In this episode of The Epic Outdoors Podcast we talk with a long time houndsman, Josh Horrocks. Over the years Josh has become well known for his hounds and getting it done consistently on Lions, Bears, and Leopards. Along with the hound hunting Josh also runs a successful Mule Deer, and Elk operation. In this podcast full of plenty of humor we talk the ins and outs of Cougar hunting, Bears, Leopards and all things hound dog related. This is a fun, light hearted podcast you won’t want to miss.
Disclaimer: this podcast has been transcribed from the original audio and likely contains errors. This transcription does not reflect the views and opinions of Epic Outdoors LLC. Please consult the original audio with any concerns.
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There’s certain areas that there’s one big lion or two big lions that work this area.
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You kind of develop and know where the cougars walk and where they move and how cats act.
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They gotta work through the rocks and bare ground and
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Anything to do with Western big games.
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Welcome to the Epic Outdoors Podcast, powered by Under Armour.
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Hey everybody. Jason Carter and Adam Bronson here with the Epic Outdoors and the Epic Outdoors Podcast. We got a super exciting guest with us here today. It’s a good friend of both Adam and i’s Mr. Josh Hors. He’s been an amazing guy through the years, of course. Runs an awesome outfitting operation for lions, bears, and leopards, as well as deer and elk. So let’s get started. Let’s give old Josh a call. What do you think, Bronson?
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This ought to be good
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That that’s his ring tone. Come on Josh. What do you think he’s doing today?
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He might have dropped his phone in a crack in the cliffs as he is trailing dogs or something.
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Hello. Hey,
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What are you doing?
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Well, I just had to go hunting again today and trying to trail a cougar up but not have much luck.
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Oh yeah, one of them 40 year old type cougars.
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No, no, this one’s, this one’s, this is a, a long tail tan one.
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Okay. Alright. Yes. Okay.
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So even though it’s a hundred degrees, you think you gotta kill a lion every day of the year.
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Who hunts lions in June, Josh?
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Oh, it’s, it’s actually gets funner because it’s harder to do and the dogs have to work, work more and it’s, it’s just actually funner to somebody that likes to watch the dogs work and hunt a little more, you know? Yeah.
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Instead
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Of just blaze up a fresh track in the snow and tree it in 28 minutes and you’re like, oh, that wasn’t really fun, huh? Yeah,
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A lot of times you can turn a poodle loose on some of them and catch ’em
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A poodle. Dude. Snowing. So, where you at? Well you don’t have to tell me exactly where you’re at, but you sent a picture to us this morning. I don’t know, you’re out in the middle of nowhere. Your dog’s out.
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Yeah, we’re out trailing. I got a, we were hung up on a big old cliff and they planted these big horn sheep here and they’re just ate pretty much all the new transplants out of there, about four or five. So just trying to save the ones that are left. I guess
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I was gonna tell you in that picture, it looks like sheep country and it is. Yeah. At least. Dang it. At least
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The lions are eating well. Those are expensive steaks, you know,
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They’re really expensive. It’s awesome to save the big horn. Just fly some more out here. The are getting hungry.
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My lions are hungry. Let’s fly some more sheep out here. Oh, right on. So let’s see if you got a minute, because you’re probably like the heat of the day is when you’d rather be doing a podcast. Probably not right now when the dog’s working. No, I,
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I kind of meant to goon myself out a little bit to do this, you know what I mean? So,
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Yeah. Yeah. When the temperature index gets like this too, it’s probably like regular employers. Your dogs are your employees, so you gotta give ’em 15 minute water breaks every hour. So, you know, it’s like this,
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I’m like the boss, they’re out working and I can sit down in the shade and watch the g p s.
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That sounds like Chris. Chris is in the shade watching the g p s making. Adam and I work.
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Well. Good. Well give us a little of your background, Josh. I know you know anybody that spent a lot of time with you, you know, obviously, or any, even a little bit of time knows that you, you love lion and bear hunting with your dogs and whatnot. But of course you do a lot of different things. But maybe to start off with, let’s talk about, you know, your youth and I know you went to school a little bit there in Utah State, which is where I went as well. And just talk about, you know, coming up through the ranks and, and you know, growing up in a hunting environment and then kind of how you got to where you’re at today.
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Well I, first of all, I’m just an animal lover, you know, and when I, my parents bought a ranch in Unit 21 on Whiskey Creek out in the book Cliffs in Colorado, right. On the Utah Colorado line. But mom worked in town two and a half hours away and dad was busy on the ranch. So they just, a lot of times they’d locked me up in the chicken coop for short periods of time so they could work and
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They did, but not
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Told
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You don’t kill your brothers and split you up in pens.
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Come in and check on, you know, I’d be sitting on the eggs smashing them, walking around like a chicken or playing with the dogs and the ducks and that’s all. Yeah. Had to play with for a while. They finally got me a wooden egg to sit on. So I quit smashing the good eggs, but just always loved, loved the animals growing up, you know, and yeah. And you gotta be passionate about something to do it really well and I just love, love the hounds and loved, loved the dogs, you know, and, and then moved back to town when I was five to go to school and told dad I wanted a hound and he got me a Bassett hound.
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Come on
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Cottontails huh? With it.
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Chased the pet rabbits around in the yard with it and told him this wasn’t gonna cut it. And then we got to where it got some had to bake steel to get me a real hound to take, but, but anyway, yeah, they, I was going to school, I always liked to get in fights at school and stuff and would get kicked outta school and my dad started buying the gas for these two old boys in town if they’d take me with them hunting the house. Yeah.
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And
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They loved to take me ’cause I’d do all the walking and all the work and yeah, get to the tree and get to the dogs. And so just developed the passion for it, you know, and yeah, killed my first lion when I was 12, which I was with them. They did all the work. I just pulled the trigger but caught my first lion by myself when I was 15. Dad let me take the truck even though I wasn’t old enough to drive and went out, found a track close to town and caught a line
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With your own dogs.
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Yeah, with with my own dogs, which I had them old guys, they kind of got out of the hounds and let me have them old dogs they had. And so I had a couple old dogs that would do it and a couple other dogs that just run wild and rampant everywhere. But
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Yeah,
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Then went to college and I came my parents, I would go and do good, but I had to take my house, they wouldn’t let me. So the first semester I showed ’em and I flunked every class I took and then they said, alright, we’ll let you take your hounds. So I lived there in them old farm apartments and tied ’em up behind the, behind the dumpsters there.
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I remember that dude, you were skiing a lion in the tree right there in on campus or basically at campus housing or
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Oh yeah, they, we hung it right there from her dorms and skin is good line running up there around the C Doy?
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No, what I remember it. Oh.
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And then shoot, I’d have to dig in the cafeteria dumpster to feed them. And then there English classes, you had to write reports and stuff and I’d write ’em all on hunting with hounds
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Like old yeller and or yellow eyes and all those old lion hunting books that we used to read as kids. Huh.
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Yeah, it was like more documented research on cougars and calling them and documented stuff. I tried to make it professional so I could get the grade and, and then, oh, Dwight Israelson, he was the economics professor and he had deer mounts and everything else in his office up there and started hunting cougars with him and killed him. A big old mountain lion. And everybody teases me. That’s how I got my economics degree.
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Well, I know, I know. That’s what it was. I had a class from him too, you know. You got a grade from that? No.
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Oh, it helped out big time. We killed that cougar over Christmas break and our class was about 200 people big and he put all the pictures in that whole first class when we got back from Christmas break, he put all the pictures and pulled the story for the whole class time. Oh
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My gosh.
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I can’t believe it is. He is quite an awesome guy. And then got outta college and just farmers and ranchers and we’d been leasing our ranch to other outfitters and having a hard time getting them to pay us and I’d go and work for ’em too on my breaks and whatever. And just got outta college and just started doing it myself.
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Yeah.
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Riding an outfit in hunters and so it just kinda went from there.
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So what, what did you call home like? Was it vernal? Vernal, yeah. So we’re talking, you know, just for people that don’t know, basically northeast Utah. Most
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People know it by the promised Land Mormon country, you know what I mean?
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Yeah, I do. Yep. It is. We’ve heard
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It called other things too, but we’ll go with that for today
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Show. Yeah. So, and then a lot of oil country up there, but, and I know, you know, I think you’ve even maybe, maybe you do have some things going on in the oil field, but it seems like, I know you’ve had opportunities at that, but you’ve kind of stuck to hunting for the most part.
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Yeah, I do a lot of hunting or try to make, ’cause most times if possible, so I can just hunt every day, try to develop a life where I can do what I love every day. And I’ve been quite successful at it. And there’s nothing worse if a guy wants to go do something and you’re stuck somewhere else. Yeah. So I’ve tried to keep my life to where I could do it I want and go hunting when I want. And, and the dogs have always been my passion and is what’s driven it. I mean, it was terrible when you had to go to work instead of being able to hunt your dogs or go to school because you had to hunt your dogs. So you just, I just had to find a way to be able to go and hunt every day and do the things with my dogs that I wanted to do and have been very successful in finding a way to do that.
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Well as we start off, take us just a quick overview before we dive in to the middle of this thing. You know, give us a quick overview of your year. How does it look? Start us through January. I know you got a lot of different species, a lot of different things you’re guiding for of course. You know, we help you with the few hunters here and there and, and you’ve done great for our clients. And so just, but just start us maybe January 1st, of course you’re lying hunting, but then take us through the year. Like how does a guy make a living 12 months outta the year doing what you’re doing? I know you’ve got other things in other countries, like just kind of take us through that and then we’ll, and then we’ll kind of take it from there.
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Well it is, is just all part of finding the process of being able to hunt every day, how I wanted to hunt and, you know, a a guy kind of has gotta find something year round to do or at least I had to and we’re very fortunate here where I live. I mean, it’s a game abundant area and Utah is very good with their seasons and regulations, especially for hound hunting and, but yeah, the, I mean our cougar season runs year round here, so that’s a wonderful thing. And you know, basically run around 20 to 25 cougar hunters a year and, and you know, they’ll basically run from November through April for the most part of them, just easier hunting in and what have you. And then April and may start killing some bears. And then June and July, you gotta think about gonna Africa and hunting leopards with the hounds. And I’ve done that for eight years.
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Geez.
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And spend a month to two months over there killing leopards with clients or just killing leopards with ranchers that, that need them killed, that are killing their livestock. They don’t have a government program over there. They just gotta hire private citizens to take care of their problems or take care of their problems theirself. And, and, and then August start killing some cow elk and, and September and October killing mill deer and elk and even made eight trips to the Northwest Territories and end of July and August, killing
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A little fun for yourself. Right. You, you guys and know you and your dad and brothers all been up there on several different times killing, killing stuff up north.
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Yeah, sheep and moose and caribou. It’s good people in good times up there too, you know, so you can find something all over the earth year round to hunt if a guy’s got the passion to get it done, you know,
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And then you’re back to November and it all starts over again. Hunting cats
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Moved from one species to the next.
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Geez. How many days a year are you hunting Josh? Like what do you figure? Oh,
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That one year, a couple years ago, my wife, she read it on the calendar all the nights I was gone from home and it was like 248, something like that.
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Oh,
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I don’t like those calendars. Those calendars are not a man’s best friend.
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Those lie. They lie. Well my god,
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I’m really blessed to have a really good wife and she understands, which, that’s what puts our food on the table too, so that makes a difference. But
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Yeah,
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She was really blessed to have a really good, an understanding wife and we just kind of explained all this to her before we got married, so she kind of knew the go around before this came about. So you’re
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Right. She signed up for it, so to speak, huh?
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Well they all say they’d know what they’re signing up for but then once they’re in the middle of it, they’re like, I never knew.
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Yeah,
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I never, I got a good one. I’ve one too. I just, I got a good one too. And she’ll listen to this and probably, you know, gimme that look. But she’s, she’s super, so anyway, I can’t do it without her. You
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Have to have a supporting wife. You for sure.
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Good. A good woman will make her break you guaranteed.
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Yeah. You know,
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He broke a lot of good men, so.
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Oh, right on.
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Well, well tell us a little bit, I mean, you, you told us a little bit how you started getting into, into Hounds and that was with some of these old time friends or your dad’s or whoever and getting into it as a teenager. But let’s talk a little bit about it from there on how, what it takes to, to train a good hound. How many dogs you have right now. I mean, those are interesting things. How many of ’em, you know, make the cut so to speak? ’cause I’m sure there’s, there’s cold dogs just like everything else that just don’t have what it takes. And tell us about that process of what it takes, because I think a lot of people that come out and hunt with somebody like yourself, they see the finished product and it’s never easy, but it’s, it’s somewhat of an oiled machine and you can tell us whether it’s well oiled or rusty in spots, but they, they, a lot goes into getting to where, where, you know, to the point where hunters show up with you, turn the dogs loose and chase the lion or bear and and kill it.
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You
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Have to have the passion for it. You know, Jason Carter and his passion to kill big mul deer. He has the passion. He goes out, he makes it happen every day. Adam Brunson and his passion for killing big sheep, you know what I mean? You gotta have the passion for it. And then that develops the drive and the work ethic. And it’s no different for people that have businesses and what they do in their businesses or even raising your own kids. It’s all about the passion, which turns into the work ethic and the drive that you put into it to make it all happen. Your hounds are only as good as your, as the owner and you know, a lot of hounds and talk about these dogs or that dogs. It’s big talk. And, and it, it is true to a point. It’s always nice to have some kind of dog that is bred for something a little different here and there.
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But the number one thing is, is the hound is only as good as the owner. And, and I mean I’ve seen guys in Africa take any junk dog they could find off the street and make good dogs out of them, you know? And so you gotta have that passion and desire, number one for whatever it is that you want to do in life. And then the harder you work at it and the more you do it, the more passion you have, the better you are with it. That’s what driven me, like what we talked about earlier, being able to develop a life where I can go out and do what I want every day. And, and, but yeah, I mean I have 72 hound right now. I have a
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Hound dog. Geez. How many pallets of food do they eat every day?
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I go through about a pallet and a half a month.
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Geez.
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And, but they, it’s just my addiction and my passion and what I love to do and it’s, yeah, I just love doing it. So you go out there and you play with them dogs and you work with them dogs and you hunt them dogs and found a way to take hunters to pay for it ’cause it’s very expensive and it, there’s a lot of fun derived from taking a client out and killing them something and watching their eyes open up real big and showing them an experience that they’ll never forget for the rest of their life. And you got to be a part of that, you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. And all the hunting that I’ve done, I can do that more with hounds. I love to goon hunters out or freak ’em out and just give them that holy cow moment, you know, and they’ll remember it for the rest of their life. And
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You told me about one of those holy cow moments. Do you remember that bear that crossed the road when we were up lying hunting on the book cliffs? And you were talking about that bear that charged that family came back on them?
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Oh yeah, yeah. When we were hunting with the tribe over there, we had about 10 Indians with us. And, and of any rate, no, we’ve had some holy cow moments with you and your, your friends, you know? Oh
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Yeah. Build
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A couple lion together and you’ll never forget those hunts or your friends that were with. You’ll never forget ’em either, I’ll guarantee you. You know.
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Tell me about what about that, tell me that bear story again. I forgot half of it.
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Oh well the U Indian reservation, they hadn’t allowed white man in there for a while and they hired me to go in there as their hounds man. And we’d go in there and we had an open charge account at the Ute Plaza grocery store, so we ate good and, but there’s some big old nasty bears in there, but them bears get kind of dominant and big when they get old. And we were hunting them in June when they were mating too. So then they get a little bit more nosy. But yeah, one big old bear, he just stayed on the ground fighting the dogs and we got in there close and that hunter shot him and bear coming up and shot him bear coming, running right at us. And Turner tried to turn it on and I just grabbed him by the shoulders and he pulled up and shot from the hit and shot him in the head and the bear rolled right in front of us and I turned around and look and had about 10 Indians running backwards. All I could see was long black hair waving in the wind going down the trail.
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Oh geez. Yeah, it seemed like you were pre you prepped him for it too and then it actually happened. Just teasing them, getting them wound up. Geez.
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Oh yeah. You gotta goon them out as much as you can. Not just leads to, you gotta make sure they don’t forget their experience. Yeah. Or else you’ve failed as a guide, you know.
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Well, the little few times in my life I’ve actually hunted with Hounds men, you know, it doesn’t, it seems like an ordinary chase can go to an ordinary very, very fast in one way, shape or form. And I’m sure you’ve seen it all. And we can get to some of those, you know, I’m sure we could talk for 2, 3, 4 hours just about experiences like that. But
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Yeah. So you got 72 dogs, do you, do you memorize their name? I mean, you know, every single dog.
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Oh yeah. I mean, 10 of those are little pups right now, you know, but the ones you’re hunting and the ones you’re working with, you, you, you know their names, you know the sound of their voice, you know, what they’re trailing or if they’re tree or if they’re band, you just learn, learn their language. Yeah. Just like, just like your kids with your own, your own kids. It’s no different raising kids or horses or hounds. It’s all the same.
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So when you say, when you say a hound is only as good as its owner, tell me a little bit more, tell us a little bit more about that. I, ’cause I’m naive to that, I would think a dog is born more with it than can be taught it, so to speak, which is kind of what you’re alluding to. So tell me about the difference of how to make a good hound based on, based on your, your personal perspective on hound hunting.
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It, it, it’s just all about the time and the work you put into the dog, you know what I mean? It’s all about the time and the work Jason Carter puts into killing a big meal, deer, it’s all about the time that Adam Brunson puts into killing a big sheep. It’s all the same, you know, it’s all about time and passion.
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And so is it something you’re, you’re training them every day. Let’s say you got these pups, you got these 10 pups. Let’s go through the training regimen and kind of the schedule, maybe your daily schedule of how you’re doing that. Obviously you’re working with ’em every day, I mean, or nearly every day.
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Yeah, I mean every day there’s something being done with the dogs, you know what I mean? Rather you’re just letting them off the chain and petting them or, or if you’re taking them, you know, I do a lot of coon hunting. I love a good coon hunt. Or if I’m taking them out trailing lions or trailing bears or trailing bobcats or from just taking them a walk out through deer and elk and big horn sheep and antelope, just letting ’em know that’s not something that we want to hunt. You know what I mean? And, and and you do that from the time they get off, get off their mama’s tit and you can, they’re, they’re a lot easier to train actually when they’re younger. Like they, they soak up a lot of knowledge and retain it in their, in their mind. Yeah. And I, I keep my pups up at our cabin up on our ranch up on the mountain, and they run rampantly all over and they learned to come to my whistle and they learned to come to me and we’d go for walks and we, and we, we, we just, we just hang out and, and, and, and, but at the end of the day they’re, they’re, they’re, they’re a tool used for hunting.
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God invented them to, to, to catch game. That’s their use and that’s what they’re invented for and you just develop that with them.
00:24:48:09 –> 00:25:23:17
Yeah, sounds like they’re, I mean, a lot more of a, I mean we, we have these with our normal, I guess family dogs, these bonds and things like that. But you’re, that’s what you’re kind of creating with 72 of ’em so to speak. They, I’m sure they all have personalities and things like that, but you’re trying to get ’em to understand you, what you’re, what you’re trying to get them to do. And then in a way trying to get them to live and have as much passion for catching a lion is as you do, you know, you’re living vicariously through them so to speak. ’cause you, you know,
00:25:23:25 –> 00:26:11:23
You’ll get a lot more out of them. You’ll do a lot more with them with the love that you give them. And so they work for the love they, they love and they know when they’ve done a good day’s work and they’ve done their job, they know it. They’re a very smart animal. They will dogs are, are, are will just amaze you on on what they can develop and what they can do. And, and then that’s just part of the amazing part of it all also, you know, like we take all these clients out hunting and, and like you say, you know, they see the end result and they’re there. They wanna kill their cougar and they want to experience the whole atmosphere and everything that goes on. And you know, they get that experience and that’s part of what they pay for when they come and do a hunt with you.
00:26:12:10 –> 00:26:47:20
And you know, and it, that’s part of your job is being a guide on what you need to provide for your hunter. And, and you know, and, and a lot of those people don’t have the time or the passion to develop what, what different people develop with their dogs, you know, and but they, they pay to come and experience it. And the, and you know, the the kill the kill is, is always fun. But you know, it’s a small part of the and the whole experience that that that that, that you provide to your client.
00:26:49:21 –> 00:27:02:18
What, tell us what type, I mean you may have different breeds of dogs. What, what do you like to settle on or, or what types of hounds do you use for the most part, I guess? Or is it varied over the years, but where you kind of settled at now?
00:27:03:11 –> 00:27:11:05
Well I’m, I’m not a racist person. I have every shape and color of hound that there was ever invented. I like them
00:27:11:14 –> 00:27:15:01
Ba You got a little ba few Bassett in the, in out of the 72 or what?
00:27:15:01 –> 00:27:16:02
Well I got, no,
00:27:16:11 –> 00:27:16:18
I’m
00:27:16:18 –> 00:27:19:14
Not into hunting cottontail rabbits and what
00:27:19:14 –> 00:27:20:17
Have just checking
00:27:21:06 –> 00:27:21:20
Just happens
00:27:22:07 –> 00:27:24:11
No short legged hounds in the, in the, in the bunch.
00:27:24:17 –> 00:27:42:00
Well some are shorter, some are fatter, some are skinnier. They’re kinda like people, you know, some are prettier and some are uglier. But they, I got some of every shape and size and color. I mean, I go out there and I just look at my dogs when I ain’t hunting them and I like just looking at them, you know what I mean?
00:27:43:19 –> 00:27:43:25
But
00:27:43:25 –> 00:28:04:11
They’re, they’re all good. The number one thing is they’re only as good as their owner. And then after that you can get certain ones that have a little bit br for a few more tendencies than, than others in hunting in different conditions or different terrains or different species that you’re hunting.
00:28:05:08 –> 00:28:51:25
Well I’m sure it’s like anything Josh, like not everybody’s cut out and does good at, you know, running big machinery or not. Everybody’s cut out for different things and like you, you know, we all, at times I’m thinking, ah, I’d like to have a couple of dogs and run lines and stuff. But I mean, you’re only, you know, like what you’re saying and it, and it rings true, is you’re only gonna get out of it what you put into it. And not everybody’s, you know, designed to be a dog trainer, a dog, you know, one of these, you know, something that for working hounds and, and maybe something that your living re you know, is based off of. So probably takes a special person too, you know, to, I mean, how long did it take you to learn how to train dogs or be good at it or, or?
00:28:52:04 –> 00:29:33:10
It took a long lot of years for me to hunt ’em and, and, and I’m still learning. Like, I learn stuff from people all the time, all the time. It’s, it’s never ending process. I’m still learning and, and, and I probably always will be learning until I die, but it, it, it just takes a lot of time and a lot of hours and just, you gotta have the passion for it to keep doing it. ’cause you don’t, you know, you, a lot of times you, you’ll know a good hounds man when, when his trucks beat the crap and he ain’t got nothing to speak for other, and these dogs, feeding these dogs and hunting them takes everything he’s got, you know what I mean? Yeah.
00:29:35:12 –> 00:30:18:05
Well maybe now let’s get into the X’s and O’s of hunting. What’s, tell us through some of the process that you, how do you hunt? And obviously it’s different in different times of year when you’ve got snow on the ground for lions. We’ll maybe just talk about lions for now versus, I think you’re out, out in the hills today in June hunting it’s totally different based on temperature terrain where the, you know, deer are prey based, bighorn sheep, elk, whatever. But tell us how that differs and, and, and maybe when it turns, when it comes to snow and whatnot, when you know, you got, what are you looking for in a lion track or whatnot that you know, you know, won’t even turn loose on,
00:30:19:22 –> 00:31:10:16
You know, kind of back to the first year question. It, it kind of depends on where the work’s at and the time of year. You know, if you got clients calling you and they, they, you know, their bottom line, you know, they wanna kill a cougar, well it’s easier to kill cougars in the snow from November through April, you know what I mean? Or even March, you know, and, and, and, and it is better on the outfitter too. I mean, I can take a hunter out in one or two days, kill a cougar and move on, you know what I mean? And so try to get the clients in during those easier times to catch cougars. And you know, a lot of times these clients, it depends on their physical capability too. You know, depending on the client, depending on where I know where cougar is and what the client can handle and, you know, to provide a positive experience at the end of the day is what everybody is after.
00:31:11:15 –> 00:31:49:01
And you know, so a lot of the, and then, you know, sometimes they get clients say, Hey, I wanna see, you know, more of a hunt. I’m in good shape, I’ve already killed a cougar. I say, okay, come out in the summertime, we’ll go hunt one in the dirt and you’ll get to do a lot more walking and watching the dogs work and a lot more hunting. Hunting before we catch a cougar. Or we might not even catch a cougar, but you’ll get a lot more hunt out of the deal. And so you kind of explain things and you fill your client out on stuff like that. Or if, you know, if they need you to kill cougars that are killing all the collar big horn sheep, you gotta go there and do that. Or
00:31:49:05 –> 00:32:12:14
Well, tell us a little bit, like, I know when I hunted with you, you know, you knew about specific lions in certain areas and and whatnot. Like are you finding that like, you know about specific lions you left this last winter and that, you know, there’s certain areas that there’s one big lion or two big lions that work this area and kinda like how maybe we key in on deer or sheep or, or Yeah,
00:32:13:05 –> 00:32:50:06
Yeah, it’s all the same. You know, I like to hunt my dogs year round. So you kind of build a database in your mind of where cougars are at and where they like to live from year to year and where ones make marking his territory and where he’s running. You know what I mean? Yeah. So you kind of, you have a knowledge of where the cougar’s at that you’re gonna kill for your client before your client even gets there. Yeah. Because if you gotta go out and look for a cougar before your client even gets there from scratch, yeah, you’re gonna spend a week the whole time he’s there just trying to find a cougar. And that’s not very good business in my mind. You know what I
00:32:50:06 –> 00:33:02:00
Mean? Yeah. So you’ve just got areas, you know, like I know there’s two, two lions running in this country or a lion in this country, and so you’re keying in on specific lions or whatnot. Right,
00:33:02:05 –> 00:33:25:26
Right. And we’re, and we’re very fortunate here in the promised land. I mean, we got a lot of dinosaur national monument that nobody can hunt that borders us and, and Indian reservations or private properties that nobody can hunt. So there’s a lot of game coming in and out of those places that allow us to harvest a large amount of animals year after year. Yeah. And, and be successful at it
00:33:26:01 –> 00:33:57:23
Kind of a refuge, you know, a refuge in, in a sense and symbolize areas. And I know you, you also hunt and Colorado side, so you got another part of the, you know, another state and some, like you said, fairly rough country. You got wilderness up in the high country summer range. You get a lot going on, like you said, and how often are you in a common hunted area, places you hunt every year, multiple times, and all of a sudden there’s a magnum track, you’re like, where is this thing come from? Does that, I mean, that has to happen. Lions,
00:33:57:23 –> 00:33:59:01
The coffee can, the coffee can track.
00:33:59:22 –> 00:34:11:26
Oh yeah. It happens every year in the same places. I go through my spots. I kill cougars in all the same places, give it four or five months and cougars are right back in there, you know, just
00:34:12:00 –> 00:34:21:10
Dispersing from wherever they’re getting to an area and they’re like, Hey, there’s no big tom marking this up, I’m taking it ’cause you’ve killed it. You know, you kill one and something’s gonna fill the void basically.
00:34:22:06 –> 00:34:50:22
Yeah. And, and, and you know, our, our ranch actually goes into Colorado and, and, and we have a lot of private property that we take deer and elk hunters on also. And we gotta thin them mountain lions out, I mean, our ranch borders, the monument actually goes in the monument on part of it. And if we don’t stay on top of these predators, then I then our, our, our big mule deer bucks, they’re the ones that get whacked through the winter. The ones that run it the
00:34:50:22 –> 00:34:53:17
Hardest. We can’t, we can’t have that, Josh, we need you to, to work harder.
00:34:53:18 –> 00:34:54:26
Don’t. And then, or the sheep then
00:34:54:26 –> 00:35:01:12
Jason Carter calls you up and he’s all pissed off or Adam Brunson calls you up and he’s all pissed off because sheep are all giant.
00:35:01:14 –> 00:35:06:10
I’ve only got two collared sheep left in a unit and Yeah, where’s, where’s Josh been? Yeah, you
00:35:06:10 –> 00:35:08:17
Just gotta keep everybody happy when you can.
00:35:09:20 –> 00:35:16:22
What, how much country will a lion Rome, what does he call his home? Is it, is it 10 square miles, five square miles or 20? Like what does he, they’re
00:35:16:22 –> 00:35:18:08
Hundreds or how, what do you,
00:35:18:14 –> 00:35:59:29
You, you know, that’s a variable question. You know, the data and everything shows different stuff, but there’s so, so many variables. I mean, cougar can get kicked out of a place and travel hundreds of miles. They tell me into a new place, you know? Yeah. Tom, looking for a female can travel hundreds of miles to find a female to mate with or, you know, if, if there’s a female living there, she’ll stay in one little hole as long as she’s got water and, and, and, and deer out or sheep to kill. You know what I mean? She might not leave a a half a mile radius, you know what I mean? They, they don’t wanna exert any more energy than they have to, to make a living or to reproduce.
00:36:00:11 –> 00:36:41:01
So it just depends on where they are in life. You get a two or three year old Tom that’s, you know, getting off kicked off a mom, your mama, you know, she’s gotta have a litter every, I don’t know, two, three years, I don’t know, Josh. And then, so you gotta have some dispersers they gotta disperse at some point in their life. But then once they become, I guess mature enough or dominant enough to hold the territory, yeah. They, they wanna stay put just like us close to home where you’re close to the fridge and the tv, I guess in their world that they don’t wanna roam. And until it’s the time of year they’re thinking about other things than just a fresh, a fresh kill and whatever, like I said, Roman for breeding or getting run outta the country by
00:36:41:09 –> 00:36:51:12
Well and it seems like I’ve even seen like little studies where they’ve collared lion and crosses the San Rafael desert ends up on LaSalle Mountain or something like they probably is some of some of that here and there.
00:36:52:09 –> 00:37:24:18
Oh yeah. I mean cougars, I mean they’re, they’re amazing animals. They’re, they’re, they’re no different than house cats. They, they breed year round, you know what I mean? If, if they, if they, if their kittens die or another Tom kills their kittens, they’ll breed right back up and they just, they they reproduce like cocktail rabbits or just like your house cats in the yard, you know, they’re, they’re a survivor and they, and they, they reproduce quite rapidly and frequently it doesn’t take much for ’em to really get going.
00:37:25:25 –> 00:37:34:02
What’s the, like what do you think the furthest distance is you’ve ever run your dogs on a track? Like how, I know it can be crazy amounts of time, but
00:37:34:13 –> 00:38:10:23
Well, sometimes you get like February when that snow gets crusty and the cougars don’t like to move much ’cause it tears up their pads. You know, you find a and and I, and it’s thrilling to me also, you know, to find a week old track in the snow and trail that thing for two or three days clear across the mountain range and, and, and catch up to him, you know, three days later pulling the dogs off at night, starting the track again in the morning. Yeah. You know, type of deal. Yeah. And, and, and that leads to, you know, some good cold trailing and some good hunting. And I find that quite amusing and quite fun to do and
00:38:11:08 –> 00:38:14:26
Gratifying probably knowing your dogs are doing it and they’re working hard.
00:38:15:11 –> 00:38:27:08
Yeah. And, and just ’cause you’re hunting in the snow, like you said earlier on a fresh snow, you know, you can turn a poodle loose and catch a lion, you know, that’s just a saying and sometimes it is true. It’s just easy sometimes. But what
00:38:27:08 –> 00:38:34:23
Is the fastest, since you brought that up, what’s the fastest you’ve turned dogs loose outta your box and had ’em bark and treat on the lion?
00:38:35:17 –> 00:38:44:05
Oh, you know, I’ve done that so much, you know, in just a couple of minutes before I’ve had a lion popped up a tree next to the side of the road, you know what I mean?
00:38:44:19 –> 00:38:44:28
Yeah.
00:38:45:03 –> 00:39:02:17
You, you never know for you can turn loose on a week old lion track and catch him in five minutes or catch him in a week. You never know if that cougar’s got something killed right there or traveled to California, you know what I mean? Yeah. So it’s part of the fun and part of the adventure just to see what’s gonna happen
00:39:03:06 –> 00:39:36:07
Probably for you. I bet it’s anticlimactic when you turn ’em loose and they’re treating five minutes, you’re like, oh, this is a boring day. I mean, it’s a kind of little anticlimactic for you that does this all the time. You probably wanna see a struggle. You want. I mean, when I say a struggle, yeah, they hit a south facing slope and they got a, they gotta work through the rocks and bare ground and then all of a sudden after a couple hours they’ve sorted it out and they’re on the north slope and hit the snow again and cut it. You know, it’s probably a little bit more gratifying and interesting for you, I imagine that way.
00:39:37:03 –> 00:39:49:06
Yeah. You know, depends on your client also, you know, I’ve taken guys that’s had multiple heart attacks or guys with one leg and, and I’ve always got their cougar and I take a lot of pride in that Wow. That
00:39:49:12 –> 00:39:50:08
I can find. Wow, that’s good.
00:39:50:28 –> 00:39:56:29
And if I can always find them the easier cougar as possible, that makes it nice in that way also.
00:39:57:11 –> 00:40:16:16
What, you know, they’ve always said lions kill a deer a week. I mean, and of course you on some of these cold tracks and you’re trailing for a long time. You’re ended up on, I’m sure on some kill or deer or sheep or whatever, lion kills. But what are you finding? I mean, are you thinking that’s legit? I mean, what, how many, how many animals are they killing?
00:40:17:15 –> 00:40:49:05
It’s a huge variable, Jason. I mean, I’ve seen so much. I mean, I’ve seen a lion come in and kill 30 headed domestic sheep in one night just to kill ’em. You know what I mean? Yeah. I’ve ran lions, I’ve ran, I mean, 200 pound lion had a three 50 class bully just killed, you know, and sitting on a rock a hundred yards away from it, some deer just walked by here, runs down there and kills one of them just to kill one with a belly full of meat. A hundred mountain lions. I call ’em kinda like archery hunters.
00:40:49:21 –> 00:40:52:22
They’re very, this ought be good.
00:40:53:06 –> 00:41:27:04
They’re very opportunistic hunters. They do a lot of like laying around water where the animals come in to drink or a lot laying around trails and whatever. Not exerting too much energy. And once that opportunity presents itself, they kill. Yeah. And, and and, and, and they’ll, I’ve just seen ’em do, you know, you can hear so much, but you, the longer you do it, you see about it anything. But I know one thing they do love to kill, which that’s the business they’re in, is killing and eating
00:41:27:19 –> 00:41:53:19
Well and I’d imagine different times of year, whether it’s, you know, hot in the summer and their kill spoils faster or it’s the winter where it can freeze up and they, you know, you kill a, an elk in a, in a canyon and if you don’t want to, if they don’t want to, or like you said, they’re lazy and whatever they can, they don’t have to move much, you know what I mean? They got an elk and they’re dominant enough to keep everything else off it. They’re, they’re set for weeks, you know what I mean?
00:41:53:23 –> 00:42:19:24
I’ve, I’ve, I’ve run into places where the deer and elk will travel out of the high range, the summer fall range into the winter range. And them animals use them same trails or passes and them lines sit in them. And I’ve seen where a 200 pound Tom has had seven dead elk in a a hundred, 150 yard radius come on. Just going down and whacking one
00:42:20:07 –> 00:42:20:29
Whenever he feels like it
00:42:20:29 –> 00:42:25:18
Right there in that little pass he’s going through and just lays there and waxs another one. They come through.
00:42:25:23 –> 00:42:38:00
Well, it’s probably their personality. Each lion’s a little different. Some of them probably thirst for that, you know, more than others or who know, who knows. Maybe it’s the time in their life too. They’re the biggest, baddest predator on the mountain. And you
00:42:38:00 –> 00:42:58:24
Know, you take, you, right, you take any species, a big mul deer or a big sheep, they find these little holes where they don’t get bothered and they have all the food and water they want and they have, you know, their, their reproduction stuff that they want there also. And they don’t gotta move. And that’s part of what makes them big adults.
00:42:59:02 –> 00:43:13:08
Yeah. Some people talk about, you know, they might be a little worried about lions or close calls or anything like that. Of course you hardly ever hear of much, you know, of an incident. But have you had any close calls lying and bear hunting?
00:43:14:01 –> 00:43:19:10
Oh no, not really. I’m still alive, so they don’t really count unless you get killed,
00:43:21:07 –> 00:43:27:12
Unless you draw blood on yourself, you know, by a claw or a tooth. It’s, it’s, it’s just part of the business, right?
00:43:28:03 –> 00:43:33:02
Yeah. You just kinda get immune to everything and it doesn’t become too big of a deal.
00:43:33:19 –> 00:44:13:17
Do you have some, I’m sure there are some, you know, just like you said, lions are different, different individuals and I’m sure there are some that, that, you know, and you’ve probably have names for ’em, maybe some, you can’t, you know, utter on the air, but they tear up your dogs and they have a habit of, you know, their fight and they maybe killed some of your dogs. And you’ve, there’s, I’m sure you have lines like that, that, that are on your list because they’re your fighter or bears like you say, it seems like I hear a lot more of it with bears, you know, as they get big they’ll just sit and swat and fight and walk in front and swat and fight and tell they wear your dogs out to some extent. But lions probably do that as well to some extent.
00:44:15:00 –> 00:44:36:01
Yeah. You know, when I was younger, you know, the dogs didn’t get to get on as much games, so they weren’t as smart as to knowing their fighting range with a bear lion or knowing the rocks and cliffs as good. So they, they, they, they got injured or even killed more often than they do now. Now that you
00:44:36:01 –> 00:44:37:04
Know, you’re hunting more regular
00:44:37:15 –> 00:45:02:00
Hunting, more regular, they kill more, catch more game. They, they know the fighting distance better, they know the terrain better, how to maneuver in it better. And they’re just smarter and they, they don’t get that as much, you know, and where you take a lot of guys that just are able to hunt on weekends here or there and catch something and you hear more problems.
00:45:02:15 –> 00:45:04:17
Archery hunters, I know you like archery hunters.
00:45:05:20 –> 00:45:20:11
Oh yeah. More and more people wanna pretend like they’re an Indian nowadays for some reason. But I mean, they keep giving them more time to hunt and whatever. And you get a hunt more and you get a wound, 20 animals before you kill someone.
00:45:21:05 –> 00:45:22:01
Josh, you’re brutal.
00:45:23:21 –> 00:45:34:12
And it’s a lot funner, you know, he, my line of work, you just pull out the gun and shoot it and be done with it. And I’d have to drag the bull around the a around the mountain just to say he killed it with a bow. But
00:45:34:18 –> 00:45:38:10
Well, remember mine came on strong, remember? I mean, stuff happens.
00:45:40:01 –> 00:45:43:23
Wait, I’m gotta put all this on the air, air getting now
00:45:46:01 –> 00:45:47:26
You’ll, you’ll,
00:45:50:04 –> 00:46:03:29
But, you know, white men use powder and Indians use stick and shrink. I don’t mind an Indian coming hunting with me with a bow and arrow, but a perfectly well white man using the bow arrows just kind of off.
00:46:06:06 –> 00:46:19:17
Josh, tell us how you really feel. Tell us how you really feel, Josh. So,
00:46:19:26 –> 00:46:49:16
You know, I know you, you probably get to hunt more lions throughout the year simply because you can do it for five or six months versus bears. But we know you’ve killed some giant bears both on some of your Utah units and some of the reservations. But let’s maybe talk a little bit about some of the differences with lion hunting and bear hunting when you’re using your, you obviously, you know, there’s differences and, and things like that. So talk a little bit about that.
00:46:51:01 –> 00:47:39:20
Well, you know, as far as the dogs are concerned and in my mind a really, really good dog, the best dogs I’ve ever seen in my life will do everything, you know? Yeah. Hunt, bear, mountain lion, lepers, whatever, it will just do it all. But then you get some dogs that are just better at hunting mountain lions or just better off hunting bears due to their differences in personalities and way they act and what have you. So, you know, I i I I keep a pack of halves around that will only hunt lions. So when I’m hunting lions in the summer and the bears are out, they’ll just stick on lion. I don’t have to worry about the bears. And then I got a pack of dogs that’ll only run bears. And how do you, I’ve got dogs that run at all too.
00:47:39:29 –> 00:47:58:12
How do you get ’em to do that? Or is it just the individual dog that just have a fire for cats and they kind of run right over a bear track ’cause they’re so focused on a, on the cat that they’re on and vice versa? Or how do you, or is it trained? You have to train them, you only chase lions? Or is it, do you kind of go with Well
00:47:58:12 –> 00:47:59:20
We’re on a bear hunt today. Yeah.
00:48:00:01 –> 00:48:00:13
How do you get
00:48:00:15 –> 00:48:33:18
Yeah, you know, you kinda see their personalities and what have you and the way they act when they’re younger. If they’re a little more crazy, you might want ’em to be a bear dog, a really good bear dog. You want a couple good crazy ones in your pack. Sometimes when you’re hunting bears or if you’re hunting lines in the dirt, you kind of want a slower nose down type dog, you know, and you just kind of see them personalities when they’re younger and you’re like, Hey, this dog drives me nuts on Coors, but he’s a wild, crazy man when we’re hunting bears, we’re just gonna stick with bears on you. You know what I mean? Yeah,
00:48:33:22 –> 00:48:43:14
I get it. So go with the tendencies and kind of feed them to the, to the stuff that you think their strengths are. Or you see their focus or their drive is you kind of feed that, right?
00:48:44:00 –> 00:49:14:10
Yeah. And, and you, you kind of develop for the country that you’re hunting or the train that you’re hunting and the type of dog that works best in it and there’s different dogs that work better in different areas or different parts of the world. Yeah. And just kinda depends on, you develop dogs for what you’re doing and every everybody that hunts around the world develops those dogs for what they’re hunting or doing in that type of train or with that kind of critter that they’re after.
00:49:14:28 –> 00:49:24:24
So what are you like today? Like how are you cutting a bear track? I mean, are you just driving or is it something where you’re out hiking the dogs and you just guys are on a walk and then you’re, you’re
00:49:25:00 –> 00:50:04:23
Yeah, like, like today I am hunting in a sheep country where it’s really rocky and steep and kind of know where these cougars are and I know where the sheep are and they’re just around them sheep. And, and just, you kind of develop and know where the cougars walk and where they move and how cats act and how cats think and, and where they go and what they like to do. And you, you can’t see tracks in the country that I’m in right now. So you just, you take the dogs and you, you hike through those areas and you, you rely on the dogs to tell you what’s going on and show you what’s going on and, and, and the way you go.
00:50:05:17 –> 00:50:17:11
So back to the crazy ones. Tell us why you want that when you’re hunting bears or a couple of them. Not all of them. You need some that obviously have good noses, but
00:50:18:00 –> 00:50:28:23
Sometimes you just, I mean, sometimes of the year bears don’t leave much scent. Sometimes they leave a lot of scent. Sometimes it’s like trailing a garbage truck down the road.
00:50:29:19 –> 00:50:29:28
Geez.
00:50:30:09 –> 00:50:30:28
Sometimes
00:50:30:28 –> 00:50:33:17
You, that’s after they’re ate a garbage dumpster or something.
00:50:34:07 –> 00:50:48:06
Yeah. And, and sometimes you just in really rough country, you got a big old mean bear on the ground. You need some of them crazy dogs in there that are going in there and working him and yeah. Pulling a little hair on him and just to get him stopped,
00:50:48:14 –> 00:50:51:07
Get him baed up or maybe treated or something.
00:50:51:15 –> 00:50:53:18
Yeah. So you can get in there and kill him, you know,
00:50:53:19 –> 00:51:02:11
So they take more aggressive, more, a little bit more aggressive sometimes to ba him up or stop ’em. That’s what you’re talking about when you mean cr crazy dogs to Yeah.
00:51:02:20 –> 00:51:26:12
I mean sometimes, you know, that’s a big aspect to the bear hunting. And also sometimes those crazy more driven dogs too are what gets you through the rocks and the cliffs in nasty country when you’re a lion too, you know? Yeah. So it’s just kind of a combination of everything. Yeah. And just the development for where and what you’re doing.
00:51:27:00 –> 00:51:45:14
Tell us, let’s talk about leopards. Like I’ve always, I mean, I’ve got a, I I’ve got a thing for ’em at some point. I’ve got a, I’ve got aquip mule deer and go do some of that. But tell us about it. Is it just, is it just a lion on steroids? I mean, what is it? How, what’s it like?
00:51:46:07 –> 00:52:51:13
Well, I don’t know. I’ll just start in the beginning. I, I, nine years ago I had the opportunity to take my dogs to Africa and hunt leopards with a guy that was my age. And you know, and back then we were, I, I dunno, 24 years old I was, you know, and he was about 30. But yeah, so I just, something I’d read about and something I’d seen about and always wanted to see them spotted cats, you know. So had a couple hunters that talked me into it, wanting to kill them. Big leopards down there in Namibia is where we started out. And they knew this, this friend of mine, their family owned a couple big cattle ranches down there, plum full of big leopards on the Kalahari desert. So I just loaded up six dogs and flew ’em over there. Parents said not to do it. And I was stupid and idiot and what have you
00:52:52:09 –> 00:52:55:05
Because you were never gonna see your dogs again, basically.
00:52:55:14 –> 00:53:15:29
Yeah. But I trusted that people that were setting me up with it, they hunted with me before and ended up being some of the most wonderful experiences and meeting some of the most wonderful people I ever met with in my whole life. I mean, I say a lot if, you know, if the plane ride wasn’t so far to Africa, we’d be out of business over here.
00:53:16:18 –> 00:53:17:06
Yeah. But
00:53:18:02 –> 00:53:53:22
I mean, God spent some time over there and made a whole variety of species of different shapes and sizes and colors and what have you, and still plumb full of wild country over there with travel for miles and miles to different ranches and, and, and people just love you to death and feed you five times a day, whether you wanna eat or not, and talk your leg off to where you can hardly even get out and go hunting. And just some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever seen. Wow. And so happy that they’re, that you’re there and just amazing. Absolutely spectacular and amazing.
00:53:54:05 –> 00:54:02:13
So you go over there, your first trip. Tell us about your first leopard or, or some of the most memorable experiences you’ve had there.
00:54:03:03 –> 00:54:53:03
Just, you know, the, the, I found that them leopards were no different than a Mount Lion. Tracks are the same. They moved like a cat, just like our mount lions. You see a size of a track. I could tell you what the weight of was the cougar, even the six, just the same as a cougar or a leopard, all the same. Only difference that I found is leopards would come into bait and leopards will tackle you and bite you. You don’t just walk up to the tree and shoot one like a cougar. You stay back at couple hundred yards if possible, and shoot ’em as far away as possible. And everybody carries guns to protect each other. A little more extreme in that way. And the environment is a lot more game rich, environment full of animals that can kill you. Poisonous snakes, what have you.
00:54:53:03 –> 00:55:37:06
It’s pretty tame over here in the us you know what I mean? And, and so a lot more and you can just be a blood thirsty killer over there. Go out there every day, hunt leopards all morning, gets hot, go out to kill planes game all day by the truckloads. You know? And, and, and, and not that you’re doing anything wrong, it’s just a game rich environment that the animals need pinned down and the hunters pay for these animals. And that’s where these people get their most money from. And when you provide that money for the animals to all these people, the better they take care of the animals instead of wanting to just kill ’em off, they want to take care of them and let ’em reproduce so people can come in and pay money for
00:55:37:10 –> 00:55:40:03
’em. Seems like you really like to hunt those baboons.
00:55:41:00 –> 00:55:42:20
Oh, I love killing baboons.
00:55:43:11 –> 00:55:43:23
Tell us.
00:55:43:23 –> 00:56:02:03
There’s hundreds of them. I mean, and, and osages and there ain’t nothing. Feather funner and watching you take your deer rifle and blow the feathers out of a 200 pound chicken, you know? Oh jeez. I mean, leopards, baboons and oss. You just, man, that’s a rush.
00:56:02:26 –> 00:56:12:26
So do these leopards, you said they’re obviously more aggressive and will jump out on you. Are they much more aggressive on your dogs as well?
00:56:13:12 –> 00:57:14:22
Yeah, it’s the exact same. If you got a pack of dogs that know they’re fighting distance, the best luck I had over there is I took really, really good dogs. Dogs that could cold trail lion in the heat of the day in the dirt. And that could fight a mean bear through the rough country all day long. You know? And those dogs did the very best over there because you had the cold trail, the, the lion or the leopard and then get to him. But then they had to ba or fight him like a big bear on the ground with an animal that could kill him. I mean, a big leopard over there has a 17 inch skull where a big mountain lion has a 15 inch skull and their canines are about twice as long as the canines on mountain lions. So they, they, they bite and they know how to kill and they got some bite. So the dogs had to know their fighting range over there to keep ’em from getting killed. And the best luck I had over there, sending over finished dogs that hunted lion, like I said, the way you want a lion dog to hunt and hunted bears as a good bear dog would. And
00:57:17:03 –> 00:57:18:20
You still go over there every year?
00:57:19:25 –> 00:57:35:20
Yeah, I, I, I am having my good friend I was hunting with over there, Scott Zeal, he got killed by a crocodile about a month ago. And then Ian’s s hunt with him over there. He got killed about two weeks killed by an elephant. Come on. So just,
00:57:36:07 –> 00:57:37:20
Are you kidding me? Geez,
00:57:37:28 –> 00:57:39:11
Josh. Sorry man.
00:57:40:04 –> 00:57:40:20
I didn’t mean to
00:57:40:24 –> 00:57:50:12
Well, they’re kinda like cows. If you can die out in the field doing what you love, then that’s a good death. It’s a lot better than dying in the house. There’s old folks home on a bed.
00:57:50:24 –> 00:57:53:00
Were they hunting with clients wearing diapers when that happened?
00:57:54:26 –> 00:58:00:08
TNS was hunting with clients, hunting elephants. Yes. And Scott was just out training dogs on leopards.
00:58:00:17 –> 00:58:05:12
Come on. So, so have you had any close calls out there, Josh?
00:58:05:23 –> 00:58:17:27
Yeah. Yeah, I’ve had a couple. You can get a lot more close calls over there than you can here. And you always just gotta be smart about things and watch around you and surround yourself with good people.
00:58:18:09 –> 00:58:21:18
Do you, do you have a specific instance that you share with us?
00:58:22:03 –> 00:58:56:08
Oh, oh, not too much that I don’t know. You, you get around wrong people and they might pull machine guns on you or something if they think you’re a poacher and just tell ’em you’re American. They don’t want to kill Americans. Yeah. Or, and nothing real bad. You surround your people with yourself, with good people and you’re in the right places with the right people. It’s, it’s no different than around here. Other, just kinda watch out for a few more things like snakes and, and animals that can kill you.
00:58:56:15 –> 00:59:03:10
So when you’re back over here hunting here, it’s like cupcakes and butterflies compared to hunting over there. I mean it’s pretty light stuff.
00:59:03:20 –> 00:59:31:18
Yeah, it’s really is pretty tame over here. I mean, we’re pretty fortunate, you know, but it’s also we’re running out of a lot more wild country to really hunt wild over here. Hunt how you need to hunt or hunt how you wanna hunt with all the government regulations, what have you we have here that limit us in certain ways. But over there you can still run wild and free and hunt how you need to hunt or hunt how you wanna hunt or when you wanna hunt.
00:59:32:02 –> 00:59:52:12
Well I know everybody that goes over there want can’t wait to go back. I’ve, I know, you know, I’ve been putting it off and I think Bronson has too. We just are one of those. We’re just, you know, once you go over there, you, you kind of give up something here ’cause you just can’t wait to get back. It seems like your dad told me the same thing. He, it’s nothing he’d rather do than go over there.
00:59:53:21 –> 01:00:10:23
Well, yeah, I mean there’s different hunting over there if you’re hunting a high fence or if you’re hunting wild. If you’re hunting wild. I’ve never seen better hunting in my life and, and just, it’s pretty, pretty amazing place. What,
01:00:10:23 –> 01:00:15:11
What do you do with all the meat? I mean, and are these communities they gobble right up like it’s crazy.
01:00:15:24 –> 01:00:37:29
Yeah, it depends on where you’re at. You can give it to the natives or the locals or there’s meat co around there. A lot of the killing we done, we sold the meat to Meat Co. Just depends on where you’re at and where you’re hunting or what’s around you. But all the meat, they eat everything over there. Then leopards kill cattle, been dead for three days and need go right up. They
01:00:37:29 –> 01:00:40:06
Eat the F FDA’s not slowing ’em down over there.
01:00:40:27 –> 01:00:42:04
No, they’ll eat everything.
01:00:42:24 –> 01:00:43:26
Geez, crazy.
01:00:44:03 –> 01:01:12:08
What about, I know we mentioned a little bit earlier you talked about going up north. What personally, I mean I know we associate you with, with hunting with your dogs for lying them bears. But personally for you, Josh, outside of, if you had to put third on your list or what after, what do you personally like to hunt or guide your clients to? Maybe either personally or like I said, what, what other animals do you really get the most fulfillment outta hunting?
01:01:13:25 –> 01:02:26:22
Oh, I love animals. I love hunting. Everything, you know, as far as the Northwest Territories are concerned, another great wild place to go. I’ve only hunted up there with Harold Grindy and, and his crew, you know, started out, you know, nine years ago just trading some hunts with them and they come hunted with us and learn so much from Grundy family up there. They just hold a special place in my heart. They taught me so much about guiding hunters and outfitting and just such good people and, and, and, and, and and and then their concession up there. It’s so wild and beautiful. You don’t see no other airplanes other than your own. And it’s just so nice to be surrounded by good people in wild country and, and wild game in its natural environment without anybody else bothering you. And just seeing new species, you know, like doll sheep and caribou and moose and grizzlies and wolves and stuff like that. It’s always intriguing to somebody who loves to hunt. And so that places just always will have a special place in my heart and I just love it up there for all those different aspects.
01:02:26:29 –> 01:02:30:20
You going back north, either yourself or any of your family here this summer?
01:02:31:20 –> 01:02:42:18
Well, no, nothing. I can go up there if I make time. I haven’t scheduled anything yet, but don’t have anything in the works right now.
01:02:43:07 –> 01:02:47:18
What’s, what’s on your bucket list? What have you, what do you aspire to do that you haven’t done yet?
01:02:48:25 –> 01:03:03:01
One thing is I’ve killed seven leopards myself and lots of others with clients, but I’ve never afforded to be able to pay for leopard to come home myself. So I gotta do the money to do that one of these days. And
01:03:04:10 –> 01:03:07:02
What’s that require, Josh? What’s it re what’s it take?
01:03:07:08 –> 01:03:11:24
Oh, it just takes lots of money, you know, just takes money. Like
01:03:12:02 –> 01:03:12:13
How much?
01:03:14:09 –> 01:03:19:28
Oh well that site permit alone usually runs you around 13 k, you know? Yeah,
01:03:20:02 –> 01:03:21:08
Yeah. Ridiculous.
01:03:21:24 –> 01:03:22:02
A piece
01:03:22:02 –> 01:03:37:23
Of paper. I always love to go up there and see it, get the pi pictures and experiences and do all that, but bringing the animal home is lower on the list, but someday need to get me one mounted in the house would be awful. Nice. Yeah.
01:03:39:14 –> 01:04:03:29
Well we’ve talked a lot about the dogs and the bears, lions, leopards, all that kind of stuff. Of course the baboons. It’s always fun to visit with you about those things. But tell us, I know you, you do a lot of deer and elk hunters, like, let’s just talk about your program real quick. And I know you’ve killed some great bulls, some giants actually, you know, even 400 plus at times. But tell us a little bit about that, your elk and deer operation.
01:04:05:03 –> 01:04:58:26
Well, we just family homesteaded this country back in the 18 hundreds. I got big cattle ranch and, and at least the neighboring ranchers ranches that I grew up with around me. And, and we bring clients in to hunt the deer and elk and bear mountain lions on our ranches. And it’s nice for ’em not to be bothered by the general public and the competition that goes with all that. And, and they come up and we, you know, they might kill an elk in a day or two and or a deer in a day or two and I load ’em up and haul ’em with me to go catch a bear or mountain lion. We just hunt like crazy every day and try to keep their o eyeballs peeled wide open and make sure they go home telling all their buddies about what just happened to ’em. Try to get more of ’em out here.
01:04:59:19 –> 01:05:15:12
You guys are the, the deer and elk stuff based up there in northeast Utah, and you guys have guaranteed tags as well. You can take draw hunters obviously that get lucky and draw some of the limited entry units that you guide in up there, but you do have landowner tags for both deer and elk, right?
01:05:16:01 –> 01:05:31:09
Yeah, that’s where we take them. We, I’ll get one or two hunters that draw out every year, but most everything is just off the landowner vouchers that we get on the, on our ranch or the ranches they lease around there. And you’re,
01:05:31:09 –> 01:05:37:15
You’re killing like, you know, three 30 to 360 plus bulls generally, or even maybe a little bit better.
01:05:38:08 –> 01:05:58:03
Yeah, the last couple of years we’re killing a lot of three 50 plus bulls and a few, three 70 plus bulls and you know, we, oh, you know, we don’t ever wanna pull the trigger anything other than three, anything lower than like a three 20, you know, but that’s a great big five point or something. But
01:05:58:14 –> 01:06:01:04
How big is that country? I mean, how many acres are we talking
01:06:02:04 –> 01:06:09:10
Oh, I, I’m leasing what we own around, around the 60,000 market deed acres.
01:06:09:27 –> 01:06:10:29
Geez. A lot of country.
01:06:12:06 –> 01:06:16:01
And then what about the deer? I mean, we gotta talk about them.
01:06:16:18 –> 01:06:18:08
It’s got a few big bucks up there.
01:06:19:04 –> 01:06:28:23
Well, well, you know, it’s the type of deal you drive around and see 34 point bucks every time you go out and look for ’em. You know what I mean? Stand around like you
01:06:28:26 –> 01:06:30:05
No, no, we don’t, we don’t know what you mean.
01:06:31:10 –> 01:06:31:17
Okay.
01:06:32:06 –> 01:06:33:17
That’s that’s a lot Josh.
01:06:34:13 –> 01:06:48:21
It, I mean it, you, you, you know, we, we try not to kill ’em unless we think they’re 180 or better or five and a half year old or older and we’re killing the odd one or two, 200 inch growth type deer a year, you know. Well
01:06:48:21 –> 01:07:06:05
Tell us just, you know, as we’re starting to wrap this up, just like you’re hunting for a living, you’re hunting 250 plus days a year, at least that’s what your wife’s telling us. How many lion hunters are you taking? How many bear hunters, how many deer, how many elk? How many, how many hunters you’re operation going through each year?
01:07:06:26 –> 01:07:21:16
Oh, around 25 Cougar hunter. I’ve killed 24 cougar since November around 60 cow hunters around 22 bull elk hunters around 14 buck hunters. Yeah. Type of deal.
01:07:21:16 –> 01:07:22:27
That’s awesome. Few bear hunters,
01:07:23:29 –> 01:07:33:20
Few bear hunters, a few hunters in Africa, a few hunters in Northwest territories. Mostly just word of mouth and talking with people that come in. Yeah.
01:07:34:27 –> 01:07:44:21
Well that’s awesome. Well anything else you wanna leave us with? Anything we don’t know about Lions that a guy might find interesting or bears or leopards or anything? Cool? Oh,
01:07:44:25 –> 01:07:49:13
I think we did pretty good. It sure was good talking to you guys. I feel like a big shot now.
01:07:50:06 –> 01:07:52:03
You are Josh. You are, you’ve
01:07:52:03 –> 01:07:52:22
Always been that
01:07:53:25 –> 01:08:06:09
You’re legendary. I appreciate you Josh. I know we spent some time with you up there hunting course, brought Under Armour out and Brian Offit. What a good dude. And we had a great time with you. Something
01:08:06:09 –> 01:08:09:26
You’ll never forget. That’s what it’s all about. Yeah. Making them memories.
01:08:10:06 –> 01:08:18:26
That’s right. And I’m sure you’re getting antsy. You’re probably watching your g p s watching your dogs go off chasing rabbits and squirrels and stuff and probably ready to get back after ’em.
01:08:19:26 –> 01:08:23:25
Yeah, that’ll be good. Guys, I, I sure appreciate you calling and You
01:08:23:27 –> 01:08:31:17
Bet. Good to visit with you and have fun and the heat trying to catch something there. And save, save some cheap, tell the archery season starts.
01:08:32:12 –> 01:08:32:20
Yeah.
01:08:33:13 –> 01:08:49:24
Alright, Joshua, thanks a lot man. You’re awesome. You’re one of the, one of our close friends, of course, you know, a fellow hunter in the outfitting industry and really appreciate all you do for hunting and of course spending some time with Adam and I and, and the support you give Epic outdoors. Thanks a lot buddy. Awesome. Thanks
01:08:49:24 –> 01:08:50:02
Buddy.
01:08:50:16 –> 01:08:53:18
Appreciate you guys also. Thank, thank, thank you very much.
01:08:53:29 –> 01:08:54:19
All right. You bet.
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