Bear Grease - Ep. 164: BEAR GREASE [RENDER] - Plott Hound Analysis & Ken’s Reward

Episode Date: November 22, 2023

On this week’s episode of the Bear Grease Render, your host Clay Newcomb is joined by Isaac Neale, Gary “Believer” Newcomb, Brent Reaves of “This Country Life,” Michael Rosmond of Sunspot Lights, and Chris Powell of Houndsman XP. Topics discussed include Brent’s horse “Ken’s Reward,” sunspot lights and the superiority of Coon Hunting lights, the Colorado ballot initiative to ban Mountain Lion, Bobcat, and Lynx with hounds, as well as the previous Bear Grease episode “Pure Americana: The Plott Hound, Origin Story.” We really doubt you’re going to want to miss this one. Connect with Clay and MeatEater Clay on Instagram MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. First Lights fieldware collection is made for the work that happens long before opening day and continues when the season ends. Products built for early mornings, full days and real use. Hard wearing where they need to be versatile where it matters. No shortcuts. Just gear designed for the work that earns the season.

Built to perform, built to last. Check out. First Light's new field. Worldware Gear at firstlight.com. My name is Clay Newcomb, and this is a production of the Bear Grease podcast called the Bear Grease Render, where we render down, dive deeper, and look behind the scenes of the actual Bear Grease podcast. Presented by FHF Gear, American Made, Purpose Built, Hunting and Fishing Gear that's designed to be as rugged as the places we explore. So, Dad, Michael Roseman was just saying that he thought it was pretty suspicious that we moved to Mina in the early 1980s.

And you became a banker in Mina, right, when Barry Seal and what's the movie, Michael? I don't remember the name. American Dream. Yeah. American Dream. Yeah. With Tom Cruise and Bill Clinton and drugs and the airport and everything? Yeah.

Contonistas. Hey man, I just don't know. You might have had something to do with that. I didn't say it was suspicious. What I said was I watched the movie, put two and two together and text Brent, and I said, hey, I don't know Clay's daddy, but wasn't he a banker in Mina at this time? How many banks are in Mina? There were a lot when he left.

Apparently, there were a lot more when he left. Well, welcome to the Barry Gris Render. Man, I've been excited about this. since I knew who was going to be here. We have multiple, I would say multiple new-er-ish voices. I have to my left, Brent Reeves. Brent, good to see you, my man. Good to be here, man.

I want to talk about, okay, we're going to go around the room and I'm going to tell each of you what I would like to talk to you about. And then we're going to come back to you. Thank you. Brent, I want to talk to you about Ken's reward. Brent's podcast this week. He talked about a horse named Ken's reward. We've got to come back to that.

To Brent's left, Isaac Neal, Bear Greece, assistant to the assistant producer of Bear Greece from Missouri, from the Queen City of the Ozarks. Did you know that Springfield, Missouri calls themselves the Queen City of the Ozarks? As far as I know, King City of the Ozarks is up for grabs, so I don't know what you're grousing about. We're just saying we're the second best city of the Ozarks. Yeah, you should call yourself the runner-up city of the Ozarks. It's pretty good.

There's a lot of cities in the Ozarks. From the runner-up city in the Ozarks, Isaac Neal, to Isaac's left. Michael Roseman. Hello. Man, Michael, so Michael, dad, he owns, operates. He's the engineer. He's the lead man. Dishwasher.

Dishwasher at Sunspot Coon Lights. So the Coonlights that we sell on Meteor.com that me and Brent you, the big high-powered coon lights, this is the man behind it. Really? Yeah. Wow. The king,

cool, man. Yeah. And so what I want to talk to Michael about later is his new light, and I'm going to tell everyone in the United States that if you don't own one of these, you should. I use my light all the time, and I don't even have a coon dog right now.

I have one retired dog that backtracks a lot. So, take me please. Runs, and backtracks. It's pretty straight. It just, we just hit a lot of dentries after I lost my good female. So I use my koonline. Turn him around. Almost every day.

Incredible light. I use in the backcountry. We'll get back to that. 10-4. The guest of honor today, because he's come so far, is my buddy, Chris Powell of the Houndsman XP podcast. How far did you come today? I was like, I traveled for three weary days by mule and donkey and cover five.

We're talking physical distance Because I thought there was personal growth or something You've come a long way Yeah There's always personal growth when you're traveling with the Yacht Terrier Patience Oh, you got your dog with you? Yeah, I got tough with me

Okay, cool You came from Indiana Yes, I do In northwest Arkansas Yep Great, well Okay, boys We're going to talk to Chris

About this newly proposed It's going to get serious Colorado legislation that's designed to shut down mountain line hunting with hounds in the state of Colorado. So Chris is kind of, he's stayed up to date on that, and we're going to introduce that and talk about it. To the world. We're going to come back to that. So thank you so much for coming.

Yeah, that was my pleasure. Yeah, man. And then to your left, Gary Believer, Newcomb. Did you hear your name come up on the podcast? I did. I did. Boy, you nailed it, brother. I'm excited.

about this episode. It's been a while since we've done a documentary style podcast. We've been doing stories for 10 weeks. So, you know, if you're new to this, if this is your first every time to tune into the Bear of Greece podcast, our render is when we talk about the documentary style podcast that we do. And the last five episodes, we did two episodes, Chris,

in September on Alaska Stories, which just was a compilation of, wild harrowing Alaskan stories which I really enjoyed and then we did three full deer hunting episodes which to me are some of my favorite things that we do I just like hearing the way people

think about a moment inside of their hunting career really it's just like I go to these guys that I know about them I have respect for and I'm like tell me your best dear story I really enjoy that so

all right going back the other direction, Brent. Yep. Ken's reward. So Brent on this country life podcast, I'm going to take a little bit of credit for a lot of the success of this country life. I wish Misty was here. Because the way this works, Dad, is Brent, we'll be driving somewhere.

He told me the story of Ken's reward years ago. Yeah, a long time ago. And I was like, dude, you need to figure out a way to tell that story on this country life. So if you haven't heard it, which go back and listen to it, Brent had, Brent's dad bought him a horse. Yeah. From a sale in Aida, Oklahoma. Yep. How old were you, Brent?

Oh, let's see. I would have probably, in 1988, that would have been 22, 21, 22. He's 22 years old. His dad and his best friend go to a horse sale in Ata, Oklahoma and get a great deal. on a purebred American quarter horse that was supposedly a rodeo horse. Yeah. And then...

And he couldn't buck. They said he wouldn't buck good enough, so they made a cow horse out of him. They wanted him for a bucking horse. Yep. They made him into a roping horse. Yep, they made him into a short-up rancher. You got to hear him tell the story.

You did a good job of telling the story. But the whole podcast was about animal names. Like, why do we name animals the way we do? and he he it's a mystery why this horse was named ken's reward yeah because you know he ends up having a lot of trouble with the horse yeah it was not he was not conducive to what what i wanted him to do and what i wanted him to do was be able to get on him and ride him and get off of him without having to go to the er yeah without any type of medical personnel involved in it i just wanted to get on a horse and go from point a to point B.

Sounds simple. And then come back. And both of us be happy. It just, it didn't work out that way. Didn't work out with Ken's reward. No. Well, here's what we're going to do. Here's what we're going to do if y'all are in agreement with it.

We're putting out an APB across the Bear Greece world. If somebody can legitimately tell us and verify where, like who owned Ken's reward, and what the story was. All we know was that in 1988, it was bought at a horse sale in 8 Oklahoma, and it supposedly came from Texas. And I saw the papers. It is an absolute 100% registered American quarter horse.

I saw the papers, and his name was Ken's reward, K-E-N-A-S reward. Okay. That was it. Whoever can get us in touch with Ken? Yeah. Or should Ken no longer be with us? Ken's, Ken?

Yeah, Ken's next to Ken. I will give you one of these a genuine Arkansas Plot-Treeed Coonskin hat Made by Josh Landbridge Spillmaker. Yeah, for a plot to tree of Coon, yeah, that's rare. I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll sweeten the pot.

I'll throw in a case mini-trapper pocket knife. Okay. It's a deal. Now, it's hard to write out, like we're not lawyers here, but it's really got to be a genuine, like, verifiable lead where we could talk to someone and get some sense of why this horse was named Ken's reward. Any holes in this plan, Chris? I don't see any. I'm looking at the hat. I mean, it's that Coonskin cap right there is legit. We know what a mini-trapper is. I mean, somebody's just got to come up with the right info. Are there any loopholes, though, dad? Like, could someone? like liars.

Yeah. I mean, but it's going to, we're going to have to talk to Ken. Now, somebody had to be pretty good to pull the wool over our eyes. Yeah, okay. Is this, is this Ken's reward's reward? That's it. Ken's rewards reward. You've seen the papers, right?

I have seen the papers. You don't need to disclose it here, but do you know how that horse was bred? No. Okay. I don't. I don't remember. That's one of the verification things out the window right there. I don't, I don't remember.

But I'll tell you what I have, I've, thought about a million times. And I didn't have a young and in the world when I had that horse. Since then, I've had three. And every time I helped him with a school project that involved glue, I fantasized about me squeezing Ken out on a piece of paper. Oh, yeah. That's where he wound up.

Wow. But that's dark. That's really saying something. I'm just telling you he tried to kill me. That is pretty dark. I feel like I'd be remiss to not point out that you're halfway to be in a longhunter by the time you get that hat and that knife, you're just missing a set of buckskins and a sharp 50 cow.

I'm glad you reminded me. That was what we're going to talk to Clay about today. Is me and Steve Ronella and a team at Meat Eater, one of those team members was Randall Williams, Dr. Randall. Dr. Randall. We talked about it this week, but we've come out with an audio original. It's essentially an audio book about the long hunters. and it's available for pre-sale. Did you see that, Dad, on the Internet?

Do you get on the Internet much? Yeah. We've done a terrible job of marketing this. He's on the Internet right now. This week, Meat Eater announced our audio book called The Longhunter's 1761 to 1775 by Steve Renella and Clay Newcomb. Narrated by Steve Rinella and Clay Newcomb. And it is never before compiled.

data on the long hunters i mean i'm serious there has never before been this data crunched together in such a compact way i mean it's incredible and it's really cool and so you can pre-order that now through penguin random house through the links that are you know on meteor and stuff but it'll come out on january night we'll put a link in the description yeah so i'm i'm very excited about that it was a ton of fun. So basically it's me and Steve Ronella kind of going back and forth in this audio book. Yep. And really cool.

So I can tell you one thing about the Internet is every time I even turn around, Brent Reeves comes up going, this country life. And I'm going, Brent, back off, man. I mean, I got to look for years. I mean, I've got to go, come on, Clay, I need to watch this. And all of a sudden, there's Brent. You mean on the bear grease feed? Yeah, just, you know, when I go after it, this guy's got the product.

He's playing it. I've got a face for radio. A whole lot better than you. That's what it is. Yeah, yeah, they're feeding you, Brent Reeves. Come on. Yeah. Michael, you're, tell us about your new light.

So, let me go back. I already said it before, but I have been in multiple showdowns with big game hunters that thought they had a good light. Never lost, did you? Never. You won't. Coon hunters win the light game every time. Am I right, Chris?

Oh, yeah. I mean, for real, I've been in hunting camps and been like somebody shine their light, and I'd be like, that's a cute light. That's right. And they're like, oh, this is the best light ever. And I'll step outside and shine them. And the thing, Coon hunters don't have the market on much. Let me put it that way.

The one thing Coon hunters have the market on is bright lights that last a long time. time. And I use my sunspotlight all the time. I take it on backcountry hunts. I take it off my hard hat. So I have a hard hat. I've had some people ask me about why the hard hat. You don't have to use a hard hat. The idea of a hard hat is that it holds a heavier light, which the bigger coon lights, I mean, they're heavier than like a little, you little energizer bunny little bitty pocket light you put in your pocket light. It's a little bigger than that. But they last forever. And incredibly bright. Let me ask you this.

On the lowest power of a sunspot, like the lowest walking light power, so this light would have multiple stages of brightness and even it dishes the light out different. Like it has a spotlight, but it also has a walking light. If you turn it on just the lowest walking light, how long would that light burn on a big charge? Over 100 hours.

So you could literally leave it on in your bag for a week. Four days. Four or five days, yeah. I mean, that's pretty incredible. What about candle power? Do you still use candle power? Is there some other?

So, yeah, they do, but it's the metric, it's, um, lux is what we go by. Yeah. So a lot of people that look at lights, they want, the first question they ask you is, how many lumens does it have? And that's not really a measurement that's useful for us. Lumens is a measurement that comes from the factory. So it's, how much that LED can output with this much current put on it.

And that's total light. That's light that's lost in the reflector, light that you're never going to see. It's not something that's useful, but that's what the standard... Oh, so Lumens is not reality. It is, but not in the way that we use it. But that's the way that the industry in like Walmart in the smaller little stuff, that's that they advertise lumens because that can be verified. So I have a Cree LED.

It has this much current put to it. Cree says you have this many lumens. Lux, like you're talking about, a candle power, is how much throw that light has. So how far it's going to shine. And that's what we call brightness. So you could have two LEDs with the same lumens, but if you put a different reflector on there, it's like the object that you use. So the lux is more of a real world, how much light you have. throw of the light.

Lumens is actually how much light you have coming out of it, but there's no way to measure that. This, what he's saying is, depending on the optics that you use for it, you can have a thousand lux. These light bulbs, or lumens, I'm sorry, these light bulbs have a high lumen value to them. And they just softly light up your room.

So it doesn't do you any good, cune hunt. But you put an optic behind it that can gather all that light and put it in one place for you, and that's what we're calling Lux. Okay. Finally. I've been using these lights forever and I have heard him talk about this a thousand times.

And you understand it. You understand it. I'll tell you a throwback on that as I was headed across 40 and boom, there's a nightlight store off the, I've like squealed tires getting off the road because when I started hunting, nightlight came out. They came out with a six-volt gel cell and then I have one of those for a while and then they put the strobe on it. And I don't know that it did anything. It doesn't do anything. But it was cool to have. The strobe was designed to make a coon look at your eyes.

So you clicked it and it... Yeah. So you push the button on top of the wristat and boom, it'd start flashing and you'd think that he's going to look now. The only thing it did was melt your wrist out down and start smoking on your side. The night light was the first real coon hunting light I ever had. The only thing I had before that, we carried a truck back. battery in a backpack with this giant spotlight that they used to make that was called a sunspot.

Really? That's where the name of the game warden took it from me. But that's another story. Sounds like that's another story. You bought me a nightlight when I was in the ninth grade. We used to have those big bell. You used to have to carry a battery packs. They had those big thick belts.

I still got it. It was the industry standard back in the day. But now the lights are way better. Way brighter, way smaller, way lighter. The only thing in this world that is increased in functionality and quality and decreased in price is a coon. Wow. Now, there's the sale for you. Yeah.

That's it. I mean, I used to pay $4, $600 for some of these belt lights, and they were literally maybe a fifth as bright is what we do now. And you're paying $300 for a light now that lasts longer is brighter. So you can signal space shuttle with you. You're light. Oh, yeah. And now this is not like a sales pitch. I, you know, there's people, and I'm one of those people, that if I like something,

I'll talk to people on the street about it. I'll be like, you know, I mean, like, I want you to like. And if you don't, if you don't like it, I'm offended. Like, I'm like, well, golly, man. No, Coon Lights is one of them. And there's a lot of good Coon Light brands. Don't get me wrong. I mean, there's plenty of them.

I'm just talking about Coon Lights, but Michael's got his. is your light has a lifetime warranty. Yeah. Send it to you. $10 for return shipping and that's it. It's incredible. The only thing we don't covers damage and we cover that most of the time. Yeah.

Depending on how bad it is. I mean, this is not a throwaway deal. You ever find yourself? Sunspots consider one of the top lights in the country and in my community for sure. Yeah. You ever find yourself just putting on the helmet to go out to grocery shop or something just so you have a entry point. Hey, that's a good, okay.

Break the eyes. When you're on a competition coon hunt, tell me if this is right or wrong. I know where you're headed. When you're on a competition coon hunt and you stop at a gas station and you got four guys in a cast in a cab of a truck, maybe you know them, maybe you don't. And you go to a gas station, everybody wears their coon light into the gas station. Is that where you thought I was going to go? Well, kind of. Okay.

Kind of. I've done that multiple times. You leave the house hunting or whatever. And you've got to stop the gas station, get a pop, get a can to chew, whatever. And you got your hip boots on and your coon light on, your vest on and people are looking at you like, what is he doing? I didn't know we had coal mining around. The way I've justified it is somehow when you're in a competition hunt, like, it's okay. Like if I went to Walmart, I'd just walk in there with my chaps and my big light on. But where did you think I was going? Oh, that was it. The other gas station's for it. Sure. Yeah, for sure. Clean lights. So y'all come out with a new copperhead. Yeah, we come out with a new light.

We dropped two nights ago. It's called the copperhead. Comparable to our other lights. It's brighter, smaller, lighter weight. Then our viper, which was our top end light. Yeah. Smaller than the viper, lighter weight, brighter, all the same functions. I love it.

I love it. I love it. I love it. Okay, we're just marching around here. Chris, I'm on a mission, man. I want to talk about this story of the plots. I wore my shirt for you. Yeah, he's got the American Plot Association shirt on.

It was either this one or not a Game Warden T-shirt. Dad, Chris, is retired game warden. Yeah. I talked to one of our mutual friends. Right, Brent? Exactly. Yeah. They got there.

I should have left that Game Warden story out. I talked to one of our mutual friends just yesterday, Chris. And, well, no, no, no, no, no. You told me this story. Maybe. One of our mutual friends introduced you when you went bear hunting with them in East Tennessee. He would introduce you as, this is Chris Powell. He's a former game warden from Indiana.

Oh, yeah. And Chris kind of got embarrassed about it, like saying, hey, you don't have to say that. And the guy was like, trust me, I don't want these guys to find out later that you are a former game warden he said they'll they won't trust you is that about the way it happened that's exactly the way it happened you know it's like since when do we have to walk around and this is this is clay newcomb he he works at meat eater this is gary newcomb he was a retired banker you know it's like oh this is a game warden and that and we're going to introduce him like that it's like being a preacher you know i never introduced my preacher it's like hey this is so-and-so he's my preacher i mean it's like

sending out the warning don't drink this is here don't catch Don't tell any off-color jokes. So, yeah, I used to get introduced like that. Yeah. He was doing it for your, as a favor to you, though. I think he was really good at pivoting on the moment and coming up with that. But I do think that, I do think it was for his benefit. Yeah, yeah.

That he wasn't bringing a game warden to the mountain. He was like, just full disclosure here. Yeah, full disclosure. Yeah, full disclosure. Yeah. You know, some of my favorite bear gree stories were about game wardens. Yeah. I mean, they just go down as the top-notch stories, man.

I loved them. Yeah, yeah. That seems to be the consensus of the world. Yeah. Because some of our best episodes were Louis Del and Charlie and then the Secret Agent Man. Yeah, secret. Yeah, I love that. Yeah, yeah.

Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls in 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 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 hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Felps. 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. Chris, give us a high-level view what's going on in Colorado. Yeah, so we're going to get serious, huh? Yeah. All right, well, I'll tell you what's happening.

We're seeing science-based, responsible wildlife management being hijacked in the state of Colorado through what's called Initiative 91. And it's been introduced. It went through what's called the title board hearing where they've got to make sure that the labeling is right. And Initiative 91 is going to be a ballot initiative where the public gets to vote on this issue of wildlife management.

And it pertains directly to Mount Lions and Bobcats. and they threw in links for a sensational value. You can't hunt links in the lower 48 anyway because they're on the endangered species list. Are there links in Colorado? There are links in Colorado. Really? So they just threw that one on the pile

just to add to the sensationalism even though you still can't hunt them. Yeah, you can't hunt them now. No, no, you can't hunt them now. So why does that need to be there, you know? Because it's an animal on the endangered species list that when the people are voting, look it up, they can say,

oh, yeah, we definitely won't. let it's totally totally sensationalized but what's happened is some groups have gotten together in Colorado and put this on the bar or put this forward have got approval for it

to be moving forward and be introduced to the ballot next year so they still got to go through signature acquisition and things like that right now it's in the Supreme Court and basically

that's just making sure that all the eyes are dotted and all the T's are crossed and things like that. But the most alarming thing about it is not because of the lions and the bobcat issue. I mean, take those two animals out and put elk in there, put sheep in there, or put, you know, whatever animal you want, white-tailed deer in there. This is just a typical tactic where people with influence are trying to hijack the traditional North American model for wildlife conservation and make it a political issue. So when you start doing that, there's a lot of dangers and a lot of trip-ups for that. You know, we don't necessarily need somebody who's uninformed, who's being been sensationalized to

and had this narrative sold to them based on emotion to vote on this, you know, because it's, it's just alarming. it's an alarming thing. I mean, our wildlife is, and our story of our conservation story is amazing. You know, going back to the 1880s and the recovery and the money that was spent to, and it's all because hunters stepped up and said, we'll do this.

Right. And then the first ten of the conservative North American model is wildlife is a public trust. So we did that and we said, yeah, go to the park and look at elk. Go to the, go to the national forest and look at bears. Do all this other stuff. So we willingly did that. It's the only bill that I'm aware of that was ever passed, the Pittman-Robertson bill, that was ever passed where people said, tax us.

Yeah. Please tax us. So we've got a big investment in this thing, and the anti-hunting crowd is trying to flip the narrative and divert us away from science-based and responsible wildlife management, make it a political weapon and base it on motion. Who is doing this? There are a couple local groups in Colorado that are leading the charge on this. That it hasn't been revealed yet, but we're pretty confident that there are some larger, more well-funded groups that are back in.

I heard that they've got a lot of money and are waiting. I mean, this is a very well-funded thing for Initiative 91. Is that correct? That's yet to be seen. You're talking which side? Well, not our side. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, they're going to, what's the, tell me the timeline. So when, give me a timeline of like, when are the, when are they signing the, well, I don't even want to ask. Right now it's, it's been introduced to, to go to. to the Colorado Supreme Court. Okay. And that's expected to be heard sometime in January. Okay. To make sure all the legalities and, you know.

Make sure the law is, it works. And then the constitutionality of it. Yeah. When does it go? When does it? Yeah, next November in the 2024 election. Okay. So between that time, you're going to have a period of time where you're going to have

to have signatures to make sure they meet the ballot. requirements for the required number of signatures for it to appear on a ballot. Yeah. There are going to be lawsuits. There are going to be, then there's going to be a campaign time when, when both sides of, we as hunters are going to launch a campaign, the anti-hunters are going to launch a campaign. We're going to have this clash as Titans in the state of Colorado. Yeah.

All through next summer and then leading up to the election, we need to have our ducks in a row by July, I would say, to be able to start working on this. Who is the main guy, what's the guy's name that we were talking about? Yeah, the guy that's spearhead and the whole efforts out there is Dan Gates, and he is the head of an organization called Colorado, Coloradans for Responsible Wildlife Management. Yeah. And a lot of different entities are coming together to back him. and he's been working this state for 30 years.

We knew this was coming. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, Colorado is right for it. It's, yeah. The demographics there are right. Big urban cities with most of the population. To give you an idea.

I saw a slide on that that was put together in a presentation while I was out in Colorado a month or so ago. There were 5.8 million people in the state of Colorado, 5.2 million of those live on the front range and then Denver, Boulder, that metroplex. Yeah. 5.2 million. That leaves 600,000 people living out in the sticks that understand ranching wildlife management and things like that. Yeah, yeah.

So it's going to be, it's, it's, it's, it's, it is the battleground state for wildlife management in 2020. Yeah. There is no place harder. You'll be hearing more stuff. from us and some specific calls to action at different times. But yeah, we're going to do our best at bear grease and meat eater to get the word out. And because, I mean, people that are listening to this podcast are going to know why we're against and, you know, closing down the season and why we're for predator management. I mean, it don't need, I wouldn't have to go.

I wouldn't even try to pigeonhole it as a predator management. This is an outright attack on science-based wildlife management. Yeah, yeah. 100%. Yeah. And not just the predator controlled. So from what I understand, and I don't be game hunt with hounds, but from what I understand, the cat hunters are basically responsible for saving mountain lines.

That's a great point, because if we're not for the houndsmen, they were out there, catching mountain lions, organizations like Colorado, parks, and wildlife would not be able to collect the data. There's so much that goes into a mountain lion study. You know, you catch it, you dart it, you collar it, you can collect all that data, you can find out their home ranges, you can find their kills on, on ungulent species. You take the bones from those ungulent species back into the lab. You can measure the fat.

You can test their DNA. You can, the predator management studies are an integral. part and valuable to the management of all wildlife species. Yeah. And just the general idea, too, that a hunted animal has cultural value, and where an animal has cultural value, it will ultimately be protected by the people that want to hunt it. Always. And so, you know, the, there's nobody in Colorado that wants more mountain lines than

mountain line hunters. You got that right. I mean, but we also know that predator numbers, what's happening continental wide is that Predator numbers are on the rise. I mean, wolves, mountain lines, coyotes, coons, possums, the meso-preditors, black bears. Like, everything is, those are the things that seem to be doing really well right now. And so hunting with hounds is a management tool, highly regulated. It is not out of control.

Mountain lines are doing incredibly well in Colorado. They're not so. This is a political thing of someone that. It doesn't like the idea of people going out and hunting mountain lions. This is something that's been going on since for hundreds of years. I mean, people hunting with dogs have been going on for thousands and thousands and thousands of years. But, you know, you get the point. So, man, everybody's always heard me talk about guarding the gate.

It's been a while since I've actually talked about it. So I'll quickly review the doctrine. I believe, and a lot of people believe, that the whole model of North American, wildlife, our management system, the weak link, the place where the anti-hunting community really has a strong foothold is inside of the predator arena, specifically bears and mountain lines. It's harder for them to sell to the general public that hunting a deer or hunting a squirrel or hunting a whatever is bad. It's a pretty, it's a pretty easy sell for them to say, hey, these guys are out there killing bears and mountain lines. What are they even doing with them? It's a trophy hunt.

don't eat them, all the stuff that's not true. Correct. And I believe that that weakest link in this whole system is the place that we need to guard the most. There kind of was, like, I would say 10 years ago, by my interpretation of the hunting community, there was kind of this idea that those guys are kind of on the fringe and those guys being the predator hunters and specifically the hound hunters that are bear hunting with hounds and those guys are kind of on the fringe that's kind of going away we're

we're not going to associate with that like people weren't wanting to step up and talk and that's not entirely true that that's a generalization hyperbolic as they say exaggeration to make a point but that was i felt like that was happening and then we were like hey the weakest link is the most important thing yeah because once they get that We know this is not this is not exaggerated hype political talk like incremental incrementalization like the anti-hunting community and whether it's this big really design thing. I mean they're kind of like, you know, the, it's like they got a hundred year plan to stamp this thing out. Yeah, they've even said it.

You can't compromise. You can't be, you can't give up one inch. Yeah. Because it will not satisfy them. You can't say, okay, okay, okay. Yeah. We'll just do this and that'll be the end of it. Yeah.

But it won't be the end of it. There is nothing that they do that is not with intent. Everything they do is purpose-driven. The reason they came to Colorado is because of the population dynamics there. Right. They felt like they could win. The reason they come after Mountain Lions is because of, that mainly affects houndsmen.

And so houndsmen historically have been very loosely organized. Yeah. Very even like you alluded to, being looked at on the fringe. I mean, you can't even get, you can't even get bear hunters or anybody to come together to say that, all of them to say that, hey man, you guys are hunting with hounds, go for it. You know, we even get snipe from inside the hunting community. Yeah. So, so.

But I think that's changing. Yes, I do too. Yeah. I 100% believe that. I think we're gaining a lot of ground there. So it was just go back to the art of, you know, art of war with Sun Tzu. These people know what they're doing and they're coming after the weakest link. Yeah.

And what we need from the hunting community as a whole is like Brent said that we stand together and we say, no. It's like, you know, it's like a family. It's like a family reunion. you don't get along with everybody there. Yeah. But if somebody comes up and punches your cousin in the face that you don't like, you're throwing in, you know? Yeah.

And that's what we need. Well, and that's what I think we've seen in the last seven, eight years, is more of the general hunting community coming around the hound and predator community and saying, hey, this is a big part, this is a part of the family, and we're concerned. Because what we've always said is that if you're a deer hunter in Missouri, if you're a turkey hunter if you're you know this matters to you like if if the whole of north american hunting and we don't realize that we're in the heyday of so many parts of north

american hunting i mean we we we have this incredible thing and the trend and you see it in other places in the world is that that thing that freedom slips away and goes away and so you know we're saying hey we're a generation that's that is not going to give anything now we're not trying to be hard-nosed or jerks about it. I mean, we're just saying, hey, this is just who we are. As Americans, there is a place inside of our society where the hunters reside. You don't have to be a hunter. We love wildlife.

If you, you, in general, people in America love wildlife and wild places. Well, guess who does too? The hunters, we're the ones who are funding wildlife, habitat, conservation across the country. We're all on the same team. You want hunters. Hunters provide a incredible, incredible service to society. We need mountain line hunters. We need bear hunters.

And so that's why this is important. Because the idea would be like, well, I don't hunt mountain lines in Colorado. I probably never will. I don't care. That's a short-sighted thing. So it's longer term. And I mean, that's really all there is to say about it. We have hunted, this generation,

of hunters has inherited 150 years of conservation work. Right. I mean, you think about that. We are the benefactors of Teddy Roosevelt. And, you know, all these guys that had a lot worse than us. You know, all these guys that built this and now we're enjoying it all. And it's like, I'm a deer hunter and I got my pile. I'm an elk hunter and I got my pile.

I'm a houndsman and I got my pile. ma'am we're not going to survive like that we got to we got to find ways to bridge those gaps yeah none of us can stand alone yeah so yeah that this is all really great and and uh it's just an invitation to for the whole hunting community to rally around this thing can i can i tell people where to find more information updates yep so if you go to save the hunt colorado dot org okay then you can get updates on what's going on with initiative 91 You can also go to our website at HounsmannXP.com. You know, scroll, we're dropping a lot of content on this sort of stuff.

Yeah. And, you know, just reach out to me. If you're concerned about it and you're looking to say, man, this is, this is a good fight. I want to get in it. Just contact me through our website at HounsmanxP.com. And there's a bunch of groups that are going to be doing a lot. Absolutely. I'm a big fan of howl.org, the guys at Hal.

They're working on it. I think they do it. Do a good job of getting stuff out. Blood origins. Blood origins. All these groups. I mean, sportsmen's alliance, big time. Yes, I'm glad you brought them up.

Yeah, of course. But CRWM is going to be the place that we need to get this money to. So that's where I would tell you to go first. Who has the bigger army? I mean, if you just say this is war, U.S. versus China, who's the probable winner? Well, I think if you're talking funding, then I believe that the anti-hunting crowd has got more dedicated funds to fight this today. However, if you look at the amount of money that hunting produces, then that's one of the biggest things that your person that's a non-hunter that's got to make a decision in Colorado. who's going to fund this wildlife next year?

If we outlaw it this year, who's going to fund it next year? It's not going to be the humane side of the United States or Center for Biological Diversity or Friends of Mount Lions or whoever is behind this. You know, you're going to strip the funding mechanism to the tune of about $3.5 billion a day. If you can communicate the way Yov communicated, I mean, you win, but you've got a gullible,

populace out there that could care less about it. They just read it and go, hey, that sounds like a good idea. I would be one of them. I'd look at that five minutes. I'd go, yeah, man, get rid of it. Well, that's one of their tactics, Gary. So you've got to be, I mean, they're, they're line to the public. They tried to push this thing through with sensational narrative, like talking about trophy hunting.

Yeah. Well, Clay, you do an outstanding job of defending trophy hunting. I mean, I've watched you do it with, on Joe Rogan. I mean, you turned it around on Rogan and explained it too. Yeah, yeah. But that's part of it. And that language has been taken off of it. But they were trying to redefine what hunting actually is.

And that's the most important thing that affects all hunters. Yeah. Well, there's going to be a whole lot more coming about it, but that's the business. This is a boardroom. That was the business we needed to take care of. And thanks for giving us the details, Chris. Yeah. It sounds like good.

Yeah, no, we're going to have a lot more about that kind of stuff. On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed. And there was a full of blood. Oh, my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors,

where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper, from cold case files to whispered suspicions, from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments, and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person.

He's incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. The podcast, Pure Americana. Let me start off by saying, Chris would understand this. This is a pretty risky podcast, Dad.

I kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, to, to, oh yeah, I understand that. To not challenge, I didn't challenge anything, but to even put out there that there was some skepticism around the origin story. But I did it because I actually felt like it would be fair to the origin story to do that. What's next? We're writing the Bible, Clay. This is so, this is so beneficial to the plot hound. Yeah, origins and everything.

I mean, they just took a little area like this and exploded it all through bear grease. People are going to buy books. People are going to talk about this. You know, Clay's been foreshadowing. What a great podcast he's got coming up. And I turned it on. I thought, dead gum plot hams. You thought, I don't care about plot hams.

But, I mean, it was an awesome deal. And I tell you, it was really good. and I think everybody will really enjoy it. It was a big deal just like you said. But at first glance, a pot town, man. I don't need no stinking plot town. But now I want one. Now you want one.

It's a human story. It's a family story. It's a history story. I don't think you offended anybody. Well, what I'm saying is in the plot community. Like, people are so opinionated and so just it's, it's, it's, they get attached to a narrative and they sometimes wouldn't want to hear anything else. But, yeah, Brent, should I die a mysterious strange death?

Will you lead an expedition into the Great Smokdown? I already got the team picked out. We're ready. I can't tell you that. Yeah. What, Chris, what did you think? What was like the most? This is all stuff you'd be very familiar with.

You hunt plots. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I'm no plot historian, though. I thought your selection of having Bob Plott, who is a descendant of the Plot family, who's heard these stories his whole life. And he's dove into finding out the stories for his books.

There's a book I'm holding it, Strike and Stay, the story of the Plot Hound. It really is a fascinating book. Bob's a real pro when it comes to history. And the coolest thing about this book is all the photos. Yeah, look at that, Brant. I'm going to get it. It needs to be in every hounder's collection, really.

Just look at some of those pictures. And then John Jackson. John Jackson has been writing plot history for decades, you know, and very well-spoken. I really like the way you described me a true Southern Mountain gentleman. Yeah. And that describes John to a T. Yeah. He was, that was the first time I'd met John.

I knew John and communicated with him some with Bear Honey magazine. He had written some stuff for us. But he is like, yeah, a classic Highland Southern gentleman. That's the way I described him. Just very proper, very articulate, but deeply passionate. Oh, yeah. We went down, and I recorded a bunch of this stuff, but I just wasn't able to really use it in the podcast.

but the basement in his house is like a museum with plot, plot stuff, and just Appalachian rural stuff and civil war stuff and guns and famous plot hunters over there, guys that had plots. He was instrumental in finding some kind of relics of the plot community. Anyway, just such a neat guy, but knew so much. But he's not a believer. And that's what's kind of radical. I was disappointed.

What's that? I was disappointed. You were disappointed, like John, like he said, I hate to disappoint you. Oh, yeah, I was disappointed. He was melancholy when he talked about it, too. Oh, yeah. Okay, here's the deal. I've read Bob Plott's book, a new Bob Plot.

I'd heard the story from, actually, Steve Hurd is the one who introduced me to the original story. Steve Hurd is a breeder of a strain of plots called Bluff Creek Plots. That's the kind of dogs I've hunted. And Steve was the first one that ever introduced me to plots, really. And he told me the story. Just like on a phone call, he's like. Yohannis, about Johanus, about the two brothers. One of them dies.

They bring five dogs. Two of them are, three of them are Brindle. One of them are yellow, whatever. And I was like, wow, that's incredible. When I go to John Jackson, who is a plot historian, I go to his house, and I expect him to just tell me that story. and he immediately, he did such a good job. He was like, Johannes Plot, da, da, da, da. He just, like, fed me.

And then he goes, Clay, I hate to disappoint you. And I don't think that happened. And I was like, correct. Literally, I was like, oh, gosh. I mean, for real, I didn't know what to do with the, I was like, well, what am I supposed to do with this interview now that this whole story that I thought was true maybe isn't true? Well, I think there's one big point here that I found fascinating about the whole podcast, and that is I'm less interested in what was true in terms of a historical sense and more interested in the fact that there was one family that cared enough about this thing to hand down this tradition from one generation to the next.

Like the veracity of the story down to the detail is less interesting to me than to zoom out and go like, here's this family. that cared enough about this thing, that whether or not the origin story of a guy stepping off a boat with five dogs is true, they are the genesis of this breed. Yeah. And it is because it's almost more compelling that it's not this happenstance thing of a guy, or maybe it is, you know, but it's not this happenstance thing of a guy stepping off with five dogs, and here we go. It's this very careful overtime, each father to son, uncle to nephew, whatever,

telling this story, caring about these dogs, bringing this forward. forward, that's as compelling, if not more compelling to me. And that's what John Jackson said. He was like, he basically said the story, you know, either way, even the story, if that didn't happen, he said is as compelling as the original narrative. Yeah. But it, it, and I mean, we're kind of cutting right to the chase here. But where did, if that story was just completely fabricated, it happened.

very quickly. Because Bob Plott, his third great-grandfather would have been Johannes or George Plot. Third-great-grandfather. So not his dad, but his, you know,

like you start going back and it's like not very far. Yeah. And somebody in that line had a really, created a really wild story and cemented it into the plot community.

I mean, there was, most plot people wouldn't even question that story. Am I right? Right. in the in the same way that our last conversation was a conversation about like to some degree like what are humans like when we're having these conversations about conservation wildlife management we want to remove humans from that system right but that's a luxury that's only happened in the last 150 to 200 years we're a part of the system us growing up in this world and learning to hunt learning to interact with animals we're an integral part of the system we're not a different system that's removed I'm not following you Are you serious?

Hunter. Is anybody falling away? He's talking Chinese. I never know what Isaac's talking about. The evolution and the progress of man is integral with hunting. Yeah, yeah. The species we hunt, we're a part of that same system. We're not a different system.

Right? That's exactly right. And that's what the anti-hunters tried to tell us is that we're not part of that system when we are. That's only a narrative that's developed in the last 150, 200 years because we've had the luxury to be removed from it. And in the same way... What's this got to do with plots? I'm bringing it back. You better get it. You better hurry up.

The only thing that's standing in the way from me tying this together is you. In the same way, we look at oral narratives, oral histories, and we look down on them. We are like, oh, well, that's not reliable because it was oral. And it's like, that is the story of humanity. The only way we gave our histories for the last thousand, the millennia preceding us is an oral history. The only reason we have anything at all. And so I think it is a very modern viewpoint to look at an oral tradition and go, well, that's not reliable. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That really was the head-to-head conflict was how much weight does an oral story carry versus what was on a piece of paper on a cargo manifest from... Chris can tell you, from a law enforcement perspective, before all these crazy CSI shows came on TV, how good was an eyewitness? then who just saw something. Oh, yeah. Pretty reliable. And now it's, then you had dash cams and then you had to have dash cams. Then you had to have fingerprints, DNA and all that. And a man's word is just tossed by the house.

Yeah, that's a good point. So maybe back in the 30s, nobody would have even been asking these questions. Even in the early 90s before DNA and all this other stuff. You watch getting back to what Brent said, when a police officer took standing, he testified to something. He had credibility in the courtroom, and the defense attorney's job was to discredit this law enforcement officer. And so that's why, and I know Brent's heard this, they'll sit there and they'll say, instead of saying Officer Reeves, they'll say Mr. Reeves. They'll try to discredit him.

And I don't know what that has to do with what we're talking about. Yeah, yeah. I see what you're saying, Brent. Is that like, what more do we need? I mean, again, this idea of a head-to-head between the actual data and facts. that we have, which are important we need, and then an oral story, because what's compelling is that this Plott family very quick. What we do know 100% is that George Plott had a bunch of dogs that were unique to this part of the world, and he just came straight from Germany.

What do you think, Michael? Is there any documentation of a brindle hound in Germany? Yeah, there is. There's a Hanover. Okay, that's a good point. there is a breed of dog called Hanavarian hounds which, and there's some brindle and doxins too, I'm told. I don't know if that's true. I got a few questions here.

How do you spell Johannes? Like Johanus. Like J-O-H-A-N-N-E-S. Okay, so that... Oh, now I'm going to get on to Michael. What does this have to do? What that has to do with it? What did you say when you...

Anglinized? Anglicized? Anglicized? All right. That would be anglicized to John, not George. Well, we're not arguing that. You have to take that up with the plots. Well, I know.

And I'm not going to tell anybody of their family story because I don't really have a clue. I'm just, this is just my mind. If someone ask a question, this is where I'm going to go to. It was signed G-plot. G-plot.

Not J-plot. Right. All right. So, Johannes probably wasn't the name on the boat. Right, right. And I mean, that's what John Jackson says. Yeah, it was probably George. How does a boy that's by himself that his brother just died land in a country where he has no money and no possessions and take care of five dogs and keep him alive all that way?

Well, but see, we don't have any. I don't know any. That's what I'm saying. I don't know if there's more to the story I'm not hearing or how where this goes. In my opinion, let me ask you this too. They might kill you. You know that right. They don't know where I live.

I'll tell them. Gary, where's your, where's the, the Newcombs from? England. England? Okay. Negative. Scotland. Scotland. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Do you think they come from somewhere other than Scotland? What do you mean? What I mean is before they got to Scotland, were they somewhere else? Yeah, they came from somewhere. The moon, I think. Okay.

You can't make these dogs out here sane from what I know from dog breeding out of five dogs. Right. Okay. Right. So there is so much in the, any hound, not just plot. You're calling them Americana. The same things with Walker dogs, blue ticks, anything else.

They got their body shape, their overall makeup from English hounds. Okay. The long years. European hands. Yeah. Everything else was American. There's no telling us how much of that was mixed into it. Well, the thing that's different about a plot than any other breed of the hounds is they are

different. They're a different style of dog. Style, but if you just look at them, they're a hound. No, that's not true. You don't think so? No, their ears are shorter. I told him coming up here. More of a flag tail in a traditional.

I do not believe because the Appalachian people are way too pragmatic to not breed. The five, they're not pure. If old ship was a good bear dog, this dog that I'm calling a plots getting bred to old shit. Which makes them Americana, but that was my point. This same thing happened in Blue Ticks, English, Walkers. What same thing? They were bred to curds. They were bred to whatever.

The best squirrel dog I've ever seen in my life was half Labador and half chow. No kind of hound whatsoever. Absolute tree and machine. And you're saying that could have been bred in? I'm saying that they, there may be a little bit of German. something in those dogs. But these hounds came, what was mixed into them come from Native Americans.

They come from the Appalachian people that were already here. And I don't see a difference in the plot story in walkers or black and tans. Well, but okay, but that's, I could shoot some holes in that boat. No, but you can't. The walkers, the walkers in that photo right there

just like the walkers in your kennel. That's because. They chose... English. That's because they chose a color to breed to. Because Walker dogs started out as English dogs. Okay. They were the same dogs as blue ticks, the same dogs as red ticks, and they chose that color pattern and bred for that color pattern.

I hear what you're saying, but you're not making your point very clear. Yeah, I am. Just give me one sentence. The overall thing is... You're saying that they came from dogs that were here. All of those hounds are maricana. Every one of them. They all have the same...

story. The difference in them is that the plot hounds has one particular family that they go back to. Right. Okay. The rest of them are overall, but the story of them is all the exact same. Okay. Let me ask you this. Why are, why does the plot, and I see what you're saying about the shape of a hound. I mean, I can give you that. They're shaped about like a hound. But all blue ticks and even, I mean, the brindle, the brindle is different than any other. English hound. Where'd that come from? Yeah.

Well, I don't know. I got a French bulldog that's brennual. I don't know. Right. Probably come from the mixing of all these other dogs into that. Yeah. They were not hounds, but had the traits that they were looking for. Or I told you, at a lab and a chow that were tree.

Yeah. So they would have, they were pragmatic. They would have took anything that would have improved their dogs and put that in there. So there's a case, and then I said it when I talked about, and I'm not sure I use the correct term by saying that brindle was a recessive gene inside of all dogs but i mean there are brindle boxers they're brindle feist my little feist out here is brendle brindle plots brindle pit bulls like brendle is something that was my buddy who's a big time plot man is the one who brought that up to me he was like clay if you just mix a bunch of dogs together it's not long before you have a bunch of brindle

what say you to this chris um i don't think i think you can mix what say you i think you i think I think you can mix a lot of blue ticks together and you're never going to get Brendel. Okay, I like it. So I think there is... The Brindle means something. Yeah, it was a concentration from the plot family. I'm more of... I latch on because I am a romantic and a historian and I like the story of Johannes Plot.

And that story, I think he probably came here with the intent of being a gameskeeper, you know, following his father's trade back in Germany. He was probably an indentured servant at the time, so he already had a place to go. He didn't need money. Somebody picked him up off that boat and brought him down there, and he had some dogs with him. And after he worked off his indentured servitude, he was also a man of means, you know, from getting money the old world country, which the plots were influential type people, you know, and they got it from somewhere. They were business people. They were horse people and and i think they had the influence and the means to be able to uh to to to i'm not saying at all they kept the all the genetics within those five dogs i'm with

i don't think anybody's saying that but that's like the exaggerated fairy tale version yeah the the reason that it's an americana story is because of the deep rich history it's the first it's a north carolina state dog it's it's uh you know there's mountains named after the plot family It just fits Americana. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you look at the Walker dog and you can talk about George Washington, you know. Yeah. So there's some of that.

But they're not the same dogs. They're not the same dog, but they are the dogs where our dream walkers came from when you trace it backwards. Brent, what about the whole story was most important to you? The whole, the whole. Which came from the English Foxx. Yeah, but it was a black and tan. Hey, hey, these two are you. I don't want to have that conversation.

Prince. What was the most saying that what stood out to you most? And you probably wouldn't have known that story much about it. No, very little of it had I ever heard. But also the longer I listened to it, I could care less, which story was true. Right, right. What fascinated me was the family. And that's what is so rich in it.

And what's so American to me is they can trace it back to that family so far. And everyone was all in on these dogs. regardless of where they came from. Once they got it started, they stayed with it. And it was father and son and grandson and grandson and grandson and grandson and nephew and uncle. And everybody, and they're still. There's still folks over there right now spelling their last name, P-L-O-T-T, and they've got those dogs in the front yard.

And to me, that is the absolute coolest thing. This would be a heck of a movie. This would beat O' Yeller to death. Yeah. It was an awesome story. My favorite part of the whole thing was a one. when you were riding with Bob in the beginning, and he was saying, you know, they were here

and this was his house. That was awesome. The story of them bringing those dogs and it following them through history and the pride that they would have had is just awesome. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I had seven generations of the same females, starting seven generations ago.

And they were, I mean, they were it for me. And they would feel the exact same way, but could you imagine not seven generations ago, But when did they bring the dogs over 1750? You breed a female, what, most of the time around two or three years old? You're looking at 100 generations of dogs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they have 100 generations of those dogs.

That's awesome. You know, to me, the most, like if you're talking about how the plot story is different, and not that we're trying to say it's better. I've had many people already say, you should do one of these on the Walker breed, and I'm sure we could. It's not as interesting, though. Well, but that's what, I think, to me, me being an adult and I got into plots roughly nine years ago that's kind of when I was introduced so I was an adult and I just was like my eyes popped open when I went and saw roy Clark and Tracy and Ben Jones and Curtis Walker and who are some of the I mean Mark defraane up in Maine and Mark Dan Wagner and Ira

Ira Jones oh can't forget Ira yeah Ricky Reinhart all the guys that I mean I know over there and a bunch of people are going to get upset if I don't start naming their names Chris who am I missing that I know there's these incredible plot people that just are deep in it I mean they just bleed plot and it's such a regional phenomenon that's to me what's the coolest part of it the whole thing is that it happened in a very small geographic area and was isolated geographically for basically 150 years. And then it just exploded. I mean, that was put through the lens of,

this is a geographic region that has been sort of a national joke. Like, look at those poor people. Look at, they've got nothing. And to be like this thing that I can take pride in that comes from here, that is my thing and is now nationally recognized as the best at what it does. I think that sort of incongruency or seeming incongruency is. You're foreshadowing into the next episode, Isaac. You hadn't even heard it.

I know. No, for real, we talk about how these people didn't have much, but this is something they had. That's why it became so valuable. They were valuable enough to be hauled out to places like Oregon. When the timber trade took off in Oregon, these Appalachians who have been cutting chestnuts and all this other stuff for generations, it's like, yeah, we can cut down big trees. when they went, they took their dogs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and that's how the brindle dogs end up in the northwest.

And today, the plot is all over. I mean, you go to Wisconsin and Michigan, they're big hubs for plots. Everl Williams lived in Illinois. He was a big coon hunter. Yep. And big game, big game. bred some of the best big game dogs. You got salmon river dogs that Doc Smith had out in salmon Idaho.

Yeah, yeah. What, Chris, give me kind of like, a tour of the plot geographically. I mean, we're not going to hit everybody, so if you're offended by this, I'm sorry. But like,

my buddy, my dear, dear friend of our family, the Clarks in East Tennessee, Laurel Mountain Plots. Yeah. Just just to name some of them. There's no way we can name them all. Well, you know,

Everett ended up taking, you know, dogs and getting them in Illinois, and those were the Weems bred dogs. Weems bred plots. Yeah, Weems bred. And then those turned into Swampland dogs and Mike Colley's Bayou Cajon.

Swampland, Mike Colley, Louisiana. And then you got, well, Swampland was Leroy Hogg in it. Okay. Ferdinand, Indiana. That's right. Mike Collie ends up with a Bayou Cajun plots that he's been breeding on for years. You've got the Houston Valley plots in Houston, Tennessee. You've got the Salmon River plots that,

that were out in the Salmon River country. You got the Bluff Creek plots in Oklahoma, or Kansas. You know, so it's, it's, it was one of those deals. Pocahontas and West Virginia and West Virginia plots. You've got the, the Redwood plots that Jeff Coons kind of inherited from his uncle and developed into highly skilled dogs. You got the serge bread plots from Ohio. Brandenburg. Brandenburg.

That was an older... That's good. I mean, just the point is that... Widespread. That inside of the plot world, there's these little narrow channels and people just go nuts over them. I mean, people are looking for certain dogs that are bred in certain ways. And just to the average person, it's just a plot. Right.

But there's these real specific things connected to real specific people. And it's like, it's just kind of neat. Do these dogs start to get different looks? Yeah. You can, if a real student of the plot breed will, we'll be able to tell, you know, Brandon Burger plots were a little bigger and a little houndier look and then what some other, and a real good person better than I am can walk through plot days and say, well, that's a, you know, that's a, you know, this is that.

They do have a look. Yeah. Yeah. You get a trained eye for them. I love hounds, all of them. and I've never really paid much attention to plots because you know there's not very many around here yeah but undeniably they have the best backstory of any of them yeah yeah absolutely there's none of the rest of these hounds so you know you have blue ticks with the vons and and those guys

and you have the walker dogs with the gettings up there and there's several different but none of them have the type of story that a plot hound has yeah yeah that's what that's why I like them dad what stood out to you just like in the whole story like what surprised you what what what was to know well it's amazing that a family name could be attached to those dogs for so long and and i like to play the game of of who's right was it the two boys coming from germany was it george family coming over so you made a compelling argument you you guys just really did a great job my argument would be that this was a smart successful family You got a guy here that wrote a book.

Yeah. I trust oral. You know, they couldn't find documentation to support oral. But, I mean, these are brilliant people, successful people. You don't see the Newcomb name all over the world. I mean, these guys, there's something special about these plot people. And they're not going to pass down lies. I mean, oh, George.

To his boy Henry. Henry tells Monty. Monty tells John. I mean, and it goes up to your buddy Bob. That's not too far back. Yeah, yeah. You know, so. You're saying it's not, they didn't just fabricate an outright life.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, I admit that it could be the other way. I mean, but. Well, that's a big question that has to be answered. Yeah, I just answered it. Was there a family reunion when they're like, back in the 18? 100s before they knew there was going to be an internet or anybody who's going to care. We're going to go.

Here's what we're going to do, boys. Moses wrote the book of Genesis thousands of years after the Garden of Eden. So do you believe that or not? There you go. If you can't believe that, then the plot story probably isn't for you. The likelihood is. It's probably a little bit of both. Just like any other story that's probably a little bit of both.

Yeah, yeah. And in all fairness, to John or Mr. Jackson? John Jackson I don't feel like he I felt like he was very measured in his response it was more of I could not find document

yeah yeah he wasn't he wasn't yeah I don't I didn't feel like it was too antagonistic or aggressive yeah and in no doubt what

I tried to make it clear too that you know one option would be that this family just to go along with what you said were so sharp dominant socially successful

that maybe not even with intentionality the plot name just got attached to them and that's kind of what John Jackson says and it wasn't like they did this as some kind of conspiracy it just happened on its own and it emerges the plot hound

but really the bigger web was much bigger in many other families in theory and this is an exaggerated thing but in theory they're could have been some other family that was as involved but not as vocal. I mean, that's kind of the idea, which there's no evidence that really supports that. Like there was not another dominant family.

And what my friend, I'm not going to say his name because he might feel like he's going to get in trouble. He told me a friend of ours, Chris, over in Appalachia. That's a big plot man. He said, Clay, can you imagine a family? family in Appalachia that was raising dogs, two families, break it down, two families raising dogs that were the same and they'd been working together and one family gets to name the dog after their family. He said, don't you think the other family would be throwing a fit?

Oh, yeah. Do you see what I'm saying? Like, like, as if the plots came in and like swooped in to get all the glory for this thing. Yeah, no. And this guy was like, no. He said, and he basically was like, I think they got it honest. Yeah. You know what I mean?

You'd hear documentation of the other family going, hold up. Yeah. Those are our dogs. This is the Jones dog. I can tell you that even within an established breed, you know, breeding for traits, breeding for confirmation, breeding for color and things like that, it's tough to do by yourself. Even your own family, you're going to need a network of people. Yes.

So that would be a regional thing for Appalachia at the time. You know, there's other people in the community that need a bear dog, and the plots had the dogs, but when it comes back to it and now I've got to breed the next generation of dog, it's like, is that a plot? Well, I don't know if it's a plot dog or not. Well, it looks like a plot, and it's a really good bear dog. It's going to fit into this program.

We can make this work. You know, that dog's got traits that I like. So he's not going to upset the Apple card here. so I really like him. Let's add him. That's a natural development of whether it's cattle, breed, dog, sheep, or whatever. Yeah. And undoubtedly, that happened.

And at some point it got to the point where, you know, Vaughn, a few generations later, he already had his breed type. He already had his standard. Isaiah Kid, all those guys, they all had that breed standard and stuff, and so they didn't breed outside of it. Their gene pool was big enough where they could stay within the breed type. And boom, boom, boom, boom, that just exploded. Yeah.

Well, it didn't explode, but it, they're still almost rare. Hey, I was going to bring up, I had somebody that got on to me for, they said I bashed Ford trucks. When I said, it's like building a Ford truck. We needed some overseas parts, but make it American made. And they thought it was like a punch to Ford. Oh, really? That's crazy. I could have said anything.

I could have used any single, I thought it was funny, though. That was triggered. Yeah, somebody was triggered on that. That was funny. Well, what other thoughts? Yeah, I have been working on this in ways for a long, long time. I did those interviews two years ago. It actually didn't.

You sounded younger. Yeah, I sounded younger. Wasn't it smart, though. No. Not even close. But it was a lot of fun. And I think people that aren't even in hounds could listen to it. Because it really wasn't about.

And that was a family story. It's American history. And it's a legacy. Yeah. And it's, you find a lot of value in it. All you got to do is look is just barely look under the surface of it. I know you've heard me talk about and I've talked about on my podcast about my dad's squirrel,

the squirrel dogs in my house. family. It started with my great-grandfather. Well, it ended with me and my brother. We have no more of them. They're gone. There will never be any more of those dogs. And that is what's so cool about it to me. And even emotional when I listen to it and think about all of that history with that family. And there's more, I cannot absolutely, I can't wait for the rest of it. I don't think people, including me, understand the dedication it takes to have a generational line of hounds. That's what I was fixing to say. It's an incredible amount of work.

I had seven generations of females all the way back. I didn't feel like breeding for a little while, and I didn't, and the last one died the day the heck was born. And that's it. They're gone. They're any more of them. That's it. And to think going back, that many, that many generations. It just takes a ton of intentionality.

Yeah. How many plots do you have, Chris, right now? I've got two right now. Two. Yeah, we've just got two. Yeah. What's their breeding? They're Bayou Cajun plots.

My colleague's stuff. Yeah, good. Yep. Well, I am big time in the market for a plot female. I've decided, I told these guys, so this is funny. And this will give you a little bit of insight as we close down into, the way people think about these things is so my good plot female that I had

Fern. Yeah, Fern. Newcomb's Ozark, B.C. Furn. B.C. stands for Bluff Creek. Got her from Steve Hurd. She was all I needed in a kundog. And, you know, if I had another one like her for the rest of my life, I'd be happy. That doesn't mean she was good. Doesn't mean she was bad. I just liked her. That's good enough. She died. Last winter. She died.

plot coon dogs are hard to find. I mean, it's not that hard to, like, get a plot, but I tried to replace her for five years before she died. Like, I got... I told you all about that. And got rid of... Went through, I think, four different dogs. And I even went as far as to hunt a Walker dog.

Michael was going to... Michael had a dog. That's it. I'm done. Michael... I hunted a dog for a couple of days that Michael had. that was a fine hound. I mean, probably better than any hound I've ever handled.

And what I learned was I didn't want a, I didn't want a Walker dog. I thought I wanted a coon dog. I didn't really want a coon dog. You want a plot, though. I wanted a plot, Coon dog.

Because I actually tried a hunter during this summer. And a guy, you know, just a friend of mine had a dog, so, you know, and I hunted at three nights and just gave it back to him.

and it wasn't the dog's fault. I just was kind of like, yeah, that was kind of dog's fault. But I just didn't do it for me. You like what you like. And it doesn't make any sense. And I think it probably bumfuzzled my two dear Walker friends here. They're like, hey, Clay, I thought you wanted a coon dog.

Yeah. There you go. I've always known you're weird. You know why I got a Walker dog? Because the first dog I got was a Walker dog. Yeah. If that had happened to me, that's the way I'd have been. You know, it's just, it's one of those.

things that there's a lot of really nice dogs out there of all colors. I mean, there really are. Plots, you take, you take like the redwood line of plots, and you take like Johnny Hager from West Virginia, and he can compete just with anybody. You know, you know he's going to be there. at late you're gonna know he was there anyway yeah and and and evan workman and jeff coons and and now you know there's they're out there but i always get tickled out of these guys that are you know they're hunting hunting a walker or something like this and they're like yeah i always thought i'd try a plot sometime it's like man you don't have enough buy-in you know it's like no that's not the way this works you've got to have total buy in it's like it's like

likened a deer hunt and think, oh, I think I'll pick up a flintlock and go out and shoot a deer with it. You've got to be more invested in it than that. That's a good way to say it. It's not easy. And I'm not even saying you're smart. I'm just saying it's not, you know. Yeah, yeah. My life would be easier.

I could go, I bet money. We should probably do it. I bet today, Dad, I bet I could buy five Walker dogs in the state of Arkansas that we could take out tonight and go Trichon. I guarantee it. In the next four hours, I could, I make four or five calls, and I could get a good three-year-old dog. If I had the money, I mean, it. Oh, you get it. You do.

Yeah, look at that. I'll sell you one when this is over. Yeah. And I know what a cune dog guys. If I had 10 grand and you said, Clay, go find you a good two-year-old plot female coondog, I'd be like, okay. Which direction do I go? I mean, there might be out there, and money talks. It might be able to pry one out of somebody.

Why? Just because they're more big game hounds is what they're looking towards you. Man, how long we're going to make this podcast? This is what I made in. I said this in a post on Instagram I made and tagged Brent Reeves. The, there's a hundred walkers to every one plot. Maybe more. Maybe a thousand walkers.

Like if you actually did the population dynamics on the breed of dog, let's just say there's a hundred to one. one. If I give you a hundred tries to throw a beanbag through a hole and I get one, you're going to win every single time. And my point is that, because me and you have joked Brent, and I've said that to Brent before and I'm pretty sure he was like, well, why do you think there's a hundred walkers? Exactly. Because they're good and people want them. I don't think that that logic is not entirely true because it all has to do with access. And the walker just, I mean, you couldn't even get plots till the 1940s.

Walker dogs are good entry-level dogs for people with me. Yeah, I get to the top tier. No, no, no. And I'm not, this is not degrading to walkers. I'm just saying it's not that simple. And so they're just a smaller pool. They're primarily big game dogs. There's just, yeah, it's just like, go right now and try to find a six-week-old plot pup. When we were talking earlier, you know, I said plots are different, and they are.

and you know in 1946 UKC decided to recognize them as a hound and it had some value for historical preservation and records keeping and stuff like that but at that point now you're allowed to go hunt them in

UKC night hunts and different so there's even a lot of strife within the plot breed breeders and fanciers between big game bread and coon bread dog coon dog type stuff Yeah. There's that kind of strife. There's there's strife, well, he's a good bear dog, but, uh, or he's a good hog dog, but they're not good, they're too hard for bear. You know, you get him killed them bear. You know, I mean, you can just go on and on and on. You can make of all kinds of stuff. So, um, the reason walkers are better is because people have one goal in mind. And that's to breed a good coon dog. Yeah. Plot breeders want hog dogs. They want utilitarian dogs. They want bear dogs. They want coon dogs. They want.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, that makes sense. Walker breeders are like, we're going to tree coons with this dog, and we're going to win world championships, and we're going to win a lot of them. And that's what they do. And, Dad, that's, the Walker dominates the hound world. I mean, dominates. Like, you know, I don't know.

The big world championship hunts, how many have not been walkers in the last 20 years? I mean, there's been some English and maybe a blue tick here and there. Maybe. No, but not in UKC. Blue Ticks never won the UKC World War II. But anyway, the dog. The Walker is like the dog that you have if you're a coondog guy. But so.

Blue Ticks won some ACHS. You had a blue Tick as a kid in you. Yeah. My first dogs were Blue Ticks. I was saying the Blue Ticks won some ACHA World Hunts, didn't they? Yeah. And there was a plot that won the world one time in the 80s, right? Yep.

That was our one, that was like Arkansas Razorbacks, 1994, NCAA champs, Corlis Williamson, Scotty Thurman, beat Duke. That's right. 1994, go hogs, right? That's the one thing we've got in this whole state. They got our whole history. We got basketball and we got almost baseball. Well, that's like the plots. When was 1988 that dog won the World Championship?

They won the PKK World one time, too. Yep, they won the PKC World. Yep. So, you know, we got a few bright spots in the past. That's good. But we do have a good story. Yeah, John Walkup won it. PKC and Spud Reynolds and Jim Cannon won it with sizzling heat and the UKC World Hunt.

I guess I could use this platform to my advantage to try to appeal to some of these good Plot Coon men. I thought that was the only reason you were doing this. Yeah, that's right. This whole thing has been a maschination. See, I've hunted the dog, Fern, the dog that you and Michael have both hunted with. Yeah, she was a good. Well, she was not, she was the only coon dog. I mean, almost all those dogs went to be lion and bear and hog dogs.

Yeah, but Fern could have been as good a coon dog is there is Fern's little holes that she had was because of you. No doubt. So it was stuff that you let her do that was okay with you. So other than that, treat Coon's good. as any dog I've ever seen. Yep. So you're being generous. He doesn't say that when I'm not around.

No, he does. That's the truth. I've seen it. He saw it. I've been around some top plot cooned dogs. I mean, they're, yeah, they're out there, but they're hard to, they're just hard to get your hands on. Yeah. Yep.

Well, any closing thoughts? Yeah, just one thought. I can't remember which one it was, but one of those boys, Mont or his boy. Montrable. Yeah, said he would never have a bathroom inside a house. He was living in. I thought about that two different times today, just driving down the road going, I mean, there is a logic to it. He wasn't the only one in that time period that thought that either.

That was a, yeah, I'm not getting bathroom in the house. I left that in there because it was such a little nugget. He said, he didn't have an indoor bathroom until like the 1940s. He said, I will never go to the bathroom in my house. How crazy are you? That was good. Now, that plot history over there, golly, if you're ever in Western North Carolina, Maggie Valley, Haywood, I know you've seen all the sites, Chris. There's a really neat historical marker put up by the state of North Carolina that looks over the plot balsam range.

And it has a, it's a big bronze, you know, about half the size of a truck hood that has the story of the plot hound. You know, it says that the plots, they lived here, they hunted here, they did this, really cool. And then Bob just gave me the tour. Man, one day, I mean, I'll realize what a unique thing I had spending the day, a lot more than that with Bob Plott over there, such a neat guy. And, yeah. The cabin in the White House. Those need to be preserved.

if nothing in really good photography and put it somewhere on display. I mean, I can't believe those two places are just, maybe they're not being neglected. Well, listen to this. So, Mont Plott's house that was built in like 1903. Yeah, 1903. Somebody has, it's not in the plot family anymore. Somebody has bought that and they've fixed it up. And it's a beautiful home, probably worth a ton of money.

They kept it classic, though. They kept it, they held true. Just imagine a really nice home that's been renovated, but still holds the kind of the traditional looks and styles. And so me and Bob went to this man's house, knocked on the door. Bob knew him. And he's like, oh, Bob. And he was like, hey, these are plot men.

They want to see, you know, Mont's old house. And he took us all through the house and real neat. And the cabin is surprisingly still. intact. They've done a good job of keeping it up, but it's not public. I mean, it's not like you can go there and knock on this guy's door, you know, and it's, it's very private and, you know, they're not like telling you where it's at. But, yeah, it's a massive piece of history. I think of the photography of it should be out for the public to see. And it is somewhere. Well, there's pictures of all that in Bob's book. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What's the name of that again?

Strike and stay. The story of the plot hound. Yeah, man, support all. Bob, he's a, he's a great writer. He's done a lot of writing that Southern Appalachia. He's got a stack of great history books. These are Southern Highlands within that one of his, or was it the legendary hunters of the Southern Highlands. Yeah, that's it. That's another book. There's a bunch of them. There's some on the railroads and different things. But, yeah, this has been great. Thank you, Chris, for coming from Indiana. Amen. Michael. Thank you for coming. Thank you. From South Arkansas.

Sun Spotlights, Southernish, Arkansas. Where? Grady? McRae. McRae. North Central. Wherever. I was just going to let him roll with it.

He was somewhere down there. It doesn't matter. Isaac, good to have you. Brent, good to have you. Hey, Meteor's got a bunch of Black Friday sales. First Light. If you want to take advantage of these big companies. Now's your time. Now's your time. Thank you, guys. You bet.

On Blood Trails, the stories don't end when the hunt is over. They just get darker. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bag. And there was a full of blood. Oh my God, he doesn't have a hit. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the outdoors, where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. Indications were he should be right there, but he wasn't. This season, we're going deeper. From cold case files to whispered suspicions,

from remote mountains to frozen backwoods. Each story begins in the wilderness and ends in darkness. Because out here, there are no witnesses, no cameras, just fragments and the people left behind trying to piece them back together. He's not an honest person. incapable of being honest. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers.

Season 2 of Blood Trails premieres April 16th. Follow now on Apple, IHeart, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.