00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to this country Life. I'm your host, Brent Rieves from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my stories and the 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 and teach you My journey is a Coon Hunter Part one. It was a children's story published in nineteen sixty one that smoldered old bookshelves with moderate sales until nineteen seventy four. That's when they made a movie telling the story of a grown man's perspective and memory of coonhound in his life with him as a child. I saw the movie Where the Red Fern Grows when I was eight, and before the movie ended, I knew I was a coon hunter. And just like Billy Coleman starting out in the story, I didn't have a dog. It would be a few years before I got one. And let me tell you what I did. I never looked back. We're talking about all things coon hunting. From what I looked for and picking out a puppy to getting them to treat. It's a coon hunting Juwilee. This week on This Country Life podcast, the first I'm going to tell you a story. This story I'm about to tell you could have come straight out of where the red fern grows. The only difference is this one is true. And while Billy Coleba was desired to have a coon dog was fictional, it was very real in the heart of my father and would eventually be passed down to me. This is one of my favorite stories of all time, and it's the one where my dad and his friend Raymond stole a coon dog. Nobody Barney lived less than a half a mile from the house where my dad grew up. He had been his neighbor since the moment my dad first saw the light of day on April sixteenth, nineteen thirty seven, in that very same house. This would have been in the late forties, when my dad was ten or twelve years old. Nobody had a good dog, a really good dog, and one that he guarded like it was a child. During this time, coon hides were bringing top dollar and having a good coonown was just like having a second income, and most of the time it paid more than being a hand at the saw meal. Dad and Raymond would go hunting with him, and like anyone I've ever taken with me that liked it, they liked it a lot. And anytime Nobody was leaving the house to go there, there stood Dad and Raymond on the porch waiting to go with him. Thirty plus years later, and at about the same age as my dad in this story, Miss Alay Barnett, Nobody's sister, lived there with him, and she'd fixed me cookies and a glass of sweet milk anytime I just happened to be walking by and ambled up in their yard, which was just about any time I could smell her bacon cookies. I'd sat on the same porch by Dad and Raymond waited on me, eating cookies and listening to nobody in Miss Ali tell me how much I looked like my dad and walked like my grandpa, except there was no coon hunt afterwards, just a heart full of old stories and a belly full of warm cookies and coal milk. They were good folks, They were real good folks. Nobody's dog was a tree and walker, and his name was Tiger, and as far as my dad knew, he was the best coon dog in the country, and not having many dogs to compare him to may have elevated his status to a kid. But he said if they went hunting, they nearly always brought coons home. Now that's the solid of a testimony for a coon hound that you can get. There was only one problem. Nobody had a job and could only go hunting on the weekends, which really wasn't a problem until school was let out for Thanksgiving and Christmas. Dad and Raymond's hunting had been limited to weekends only, just like nobody's. But now that school was out Friday night and Saturday night, that wasn't nearly enough time for two aspiring young houndsmen to get their fix on hunting, and no amount of begging to persuade Nobody to sacrifice a good night's rest when he had to be at work so early in the morning. Now, Dad said it was absolute torture to walk by and see Tiger tied out by his doghouse, knowing they weren't going to be able to go hunt that night. This is when the innocence of my father's youth took a dark turn. Dad said he he told his friend, well, if he won't take us hunting, we'll just take his dog. The plan was formulated when nobody went to bed, Dad and Raymond would slip up to the edge of the yard, remove Tiger's collar and fashion it back like he pulled lookes from him, and then they'd go up. The first night they did it, Dad said, they slipped up to the woods at the edge of the yard and waited for the lights to go out. When they did, they waited for a little bit, and he left Raymond to watch the house, and Belly crawled across that yard like he was sneaking up on the enemy bunk, hoping old Tiger didn't start barking, all the while watching the house for any signs of movement. He made it up to Tiger, who'd been watching him the whole time, wagging his tail. Dad took his collar off, fastened it back, and they led him a long way from the house with the lead rope he'd made from some haystring. He got out of the bum, and once they were far enough away they figured nobody couldn't hear Tiger barking. They cut him loose and the hunt was on. They treated a coon or two and as happy as they could be. They're planning to workship perfection. They'd gotten away with it, and when they were done, they walked Tiger back to within side of the house and let him go, knowing full well that he'd go back home, and he did. They hid their coons up in the barn that night and skin them later the next day, after nobody and everybody else had gone to work up in the day. They walked by and checking, sure enough, they're laid Tiger back on the chain, sleeping the day away mission accomplished. That was easy, so easy that they decided to do it again. They did this several nights over the winter school break, each taking turns doing the belly crawling while the other one was the lookout. Dad said they did it so much the tiger would be sitting outside his doghouse looking for him to slip into their hiding spot, waiting on him to go hunting. They did it. It was the same hide out till dark, crawl across the yard, hitched Tiger up to the homemade lead rope and fix his collar back exactly as it had been leaving nobody eating. No other answer for him to being off the chain other than he pulled out of it on his own. Now, Tiger always went home. It was the perfect victimless crime and one that they had no intention of stopping. One school started back, he said, if they could borrow a man's prize coon now without him knowing about it, and then they could surely slip out of the house and go hunting, because not only were they hiding their actions from Nobdee, but the Reeves family too. My great grandpa would not have approved of him borrowed someone's dog, especially one is valuable as that one. Folks didn't have a lot of pets back then, and you can bet if they were feeding a dog, he was serving a purpose, and one that could put food on the table and money in your pocket was more valuable than any. Dad told me he didn't know how many times they pulled that off, but it was a lot, he said. It all came to a screeching hault one night when it was Raymond's turn to fetch Tiger. He said, Tiger wasn't setting up waiting for him like he normally was, and they could see him under the night light, still in his house. They guessed him to still be sleeping, and deservedly so, after all, he had been hunting quite a lot during the weekends, not to mention all the times Dad and Raymond had him out during the week Dad said it was Raymond's turn to get Tiger, and he washed him crawl off toward the doghouse, ready to hit the woods and tree some coons. Then Raymond came crawling back and said, Buddy, something wrong with Tiger. It's breathing. Funny. Dad told there ain't nothing wrong with that dog. We hunt him every night this week, including last night. Was nothing wrong with him then, And when we checked on him this afternoon, I bet he's just sleeping in his house. I'll go get him, And off he went, crawling across the yard like an aggravated Gi Joe. To find that. Raymond was right, he said. He stopped right before he got to the doghouse and listen, and he can hear him in there breathing, kind of laboring to do it. He said it It sounded to kind of like he was snoring in and out. That's he didn't know what it was, but he whispered, come on, Tiger. Tiger got up walked out of the doghouse. He said. He reached up to grab his collar, and he said it was so tight that he could barely get a finger under it to take it home. Nobody had apparently grown tired of time. Nobody had apparently grown tired of Tiger slipping out of his collar and had been slowly tightening it up every morning when he'd leave for work, he'd come home and there was Tiger on the chamberside his doghouse. He'd go to bed and wake up only discover his prize coon dog was loose once again the next morning from slipping out of his collar. Dad said, if we would have took Tiger out one more night, when nobody found him loose again the next morning, that he would have tightened his collar up so much it would have choked him to death. Before nobody got home from work that day, Dad loosened his collar and they never barred him again. And that's just how that happened. My journey as a coon hunter. Coon hunting has always been a part of my life since I was a kid. I got my first hound when I was fifteen. He was a registered tree and walker and I got him from mister Lloyd Corker, who on Corker's feed store in Warren, Arkansas. He cost me seventy five dollars is an eight week old puppy. I had a job working at the local sail barn, pushing cows from one end to the other. As the sale progressed every Saturday and a little trapline money left, but I was still twenty five dollar short. Dad told me he loaned to me, and we paid him, and mister Corker gave me a bag of feed before we left. I named him Tom. Want to know what you do with a night week old coonhound? Absolutely nothing as far as training the coon dog goes anyway. They're too young. The brains are like jello, and some of them, well, some of them never grow out of it their infants, and they don't know the buds from fifteen since. When it comes to anything about what their purpose in life is, that's gonna come later. But there's lots of things to do before you ever turned that rascal loose in search of a coon. Now, this was my approach and the methods that I used to train My first one was from what my dad taught me later on, and as recently as right now. I'd ask my uncle Jim Ray, whose favorite dog he had many years ago was a tree and walker named Willie Nelson. I thought it kind of ironic that now I have one named Whalen. Anyway, some of what I learned is from friends like Rex Whiting, Michael Roseman. But the best lessons I got was from cutting that hound loose in the woods. But only after I'd made sure of one thing that he'd mind me. Remember, I said, this is how I do it, what works for me. I ain't looking to defend this as a doctoral thesis. Everybody has an opinion this one. It just happens to be mine. Dad told me it does me no good to have a dog with no way to control him. So from day one he has to learn that I am his boss and he's safe with me. Wherever I am is always a good place. That's the only way that a dog will leave what he's doing or is interested in and come to where you are is if he recognizes your authority and feel safe and secure there. How do I get him to come to me? Well, that for me starts when I'm picking him out of the litter. You can't tell what a dog was gonna make when they're two months old. Old time coon hunters wouldn't even start messing with a coon dog until he was like a year more older. So here's a few cues that I've found to be helpful. I'm looking for a puppy that looks at me. Michael Rosevean will tell you, and I believe it that a dog that will make eye contact with you has some potential to take direction he's paying attention. That doesn't mean to tell tree coons and not chase deer. It's just a starting point. Dogs are like people and that they have personalities. There is different as night and day. There's no one size fits all, just traits to look for. Genetics are important up to a point, and to me, it's just a baseline of skills that a dog should inherently possess. Notice I said should possess just like Mama, Daddy, Grandma, grandpa, and aunts and uncles can do it. It don't mean Junior can or any of his litter mates. I've got to teach this joker to come to me when I call him, and one of the easiest ways is to use food. Call the name when you put down some food or a treating, praise him when they get there. But that's not the way I like to do it. That'll condition a dog to look for food every time that they come to you, and it won't take many times if you forgetting to bring any or running out, and soon that dog might say, ah, I hear you calling, but you don't ever really have anything to eat. I think I'll just stay here. Well, I'd rather have that dog come to me from the rapport that we've developed together through socialization. I'm the guy that feeds him. I'm the guy that waters him. I'm the guy that makes sure his dog bed is cleaning, his kennels are washed out, and in Whalen's case, I'm the guy that cleans the filter in his air conditioned doghouse. I spend time with my hound. But Dad always said that a dog that gets messed with and hunted will make the best tree dog. So I don't look at him as a tool. He's not a hammer in his doghouse, ain't a toolbox. I don't just pull him out of the kennel every time I want him to go a coon. He's a member of this family, and he got there by doing what I wanted him to do, or he be a member of somebody else's family. I wasn't looking for a pet when I got him. I was looking for a coon dog, and it was my responsibility to give him every chance to be one. It goes back to that looking at you thing. If they're looking at you, they're paying attention. If they're paying attention, they're teachable. And that's half the battle. If you got an intelligent dog who's inherent desires to please you, they're boss. And you can't convey what you want that dog to do. That ain't the dog's fault. That's all on you. They say dogs can learn close to like two hundred and fifty words, go tree a coon, that's only four. So how hard could it really be to get one to do that? Well, they got to be exposed. You can't teach a dog desire. That's got to come naturally. They have to have the will to leave the safety of your presence and go into the dark unknown, specifically looking for the sin of a coon. And let me tell you about Old Tom. His registered name was Reeves Sea Creek Tom. That name come from obviously my last name, and the creek that ran through our farm that I only a few weeks ago learned The actual name wasn't Sea Creek, it was Walker Creek. So I guess you can teach an old dog a new trick. At least you can teach him a little bit about the geography. But Tom was his call name, and that's what it was going to be. Steve McQueen played a cowboy named Tom Horn in a movie by the same name. I liked that movie and Steve McQueen, so I named him Tom. When you register a dog, a pure bred dog, he has to have a unique name that separates him from the other dogs in the registration. There are some real creative names in the registrie in some of which make absolutely no sense. It may not even be what the dog is called. His registered name could be Buffalo Bill, Cody's Trycolored Tornado, but his call name might be Carl. That's a whole, whole other show. So we're gonna go on with the story. Old Tom gets to be about eight months old, and I'm about to have a fit to take him hunting. Dad finally says, come on, let's load him up and go see what he'll do. Finally, it's Coon hunting time. After six months of working with this dog and leading him and teaching him to load, to come to me when I called, and getting him to do everything under the sun that I wanted to do except split wood and paint the barn or anything related to coon hunting, We're finally finn to get this dog in the woods. I was about to pee in my briches from excitement. Philly Coleman, you ain't got nothing on me, because I'm fitna do this for real. We loaded Tom up and Dad's dog crate, and off we went to the neighbor's chicken farm. Dad said, there was a big persimon tree on the side of the road that goes down to the chicken house. It's probably got some persimmons on it. If it does it order to have some coons in it or close by, we'll cut him loose and see what he does. Now. I should probably mention in this point of the story that I had recently had my appendix removed, like eight days ago. I was still sporting a handful of staples in the incision. Anyone that's ever had an appendectomy will tell you they're not fun. Believe them when they say this. On with the story. I was sitting on the edge of the seat for the two mile ride down the gravel road. We made the curve in twenty yards off the road, and a hundred from that chicken house stood the persimmon tree, and it looked like it was decorated for Christmas. When all those coons looked at the truck and their eyes glowed in the dark, Dad said, well, Tom's fixing to get his test. I was ready to bail out of that truck before it stopped. I did that ten years prior to this night, and my dad ran over me on a accident. Six years prior to this night, I ran over him. But those are two different stories. Back to the coons, that tree was over twenty feet tall and as big around as a cantalog. The first limb was about eight feet off the ground. It was loaded with for simmons and coons. I counted six sets of eyes of what I could see. Dad, what I do? He said, Get Tom out and cut him loose. We'll just see what he does. He needs to find him on his own. Well I did just as he said. Old Tom walked around in front of the truck, wagging his tail and looking happy just to be hanging out with the boys at night for once, and all of a sudden he caught a whiff of scent from the coons, and his whole demeanor change. He started moving with a purpose over toward that tree. His nose was going from above his shoulders back to the ground. Dad said, he's winding them coon, son, and that means he was catching their sin as it flowed through the air. And then he put his nose to the ground and smell where they'd been walking around. Now, you think that would be an ideal scenario to train a dog in, but it really ain't. Dogs don't smell like we do. If you walked in a house and you smelled someone cooking homemade soup, you think I smell soup, let's eat. Well, the dogs never don't work that way. They walk in the door right beside you, and while you're smelling soup, they're smelling tomatoes, salt, pepper, potatoes, garlic, celery, thyme, corn beans, whatever you got in the pot, plus and everything else in the house, including you. In an area where coons have been frequenting, it could turn into sensory overload. Literally everything around it smells like coons, and when everything smells like a coon, it's hard to discern where the source of the smell is coming from. That'll mess up a finished dog just as quick as it is will a young one. I've seen it. We watched old Tom as he went back and forth around that tree, left and right, front, and back over to a big corner post on the fence ten yards away, and back to the tree again. He was confused. He was also still a baby as far as coon dogs go. Now, you coon hunters out there, save your message just telling me about how your dog was tring coons by there by theirself when they was two months old or before they had their eyes open. I know y'all are out there. It goes for you too, Clay, Michael Rex, Toby Neemeyer Ain't. Nobody got time for that. Tom needed some help. So I had to plan, and I knew if I didn't, if I didn't just do it on my own, that I'd never get it approved by my dad. So when Daddy walked back to his truck to get a light, I saw the opportunity I was waiting for. I could feel the staples pulling against my incision as I reached up and I grabbed that bottom limb of that for Simme tree. It felt like my guts were about to pop out of that cut when I finally hooked my leg over the limb and stood up on it. I was fixing to shake some coons out of that tree. And if that didn't get Tom more focused on what we were doing there, I didn't know what would son get out of that tree. You feny, tear your staples out now, Just so y'all know and to adhere to the Beggrease policy manually in reference to truth and storytelling. That is not an exact quote of what my father said when he turned around and saw me eight days out of surgery and my feet eight feet off the ground. It ain't even close. I remember it verbatim, and it contained all those words I just quoted, but it was also sprinkled with a string of agitty that were not approved for all agents. Having kids and grandkids of my own, I get where he was coming from. Dad. I'm all right, and it don't hurt. I'm fixing the I'm finna shake these coons out. Get ready now. I should have paid attention to that warning, aboy, getting ready I looked up and I could see coons sitting everywhere in that tree. They were on the limbs I was holding on to. They were sitting just above my head. They were sitting on the limbs on the other side of the tree, And without much effort, I could have reached and touched every one of them. But what I did was test the tensile strength of that tree. Like hurricane reeves that just blowed into town. I was shaking that tree with every bit of strength I could must. My side was hurting, but I was making it rain coons on Dad and Tom. They were dropping out of that tree as fast as as the precipitons were. My plan was perfect, almost perfect. The tree was one hundred yards from that chicken house, ten yards from that big corner post on the fence, and two hundred yards from the next tree. In my mind, those coons had two choices. They could head toward the woods across that pasture or climb that fence post. Either way, Tom was bound to get after him. Six coons hit the ground. One made three jumps and was sitting on top of that big corner post matter than a mashed cat. Tom was right behind him. Barking. Now, this was good, But only one of them went up that post. No problem, on, I'll climb down. We'll let him tree on that post for a little bit. Then i'll put Tom on the leash. I'll get me a stick and poke that coon off the post and let him run off. I'll turn Tom loose and let him tree him again. This was gonna be some good schooling. But I'd made two mistakes that night. One was climbing that tree so soon after my surgery. My side was killing me. Two was thinking those coons only had two choices once they hit the ground, because the other five came right back up that p cemetery. It was chaos, absolute chaos. Tom was barking and jumping at that coon. That coon was growling and fussing and taking swipes at him every time he jumped. Dad was hollering, get him, Tom, so be careful. Get him tom Son. Look out, the coons are coming back out of the tree. Get him Tom, hold on Son. I looked down that tree truck, and I saw that squad of coons and a coggle lin coming up so fast that all I could do was watch. I couldn't jump all my guts would have come out when I hit the ground, and I'd have died, never knowing how good that coon dog was gonna be. I just had to ride the storm out. Two of them ran across my arms as I bare hugged that tree. The other three ran across my left leg in rapid succession and between my knees as they cork screwed up that tree. They were circling it like a coon barber pole. I just stood there watching the show. All five of them looked me right in the eyes as they passed my head going to the butt of that pre cemetery, and I could smell them, and they didn't smell like homemade soup. They smelled like rav's and hate. And I was stuck in that tree with them. I had made an egregious mistake by not factoring in the precimetery as their alternate route of travel. Now Tom was still barking at that coon on the fence post, but he was starting to lose interest for everything else that was going on. My dad was begging me to get out of the tree, and I was scared to move. Finally, I started easing down and my dad grabbed my legs and put me on his shoulders. He walked to the truck and I stepped off on the dog crate. He checked my staples and they were all still good. I hadn't pulled anything loose. But while he was checking me over, Tom made a dash over where we were, and in that instant that coon bailed off that corner post and disappeared. I don't know where he went. Dad pulled the plug on that hunt and we called it a night. We'd accomplished what we'd set out to do with Tom and had one heck of a tale to tell folks. Unfortunately, I never got to see what that hound would have made he got stolen. He was bad to wander off and visit the neighbors, and during that time, you could run deer dogs during deer season, and lots of folks did. Out of towners were bad about picking up hunting dogs that didn't belong to them and trade them off to other deer camps to run deer, and we're pretty sure that that's what happened to him. I hated that, but man, what a wonderful memory we shared with our friends and family over the years telling that story, and that old pup made it all possible, Dad Gum, I've been telling these tales about my journey as a coon hunter, and we about to run out of time. I guess we'll just make this part one. If that works for y'all, that works for me. There's plenty more stories my old I'm going to tell you, and me and old Whalen were making them just about every time we go. You folks have been mighty good to me. All of us in my family and my meat eater family appreciate so much all the wonderful feedback in the reviews that y'all have taken the time to send in. There's lots of folks that work on this thing. It's not just me, not even close. Hey, if y'all can share it with others you think might enjoy it. And until next week, this is Bred Reeves. Sign it all. Y'all be careful

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