Bear Grease - Ep. 297: This Country Life - Waylon, Jessi, and the Girls

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Brent's got a new coonhound puppy and is talking about the risks involved in the new investment. With a house full of dog lovers who could care less how they perform in the woods and only consider companionship, it's a recipe for potential conflict. He's also talking about a few of the techniques he used in conditioning his dog Waylon on what not to do. Get Brent's theory on several aspects of welcoming in a new hunting partner on this week's "This Country Life" podcast.  Black Bear Bonanza: https://www.backcountryhunters.org/black_bear_bonanza_2025 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.

First Light's fieldwear 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 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 fieldwear gear at firstlight.com.

Welcome to this country life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves. From coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living, I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences and life lessons. This country life is presented by Case Knives on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcasts the airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stories to share. Wayland, Jesse, and the girls. Bringing a puppy into the family is a risky gamble if it's a hunt dog. Not all of them turn out like you won't. And after the family gets attached, what happens next?

Are you stuck with a pet? I'm so excited to talk about what's new at my house that we're just going to jump straight to it and discuss what my experience has been, and that is some of my friends. Let's get to it. Every week, here on the show, the This Country Live show, nine times out of ten I'm talking about something that happened in

the past, either recently or back with me and Jesus were still in junior high. I'm connected to the past as we all are, and it's from those experiences that help shape our lives or format how we see things and point us on the past that we choose to follow. The same can be said for this week, but I'm also going to be talking about the future and an investment I'm making now that I hope to start seeing the dividends of in the next year. No, I'm not talking about betting on the stock market or trying to come up with an easy way to fold a fitted sheet to revolutionize the home laundry business. I'm getting a coon dog puppy. Or better yet, we're getting a coon dog puppy because everyone in the household will be affected by her presence. Now, the responsibility for her care is up to me,

but I have a job that requires me to travel at times and as strong of an argument that I made to Alexis before we got her that she wouldn't have to do anything and taking care of our new occupant and that I would take care of it all? Well, that wasn't true. She and I both knew it when I said it. So why would I go through the expense and aggravation and long-term gamble of investing in the time of raising a puppy, not as a pet, but in hopes that she will be the caliber coon hound and hunting companion that I have now in the dog I've been hunting the last five and a half years that most of you are more than familiar with my dog wailing first let's talk about what's at stake this puppy is 10 weeks old as of today february 14th she'll be 10 months old

before she's mentally mature enough to even start developing an idea of what her purpose is for being here on the planet now i know there's some folks who will say my puppy was running in tree and coons by themselves when they were six months old, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever. There are always outliers and exceptions to every rule. Save you one and a million dog prodigy arguments. I'm talking in generalities here. And I know there are some adolescent phenoms out there. I get it, but that's not normal. What is normal is that one time Michael Jordan was just a kid playing basketball with his friends and was no better or worse than they were. Then through hard work and practice, he turned his gift into what some say is the best ever basketball player. So far,

anyway. Now, do I expect this puppy to be the best ever? No, I don't, because I already know her main limitation, and that's me. If it weren't for my friends and mentors like Michael Roseman and Rex Whiting, my dad who passed away years before I got him, and especially the natural ability of this tree of Walker Coonown that snored at my feet as I tell you all this, he wouldn't be the dog that he is. He's a pretty good dog. Anyone that's hunted with him will tell you that. Could he have been a world champion? Hard to say, but I guarantee that he could have been better known in the competition world even more so than he is in the podcast world if it weren't for the same limitation that will

anchor this new puppy into abject competition of security. Me. Again. It just ain't my thing. What is my thing is having a dependable dog that when I turn it loose, I have more confidence in it treeing a coon than not. I do it for the pleasure and only compete with the coon. Since Whalen started treeing on his own,

I have never turned him loose that I wasn't confident in his abilities. he was an easy dog to train. If you can say I trained him, I really didn't train him. And it's been my experience that you can't train a dog to do anything. You have to teach them what not to do. I know that's a broad statement and someone will say, well, I saw a video of a dog painting the barn or riding a skateboard or doing algebra. Well, a dog wouldn't naturally do any of these things.

Someone had to teach him. You're right to a certain extent, but to me when you break it down, there's no difference in a dog tree and a coon and one herding sheep or riding a unicycle. You have to build off a dog's natural ability and desire to please the dude that feeds and cares for him. That's why they do what they do beyond their natural desires, predators, and companions to humans. I know I started talking about a puppy I just got. now I'm giving you my theory on why a dog can be conditioned to play the piano, but believe me, it's all connected. Working dogs have been purposely bred over the last 15,000 years for specific roles and jobs that all play off their natural abilities as predators and

highly keen human associates. I can't go into specifics on why herding dogs herd or medical alert dogs alert. There's way better folks at explaining that than I am, but what I can't tell you is why tree and dogs tree and how I plan to give our new family member the best opportunity to find her place here in our home as a coon dog. Let's talk about this investment and risk of bringing a puppy into the family circle of dog lovers like the two I live with. My daughter Bailey and my wife Alexis love dogs. Now not coon dogs, not lap dogs, dogs, every one of them. They have as natural of an attraction to dogs as I do to case pocket knives in Belgium made shotguns.

I know folks that trade all three, dogs, knives, and shotguns, but I'm not in that number. Now, I don't mind selling the dog if I'm wanting something different, but a knife or a shotgun that finds its way into my purview has found its forever home. The same can be said for dogs to Alexis and Bailey. It's like they're working the front desk at the Hotel, California. The dog can check out any time it likes that he can never leave. Which brings me back to investment risk I took when I bought this puppy. A hundred percent bought this dog not as a replacement for Whalen, who'll be six years old, August the 15th,

but it's more of a continuation of his lineage. I will hunt Whalen until he no longer has done. desire or the ability to do so. He will spend the rest of what I hope are many years here within the confines of the Ponderosa, hunting when the opportunity presents themselves or not. He has earned his spot here by being a good hunting dog and even better member of the family. This puppy is a direct descendant of Whalen's grandfather, the famous Tree and Walker known as Bone Collector, who died at the age of 10 in 2017.

So how does Uncle Brick get a puppy sired by Whalen's grandfather who died in 217 that's two months old in February of 2025? More or less the same way puppies were made back then, except all the romance has been replaced with surgery. I was fortunate that Whelan did so well in the hunting because, as I've related on here prior to now, the girls, as I like to call them, referring to Alexis and Bailey, could care less about his ability to triacute and love him unconditionally and in spite of a few shortcomings. I owe as much to my ability to live here to that same sense of forgiveness and compassion they show the dog. Now had Whelan not turned out to be a good hunting hound, he'd still be here because of their unwavering love. That's my biggest risk in bringing a new one here.

What if she doesn't make a good hunting dog? I know there's folks listening that are yelling at their radios or whatever they're listening to right now, saying you sell it or you give it to someone else who wants to try their hand at training or to someone that just wants a pet. Well, I'm glad you have the luxury of doing that. That's not a luxury I'm afforded at Casa Day Reeves. Once they're in, they're in. I've been saying literally for the last couple of years to Alexis that when I have,

eventually got another dog to train and hunt to succeed whaling. And I might have to go through two or three before I found the one that I wanted. So have your mind made up before it even gets here that it might not and probably won't stay? I truly believe I could have done that had I gotten a dog that wasn't considered a puppy. I like to think that's true, but it probably isn't either. But I knew without a shadow of a doubt that when they laid their eyeballs on Miss Jesse, that she was going to be here for the long haul. Just like a buddy of mine who gambled on a dog that to this day

possesses all the skills necessary to make a good tree dog, only to lack the main ingredient, which is the prey drive and desire to go hunt. She was a decent at running a track and loud as a train whistle when she barked, especially for a female, and fairly accurate for a started dog. All the things you want,

a dog that's still in development. She just didn't pack the desire to go every time you cut her loose from the lead. That can't be taught. That comes from within. It can't be trained, only taking advantage of and directed towards what we want the dog to do. And that's the smell where a coon has been walking around on terra firma and barked like the house is on fire when they find the tree the Coon has climbed and wait for us to get there. And while she could do that, she didn't do that enough to make it worth hunting her. But guess what? Too late. His wife had fallen in love with her, and that's the end of that. She's a permanent fixture and a man can only have so many dogs. So he's got a really nice pet that could have been a good hunting dog if she had the desire.

So unless your dog being is a long way from the house, choose your place. wisely in case they wind up staying just by default. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps game calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use. I'm not going to go, I'm not going to win a turkey calling contest. It's just not going to happen. But when I run this call, I get the sounds that gobblers are looking for.

I have a great turkey hunting track record. if you go listen to real turkeys out in the woods, they're not going to win calling contests, right? That's who I listen to. I can make those sounds on my cut. I also hunt with Phelps's cut, and I 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 Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good. turkey noises and getting action. There are several things in play that we're asking a dog to do to be successful, most of which is going against the natural order of things. Remember when I said we'd been manipulating the breeds of dogs for the last 15,000 years to perform tasks and duties for us? Well, here's how we'd changed wolves and the coon hounds. Through many thousands of years

of dogs begetting dogs, we arrive at Modern-day Arkansas, where in my backyard and sometimes on my couch, lives the domesticated version of the gray wolf, Canis Lupus, or in our case, Canis Lupus Familiaris, the domesticated dog. I want to adept predators silently hunting in packs for all types of prey, primarily mammals, with better than 90% of their diet made up of deer elk and moose. That's where they came from. Now, we prefer our coon hounds to hunt separate from all others and be vocal while they're doing it,

the exact opposite of what their ancestors did. If you bark and make noise while pursuing prey, you warn them that you're coming and give them the advantage of more time to escape and get to safety. Wolves go hungry in that scenario. We've manipulated and exacerbated the fault of a racket-making wild canine into a desired trait for domesticated one. I want my dog to hunt like a hungry wolf in fervor only. Being silent does me no good. I want to hear him barking on the track and bawling when he puts him up a tree. Now, his reward once I get there is only a pat on the head and maybe a little

nibble on the bandito should I decide to shoot him out of the tree to take him home, but that's that's only occasionally. I don't shoot a fraction of the coons we tree unless I'm hunting a parcel of land with a specific request to thin the population. But if I let him put his mouth on that dead coon, it's only for a few seconds. He put him up that tree for me. That's my coon. And when he figures out that he's working for me in this deal, the headpats come more often,

which is reason number two why he's doing it in the first place. A dog's inherent desire to please us is a byproduct of all the bagueton when a kinder and gentler dogs were preferred over the ones that tended to bite the hand that fed them. Now, that's why they're so loyal and respond better to praise than being heavy-handed. Now, I've witnessed that myself, like my friend's dog that lacked the desire to get out and go, and I've heard some say, I can make that dog go hunt. I'll tear her high and end up and make her get gone. No, you can't.

You can only make one go. but she's going to go and hide. Common sense has told us that for years, tracking callers have proven it to be fact. There's no place for that in my presence or on my hunts, and I'm proud to say that the folks I hunt with, they feel exactly the same. So how am I going to train?

There's that word again that isn't accurate. Train a million times removed wolf into an obedient straight coonown that will be happy to only bark on the track of a coon and ball at him until I get to the tree to pat him on the head. Here's how. Way back when I substituted the word condition for the word trained, that's when I started more accurately describing what happens. The good old time hounders will tell you, give me a young hound dog that'll run anything

with purpose regardless of what it is, and I can teach him to focus on coons by showing him what not to focus on. That's the secret. That's the answer to the $64,000 question. Very few coon hounds come off the assembly line that don't require some type of correction. Now, the first animal Whelan messed with that I saw was an armadillo. It was March the 24th of 2020 and he was seven months and three days old. Bailey and I were standing in the bottoms, just letting Whelan wander around being a puppy and smelling and looking at things. It was the beginning of the COVID mess and we were social distancing ourselves from civilization by taking our newest member of the family out for an evening stroll. Just me,

Bailey, and whaling. It was dusky dark, but you could still see without the aid of a headlight. I heard something in the dry leaves moving toward where we stood, and Bailey heard it too, and without saying a word, she stepped as close to me as she could and grabbed my hand. We could see Wayland 60 yards away and she knew that whatever was making that noise wasn't him. I can't even imagine what she thought it was, but I'm sure Armadillo was way down the list. I'll be scared, honey, it's just an armadillo. Let's see if Wailin messes with it. She seemed better once she figured out it wasn't a monster coming to get us,

and I could tell by her loosening up the grip on the index finger of my left hand that maybe, just maybe, would allow enough blood to start circulating in there where I could eventually get the feeling back in it. We saw the armadillo about 30 yards away, and sure enough, here came wailing on the same line, nose to the ground. Following exactly the same path, the combat possum had taken that was oblivious to the encounter that was about to take place.

Stopping to dig at something under the leaves, the armadillo was only seconds away from getting goose by Whalen's nose and I saw it coming. Bailey saw it coming, but neither the Armadillo or especially Whalen knew what was going to be coming with it. I held my tracking and training device in my right hand that was connected by a satellite signal to Whalen's collar with my thumb on the trigger button

that would send an electric shock or stimulus to the two electrodes mounted on the inside of Whalen's collar. If you're not familiar with one, it works like a remote control. The shock or the stimulus is low, and I did it to myself before I ever put it on my dog years ago when I was finished training my black lab. It doesn't hurt at all. It doesn't hurt it all. It wouldn't use properly as a quick and effective tool in correcting behavior. In this case, it was just going to be a deterrent to show an interest in armadillos.

The setting was very low and only high enough to startle him to break Wayland's concentration. The great thing was I was observing what was happening and applying the correction at the precise moment for maximum results. I said, Bailey, watch this. If the way the messes with that armadillo, the second he puts his nose on him or chases him, I'm going to stop him with his collar. He picked up speed, trailing the armadilla,

and when he put the pieces together that what he was smelling was what he was seeing, creeping along 20 yards in front of him, the temptation was more than he could bear. He ran straight toward him, and before the armadillo could react, Whalen planted his nose right on his rear end, and I sent him a message via the electrodes that adorned the inside of his collar. And that's all it took. He stepped back and looked at the armadillo that was now bouncing through the woods, very aware that something had slipped up on him and was making his escape.

Whelan was no longer interested in him, and when he heard Bailey giggling, he came straight. to us, and she proceeded to try to rub all the hair off of him. Now, as far as I know, he's never messed with another one. I've seen him walk beside him, and possums, too, just like they weren't even there. He's chased deer a handful of times, and when I was 100% sure that that's what he was doing, I corrected that behavior through his collar. I saw a deer jump and run across the power line once when he was young, and him in hot pursuit.

A momentary pulse of electricity to his collar, and he immediately, lost interest. They assumed that whatever caused the discomfort was what they were chasing and associate that stimulus with the scent. That's how it works. It was like me and skipping school. I knew what the penalties were, but I couldn't be broke from the habit. Whalen learned way faster than I did. Maybe my mama should have tried to call her on me instead of whatever she could pick up and swing at me. But after two or three lessons, I can turn Waylon loose down wind an indirect sight and proximity of deer and he ignores him and he still does.

All I did was show him that chasing deer had a negative impact on his concentration and comfort. These are the things I'm going to be doing with this puppy and all in good time, but it will be a while before she gets any kind of exposure to anything

other than playing and learning kennel manners and finding her spot in the family pecking order. Lots of stuff to learn and I enjoy it more than anything seeing them try and fail and learn and succeed. It's so much fun. If you want to follow along on Jesse's progress and integration into the family, give my Instagram a follow as I document our journey.

There'll be regular updates here as well if you won't. Now, hey, on March the 1st, you can find me and my compadre, Clay Newcomb at the Black Bear Bananza at the Benton County Fairgrounds from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. It's absolutely one of the events I look forward to every year. Bring the whole family. There's so much fun stuff to do and see. It's truly become like a family reunion. Google search Black Bear Bananza for directions and tickets

or hit the link that Reeve is going to put in the show description. Thank you all so much for listening. Until next week, this is Britt Reeves. Signing all. Y'all be careful. Last spring, Clay Newcomb and I collaborated with Jason Phelps at Phelps Game Calls and building each of our own favorite turkey diaphragms called prime cuts. Now, I'm going to tell you, I love mine because it's easy to use.

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

Check out Prime Cuts at Phelps Game Calls.com. I think you'll be glad you did, and you'll find out that the Steve Ronella cut is an easy-to-use cut for beginning callers who just want to start making good turkey noises and getting action.