not how policy works. No. And that's not how wildlife management works. And it's just never gonna happen. The it's all, everything's such a slow, tedious crosses and especially today in the Facebook age. Everybody wants it right now.

Yeah, we want a rule change in U kc. We want it right now. We want to have some law changed or some deal going on with the hunt or whatever. We want it right now, and those just don't work that way. Bureaucracy. You've were a game warden for a while. The bureaucracy is very strong.

Yes. It's not going anywhere. It takes bureaucracy is the worst thing that ever happened to wildlife management. Yeah. That and it's so weaponized and politicized these days. That's what we talked about in that wolf podcast. There's nothing that's been more weaponized than the gray wolf.

And then that's a mess. I want to. One thing I wanted to ask [00:16:00] you now that we've touched on that subject is what makes human beings view large predators so much differently than every other animal? Man, you it's a whole media thing. You can take, I, I was, I think a lot about this.

If you go out and let's say we're gonna do some filming. Okay, we're gonna, we're gonna film different guys out there hunting different stuff with their dogs. If you go out and you film that one Mountain lion getting shot and everything, then you're gonna get backlash on that.

But the same people say nothing about guys like Mark Donovan in Boston hunting war rats. Yeah. With his terrier. Exactly. So it's, It used to be brown eyes, and if it had brown eyes and eyelashes, then it, and deer were the thing, it was, everybody had a [00:17:00] soft spot for that. Yeah.

But with the level of attention that these big apex predators are getting, A lot of it boils down to, there's a lot of money in organizations like Center for Biological Diversity, the Mountain Lion Foundation H S U S. The list goes on and on. There's a lot of money there for them to build this media hype around that wolf or that lion or that bear and they don't.

The guys at the top, they're just cashing checks. That's all they're doing. Oh, yeah. The average person out there that, that shows up at these local meeting they're passionate about it. They, they don't want you hunting, but the guys at the top know that they're never gonna stop hunting, but they like cashing those checks and that's where it's at.

That's why we see such, such a big push on it, is because there's been a lot of money being spent. To fuel [00:18:00] that propaganda machine. But what if I started the Save the a possums foundation? I think you should. It's the only North American Mar Marubio. I know. It's a very special animal. Jeff Wright's got the bifurcated penis.

Yeah. Jeff Wright is a wildlife biologist who done his study on the travel habits of Possums in like urban areas and he lived over here by me. He used to come Quail hunt with me all the time. Now I think he's in, he was in Montana for a while. I haven't spoke to Jeff for a while, but he did a big study on, he collared possums and turned them back loose, and one of them died in a beauty shop in the wall and he went in there to get his collar and they didn't know what the smell was.

And they were so mad at him cuz they didn't tell him that he lived in the wall and all this stuff. But yeah, he would be a good backup for the possum foundation. But why do, because possums are cool. I don't shoot possums just for fun or take 'em during coon season or furber season or anything because I wanna leave that possum there just in case I'm guiding in that spot.

And I know my dog won't. Maybe some other dog will, but I could take a possum [00:19:00] and I can hold it up dead and nobody's gonna bat an eye. Nope, nobody's gonna care. But when's the last time we named a possum? We've got piece, I'm with the lion. We've got that limping ass bear that walked on however legs that they don't name 'em.

They flip side to that though. Big predators. The flip side to that though, you remember that post that, even Hounds when were posting it, Oh. About how they possums they don't, 3 million ticks a day. Yeah. And that study was totally, it totally came from the possum, the animal zes.

Yeah. The Possum Foundation. Foundation. It sure did. Possums. Yep. It was all a setup that study was done. They didn't feed this possum anything except ticks. Yeah. In a box. Hell yeah. He is gonna to eat him. He's hungry, but it was all bull crap. There's cat in there and see how many ticks he eats.

Exactly. Yeah. If he can walk up on your porch and eat your cat's food, he's not eating ticks. Yeah. I just, but I still don't [00:20:00] understand. To me, a snake is a rat is a duck. As a deer, as a wolf is a, they're all the same to me. I get the same views. You look at it from a healthy herd standpoint instead of an individual standpoint.

The thing about animal rights activists and people that see animals and, oh, don't hunt this, don't that, that they're more concerned about the individual an animal than there are the species. But they don't do that with so many other types of animals, but they do it with big predators, even hunters.

Even hunters will look at someone that will tree a mountain lion and say, it's not fair. Or say it's not this, or I don't, that's not fair, chase. We've had that question too. Oh, yeah. And they don't, but I don't get it. A pheasant behind a, in front of a setter is fair chase, but a fricking 150 pound mountain lion above a dog is not.

Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. It's nonsensical. Nope. I'll tell you what I think a lot of it is, and. We [00:21:00] probably get a lot of hate mail over this, but hopefully we do. That means some deer hunters and other hunting groups are listening to this podcast. Yeah. But hunters in general, I feel like are losing.

They, they've lost their skills to hunt and it's because it doesn't take anything to go out and shoot a deer. No, it does it's no challenge. You can do it. You can do it just about any day of the week you want. Now, killing big bucks. You can add some, you can add some skill level to that.

However, the majority of deer hunters in this area that I'm in, all they are is creating the op. They're good at creating the opportunity to kill a deer. Yeah. With food plots and cameras and all this other stuff, they've become very good at creating the opportunity to shoot a deer. I always wonder if you took that same guy that's so passionate about his deer hunting [00:22:00] and you took him and you blindfolded him, and you dropped him in the middle of, who's your national forest, or Daniel Boone National Forest.

Can he hunt his way out of there? Can he even live to get out of there? Because he doesn't have his side by side, he doesn't have any of that other stuff. But some of the homan stuff is the same way. It's in the same vein. We've got so many coons that dogs can be trained a lot easier.

Yeah. I don't even know what we would do if you didn't have the coon numbers. And the opportunities to put dogs on game and stuff like that. Oh, I remember. I do too. It was hard with that. No gps not the coon numbers here that we have now dogs that were not as genetically superior as they are now.

And that's the honest to God's truth. I know guys bang on me all the time. Dogs of today versus dogs yesterday. Just the fact that I can get. A seven, eight month old pup to tree, its own coon, even an easy one, is unreal. [00:23:00] And would've been unheard of 30 years ago. Ago. Yeah. So the dogs are, the breeders have done a better job than people give 'em credit for.

The dogs are genetically easier to start, in my opinion. And like I said, that's just opinion. But yeah. Give me an, give me a Finlay River dog from the late eighties. And a little, a small coon population. I must struggle. You bet. I hunted with a drex son of Finlay River Chief. Yeah. And they were good dogs.

They were just hard starters. Oh yeah. Them, yeah. They, and he was a solid dog. He actually placed fourth in the in the A C H A world championship. Back in the day. We would be much more patient. The first night I ever koon hunted Josh, there was a guy that went with us. An older guy that was wearing a car by light.

Yeah. And I'm not trying to say, I was hunting by, but it was 1983. Yeah. And this old timer was, did you guys drive your chariot to the woods Old? We rode. Yeah. Yeah. We rode the, had a [00:24:00] wagon Drone by mules. Go get 'em all. Dan, go get 'em. Little. You gotta find grandpa.

But it was a different time and Koons weren't as plentiful. And I c I tell you this that the tracking abilities and the trailing abilities of those hounds was a lot better than what we have today. Yeah. And a lot of instances and a lot of strains. Yeah. Yeah. They are, they were better track dogs but they were trail first dogs that Sure.

Yeah. And a lot of 'em would be two and a half, three years old before they started tria. That was not very uncommon. No. I remember dogs from my best memories, my best early memories are gonna be 88. To 93 when I'm eight to 13, the truth on the Hounds. My XP podcast network is proud to partner with Cajun Lights.

Cajun lights can outfit all of your hunting light needs. Everything from the high quality RO guru, [00:25:00] super bright, super versatile. They've got a buy you, which is a mid-range price light. And then one of my personal favorites is the micro gator. I use that for big game hunting. Finding tracks, just general use.

If I need a light on my head, I'm grabbing my micro gator. I've looked for bear tracks in that thing. Lion tracks, cat tracks. Coon, hunted with it. Hog hunted with it at night. I've even used it to work on the plumbing in the house. Super bright, super dependable. Everything that LW sells down there is. Is high quality in the customer services second to none.

Every week I'm getting notifications as they're adding new items to their store. They've got Briar crew clothing coming out. They got a jacket out right now. That's really nice. I put the vest through the paces this last bear season and coon season. Couldn't be happier with that. I can't find anything there that I don't like.

And I like [00:26:00] dealing with LW Nixon and Cajun Lights. So check 'em out. You can go to houseman xp.com, you can follow that link. Cajun Lights right from our website. Check 'em out folks. And those are when of course we, I've been hunting since I was old enough to be carried, but they were not. I remember when we had a dog that was right outta year old Star Tree and it was a big deal.

Yeah. And they, he just went in there and, covered the old dog and treed with it, and that was huge. Yep. My grandfather was ecstatic about this pup tree that quick, and I think this was a cross that he'd made 19 times. And this was litter number 17. He oughta knowed what they were all gonna do by now.

What year did WIC write the book? The first book, the first read, I haven't read either one of them. It had to be, it had to be in that timeframe. Mid eighties, mid early eighties. I've got two copies of it here, but I'll check that copy right on that, that [00:27:00] hardbound book. But I think WIC originally, he talked about the 18 month old pup.

If you've got an 18 month old pup that's not doing it then you should start looking somewhere else. Yeah. So even back then, 18 months old has been the standard rule of thumb except for guys that are, looking for that super early starter that they can put in baby steaks and stuff like that.

And one thing I have to remember is that we were not hunting with the best of the best coonhounds, in the late eighties, early nineties either. We were pleasure hunters, hide hunters had our own type of strain of dogs, and there were a lot of good dogs that we hunted with and we treat a lot of coon and stuff, but, There were levels higher than what we were.

I have no doubt. Yeah. In Indiana though, those guys may have had it figured out better than we did. I'm sure they did. I drew Russ Beller at Sugar Creek, Coon Hunters with Pacman. In the eighties. Yeah. And Lester Nance was still getting after it. Them with the na [00:28:00] bread hounds. Yeah. And stuff here.

And then you had Burton Oni, the Tur Ridge racket dogs and stuff like that. They were around. And so some of those old timers I, the legends of the old days, I, I. Got to hunt with him. Yeah. When I saw those dogs, and Pacman was impressive. He was legit Coon dog. And but he was an old style dog, he was a, he was just an older style dog. He wasn't what we've got today. It's amazing how far we've come and it changes monthly almost, it seems these dogs are changing so much faster and the style of hunting is changing so much faster. And the ability to get a good dog is getting easier.

As far as just starting one, cuz just like we touched on Koons are thicker. The dogs are easier to start. That's what made some of these great big stud dogs so popular. The nailer the rat attack, Sackett, Jr.[00:29:00] Some of those dogs that are really the foundation of a lot of breeds today is their puff started treeing quick.

Bone collector was a good example there too, especially during the Zeb three days or the wipe out days when the wipe out Hounds first came out and they were a little slower to start. They were trail type dogs and they were a little slower to start getting tree up until Zeb three came along. But go ahead and finish yourself.

But I'm just saying that the thing that makes these dogs so much easier to start is they were good tree dogs early. Yeah. And in thick Coons, you can get by with that. Jerry Mall always says, he says it's a lot easier to take tree out of a dog than to put it in. Yeah. And so he's bred his walker dogs.

And if I was gonna go find a walker that I would enjoy hunting, I've hunted some of 'em, Jerry's Hounds, one of 'em, I hunted one hound for him for a while. Real nice female, but he's just got some very nice hounds. And that's how he is brought 'em, it's easier to take it out than it is to put it in.

Yeah. And [00:30:00] some of these dogs, and I think that's why certain dogs like Ex Jr. Did not breed as many females, is those were trailing type dogs. They were, he was Zeb three before Zeb three came along. It was just, but. You know when you get used to a rat and Yeah they all get grief for throwing slick trigger and stuff like that.

But we didn't know then what we did know. Now when Nailer first come along, or rat or Sackett Jr. Or some of them dogs, when a pup started looking up at five months old, you encouraged it. You was over there. Yeah. Tapping that tree and petting that pup on the side. Holy cow, I got something. It's a freak of nature.

We didn't know they were all like that. And we didn't know we were creating bad habits, encouraging them to tree, especially by sight and certain things like that we did with these old style dogs. That's, I've, I have seen that come back around. We went through a period there where dogs were winning big hunts.

I know the dog that won super stakes one year was a guy here local, that owned her, owned this [00:31:00] female. And his comment about her was she never met a tree she didn't like. So she could tie up a cast, she could tie up a cache for an hour and a half, and she was loud, so you get sucked in under the tree.

And if she had three coons outta 10, that's enough to beat you. Yeah. Because you couldn't hear what was going on out here. And, but now we've changed the rules and massage those rules. And the dog is more independent too. Yeah. Yeah. They're not all gonna be piled in with that dog like they were used to be.

Yeah. Yeah, but it was just, we've massaged the rules. We've changed the rules, and we've bred dogs that have to go and treat raccoons if they're gonna win, if they're gonna win big. And you, there's still that stigma of all, and you'll see it every now and then on social media of guys that have never, haven't been to a hunt in 30 years.

And they're like they just wait till the leaves are on. They wait till the leaves are on. You gotta wait till the leaves are on cause the deer hunters are in the woods all the other time and there's plenty of hunts with the leaves off. There ain't no leaves on in January in Texas during the rockstar, these dogs all have to tree coons.

They all have to [00:32:00] win anymore. And it didn't, and it didn't used to be the case. I see squirrel hunting coming along in that same style, but it's gonna be it's going to be expedited. It's gonna go quicker. It's gonna go through that tree dog phase and into that. Having squirrels again, phase.

Faster than the Coonhounds did. But some of these guys are just encouraging these dogs to tree and they can rack up enough points. Cause it's hard to minus a squirrel dog. Oh man. All they gotta do is if there's a tree in the woods, it's circled and they tree in that woods. That's pretty much, yeah.

You know what the old in KC rules is if there's a place of refuge within 20 steps of where your dog tree. Yeah. Then it was a circle tree. Yep. That's a long way. That's a long way. Especially when you're in the middle of woods. There's never, especially with a squirrel Exactly. Can find anywhere there.

You can find a nest, you can find a hole in the tree, you can find it's hard to minus a squirrel log. Yeah. And Squirrel. I've seen this a lot. A lot of squirrel hunters, especially the old timers that'd just be out there with the dog [00:33:00] and they'd walk through the woods shaking vines.

Yep. Getting those squirrels to move out. And then those little feist dogs, they were all eyeballs and they'd see 'em and they'd just go nuts and then they'd catch on. They, but they also walk to a lot of empty trees. I got to hunt with Jared Hughes and Shane Mason here a while back down Louisiana.

I was coming back from the Jarvis HUMS memorial. And stop there and hunting with Jared and Shane, and they got really good squirrel off independent, have their squirrels when they tree Shane's hunting a fight called Traveler Jared's hunting chemicals, and they just go out and they treat squirrels.

That's it. They go out and they treat squirrels and they were talking about how sometimes it's hard to compete with the, they'll turn a big, loud walker dog in there that likes to get wooded. And, it blows the cast up a little bit. And the walker dog has to have one squirrel and three or four circle trees on a day when it's, from 10 to three when the squirrels aren't up and about, and the camera crew and the other dogs that want to have squirrels aren't making any trees.

And yeah, while it still takes and the old [00:34:00] adage is, just go tree squirrel and it'll beat it. You'll beat it. But, you can't find all of them. They're hard to find, especially when the leaves are on. But, I ran that circuit hard, man. I had, oh yeah, I had mountain curves and it's fun.

But I ran all the way, ran all the way to South Georgia and Missouri and all over the place squirrel hunting and I went it that hard and it was we expected our, I expected my car dogs to hunt. Like the hounds that I'd had. Yeah. If you're a treated, you need to be treated. Yeah. And I don't want you out here messing around.

I'd set 'em up and sneak in there and tone 'em back on trees and correct milling around at the tree and all that stuff if I had it. But a lot of these, a lot of those curves that I saw coming along, they were tree dogs. Yeah. For real. Yeah. That's what they're gearing towards now.

A lot of people. It seems half the community's looking to get treated and half the community's looking to have squirrels in every tree. And eventually I think it's all gonna work itself out. It [00:35:00] will. Yeah. And I think they're just, they're on the same path that the coonhounds were and with the money coming into that sport then I think it's gonna just expedite everything to where eventually you're just gonna have better quality dogs.

That's my opinion anyway. Yeah. Yep. I've been out of touch with it for a long time. I really don't know what's going on over there much anymore. Yeah, no, I don't. I'm not, of course, I'm maybe talking out my butt here too, cause I don't really know it that either. All I know is what I've seen and what I hear people talk about, through the dog food and all that stuff.

Yeah. I gotta figure out how to mute this mic so I can let yell at that healer. Just yell at him. Hold on. No, cuz you always gripe at me for not muting the mic when I yell at my dog. Just move your cursor around. It's there. Your left hand. Hold on mute. Hey, shut up. Bogan. Shut up.

I think someone might, they're building the building. A new building out in the er, [00:36:00] and I think they're out there working. I yelled at him. I yelled at him For you. Yeah. He heard you. Some reason he just immediately shut up.

But yeah, every time I go to yell at a dog or go get a drink, you're like, you can hit that mute button. And then the one time I'm getting ready to yell at him, you tell me not to.

You gotta have something to talk about. So what else is going on? What else are we gonna talk about in this? I was gonna rant, we got off subject a little bit like we always do. But you know the truth, you were talking about bridging gaps in the beginning. Yes, and we went on a way Hounds my xp and of course the truth and all that stuff, we were bridging gap.

The truth was there to bridge the gap between the big game guy and the competition guy, bear dog hunter in Wisconsin, and the PKC Hunter and Louisiana, and so we've done, I think we've done a really good job of that, and we've brought a lot of that to the table. But there's all kinds of opportunities for that.

[00:37:00] And we were, we've been talking around this subject the whole time, the coon numbers. That is a good opportunity to bridge a gap between the big game hunter, the Turkey hunter, and the hounds man. A huge opportunity. These guys, they don't like the coon on their feeders. They don't like the coon eating the Turkey eggs.

They don't like this. All we have to do is conduct ourselves in the right way and play this the right way, and then all of a sudden we're adored by a community that used to hate us. Yeah. It, it's real close if we do it right. If you go down to the big hunting clubs down south there and hunt on some of those where they keep deer, corn out all year long.

Yeah. Yeah. We don't get, I've never been turned down from coon hunting there. Because they're not, they don't wanna pay to feed Koons. No. You look what the, what they spend on deer corn in east Texas on that ranch that we stay on. Yeah. A lot. Yeah. A lot of money. [00:38:00] So you're actually doing 'em a favor, and like you said, if you conduct yourself in the right way, maybe you only get to hunt at three months outta the year.

But that's a lot of acreage that, that you didn't have that you're not gonna have any other time of the year. Yeah. And. And why should we be the selfish ones when it comes? Cause we talked about how there's never enough deer for the deer hunters, there's never enough Turkey for the Turkey hunters and so on and so forth.

We can be the unselfish group and say, look, you know it's yours nine months outta the year. I just, or 11 months out of the year. Give me a month. Give me a month. I'll go down there. I'll knock your coon population down. You'll see less coon on your feeders. I got a good spot to hunt my young dogs.

It's their property. It's their tax money. It's their, maybe it's their dream to own 40 acres in the Ozarks or their dream to own a hundred thousand acres in Texas, it's the same thing. We can, we have the opportunity to come in there and to look at it as a gift instead of [00:39:00] It's my right.

Yeah. Cuz it's not, no, it's not. All right. It's a favor that they are doing to us. Or given us. Yeah. Yeah. I think we sit back and we scream when the anti-hunt comes out and makes, we talked about it, the brown eyes and the eyelashes or make an emo an emotional decision or developing a, an opinion based on emotion.

So when I see people who. Go completely off the deep end over a coon killing contest. You are making that, that opinion, you're developing that opinion based on emotion. Because it's not scientifically backed, it's not based in science, it's not gonna hurt that your opportunity. I'm like, he's done like Anthony Fauci, just trust the science.

That's, see that's the biggest problem and there are.[00:40:00] Our hounds men are the most conservative crowd on the face of the earth. No doubt about it. And so even science has been weaponized and politicized now where we don't know what to believe and what not to believe. And everything's a conspiracy and all this stuff.

But nobody's weaponizing the taking of raccoons for some political gain. No. Like they're the w like the Wuhan virus. Yeah. I agree. It's not weaponized. There's nothing in it for politicians to come up with some conspiracy to stop no raccoon honey. We can't do nothing correctly or bureaucrats Yeah.

Unless we detach ourselves. Yep. You have to detach and look at things differently than, yeah. It's no different than training a dog. Me and Finley just finished a podcast a little bit ago about recognizing the holes in your dog. And you have to detach yourself and be honest with yourself just like you do when you look at something like the Coon Killing Contest, or you look at something like [00:41:00] someone taking a bear when you think bears are your effing spirit animal or something stupid, it's just you gotta detach yourself and you gotta do what's best for the species and do what's best for the organization or the group that you're with.

You know us as Hounds man. What's best for Hounds Man right now? Is it throwing a fit and going to kill a bunch of turkeys because someone shot a bunch of coons at a raccoon kill and contest 700 miles from your house? That, that, that is not what's best for house.

Yeah. If I'm in Louisiana and I'm mad because they had a coon kill contest in Minnesota, that's on me. And I do get the complaint that, this stuff spreads and. All this stuff, but if there are no coons to kill, then the one, the coon column contest probably ain't gonna hurt you.

Now you know if they have one in someplace where you have low coon numbers and they kill 10 big deal. Yeah. [00:42:00] So any damn bra, Dan Braman even said it, he said, if there's not a problem there with predators, we're not gonna do, we're not gonna ho host a hunt there. No, and it is one thing I didn't push Dan on enough is, How much more important habitat is than predator control, in my opinion.

And most of the biologists are gonna back that up. And I think Dan believes that as well. He did touch on it, but we didn't press on it enough. There's been a lot of habitat loss and changes that Oh yeah. That has helped not only up the coon population, but to lower the Turkey population too. So it al, it should always be habitat first, especially the ground nesting birds, quail, pheasant, turkeys, all that stuff.

But predator control is a deal. There is a thing. We have too many coons in the Midwest. There's too many, and I'm a coon hunter, and I will always be a coon hunter. But there's too here. Okay here's another spin on it. Delta waterfowl has been doing predator. Management and predator trapping in the wetlands.

A [00:43:00] place at no hounds man's hunting. Yeah. Up in North Dakota. It's all cattail and flooded. Flooded ground. Yeah. There's only two hounds up there. And they ain't hunting those spots. Yeah, they, they've been doing that for 30 years. Yeah. And it didn't hurt my coon population. No. I'm not going to North Dakota to hunt wetland.

Yeah. Hunt. I might, it'd be fun to take the terrier up there. They haven't trapped Duck Lakes in Texas, right? Yeah. Water files not down there. Murder in the Koons. And yeah, we gotta detach, just like the fur mom has to detach from, oh my God. They killed a black bear that just knocked over 10 trash cans and tore into a garage.

We got it detached from seeing things like that and losing our mind, but that's part of being in the social media day and age. Yeah. It is, it's too easy to make comments. Yeah. Anymore, my rule of thumb is, If I'm triggered by something and I think I'm gonna, I'm, I always set it aside and I just walk away and think about it for a little bit.

And then I usually decide, [00:44:00] ah, I'm not even gonna respond to that. What was the old football coach? He used to coach for the chiefs and the jets. His big saying when he went to talk to the new rookies is Don't press send. Oh yeah. Don't press send. Yeah, get back. Think about it.

Don't press send cuz that don't go away. I don't know. I've deleted some post to not very often. Normally if I type something it's pretty well thought out and I don't care if it's out there. But we've all done it. Two bourbons deep and your dogs look like crap. You've got on Facebook while your dog's been trailing for three hours longer than it should have.

And you type something out and you're, you probably shouldn't have said that. Yeah. But we need to really consider what we thought I did that once I typed one out and sent it and then I deleted it. Yeah. And then the guy started bashing me cuz I deleted my comment. I didn't have the guts to, if you're gonna say it, just say it.

You don't need to post a comment and delete it. And I was thinking, dude, judgment's a better part of valor here. And [00:45:00] I Yeah, I'm, there's, that's not gonna help anybody. So No, I've walked, no thanks, I've walked things back. If we can't, if you're too stubborn to walk something back, then that's a you problem.

Yeah. Even the great Josh McKaylas makes a mistake every now and then. Yeah. You're not telling me anything.

But yeah, that's really, I just wanted to, cuz I thought this would be a good circle points episode. We can talk about the wolves, talk about the trapping, and it all kind of ties in together. It's all about, yeah, bridging gaps. And we try to do that between the competition coon hunters and the big game hunters.

The big game hunters and the hounds man. Period. I'll tell you a gap that needs to be bridged is the competition hunter and the, and just the coon hunter. The, yeah. Standard. We try, I don't know, coon hunter, some of them, but the thing of it is, I don't care who it is, nine times outta 10.

You know the guy that if he gets that stem winding dog, That he's gonna take it to town. Yeah. And [00:46:00] all of a sudden he's gonna find somebody that will. Yeah. Or he's gonna sell it to somebody that will. Yeah. So both sides need the other side because guys like Bub Blackwell don't go buy dogs from Mike Granny.

Mike Granny buys dogs from him. Exactly. Bub goes out here and finds these dogs that have potential, brings that potential out, and then he cashes out 'em. Yep. We've all done so, so he needs. He needs that guy that, that's just a pleasure hunter. Yeah. If you wanna call it there. That I always hated that term pleasure, hunter.

I never got any pleasure out of a outta hunting a counterfeit dog, no. And sometimes hunting is not pleasurable. Yeah. Otherwise this wouldn't be fair. Chase. Yep. It takes a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to make a dog. I don't care if it's a bear dog or a line dog or a coonhound. It takes work and effort and sometimes you gotta drag yourself off that La-Z-Boy and go do it when you don't want to.

[00:47:00] That's been hard for me lately. Yeah. Not for me. The weather. This time of year I really get, I always loved hunting this time of year, but just like today, I spread 40 bags of mulch and just, getting stuff and yeah, I'm just a puss. Yeah, I get like that every now and then, but it's usually about July.

Man, I used to, you, I could put in a full day spreading rock or whatever, and I couldn't wait for it to get dark. Yeah. And some of it too for me is, when the kids were here, Carrie was busy and she was busy with the kids in the evenings and all that stuff, I didn't feel bad about Yep.

Going out and leaving her in the, leaving her home. And now I go out a lot of ti, a lot of times I'll go out and I'd be like, I might be an anomaly, but I enjoy spending time with my wife, yep. I get it. I enjoy it. And it's just so I'm still hunting. It's just not, but not used to, man.

If the road was blocked, I'd go a different direction. Yeah. [00:48:00] If the, if my driveway was blocked I'll just go from the house, yeah. I'm going, when it, I'd come home from work a midnight, a three 30 to midnight shift and. Soon as I hit the driveway, man, I was peeling stuff off and getting ready to go and throwing dogs in the truck and gone.

I, I rarely hunt for the fun of it anymore. I need to get back to that and I haven't hunted for the fun of it in years. Maybe every now and then, once a year maybe I'll take the kids out just for fun and let 'em hunt with old dogs and just enjoy being with them or something. But that's always with a goal in mind.

Probably the last 20 years. It's only cuz of an end goal or I'm hunting I'm getting ready for, or a young dog. I'm really excited about that. I have no intention of keeping, I plan on making a profit on, selling. It's always something like that drives me to go. Right now we're getting ready for nationals and we're getting ready for our truck hunt.

Yeah. And I can't wait to hit the woods. I want compete. Funnest hunt. I've been on all year. Was when I went up and hunted with [00:49:00] Bub and Chris Allen and that friend of Chris Allen's up there. We just had a good time. Yeah. We just had fun. But I used to be miserable to hunt with when I had Squi.

I still am nice. When I had squirrel dogs, everybody else was out there kicking leaves and stuff, and I, it was business. Yeah. I was training dogs and same way with the coon dogs and everything, but, so I haven't. It probably took a lot of the enjoyment out front, out of it for me and that's why, I just took a big break from the competition scene.

Yeah. And I'm, I have to have that young dog or I have to have that to drive me otherwise. Cuz and I envy those guys that, oh, I just like to go and listen to the hounds go. And if I tree a coon, that's fine. I just like being out in the woods at night and hearing the dogs run. I wish I was that way.

I really do. Even when I go, I'm not out there to enjoy the night I want to, I want dogs to get busy and get their job done, so a dog looking bad ruins my night. Yeah. And I'll get home frustrated and can't [00:50:00] sleep at four in the morning when I gotta get up for work at six 30, and I, that dog was looking bad. I got a hunt coming up, or this young dog took a step backwards and now I gotta start. Two steps away from where I thought I was. And it just, it absolutely makes me in a bad mood. Hey, I know we're closing in. We've got a couple other things we need to do, but did you listen to that podcast that Heath dropped with Clinton Seiler?

No, I've not yet. Man, you need to listen to that. Sounds a little bit bad on the second one, but they get into talking about. Given those dogs breaks. Yeah. And we always think, man, you just pound 'em for 30 days and you'll hunt, hunt 'em out of it. Yeah. Hunt 'em out of it. I hate that phrase.

And Clinton Saws is war renowned for his and for his tracking dog training. And he and Heath go in deep about the benefits and the value of giving the dog a break. Yeah. That's how I got involved with big country. I was getting [00:51:00] ready to blow up jazz. I remember where we were the night it happened.

I flip her loose and she was up to that point. She was like, get gone, get treat, and she was looking phenomenal. I flip her loose, she runs 30 yards and she has stopped and looked at me and I went up there and I thought I'm gonna recast you. And flipped her loose. She went out about 50 yards and did a circle around and came back behind me and I thought, what in the world?

So I thought she was, and then it dawned on me, I was like, I've been pounding. Yeah. This 10 month old pup, like she was a four year old dog. Yep. And so I took her home on the way home. I called Donnie. I said, Hey, what's, what are you doing with country? He's just standing out in the kennel behind the barn.

That's how it happened. Yep. Nope. We've blown, we've, we, me and Jed done that podcast on the truth about all the dogs we've blown up. Yeah. And it's not necessarily the quantity as to what you're doing to 'em while you're out there too. Yeah. It's, you get frustrated, so you end up making bad decisions and correcting behavior [00:52:00] that are overcorrecting.

Yep. Because once they get on my bad side, they can't. That applies to gun dogs too. Yeah. When I'm doing retrievers, when I was doing retrievers, I. I would take steps backward all the time because I got frustrated back in the day, man, if I, if a dog got on my bad side, they could do nothing.

They couldn't do anything. Yeah. And when they did, it was like, it's about time, idiot. Here's the thing is I recognize that in myself too, but I still stubborn enough that I'm not gonna change the way I do things as much as I'm just gonna get rid of the dog. The minute I don't like one, I sell it.

Yeah. If I've got a bad opinion of that dog, two or three nights in a row. Come get it. I'm done. Yeah, I know several people like that. Yep. And there's, they come in litters. I don't get too attached to 'em, but except for Boga, that idiot's still sticking around. I hear you. Yeah. Oh, that's Chris. My host strung Yog is sacked out on the futon behind me here.

Nothing nice. [00:53:00] Mine's getting ready to go out and try to attack these builders if I let him out that door. So I'm just gonna keep him inside for a little bit. I hear you. Good deal. No, good. We need to get together more often. Yep, we do. Good conversation, I thought. Yeah. Yeah, me too. We'll wrap it up and we'll move on to the next one, huh?

Sounds good. All right. This is Josh McKayla with the Truth on the Houseman XP Podcast Network. We thank you for.