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 the teaching dog stories. Nothing will pull at your heartstrings, make you laugh, aggravate you, or make you proud quicker than your dog. Since the first wolf slipped up to the fire and didn't try to eat the folks that was camped there eons ago to this morning when I walked outside the feet old way, dogs have been our faithful companions that love us unconditionally, even when we don't deserve it. It's all about our hunting buddies. This week the four legged ones on Meat Eaters This Country Life Podcast. But first, I'm going to tell you a story. My dad was a very well known wolf hunter, and yet he had never actually seen a wolf in his life. It's just what folks in South Arkansas called kyoud hunting, and the hunting part was all about whose dog was leading the pack. The object was not to kill the kyoty, but to run him. And I guess I need to put this in context for all the cayote lovers out there, if there are any, which I doubt there are, and if you're listening to this of your own free will and not being forced under some kind of government sponsored enhanced terrogation technique. If that's the case, you might as well go ahead and fess up, because this ain't gonna get no better. But running a colt just means your hounds are trailing the scent of where the coyote has been, just like a coon hound trailing and barking after a coon that's been walking down the edge of a creek and follows his scent trail to whatever tree he eventually climbs. My dad's running dogs were just smelling and barking on the trail of the cold They main't never get close enough to even hear him trotting through the woods, and the coyote may slap get away from them by zigging when the dogs are zagging. I don't need any hate mail from the folks picturing wily coyote running through the desert with his ribs showing and his tongue hanging out. That ain't how it works as evidence. I all for exhibit A the red Man Coot story. I was just youngin and my dad and I were standing on a timber coming road that ran north and south one evening in the fall of the year. It was about fifteen minutes before dark, and we'd just cut the dog's loose, about six of them, out to the west of the road. One of his dogs had struck the scent of a cod from the back of the truck while we were driving. That's not unusual for a good dog to do that, but this dog was exceptional at it. He was a bone of fire, straight up running walker. Foxhound. Now y'all gonna think I'm messing with you, bringing the word fox into a story about code hunting that we call wolf hunting that ain't actually hunting. But this is where I'm from, and we're pretty much making up the rules as we go along. Anyway, it was the time of day when headlights were no good, but the light from the sun wasn't much better, but you could still see in the open, but out in the woods it was dark, and like I said, the dog Old Red Man started barking in the back of the truck, and we were going down the roads. When we stopped, Dad said, dump them all. So I let the tailgate drop, and those hounds poured out of there like tea out of a picture. Red Man was leading the pack, and they had a due west straight away from us, with all of them barking every breath. Dad said, Old Red Man's got him, and the rest of them are going to put it on him. The dogs were sure enough, sanding the rails and moving directly away from us just as fast as they could go, everyone of them bawling and barking as loud and fast as they could. Now less than two or three minutes, and they were getting the pretty good ways out there, But boy, it sounded good. We were smiling at each other, listening to the race, and me trying to guess which dog was Witch, and Dad telling me if I was guessing right. They'd gone about as far as we could hear them when something caught my eye about two hundred yards away, and I looked down the road. It was a straight section of road that you couldn't see either end of from where we were standing. I said, Dad, look yonder. The cow just walked out in the road. I was standing at the right front fender of the truck and Dad was standing right beside me. He said where. I told him, right there in the road. He's coming this away. He still didn't sing, Dad, right there, he's coming straight to us, Son, I don't see him. I thought maybe he'd gone blind, because he was standing so close to me that I could feel him behind me. Dad, he's right there. I could hear his feet clicking on the gravel and pointed at the coyote that was now less than fifty yards from us. He was just trotting toward us in the right hand rud of that road like he's riding the bicycle. Dad said, that's that young dog that we turned loose. I didn't say a word. That was a cold, and I know I didn't turn one of those loose. Well. As he got closer, the cold was passing by us, literally within the arms reach. Dad reached out and put his hand on my chest and mashed me up against the truck and kicked it tack coyote to move him on down the road. He never changed gears. We were laughing, high fiving and retelling each other that story that we both just witnessed. It was incredible. While all that was happening, that pack of wolfhounds that we thought were burning the hair off of coyote started getting a little louder and looping around to the south. It took him about twenty minutes, but they came out on the road right where I saw the kyote come out, and we're kicking rocks as high as a six rail fence when they passed us, hot on his trail, hot on his trail, Yeah right. That race lasted about three hours before he finally gave the dogs a slip and we caught them all not far from where we turned them loose. Man, that was a fun night and we got to see something and share something pretty cool that we both talked about for the rest of his days. And that's just how that happened. I never get tired of hearing dog stories, and I never get tired of telling them. I come from a long line of folks that use dogs to put food on the table. We're dog people, and there has never been a time in my life that I didn't have a quality hunting dog of some flavor, whether it was a duck dog, a squirrel dog, or a coon dog. Obviously my dad, my uncle, Jimmy Ray, and my brother Tim. It was just something that we did. Any of us could have opted out at any point, but why in the world would we have wanted to. There's nothing outside of my family that equals the joy and satisfaction I get from hunting a well trained dog, especially one that I trained or had a hand in training. I know there's folks that don't have the time or the ability to do the training themselves and love the companionship and the thrill of the hunt, just like the folks that train their dog. There's just a little extra bump on the proud meter when you're the one helping your dog see the light and the purpose for his being. It strengthens the bond between you even more because you have both figured out that you can trust each other. You show him what you want done and how you want it done, and the dog trusts you to praise him when he does it the way you've taught him. Tim and I were duck hunting buy Meeta with some clients many years ago back when you could commercially hunt there, and my black lab Anna was our retriever. Anyone that had the good fortune to hunt with this dog would tell you that she was something special. I was reminded of the story by hearing my friend in Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame member Jim ron Quest, talking about a similar thing that happened to him with one of his labs. Jim is a world champion competition duck caller, but better than that, he's a heck of an outdoorsman, and beyond all that, just a dang good fella. And when he told this story, it reminded me of this one. We were having a good hunt with good groups of ducks working into the hole we were hunting. We boted in before daylight, we found a likely spot that we'd hunted before and with a forecasted wind, and when shooting time came, so did the ducks. We were smashing them pretty good, which is my favorite way to do it. Get the hunters in some ducks, let them shoot their limits fast, and get back to the camp to fix dinner, watch a little football, take a nap. Whatever. It was setting up to be an easy day. We were just four ducks short of six man limit, and Tim and I had our limits, and the four clients they lacked one duck each. So Tim and I were done shooting. We were just calling working the ducks, and I was handling Anna. Now these boys were not the best shots, but the ducks were working in the decoy so good that they were real having to work hard not to hit them when they came in the hole. Those last few ducks always seemed to be the biggest struggle. I added the pressure of strongly encourage them to shoot only green heads, which was supposed to make them take their time and shoot what they recognized as being a drake mallard. There was two reasons for this. The most important was conservation. By not shooting hens, we were returning mama ducks to the nesting grounds to raise more babies next year. The second reason was to make our clients pay attention and focus on one particular duck to shoot instead of getting all amped up. When fifty more ducks dropped in through the timber and were hovering over the decoys, landing literally all around them, I seen them run the shotguns to the plug, aiming at nothing in particular and hitting the same. But the quicker they got their limit, the quicker we got out of there, letting the ducks rest, and men Tim rest too. We counted and recant ducks. Yep, four ducks short of a six man limit, and the midmorning little of no ducks flying had just begun. Now we wait. It's getting close to ten o'clock and I'm hungry, and we could have been done two hours ago if these clowns could shoot. Anna sat beside me on her dog stand, her eyes ever more on the watch for ducks. She'd retrieved every duck that morning that we killed, except for two of three that fell so closer to where we were standing that we just picked him up and hung them on the stringer. None of them fell further than forty yards, and she made quick work of them in that knee deep water. I saw Anna jerk her head and start tracking toward the sky, and a moment later Tim started calling. I looked over at him, and I saw where he was looking, and they were both laser focused on six ducks. As they passed overhead. I could easily see that group had four drakes and two hens. All right, boys, shoot the drakes, I told them me and Tien went to work on the calling those ducks in kicking water to put some moving in the decoys. And when the ducks were facing away from us and standing dead still, when they passed over the hole, checking out whether or not it was safe to come in. Now, I'm telling the clients where they are the whole time. They're behind us. At six o'clock, they're getting lower. Y'all be still circling around to the west. Three o'clock, y'all get ready. Twelve o'clock, het it come go to work? Boys? Well, they commenced to shooting, and three drakes fell as dead as the duck could die, barey up in the decoys, and a couple of them paddling at the air with the little orange feet. The two hens climbed out of there like they were headed to the moon. I recounted the ducks floating in the water. I mean we get him, said, all the drakes fell, but I only saw three. The hunters were hooping and hollering for getting their limit, but I couldn't find the last duck. I looked at Anna and she was stone cold. Fro was on her seat, stared out to the right of the hole, and That's when Tim said, yondergoes a cripple. He pointed in the direction Anna was looking. I knew then she'd seen it, and I sent her off on a straight line in the direction she was looking. She left that stand like it was on fire and was bounding through the water like she was on a rail, in a perfect line cast in the direction I sent it. A couple of the hunters that were standing close to me got my attention away from her by slapping me on the back and shouting how cool that was and how much fun they'd had. They were already getting the cameras out. Now that'll give you a clue, is how long ago it happened. They brought cameras, not phones. I turned back toward Anna, and the ripples that she'd made in the water were all about gone. I told them to be quiet and listen, and they didn't. They were still all excited, and understandably so after the second time I told them to be quiet, I got rude and I said, hey, y'all, shut up, I don't know where my dog is. Well, I couldn't hear a thing, no crashing through the water like i'd heard when she left. I walked out towards the direction that she went, but the film that covered the surface of the water had closed back together and the sunken leaves had kept her from leaving a mud trap. I called her and nothing. I whistled and nothing. She was a well trained professional duck dog. It wasn't like she was just a labrador and looked apart. No, sir, she was the real deal. I whistled again, trying to blow the pea out of that roar, going your dog whistle and nothing. Boats were starting to come down to Baiou and out of the woods, so the noise they made was drowning out any hopes of hearing her in the water. Twenty minutes went by, Tim and the other hunters had everything loaded in the boats. I'd made a big loop out in the flooded timber, looking and calling for Anna and nothing. I walked back to where they were and we started making plans of how we were going to all split up and start looking for I had no idea how I was going to explain this to my kids. They loved her more than they loved me. I was sick to my stomach, and I hated the fact that I'd even brought her. I heard a racket in the absolute opposite direction from which she left on that retrieve, and I saw a flash of gray about as far as you could see down through the woods. We all froze. As it got closer. I could see that it was the top side of a mallard drake's wing, and it was sticking straight up in the air, moving through the flooded timber like a shark's fin on top of a pinball, bumping into bushes and ricocheting off trees. And I had a locked down grip on that crippled duck, and when she caught him, his wings folded over her eyes. She was slowly but surely making her her way back to me with that duck in her mouth, unable to see a frazzling thing. I met her halfway and took that duck from her. Man. I was glad to see that dog. I was worried to death, but she wasn't. She was doing her job and loving every minute of it. We walked back to the hole of the When we got there, she hopped up on her stand, ready to go again. I was needing a cigarette and I didn't even smoke. It's times like these that stick in your head forever. I can show you right where we were hunting the tree. I was standing beside the tree, Tim was standing beside or at least where the stumps are now, And I remember the great sense of relief I felt when I saw her coming back with that duck in her mouth. Man, it's a bond you build through living life together, not just hunting, the ups and the downs, the successes and the near failures. Watching your kids play with a dog in the yard. Y'all have heard me talk about Peanuts, the world's greatest squirrel dog. That was my hairy little brother and my father's favorite son. He would play chase with us and hide and seek. I remember one time we were all chasing him and he took off behind the house with us in tow. He circled around and was heading back toward the front yard, so some of us doubled back to catch him and cut him off. When he round to the other end of the house, some of us continued to follow him. We met each other in the front yard, but there was no Peanut. Where'd he go? We only lost sight of him for a second or two, But apparently that's all he needed to disappear. We called him and looked all around the house, going back and forth, but we couldn't find him. Then someone looked up and he was sitting on the roof of the house just looking at us. And if a dog could smile, that Rascal was smiling big. My dad's truck was parked at the edge of the carport and the tail was now. Peanut jumped up on the tailgate, onto the toolbox behind the cab, that on top of the cab, that onto the roof, and I suppose was just sitting there watching us running around the yard looking for it. A dog's life mirrors my own in some degree. I have to say. I like to have fun. I like to be around the folks that I love. I get excited at meal times. I like to take naps. I like to hunt every chance I get, and go with someone that I care about and share it with them that I mentioned naps. Kids and dogs go together like biscuits and gravy. Kids and grown folks too, can learn a lot about loyalty, friendship, and unconditioned love just by having a good dog. I read a quote that said having a dog will bless you with many of the happiest days of your life and one of the worst. Well, that's true. And when they leave us, man, it's hard and it's sad. But I look back at the membies and the stories I have about Anna and Peanut and a whole host of others, and it doesn't make me sad. When someone asked about a dog and I don't tell them how they died, I talk about how they lived, and all the adventures are the funny things that was shared. Just last Saturday, I was sitting in my truck waiting on daylight so I could hit the woods and go squirrel hunting. I was catching up on my messages and I read one from my guy up in the Appalachian Mountains who had recently lost one of his turkey dogs. That's right, I said, turkey dogs. I remember reading an article about turkey dogs when I was a kid in some hunting magazine, and more recently, doctor Seth Bynam wrote a good one that you can read at the Meat Eater dot com entitled how to hunt Turkeys with a Dog. The point of me bringing either one of those subjects up is you can train a dog to hunt anything, and if you put in a little effort. You can find folks that'll help you get it done, or if you can't, they'll do it for you. But back to the fellow that lost his dog. While I was reading his message, I was immediately back hunting with Peanut and Anna, both of which have been gone now for years. Peanut when I was just a kid, and Anna ten years ago. But I wasn't sad. It made me happy thinking about them. I'd be lying if I said I didn't get a little wistful thinking about both of them. But how much would I be missing today if they hadn't been in my life. Some would say nothing, because you can't miss what you never had. But I look at the pictures that that man sent me, and I can see myself and him sitting in a cameo with his dog in their turkey, both of them looking proud to be in each other's company, the hunter looking at the camera and the dog looking at him. That paints a bigger picture, and that pretty well describes the true relationship between hunters and hunting dogs. Now, thank you so much for listening, and I appreciate y'all sharing this podcast. I'd like to say a special hello to Miss Michelle Baldwin's English class at Cherokee High School in Cherokee, Oklahoma. Man, that's almost smack dab in the middle of the US of A. And if anyone knows the country life and how good it is, it's the great folks in Cherokee. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful. Fire movies.