Cowboyvon wrote:I have used the trail cameras and during the summer heat I've been known to drag a road with my buggy... I've pulled all my trail cameras and unless I'm exercising the hounds I'm always on a mule or on foot now days... I like to think like Henry McEntire "take good hounds in good lion country and make circles" I'm pretty fortunate because I can hunt right out my back door .. but reading the stories about the old timers and what they had to go through.. trying to stay with the hounds or riding up on top of mountain just to listen to see if they could locate them.. Orville Fletcher was telling me about hunting jags down in S America.. I got all excited and told him man I would like to of tried that.. he just looked at me and said "your not tough enough" lol
Me either!!! But I sure would have liked to have had the chance to prove it!!!
After reading Brave and other stories by Steve Mathis i think that hunting Jag's in Central America would of been the true test of stamina in a hunting situation. The planning alone,and getting everything you needed down there back in the 40's and 50's would of detoured 99% of the hunters. Disease (for both man and dogs) was very high. There is a picture in his book of a Boa track in the mud that looked like someone flipped a car on its top and drug it through the mud! The Insects,snakes,heat,humidity,bad water,and all the other jungle luxury's would of made it hard to enjoy hunting i think. But they did it! Personally i think a northern Mexico or south Arizona jag hunt would of appealed to me more lol....... It is definantly fun to read about though.
Steve could write and was a great houndsmen.My book finally fell apart .After reading his and Dale Lee's books on Jaguar hunting I would have loved to travel back in time and went with them .I might not have been tough enough but just like you guys i bet we would have made it or died trying because we are houndsmen !
For those who have never read or seen the book, all the pictures of Steve's dogs when he was at home in the states hunting showed his dogs to be fat and slick. I just put the picture on here to show the toll the jungle took on the dogs.
I'm not tough enough to hunt even where I did 2 years ago now that I'm getting deaf and arthritic, but I know just enough about hounds and hound hunting that I still get really excited by the old (and some of your new) stories. What's more, I rarely get so much as a mosquito bite reading a book or the computer screen with my old hound at my feet! Most of those old timers didn't do a lot of whining, so its easy to overlook just how rough the country was and the considerable dangers they faced when they made even fairly minor mistakes or had a little bad luck. They were so far away from any help. I sure wish I could've learned a thing or two from them.
Here is another book for you. " No Life for a Lady by Agnes Morley Cleaveland get it on amazon . NM in the last quarter of the 1800's, there's a couple of Bear and Lion hunts in there.
I can make 'em go and I can make 'em Whoa ! God makes 'em do. I'll take Jesus, you can have the field
Sent to me from Mr. George Pavey. George is 80 years of age and has a wagon-load of old time stories. here is one of them.
I spent two year plus with Dale Lee. Our season was January through April in Nayarit, Old Mexico, hunting jaguars. May through November was spent in the southwest mountain ranges. We rode mule back every day of the summer. Each morning you could bet on hearing Dale say "come on boys we're burning daylight:. I still get up before daylight and think of that often.
Talk about how tough Dale was... we were on a cat track in the Catalina Mountain just outside of Tucson, AZ. We ran into a lot of bluffs that we couldn't get the mules around. Dale said "George, you get a foot, and I will take the animals and catch up with you somewhere". Two hours later I was on the side of a canyon and a light thunderstorm came up and wiped out the track. It wasn't a real good track to start with but Dale decided to let the dogs work it. I was surprised to hear Dale howler down to me, "it's about time you called them hounds off that track." I had not idea that Dale had caught up with me as it was really tough going.
He came down to where I was and we sat down. He had forgot to put on some regular work boots that morning; he was wearing a pair of high heel cowboy boots. When he pulled off his socks, rather what was left of them, both of his heels were solid blisters. After awhile, we got ready to go on a walk back to our mules. He threw his socks away, pulled on his boots and away we went. No complaints, we just took off again.
Yes he was tough and you had to be too if you were going to be around him. He was in his 50s and I was in my 20s, I could barely keep up with him. That's what you call "old school".
Had trouble getting back on line so will have to re-register. Sending my response through Don.
George Pavey
I can make 'em go and I can make 'em Whoa ! God makes 'em do. I'll take Jesus, you can have the field
come-hunt wrote:Sent to me from Mr. George Pavey. George is 80 years of age and has a wagon-load of old time stories. here is one of them.
I spent two year plus with Dale Lee. Our season was January through April in Nayarit, Old Mexico, hunting jaguars. May through November was spent in the southwest mountain ranges. We rode mule back every day of the summer. Each morning you could bet on hearing Dale say "come on boys we're burning daylight:. I still get up before daylight and think of that often.
Talk about how tough Dale was... we were on a cat track in the Catalina Mountain just outside of Tucson, AZ. We ran into a lot of bluffs that we couldn't get the mules around. Dale said "George, you get a foot, and I will take the animals and catch up with you somewhere". Two hours later I was on the side of a canyon and a light thunderstorm came up and wiped out the track. It wasn't a real good track to start with but Dale decided to let the dogs work it. I was surprised to hear Dale howler down to me, "it's about time you called them hounds off that track." I had not idea that Dale had caught up with me as it was really tough going.
He came down to where I was and we sat down. He had forgot to put on some regular work boots that morning; he was wearing a pair of high heel cowboy boots. When he pulled off his socks, rather what was left of them, both of his heels were solid blisters. After awhile, we got ready to go on a walk back to our mules. He threw his socks away, pulled on his boots and away we went. No complaints, we just took off again.
Yes he was tough and you had to be too if you were going to be around him. He was in his 50s and I was in my 20s, I could barely keep up with him. That's what you call "old school".
Had trouble getting back on line so will have to re-register. Sending my response through Don.
George Pavey
Great story!!
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
