Bear Grease - Ep. 189: THIS COUNTRY LIFE - Coon Hide and Seek and the UKC

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

Brent's telling a tall tale this week about a coon that almost got away. He's got witnesses that the story's true and the video to back it up. Then he jumps the Big Muddy to visit with the folks at one of the biggest coon hunts of the year in Batesville, Mississippi. It's "Coon Hide & Seek and the UKC" on MeatEater's This Country Life Podcast. Black Bear Bonanza Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube Shop Bear Grease MerchSee 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 got a thing or two to teach you.

Coon Hide and Seek in the UKC. Last weekend, I drove down to Batesville, Mississippi for the UKC Winter Classic Coon Hunt. I wasn't hunting any, just taking in the annual event that's been taking place since 1988. Saw some old friends, made some new ones, and I'm going to tell you all about it. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. The story is called Jacques Coon Stowe. Last spring, we were. Michael Roseman, Brad Clark, Randall Whitmore, and our raccoon hunting.

It was May the 20th. I know this because I have the time-stamped video to prove it, and I'm going to share it on my Instagram feed, but don't spoil it. Listen to the story before you go over and check it out. Anyway, Waylon struck a hot track and took off like he was late for work. Now, old Waylon isn't a dog that barks much on a track unless it's really hot, meaning really fresh. Lots of times he may open up a little as he goes along, but generally if the track has any age to it at all,

he's just liable to commence to tree it. He's just not going to help himself out in a competition hunt with being a first-strike dog, which means the dog that barks first. That's not a real good trait to have if you're competition hunting. The dogs that bark first and finish the track to a tree with a coon, get way ahead with points over the dog that on. only barks when he comes treed because you get points for doing both.

And there's a lot more that factors in there, but ideally you turn your dog loose. He starts barking at the scent of a coon pretty quickly and continues until he comes treed. You walk over, see a coon looking back at you. Then you cut him loose and do it all over again. These type dogs are valuable if they can do that consistently and have a coon when they tree. What Whelan lacks in barking on the track, he makes up for an accuracy. Michael has told me more than once that he's one of the most accurate dogs he's ever seen. If he's treeing, you can just almost bet there's a coon in there.

As a matter of fact, Wayland is now four years old. He'll be five in August, and he has slick tree, which is when you're absolutely positive, there's no coon in the tree that he's barking on. He's done that less than 15 times out of the hundreds. if not close to a thousand coons that he's treed by now. Now, I stopped counting confirmed treed coons over a year ago, and he was over 500 then. And I hunt with people who have younger dogs that have treated more than whaling.

Michael's dog, heck, is one of them. But this story isn't about numbers or how good of a dog whaling is. I'm not bragging on him at all, I promise. I'm just laying the groundwork of what kept me from doubting him and having enough faith in him to look closer at what was about to happen next. So Wayland is singing to us as he rolled down through the bottoms. The weather was warm but not hot. The mosquitoes weren't bad yet.

The wind was minimal, and you could hear that joker trying to blow the leaves off the trees as he drove that coon out of the bottoms and over the White River Levy. He was barking his brains out. The more barking you heard correlated right along with how hot the track was. This track was so hot we were joking around thinking maybe he was seeing the coon make the tracks as he was running. And that probably wasn't far from the truth. We rode up on the levee and heard him start barking like he was baying him on the ground. I know it sounds a little weird, but the folks that don't know, there's a difference in how they bark and when they bark.

The sounds they make and how they make them will tell you a good. good story of what's going on if you'll just pay attention to what the dog is saying. Now, this only comes after hours and hours and hours of learning how a dog hunts and watching the mannerisms and how they deal with different situations. At this point, Whalen and I had been hunting together for three years, a minimum of three nights a week and sometimes five or six. I know this dog, and I could tell he was on a coon and where he was now is where the race had ended. We bailed off the levy and walked into an area that was holding water,

will of trees and beaver runs. There wasn't a tree in there big as my arm close to where Whalen was racing all the ruckus, so I assumed he'd just had one bade. Now that means the Coon has gone as far as he was going to go, and Whelan more or less had him cornered but not captured. Whelan hates a coon, but he ain't no one. killer. I've seen more than one coon give him a good white for. He ain't scared to take a butt whoopin either, but he also ain't going to run away after he gets one. He's got a lot of trying him.

I'll say that. So when I walked into where he was, it could see him barking and chewing on an exposed clay root from a fallen tree, and I couldn't immediately see the coon. I felt disappointed. All that build-up of adrenaline listening to him blistering down through the wood, chasing that coon had culminated into my dog barking at a big dirt clod like he lost his mind. It was also an embarrassing. They say a man's ego was a heavy load for a dog to tote and I was about to see that play out in spades. In the video, you can see as I start walking up to him that he's chewing on the root between barking at what seems like the edge of the water where it meets the clay root. I laughed because he looked insane barking the dirt that didn't have a place big enough to hide a baby Coon, much less one big enough to him.

Let him on that dukes a hazard chase we had all just witnessed. But he was convinced that the Coon was there, so I got closer, looking for a hole in the Clayroot the Coon had crawled into. Nothing. No hole. Whalen was telling me with all the vigor he had that the Coon had, Coons right there, boss. You got to believe me. My first inclination was just to lead him away and cast him again and chalked it up to,

hey, they make mistakes just like we do. But this hound was giving me the best argument I'd ever heard that he didn't make a mistake and that all I had to do was trust what he was telling me. So I looked closer. And Whalen kept barking like his life depended on it. Finally, I saw what looked like a glowing eye looking back at me from under the water. Then I saw the other eye. The coon was looking at me from beneath the surface, completely submerged.

I thought, well, I'll swan. Whalen killed him before we got here. I had it in my mind to reach down and pull him up from under the water, and then I saw him poke his nose and mouth up and get a breath of air, then pull his head back down under the surface, watching me and wailing the whole time. Now, I have seen some crazy things before, but I swear I ain't never seen anything like a coon laying under water, poking his nose up every once in a while to get a breath of air like a snorkel. But not only did I see it, I filmed it.

I put the leash on whaling, and someone held him back. I jobbed that coon with a stick I'd picked up And he come up from under the water And left on his own accord and we let him go That coon was special But he came in second place that night In his and Wayland's game of hide and seek I'd like to think that

He's the same coon that Whalen bade underground Later that winter If you hadn't heard that story You'll want to go back and listen to episode 179 Of this country life Now was it the same coon, who knows. But if it wasn't, I bet they were friends.

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 got. Obblers 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' cut, and I hunt with Clay's cut because they're all three great cuts. Check out Prime Cuts at Phelpsgamecalls.com.

I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Rinella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action. Last Saturday at the urging of my friend Michael Roseman, I made the three-hour drive from central Arkansas to Batesville, Mississippi,

for the United Kennel Club Winter Classic Coon Hunt. It rained hard, and every swipe of the windshield wiper was telling me to turn around and go back home. I'm not a competition hunter. Me and old way don't have been to, the five UKC club hunts and we've won two of them. That's a pretty good average. But the allure of the competitive life just wasn't there for me.

Basically, it comes down to being lazy. In official hunts, you can't ride a side by side or use a four-wheeler. You got to walk. And my dog trees a mile west of where we're standing. And yours trees a mile east of where we're standing. We got to walk to my dog first and then walk back to your dog. Also, there's probably two other dogs making a four-dog cast the official limit on how big the cast is. Being lazy is not really the reason I don't competition.

No, it is. No, it's not. Well, maybe. Okay, anyway, the cast is what you call the group of dogs that are in the contest at a given location when you hunt. Now, you could have any number of dogs in the overall contest, but the total number of dogs is broken down into groups of four. the closest to it without going over. The dogs are further separated by accomplishment. Dogs reach certain graduated titles by the number of cast wins they have.

The more wins they have determines who they're grouped with and a cast going forward. It makes it more fair for younger or more inexperienced hounds to go against each other while the more experienced and upper echelon of dogs compete head-to-head in a different location. There's a laundry list of rules that have to be adhered to during the competition. Each dog is evaluated and scored according to a point system that is recorded by an official judge who, get this, can be hunting in the same competition. Now, that kind of sounds like letting a major league baseball manager be the home plate umpire and call balls and strikes for both teams. What separates this from that is these rules are called honor rules. and I can honestly say that in the five UKC hunts that I've been in

that all the judges hunted and every one of them judged those hunts fairly and explained each and every call they made to all the participant's satisfaction. If it didn't work, it wouldn't be as strong as it is today. There's good and bad and everything, and someone is always angling for an advantage sometimes by breaking the rules. The UKC has tailored the rules over the years to address these things, that come up in the field and to prevent things like that happening. My dad always told me that padlocks only keep honest folks honest.

A thief is going to be a thief regardless. The honor rules of UKC work the same way. I rolled into Batesville Park and strolled inside the convention center into a sea of folks that all shared a common interest, family and hound dogs. There was vendors there from all over the country. That's why Michael was there selling. and servicing his sunspot lights, the lights we all use at meat eater.

The light my friend Rex Whiten was using before I ever met Michael. Now Michael is one of my best friends, and I owe it all to Coonuntunt. I was going to see some other friends and make some new ones that I want to tell you about while I was there. But first, let's talk about UKC. United Kennel Club was founded in 1898. That's 126 years ago. That's five years older than Major League Baseball. So let's do some math.

My most favorite math teacher, Ms. Brenda McDougall, just raised both of her eyebrows right now, waiting to hear what I'm fixing to say next. I credit her for single-handedly getting my attention at an early age by loving me enough to hit me with a board when I needed it, and by showing me that the reason I was more comfortable standing than sitting was my own doing. She also showed me how much she loved me by never giving up on me.

I can do a whole podcast about her. That's for another day. Back to the math. Not counting little league, just high school baseball players. Only one out of 200 get drafted into the major leagues. Only five out of that hundred drafted ever play one game in the majors. What am I talking about? This is what I'm talking about.

What I'm saying is this. Statistically speaking, if competition coon hunting is your thing, your chances of competing at the highest level is a whole lot better than playing baseball. Now, there were whole families walking around together, visiting with folks buying dog supplies, eating, and having fun. This event actually starts earlier in the week. They have what they call warm-up or slam hunts that they don't count toward the winter classic win, but they do give hunters who've traveled a long ways the opportunity for their dogs to get acclimated to the new areas.

You know, these dogs, they're not machines. Different environments require an adjustment period, and you want your hound to be acclimated as soon as possible to his new surroundings. In theory, this equals the playing field for locals and out-of-towners. I can speak from experience that when I'm traveling with old whalen somewhere, any change to his routine will affect his production in the woods. They have to get used to it. There's so many factors that go into it that I'm having to just really skim over.

the surface. Environmental changes and the effects on a dog's performance could be its own episode. It'd probably be as boring as listening to Clay tell someone else how the mountains in Arkansas were formed for the cabalient time. Anyway, as a bonus, UKC has added some prize money to those warm-up hunts. They call them slam hunts. And if your hound wins, you can put a little jingle in your pocket. If nothing else, you get to meet your competitors, fellowship, and go hunting. What's not to like? Well, the walking part, but it's good exercise. Good exercise.

That's an oxymoron. Anyway, I hadn't gotten inside good when a man approached me and introduced himself. His name was Michael Bradley. He was there with his son, Jacob, and his son-in-law, Jacob. Michael was familiar with some of the content that I've been involved with, and he wanted to visit. That's what I was there to do. Turns out, Michael is a coon hunter. I know.

Shocker, right? Me running into a... a fellow coon hunter at the first big UKC hunt of the year. The first of three that make up the Triple Crown starting with this one, the Winter Classic that started in 1988 and officially starts the competition season. Followed by the second jewel of the yearly crown, Autumn Oaks, that began back in 1960 and is held yearly during the Labor Day weekend, culminating with the World Championship in early September.

That hosts dogs from the USA and their hockey. loving neighbors to the north in Canada. But what are the odds that I would meet another coon hunter here? Well, Miss Brenda and I would say the odds were heavy in my favor of doing just that. I would have been hard pressed to have chunked a yard dart backwards over my shoulder and not stabbed a fellow coon hunter at this gathering. Trying to do that and hit a fellow that still coon hunts off a mule, now that's where the odds fall in favor of the house.

My friend Luke McFadden, Instagram hero, crab fishing prodigy, President of Maryland was down coon and squirrel hunting with me, Bear, and Clay Newcomb last weekend. We were riding mules with the Ozark squirrel hunting, and Luke asked me if folks hunted coons for mules. I told him that back in the 1970s, up until the early 80s, that it was the thing to do, although I'd never personally owned the mule to coon hunt off of it. We hunted squirrels off horses and walked coon hunting, but that I'd always wanted one. The mule thing was popular where I was from, but it all but died with the advent of ATVs. Which brings me back to my new friend Michael Bradley.

It was about the third thing out of his mouth while we talked, and I was amazed that there were still anyone doing him. I'm going hunting with him soon if I have to rent one. He's also from Arkansas, and keeping alive a tradition that I thought was gone. I talked to him on the phone today, and he told me that he'd been coon hunting off mules for the majority of his life. Man, I love that stuff. It made my heart feel good that the old ways were still being practiced. Even one that I'd never participated in. Those things are important to keep around for the next generation to decide that they want to

partake. I can't blame anyone for saying no to it, but at least they'll have the opportunity. Thanks to Michael and folks like him that find value in the old ways. It's also hard for me to think of the set. as the old days, but 1970 was 55 years ago. My hip hurts just thinking about it. Then I met up with Michael Roseman and his band of Untouchables at their booth and just soaked in the atmosphere that was teaming with folks all talking about hound dogs.

Our friends Randall Whitmore and Brad Clark were there scoping out the scene, and we walked over and watched the UKC bench show. It was fantastic. Let me tell you, there was some good-looking dogs. there. The bench shows are run like the ones you see on TV, following the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade. The one on TV is put on by the Westminster Kennel Club in New York. You'll see every kind of animal purported to be a dog on that one, but the bench show at the UKC Coon Hunts event are all registered coon hounds. There was a representative of all six breeds of coonhound,

tree and Walker, black and tan, English, blue-tig, plot, leopard hound, and redbone. Now, the dogs are judged against a set of a group of individual breed standards. Height, weight, color, ear-length, bill, just to name a few, and all these different criteria must fall into the parameters that have been set up as the standard for each particular breed. At this level, all that equates to is a group of beautiful dogs that are prime examples of what each should look like. There was one dog that stood out to me when I first laid my eyes on him. Boy, was he forever more pretty? Brad and Randall and I sat there watching as the handlers trotted them in the ring and put them up on the benches to pose.

I picked that rascal as the winner before the event ever started, let me tell you. The other dogs in that mix were just as pretty in their own right. But something just kept bringing my eye back to that dog. And wouldn't you know it, before he left there, he wound up being the top ten bench show overall winter. and he was a red bone named Walbash River Lost Highway. Now, that's his registered name, but he answers to Hank, which is a lot easier to remember. Hank was handled and owned by the pride of Lake Lured, North Carolina,

Miss Andy Emery. Andy and her husband Keith ain't rookies when it comes to winning, and neither is old Hank, and neither is Hank's son McGraw or Hank's mama Rosie. Now, we've got a Jack Russell name, Rosie, that we've had for over 12 years. The only thing she's ever won is the crop dusting dog hair world championship as she floats from room to room with the Lexus and the vacuum cleaner in the hot pursuit. But the cool part about that story is how families are all involved.

UKC will tell you that in the beginning the folks showing the dogs were all men. Now men are the exception in the event that's dominated by women. Now, y'all don't get your feathers all ruff, but I know lots of ladies that like to coon hunt too. my wife who loves my coon dog more than me is not one of them but parading him around for other folks to look at and ogle over well that's her game if whalen was a show dog and had she been so inclined it's it's not just hunting it's a whole lot more i saw kids of all ages there that was what was so easy recognizable it was one big family gathering i got to visit briefly with my friends alan gingrich and Trevor Wade.

Allen is the director of the hunting operations at UKC, and Trevor is the Coonham Programs Manager. Now, those boys were busier than a cat in a sandbox. They, along with the squad of other UKC employees and volunteers, were coordinating everything you can imagine that involves 350 hounds, the folks hunting them, the judges, and the guides. Man, it's a big operation. I also ran into Bryce Matthews and sat down with him and Stephen Basham,

the cats from the Sinter Doggin podcast and visited with them for a little bit. You can hear their podcast just about anywhere you can listen to this one. They wanted me to tell a story, so I did. That was the common theme throughout this whole event, people telling stories whether it was about old dogs or old hunters or new ones of each. People were talking about last night's hunt and anticipate, and hunt that was only a few hours away, the last rounds that would decide

who'd be the overall champion of the 20-24 hunt. Now, once the dust settled and the scorecards were turned in, a tree and Walker named Wade's lockdown playboy owned by Carl and Tracy Wade toaded the overall hunt winner trophy home with them to Alabama. You hear that, Claibault? A tree and Walker won. I wasn't the only person there that wasn't a competition hunter.

Johnny Smith, a strapped mule man and pleasure coon hunter from Mississippi, was walking around in there with an official Gary Nucca bear Greek's believer hat on. Man, it was just like being at home. These are my people. We got plenty of room for more. It's a family tradition for a lot of folks and a new one for others, including me. And best of all, it's another opportunity to share. There's something outside with dogs and folks you're partial to being around of any age.

That's good. That's a constant theme with me in this program, getting outside with loved ones. That's good for everyone. I hope y'all have enjoyed this competition, Coon Hunting episode. I've gotten some ideas for others along this vein if there's enough interest from the folks that listen and y'all don't revolt. If you want to tell me in person to knock it off with the Coon Hunting episodes, come see me at the black bear bananas on March 9th in Bentonville, America, and tell it to my face. www.w.w.blackbearbananza.com will get you all the info you need. It's going to be a good time,

and it'll be here before you know it. Better get you tickets now. Until next week, this is Brent Reeves. Signing off. Y'all be careful. 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 fieldwear gear at firstlight.com.