Ramble: What I've Been Up To This Summer
Summer officially ends on the 22nd, but I’m going to need to see a nice cold snap coming in on the forecast to believe it. It’s been hot, dry, and the dogs and I have been miserable because, as I’ll share more, we’re all ready to go for hunting season, and the pursuit season has started, but any hunting past 10am has been a no-go for me. Too hot.
This is a sort of catch-up break-the-ice kinda newsletter to get back into the habit of writing here now that season has started and there are interesting things occurring to write about and share.
First, and I’ll be going way deeper into all of this …
I NEED TO TELL YOU ABOUT MY NEW DOG
Whiskey is her name … but I’m thinking about renaming her, well, Whisky. Because I’m more of a Scotch man.
She is an 11 year old straight bobcat dog and she was given to me by my mentor. He was going to retire her this year but figured my pack could use the help, and she could use the sweet comfort I would be able to provide an old lady hound.
I took the first two days of the month off to hunt and it was my first experience with Whiskey. He said she would strike from the box and oh boy does she. While my trashing rascals were striking on deer and coyotes (Finn) and grouse (Roux), Whiskey kept her lips shut until she smelled cat.
It was funny to watch Coulee — she wasn’t striking on trash, but she didn’t strike with Whiskey either. However, when Whiskey struck, Coulee was like — “Oh wait, you’re barking at that smell!?”
And off on a race they went.
We struck and ran a track both days, one faded out, the dogs lost it, and by the time I was starting to figure out where to go to pick it back up, it was getting too hot so I called it. The other race the dogs ended up in thick area along a creek bed with some full-leafed deciduous trees which made it tough to see if anything was up there. Whiskey was circling and working the area but never treed and after about an hour of letting them try to work it out and explore the surrounding areas looking for a possible out track, I ended up calling it again from the heat.
There will be lots more content coming with Ms. Whiskey as the main character. She has already taught me so much and is an incredible asset to the pack. I can’t wait to see how this all unfolds.
THANKS FOR STICKING WITH ME … NEW STUFF IS IN THE WORKS
I appreciate you reading this because it has been some time since I wrote here on Hound on the Run. I’ve never been the kind of person who says “busy” when asked how things have been, but these days my time really has been stretched thin between all the things, events, happenings, and non-happenings that have occurred since I last wrote.
I’m hoping to have some rebooted podcast content coming up, but it just hasn’t been a priority for me as much as I hate to say that. Podcasts are a heck of a lot more work than I imagined and I’m blown away by those who can put out consistently good podcast content that’s actually entertaining and well made. It’s tough. But I’ve been missing it and it’s time to get back into some more conversations about hounds and their owners.
WHAT I’VE BEEN UP TO THIS SUMMER
I got a new position at work. I won’t say where I work, but I will say that I leveled up a bit. Nothing huge, but enough of a learning curve that getting integrated into the new role was more mentally taxing than I had bargained for. My schedule is slightly more flexible in terms of when I can take off, and I have a fair amount of PTO saved up, so I will be taking advantage of all that this hunting season.
I went to the Fern Ridge Field Trial and Coulee got first line on the bobcat race. Oh boy was I proud. It was her second time running in the races at the trial and she did good enough to end up in the fast dog division, getting second line in one race and winning the whole thing (for the line anyway, she didn’t bark treed until after multiple other dogs barked but that’s OK … she trees just fine in the woods!).
Roux found himself in the slow dog division, but still did really well finishing in the top three to earn himself a spot in the final race with Coulee (he finished 4th or 5th … I can’t quite recall).
I Did a mega tune up on my truck. Last season, my Nissan Hardbody which I absolutely love left me stranded a few times. It was the alternator one weekend and the starter a few weeks later. The truck has solid bones, though, so I spent some of those sweet socialist buckaroos on fixing the electrical and ignition components along with all new suspension and steering. It’s driving nice and has proven to be the perfect little truck for hunting in Western Oregon.
I’ve been playing my guitar A LOT. Most who know me know that I go full-send into just about everything I do. Before I got my hounds, it was regular hunting (so boring), and before that, it was fishing (give me all the catfish), and before that, my main creative and passionate pursuits were centered around music. I have been playing guitar since I was about 10 years and studied jazz music with many different teachers. I went to a performing arts high school in Denver, Colorado where I studied music to a high degree, and ended up moving to New Orleans after high school to pursue a career as a working musician. All that stuff didn’t necessarily work out as I had envisioned, but back then I had realized that the lifestyle of a working musician was not for me, so I moved on. But now, the axe is back in my hands and I’ve been out back in the wood shed grinding and honing and chopping and chopping to get my fingers back in shape. Practice makes better, folks.
Gardening. Plants are cool. Our garden last year was garbage, but this year it’s booming! We spent the crazy money on lumber back in the spring and built some raised beds and took a lot of care in preparing the soil. 6 or 7 varieties of tomatoes, many pepper plants (jalapeno, ancho, and arbol) and beets galore. (Insert Dwight Schrute meme).
Writing a lot working on a book project. Producing lasting, long-form content has been a big goal of mine and so while I haven’t been sending out newsletters as often as I have in the paste, trust that my fingers have been pounding the keys and the word counts are growing. Back in April, I wrote a piece called When We Aren’t Hunting and I released a podcast episode where I read that piece. That’s basically the introduction of the book project I’m working on. It all has to do with what I’m seeing as a new trend that I think is important — people, who like me, want to own hounds and hunt with them, but may not fit into the traditional image of what a houndsman is or used to be. I may be way off but I think there are far more of us silly city-dwelling dummies who run hounds and live with them more or less in our houses than one might realize, and I think this is a rich topic worth exploring.
THAT’S ALL I GOT FOR NOW
A big part of my motivation for finally sending out a newsletter today was all the new subscribers who have signed up for Hound on the Run. THANK YOU! I needed a jumpstart and seeing those opt-ins brought me back to my first excitement when I started this all last year. So please stay tuned and I’ll try my best to make it worth your while!
With much love to my fellow hound runners,
Niklas