I’ve had a project like this in the works for a long time, but it’s never been quite the right time or right fit for my life.
Until now.
Today I’m going to share some background about me and my dogs and what led up to all this so we can get started on the fun stuff.
About me:
I’m the proud owner and operator of a small mixed-up pack of coonhounds. You’ll learn all you could care to know about each in future writings.
And yes, I do hunt with them.
Still new to this wild and wonderful world, our first two seasons we focused solely on hunting raccoons here in Oregon and have done quite well. I have high aspirations to get these dogs on bobcats this upcoming season (Roux is my new pup out of bonafide bobcat dogs) but that’s a whole other game with an entirely different skill set.
I’ve seen first-hand how much time and dedication it takes to catch bobcats and I don’t know if I have it in me! I sure will be trying my best though, and I’m confident the dogs will, too.
It was as much of a surprise to me as I’m sure it was to my friends, family, and anyone else who’s known me over the years that hunting at night with dogs has taken over my life to such an extensive degree.
And honestly, I wish I had gotten into all this sooner …
When I let myself daydream about alternate stories for how my life has gone, I think about what it would be like to be born into a long line of houndsmen, carrying on the family’s bloodline …
But that’s not my story. I’ve stumbled into hounds in my own unique way, and though it surprises me as much as it does most people I tell it to, I don’t judge it.
I only embrace it.
I’ve always enjoyed the outdoors and doing outdoorsy things like fishing, hiking, rock climbing, etc. But once I got into hunting -- my gateway was hunting whitetail deer in Louisiana -- all those other, let’s call them “outdoors-lite” pursuits, have fallen off and nearly all my time outdoors is spent hunting or training with my dogs.
Oh ya, I . . . try . . . to hunt elk with my bow every year, but have yet to punch a tag. I’ve also made a few attempts to hunt turkeys with similar results. I’m trying for elk with a rifle this year, so we’ll see . . .
Nothing has stuck with me like chasing these hounds through the woods in the middle of the night.
I’m also a writer. Or at least I like to think I am.
Before I got my day job (which I do enjoy) I used to be a freelance writer, mostly for brands and blogs in the outdoor industry. Most of what I wrote was about fly fishing, my first true outdoor love.
The thing was, I was a writer-for-hire. Basically the writing equivalent of a guy you’d pay to install hardwood floors in your home. It paid the bills (sort of) and did exercise my creativity, but after a few years of grinding it out, I finally admitted to myself that freelancing wasn’t for me. Although I learned many skills in that line of work that help my life today, I got really burnt out and decided to let the ship burn, let it sink, swim to shore, and move on to better things.
A big motivator for getting away from writing for hire was that I felt muffled when it came time to work on my own creative writing projects, which is why the many projects I started, never left the ground. It was like all my creative juices got used up during the day for my clients so that when it came time to work on stuff I really wanted to work on, my flame flittered out with nothing more than a few tears and specks of blood on the page.
Thank goodness all that’s over.
Now it’s time to focus and write.
This project, Hound on the Run, is where I’m taking a deep dive into the pursuit that has captivated me in every way.
You could say my dogs are my muse, and Hound on the Run is where I’ll share the unfolding of what I learn and experience as we go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole together.
What I want to share more than anything is that this whole “hunting with dogs” thing really isn’t what most people think it is.
There are so many false perceptions circulated in the collective media that hunting with dogs is cheating, that it’s easy, unfair to the game animals, cruel, or whatever descriptors the opposition wants to use to spin their agendas.
In my experience, and having confirmed this with many hound hunter’s I’ve met, all those things are simply not true.
But I’m not here to fight. All I want to do is share what it’s really like for me and my dogs and let whomever reads my words decide for themselves.