al baldwin wrote:David never heard of you. Thought Bill Dwyer brought Mckenzie River Banjo to Oregon. Recall when Sam made that cross. Al
Al, Mac Mcallister gave me first pick out of Banjo's litter, only because I was the first one to get there at weaning time. He was obviously different than the others in his litter. He strutted around like he owned that litter and the pen they were in. In fact his arrogance would probably include Macs immaculate farm and home. Finley River Banjo had just been killed by a car, and this was one of his last litters on earth. Little Banjo was 400.00 which was far beyond what my new wife and I could afford. I spent much time laying awake trying to figure out what his full name would be. As we were getting in the car to leave after spending the night hunting and sleeping, Mac picked up a female pup that was running around his farm and said, "here you are going to need something to breed that dog to." That was Rainbow.
My parents were keeping Banjo in their back yard for me while I finished college. I could not keep both dogs together in town because they got each other barking. One day when he was about 6 months old or so, my mom calls me at school and says I need to come over to their house as banjo has been barking steady for two hours or more and she cant get him to quit barking. My mom and dad knew nothing of hounds and hunting. I said mom, look at him what is he doing, tell me exactly what he is doing. So she goes to the sliding glass doors and says "well he has his feet on a telephone pole and just barking his head off." "MOM! look up the telephone pole." "Oh, hey, there is a squirrell up there at the top of it". I was so elated. He had been treeing for two hours or more. Mom was not happy at all as they lived right in residential Eugene. It took me another two hours to get there, and when I did he was still hammering every breath. Why that squirrel did not leave, I have no idea. His voice was tremendously loud but it is hard to imagine the squirrel being frozen that long. If you ever saw that dog on a bear, you know he never ever paused to swallow. His tree barks were steady. That is why he was always blowing his voice out.
I figured it was time to go to the woods with him. Rainbow was a month or two older so I figured she must be ready too. I was new at this but read everything I could about it. I took them to the woods that night. Rainbow treed her first coon that night with no help. She held that tree while Banjo ran trash around her all night. I kept thinking he would finally come in to her, but he had no intention of it. I would leave her when ever he got close to try and catch him. She never pulled from that tree. I was dumb enough to think that is just the way dogs are.
I thought he was running deer back then, but now I think it might have been a fox because every so often through the night he would come back through still blowing every time he hit the ground. There was no chance of catching him. I had no idea what to do. I tried all night to catch him and he never showed a sign of slowing down or getting tired.
I had to leave to get to classes, and just hoped some one would find him and call me from the name tag. I went to classes and came back in the afternoon, and he was still running wide open. Now, I could see though, so was able to put an angle on him and run him down.
I read an article by Bill Dwyer in Full Cry. He lived in Springfeild and listed his number with the article so I called him. I told him about my problems and he invited me to take him and his two dogs with me when I go. He was as poor as I was and welcomed the ride to the woods. I remember his male was named "Guy", I forgot the females name. They were what he called the "Emerald Valley" dogs out of Joe and Rainey. It is funny that "Joe and Rainey" could have easily been nick names for banJOE and Rainbow.
I remember in the phone conversation he asked me over and over to recite the pedigree of those two dogs. It was as if he just could not get enough of hearing it. He did that for the first few times we hunted together. He asked me if he could take Banjo and put him on bear so I said yes. Then he came back and asked me to give him half ownership for hunting him on bear. I said yes to that also. As soon as I did, and he started hunting him with other hunters I started getting phone calls from guys trying to under cut Bill. You can not believe all the warnings I got about Bill and how he took me so bad. I still don't think he did. You or any one else never would have heard of the dog if not for Bill. He had a tremendously hard time with me hunting my dog, however, and we ended up selling him. He went to Terry Merritt in New York for more money than I had ever held in my hand or bank account in my entire life. Again, that would not have happened if not for the way Bill "promoted" his dogs.
So you can see how very little I had to do with how things turned out. My only claim is to the months of research I did on the treeing walker breed to find what I believed would be the best cross in the world. That truly was my goal, and maybe I was not far off for that time in history.
Many bobcats were caught with those dogs and their offspring, but they were about the worst bobcat dogs I have had in my life of bobcat hunting. I never caught a single bobcat with Banjo in the heavily brushed upper coast range. I caught about 2% of the cats I had Rainbow on up there. That is, until I brought in a bobcat bred dog from Earl Davis. I did very well with the Missouri bred coon dogs on bobcat in the Cascades and high desert. I very seldom could get there though.
All this to say I became painfully aware of the problems powerful tree dogs can bring to the bobcat hunting table. I have learned from folks like Johnny Young and Jcathunter that the power of those genetics was still being noticed when I first found this board about 7 years ago. That is over 20 years later.
I love to go to a hard treeing dog. It is a huge part of the pleasure of the hunting experience for me. It means so much to have a dog that you know will be there treeing hard even if it takes you 8 hours to get there. It is so great to be able to stop at any moment in the long hard climb, or descent, or crawl through the brush. You know you will not have to stand there waiting to hear something. You just stop enough to hear, and there they are calling you on, giving you that encouragement to keep going; giving you that shot of adrenaline that you really need at that moment. These are tremendous moments in the life of a person who hunts bobcats.
I wont start on all the problems these dogs bring with them. If I did, I would have to give equal time to all the new problems rational thinking dogs bring with them also.
Jcathunter, dont give up on your search. I am sure the dogs you are looking for are out there in that very state you live in. Let us know how your search is going.
) The ones who signed their names made it a little easier.