When I think about my journey into the world of hounds so far, all I can do is laugh. It’s just so ridiculous how quickly all this escalated. This hobby of mine has gotten extremely out of hand, and if even a mere five years ago you had asked me where I saw myself half a decade later, I never would’ve expected my life to be entirely centered around floppy-eared dogs who like to chase furry things.
A psychologist might diagnose me with something like “Rapid Onset Houndsmanism”—a disease for which there is no cure.
The last time I wrote here on Hound on the Run, I shared a few details about the first bobcat I killed. It’s almost unbelievable how much has happened since then.
To those who have subscribed and actually want to hear from me, I’m sorry I haven’t written more. But I’m happy to say I have a whole lot of exciting news coming down the pike. But first I want to catch everyone up on where I’ve been and what I’ve been up to.
As I’ve written about before, I got my start hunting with my hounds by chasing raccoons and had a great time running the night woods. But really, my first introduction to hound hunting was when I got to tag along on a bobcat hunt with the man who is now my mentor. He gave me my first dog, Finn, not knowing I had any intentions of hound hunting. Soon enough, I had acquired another hound, Coulee, because of course, Finn needed a buddy. One thing led to another, and I started coon hunting with those two which I did for a couple of years.
But sometime toward the end of the 2020/2021 hunting season after I had caught a whole pile of raccoons with my dogs, I started getting really itchy to try my hand at bobcat hunting.
My mentor had given me another dog, a male Walker pup I named Roux who comes from a long line of bobcat-catching dogs, but I was still just coon hunting him. Sometime in the summer of 2021, I finally decided that enough was enough and I needed to buck up and give cat hunting a solid effort.
When I mentioned to my mentor that I wanted to learn how to bobcat hunt, he fully had my back and gave me a gift that changed everything for me. That gift was one of his old finished dogs name Whiskey—a true cat dog of the highest caliber.
Now don’t get me wrong, while my mentor is certifiably crazy—and he’d agree—he isn’t dumb enough to simply hand over one of his best dogs for free. He had just made the tough call to retire Whiskey from his pack, because due to her age, she simply wasn’t able to keep up with his younger dogs that were running the show for him. When I picked Whiskey up last August, he told me he wasn’t sure exactly how old she was, but it was somewhere in the ballpark of 12 or 13 years old. Having ran her for 200-plus days a year her whole life, to say she had seen some miles would be a tremendous understatement.
It was great honor to accept Whiskey and I made her the queen of my pack, promising to let her live in luxury for the rest of her days.
This past season was my first spent solely pursuing bobcats. I went coon hunting a handful of times in the early season, but once December came around, it was the cats I was after. And if wasn’t for Whiskey, I don’t think I would have learned nearly as much as I did or get my first taste of bobcat-success.
My goal was to use Whiskey’s tried-and-true, straight-as-an-arrow, cat-tuned nose to help my younger, less experienced coon dogs learn how to catch bobcats. And although it took a tremendous effort, and despite wanting to admit defeat more than once and give it all up, by the end of the season I had achieved my goal. During the last few weeks of the open harvest season, I caught my very own bobcat with my humble little pack of dogs. And then I caught another.
I’m happy to say that Coulee and Roux now know what a bobcat looks, smells, and tastes like.
I hunted so hard this past season that although I didn’t want it to be over since my dogs were just starting to figure things out, I was somewhat relieved to have a break. I put tremendous pressure on myself to get my dogs in the woods as often as possible. So, when the time came, it felt good to rest a bit and focus on other things.
Even though I stopped hunting two or three days a week after the season ended, I was still heading to the woods for a few hours every Saturday or Sunday morning to road the dogs. But once it started getting hot out, that had to stop—not because it was too hot in the woods, but the dogs would be too hot in the box on the drive home.
The older and busier I get doing adult stuff, the more valuable my free time becomes. Anytime I hear someone talking about being “bored,” I just simply can’t relate … there are so many incredible things to do in this world!
So, with running dogs no longer an option for the past few months, I had a void to fill.
And I’m happy to say I maximized every ounce of my free time by pouring myself into a project that has become one of my proudest accomplishments to date.
I have kept this project a secret from everyone except for my wife and a few select family members.
I’m extremely excited to share it with all of you, my dear Hound on the Run readers.
But I’m gonna have to leave you on the cliff for now … I know, it’s not fair.
Keep an eye out for another post on Wednesday and I’ll fill you in on all the details about why I’ve been radio-silent here for so long.
Be sure to subscribe if you haven’t already.
Thanks for reading and you’ll hear from me very soon!
Niklas