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Al, I have seen the papers on JC and his name is a Frenchman looking name, Willis had traded for Buckwheat (JC"S dad) from Red Napier, then Red backed off. Willis took a female that was directly out of House's Clint and bred her to Buckwheat. Willis never said anything to me about Tom or Zip? I had JC on Bear the first week I had him, so Willis shooting like you said must have cured him from being gun shy because he showed no sign of it even when a big gun was used. Herb Miller and Willis were guiding together and both bred to Buckwheat and both brought me young dogs out of him to start for them. If Zip and Tom both hunted him for Willis then the light must have came on the first trip out with me. I don't know how much they hunted him because he didn't load up by himself and didn't know what a coon was until the second one. The first one he just smelled it a little, second he grabbed ,third he ran and treed. Then there was no stopping him. His brother Painter, was the father of your Rowdy dog.

I too, was very surprised to learn Tom owned JC as a young dog. As I recall Tom had originally named him something other than JC & changed it to JC because he was disgusted with him. I had hunted with JC & as you say he could be impressive at times. Telling Tom about hunting with him & he then told me about owing jc. Believe, He and Zip were hunting about every day the winter he owned JC. Tom was not hunting him for Willis, at that time Willis guaranteed those pups and stood behind his word on jc with Tom. Al

I went to see Willis a couple years back and looked at JC's papers that Willis dug out. JC had a name on the papers that was a man's name that sounded French, the first name started with a J and the last name started with C. Willis told me who it was, but don't recall ?

I see Willis every so often when his Grand kids are here at my sisters house and I'll ask him about JC's name and Tom ?...

Willis also brought Painter and gave him to Rene for training JC. Painter was gun shy, and man shy. I thought he was like this because of the place Herb and Willis Kept them. Painter turned out a to be a good dog, Loyd bought him and sold him for more money.

When they needed help because of their dogs being blown-out or to many clients at once with little time, I would go down and help them. I seen where they kept there hounds up on the Mountain. They had 40-50 dogs tied up with two 5 gal. buckets of water each and would go feed them (mostly meat scraps) every 2-3 days. The dogs looked in good shape but acted spooky.

I've always hated rock bluffs with snow on them!! Here's why!!

Cecil King and I were driving up Bone Mt. to hunt the snow, and seen Bobcat tracks cross the road. We turned lose and treed it in about 25min. later. The ground was steep and had to walk along a ledge on a Bluff to get there. Got the cat and headed back across the ledge that now had the snow smashed flat and had turned to ice. It was hard not to slip, then the dogs tried to go between me and the Bluff wall, and was pushing my legs of the ledge. I freaked and started cussing the dogs and they backed off.. That was Close!!!!

Old dog, you had me rolling with your wompus cat story!
About a yar ago now, ny best friend and hunting buddy moved off to west TX. I have a few other people ill hunt with but when you got curs as counterfeit as mine, you hate to show em off!
I am fine and dandy like sour candy with hunting hogs solo in the day time, but as fate would have it all the grain farmers I hunt for have a Dracula policy, Hunt all night but be gone before I wake up kinda deal. Well I hunted a lot this year by my lonesome and caught a few good hogs and a bunch of average ones and I can do my duty just fine so long as I dnt turn on that dang radio!!! If I getbored and listen to coast to coast with George Norey while im roading, I bout have an accident when a dog sounds off!!!!

Hell, I've almost wrecked with no radio on !! When Hunting for hours without a Bark. More than once I looked back and the dog/dogs were gone! Went back and found 'em treed a couple times. (This is on private ground where I don't chain them on to often)

I was hunting up Upper Rock Cr. and had JC my son along. I pushed in a cassette tape and JC said, Dad you can't hear Ben if he strikes with that on!!!! The kid was smarter than me then

Russel McCall and I went down to help Willis and Herb guide 2 clients. Herb and I were listening after catching 1 Bear, to Russel's and Willis dogs running another. I had walked down the road 50 yds or so when Dan Sweeney started Hollering "Cougar""Cougar"!! I looked up the road and seen Dan pointing, but couldn't see over the raise of the road. I said, WHAT!! and looked at Herb who was standing there with Dan, I"ll never forget and can still see it plain as day, what Herb did.
He looked at me with his right hand in the air and left leg up and bent at the knee and said, Brad I swear to "GOD" a Cougar just crossed the road.

Now the rest of the story!!, We turned lose 4 old dogs and they started opening going up and over the ridge. Herb said, we can get closer! So we drove around till the road ended. Got out and could hear the dogs treeing. There was a Gov.trail that left from there heading toward the dogs. We met a hiker who said the dogs were treed next to the trail we were on, so off we went.
Then things got quite and here come all 4 dogs, running with their tails between their legs and about a half dozen "WILD" Range Cows chasing them. I don't know if you've been around Cows that have went wild but we were right behind the Dogs!! I never did get to see that one..But Herb damn sure did!!

I was about 19 yrs old at the time of this story. I had bought a sure enough coon dog from a guy in the hound club for a hundred dollars. and every body knew he caught hundreds of coon so she had to be the real deal. me and pop ledford went to pick her up and she looked like a high tan kind of dog as near as we could tell as she was hairless all down her back pop advised me to keep my money but the guy said to pour some used motor oil on her and she would be good to go so I bought the real deal coon dog.. we were already on our way to go to our spot and headed that way planning on leaving her in the box while we hunted.we left the truck on high spot and casted the dogs down to the river bottoms and headed out. it didn't take long for that dog to chew out of pops box and she flew past us going to the pack which hadn't started a track yet so we just kept going. after a while the new dog opened on a cold track working it slowly thru the black berry thickets. after twenty minutes she had worked it well into the biggest mess of briars in the country and by now all the dogs were working it with her. pop says " she sure has a cold nose don't she" about then all the dogs caught and we started into the briars to go to them. we hunted this area a lot and had stashes of planks, old tin and anything we found along the way to lay a trail thru the briars. so we did all this and came to a barbed wire fence all covered over and the dogs were baying a hollow log on the other side of the fence. so we get over it and my butt was pressed up against the fenc so as to allow pop enough room to pick up the log so the dogs could work the coon there was no extra room at all. so pop is hissing and hyping them up,,,here he is,,here he is as he lifts the log he hollers get him! when he lifted that log the mother of all SKUNKS let fly and got him directly in the face... he always said he could of jumped the fence if my fat ass had not been blocking the way lol...that trashy old dog never did tree us any coon and I never got my money back but pop culled her for free for me

Every time I write about a hunting experience, 1 or 2 others pop into mind. But I'd better save some for Big-n-Blue when we hunt together this winter.

Plus, 911 is tomorrow and we should get back to Politics . Maybe on the General Forum is a better place. My daughter is going by the court house and get a load of Voter Reg. Forms, and hunt people down that are not Reg. And my wife will be at a 911 Remembrance in Coos Bay. I'll stay home and hope my Big toe heals up, as I broke it a week ago. Now you know why I've been gabbing so much, I can't take the dogs out and bored to death!!!!

I watched Barry give his speech, we'll see how this goes ??

Varminator and old dog ,Another thing the young hunters might take from this thread is how dangerous the outdoors can be if you're not careful .Your experiences point out some of the dangers and here's one of mine.I was hunting out west of Sutherland on Old Blue in 96 if memory serves .I was hunting McKenzie River Hunter and Blue Bess.They treed a cat in a steep canyon and i went to them.The cat was in a old growth fir,almost to the top .After a few shots i knocked him out and he fell way down on the steep slope. The dogs didn't hear him fall and kept treeing .Thinking he might get away i took off running down the mountain,yelling at the dogs to come with me .As i was running I came to a large log ,I vaulted over it and as i was going over I saw there was a sheer drop into a boulder filled creek about 15 feet below.My fingers dug into the bark on that log and stopped my fall but I was stretched out full length ,literally holding on by my finger tips .I tried like hell to pull myself up but couldn't do it.I was sure the drop wouldn't kill me but at 215 lbs(it was a long time ago ) i was probably going to break something.Resigned to my fate i let go and turned on my back as I fell but instead of crashing into the rocky creek i landed in the bottom limbs of a cedar tree with my feet dangling a foot above the creek .I have no doubt the Lord saved me but my point here is to make you aware of the many dangers you can run into while hunting and yes I got the cat .

I was just killing time and was hoping that Blue, Mark, Jim, The Davids, or who ever had a story would join in and tell a couple.....

Old Dog sent this picture to me and said it was a French Deer Hound??
He wanted to know if it was one of Big n Blues? Or some cross Mark made, with Shig and his Blue ?
Looks smart, but sure is coon footed!

varminator the more I look at this picture the more convinced I am that mark and big n blue are crossing their dogs??? I bet them long toes sure help them in the rocks

This past wed. Morning, the start dog was working on a pretty fair track and I decided to put a 3yr old down to help speed things up a little, and she did speed things up a lot. Jumped a nd ran a half grown nanny almost in the front passenger for that was open. I thought I was dreaming but it wasn't a dream. She was wearing a tt10 collar that was set on 6 hi and I didn't have time to lower the dose so I gave her a jolt and she let me know I made contact. The hand held showed her 300 yds and not moving. She usually cameo in with just a tone so I drove down the road till I found her laying on her side under a tree and at first I thought she was dead . I noticed she was Barely breathing. I shook a back leg and she bounced up wagging her tail as if nothing had happened. Went to truck like normal and has been normal since. Tell me what happened, I've bumped a lot of dogs that never did that.

She may have had a seizure when you zapped her ? Or a heat stroke if she was out of shape on a hot day ?
You said, she was lying on her side! So she wasn't hiding from you. Need more info.to say, and still may be wrong!!
Maybe the nanny turned, and butted her head to head and knocked her out!!!