Bear Grease - Ep. 145: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - My Journey as a Coon Hunter (Part 2)

Episode Date: September 15, 2023

Brent's back with a second installment of his journey as a coon hunter. From disappearing coons to what’s really going on out there when a dog is chasing one, Brent’s experiences and observations have helped him see the light on several different levels. There’s some good stuff in this one and all his stories happened this century. That’s a story all by itself. Sit back and take a listen to this week’s installment of MeatEater’s “This Country Life” podcast.  Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease Merch https://gootf.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From Coon Hunting to Trotlining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and country skills that will help you beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as part of Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast the Airways have to offer. All right, friends, pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I think I've got a thing or two to teach you.

My journey is a coon hunter, part two. We're back this week with more tales of coon hunting and coon dogs. The banditos we chase are curiously smart creatures and their survival instincts of slipping away from hounds is about as legendary as it gets. The continuing struggle of my exploits along with observations and lessons learned are up next on meat eaters of this country live podcast. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. About three years ago, someone sent me a want ad for lack of a better term that they'd seen on Facebook in some hunting group.

The post had a number listed and it said, Looking for someone to get Coons off a Deerlease in central Arkansas. Like Doc Holliday in the movie Tombstone, when drunk Johnny Ringo challenged the Earp's to a duel and they ignored him, prompting him to shout, Wretched slugs, don't any of you have the guts to play for blood? And Doc Holliday calmly said, and they all say it with me. I'm your huckleberry.

That's just my game. Well, that's just how I felt when I saw that ad. I broke a nail tapping the numbers out on my phone to talk to the man and offer the services of me and my coonhound whaling. I talked to him, and in short order, he'd sent me a waypoint on Onex. And just like that, I had 400 acres of private timber ground to hunt. in the middle of ag fields. It was too good to be true. All short growth hardwood timber surrounded on four sides by rice, corn, and soybeans.

It had a drainage canals on one end and would hold water on about 60% of it that was about ankle deep, making it pre-mo for crawfish, tadpoles, and frogs. Three house favorites of Ricky Raccoon and his kin. Good night, nurse. If I was going to draw on a piece of paper, The perfect place to train an up and come in Coonhound, that would have been the place. The Coons were thick in there, and when I dropped Whaling in there the first time, he treated a coon before a cat could lick his behind.

He treed so quick I thought he'd messed up. Now, I can count on two hands and still have fingers left over the number of times that old Whelan has slick-treated. He just doesn't do it. And if y'all don't know what a slick tree is, it's like striking out in softball. It is no bueno and a bit embarrassing. A slick tree is when a dog sets in tree in which is the way of saying, Hey boss, I found him. He's up here in this tree.

And then you look and look and finally decide, hmm, no, he ain't. That tree is slick, meaning there ain't no coon in it. Nobody likes a lion coon dog, especially the fella he belongs to. Some dogs do it because they just can't figure out which trees in and they gamble or they're just not good enough to decipher it and figure it out. That prey drive and the want of praise gets the best of them. Now, old whalen, he ain't never been bad about that. He ain't never been bad about that at all.

And I've heard Michael Roseman say he's one of the most accurate dogs he's ever seen. And Michael has seen a lot of dogs in his lifetime. And coon hunting and making lights for coon hunters is his business. So when he made that tree, 50 yards from where I could, cut him loose instead of getting on to him and making him go on, I checked the tree, and there he was, the masked bandito looking right back at me. Less than a minute in, and I'm already looking at a coon. It was that way for quite a while.

We were flat smashing the coons in there, and Wayland was getting some good training and experience, and so were the coons. I'd hunt there three or four nights a week and never failed to tree coons. It was more or less automatic. I'd park my truck on the north end of the property, walk into the edge of the woods, cut wailing loose, and he'd be struck and embarking in pretty short order. A few times, and y'all going to think I'm crazy, but he'd strike a coon in the same place, or at least on the same couple of acres, and I believe in my heart that it was the same coon every time,

because that joker would make a couple dips and dodges in the woods before making a big loop and then a bee-lop. right out of the timber into a flooded rice field and soybean fields across the county road. Now let me tell you, it's hard for a dog to catch up to a coon in a flooded field. They'll get in there and zigzag around and it's hard for the majority of dogs to gain ground on them because the rice is thick or the soybeans are thick and the coons will just get away. Meanwhile, back in the woods, old Trickey Ricky will pull some fast ones too. and in this scope of woods, I got to witness seeing the coons that Whalen was running on more than one occasion. I just happened to be standing in the right place at the right time to see the coons

come ambling by with a hound in hot pursuit. Some folks think that when the hound is trailing and barking at a coon, that he's always looking at him and running through the woods in front of him, and that's nearly always not the case. Even when I cut whaling loose, and he treed 50 yards in front of me. I seriously doubt that he ever saw that coon until he fell out of the tree and on the ground after I poked a hole in his ear with my 22. That coon was probably spooked up that tree by us walking in

before I had ever cut Whelan off the chain. But Whelan could smell him because I was casting him into the wind, which means I had him facing into the wind when I cut him loose. And he just went straight to where that coon had just climbed up in a tree and started treeing. What's really going on when the hound is chasing the coon is the dog is barking where the coon is been. And here's a short lesson on how that works.

We all leave scent wherever we are, regardless if we had the burrito bomb for dinner or not. We are constantly shedding skin cells from our epidermis called Skirf, spelled S-K-E-R-F. Well, guess what? Soda coons and all other little kids. creatures running around and making a living in the woods. It's kind of like dropping bread crumbs, but instead of leaving a visual trail of gravity influence sign for the hound to follow, these breadcrumbs of scurf are floating on the breeze and microscopic particles that are affected by wind, humidity, temperature, and age.

And by age, I don't mean the age of the animal. I'm talking about how long it's been since the animal passed through there. The dog is following the scent with his head up for a ways and down for a ways, and while moving through the woods and depending on how the scent is flowing, he could be several feet away from where the coon actually walked, just catching scent enough every few feet to make sure that he's going in the right direction and staying on course. This is called drifting the track, and that's what Whelan does

as compared to a ground-and-pound style of hunting where the dog has his nose literally on the ground smelling for every bit of scent that as he moves through the woods following the coon. My old buddy Rex had a dog named Shadow that was absolutely excellent at this. And that was his style and that's the way he hunted. He could sniff out some coons that had been traveled through a long time before. But the drifting style dogs are usually faster on the track than the ground and pound types, but those dogs make fewer what we call loses on the trail by staying as close to the skurf plume as possible. Now the first time this happened that I saw a coon that the dogs were chasing,

I was hunting with a new friend of mine named Michael Crosby. Michael was looking to get his first coon hound, and I took him along one night to give him a dose of what it was all about. We cut old whaler loose, and he was making a big loop down through that 400-acre block of woods, and as he started back toward where we were, he struck in barking. I looked at my garment and he was over 300 yards away, but pointed back towards where we were. Michael and I stopped and we cut her lights off and listened. I was explaining what was going on as it unfolded.

I was talking soft and giving him the play-by-play of what I assumed was going on by by how Whalen was barking while still listening to Whalen. He was more or less coming straight to us, and I told Michael, you know, if we're quiet and still, he's liable to run that coon right over the top of us. I was joking, but I was also thinking how cool that would be if he did. All of a sudden, the conversation kind of died out as Whalen's barking picked up and got closer, and I could hear something coming toward us from about 30 or 40 yards away. Now, I ain't scared of the dark, not in the least.

Not in one little bit, but standing in the middle of the pitch black woods at ankle-deep water, hearing something wading towards you will heighten your situational awareness. I switched on the red lens of my sun spot light, and I looked toward where that racket was coming from, and sure enough, here comes the coon. We didn't move an inch. That joker looked like he was out for a Sunday stroll, not even trotting to a mountain much. Every now and then, we'd see him break into a short loat for a few yards and then go back to actually just walking with a purpose. He got to a little log that was laying in front of us and hopped up on top of it and walked up on top of it, and walked up. the length from one end of the other before jumping off the ground at a 45 degree angle and

heading due east and we watched him go slap out of sight like he wasn't late for work but if he wasn't careful he might be cutting it close two minutes later here comes whaling barking his brains out about 10 yards further away from where that coon had just come through he was downwind and drifting that cone scent as it settled according to all the environmental factors that affects it like I just talked about. You know, wind and humidity, all that. Whelan stayed on that coon's track until losing it 100 yards or so from where it came by us. No idea what happened.

Sometimes it's just like the world opens up and swallows them whole. They just disappear. But we lost him. Other times, it's like when Rex Whiting and I were hunting in that same spot one night, and Rex was training a tree and walker pup named June that he was running with Whalen. Now, basically the same scenario played out just like it had when Michael Crosby and I were in there a few nights before. Whalen and June struck a track and it looped back toward where we were standing. The only difference is this time the barking was a whole lot more excited,

which usually indicates that the hounds know they're close to the coon. They're either actually seeing or hearing it running or the scent is so fresh and hot that it's easy to follow, which actually can sometimes work to the coon's advantage. But it appeared that it was like the same song, second verse from the other night. And I'd already told Rex about it. I remember saying, we fixed to look at this coon. And he immediately turned on his red light, and I did too. And I grabbed my phone out of my pocket, and I started videoing.

Sure as I'm sitting here right now telling you this, we saw that coon coming and could hear not only the barking and wailing and jimbo with their feet. splashing coming close behind. They weren't far away when that coon ran past a big tree, stopped right in front of us less than 10 yards away, ran back a few feet and laid down as flat as a flitter. He looked like Wiley Coyote after a steam roller had run over him, and both of those dogs ran within the feud of him, barking and raising sand like they was about to catch him.

And they kept going. That coon got up like he'd been taking a nap on the couch and just loped away. Whalen and June had gone 25 or 30 yards past where that Coon had stopped, and then they came roaring back to pick up the scent. Whalen opened up and took off with June right behind him. That coon turned east, just like the one had done a few nights ago, and after a hundred yards or so, the dogs lost him again. Now, I can't swear that it was the same Coon from the hunt before, but he ran that whole circuit just like the other one did. They struck him and trailed him almost identically, and he looped around and came back to that same two acres where the one before it done. Then that coon turned due east and disappeared just like the other one.

No, I can't swear it was the same, Coon, but I saw them both, and it looked just like him. And that's just how that happened. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game, calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for.

I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my. I also hunt with Phelps's cut and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps Game Calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.

My journey is a coon hunter part two. For a fellow that's been a coonan for the better part of 42 years, one would surmise he's had a bunch of dogs during that time. And normally they'd be right, but in this case, in my case, I've only had three. For the past 32 years, my career has limited the amount of time that I could dedicate to training and being able to properly care for a dog the way a hounds should be cared for. They need space and they need hunted, being on call and it's, involved in cases and such was a limiting factor over a large portion of that 32 years,

and only in the past five years or so have I been at a stage in my job that I could dedicate the proper amount of time to do it. So in 2019, I decided it was time for me to start looking for a hound of my own. I wasn't going to be real particular about the bloodline or the breed, for that matter, although I've always leaned toward tree and walkers. That was my first cune-hound in my teens, and even though my second one was a blue-tick in my late 20s, I never lost the preference for walkers. My dad was a walker man, but his dogs were used for running coyotes. I remember taking my city mouse girlfriend at the time of Alexis down to Dad's house to meet him,

and when we got there, you could hear his hounds over in the pen barking and raising cane. I introduced her to my dad as we walked in the door, and she said, She asked him, what is all that barking? He said, that's my cold dogs barking. She asked him, well, what kind of dogs are they? He said, they're running walkers. She scrunched up her nose and said, running walkers. They need to make up their minds what they're doing.

He laughed and loved her from that very moment. I had never even thought about the paradox of that name until she said that. Anyway, I was looking for a walker dog, and for six months, I made phone calls. I sent texts and emails, and I skired over the internet looking for a dog that would suit me and what I was after. And what I was after was simple. I wanted a dog that would mind and tree coons. I wasn't after a particular style of hound, like I didn't care if he was a dog that drifted a track, or if he was a ground ponder, or a combination of both.

I wanted to be able to turn him loose, have him tree me a coon, and come to me when I called. I had no interest in competition hunting. I got nothing against it, and I loosely follow it due to so many of my friends that I know and hunt with that do enjoy it. There's a strategy and skill in competition hunting, and the handler that knows the rules best will win a competition, even when his dog may not be the best dog in the cast. And that's cool.

It involves the human element and the bond that's created between a handler and a hound. The handler has to know the tendencies in how. habits of that dog inside and out to be able to listen to him and tell what's going on just by the different barks or tones of different barks and make his call to the judge based on his observations. There's a lot of skill in that. Me, I ain't that good at it. And me winning a competition hunt with Whalen rests squarely on his shoulders, not my brain. Michael Roseman, Rex Whiting and I would hunt together and we'd use all the rules of a competition hunt and they'd keep a running tally in their head of the time left in the hunt and what everyone's score was.

Heck, I couldn't even keep up with my own, much less everyone else's. It was fun, but it just wasn't my thing. If it's your thing, you should see what Alan Gingrich and Trevor Wade and all those folks over at United Kennel Club are doing. You'll find them online at www.ukcdogs.com. Then just search up to Coonhound events. They've got a lot going on, and there's always room for more participation and these folks will bend over backwards to help you.

So, to get back to my journey, after six months of looking, I found a dog that interested me. I was scrolling through Facebook Marketplace and there was a picture of a six-month-old tree and walker puppy for sale with an address that was 45 minutes from my house for $250. Something struck me about the picture. I can't tell you what it is to this day, but there was something about that dog that called to me. Up to this point, I had looked at well over a hundred pictures of dogs on the internet and talked to a multitude of people on the phone or through texting about a gillion dogs that I never laid eyes on, but I had never been drawn to going and looking

at one until now. I called the number, I talked to the lady, and made an appointment to go see the dog the next day. She informed me that the address on the Facebook ad was wrong. and that they had moved nearly three hours away from me instead of the 45 minutes I originally thought. Okay, I was still going to look. I couldn't shake the image of that hound out of my head. When I pulled up and saw him, I knew he was the one that I'd be taken home.

When I found out his name was Wayland, it solidified it for me. For half a year I had fretted and worried about finding a dog and having one reason or another not to even commit to going and look at one. Now after learning at the last minute that I'd be driving two hours further away, I hadn't been deterred. Pulling up to the address and seeing the dog in the subpar living conditions he was being housed in, I didn't really know if I was going to be buying him or rescuing him, but I knew I was leaving with him.

Come to find out, he was rescuing me. It was Thursday, March the 12th. of 2020. I had made it back to the outskirts of Little Rock when I got a call from Alexis saying, through her job, she'd learned of a possible exposure to the COVID virus earlier in the week. This was when all that started. They were instructing her to go home, and we had to report our family's possible exposure to my employer in Bailey's school.

Now, Bailey was in the first grade. Alexis had called the school, and they said, that we'd have to come get Bailey and do that whole quarantine thing that was just starting to get so popular then. It was all the rage and everyone was doing it. I would have never thought that Bailey wouldn't get back to her class that year. I also would never have thought a dog could have meant so much to us in such a short amount of time. Bailey was doing her classes online now, so she was free to roam around with me and our new hunting hound. So while elementary school was basically out for Bailey,

Coon hunting school was in for her and Whelan. The rest of that spring and summer was spent taking that dog to the woods and turning him loose and just seeing what he'd do. Bailey went with me on a bunch of those trips. She liked riding the full-wheeler and watching and learning what Whelan was doing and asking a million questions an hour while unknowingly tried to burn the retinas out of my eyeballs by shining her coon light in my face every time she looked at me. I bought a metal diamond-plated dog crate for my truck.

That attracted the attention of a guy that happened to be driving by one time who stopped and introduced himself, and that was Rex, who is now like a member of our family. He introduced me to Michael Roseman, who is now like family and who I'm going hunting with tonight, all because of a dog. I bent the ears of those boys and several others in the training of old whalen, and they helped me beyond measure in the development. development of this dog from coonhound to coon dog. And there's a difference, a big difference. He was born a registered purebred cunehound, but he earned the title of coon dog by being one. I took him religiously, every opportunity that I had that didn't interfere with anything related to my family. Alexis leaves for work early, so she goes to bed early. And I work from home and I set my own hours. Bailey goes to bed early, so when they hit the hay, I usually hit the woods with this dog.

The best advice I ever got was for my dad who passed away 12 years ago, and I mentioned it earlier in part one of my journey as a coon hunter. When he said he could always tell which dog out of a litter that was going to make the best because it was the one that got hunted and messed with the most. You can't take that literally because some have more natural abilities than others. He meant when all things are equal, the pup that gets hunted will be better than the ones that are still sitting in the pen. And that's simple and straightforward, but his message was more hidden. In order for that dog to get better, I had to take him out and give him the opportunity.

In doing so, I was outside and I was getting better. My dad taught me a million things about trees and animals, hunting, fishing, taking care of dogs, And the whole time he was really teaching me how to take care of myself. I just didn't know it. It worked the same way with old whaling. All I really did was give that dog the opportunity to make choices, both good and bad, when I cut him loose. The good choices were praised and the bad ones were corrected. The maturation of a hound is very comparable to that of a person when you think about it.

A dog lives a week of their life for every day of hours. Imagine if it was the other way around. We wouldn't live long enough to see how good a dog could be or have the opportunity to learn just as much or more from them as they do from us. The core of my law enforcement career was during my hiatus from owning a coup now. I saw more tragedy and ugliness during that time of my life that I'd ever imagined one person could. I live with that and dealing with those memories or not dealing with. with him has led me to where I am now.

I used to hunt alone a lot. When I first started out training whaling, I'd go five nights out of seven, slowly implementing what I desired for him to do and corrected the things that I wanted him to stop. I had a lot of sitting on a log in the woods in the dark time, and while I was watching Whalen's tracker, I was thinking about stuff. It allowed me moments to talk out loud with my dad and talk to the good Lord too.

And my journey as a coon hunter is still going on, just like my journey and my faith as a husband and a father, a brother, and a friend. That old dog that Alexis follows around the house with a vacuum like she's hot on his trail has been an important factor in helping me do all those things by making me slow down and pay attention to what was going on around him so I could get a clear picture of my head of what he was doing, and in doing so, I started to pay attention and see what was going on around me. That, as Barney Fife would say, was very therapeutic.

The rest of us would say therapeutic. So that's your challenge this week. Find your whaling and give yourself the opportunity to have that sitting on a log in the woods in the dark time. Whether you're literally doing that or on your dinner break at the office, office. If you're on your dinner break at the office, you're probably going to want to leave that coon dog at home, I'm just saying. Hey, I hope y'all have enjoyed these episodes about coon hunting and adventures me and Waylon the Wonderhound have had. I got a lot more stories about him and chasing those river bottom banditoes that I'll share later, but like I always say, that's another

story. Thank you so much for listening and sharing our show with others. You folks are simply amazing and I appreciate you allowing me some time during your life to talk about mine. It don't matter where you're from or where you are. We're all alike. We can sit down and have the noon meal and I can call it dinner and you can call it lunch, but it's still going to taste the same. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use.

I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for. I have a great turkey hunting track record. If you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut.

I also hunt with Phelps's cut. and I help with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps Game Calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.