00:00:05 Speaker 1: Well, I used a good word their story. I call it a saga, and I sure hope I don't disappoint you. We can't prove this, We can't. 00:00:17 Speaker 2: Some stories are so sacred, so old, you almost have to earn the permission to tell them. 00:00:24 Speaker 3: This is one of those. 00:00:26 Speaker 2: I don't think it could be told by an outsider by like a visiting journalist. The only way to tell the story is from the inside. The audacity of my attempt comes after nearly a decade of curiosity, hunting with and meeting some of America's top plot hound families and historians, and maybe most critical, being a plot man myself. Well, that is even if I qualify. But I feel like I'm ready. We're talking about the saga of the American plot hound, which is a breed of big game hounds special lising and bear hunting, developed deep in the mountains of southern Appalachia, specifically Haywood County, North Carolina. 00:01:08 Speaker 3: Unique to the. 00:01:09 Speaker 2: Breed is they carry the family name of plot They were kept in isolation from the wider nation for nearly one hundred and fifty years while being refined by the frontier mountaineers of Appalachia. We've beaten around the bush of the plot genesis story, but we've never told it in its entirety, nor included the controversy of its authenticity. I'd be remiss to say if I didn't say that plot people are usually outsiders, a little bit quirky, often opinionated, and perhaps unsatisfied with the mainstream trends of the hound world. And I think they're quite content with this identity. The plot hound is anything but mainstream. In my extensive travels to meet plot hound men and women in this country over the last decade, I've met some of the finest salt of the Earth people in America. But this is not a story without drama and debate. This is a fascinating story of true Americana, and I really doubt that you're gonna want to miss this one. 00:02:13 Speaker 1: Not everyone's been born in North Carolina. Not everyone lives in western North Carolina. Not everyone has been around a plug dog. Unselfishly, I will tell you that it is a pride that I have that not everyone has. 00:02:38 Speaker 2: My name is Clay Nukelem and this is the Bear Grease Podcast, where we'll explore things forgotten but relevant, search for insight and unlikely places and where we'll tell the story of Americans who live their lives close to the land, presented by FHF gear, American made, purpose built hunting and fishing gear that's designed to be as rugged as the place as we explore. 00:03:16 Speaker 4: There's where Plot Creek begins right up there. 00:03:22 Speaker 3: This see old log house. 00:03:23 Speaker 4: Right there, that's the remnants of the Henry Plot cabin. He's got to be back to about eighteen oh three. And that house there was built in nineteen oh three by Mantraville Plot and his son John Plott moved into it nineteen twenty four after Mott died. And that's where little George Plott lived as a boy. 00:03:48 Speaker 2: I'm in western North Carolina. The mountains and places are so steep and thick it's intimidating, or at least when I think about traveling long distances of foot in them. Right in a truck with a man whose last name is Plot P L O T. T. You see, this isn't just a story about dogs. 00:04:09 Speaker 3: It's a family story. 00:04:11 Speaker 2: This is my friend Bob Plot, a direct descendant of the people who lived in that cabin and bred and built what's known today as the American Plot Hound. 00:04:21 Speaker 4: This creek here you see, there had dogs all lined up down they watered to dogs. They had dogs all up that run, all in a run where they could. 00:04:30 Speaker 2: I've seen that a lot over here in the Appalachians, where these there's these little springs like a spring maybe and they'll they'll state their dogs out. 00:04:40 Speaker 3: A passerby might. 00:04:42 Speaker 2: Be in jeopardy of missing the beauty history the legacy of such a scene. One of the most striking images of Appalachia is a narrow hollow full of handsome, dark brindle hounds tethered to wooden dog houses, with their lead extending far enough for them to have free access to fresh spring water. It's common to the uninformed it might be unnotable or even an eye sore. Archaic may be hillbilly and the derogatory sense of the word, but not to meat or the people on the inside. A plot hound is a muscular built dog, with males averaging sixty to seventy pounds and females in the fifty pound range, often with a saber tail, short to coarse hair, and moderate length ears not reaching past their nose when outstretched. Their classic color is brindle with a brown undercoat and dark stripes, but some appear almost black at a distance. There are two rare color variations of plots. Number one the Maltese brindle or this kind of grayish black stripe looking dog. But the most rare is the buckskin plot, colored almost like a Golden Retriever or a yellow lab intelligence trailer in ability, grittiness to stick with rough game. I've actually heard plot men in East Tennessee. You refer to them as nervy, and they're strong tree dogs. Plot Hounds are traditionally used on raccoons, hogs, mountain lions, but most importantly and core to their identity, bears. In many circles, they're known as plot bear dogs. Imagine there being twenty five plot hounds right through there. That was the beginning of the plot breed. 00:06:32 Speaker 4: And there were I mean that right there is where they were, and I mean, I've got pictures that big house, the bigger house there. The white house was built in nineteen oh three by Mott Plot and he didn't have any running water in it till probably the forties, and didn't have an indoor bathroom in it until the forties. John Plott said he wasn't going to go to the bathroom inside of house he lived in, but there was a great picture of him and his wife standing right there with two of the grediest plotthounds you've ever seen. 00:07:04 Speaker 2: The story of the plot Hound goes way back to before America was America. The reason this story is unique is that most of the hound breeds came here from England, in many. 00:07:15 Speaker 3: Ways already developed. 00:07:17 Speaker 2: But the origin story of the plot is surrounded by mystery, cloaked by faded time, geographic isolation, and scant documentation congruent with the hill folks ways. But in the early nineteen hundreds, this dog just emerged out of the hollows of the Great Smoky Mountain region, fully developed, uniquely suited, and deeply tied to the region's interior circle of bear hunters. These dogs became the symbol of Southern Appalachian ingenuity, Taylor fit for the rugged landscape, its people, and its beasts. The most interesting thing to me about plots, though, is their cult like following and this deep connection to place. No other hound breed has this. It's a phenomena unlike anything I've ever seen. And because of that, there is great risk in telling this story. If I die a suspicious, untimely death. It might be related to the version of the story that I tell. This is serious business, and what I've always loved about plot people is their passion. I've always been attracted to passionate people who dedicate their lives to narrow windows of expertise. One such man is John Jackson of western North Carolina. He's an old style Highland gentleman, a pastor, a schoolteacher, but most uniquely for my interest, a plot historian. 00:08:45 Speaker 3: I haven't told you yet, but. 00:08:47 Speaker 2: The plot hound is the state dog of North Carolina. There's a strong case that this was our first maid in America hound. But kind of like building a Ford truck in twenty twenty three, we had to bring in some overseas materials. We're going to jump right into the story with mister John. Where did these dogs come from? So, mister John, there's such a rich history of plot hounds in North Carolina, which is where they got started. 00:09:17 Speaker 3: Tell me that story. 00:09:19 Speaker 1: Well, I used a good word their story. I called it a saga. In seventeen sixty, there were two brothers who came from Germany, a Palatinate area of Germany. There was a great mass migration of Germans from that area to colonbial America, and the story. The saga goes that they were the sons of a German gamekeeper. They brought with them some what we would call plot dogs, the ancestors of plots, one of which was yellow and the rest were brown colored, which means they were brendled. 00:10:01 Speaker 2: This is the foundation piece of the plot hound story known far and wide in plot circles. 00:10:06 Speaker 3: The two brothers from Germany. 00:10:08 Speaker 2: Their father was a gamekeeper, a guy who took care of the large property of some type of royalty, and he sends his boys to the English colonies future America with some of his prize hunting dogs, brindle and yellow colored hunting dogs. If we were building a car, the dogs would be the engine and the brothers would be the power train. And please note how mister John referred to these as plot dogs, as in dawgs. That's a term of endearment. It means something. I now want to go back to the man I just rode around with with the interesting last name of plot. This is Bob Plot and he's jumping in right where mister John left off. 00:10:54 Speaker 4: The story we always told him was told generation for generation was my fourth great grandfather said, man, this just there's no future here for my kids. I'm sending my two boys and the only thing of real value I have to America, and it's these five of these dogs. And three of them are supposed to be brindle colored dogs. Two of them are supposed to be light colored or buckskin type dogs. 00:11:16 Speaker 2: Did he just say my fourth great grandfather, Yes, he did. Bob's fourth great grandfather would have been the father of the German brothers that mister John was talking about. But this is going to get dramatic real quick, so brace yourself. 00:11:35 Speaker 4: They his brother died because you know, the conditions on the ships took two months to get to America. They were terrible, bad food, bad water. Anyway, legend has it that he died buried at sea. So here's this kid, sixteen years old at most, and he's like, man, all along, five dogs, gets to Philadelphia, He's got to go and then does The version I always heard was that they were coming to America to be contract hunters in Newburn, North Carolina, which at that time was the largest German settlement on the East Coast. But they didn't have you'd think, oh, it's the frontier and it was. But they had blacksmiths and wheelwrights and as they didn't have hunters. So so that was a theory and what we're always told. But now the other theory is they arrived in Philadelphia and just went down the wagon road and went straight to the Pied Mine in North Carolina, where we know they did end up. But the story I was always told was the real poignant story was his two brothers, my third great grandfather, George, his brother, they're in route. They got five dogs with them. They can't speak English, you know, they're Germans. When George got here, they still referred to him. Even his son Henry, who came to Haywood County later, they referred to him as the Old German because they still had these strong German accents, still spoke German. 00:12:54 Speaker 2: We've just covered a ton of ground really quickly. Enoch, one of the brothers, has died. Johannes lives and brings the five dogs from Germany with the intent of becoming a professional hunter in the colonies. Even two generations later, Bob said they called his great grandfather the Old German. Bob actually wrote an incredible book about the history and story of the plot Hound called Strike and Stay the story of the plot Hound. In it, he details this plot genesis story, which was handed down in his family. 00:13:30 Speaker 3: It's believed that the. 00:13:31 Speaker 2: Modern plot hound was bred and evolved directly from these five dogs that were on that ship. Some believe they were never outcrossed from those original five dogs. However, I've never personally met anyone who confessed to fully believing this. It's kind of like believing the most extravagant version of a fairy tale. It's just not really that functional. But I have some interesting news for you, and of all people, I hate to cast doubt on such a great story, but I'd advise you to not get too attached to it. 00:14:04 Speaker 3: Here's mister John. 00:14:08 Speaker 1: Here's where we got to stop him in it, And I surely hope I don't disappoint you. We can't prove this, We can't. I have worked on it and worked on it and thought I had found him, and it's not him. There is, to my knowledge, there is no Johannes plot. His name would have been George Plott, George Plutt senior. There's a George Plutt junior. He came he and his family together. They were well to do. They paid their manumission fee and they came down the o' wagon road to Mecklenburg County, North Carolina. That's where Charlotte is. He would have settled in what is now Cabaris County, which used to be part of Becklenburg. 00:14:57 Speaker 2: Now, so you're saying the story of Johannes Plott and his brothers, you're saying that's not necessarily true, right, And you're saying this is true. Is that George Plot And so George Plott isn't Johannes Plott. 00:15:09 Speaker 3: This is a semi wealthy guy. 00:15:12 Speaker 2: Okay, he was not to So this is the traditional The traditional story was Johannes Plott and this boy's his dad send him with dogs. 00:15:20 Speaker 3: And you're saying that's not necessarily what he can prove. 00:15:23 Speaker 1: It's what I'm saying. 00:15:26 Speaker 2: What he's saying is this, they've never found written record of a lone teenager named Johannes Plott bringing dogs from Germany to fully corroborate the traditional story. However, would lost or inaccurate records from the mid seventeen hundreds be all that surprising. Written records of that time would undoubtedly have been a dim record of reality. There is, however, record of a man named George Plott coming over with his family, just no dogs. I want to see what Bob Plott has this about this, and don't think for a minute these are trivial matters in Appalachia. If I go mysteriously missing after this series, I'd like to commission Brent Reeves to come out of retirement and lead a reconnaissance team into the Great Smoky Mountains, not to avenge my death, but to do even more research so that we can get to the bottom of this. 00:16:21 Speaker 3: Here's Bob. 00:16:24 Speaker 4: Now. The other version is, and it may be true, it may not be true, is that his parents took him, that the family came together as the family unit. Again, all I'd ever heard from time I was as tall was the first story. It's been convoluted from the start, you know. Nineteen fifty nine first year book came out about plothounds. There were ten different stories in the first Year Book, and all of them were different, Like how can you put ten different stories in the same yearbook. I mean, one of them's got to be true. And so all I knew was was what they had told me. My father told me this was a story Bonne and told me, this was a story my grandfather's. You know, all these my uncle, my grandfather, my grandfather died by them. But my uncle's this is what my daddy told me. This is what his daddy told him. And so and I also had a kind of unique situation in that I'm just a third great grandson to George Plot, who founded the breed you know, who bottom over here from Germany supposedly, and most people are five six seventh great grandson. But see, my grandfather was born in the Civil War. Really yeah, So he died in nineteen forty four. I didn't know him, so, but my dad was at D Day he died, you know, when I was just still a kid too. So I was around all these old guys. So you don't have to go back, you know, just three generations and you're there. 00:17:45 Speaker 3: Wow. 00:17:45 Speaker 4: So they knew this stuff, you know, and it all made sense, It all tracked when I started researching it. So and I tried to document as much as I could. And once the Plot family got to North Carolina, it was very easy to document. Yea, they got there, it was a little more difficult. 00:18:04 Speaker 2: Bob believes that the name Johannes was anglicized to George, and so we're talking about the same person. Bob's grandfather was born during the Civil War, and Bob's father had him later in life. Bob is a rare fellow. You feel like you're touching history just by talking to him. The Plot's story holds some water for me simply for this reason, and he just clarified a distinct line in the story of what we're sure of and what we're not sure of. Once the Plots got to North America, the history is much easier to track, and it's clear that a man named George Plot arrived and quickly appeared with the unique line of hunting dogs not found anywhere else in the colonies, and these dogs that they had were uniquely different than these English strains of hounds. So let's clarify the controversy and look at the options. It's possible that no dogs came from Germany at all, but the Germans who came here acquired hunting dog stock that was already present in the colonies when they arrived, and from this emerged what would become the Plot hound. That's option one. There were definitely hounds, curves and all varieties of mongrel dogs as potential stock. Here or number two, the story is true, and they brought in a unique strain of German big game hounds that developed into a new identity in the New world under the guiding hand of this isolated family on the frontier. I'd like to note how quickly they emerged with a unique looking dog, which was brindle, while most of these English hounds were not brindle at all. However, as my friend Alvin once told me, the brindle color is a recessive gene and almost all dogs. If you mix up a bunch of dogs, it isn't long before you get that brindle coat. 00:19:56 Speaker 3: Hmmm. 00:19:58 Speaker 2: So maybe this unique brindle's stuff isn't entirely relevant regardless, Bob, mister John, and the whole lot of Plot connoisseurs agreed the period between the seventeen fifties and eighteen oh three is a mystery. But Henry Plot we just saw his old cabin in North Carolina. By the time he showed up, he had a line of dogs fully established in the region as reputable brindle bear dogs. So if option two is right and the family story is correct, and the stock did come from Germany, what were they doing with the dogs over there? 00:20:35 Speaker 4: Here's Bob, So I think these guys are like that works, that works together. And I think over multiple generations, going back probably five or six generations before my family came here, this breed was evolving into that. So sometime around either seventeen forty two seventeen fifty, depending on. 00:20:55 Speaker 3: The Germans were using these dogs for what over there. 00:20:58 Speaker 4: Boar hunting mostly and anything. There were multipurpose dogs because they used them for herding, they used them for hunting, but they were already on big game. Whatever they needed to do, that's what they used them for, you know. But they had great value. So all these dogs were available, you know. But the most thing it was really unique was most it was the Germanic origins because most of the American purebread dogs come from their British house, whereas its plihound came from Germany. But they're all applied. 00:21:25 Speaker 2: And what's interesting at that time is he would have been sending his sons to a new world that was known for hunting in wilderness, So it would have made sense that he would have given he would have sent his kids. 00:21:39 Speaker 3: With tools that they would have needed to survive. And thrive in this place. 00:21:45 Speaker 2: I really want to believe this version of the story, and many do, but some don't. But nobody complains about it not being. 00:21:53 Speaker 3: A good story. 00:21:54 Speaker 2: But as we've seen in many of our other deep dives into American history, myths can become told so many times they become infallible truth. What's your gut telling you right now with just this little bit of information you have. You don't have all the info yet, but you're probably leaning the direction. I really appreciate Bob's perspective, and of all people, he's got the right to have one. This is his family's story that he heard while sitting on the knee of his family in a rocking chair in North Carolina. He's kind of become the caretaker of this story, which I'd say is very noble. But he's the first to acknowledge that it's hard to know exactly how it went down. However, once the calendar rolled into the eighteen hundreds, the evidence is clear and undeniable. The more I understand about history, especially that far back in American history there just wasn't a lot of documentation was so, I mean, these stories have like oral tradition does hold a lot of relevance to these kind of stories, and obviously there's documentation of land records and all this stuff, like these people did actually exist. But so, you know, I want to say that because it wasn't like it is now, where every single thing we do is documented. I mean, like if I go down here and buy a coffee, somebody two hundred years from now will know it. Yes, they'll say, Clay Nukam was in North Carolina with Bob Plott on the morning of July seventh. 00:23:26 Speaker 3: Man. Back in those days, that wasn't the case. 00:23:28 Speaker 4: No, And that's a great point because up until eighteen hundred, passenger ships didn't have a cargo manifest supposedly, or some of them did, but a lot of them didn't, so sometimes you didn't know who was on there who wasn't. But John Plot he had supposedly. I never saw it, but I know people, reputable people who did, who said there was a manifest, a cargo manifest that listed the five dogs now and that they were listed as three brenda or tiger stripe dogs and two solid colored buckskin dogs. Now. Again I never saw that. I don't know, but again that was oral tradition. But I know four people who have never lied to me before, who swear to God that they saw it. 00:24:09 Speaker 2: Greater mysteries have been solved, but at this point it's unlikely this ever will be. Paper products from the seventeen fifties usually don't accidentally get preserved, and I want you to hear these stories so you can make a decision for yourself what you believe. But truthfully, what you or I believe about the origins of these dogs really isn't that relevant, because today what's not disputed is that plot hounds are widely distributed across America and even much of the world, and are a top notch big game hound. So let's just take a time out for a minute and clarify exactly what we do know. George or Johannes Plot, without dispute, did come from Germany on September twelfth, seventeen fifty on a ship called the Priscilla. There is documentation of a signature G Plot on that car manifest. 00:25:01 Speaker 3: Just no dogs. 00:25:02 Speaker 2: And to give a big time fast forward, high level view, this George Plot would die in Lincoln County, North Carolina in eighteen ten at the age of seventy six, So all that adds up, and it's well documented that he had a pack of hunting dogs, which he turned over to his son, Henry, who would then move to the Great Smoky Mountains. Bob and I were just at Henry's home place. The mystery is simply, where did these dogs come from. Here's Bob with a summary of the deep Plot family history describing their movement through North Carolina. 00:25:37 Speaker 4: We know for a fact. Now up to that point, we can speculate. You can have this camp over here saying yeah, they went to New Bernard, the camp over here saying no, they went from Philadelphia to the area around Salisbury. Either one could be true, but we know for sure that by seventeen sixties they were there. There's lane grants, there's marriage certificates, theres death certificates, theres the court records signifying yes, George Plot was here, George Platt got married here, George Platt started having a family here. And there's records of other people talking about these dogs. Sometimes they just called them Brendle bear dogs. Sometimes they talked about dogs on the frontier, literally defending households now because this was Cherokee country and Kataba Country at that time. I mean, this was where they were living on the east side of the Kataba River was frontier. You know, this was before the French and Indian or right bout the time of the French and Indian War. So my third great grandfather's there. He starts having, like everybody did back then, a bunch of kids, and most all of them are born there in what's now Caberts County around Concord. Well. Again like this great manifest destiny of American history, it's like, we got to find something better. So they go a little bit further. They go into Idol County and they go in across the Kataba River and become the first white settlers across the Kataba River. And that's where George settled there, and that's where his boys started really hunting hard and doing a lot of different stuff. But Henry, who was my great great uncle, he and his brother in law, Jonathan Osborne, who was another German immigrant, they came up here sometime around eighteen oh three with the mind to settle and supposedly they took the dogs with me. And here is Heywood County. Yes, so there's an area there called Pleasant Garden, beautiful beautiful area along the Pigeon River, and he thought, man, this would be a great place to set up homestead, plant a proper corn and that's what in his brother in law did, had the dogs with him. Well, the corn crop failed, they could get their first taste of a mountain winter, and they're like, man, Jonathan's like, I'm getting the heck out of here, you know, I'm going back down where it's a little bit warmer. Henry, being stubborn, Plot goes, Nah, I'm staying, man, I'm keeping my dogs with me. And so he later credits the dogs of keeping him alive during that first winter, you know, keep me helping him put food on the fire. Well, then again, following that ruther of or Trace, he goes up over Pigeon Gap, comes down into what's now Waynesville, down into what's now Hazelwood, and then goes follows the creek up this beautiful valley to the confluence of Richland Dix Creek and says, now we'll build a house right there, and builds a cabin there. 00:28:20 Speaker 2: Where Henry lives became known as Plot Valley. It's pretty cool how many locations in the region are named after the Plots. There's even a range of mountains called the Plot Balsam Range, which is on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina. There's a historical marker there that you can go and see. Here's mister John with another unique location. 00:28:41 Speaker 1: Name Famous Plot was the brother to John Plot. Henry Plutt would have been his father. He had a line of Plot dogs that were just superb. One was called Porter Porter lost his life in Porter Dye Gap. 00:28:57 Speaker 3: He's dog and a bear Porter dyed. On the map you could find Porter Dye Gap. 00:29:02 Speaker 1: Can't now, that's water Rock Knob. Okay, get on the parkway, go water Rock Knob. Porter Dyke Gap is there. Well. I had to go to Porter Dyke Gap because I want to feel the history. Didn't want to read it, won't feel it. And you know, you visit these places and it's Hallod Ground. It's Hallock ground. To a person who likes to bear hunt, run a cone, tre apostle or something like that, you know it's it's Hallod ground. It is. That's that's the thing that endears me to the pluck Hog. It's a just tremendous, overwhelming pride and what we have been bequeathed. 00:29:45 Speaker 2: I hope you're beginning to pick up from these men just a fraction of what these bear dogs mean to these people. When's the last time you heard someone speak of being bequeathed the royal heritage of a mountain strain of American bear dog. You haven't, my brethren, We've found ourselves in the midst of something unique, unknown to the mainstream, and deeply American. Here's Bob with more on Henry plot down in Plot Valley. 00:30:17 Speaker 4: Well, by the eighteen ten or so, he'd honed pretty much the whole valley. The dogs were becoming famous. That they were. You know, people made Brandy to make a living too, They did that. He had a steal steals in his will. He's ignifized out. Yeah, and he too had a prolific family, I mean multiple sons. 00:30:38 Speaker 2: And when you say the dogs became famous, let's describe what that would mean to someone who wouldn't even understand hunting culture. Maybe yeah, regionally, especially if these dogs are helping this guy acchoire game for food on his table. I mean that kind of stuff quickly gets out. Oh yeah, so, I mean someone with a past of hounds. And the other thing is that this is not recreational hunting, and during that time as well hunters and the idea of being a hunter. I mean this is right in the time of Daniel Boone when Daniel Boone's. 00:31:14 Speaker 4: Daniel Boone lid right up the river from the Plot family and yachtkin read out valley. 00:31:18 Speaker 2: Yeah, And so I mean, to be a hunter was a widespread cultural very much a compliment like these guys are good hunters. I mean that was essentially like saying, this is a good family that is well off. 00:31:31 Speaker 4: And not only that, but the good hunters usually had the good dogs, and so those dogs had value. I mean, we've got in our Plot family, we've got a bean rifle which today would sell for probably hundreds one thousand dollars that was sold that was traded for a dog, you know, in the early eighteen hundreds, and the flint lock rifle. And there was Stanley Hicks, oh deer friend of mine has passed away now his third great grandfather sold an entire valley for a rifle, keepskin, and a dog. 00:32:02 Speaker 3: So I mean probably felt like you got the better end of the. 00:32:04 Speaker 4: Absolutely bragged about it, you know. So you start hearing this reputation. People started talking about these these some of them just called them Rendel bear dogs. Some of them start calling them Plot dogs because the Plot family had them, you know. And what was really interesting about this area at that time was between eighteen hundred and really about really about World War two. Trains didn't come into Ashville in eighteen eighty something was twelve hundred people living there. By nineteen hundred, when the train was there, it was the third largest city in North Carolina. But between that time, between the time Henry Plot first got here in the early eighteen hundreds and that time, it was kind of a time capsule. You know, people here there was no really connection to the outside world because trains didn't get to Waynesville until eighteen eighties, didn't get the Murphy until eighteen nineties. You couldn't get in here or out of here except by a wagon or horse. Yeah, and the roads were terrible. If it was raining and you could forget it. Snowing could definitely forget it. Yeah, game was abundant. There weren't many white people even living here then, and the few that were were farmers, subsistence farmers, hunters, and like you said, that was a big deal. Man. You had to hunt It wasn't a matter of like, oh, I just enjoy hunting, to go get me a trophy. This was about I got to put food on the table. We got to smoke some meat for the winter. 00:33:25 Speaker 3: These dogs had some real legitimate value. 00:33:29 Speaker 4: Most definitely, And people forget they were looking for multi purpose dogs. Yeah, they were looking for dogs to defend their homesteads from a time of the Indian Wars all the way up to the Civil War when deserters were coming back and you know, trying to attack homesteads and that sort of thing. And then you have the fact that you know, people think about fences. Back then, fences were you used to keep livestock out. Yeah, In other words, you build a fence around your garden to keep livestock out. You let your pigs and your cows. You notched their ears or gave them a mark, and they wentere range and you kind of knew where they were, and you'd go check on them two or three times a year. But in the fall you'd go get the dogs, and the dogs we hurt them back. 00:34:12 Speaker 2: So what I'm hearing you say is that these dogs were guard dogs absolutely, so herding dogs, yes, and then they would have been what we'll define later, but as tree dogs, dogs that run game that can climb up trees. This gets as caught up on the plot family history, their frontier life, and how they were using these dogs. And the term tree dog is an important distinction amongst hounds. This means that the dog will stay and bark at the base of the tree that the game they're pursuing has climbed, or as Henry Plot probably would have said, had clumb not all will do this. And it's a badge of functional honor to be called a tree dog. And as a quick lineage summary, I think we've got to go through this plot history just real quick so you can stay on track. George or Johannes Plott was born in seventeen thirty four and immigrated from Germany. Interestingly, Daniel Boone was born in seventeen thirty four too, so George Plott had a bunch of kids. But one of them was Henry Plott, who was born in seventeen seventy. 00:35:20 Speaker 3: We've been to his home place. 00:35:21 Speaker 2: He was a hunter and as the story goes, he was handed down his father's dogs. Henry had eleven children, one of which was John Plott. Who was born in eighteen thirteen and was a big time hunter. He had a son named Montroval Plot, who was probably the first to be recognized as having plot dogs. Montraval had a bunch of kids, but the most famous of his kids, and maybe the most famous plot hunter of all, was von Plott, who lived into the nineteen sixties in Heywood County, North Carolina. Bob Plott, the guy I'm talking to right now, knew Vaughn personally when he was a kid. 00:35:56 Speaker 3: It was one of his uncles. 00:35:58 Speaker 2: However, to be fair and to throw a wrench in our story, it's not entirely known how these dogs arose into modern history. 00:36:07 Speaker 3: With the plot name attached to them. 00:36:09 Speaker 2: It seems evident the trail is clear that this family had a unique fingerprint on these. 00:36:15 Speaker 3: Dogs, like no doubt. 00:36:17 Speaker 2: But could they have just been the most prominent folks using these brindle bear dogs that were developed by a wider community. Here's mister John and he's going to give his opinion on the development of the plot hound in Appalachia. 00:36:32 Speaker 3: I asked him where he thought they came from. 00:36:35 Speaker 1: Now, to your question, not every plot dog came from the Plot family. Taylor Crockett has told me that they were a type of dog rather than a breed at one time, and they were numerous breeders, numerous hunters. You couldn't have very many dogs because they weren't some dog food. Back thee it fed them scraps. We watch you feed them normally dog corn bread. There are three types of people that settled western North Carolina. One where to be the townsfolk settled in towns. The other would be farmers who owned the best low lying bottom land farming land. And then there were folks. There were three types. There were folks, and I smile when I say this. They were folks I call the Branchwater Mountaineers. They lived up the hallows at the head of the branch. To get to their cabin you had to take a slid rode in. There was a log cabin there with the dog, truck, kitchen. Dog slept under the house. Everywhere that man went, his dog went with him. He took his rifle if he was working. If he heard the dog, tree picked up the rifle, left to work and went to the dog. That was the supper for that night. But the Branchwater Mountaineers, those old families I think a lot in a large part responsible for what eventually became the Plot dog. 00:38:09 Speaker 2: Mister John appreciates the story of the German origins of the Plot hound stock, but doesn't fully buy it. 00:38:16 Speaker 3: He believes the dogs. 00:38:17 Speaker 2: Were likely developed from stock that was here, and that this breed of brindle bear dogs weren't the sole doing of the Plot family. And just to clarify, it wasn't necessarily the Plots who claimed one hundred percent ownership of this brendle bear dog. It just kind of happened, and people often believe what seems to be an easy narrative. There's an argument to be made that the Plot simply became the dominant spokesman for this type of dog. As John's mentor Taylor Crockett told him, it's important to remember that there was no United Kennel Club, and these people weren't trying to start a breed. 00:38:52 Speaker 3: These hill folk families simply. 00:38:54 Speaker 2: Needed dogs that could get the job done on bears, hogs, and coon and these brindle dogs were doing it. 00:39:01 Speaker 3: It was only. 00:39:02 Speaker 2: Later that we got interested in where they came from. I've now got a question for Bob, so tell me about from eighteen hundred to nineteen hundred, what happened with the plot hound breed, because at this time it's not even called no, no, it's not a plot hound breed. It's just this kind of regional phenomenon. This family talk to me about how they like the dogs became distributed and how that happened. 00:39:27 Speaker 4: Two things happened there that I really think played a huge role in making the plot hownd what it is today. I think because we were in that time capsule, so to speak, it allowed the dogs to get skipped better and better and better, you know. And von Platt talked about his father, Montreville Plot was born in eighteen fifty. He talked about what he called the Toasac network. I think I actually named that. But settlers from upstate South Carolina, North Georgia, East Tennessee, Southwest Virginia would come riding in on horses and mules with toasacks and get puppies. And the understanding was that, you know, we get you a puppyre, we sell you a puppy, or we trade puppies. Is that we work together. You know, you got to keep this bloodline as close as we can. We're gonna there's gonna be stuff introduced into it at times, but the most part, we're will try to do a lot of line breed and we're gonna try to do some things to keep this what's working. Yeah, And so they really had. And then of course then you had other families who took that and said, well, I want to go this direction with it, and they did and they did well. But you had this network of people that were doing this that were not named. Some of them were related, some of our cousins and whatnot. But that time between there, between eighteen hundred and nineteen hundred, the breed was continuing to evolve. But even then it was still more kind of I think what I have been a regional phenomenon, except for around nineteen hundred, people started coming in here. Once a train was in here, the train was train changed everything. You can take a train end all the way to Murphy. You could get off in Proctor, you go up on Hazel Creek and hunt and all these communities had hunting camps. All these some of them were affluent people, some of them were just common people. So branch Ricky, who was arguably the most famous or one of the top probably three or four famous athletes, in the world at that time. You came here and hunted, you know. He was credited with later signing Jackie robertson the professional Baseball contract Integrating Professional Baseball in nineteen forty seven. But he came here in thirty five and was working for the Saint Louis Cardinals then. And I've got a letter on Saint Louis Cardinal letterhead of Ricky writing back to Vonplat saying, man, you guys got the professional stamding of professional athletes, you know, running these dogs, and I want to buy these dogs. I want to get these dogs. 00:41:42 Speaker 2: And so basically, when this area opened up, these hunters started getting some national attention because of their their prowess as hunters. People started coming in here. There started to be writers, big name people coming in and talking about and they were like, hey, there's these hunters down in North Carolina and they've got these dogs. And again, up until this point, this isn't a recognized This is still just kind of this regional phenomenon, these guys with dogs. And obviously by the nineteen hundreds it would have spread beyond the Plot family most definitely. 00:42:20 Speaker 3: It would have. It would have been dogs all over the country. 00:42:23 Speaker 4: Yeah, I've got shipping receipts from early nineteen hundreds of plot hounds being shipped Arizona. You know, plot howns being shipped different parts of the country. By the nineteen thirties, those dogs were going for one hundred and twenty five dollars each, which was a lot of money at that time. Yeah, but backing up a little bit to your point. By nineteen hundred, early nineteen hundreds, when these train was here, people could get here a little bit better. Writers were coming here. You know. Raymond camports writers, sports writers. Raymond Camp was a writer for the New York Times. So imagine this New York Times. You don't think about New York Times that way. New York Times had a full time out door commns named Raymond Camp who wrote three articles a week. 00:43:04 Speaker 2: So by the nineteen hundreds, the dogs are getting national attention and they're being called plot hounds. But where are the first written accounts of them being called plots Because to my knowledge, there is no record of the early plot family in the seventeen hundreds and into the middle eighteen hundreds calling them plot hounds. They might have simply been referred to as the plots hounds, as in the Plot family has some hounds, not as in a proper noun plot hounds. But at some point there was a big shift in ownership. Here's mister John. 00:43:41 Speaker 1: I have found as early as the nineteen hundreds of New York Times articles about plot dogs, yeah, and hunting plot dogs and hunting paar in western North Carolina. So believe it or not. As early as that was this national publicity about the Plot family and their plot dogs. 00:44:00 Speaker 2: So by the early nineteen hundreds they're referring to them as proper noun plot hounds, which is pretty compelling evidence that they'd probably been calling them that for a long time. The first known photograph of a plot was taken in nineteen oh six. A handsome, dark hound looking dog with a frosty muzzle sits happily. 00:44:21 Speaker 3: In an old school family portrait. It's pretty cool. 00:44:25 Speaker 2: You can see that photo along with countless other incredible images in Bob's book Striking Stay. You really should order it. Every one of you should have a copy of Striking Stay. But the dog in that first plot photo came from the stock of Montraval Plot, who would have been the great grandson of the original immigrant Johannas or George Plot and Montreval would have been Bob's great uncle. 00:44:49 Speaker 3: And not to throw a possum and the egg house of our beautiful story. But it's just too relevant to ignore. 00:44:57 Speaker 2: Montrovale Plot, who's known as one of the modern patriarchs of the Plot story. He's the first one we really know a whole lot about, primarily because of his son Vaughn. But old man Montraval was adamant that his dogs weren't hounds at all, but rather plot curs. He corrected anyone that called them hounds. Bob told me that kerr is the transliteration of the Welsh word key, which is a purebred and highly coveted hunting dog. So Mantraval, only two generations removed from Europe, had some allegiance to the idea of. 00:45:34 Speaker 3: A cur dog. 00:45:36 Speaker 2: Today, however, the modern usage of the word cur is multi layered. 00:45:41 Speaker 3: Some might use that like a curse. 00:45:42 Speaker 2: Word for a dog that's nothing but an old cur or, you know, like a mixed breed mutt. But there are also some legitimate breeds like black mouth, stephens, curd and tree and curve. It's complicated, but this is bear grease. Did you expect the day off from complicated drama? 00:46:00 Speaker 3: I hope not. 00:46:02 Speaker 2: I want to get back to mister John and ask him a pointed question about why the dogs carry the name Plot. Remember, what we're in search of is the authenticity of the general arc of this story as it relates to the Plot family, because it's wildly interesting and just to be frank, mister John is skeptical of the origin story of the Plot hound and these boys bringing over five dogs from Germany. So my question to him is, why is this breed named after the Plots if they weren't the sole creators of them? 00:46:35 Speaker 3: Man, I hope I don't get in trouble for this. 00:46:38 Speaker 2: What you're telling me doesn't surprise me. Like the traditional story I've known and I mean just kind of believe was probably for the most part true. But one thing I know that humans do very well is streamline stories to kind of make it fit an easy narrative. Would you say that that's happened place? 00:46:58 Speaker 1: And also, the Plot family were the most identifiable, the better known of the hunters and we're written about, and at that time the family members were getting out in around, serving in the military, serving in World War One, for example, they just were better known and could communicate better. I know, I tried to explain to some folks. I said, I know it may be disappointing to you, but there's an other side to this too that's just as fascinating, if not more intriguing than that. I've just I used the term here first on this couch pure Americana. It's just a very intriguing account and story about Plot dogs. 00:47:51 Speaker 3: Pure Americana. That's a good phrase. 00:47:55 Speaker 2: What I'm hearing mister John say is that the Plot family might have just risen as the most prominent family hunting these Appalachian brindled bear dogs, and thus the dogs were named after them, and that in and of itself would be completely fair and reasonable. They deserve to have this dog named after him. That's not what we're trying to get at. But what I'm also hearing him say is that it really doesn't matter. And that's really what I'm hearing Bob say too. He's just interested in preserving the traditional family story, which he's done an incredible job at, and the story absolutely deserves. 00:48:35 Speaker 3: To be saved. 00:48:36 Speaker 2: We just don't know how it all happened, but we still have this hound or this cur as old Montrable said, that was developed here in an incredible fashion. Regardless of intent or who did what. Bob and mister John are on the same team. They're actually friends. Bob quotes mister John in his books Striking Stay. These men both have dedicated their lives to plot hounds and their history. And to go back to this idea about the plot family being dominant, this kind of stuff happens all the time in life. Some activity is happening and gaining popularity. In this case, it was hunting these brindled dogs, and then a prominent person arises and the activity becomes deeply associated with them. For example, think about bow hunting legend Fred Bhaer. He didn't invent bowhunting. He was just a guy that came around at the right time, was incredibly good, was a good businessman, a good marketer, and genuinely ushered us into the modern era of bowhunting. But he didn't create bow hunting. It's possible the plot family was this for these dogs. Now, I still think it's kind of risky to fully buy into what mister John is saying. I mean, the data points are extremely compelling and It's undisputed that this family had a unique line of dogs that stretch back to their patriarch, George Plot. It all goes back to the question, did George or Johannas have the these five dogs on that ship or did careless record keeping delete that from history? Or is it a fabricated myth? And if it's a myth, who and why did they make it up? And man, it is a good story if they made it up. I love this kind of stuff. It's really in the realm with the Black Panther Bigfoot. Are you a believer or not? I have a feeling Gary believer. Nukem will believe those dogs were on that ship. 00:50:25 Speaker 3: And if Brent Reeves would have been around, he'd have been an undercover warden. 00:50:29 Speaker 2: On that ship, dressed like a pilgrim trying to catch some outlaws. Maybe by the end of this you'll have a sense of what you think actually happened. 00:50:41 Speaker 3: But what's not disputed is that the. 00:50:43 Speaker 2: Plot family were the most prominent, well known plot dog hunters in Appalachia when the calendar rolled into the nineteen hundreds. Here's Bob bringing us into the finish line of the official formation of the Plot hound breed. 00:50:59 Speaker 3: This this is big. 00:51:01 Speaker 4: So that's all of a sudden, be like, man, I want to hear more about this. I want to see more about this, you know, And so they come here. So by thirty five, the Ricky thing kind of exploded. By then you got guys in the Midwest who are coming here after, Like a senator from Wisconsin came here and he went back and started telling people about it. Well, all of a sudden, guys from Michigan and Illinois and all over the place are saying, man, I want some of those dogs. And like you said, and you're so correct. Without all that it would have, you know, as much as I love my family, as much as I love the history of the breed, it would have been really nothing more than a regional phenomenon without that sort of recognition. But when it did, man, it took off. And then all of a sudden there became a crime of crusade for to get the dog registered as an official breed. And so that happened in nineteen forty six when the UKC finally sanctioned that and approved that. And if you look at the first I think there's about one hundred dogs registered at that time eighty seven of them roughly were all either owned by Vane Plot, John Plott, Taylor, Crockett, Gola, Fergus. 00:52:10 Speaker 3: All those guys would have been from right here, yeah, right here, yeah, North Carolina. 00:52:13 Speaker 4: Taylor was living in Macon County at that time. Vaughn John were living right here in Haywood. Gola was living right over in Jackson. 00:52:21 Speaker 2: So nineteen forty six, yeah, the plot Hound became a United Kennel Club UKC official breed. 00:52:29 Speaker 3: And these guys right here. 00:52:31 Speaker 2: In western North Carolina were the ones who defined what the breed was. They presumably presented a case to the UKC said we've got two hundred years history, We've got two hundred years of breeding. 00:52:45 Speaker 3: They had to prove that, I. 00:52:47 Speaker 2: Mean some of the stuff that you have today, like these old records of what these old men said and what their dogs look like, and old pictures and like, they basically built a case for this breed, its own specific breed. 00:53:02 Speaker 3: And that was a big, big moment for huge for the plot Hound. 00:53:06 Speaker 4: Huge, huge. You can't you can't put that in really any perspective, how big it was. I mean it was because here you got the guys, the original family members I say original dating backed. I mean, Henry Plott would have been Von's great great grandpa. Henry Plott was my great great uncle. So you had that direct connection. You had these multiple generations, and like I say, of the first one hundred dogs, a eighty seven of them came from those guys. And guess what, the rest of them were all bought from them by people in the Midwest. So it all came from the same thing. Now, give the Midwestern guys credit. Once they got them, boy, they marketed them. Man, all of a sudden, it became like, let's start advertising, let's start doing this. I started doing it. 00:53:47 Speaker 2: And so when in the late forties when this happened, this is like such a powerful time too in American hot Yeah, world War two. 00:53:55 Speaker 3: Yeah, world War two is ended. 00:53:57 Speaker 2: All these guys come back with these young guys come back from war, and there's there's money here, there's time that they've never had. America's kind of popped. 00:54:07 Speaker 4: Yep. 00:54:07 Speaker 2: There became a big demand for the plot Hound, huge all across the country. 00:54:13 Speaker 4: And but yeah, that's the thing. I mean, you come back to this, just this greatest generation the guys are coming back from the war. Economies booming. People have a little bit of disposable income. You've got a railroad system. Now the roads are actually getting in here where you can drive a car in pretty much anywhere. And so that network across the country which is boom, you know. Yeah, And those Midwestern guys give them credit. They were like, man, we want to promote this. You know, magazines start coming out, you know, yeah, the full Hunter's Horn, Yes, yes, yes, and so people start subscribing to them, and then it just became this big push for we got to find a way to support this even more. And so by I think it was late fifties, the National plotoun Association was formed to kind of promote the breed. You know. 00:55:03 Speaker 2: In nineteen forty six, the UKC recognized the plot hound as an official breed. In eighty seven, of the first one hundred dogs registered were from a very tight circle in western North Carolina, and a bunch of them had the last named plot. By the late nineteen fifties, the fame of the plot hound as a bear hog and coon dog was soaring across the country. You've got to wonder if those old Branchwater mountaineers carrying away brendle puppies, and toasacs had any sense they were building something that would become a mainstream breed of American hound, I think we can undoubtedly say they didn't. As we closed down on this first episode of this series, I want to ask mister John a question, a personal one. I think, to me the most the most special thing about plot dogs and being here in North Carolina, regardless of the history, which really will never know all the details because it was during a time when records just weren't being taken very well, and. 00:56:08 Speaker 1: Fact it becomes legend, legend becomes fantasy. 00:56:11 Speaker 2: But the thing that is special that can't be taken away. And I want to ask you, what does a plot dog mean to you? Being here in the mountains of North Carolina, being a bear hunter, knowing some of these old old guys that dedicate their lives to the plot breed like you have. 00:56:28 Speaker 3: Now, what does it mean to you? 00:56:29 Speaker 1: Well, to the person who never hunts, never has hunted, it wouldn't mean anything. But in my view, it is a tremendous pride. Unselfishly, I will tell you that it is a pride that I have that not everyone has, because not everyone's been born in North Carolina. Not everyone lives in western North Carolina. Not everyone has been around a plot dog. Not everyone has had an interest in the history of this fabulary, breed of dog. And so it's a tremendous overwhelming pride. It's a state dog in North Carolina. 00:57:10 Speaker 3: Do you know what a plot dog is? 00:57:11 Speaker 1: No, don't believe I do. I said, well, I'm gonna teach you. It's a state dog in North Carolina. 00:57:17 Speaker 3: A lot of kids, you know, Uh, it's. 00:57:19 Speaker 1: Usually grocery store cashiers. I get you. But it's a tremendous overwhelming pride. And I can go places where these events took place, and Clay, this is just funny feeling comes over you. That's a funny feeling like you're right back in time. 00:57:44 Speaker 2: The most compelling thing about plot Hounds for me, from the very first time I heard this story was the deep history tied with these dogs. Their story is kind of a hound version of America. On the next episode, we'll hear more of the modern story of the plot hound and hear from some of the people who've dedicated their lives to them. I can't thank you enough for listening to Bear Grease. Please tell a friend about our endeavors here and leave us a review on iTunes, and be sure to order Bob Plott's book Strike and Stay. You can find it all over the internet. Bob's actually a prolific and very good writer and has written all kinds of history books about Southern Appalachian. 00:58:39 Speaker 3: Be sure to check out the meat Eater. 00:58:41 Speaker 2: Dot com for just about all of your outdoor gear needs, ranging from optics to rifles, to coolers, boots, backpacks, tents, knives, and outdoor cooking supplies. 00:58:53 Speaker 3: We've got it all. 00:58:55 Speaker 2: I can't wait to talk to all those hillbillies on the render next week. 00:59:00 Speaker 3: We'll see that