"Home of REAL Treedogs"

Hello to all the faithful readers of FULL CRY magazine and my column Out and About. As you read this article the Cur and Feist Spring Round up will have already been held and we can set our sights on the World Hunt in October. This year brings a lot of excitement as there are to be several quality hunts held across this great nation. I look forward to getting out there and meeting new folks and making new friends as the 2005 squirrel season approaches us. Hopefully our nut crop here in Indiana will be better than the one last year and the squirrels will once again be as plentiful as they were years past.

I will start out this month's column talking about the fun and fellowship that I had at the Elnora hunt club during the "Spring Round-Up" squirrel hunt held back in March. We assembled the regular crew once again and convened in a pleasant setting behind the clubhouse as we do every year. I was joined at my campsite by Jacob and Justin Jump, Melvin Westerman, and just too many other folks that either stopped in are strolled by once they had smelled the wild game cooking. We had squirrel, rabbit, turkey fries, catfish, potato wedges; you know the stuff all campsites should have on the fire! We had a great time, talking with folks I see there every year and meeting a few new people as well. Personally I had a great hunt and drew some real nice dogs. I was fortunate enough to end up with a nice enough score in the first hunt that I re-drew for the final cast elimination. My dog and I ended up with third place which I think is very respectable for a hunt of this magnitude. So I left happy, the third place win was just a bonus to time well spent. I talked with Amy Thomas while there at Elnora; she asked if I could possibly help with a Treeing Cur yearbook. I told her that I would be glad to help her, so hopefully all of you that are in the National Treeing Cur Association will have a yearbook to reference soon. Amy has worked hard to up the membership numbers this year for the NTCA and I believe it is now well over one hundred members thanks to her efforts.

I had some visitors stop by the house the other day. I was happy to see my good friend Don Cottingham and Bill Ryan pull into my driveway. They stopped by to talk dogs and to see what I have been up to. Bill Ryan says that he enjoys reading my column monthly in FULL CRY. We sat and talked for an hour or so, about dogs and hunting. Bill informed me that his grandson Kyle Ryan had been doing quite a bit of hunting and that he had a good young cur that was coming on nicely. Kyle is a teenager that is consumed with hunting of any kind. I must say he comes by it honestly, his dad (Bill Ryan Jr) is an avid outdoorsman and his Grandfather never passes up the opportunity to spend time in the woods. Bill and Kyle had an excellent Treeing Cur they called Buster. He was truly as nice a dog as most will every come by. He was not flashy but he would get gone and get treed and have the meat. Buster died way before his prime due to some complications. But Bill and Kyle are doing their best to try and make another "Buster". Best of luck to you guys and if Kyle puts the energy in the dogs that he does chasing the girls you will have a soon to be world champion cur dog on your hands (ha-ha). Don Cottingham informed me that the squirrel hunting in Kentucky was rough this year. The same woods that he seen squirrels in 2003 seemed to be less populated in 2004. He believes that most of these squirrels migrated to better woods holding better mast. Or he feels that they may have migrated closer to corn or bean fields. We had a conversation about how more squirrels fell pray to Hawks and predators due to the fact they were leaving the confines of the woods and traveling farther out into the corn fields leaving their selves out in the open to feed. On my way home not long ago I noticed a cat in a yard under a bird feeder with a squirrel in its mouth. The squirrels in our area are being pushed to feeders and frequenting places they would not normally have to due to the lack of a good nut crop last year. I know I did my best to fill my feeders throughout the woods behind my house last season, some feeders I was replenishing two and three times a week.

I also had a visit from Melvin Westerman it was unfortunate to hear that his Father had passed away. My prayers go out to Melvin and his family in their time of mourning. Despite the unfortunate news Melvin's sprits were ok and he told me that his Blue Creek B.B. pups were looking good at three weeks old. He told me that several had already been booked and he felt that they were sure to be some good ones. Rodney Stratton called and also gave me an update on the Jake/ Kung-Fu pups. He said they are all very active and are looking good and healthy. I am pretty excited about these pups because I have one female booked myself!

I hope last months article went over well with the question and answer type interview with Mr. Claude Thomas I have not got any feedback on the concept yet so I guess no news is good news and I will continue to interview someone in this sport each and every month here in this column. I will however have to postpone the interview in this months column due to my career change this month has been real hectic and I am barely making the deadline to turn this month's column into FULL CRY. Besides I would like to finish up the interview with Claude Thomas, he did make it to the Spring Round-Up despite having back surgery a few days before. But unfortunately I did not get to speak with him.

I got a nice letter from Mathew Peterson of Grayling Michigan. Matt has a young dog that is a Cur/Feist cross that is doing real well for him. He invited me up to Michigan for some squirrel hunting. He also told me that he enjoyed reading Out and About. Thanks for the kind words Matt, and I may be in touch soon, I have always wanted a chance to hunt black squirrels.

Well, I am sorry the column is kind of short this month, but I will hopefully have things back to normal by the next issue. I would like to say before I close, I bought a dog a few months back, I did not see him in the woods first, I took the guys word for what the dog was supposed to be. Don't ever make the same mistake….

Until Next time, KEEP LOOKIN UP!

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