My hounds . . .

Otis



and Belle

nice Marty very good looking animals. seeing them in the patrol car like that reminds me of my primary school mates Dad. he was a small town copper in a fairly rough wee timber town and they had some great big smoochy rhodiesian ridgebacks, when Craigs dad had to go out on patrol alone he put one of the girls on the passengers seat and left the window down if he got out, one short whistle and he had all the back up a fella could ever need, no big smoochy then just all teeth and hackles. oh those were the days.

Nice looking hounds Marty...and they look like they can be relied on when needed mate.

Elvis...Ridgies are great dogs...I had one many years ago. As you say, big softies until they need to show their "other side". They were bred in Africa to protect the family when the master was away, and to hunt lion. Beautiful dogs. A good sized male stands 28" high at the shoulder, whilst a bitch is only slightly smaller at around 25"...certainly one of the heavyweights of the dog world.

Cheers, Vince

another of my mates had a labrador ridgy cross she was a softy to be around would retrieve ducks or live ducklings going underwater to catch them but put her on a pig or soool her on a cattle beast and look out.

Those are some great looking hounds Marty. So how is the lobster from the seafood shack in the back? They got sword fish?

Here are a few pix of the pups.









And what luck, somebody smacked a coon out in front of my place. So I went and chopped off the tail and tossed it to the pups to play with.

NICE TJ - You'll really have your hands full in a month or two. You may need a second job to feed them critters.

The lobster shack in the background is in Eastham, MA on Cape Cod. I took the dogs for a walk along the beach and they struck a track and got away from me. Somehow they flushed the coon out of its den, wherever it was (I missed that part.) They ended up cornering the coon in a greenhouse attached to a touristy flower shop and tore it up. I'm glad they didn't tear up the greenhouse too bad.
The woman running the shop was a bit upset and callled the cops. Her husband thought the whole episode was pretty cool, couldn't get enough of the dogs - wanted to buy them from me.
State law in MA says that if the dogs picked up by the game officer were hunting, the owner is not responsible for any damages incurred and the game officer/kennel can not charge anything for holding/returning them, unless they are kennelled overnight (or several nights). In that case, the maximum charge is $10 total per dog.
At any rate, the woman's husband wasn't going to ask for any $ anyway. I apologised profusely to her and paid for a potted plant that got broken. Actually, I think she had quite a few extra customers from the crowd of people who stopped to see what all the commotion was about. The dogs were in their prime then, and you could hear them for about three miles.

I could picture that Marty. Had to be a hoot to see that one. Wow the laws are sure in favor of the hunter and his doegies!

Suz

those laws are grouse you are very lucky to have them.
those pups look just like Kiwi huntaways but probably not as noisy.

One last tip...make sure you're in really good shape! The one (and only) coon hunt I was on just about wore me to the bone...and that was when I was 18 and in good shape (far too many years ago to try to re-enact!)

Some quotes about coon hunting from Robert Ruark:

"Coon hunting is a thing for bust-neck people who don't really care if they fall in holes and trip over briars and run against trees. Far as I know, a bone-bred coon hunter doesn't care whether he catches the coon or doesn't catch the coon. He just wants to hear the hounds make that music."

"I don't know how many miles you travel on a coon-hunting night. The dogs circle, and you try to cut the circle, and you fall into the creek, and you lose people and lose dogs, and along about two or three in the morning everybody's had enough, including the dogs, the coon you didn't tree, and the deer that went over the hill. By some common accord everybody decides to quit. You know the hounds will come back, those you've lost, in a day or so. So you make for a headquarters, which would be Tom's place or Elwood's place, and you kick the sleepy fire into a blaze, and everybody lies around the kitchen floor while somebody else puts the coffee pot on the hob. Somebody else goes out to the smokehouse for a side of bacon, and somebody else disturbs a hen and brings in a gross of brown freckled eggs. Somebody else digs up another jar of hand-woven corn liquor, and somebody else gets out the guitar."

"I'm telling you again," he said. "Insanity runs its own peculiar way. Coon hunting is a very strong symptom. In a way, it reminds me of what life's like. You work and you fall down and you eat and you fight, and when it's all over you feel awful foolish. Because, generally, you ain't even got a coon to show for all the commotion."

Actually, in my experience coon hunting, the one quote of these three I definitely agree with is the first one. Many nights, I would bag at least two or three coon. A few exceptional nights, a dozen or so. Sometimes a bobcat to sweeten the deal. I had a pair of exceptional dogs, though. One would cut a wide circle, bay each time she crossed a coon track, and continue until she completed the circle. If she crossed a bobcat track, she wouldn't finish the circle but take straight off after it. If she didn't strike a bobcat track, she would make a beeline for the freshest of the coon tracks that she had struck and run that. She was the most amazing hound I have had the pleasure of hunting with. A few times she treed a couple of coon up separate trees, racing back and forth between the trees to keep them both up there until I arrived to shoot them.

Anyway, I hope you got the chance to try a coon hunt or two. Lord help you if you catch the fever the way I did. You will have some wild times ahead, because anything can happen.

sounds alot like pig hunting, the insanity bit that is. Ive hunted opossoms by treeing them with a dog and its alot of fun alright.

just walked down to the pit to retrieve our canoes as the water has gone down and took the dog for a walk. he stuck his snorer in a pile of brush and kept it there while we picked up the boats ready to walk home. "wheres the dog" "whats that barking "? sure enough he had found some thing in the pile of garden rubbish . so we put down the boat and I had a dig around expecting a hedgehog nest. the hole was quite large so I moved abit more stuff and sent Nugget in. well in he went alright then all hell broke loose with growling and screaching aha says I its a possom. he dragged it out shaking the crap out of it. and yours truely tried to grab its tail to help out..... dumb move the hua bit into my hand and started scratching my arm all the while the dog is still shaking i t... plurry hurt but I got it by the tail and chucked it out in the open for dog to finish it. when it grabbed the dog by his ear I got it off and found a rock to scone it with. came home plucked its fur and put body in freezer for dogs tea next week .
thats twice Ive done that dumb thing and got bitten for my troubles most people would have learnt first time.

Oh I would have loved to be there and seen that Elvis...a real "hold my beer and watch this" moment mate. It reminds me of something that my cousin did many many years ago when we were kids. We found a brush tail possum in the rafters of the back shed (an old school house) and my cousin said, "lets catch it". Now the brush tail possum is a lovely soft gentle looking critter...until ya grab hold of it...then all hell breaks loose. This thing sunk its teeth into my cousins hand, in the web between thumb and forefinger, and the teeth met in the middle. My cousin was screaming and bleeding everywhere, the possum was scritchin' and scratchin', bitin' and clawin'...and I was rolling on the ground laughin' to the point of damn near peein' my pants. My cousin never forgave me for not grabbing the possum to drag it off his hand...my excuse, "I'm the city kid, you're the country kid, I didn't grab the damn thing".

Cheers, Vince