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 to teach you. Decoy dogs. I'm talking about decoy dogs this week, and not the dogs are decoys I'm normally associated with. You don't hunt birds or bandidos with these cane nines, And believe it or not, the dog is the decoy. We're hunting codies. And if you're not familiar with how it works, just hang with me and I'll tell you all about it. But first I'm going to tell you a story. This story comes from This Country Life mail bag and listener Justin Moore from way up Yonder for me Anyway in Orchard Lake, Michigan. Orchard Lake is a bustling metropolis of some twenty three hundred folks, with the most notable being our pal Justin and Bob Seer. We're turning the page. Bob, it's Justin's time to shine. And does this boy shine? I'll say he does. And Justin's words in my voice. Here's Justin's story. Well, it was the fourth of July twenty eighteen. I had the day off from working long care and I had decided to go fishing. There was a small lake in the back of my division that only me and one other gentleman fished. It was perfect. I had the whole place to myself, and for some reason unknown, I decided not to take the boat out that day and just to fish from the bank. And after a couple of hours and a few fish later, a woman came walking up the beach I was fishing with a big old flamingo floating well there with the fishing. She told me she was just going to anchor it out a little ways for her grandkids could swim on it and play on it the next day when they had a cookout. Well, I thought that was a great idea, so she started swimming out with it as I started packing up my gear and loading everything in my truck, and then I heard something no one ever wants to hear at any given place a yell for help, but I mean a real yell for help. I ran down to the edge of the water like I was getting paid for it, and I started yelling her, you okay, what's wrong? She continued yelling for help, and I pulled out my phone to call nine one one, but I quickly realized that whatever was going on, it couldn't wait, and in the water I went. I wouldn't be surprised if a witness told me I had a rooster tail of water coming up from behind me on my way out too or while I was swimming. I tried to keep communication with her, and I tried to keep her calm. I'm coming, it's gonna be okay. She wasn't responding, and that big floating flamingo a terror, was blocking my view. I came around the end of the floating All that was sticking out of the water was the woman's nose and her mouth. The anchor had wrapped around her arm and was pulling her under. Now she had enough time to grab the seam of the flamingo with the tips of her fingers, and I told her to stay calm and most importantly, don't grab onto me, or we're both gonna be in a big mess. I was able to reach under her for the rope with one hand and grabbed the floating with the other and pulled them together. I eased a tension off her arm and she was able to swim away. I made sure I wasn't in any way tangled up in that rope too, and I let it go. Who were both tired. She said, let's float on our backs to the beach now. I quickly made her aware that personally, I do not like being in deep water. Now. I'm a great swimmer, don't get me wrong, but I'll take the boat out and catch some fish anytime. That's never been a problem with me, and I just don't like knowing what's underneath me. Anyway, we made our way back to the beach in safety. She's a wonderful woman whom I'm glad to still know, and she laid her notified the fire department in our local newspaper, where I was recognized by the city and awarded the Meritorious Citizen Award at the fire station. To this day, she brings me down to jar of her homemade strawberry jelly for Christmas. And boy, that stuff will put some folks out of business. More importantly, Miss Andrew is still alive and doing well, and faced with that same situation, I'd do it all over again. And according to Justin Moore, that's just how that happened. Well, Justin, you earned that strawberry jelly, my friend. I'll tell you something else. If I ever find myself in Orchard Lake, Michigan being attacked by floating flamingo, I ain't gonna be hauling for Bob Seger to come save me. It's gonna be Justin Moore and nobody else. Decoy dogs. I had the pleasure several years ago before I started filming my old palle clay chasing bears, to be introduced to some of the coolest dog related hunts I'd ever been on. Now, I'd hunted coons, worlds, deer, quail, rabbits, hogs, and coyotes with dogs of all makes and models, and I assumed I had done just about every type of hunting imaginable with a dog in Arkansas, and I was wrong. Through an Internet hunting form, I ran across the guy from North Arkansas who was not only a decoy dog hunter, but about the best in the business. I'd soon come to find out. I never heard of decoy dogs or what they were used for. That was all about to change. When I saw some footage connected with a man named jeff Ryder. I told him I was intrigued with what he was doing, that I was trying to get into filming hunts and wanted to meet up and document what he was doing. Over the course of the next couple of years, I spent a lot of hours traveling and filming some amazing dog work and interactions that, while were exciting and action packed, were also providing a service to landowners and wildlife. Before all you lovers started lighting your torches and issuing out pitchforks. The National Agricultural Statistics Service reports that ninety five thousand caves were lost one year nationwide, and sixty five percent of the calf losses because of predators were attributed to coyoties. Now, codies can have a significant impact on cattle, sheep, and goats, but there there can be original differences as well. They can be worse in some places than others. Kansas, for example, sees coyoties being responsible for eighty four percent of calf losses. Not eighty four percent of losses to predators. Eighty four percent of all losses are to old wiley Cody filling his belly with baby bovines. That's a lot of calves. There's also a lot of bees. Kansas is also where my friend Jeff does a lot of his coat. Then more on Jeffrey in just a minute. Coats also impact dear another wildlife. After all, that's where they naturally get their groceries. And I get it they got a E two. But a study in South Carolina involving ninety one radio collared fawns saw fifty six of them killed by colds. That's why of those jokers have got to be held in check. Enter the decoyed dog hunter as one method of controlling them. And like I said, until I met Jeff, I didn't know there was such a thing or such an activity. He explained to me that there had been government contract hunters for years out west whose sole purpose was to control the colt population, and most all of them used decoy dogs. Now y'all have heard me talk about how my dad and his colt running buddies did it. They'd gather up after dark on the timber company roads near home, and they'd make the colts hound by blowing a siren at them, or mimicking the howl with their voices, or finding scating the road and just cutting the dogs loose, and the race would be on, literally a race. They chased them. They chased them through the woods and the the dogs did through the woods and the river bottom until the cold got away. Now rarely did they catch them, and they didn't want to catch them. They wanted them to run so they could hear the hounds barking to see whose dog was the best. Then come back and do it again another time. And the longer the race went, the more testament to the dogs that keep up and stay in the contest. We just drove around different roads and keeping the dogs within the earshot and listening. Now, when using the decoy dog, the time of the day you hunt and the ending is much different, especially for the cows. Now here's how Jeff did it. When I was filming them in Kansas. He drive for miles talking to ranchers and farmers getting permission to hunt property specifically for coyote control. Now this was in the days before on next one, folks had to read maps, and Jeff had a landownership plat book in his truck with property owners marks that he'd gotten permission to access. And I remember thumbing through that book, and I don't recall the estimate. He told me once about how many thousands of Acrecy had permission to hunt coyotes on. But it was a lot, like a jillion. There's a jillion, and actual number, if it is, I know it's a big one. And Jeff had three of them. He knew those areas like folks know their neighborhoods that they live in. And we drive from my alls according to wind direction and the position of the sun, and cherry picking the best spots to set up and call a coat and break him once and for all from the bad habit of eating cash phones and building elaborate bombs and traps to catch road runner. We started daylight on that had creek bottoms and thickets next to prairie ground and pastures with grass that was short enough that you could see a good ways across it. Then he checked the wind direction and we'd set up with the wind in our face or at least a quarter and two us in one direction of the other. The reason being is if they smelled us before they heard the call or engaged with the dog, the chances of us even seeing them were drastically reduced. Kylds ain't dumb, and they're thriving everywhere because of their adaptability and weariness when it comes to survival. But you can throw all of that stuff out the window. Once they get focused on that dog, they do some really wild stuff. Now I've buried the hook deep enough, let's get to it. Check this out. We set up in a fence row or beside a big round bala haea, the tree line or brush topping. Nine times out of ten, we wasn't wearing any camouflage. We was just in jeans, overalls and T shirts and sitting on folding stools. And Jeff would run a fox Pro predator call out about thirty yards or so away, sometimes closer and come back and he'd set beside me and the camera on one side and his decoy dog spot on the other. Spot was a bobtailed Catahoula curR cross that was the smartest dog as I've ever seen. She was laid back, professional and knew what her job was as well as any seasoned veteran. Her job was to be the judas to every coat she could find. Jeff would kick that predator call off with different sounds depending on the time of the year, and set back and await for a coat to reveal itself. All the coaches had to do was be in a position where Spot could lock in on them. Couch sometimes would be hundreds of yards away when we saw them trotting closer to the sounds coming from that predator call. They moved in and out of the thickets and trees like ghosts until they got within one hundred yards or so, and with spot laser focused on that coyotes, Jeff would send her out towards the colt. Now eight times out of ten, the cold would see Spot loping out towards them and freeze until she crossed whatever distance that cayote had chosen us close enough, and then they turned around and start running away. But just before they hit the woods or a thicket, they'd always glanced back at Spot. And here's the cool part. Jeff had trained her and conditioned her to retreat when the coach did this, and it became so ingrained in her that he didn't even bother toning her back anymore over their tracking collar. She see that colt look back, and she'd voluntarily start back towards where we were sitting, and just like setting the hook on a fish, that colt would stop, turn around and follow her. Now. Once that happened, our scent, our movement, and any other thing that would normally spook a coat into another zip code went out the window. With the dishwater. They lost all natural fear of anything they were genetically coated to avoid, mainly people. It was incredible to watch the interaction between the dog and the colt, and every stand would have the coat turn and chase Spot, then turn and start back to safety, only to have Spot turn around and go back. Then the coat would re engage and Spot would once again make tracks back toward us, tolding the coat even closer. I've seen this back and forth go several rounds until Jeff ended it all with a well placed two twenty three round or turkey loads at close range. I remember one of the first times I hung with Jeff and witness this back and forth between Spot and the coat. We were sitting on the edge of a pl loud field in the Arkansas Delta, not far from where my brother Tim and I are putting the SmackDown on the catfish in the Arkansas River. It was nearing sunset, and the last end of the day was this one before we headed back to camp and supper, and we walked down the river levee and were more or less in the bald open setting on the ground, resting against the field levee with us hoping that it was tall enough to break up our outline against the horizon. The field was muddy, and Jeff laid the predator call in the seat of his hunt stool about twenty five yards out in front of us, and then he walked back through that gumbo mudding, settled back down beside me, and he turned it on. Almost immediately. We saw one, two, then the third codey entering the field a quarter of a mile away, heading toward the diet rabbit sounds coming out of that collar that was wailing out in front of us. Then they saw us and they froze and spot right on. Q took off like a labrador after ducking the decoys, and all three of them, at different stages, started going back from where they came. Just before hitting the field edge, they looked back and spot did her thing. One by one, they turned and followed her back, tried to catch her. She was playing tag, but the coyotes weren't playing at all. She was an intruder and if they could, they had to catch her and turn her into suffer. But Jeff was ready to make sure that that wasn't going to happen. But back and forth they went, spotting all three colts like a k nine yo yo. Every time they came back they got a little closer. Jeff could have whacked all three of them at any time, but we were enjoying the show and it wasn't showing any signs of ending. Son. The predator call was twenty five yards in front of us, and at one time there was a cold walking around it, another one just behind it making laps. But the bravest of them all was following the spot back to where we sat in the bald open match. That one got so close. When he turned to go back yet again, he kicked mud on me and my camera. He was easily within ten feet to where we were sitting. I could have jobbed him with a frog gig and never fully stretched out my arm. It was crazy then it got loud, bam bam. The end of two cold is the third one, old, spooky, the one that never came in as close as the others. He got away. The thrill and enjoyment of seeing the interaction is what's so incredible. You know, I enjoyed cold hunting with my dad only because he was there. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy hearing a good dog race as much as anybody, more than most. But there's a reason I don't have a pen full of cold dogs out behind my house. Well there's probably several reasons, really, but the main one is I don't enjoy it enough to justify owning a passive of them. But hunting like he did, I had to guess at what was going on out there? Where his dog's really leading the pack or were they just allowedest or was it Toby's or Raimonds getting the best of all of them? You know, no one really knew, But with a decoy dog, the only thing you wondered about is why you hadn't heard of this, or why someone hadn't told you about it, or why you hadn't tried it before. Now it's fun, but it's not all action all the time, you'll have stand after standing, have driven miles and miles between them and zeroed on all of them. But just like that one good golf shot that keeps Gary Believer Nukem out on the link swinging the wrenches when it works, and you see a code attempting to play his deadling ninja skills in the broad daylight up close and personal. Man, it is a sight to behold, y'all. Check out Jeff's YouTube channel, Decoy Doggers. Reeve was going to post up a link to it in the description, And while you're wandering around on there, ease on over and smash the old subscribe button to our new Meat Eater YouTube channel two. It's gonna have the audio to all the podcasts and the video to the ones that are filmed. And we just started filming the Bear Grease Renders and that buffoonery will be up there soon too. Lots of other stuff is coming and in the works, and I'm excited for y'all to see it. I hope everyone has a safe and happy Fourth of July, or as I like to call it, America one England zero day until next week. This is brit Reeves. Sign it off. Y'all be careful.

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