00:00:05 Speaker 1: Welcome to this Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves from coon hunting to trot lighting and just in general country living. I want you to stay a while as I share my experiences in life lessons. This Country Life is presented by Case Knives from the store More Studio on Meat Eaters Podcast Network, bringing you the best outdoor podcast that airways have to offer. All right, friends, grab a chair or drop that tailgate. I've got some stores to share. Taking the Hounds to Town. Taking a hound to town has in the circle of coon hunters meant you were going to enter a competition. Coon hunt. It's a contest rooted in history and celebrated to this very day. I'm going to go into my experiences with it and give you the scoop on what it's meant to me. It's a story that took about twenty five minutes to tell in four years to write. We got a hound to cut loose, so let's get started. On Friday, April the ninth, twenty twenty one, my friend Rex White and called me early in the day and said, have your stuff ready, We're going coon hunt tonight. Now that wasn't unusual. Wasn't unusual? At all. We went coon hunting a lot back then. My dog Whaling was a year old and Rex had been helping me with his training. Rex was the guy who wound up being my friend by being nosy. He was driving by my house on his way to town and saw me out in the driveway cleaning out a dog box that I had in the back of my truck. Since he was a hound hunter himself, he took the opportunity to meet me. Pulled up and started interrogating me on what kind of hunter I was. Was a hauling duck dogs in that truck or coon dogs. Being where Rex and I are from, it was a safe bet I was one of the other. I was actually both, but my old lab Anna passed away a few years before and I had recently acquired a coonhound named Whalen. Rex had lost his hunting partner a few years prior, and after we visited for a while, we decided we'd go together soon, and we did, and we became friends. Rex was a competition hunter with lots of experience, and I've talked about him many times on HISS. I'm sure some of you may remember hearing me say his name, so just to catch the new folks up. Rex became my coon hunting coach A couple hours before he came by the house to pick me up on that Friday night. He called me back and said, we're taking whaling to town tonight. I've got you and whalen regsted in a UKC hunt at the Faulkner County Coon Club. Now, the official name is of Faulkner County Coon Hunters Association, and it's located near Conway and registered as an official club with the United Kennel Club or uk C as that's commonly referred to, headquartered in Kalamazoo, Michigan, all very official and lofty sounding names of which I was only aware of uk C as a dog registry and completely ignorant of the Coon Club and most especially competition hunts. I wasn't sure I knew the rules well enough to be in the competition. Actually I was positive I didn't, but my coach said we were taking a whale into town, so that's what we did. Now. All the way over from my house to the clubhouse, I was quizzing Wrex on this and that about the rules, and more or less adding more pressure to myself. Rex said just call his name out of the judge when you hear him strike a track, and call him tread when you hear him treat a coon. You need any help, too bad. You're on your own and I can't help you. This competition is you and whaling against the world. Good luck, We're counting on you. And with that, my bald headed veteran coon hunting coach kicked me out of his truck and drug me inside to meet the folks that was running the contest. The clubhouse was a modest structure that appeared well kept and well used. You could tell that there were folks here that had been there for a long time, folks that had regular spots on the furniture, and folks who'd probably made some of them. The coffee pot was in full swing, and there were two men sitting at a table registering hunters for the drawout that would come later. That's how it works. There are different divisions for dogs at different levels of proficiency, and each dog is entered into the category of registered dogs with similar talent. Depending on how many dogs show up determines how many groups or casts are sent out to hunt dogs with little or no experiencing competition. Hunts are sent out together in UK. It's hounds male or female that have zero to four competition cast winds that are grouped together no more than four hounds in no less than two can officially make the United Kennel Club cast. I was grouped with one other person, a man who had a dog from Port Tobacco, Maryland. Now the man wasn't from there, but the dog was. And Port Tobacco is a town founded in seventeen twenty seven, one hundred and nine years before Arkansas became a state. How that dog wound up in Arkansas at the Faulkner County Coon Hunters Association UKC hunt is beyond me. But there we were two tree and walkers, mine a year and a half old and his a pretty five year old female named Dixon. Now I'm glad we were all there, mainly glad Rex was there. I was nervous as a fellow could be. We drove a short distance to where we were going to turn loose, Me and Rex, the man who owned the dog from Maryland, and the hunt judge who would also be our guide. Rex was allowed to go with us as an observer, only he couldn't participate in the hunt or assist me in any way. No questions, no suggestions, no facial expressions, anything that could be construed as aid in any form for his minor league dog handler that he just called up to the majors. They gave us the time to be back at the clubhouse to turn the scorecards in after the hunt. The judge explained that he wasn't putting up with any foolishness and would judge each of us fairly and firmly. If we had questions, we could address them in the field openly. If that wasn't good enough, we could appeal anything to the Master of hounds back at the clubhouse. It was in the low sixties when we cut loose, and the wind was blowing just hard enough to make it feel a few degrees. He's cooler. They'd made it about fifty yards when Whaling barked first and I called his name, strike Whaling. Rex told me to say it where there was no doubt in anyone's mind that I had called my dog. I looked over at him and he nodded his approval, as the judge repeated back to me, Whaling struck for a hundred wasn't worked that track. In a short order, he came treed with his loud booming chops that you can hear forever, Tree Whaling. I heard the judge say Whaling treed for one hundred and twenty five. Then Dixie opened up and her handlet said strike Dixie. The judge answered, Dixie for seventy five. The only problem was she wound up running the same track that Whaling did, and when she treated with Whalen, the only points available were for a second tree, and that's seventy five points. That's what the value was. He called Dixie treed and the judge said strike points are avoided. Dixie treed for seven five. Now, had she opened up before Whaling was declared tree, before I called Tree Whaling, she would have had seventy five second strike points and seventy five for a second tree. But once a tree is declared there are no more strike points available. I know that sounds confusing, but it's really not if you think about it. It makes sense to do that because it keeps dogs from just following other dogs around, scoring points off their ears rather than using their noses. Kind of like copying the answers on a math test. You didn't do the work, but you're going to get some of the credit if the answers are right, that is. And on the scorecard, Whaling was leading by one hundred and fifty points. He had two hundred and twenty five to her seventy five. But those points are only good if we find the coon. I remember walking up to it, and it was a small white oak tree about fourteen inches in diameter. Whalen was standing there on his hind legs and had his front paws on the trunk of the tree and his head laid back, telling the world he'd found a coon. Dixie was on the opposite side of the tree, barking in agreement. About twenty five feet up in the air was the prettiest pair of yellowish green eyes looking back at me. I got him judge. He looked up, as did Rex and Dixie's handler, and everyone agreed. Whaling now had two hundred and twenty five plus points and Dixie had seventy five of her own. Now, the judge told us to walk her dog, so we walked about eighty yards away and recast them. They both took off in different directions. Then in the cool CHRISP. Berry I heard Dixie open up, and her handler called her struck strike Dixie for a hundred. The judge said, I got Dixie for a hundred. Then she started a tree and tree Dixie Dixie for one hundred and twenty five. Now hadn't made a peak since leaving that tree. I was watching him on my garment tracker, and he was working all over a drain that siphoned down towards Lake Conway. I just knew at any moment he would have opened up, but he didn't, And now we were all walking to score Dixie's tree with very little time left in the hunt. Now, if she'd have had a coon in that tree, she'd have an additional two hundred and twenty five point. She'd go with her seventy five. And if Whaling the Wonder Hound didn't do something pretty quick, the closest thing we were going to be to win in our first competition hunt was being the first loser. All of a sudden, I didn't feel too good about our chances. For someone who had repeatedly said I'm not sure I'd even want the competition coon hunt, thought of losing this hunt was apparently more important than I thought. We all got the Dixie's tree and began searching for a coon, and in the vein of competition, that man not being able to find that coon, even if it was up there, would mean Whalen would win. Trees that are scored where a coon isn't found but could possibly be there, hidden in the vegetation or in a hole big enough for them to seek refuge in, will have the points circle, meaning the coon may have been in there, but we couldn't prove it, and we couldn't prove it wasn't. They're called circle points, and a million circle points won't be one plus point because as in Whalen's tree, everyone heard him bark pretty bark burst, and they heard it, they saw him the coon in the trees that he had treated on. Those are plus points. We searched and searched Dixie's tree, and I tried to find her coon. Had she had one, and I was the only person who have seen it, I would have pointed it out to the handler and the judge, and I would have lost the competition, but I would have done the right thing. In the UKC Handbook of rules that are not referred to simply as rules, they're called honor rules. And there's a reason for that, and the main reason is just for situations like that one. She treed on a big water oak and it was a huge old tree with lots of leaves that had come on, and we searched and searched that tree right up aunt the time that the hunt was over, but we couldn't find it, just declared the point circled and with time up Whalen had won his first and my first UK sea hunt we ever entered. Dixie's handler shook my hand the sick congratulations. I was excited and happy with how we'd done us, proud of how Whaling had performed, and relieved of how I hadn't messed up this competition. Coon hunting is fun and apparently pretty easy. I'd entered and won my first UK sea hunt against a more experienced dog and handler. I must be a natural of this, I was not. Over the course of a year twenty twenty one into twenty twenty two, I entered three more competition hunts and got my tail whipped all three times. I could have easily entered ten times that many in that span of time, and took a lot of chastising by Rex Whiting and my other coon hunting coach, Michael Roseman, both of them telling me, you got a good dog, you ought to be hunting him in these hunts to get a title. It just didn't matter much to me. Even though I enjoyed meeting new folks who liked the same things as I did, coon hounds and all the things that go with them. I just never really got stoked up about hunting in an official contest. Case in point, our fifth and final contests that happened a year later. On May the seventh, twenty twenty two, Michael and I had gone to Saint Charles, Arkansas to hunt a UK sensationed event sponsored by the East Arkansas Coon Hunters Association. I would be hunting with folks that I didn't know and had met only that night. One fellow was hunting the black and tan and one was hunting a blue tick. Our guide, who was also serving as a judge, which is the official scorekeeper of the hunt, was hunting the tree and a walker like I was. I had my work cut out for me. I could tell these guys were veterans of competition hunts. After we drove to where we were going to be turned loose, set around to talk. Before we did, I told the other three that if y'all want to practice taking advantage of someone who doesn't know the rules, very well, tonight's your night. Gents. I have no idea what I'm doing. And they all laughed, and I laughed with them. Whaling, who I was holding by the leaves he'd taken all the slack out of and was raring to go, looked back at me and the rest of us as if to say, he ain't kidding men, he ain't got a clue, but let's get on with it. And with me being thankful dogs couldn't talk to, Judge said all right, y'all ready cut them loose. Four hounds each trying to get in the lead, left in a cloud of dust down the edge of a stand of hardwood timber bordered by a big soybean filled They didn't go eighty yards before the barking started, and Whalen was thirty in line to start making racket. That's not a good way to start, considering that only gave him fifty points to start out with in a hunt that was only going to last ninety minutes. That's why a few episodes ago, when I talked about dogs being quick to get gone, strike a track and begin barking and come treated. So imported, you only have so much time to score plus points, and plus points are what mattered most in a competition. Huh. The dogs treating Whalen was last start barking out of the group. The coon was found and seen by all of us. We cut him loose after that tree was scored, and me and my four licked little buddy were in the last place. And I only knew that when the judge, who's now my friend, Barry McEwan from d w At, Arkansas, called out the places we all held and our scores fourth place out of fourth. We had nowhere to go but up from right there. But I wasn't upset. Whaling had done everything I'd ask him to do. He's not a follower or a run with the crowd dog. He's independent to a fault and was only striking in treating with the other dogs because they'd all smelt the same coon when we turned them loose. He was there with them purely out of coincidence. I had nothing to be upset about when I saw him hunt, carefree and unbothered by the other dogs. I felt like I'd already won. Rex and Michael have some Rainman type math skills when it comes to keeping up with everyone else's score and what their dog needs to do to get ahead and what they don't need to do to get behind. And there's as much strategy that goes into the competition that the best dog doesn't always win. Some might say that that takes the fun out of it and that the handler really doesn't have anything to do with the outcome or of the performance of the dog, and that is far from the truth. The handler is the head coach. He practices and works on corrected minor faults all through the training time and in between competitions to correct and improve performance. There are a ton of rules in hunting competitions, and a well versed, knowledgeable handler with a decent dog will have the advantage over a better dog with a poor handler. Clock management is key and knowing where everyone stands on the scorecard is paramount. There are grace periods and time limits to be considered for individual parts of the hunt that, when called too soon or too late, can have direct results on who wins and who loses. Now, my knowledge of the rules or lack of them, and coon hunting competitions could be rendered down to football terms. Now, I figure there's probably more folks listening to this that can relate to those than the ones I barely even know. And I've been in competition hunts, but kind of break it down like this, run left, run right, throw the ball, and punt on fourth down if you don't get a first or score. And coon hunting, it's Carl Whalen's name when he strikes, call his name when he trees. It's my own fault for not knowing any more than that. I had two of the best competition coaches of my own that I hunted with weekly. I just didn't care, but not in a non caring way, if that makes any sense. I was having such a great time being out there with those men and their dogs that I couldn't have begun to even guess the score or how much time was left in the hunt. Some dogs had treed and no coons were found. Others had done good here and there, but there was none of them, including my own, that was doing anything exceptional except Old Whaling hadn't done anything wrong. Some of the others had. One in particular, was actually withdrawn from the competition by his hand, and there was just no way he could catch up with the rest of us after making a fault and getting a minus point, so he chose to throw in the towel. I was listening to them talk about his withdrawal and trying to follow along and figure out how the rules all played out when Whaling started barking, so I just called him struck. And then he started treating a few moments after, and I treat him. No idea how much time was left in the hunt, what anyone's score was, or what mine was for that matter. I just knew my dog could treat a coon, or it sounded like he had, and was within seventy five yards of where we were standing. We all walked over and someone said, I got him. Now, that's the universal call out of someone seeing the coon. We all walked to where he was, and sure enough, about twenty feet off the ground was a coon looking back at the four of us, and my barking hound dog, Barry said, waiting two twenty five plus for striking tree. Time up, men, that's the hunt. He then took out his scorecard and commenced to doing some figure. He added readded and added again. A and the other two men were busy visiting about how much fun we'd had and that how much we'd enjoyed hunting together. When Barry said, congratulations, mister Reeves, sir, congratulations, you won? Are you kidding me? He looked at the scorecard again, as if doubt in his calculations after my less than enthusiastic response. Then, with everyone looking over his shoulder, he went through the hunt and did a play by play of the hunt as it played out in the woods and on paper. Sweet Jesus, I did win, but I learned more than I won. I learned that while competition coon hunting is fun, I didn't embrace it enough as a competition handler to keep up with it. While I was doing it, I enjoyed the community of the endeavor, the heritage and the legacy of the participants, in the stories of the dogs present, and passed far beyond the arena of competition. I Barry mcute could have told me, I came in last place, and I have never known the difference or been affected negatively by the outcome. My dog had done what I asked him to do and had a him by believing what he told me. While I fully support all the registries that carry on the legacy of coon hunting and follow us enthusiasm a lot of the big competitions, engaging in them beyond being a spectator. Just me, this ain't who I am, and I learned that four years ago in Saint Charles, Arkansas, beneath a big red oak tree on a cool spring deep I'm a coon hunter and proud to be recognized as one, but for me, it's not as far as it goes. On September sixth, from nine am to four pm, I'll be at the Shepherd Hills Cutlery Celebration in the Ozarks in Levenon, Missouri. If you get there and pronounce it elevenone, you will be identified as a spy and thrown into the stony lownesome. It's Levennont. I learned that the hard way. Alexis and Bailey will be with me, and we'll have some this country life merch available along with some of my signature case mini trappers. Bring the whole family. It's gonna be a great time. Thank y'all so much for listening. Share your stories with us at my TCL stories at the Meat Eater dot com and until next week. This is Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful.