Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bear Hunting Magazine Hunt Cast. With me
Speaker 1: Koby Morehead, We're gonna nerd out on bears hunting and
Speaker 1: the outdoors. We'll tell stories, talk biology, tactics, gear, and
Speaker 1: the fight to protect the pursuits that we hold dear, So,
Speaker 1: grab your bino's, lace up your boots, load up your barrels,
Speaker 1: and gather the hounds sweet venture on this journey together.
Speaker 1: Welcome one and all back to the Bear Hunting Magazine Huntcast. Today,
Speaker 1: we're joined again by none other than lifelong houndsman and
Speaker 1: host of the Gunde of the Dogs podcast, mister Steve Fielder.
Speaker 1: Steve wrote an article in the January February twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three issue of Bear Hunting Magazine about the foundations of
Speaker 1: all of the hound breeds that are typically ran on
Speaker 1: bear today. As we found out in the last episode,
Speaker 1: Steve was a part of the Dog Registries for over
Speaker 1: thirty years and he definitely knows some history behind these breeds.
Speaker 1: And one of the things we'll figure out inside of
Speaker 1: this spoiler alert is that a lot of the breeds
Speaker 1: have quite a bit in common as far as recent ancestors.
Speaker 1: All Right, without further ado, let's get into it here, Steve.
Speaker 2: You know, I talked about the breeds and pretty much
Speaker 2: put them in alphabetic order as we would discuss them.
Speaker 2: Let's say, if I were giving a presentation on breeds
Speaker 2: at one of the kennel clubs. And you know, the
Speaker 2: bear hunters have adapted their hounds basically from the various
Speaker 2: breeds of coonhounds. And you know, whether even now used
Speaker 2: to see a lot of the big game hunters hunting
Speaker 2: dogs that are what we call crossbread or a mixture
Speaker 2: of these coonhound breeds. There are six breeds, and just briefly,
Speaker 2: you know, the black and Tan, the blue tick, the
Speaker 2: English coonhound, the plot hound, the redbone, and the tree
Speaker 2: walker were the six fundamental breeds. The first breed that
Speaker 2: was recognized and by the kinner clubs and law was
Speaker 2: a dog that basically was the dog of the colonists,
Speaker 2: the settlers. And this was a dog that they called
Speaker 2: the black and tan simply because it was a black
Speaker 2: dog with tan or reddish points along its legs and
Speaker 2: the sides of its head and so forth, but predominantly black.
Speaker 2: And these came, you know, from the Talbot and Saint
Speaker 2: Hubert hounds and all that dated all the way back
Speaker 2: to the after the Norman invasion in the eleventh century.
Speaker 2: There they came from from France and then from England
Speaker 2: and they were brought to this country and they quickly
Speaker 2: adapted to trailing. You know, the game animals that were
Speaker 2: here in Europe there were no raccoons to tree. Many
Speaker 2: of the fur bears that we have in this country
Speaker 2: were not existent there, but they were easily adapted. And
Speaker 2: you know, they were kind of like the bedrop breed,
Speaker 2: but they've gone through an evolution. You know. They were
Speaker 2: a large breed, a heavy boned, deep voiced, but not
Speaker 2: very quick on trail. As I said in the article,
Speaker 2: black and tens are not really the most popular of
Speaker 2: breeds for bear hunting. But I've done some articles about
Speaker 2: some really incredible black and tan bear dogs. I remember
Speaker 2: doing one about a dog that marrolled money up in
Speaker 2: Wisconsin and Minnesota that was a tremendous bear dog. Some
Speaker 2: of the dogs that I've written about even lately, the
Speaker 2: Luther Dog of Scott McLoughlin's I think that's coming out
Speaker 2: was a black and tan colored dog.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's time for you guys to get
Speaker 1: a little treat. I'm going to read a little bit
Speaker 1: out of this current July August twenty twenty four issue
Speaker 1: of Bear Hunting Magazine Legendary bear Hound, Part fifty six.
Speaker 1: Scott Maclothin's Luther Great bear dogs don't always come from
Speaker 1: royal beginnings with grandiose pedigrees. Sometimes from the most humble
Speaker 1: beginnings greatness arises. It's true about the hound named Luther.
Speaker 1: He was a half curR, half walker. He looked like
Speaker 1: a pure bred black and tan. Scott McLoughlin said when
Speaker 1: describing his bear hound of a Lifetime. You should get
Speaker 1: the current issue of Bear Hunting magazine. And this is
Speaker 1: a shameless pluck, but seriously, you hound guys, just check
Speaker 1: out the cover of this magazine and you'll be sold.
Speaker 1: All Right, I'm done, Let's get back to Steve.
Speaker 2: The but I contained you know, in my dad's experience,
Speaker 2: one of the earliest bear hunters that once he got
Speaker 2: the fever ed started a bear hunting with a group
Speaker 2: of hunters over in eastern Virginia, and a guy named
Speaker 2: Arden Smith had a dog named Sounder, and he met
Speaker 2: the UKC and AKC standards for a purebread black and tan,
Speaker 2: you know, and he was that cold nose, which is
Speaker 2: a trade of the black dog. You know, he was
Speaker 2: a dog that you could free cast in the mountains,
Speaker 2: which means, you know, you turn him loose, you lead
Speaker 2: the other dogs, and when he would find a track
Speaker 2: and make progress on it, then you could release dogs
Speaker 2: to help him with it. But Sounder was quite a
Speaker 2: producer of good bear dogs, and he looked like a
Speaker 2: purebread black and tan. But when you looked at a
Speaker 2: little of pup city sired, they were all colors. Red tick,
Speaker 2: blue tick, solid red, you know, black and white, spotted
Speaker 2: like a walker dog.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I get the feeling. Mister Steve is just
Speaker 1: now hitting his rhythm. Let's get on and start talking
Speaker 1: about some blue dogs. I feel a lot of you
Speaker 1: Western guys are waiting on this one, and just a
Speaker 1: heads up, it's a little more complicated than just a
Speaker 1: cut and dry. If it's black and tan, it's black
Speaker 1: and tante.
Speaker 2: Well, blue ticks are one of the most popular of
Speaker 2: the breeds. There's something about a blue tick. Man. Once
Speaker 2: they get a blue tick, they are absolutely they sign
Speaker 2: up for life. You know. There's just something about those
Speaker 2: dogs that there's the selves to these guys, and you know,
Speaker 2: to go back in the history of the breed, there
Speaker 2: were three breeds that we recognized today. There were at
Speaker 2: one time lumped within a single breed, and we're going
Speaker 2: to talk in a minute about the English coonhound. Well,
Speaker 2: the blue tick was one of those. And the English
Speaker 2: coonhound typically has what we call a red tick pattern,
Speaker 2: and it's really just little specs of hair on a
Speaker 2: white background, and some of them are more dnse than
Speaker 2: the others, and it kind of in the case of
Speaker 2: the blue ticket, gives that blue tick look. But before
Speaker 2: I get too deep in the weeds here, those three breeds,
Speaker 2: the blue tick, the tream walker, and the English, in
Speaker 2: the mid forties were separated out into individual breeds. So
Speaker 2: it was at that time, around nineteen forty six that
Speaker 2: the blue tick coonhound was recognized by United Kennel Club.
Speaker 2: And they also descended from the foxhounds that came from England,
Speaker 2: and the General Lafayette gave some of these blue tick
Speaker 2: colored foxhounds to George Washington, who was a fox hunter,
Speaker 2: of course, and they generally traced their background back to
Speaker 2: these French hounds, the big and there's a breed called
Speaker 2: the blue Gascon, which is a taller bigger houndier as
Speaker 2: we say, breed, you know than the American blue tick
Speaker 2: are the one that you know, we typically recognize. But yeah,
Speaker 2: blue ticks have been known for the ability to trail
Speaker 2: and when you go back and look at the early
Speaker 2: successful lion hunters, dry ground lion hunters in this country, uh,
Speaker 2: the the kind of dogs that the Lee Brothers of
Speaker 2: Arizona uh hunted and so forth. You know, there was
Speaker 2: a lot of blue tick influence in in those dogs.
Speaker 2: Blue ticks are very popular, they're they're not, but you know,
Speaker 2: the ones that are used in raccoon hunting and in
Speaker 2: competition have been bred to be much quicker afoot, you know,
Speaker 2: speedier dogs than the old original ones were pretty much
Speaker 2: you know, meticulous trailers. You know, they didn't worry too
Speaker 2: much about uh when they got that lion track jumped
Speaker 2: or that bear track jump. But when you know, they
Speaker 2: were more useful in the fact that they could smell
Speaker 2: it when the other dogs could not. You know. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the blue tick is is, you know, has been just
Speaker 2: one of the the h go to breeds or or
Speaker 2: anchor breeds for most anybody that especially hunts mountain lion
Speaker 2: on dry ground or bear out in the Huntred with
Speaker 2: Calvin Redhouse out in the Navajo Nation. And you know
Speaker 2: he has some blue tick and type dogs in his back.
Speaker 1: You know, Lafaye given Washington some blue dogs. I really
Speaker 1: like that. Founding father and founding helmsman. That's something that
Speaker 1: you'd teach in schools. Well, just like in pool, got
Speaker 1: us sometimes put some English on it. Let's see what
Speaker 1: Steve has to say about the English.
Speaker 2: Well, the English breed was first registered by UKC back
Speaker 2: in nineteen o five, and they were called English fox
Speaker 2: and coon hounds. Was in the forties that people with
Speaker 2: the foxhound influence in the English dogs that came out
Speaker 2: of the Kentucky hounds, the Walker family and various ones
Speaker 2: and all they wanted to have their own separate breeds,
Speaker 2: and gentlemen named Lester Nance of Indiana pursued this idea
Speaker 2: with the United Kennel Club to separate out and call
Speaker 2: these foxhound type coonhounds walker dogs after the Walker family,
Speaker 2: and that's how the term tree and Walker came. But
Speaker 2: they were originally English coonhouns or registered as such, as
Speaker 2: were the Blue Ticks. And so when they all separated
Speaker 2: out and there were three separate breeds the English coonhound
Speaker 2: was the one that, you know, it was kind of
Speaker 2: the foundation of these other two breeds. But they had
Speaker 2: a more flexible standard as far as the colors of
Speaker 2: the dogs. You know, the dogs could be blue tick color,
Speaker 2: they could be red tick color, they could be white
Speaker 2: with red spots, white with black spots, virtually any hound
Speaker 2: color except solid colors. They didn't want them to look
Speaker 2: like black and tans. They didn't want them to look
Speaker 2: like the red bone, which we haven't talked about yet.
Speaker 2: But they were more concerned with the ability of the
Speaker 2: dog than they were in trying to create a uniform
Speaker 2: hound that someone could you know, glance at and say
Speaker 2: that's an English coonhound. But yeah, there were always one
Speaker 2: of the most popular in coon hunting. There's been a
Speaker 2: lot of outstanding English coonhounds down through the years. And
Speaker 2: I did a story for you in the Legendary bar
Speaker 2: Dog series about the Armstrong Hounds over in western Virginia.
Speaker 2: I did an article about the dog, a dog named Trey,
Speaker 2: and he was an outstanding bar dog and he belonged
Speaker 2: to Buck Armstrong. The Armstrong family were known for many
Speaker 2: years as having top bear dogs that were very dedicated
Speaker 2: bear hunters. I really enjoyed the opportunity to do the
Speaker 2: story on Trey the English dog, because I had heard
Speaker 2: of the armstrong dogs from my earliest memories as a
Speaker 2: kid going on the bear hunts with my dad, and
Speaker 2: I knew, you know, people, and I saw offspring of
Speaker 2: these dogs in action, and they were tremendous sounds. And
Speaker 2: so to be able to do a story about one
Speaker 2: of these sounds in this dog tray, which was a
Speaker 2: phenomenal dog in his own right, you know, he had
Speaker 2: had all the all the tools, as we say. But
Speaker 2: so the English, you know, they're kind of a potpourri breed.
Speaker 2: You know, you got a lot of different colors and
Speaker 2: things like that, but they're pretty much descended down from
Speaker 2: the English fox hounds that came to this country with
Speaker 2: the earliest colonists. You know, if you.
Speaker 1: Guys know Steve Fielder, you know there's one particular breed
Speaker 1: that is close to his heart. Steve was raised by
Speaker 1: die Hard plat Man, and boy, if he doesn't get
Speaker 1: excited when you fell in that it's time to start
Speaker 1: talking about some rendell dogs. It's hard to be good
Speaker 1: their Steve. Whenever I's hold, let's talk some plot hounds.
Speaker 2: Well, how long do we have here? You want to
Speaker 2: get you want to have lunch catered in. But yeah,
Speaker 2: the plot breed is of the six recognizable breeds or
Speaker 2: the standard breeds that these bar dogs come from. All
Speaker 2: of them trace their roots back to the English foxhounds,
Speaker 2: except the plot hound. And the stories vary, and you know,
Speaker 2: two hundred years or nearly two point fifty is a
Speaker 2: long time and a lot of twists and turns in
Speaker 2: the road can happen. But the legend was, and as
Speaker 2: John Jackson called it, the saga was that, you know,
Speaker 2: the plot dog came from Germany, brought to this country
Speaker 2: in at about seventeen fifty by a couple of boys.
Speaker 2: Actually two boys left Germany, where their father was a
Speaker 2: gameskeeper there, and brought some dogs with them. One of
Speaker 2: the boys died on the past passage over the other one,
Speaker 2: Johannas or Johanna's Plot, is credited with bringing the dogs
Speaker 2: to America. Came into Philadelphia, migrated down to North Carolina
Speaker 2: and then later onto the mountains of North Carolina. And
Speaker 2: that's where these dogs were used, you know, primarily for
Speaker 2: bear hunting. And so the plot dog, unlike the foxhound
Speaker 2: route and so forth. He basically was bred from his
Speaker 2: earliest days for big game and that's what most of
Speaker 2: them are used for. They're not the most popular breed
Speaker 2: in terms of numbers in the registries, but they are
Speaker 2: extremely popular with a good number of bear hunters, especially
Speaker 2: in the East. Now, I don't think the plot hound
Speaker 2: perhaps caught on as well out west as a bear
Speaker 2: dog as they did in the East, and I rather
Speaker 2: think part of that may have been due to the
Speaker 2: nose factor. There were kind of two basic lines of Plots.
Speaker 2: If you go back into the Plot family, John Plot,
Speaker 2: the elder brother to vaunt On Plot, who was the
Speaker 2: youngest h John like the shorter eared, quicker, harder fighting
Speaker 2: type dog, Von Plot like the bigger dog, perhaps the
Speaker 2: colder nosed, houndier looking dog. But the Plot got a
Speaker 2: bad rap when they were first, you know, introduced to
Speaker 2: the country in about the mid forties, at of being
Speaker 2: you know, aggressive, too aggressive, aggressive with other dogs and
Speaker 2: so forth. We never found that to be true in
Speaker 2: all the years my father was a breeder for fifty
Speaker 2: years and all, but that was the rep that they got,
Speaker 2: kind of like what pit bulls carrying in some circles
Speaker 2: and I think it was that part of it was
Speaker 2: the color, you know, that brindle color, and they do
Speaker 2: have a fierce look from their eyes. And when they
Speaker 2: get you know, there is a gentline hide transformation from
Speaker 2: being the couch dog to the to the bear dog.
Speaker 2: You know, they are absolutely turned the switch on and
Speaker 2: they don't turn it off until that game is down
Speaker 2: or up the tree or they're led away. But you know,
Speaker 2: they are vicious fighters on game, and they have a
Speaker 2: super treeing instinct. They like water, they're quick to learn
Speaker 2: or you know, and they're open trailing. You know, their
Speaker 2: voices tend to be run more towards what we call
Speaker 2: a chop voice, which they cut the barks off in
Speaker 2: short links, rather than drawing them out, which we call
Speaker 2: a ball mouth b a w L. But yeah, plots
Speaker 2: would probably be in the be lost to the mountains
Speaker 2: of North Carolina had it not been for guys like
Speaker 2: Dale Brandenburger, a coon hunter and Illinois a farmer that
Speaker 2: went out and bought stock and brought them back and
Speaker 2: began to rent run ads in the coonhal magazines about
Speaker 2: the dogs, and then they became immensely popular. But my
Speaker 2: favorite breed always will be I guess you know. The
Speaker 2: old sin is you ought to dance with the one
Speaker 2: that brung you, you know, And so that's kind of
Speaker 2: where I am. I still love a plot dog, I
Speaker 2: love them all. I love all hounds deep down, but
Speaker 2: the plot will always have a special place with me.
Speaker 1: It's great to see someone sticking with their first love
Speaker 1: no matter what happens. I'm sure that Steve will love
Speaker 1: plots more than all other breeds of the day. He
Speaker 1: does well, we're moving right along inside of her breeds,
Speaker 1: and next up we're talking about a breed that was
Speaker 1: made famous by a story from right here in the Ozarks.
Speaker 1: If you know the story, you already know where we're
Speaker 1: headed here.
Speaker 2: Steve, what grade school kid in America doesn't remember reading
Speaker 2: the story of Depression in the Ozarks and Billy, with
Speaker 2: its two pups that he ordered, Old Dan and Little
Speaker 2: Anne where the red fern grows, probably did more to
Speaker 2: promote the red Bone coon hound than anything and continues
Speaker 2: to do so. The Red Bone, in my estimation, is
Speaker 2: one of the most beautiful of all the breed. It's
Speaker 2: one of the oldest. Uh. You know, way back in
Speaker 2: the early days of UKC they registered the black and
Speaker 2: Tan the Red Bone and the tree Walker. But the
Speaker 2: early red bones were not that trademark solid red color.
Speaker 2: They were a black dog with red legs, perhaps white feet,
Speaker 2: white in their chest, and just through selective breeding down
Speaker 2: through the years, you know, they became the solid red
Speaker 2: dogs that that we have. You know, I did an
Speaker 2: article and I slay his name all the time, but
Speaker 2: Bill Derrazuski is a professional main guide that hunted red bones,
Speaker 2: and we did an article about his redbone. It was
Speaker 2: called the dog was called McDonald's Rooster Cogburn. I guess
Speaker 2: that was named after John Wayne movie and the dog
Speaker 2: was owned by mac McDonald who was a client of Bills.
Speaker 2: But anyway, rooster was quite an impressive bear dog. And
Speaker 2: there have been several others. Uh. There's a guy named
Speaker 2: Connie Gibson in North Carolina that has hunted a predominantly
Speaker 2: an exclusively redbone packed on bear for many years. So
Speaker 2: the Redbone, you know, was a coon own of course,
Speaker 2: as we knew, and from reading Wilson Rawls's account in
Speaker 2: Where the Redbern Grows but also adapted well to bear hunting.
Speaker 2: Uh there, you know, it depends on the strain. But
Speaker 2: you know, they're smart, and they're have all the traits
Speaker 2: that the other hound breeds have, but they have been
Speaker 2: more popular with the coon downs and the coon hunters
Speaker 2: than they have with the bear hunters. But red bones
Speaker 2: are typically good tree dogs and they are are good
Speaker 2: trail dogs. The only problem that the red dog has
Speaker 2: suffered down through the years, it's probably altered its ability
Speaker 2: somequa is the fact that they're so beautiful and that
Speaker 2: so many people acquired them just from reading the book
Speaker 2: and actually didn't earnestly breathe them, you know, for hunting,
Speaker 2: and so it's kind of like the Irish I won't
Speaker 2: say that to that extreme at all, but the beautiful
Speaker 2: Irish setter was once a great bird dog, and because
Speaker 2: of its beauty and the fact it was taken into
Speaker 2: the show ring and bread for that instead of hunting
Speaker 2: quail or pheasants or whatever. You know, it became hard
Speaker 2: and probably still his heart to find a classic Irish
Speaker 2: setter that you can take out to the field and
Speaker 2: have a good day shooting birds. But breadbones, I would
Speaker 2: rank them kind of the middle of the road. You know.
Speaker 2: They're not on the high end, they're not on the
Speaker 2: low end. They're just a good, solid, steady hound. And
Speaker 2: if you get a good one, you've really got a
Speaker 2: good dog. And if you go back and read the
Speaker 2: story of Rooster of Matt McDonald's, was just that kind
Speaker 2: of dogs. Yeah dog, he said, you know that he
Speaker 2: could go out and cold trail a track that no
Speaker 2: other dog could even smell. And you know, and a
Speaker 2: lot of times, says we said earlier, he was the
Speaker 2: only dog under the tree, you know, so he had
Speaker 2: the complete package.
Speaker 1: Redbone's just too pretty for their own good. Well, next up,
Speaker 1: we're talking about a hound that takes me back to
Speaker 1: my childhood. For a long stint inside of my elementary years,
Speaker 1: we were die hard coon hunters and there was hardly
Speaker 1: a night I feel like I went to school fully
Speaker 1: charged from all the coon hunting we were doing. And
Speaker 1: that hound belonged to this next breed. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: go a little bit longer today to stick with us.
Speaker 1: We just got a few more breeds to go.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, the dream walker. You know, I did an
Speaker 2: article for a hound magazine for a few years there,
Speaker 2: and I called it. It was about the dream walker
Speaker 2: coon hound. The publisher had wanted some content that focused
Speaker 2: on training walkers and I called it the America's Choice
Speaker 2: or America's choice. It is the most popular of all
Speaker 2: the hound breeds. About nineteen forty five, after World War Two,
Speaker 2: when all the boys came home, they got involved and
Speaker 2: created a competition for coonhounds that they called the Night Hunt,
Speaker 2: and the early winters of those events, although the redbone
Speaker 2: coonhound at the very onset of those events was the star,
Speaker 2: they really were popular. But as Tom went along the contests,
Speaker 2: when the rules were written, it favored the dog that
Speaker 2: was fast, the dog that had the speed, that the
Speaker 2: one that could hunt out to find a track the fastest,
Speaker 2: run that track to the tree the fastest. And then
Speaker 2: they were a little bit short on the treeing instinct
Speaker 2: in the early years, But through perseverance, the breeders spread
Speaker 2: more tring ability into the dogs, and the walkers became,
Speaker 2: you know, early winners of world championship events and so forth,
Speaker 2: and just you know, year after year just built upon
Speaker 2: that base and became the most popular of all the breeds.
Speaker 2: And when I was a kid, i say, or a
Speaker 2: young hunter up into my twenties, you rarely saw a
Speaker 2: tring walker dog in a bare pack, especially in the Appalachians. Rare,
Speaker 2: But now you see guys that are hunting entire packs
Speaker 2: of a tree walker dogs and so there's been a
Speaker 2: you know, kind of an evolution there. And I think
Speaker 2: you know, Kirk Rogers was a guy that I mentioned
Speaker 2: in this article that you've referred to a professional main guide.
Speaker 2: You know, it has built his entire pack upon what
Speaker 2: we call house bread treeing walkers. That was the work
Speaker 2: of a breeder named Joe House. But uh, and there's
Speaker 2: a lot of other other guys out there that are
Speaker 2: hunting strictly walker packs now. But the same thing on
Speaker 2: bear that has uh that distinguished them as coon dogs
Speaker 2: was their speed, their h and they're determined, you know,
Speaker 2: a tree walker dog going back to those old foxhound
Speaker 2: routes where they would run a red fox all night long,
Speaker 2: from from sundown to son up. You know, that kind
Speaker 2: of of heart and determination and the athleticism. You know,
Speaker 2: it's made them a natural. At first, they kind of
Speaker 2: got a bad rap about not having the grit that
Speaker 2: they needed. And in terms of bear dogs, that's something
Speaker 2: we haven't talked about very much, Kobe, but there's a balance.
Speaker 2: You know, you can have too much grit in a
Speaker 2: bar dog you're gonna spend a lot of time in
Speaker 2: the vet or worse, you're gonna spend a lot of
Speaker 2: time in a breeding pen, breeding more dogs or buying
Speaker 2: more dogs to replace the ones that had too much grit.
Speaker 2: A good bear dog is an intelligent bear dog. He's
Speaker 2: a smart fighter. He's a a boxer. He's not a
Speaker 2: TV wrestler, you know. He and you know, one of
Speaker 2: the best bear dogs that we had, and I think
Speaker 2: I wrote a story about her at one point, was
Speaker 2: a female named Julie. And she never got a she
Speaker 2: would never get a mark on her, you know. She
Speaker 2: she was just very very smart. Bade a bear very
Speaker 2: close on the ground, but was more like a mosquito
Speaker 2: than she was an alligator. You know, she is harassed
Speaker 2: a bear, and I think they just said, man, this
Speaker 2: is enough of this. I'm going up a tree. But
Speaker 2: but yeah, the walkers are great anything you use them for.
Speaker 2: A lot of guys are running them and some of
Speaker 2: them are crossing them, you know, with other breeds and
Speaker 2: so forth. But one of the older breeders there, one
Speaker 2: of the guy that was really responsible for them being
Speaker 2: name eamed tree Walker Leicester Nance. His dogs have excelled
Speaker 2: as bear dogs. Some of them were taken out west
Speaker 2: early on, and you know, and have done very well.
Speaker 2: So the nance in a n CE bread walker dogs
Speaker 2: are well known as bear dogs.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna speed walk into this next one.
Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about some Merle colored dogs, and
Speaker 1: then after that we're gonna be moving right on to
Speaker 1: our last type of hound, and that is the crossbred hound.
Speaker 1: But first here's Steve talking about the American leopardhound.
Speaker 2: A couple of bear dogs in our hunting party, and
Speaker 2: I mentioned him in this article, were owned by a
Speaker 2: fellow named Jimmy Thomas, a hit purchased from Richard mcduffy.
Speaker 2: Richard was from North Carolina, or at least he lived
Speaker 2: there for many years and later moved to South Carolina.
Speaker 2: But he bred these leopard dogs. And basically when we
Speaker 2: talk about leopard there murle colored dogs like you would
Speaker 2: see in a Catahula catalog maybe, or like you would
Speaker 2: see in h oh all kinds of breeds. You see
Speaker 2: the Meurle coloration and the Shetland sheep dogs and various ones.
Speaker 2: It's more of splotches of black on a background with
Speaker 2: you know, they're very colorful they're beautiful dogs. They can't yeah.
Speaker 2: Now they can come black and tan color and maybe
Speaker 2: solid yellow to look like old yellow. But the popular
Speaker 2: color and the most common is this murle color. And
Speaker 2: it can be a red murle, more of a liver colored,
Speaker 2: or it can be a blue murle which leans more
Speaker 2: toward the bluish castle like a blue tip. But they're
Speaker 2: very beautiful dogs. But I had the opportunity to hunt
Speaker 2: with two that came from Richard mcduffy. I'm not sure
Speaker 2: if they were brothers. The big reddish murle dog was
Speaker 2: called stub and as some of them do, these leopard haounds,
Speaker 2: some of them do have a natural bobtail, and so
Speaker 2: he got his name from his tail. And the other
Speaker 2: one was called Rattler, and he had the blue murle pattern,
Speaker 2: which kind of looked more like one of those old
Speaker 2: timber rattlesnakes you know that we had back in back
Speaker 2: in the Appalachians. But they were both good bear dogs,
Speaker 2: coal trailers, ran hard, ran up front with the other dogs.
Speaker 2: Uh you know, uh, tenacious on a bade up bear.
Speaker 2: So yeah, that breed. I don't know how many people
Speaker 2: are concentrating on hunting leopard hounds on bear, But I'm
Speaker 2: sure that's.
Speaker 1: Do you know where they came from, what kind of
Speaker 1: some of their history.
Speaker 2: You know, they say that basically that the Spanish conquistadors,
Speaker 2: you know, had dogs that were like this, and then
Speaker 2: they crossed them with some of the native Mexican dogs,
Speaker 2: you know, and that these dogs you know that came
Speaker 2: from Mexico were used for hunting bear. But they they
Speaker 2: weren't recognized by UKC in until nineteen ninety eight, and
Speaker 2: they were typically called leopard curves, but UKC calls them
Speaker 2: the American leopard hound. But I did get to spend
Speaker 2: some time with Richard mcduffy, this long time breeder. There's
Speaker 2: another fellow named Lamar Meeks that was a longtime breeder,
Speaker 2: and so you know, there were pockets of these dogs
Speaker 2: around the country. I think maybe several of them, you know,
Speaker 2: down in Louisiana in the cane breaks where they hunt
Speaker 2: the hogs, you know, with dogs, and through across the South,
Speaker 2: and you probably find more of them that way. You
Speaker 2: don't see them very often in the coonhound events, so
Speaker 2: I know they're not being used in any great numbers
Speaker 2: as coonhound. I would say the same is probably true
Speaker 2: with the bear dogs. They're out there, they're being used
Speaker 2: by some hunters.
Speaker 1: Do you know what kind of traits would would be
Speaker 1: something that a bear hunter would seeing that breed that
Speaker 1: would make them want to try them out?
Speaker 2: Well, I think probably the thing that would attract a
Speaker 2: bear hunter more to the leopard dog would be his
Speaker 2: grit and his tenacity. Although you know, I've read the
Speaker 2: stories and all about some of the dogs that do
Speaker 2: have strong noses and are able to coltrail, but typically
Speaker 2: people associate and I say associate because you know, I
Speaker 2: may be wrong in this, but the leopard hound kind
Speaker 2: of fits over here more in the what we call
Speaker 2: cur dog category, uh. And I think that's why UKC
Speaker 2: was careful to name the dogs that they went after,
Speaker 2: the registered leopard hounds, to distinguish them from that leopard
Speaker 2: curve deal. So most guys on the street, so to speak,
Speaker 2: would classify the leopard as a cur dog. But really
Speaker 2: there's been a concentrated effort to preserve those with hound
Speaker 2: traits and breed them to others with those same traits
Speaker 2: to establish, you know, a leopard colored hound, and that's
Speaker 2: what that's what we see.
Speaker 1: I think it'd be cool to see more than more
Speaker 1: of those pop up. And yeah, they're a pretty dog.
Speaker 1: I love that Merle pattern.
Speaker 2: Gorgeous.
Speaker 1: I'm always drawn to they really are. There is one
Speaker 1: more breed that we can visit for a second, the
Speaker 1: cross breed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And if we're talking bear dogs, especially in the
Speaker 2: West and in other areas of the country, even in
Speaker 2: the groups that I hunt with over in Virginia, the
Speaker 2: crossbread dog is the you know, the type dog they hunt.
Speaker 2: And I think that comes more from just breeding. What
Speaker 2: we typically said in the old addage and breeding coonhouses,
Speaker 2: just breeding coon dog to coon dog, meaning the best
Speaker 2: to the best, you know, And that was the breeding
Speaker 2: tool for many years, and it proved to be a
Speaker 2: good one, but it wasn't always good and it didn't
Speaker 2: always produce results. I'm a guy that likes to breed
Speaker 2: along family lines, you know, a family of dogs within
Speaker 2: a within a breed. You know. The old bear hunter
Speaker 2: in Virginia, Lance Hunting holds a couple of degrees in
Speaker 2: animal science and genetics and things like that. He always said,
Speaker 2: you know, you family breed to establish your line, you
Speaker 2: outcross to get your outstanding individuals. But if you can
Speaker 2: outcross to a family bread line of dogs other than
Speaker 2: the one you had. Then that's the icing on the cake.
Speaker 2: So a lot of these breeders, you know, Lance was
Speaker 2: able to establish a long line of really good bear dogs.
Speaker 2: And the foundation was breeding a black and tan female
Speaker 2: to a treeing walker male, and so that's being done.
Speaker 2: And then out in the West Oregon, Mike Kemp has
Speaker 2: had much success in breeding the running hown, the running
Speaker 2: foxhowl into you know, coonhound breeds and producing dogs that
Speaker 2: do very well in bear hunting. Of course they're crossbread dog.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening. The Bear Hunting Magazine Hunt Cast
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