Bear Grease - Ep. 229: This Country Life - Decoy Dogs

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

Just when you thought Brent had talked about every kind of hunting dog, he shows up with another one. This week he's giving us an introduction to decoy dogs, how they're hunted, and for what purposes. He's also sharing a 4th of July story from a listener that involves strawberry jelly and a pink flamingo. There's a lot going on this week on MeatEater's "This Country Life" podcast.  Check out Decoy Doggers on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTEKz-HCuwegpOmZ_CSpd4A Subscribe to the MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Connect with Brent and MeatEater MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Youtube Clips MeatEater Podcast Network on YouTube Shop This Country Life Merch 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.

Decoy dogs. I'm talking about decoy dogs this week and not the dogs or decoys I'm normally associated with. You don't hunt birds or banditos with these canines and believe it or not, the dog is the decoy. We're hunting coyotes and if you're not familiar with how it works, just hang with me and I'll tell you all about it. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. This story comes from the This Country Life mailbag and listener Justin Moore. from way up yonder, for me anyway, in Orchard Lake, Michigan. Orchard Lake is a bustling metropolis of some 2,300 folks

with the most notable being our pal Justin and Bob Seeger. We're turning to page, Bob. It's Justin's time to shine, and does this boy shine? I'll say he does. And Justin's words in my voice? Here's Justin's story. Well, it was the 4th of July, 2018. I had the day off from working lawn care and I had decided to go fishing.

There was a small lake in the back of my subdivision that only me and one other gentleman fished. It was perfect. I had the whole place to myself. And for some reason unknown, I decided not to take the boat out that day and just to fish from the bank. And after a couple of hours and a few fish later, a woman came walking up the beach I was fishing with a big old flamingo floaty. Well, that went to fishing. She told me she was just

going to anchor it a little ways for her grandkids could swim on it and play on it the next day when they had a cookout. Well, I thought that was a great idea. So she started swimming out with it as I started packing up my gear and loading everything in my truck. And then I heard something no one ever wants to hear at any given place. A year. for help, but I mean a real yell for help. I ran down to the edge of the water like I was getting paid for it, and I started yelling, are you okay? What's wrong?

And she continued yelling for help, and I pulled out my phone to call 911, but I quickly realized that whatever was going on, it couldn't wait. And in the water, I went. I wouldn't be surprised if a witness told me I had a rooster tail of water coming up from behind me on my way out to her. And while I was swimming, I tried to keep communication with her, and I tried to keep her calm.

I'm coming. It's going to be okay. She wasn't responding. And that big floating flamingo, a terror, was blocking my view. I came around the end of the floating, all that was sticking out of the water was the woman's nose and her mouth.

The anchor had wrapped around her arm and was pulling her under. Now, she had enough time to grab the seam of the flamingo, with the tips of her fingers. And I told her to stay calm, and most importantly, don't grab onto me or we're both going to be in a big mess.

I was able to reach under her for the rope with one hand and grab the floaty with the other. And pulling them together, I eased the tension off her arm, and she was able to swim away. I made sure I wasn't in any way tangled up in that rope, too, and I let it go.

We were both tired. and she said, let's float on our backs to the beach. I quickly made her aware that personally, I do not like being in deep water. Now, I'm a great swimmer. Don't get me wrong, but I'll take the boat out and catch some fish anytime. That's never been a problem with me, and I just don't like knowing what's underneath me. Anyway, we made our way back to the beach and safety. She's a wonderful woman, who I'm glad to still know, and she later notified the fact.

fire department and our local newspaper where I was recognized by the city and awarded the meritorious citizen award at the fire station. To this day, she brings me down a jar of her homemade strawberry jelly for Christmas, and boy, that stuff will put some folks out of business. More importantly, Miss Andrea is still alive and doing well, and faced with that same situation, I'd do it all over again. and according to Justin Moore, that's just how that happened. Well, Justin, you earned that strawberry jelly, my friend. I'll tell you something else. If I ever find myself in Orchard Lake Michigan being attacked by Floating Flamingo,

I ain't going to be hauling for Bob Seeger to come save me. It's going to be Justin Moore and nobody else. Decoy Dogs, I had the pleasure several years ago before I started filming my old pal, clay chasing bears to be introduced to some of the coolest dog-related hunts I'd ever been on. Now, I'd hunted coons, squirrels, deer, quail, rabbits, hogs, and coyotes with dogs of all makes and models. Now, I assumed I'd done just about every type of hunting imaginable with a dog in Arkansas, and I was wrong.

Through an internet hunting form, I ran across a guy from North Arkansas who was not only a decoyed dog hunter, but about the best in the business I'd soon come to find out. I'd never heard of decoy dogs or what they were used for. That was all about to change when I saw some footage connected with a man named Jeff Ryder. I told him I was intrigued with what he was doing that I was trying to get into filming hunts and wanted to meet up and document what he was doing. Over the course of the next couple of years, I spend a lot of hours traveling and filming some amazing dog work and interactions that while were exciting and action-packed,

were also providing a service to landowners and wildlife. Before all you coyote lovers start lighting your torches and issuing out pitchforks, the National Agricultural Statistics Service reports that 95,000 cows were lost one year nationwide and 65% of the calf losses because of predators were attributed to coyotes. Now, coyotes can have a significant impact on cattle, sheep, and goats, but there can be regional differences as well. They can be worse in some places than others. Kansas, for example, sees coyotes being responsible for 84% of calf losses. Not 84% of losses to predators.

84% of all losses are to old Wiley Coyote filling his belly with baby bovines. that's a lot of calves. It's also a lot of bees. Kansas is also where my friend Jeff does a lot of his coyote thinning. More on Jeffrey in just a minute. Coyotes also impact deer and other wildlife. After all, that's where they naturally get their groceries. Now, I get it.

They got to eat too. But a study in South Carolina involving 91 radio collared fawns saw 56 of them killed by cowards. That's why those jokers have got to be held in check. Enter the decoy dog hunter as one method of controlling them. And like I said, until I met Jeff, I didn't know there was such a thing or such an activity. He explained to me that there have been government contract hunters for years out west whose sole purpose was to control the cowl population and most all of them used decoy dogs. Now, y'all have heard me talk about how my dad and his cowt running dogs,

buddies did it. They'd gather up after dark on the timber company roads near home, and they'd make the coyotes howl by blowing a sirene at them or mimicking the howl with their voices or finding a scat in the road and just cutting the dogs loose and the race would be on, literally a race. They chased them. They chased them through the woods and the dogs did through the woods in the river bottoms until the coyote got away. Now, rarely did they catch them, and they didn't want to catch them. They wanted them to run so they could hear the hounds barking to see whose dog was the best. Then come back and do it again another time. And the longer the race went, the more testament to the dogs that keep up and stay in a contest. We just drove around different

roads and keeping the dogs within the earshot and listening. Now when using the decoy dog, the time of the day you hunt and the ending is much different, especially for the cow. 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. 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. Now, here's how Jeff did it when I was filming him in Kansas.

He'd drive for miles talking to ranchers and farmers getting permission to hunt property, specifically for coyote control. Now, this was in the days before all next when folks had to read maps. Jeff had a landownership platinum book in his truck with property owners marked that he'd gotten permission to access. And I remember thumbing through that book, and I don't recall the estimate he told me once about how many thousands of acres he had permission to hunt coyotes on, but it was a lot. Like a jillion. Is a jillion an actual number?

If it is, I know it's a big one, and Jeff had three of them. He knew those areas like folks know their neighborhoods that they live in. We drive for miles according to wind direction and the position of the. the sun and cherry picking the best spots to set up and call a coyote and break him once and for all from the bad habit of eating calves, fawls, and building elaborate bombs and traps to catch a roadrunner. We started at daylight on property that had creek bottoms and thickets next to prairie ground and pastures with grass that was short enough that you could see a good ways across it.

Then he'd checked the wind direction and we'd set up with the wind in our face or at least quartering to us in one direction of the other. The reason being is if they smelled us before they heard the call or engaged with the dog, the chances of us even seeing them were drastically reduced. Coyotes ain't dumb, and they're thriving everywhere because of their adaptability and weariness when it comes to survival. But you can throw all of that stuff out the window once they get focused on that dog. They do some really wild stuff.

Now I've buried the hook deep enough. Let's get to it. Check this out. We'd set up in a fence row or beside a big round bail of haya, the tree line or a brush top, and nine times out of ten, we wasn't wearing any camouflage. We was just in jeans, overalls, and t-shirts and sitting on folding stoops.

Jeff would run a Fox Pro Predator call out about 30 yards or so away, sometimes closer, and come back and he'd sit beside me and the camera on one side and his decoy dog spot on the other. Spot was a bob-tailed Cattahoole of Kerr Cross that was as smarter dogs I've ever seen. She was laid back professional and knew what her job was as well as any season veteran. Her job was to be the Judas to every cow she could find. Jeff would kick their predator call off with different sounds depending on the time of the year

and set back in a wait for a coyote to reveal itself. All the coyotes had to do was being a position where spot could lock in on them. The cowl sometimes would be hundreds of yards away when we saw them trotting closer to the sounds coming from that predator column. They moved in and out of the thickets and trees like ghosts until they got within a hundred yards or so. And with spot laser focused on that coyote, Jeff would send her out toward the coyote. Now, eight times out of ten, the cowboys, will see Spot loping out towards them and freeze until she crossed whatever distance that coyote had chosen as close enough, and then they'd turn around and start running away.

But just before they hit the woods or a thicket, they'd always glance back at Spot. Now here's the cool part. Jeff had trained her and conditioned her to retreat when the coyotes did this, and it became so ingrained in her that he didn't even bother toning her back anymore with her tracking collar. She'd see that coyote look back and she'd voluntarily start back toward where we were sitting. And just like setting the hook on a fish, that coyote would stop, turn around, and follow her. Now, once that happened, our scent, our movement, and any other thing that would normally spook a coyote into another zip coat went out the window with the dishwasher. They lost all natural fear of anything they were genetically coated.

to avoid mainly people. It was incredible to watch the interaction between the dog and the coyote. An average stand would have the coyote turn and chase spot, then turn and start back to safety, only to have spot turn around and go back. Then the coyote would re-engage and spot would once again make tracks back toward us, tolling the coyote even closer. I've seen this back and forth go several rounds until Jeff ended it all with a well-placed two. 23 round or turkey loads at close range.

I remember one of the first times I hunted with Jeff and witnessed this back and forth between spot and the coyote. We were sitting on the edge of a plowed field in the Arkansas Delta, not far from where my brother Tim and I are putting the smackdown on the catfish in the Arkansas River. It was near in sunset, and the last end of the day was this one before we headed back to camp and supper. We walked down the river levee and were more than. or less in the bawled open sitting on the ground resting against the field levy with us hoping that it

was tall enough to break up our outline against the horizon. The field was muddy and Jeff laid the predator call in the seat of his hunt stool about 25 yards out in front of us and then he walked back through that gumbo mud and settled back down beside me and he turned it on. Almost immediately we saw one, two, then the third coyote entering the field a quarter of a quarter of a quarter of quarter of a mile away, heading toward the diet rabbit sounds coming out of that collar that was wailing out in front of us. Then they saw us, and they froze, and Spot right on cue, took off like a Labrador after ducking the decoys, and all three of them at different stages started going back from

where they came. Just before hitting the field edge, they looked back, and Spot did her thing. One by one, they turned and followed her back trying to catch her. Now, she was playing tag, but the coyotes weren't playing at all. She was an intruder, and if they could, they'd catch her and turn her into suffering. Jeff was ready to make sure that that wasn't going to happen, but back and forth they went, spotting all three coyotes like a K-9 yo-yo. Every time they came back, they got a little closer.

Jeff could have whacked all three of them at any time, but we were enjoying the show, and it wasn't showing any signs of ending soon. The predator call was 25 yards in front of us, and at one time there was a coyote walking around it, another one just behind it making laps. But the bravest of them all was following the spot back to where we sat in the bawled open, mind you. That one got so close when he turned to go back yet again. He kicked mud on me and my camera. He was easily within 10 feet of where we were sitting. I could have jobbed him with a frog gig and never fully stretched out my arm.

It was crazy. Then it got loud. Bam, bam! The end of two coyotes. The third one, old spooky, the one that never came in as close to the others, he got away. The thrill and enjoyment of seeing the interaction is what's so incredible. You know, I enjoyed coyote with my dad only because he was there. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy hearing a good dog race as much as anybody more than most,

but there's a reason I don't have a pen full of coyote dogs out behind my house. Well, there's probably several reasons, really, but the main one is I don't enjoy it enough to justify owning a passable of them. But hunting like he did, I had to guess at what was going on out there. Were his dogs really leading the pack? Or were they just the loudest? Or was it Toby's or Raymond's getting the best of all of them? No one really knew.

But with a decoy dog, the only thing, you wondered about is why you hadn't heard of this or why someone hadn't told you about it or why you hadn't tried it before now. It's fun, but it's not all action all the time. You'll have stand after stand and have driven miles and miles between them and zeroed on all of them. But just like that one good golf shot that keeps Gary Believer Nukem out on the links, swinging the wrenches when it works, and you see a coyote attempting to apply his deadly ninja the skills in the broad daylight up close and personal.

Man, it is a sight to behold. Y'all check out Jeff's YouTube channel, Decoy Doggers. Reva's going to post up a link to it in the description. While you're wandering around on there, ease on over and smash the old subscribe button to our new meat eater YouTube channel too. It's going to have the audio to all the podcasts and the video to the ones that are filmed. And we just started filming the bear grease renders and that buffooner that buffooner will be up there soon too.

Lots of other stuff is coming and in the works and I'm excited for y'all to see it. I hope everyone has a safe and happy 4th of July or as I like to call it, America One, England Zero Day. Until next week, this is Britt Reeve, 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 morning. mornings, full days in 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 fieldware gear at firstlight.