Hello Folks!
Last night Dad decided that it was time to head to Malvern, Arkansas, to grade Glen Rybard and his Pack of Clay Hounds.
Glen is a young fellow (age 36) who has always hunted with Hounds and his life’s dream was to have a Pack of Bobcat Hounds. Many years ago Glen came to see Dad about getting some Hounds. Dad convinced Glen that his life’s situation precluded him from having the time and resources to be successful with Cat Hounds right then. To wait awhile, to come hunt with him whenever he could, until things improved. Glen was not long married with a baby and another on the way. Bobcat Hunting has been known to stress even the longest and best of marriages! So this is what they did for several years. Then Glen made a carrier change and was out of site for a while.
About 5 years ago Glen came to see Dad and said that life had been good to him; he had bought a Sawmill and was now ready to Cat Hunt! Dad said well, lets find you some Hounds to start with. Dad found him some out of N. Carolina and Harold Parker (our good Friend, one of five Hunters with Clay Hounds) let Glen have Candy an older ½ Clay Hound female. Dad told Glen to hunt these a while to see how much Game he had where he was going to be hunting. Dad had hunted with Glen in Glen’s region in times previous and had found some Cat but wanted Glen to make sure that the Game was plentiful enough before Glen’s investment became too great!
Glen hunted these for a year, learned his country and where the Game was and started to run Bobcat regularly. Then Dad had him breed Candy to Dads Redcloud, and started to give Glen Clay Hounds out of his own Pack. Now 5 years later Glen hunts 15 Clay Hounds and has 5 Pups coming up. It takes a Smart Bobcat and Bad Scenting conditions for a Bobcat to escape from his Pack! About twice a month Dad has me take him down to Hunt with Glen and his Dad, Bud. We always enjoy the camaraderie and most nights enjoy a Race or two.
Tonight was extra special!
We arrived early and took photos of his pups to compare with ours (we have 5 littermates to his) and catch up on Cat Talk! We drove a ways and put out ½ of the Hounds to empty out, road hunted a bit and swapped Hounds so the other ½ could do the same. Then we put the Rig dogs up and started the hunt in earnest. We rigged for thirty minutes or so then got a Cold Strike put the Hounds down and No Luck finding where the Bobcat had left the road. We did this twice more before 11:00PM, and then we had a good strike. You can tell by the intensity of the barking and which Hounds are barking as to the quality of the strike. This was a good one!
Glen put down 5 Hounds to find which way the Ole Shortail had gone, but while they could bark both ways up the main road and both ways up a logging road the Hounds just could not make up their minds as to where the Cat had gone. Dad, who knows these Hounds as well as his own, said that tonight the Scenting conditions must be BAD. Glen agreed and put the Rig dogs back up and said that we would hunt around the Clear-cut to the north as the Hounds had sounded better that way up the logging road (in some parts of the country, as we can in Florida, the roads are not rocky and you can find the Cats track to help the Hounds, in Arkansas this in generally not he case!).
We rigged around the Clear-cut for a mile or so, came to where the logging road came out to the main road again and sure-nuff the Rig dogs opened. Glen put them down and Copper (littermate to our two and a half year old Hound, Rivers) opened up the road. Lou and Laredo joined in and they took the track into a 10 year old Pine Plantation and jumped the Cat out of her bed. This started 4 hours of Southern Cat-Hound “Opry” at its finest! For the first two hours the Scenting conditions were bad, only the two or three Hounds right on the track could open (with Clay Hounds a Hound who gives too much mouth in the wrong places is removed from the gene pool, Dad has been doing this long enough that one very seldom comes along). But this was enough to make the Cat head for safer country. She took part of her trip by road. This bought her some time as it took several minutes for the Hounds to locate where she had left the road back into a Clear-cut. But this kind of work is made to order for Laredo, his daddy our Rip passed on the “smartness gene” and instinctively they seem to know where to go to find the Ole Shortail when he pulls a trick out of his or her’s Bag!
For a hour and a half the Race took place in a Plantation with trees just over head high and Bad Briars waist high. You wonder how anything can penetrate
this stuff much less run a track in it. The Photos you see just can’t show how bad it is! We were able to drive to within 300 yards of the Race with the Garmin Astro 220 and Topo chip showing every road and Pig trail in the area we were hunting. The Hounds running on top of the track were making a small Roar and the Hounds busting brush and briars trying to get over the track were making a racket of their own.
The Cat was beginning to feel the pressure and reached deep into her bag of tricks and pulled out a real dirty one. She made a run out to the road, then doubled right back on her own track, running the risk of being scooped up by the Pack. Well the trick worked, for a while. The Hounds could not find where she had crossed the road, could not find her up or down the main road, and were fearful of opening on a covered track if they went the way she had come.
But Laredo and Dan (Redcloud son) saved the day. They circled around and found fresh smells of the Cat slipping out and the Race was back on. Also a weather system was moving in and the wind changed and the Scenting conditions improved to where every Hound was smelling the track and able to bark. The Roar now made the hair on the back of your neck stand on end!
The Race moved into a fresh Cut-over and after 10 minutes or so, right down a haul road, 75 yards off the main road, the Pack started to Bay! Glen, Mr. Bud and I broke to them. I wanted photos of the Hounds and Cat; this was one of the few times everything worked out perfectly for this. Glen saw the Cat come towards us and squat under some briars, the Hounds were all over the Cat but Briars so BAD they could not reach her. With the Hounds knocking each other over and baying at the strong smell of where she had been, the Cat slipped out. We harked the Hounds to where we saw her go and the action started up again. I was able to grab some good pictures during the mêlée and had the MP3 player going as well. We repeated this scenario several times over the next few minutes. Glen and his Dad caught the 5 older Hounds and put them in the truck to let the younger hound close the deal.
Well this worked out but not as planned. The Cat and we could see that it was a large Sow (female) by now, slipped out of another bay up and made her way to a large creek. Now she could unleash her set of water tricks on the young less experienced Hounds. What should have been a caught Cat now turned into an escaping Cat, she thought! Copper and Jewel (his littermate) and Dan and Bonnie (18 month old littermates sired by Redcloud) as well as Glens 6 other young Hounds though otherwise.
They absorbed her water tricks and solved each. They finally made her leave the water and head back into some more BAD briars and for another hour they ducked and dodged within two acres. This was shaped like a horseshoe right off a bend in the creek. There was a fire lane running along the edge of the creek so Glen, his Dad and I were able to be within yards of the action, Dad stayed in the truck less than 150 yards away. The Cat would come to the edge of the briars, see us, pose for a photo, and then slip back into the briars, often with Hounds all over the top of her. We had begun to tell her to climb a tree as we wanted her to live to run again. We were trying to catch the young Hounds as they came out of the briars, but you might as well have tried to catch Moonbeams.
Then silence, Oh No, we wanted the youngsters to do good but our sympathies had definitely switched to the Cat! The silence was deafening,
Glen and his Dad had taken two Hounds they had caught to the truck and were not with me. When here came the rest of the Hounds out of the briars to stand around me panting with a look of satisfaction on their faces that they completed a difficult task.
I thought to myself that that is what comes from Breeding and Raising top Hounds, that sometimes winning is also losing. As I walked out the fire lane I looked back to make sure all the Hounds were following me and my Nite-lite head light picked up two head light eyes about 20 feet up a small Gum Tree growing about 200 feet in the Clear-cut Briar Patch. Right about where the Race had ended! Thank goodness, she had decided that Altitude would be her deliverance!
Four hours of Southern Cat-Hound Music, lots of good Hound and Bobcat action photos, all on tape, and a Cat left to run again.
Folks it just doesn’t get any better than that!
Oh by the Way Dad gave Glen an A and his Hounds an A+!
So long till next time!
Dads Dogboy!
