ATTENTION: My book, Cat Dog Chronicles, is now available as an audiobook on Audible. Check it out here!

Hey everyone. It's been a long time since I've written here so I thought it would be a good idea to fill everyone in on what I've been up to and why I've been "radio silent" as of late.

Although there were a lot of highlights and exciting things that happened for me, 2023 was one of the most challenging years of recent memory. I'm not going to get into any of the personal stuff here, but several of you have reached out asking what I've been up to and if I plan on putting out more content and more videos on YouTube. So, let's get into it.

Old Dogs are the Best

As I write this, it's March 17th and bobcat season has been over for just over 2 weeks. The last week of season the mountains I hunt got hit with a huge snowstorm, and while I did manage to get one snow day in searching for tracks, after that we were pretty much snowed out as the conditions were far too treacherous. Oregon Coast Range snowstorms are no joke. But prior to that, I actually had some of the best days hunting with my dogs of my life and that is largely due to a new dog I acquired named Rider.

Clover, Bruno, Roux, and Rider up on box.

Rider is a 10-year-old Bluetick given to me by my good friend to use as a "pup trainer" with my young aspiring bobcat dogs. Rider has treed hundreds of bobcats and is a true seasoned pro. He strikes from the rig, cold trails, starts tracks, jumps cats, and is a rock-solid locating tree dog. The full package, if you will. It took some convincing of my wife to let me bring him home, but I absolutely love the idea of giving good old hunting dogs a comfy retirement home -- so I jumped at the opportunity to bring him into my pack.

I think it was my third trip out with Rider that we caught our first bobcat of the season -- I nice 24.5lb tom. Yes, I know the bobcat's weight because I killed him and brought him home with me. His hide is currently drying on a stretcher, and I plan on making a rug out of him. I will never forget that day as it was a turning point for my younger male dogs, Roux, Clover, and Bruno -- they kept up with Rider the whole race, which lasted about 6 hours by the way, and even contributed to picking up some losses. I don't think I've ever worked harder to tree an animal than that cat and success that day all came down to a decision I had made that no matter what I was not going to give up on this track until we had it caught. And that's exactly what happened.

Bruno and Clover licking the cat. Rider was just out of frame, chilling. My glasses were flung off my face by a branch a few minutes before this photo and I could not find them; it was a very blurry drive home.

Prior to that, I was struggling bad. Really bad. All season, I was attempting to get my greenhorn dogs onto bobcats, and although we were putting in a good effort and getting a few tracks started here and there, we were having an extremely difficult time and every day out was a battle to keep a positive attitude.

The Struggle is Real

But the roots of that struggle go back much further. Those of you who have read my book, or have at least heard me talk about it, will know that it's all about Whiskey, the old Walker female my mentor had given me as a pup trainer. Sadly, she died unexpectedly in August of 2022, just before that season started. That lead to a very tough season where I was relying on Coulee and Roux who had hunted with Whiskey, hoping they had absorbed some of her talent.

Most of my hunting videos on YouTube are from that 2022/2023 season and as you'll notice, we didn't catch much. We caught one cat on our own that year, and unfortunately, I didn't get any usable footage of the cat in the tree, so a lot of people don't believe me that we actually caught it. I promise we did. Maybe it was a little bit too big to show on the interwebs. Whatever. If it weren't for the generosity of my mentor and his hunting partner, with whom I've since become great friends, my dogs would have seen far fewer bobcats. So, thank you, gentlemen.

A Year of “Dabbling” in YouTube

Once that season was over, I started focusing a lot more on growing my YouTube channel. A side note on that: the main reason I started the YouTube channel was simply to have a way to promote my book, Cat Dog Chronicles, and I didn’t exactly plan on becoming a "YouTuber." Overall, I enjoy the process of filming and editing videos, but man is it a lot of work. I don't really consider myself a perfectionist, but I'm definitely on that spectrum somewhere, so when I put something out in the world that I'm not fully happy with or proud of, it really bothers me. This is most likely the reason why you haven't seen any new videos out of me lately -- it's a bad excuse, but I simply haven't had the time or mental bandwidth to put in the necessary effort to make good videos. I'm sorry if you enjoy watching my videos, maybe at some point I'll start making them again.

Starting the 2023/2024 hunting season, I was optimistic that if I just spent enough time out in the woods, covered enough miles of road, and ran the dogs hard enough, we would luck our way into some bobcat trees. Well, that didn't really happen and I spent the first couple months of season really struggling. This was around the time when I got overwhelmed with pretty much everything going on in my life and decided that for the sake of my own mental health, I was going to drop everything extra and focus only on hunting. So that's what I did and that's why you haven't heard from me, unless you've tuned into the handful of random YouTube livestreams I've been on with the "HoundTuber" boys.

Blue Dog Redemption

Luckily, Rider came along and bailed me out and we are all in a much better place. We treed that cat I mentioned, and treed a couple more, though I had a hard time finding those ones -- I believe Rider and count them as success. Of course, I don't have video evidence of those cats so you won't see those races on YouTube; they will stay tucked away as fond memories I'll always have for myself.

Bruno and Clover rigged and soaking wet from the rain in true Oregon fashion. They don’t seem to mind the perpetual wetness.

Perhaps the biggest highlight of this last season was watching my two blue males, Bruno and Clover, get their "lights" turned on while following Rider's lead. Roux did great, too, but he has a couple years on these blue boys so it feels different.

What's Next?

Well, that's a great question. I have always been an "ideas" person, but over the years I've learned that ideas aren't worth anything without execution. A year of dabbling in YouTube has shown me where my real passion's lay, and that's with writing. Writing for me is my absolute favorite artform, and sometimes it takes messing around with other modalities to realize what you really like doing.

My plan as of right now is to shift my focus back to writing, and specifically, writing more books. I have begun work on a new book, and you may be surprised to hear that it's not directly related to hound hunting. I do have another hound book idea that I'm really excited about, but I need to let that idea simmer for a while and may need to save that project for 2025.

That's all I have for now, thanks for reading and catching up with me.

Sincerely,

Niklas

P.S. I'm only offering this to newsletter subscribers, but if you want to get a free download of my audiobook, Cat Dog Chronicles, through Audible, I have a bunch of free codes I can give out -- just reply to this email or email me at houndrunnerweekly@gmail.com and I'll get you hooked up!

Hound on the Run

Where Has Niklas Been?