Will They Get It Jumped?

Hound running in the early season ... we'll take all the action we can get!

We started the day with a huge let down in the form of a locked gate. Always hungry to expand my range of viable hunting territory, I had stayed up late the night before scouring my various mapping apps looking trying to find access into a chunk of Travel Management Area land I had been to before, but usually takes nearly two hours to get to on back roads. I wanted to find a shortcut. The PDF map provided by ODFW showed a prominent road leading directly where I wanted to go. A waypoint was marked, a plan was made.

I don’t know if I’ll ever trust a map again. The road was in decent enough shape and was all clear until it wasn’t. A sliver of locked-up private timber separated me and all my hounds from my waypoint. There was a gate and it was locked. A “welcome hunter’s” sign told me I could go in on foot, but that simply would not work for my purposes. Bobcat hunting West Coast-style is a vehicle-based activity, and while I do enjoy hiking closed roads with my pack for exercise, I flipped off the sign, flipped a U-ie, and burned rubber to get to more accessible area.

Back on familiar ground, I collared up the dogs and spent the morning listening to Coulee and Roux work on a track. Still early in the season, the tracking conditions were less than ideal. A bit too warm and much too dry, but I was proud of how hard my dogs were working in. I can’t share too many details about how that went here … because I really want you to watch the video to find out!

Another highlight of the day was introducing my blue pups to the fine art of “roading.” Running each puppy one at a time with Coulee and Roux, who are both excellent road-runners, the youngsters did better than I would have expected.

Well, except for Pip. You see, Pip—AKA “Pimp”—is a very peculiar little dog who I can tell has a lot of natural talent, but just does everything in his own, very special, way. Pip reminds me of some of the kids I went to elementary school with who were in the “Talented and Gifted” program—more than a little odd and socially awkward to a painful degree, but incredibly smart. Pip’s roading session got cut short because he kept darting off into the bushes and not coming out. Each time I stopped the truck, got out, and walked into the brush to see what he was doing. He was just lying there. Not cowering or anything and didn’t seem particularly scared … but he was just lying there. Oh well, I’m sure he’ll figure it out.

Watch the latest installment of Hound on the Run TV on YouTube below:

I want to give a huge thanks to everyone who has subscribed to the Hound on the Run YouTube channel — although it’s still quite small in the grand scheme of things, it’s been incredibly exciting to watch it grow and have viewers from all over the world checking out what it’s like to hunt with hounds in Oregon.

I also want to send a huge thanks to everyone who has bought my book, Cat Dog Chronicles, and told others about it. The hound community has been incredibly kind and encouraging to me so far about this book and it makes all the hard work I put into it worth it. So thanks everyone!!

I have a lot more videos in the editing queue so stay tuned. I also have some appearances lined up on some of the bigger hound podcasts out there which I’m really excited about and I’ll be sure to let you know when those are available.

That’s all for now, have a great week everyone!

Niklas