Garmin's outings: Development of a young hunting dachshund

I know, I know, just when you expected a report from another blood tracking adventure we have something different here, this time from Teddy Moritz. It is an article about how she goes about developing a young hunting dachshund Garmin and how she adjusts her training methods according to the young dog's temperament. Well worth reading as it has broad applications.

On the other note, a big THANK YOU for all the submissions for the blog. We really appreciate them. This is a very busy time of the year, and our hands are full. We will be posting as quickly as we can, but sometimes there will be a delay, and sometimes there will be 2-3 articles/reports posted on the same day. Above all we want the blog to be educational and interesting, so we always welcome reports that allow all of us to learn something new. Also because of the time constraints, the less editing I have to do, the faster the post will appear on the blog. If I have to pull info from various sources, like Facebook and several e-mails, that usually takes more time.

Garmin's Outings by Teddy Moritz

Garmin is a two year old miniature longhaired dachshund, about eight pounds with a 13 inch chest. She runs rabbits for me in the winter, and trees squirrels as well. She's a pretty good hole dog but lacks a certain amount of confidence, which I believe is an inherited trait. I know her sire and dam, and both are dogs who are happier when told what to do rather than think independently. Those traits are not a bad thing, all around, making the dogs very voice-controlled and obedient but also less likely to be the ones out and about finding game. Despite raising Garmin from about 9 weeks, she shows her sire's "please give me instructions" attitude. Not always, but enough that I have started taking her out alone, even leaving the lurcher home. If he's along she'll look to him for game. She does hunt out and knows where to find game but isn't quite the A-team.

In hunting her by herself I have seen an improvement in her earthwork. She's fine on rabbits, she just needed some confidence doing earthwork on harder quarry. Last spring she did confront and bolt a vixen in a natal den, taking a bite and coming out looking surprised. She went back in and moved the fox till it bolted. Garmin is by no means a hard dog but she'll stay with her quarry if it is in front of her. However, when I used her to dig groundhogs she would give up if the chuck back-filled  a lot before I could dig to her. With this hot dry summer the ground was very hard and I sometimes just couldn't get there.

Recently Garmin and her kennel mate Bane got into a quarry under a pile of very long, thick telephone poles. Bane moved it more than Garmin even though there seemed to be several tunnel openings. I heard Bane growl Garmin off a few times, which did nothing for her confidence. Finally Bane cornered the quarry under a buried telephone pole, which was weighted down by several more poles. I wasn't able to dig to the quarry nor was I able to bar the poles off the area. The quarry was apparently in the back of a slightly wider portion of the den so the two dogs could work side by side. From the growling I knew we had a possum. It had been awhile since the dogs had seen any earth quarry so I let them work  it. It was good to hear the dogs in a confrontation. The lurcher was with us and he lay nearby waiting for some action.

After awhile I cleared the dusty, sandy soil away from the entrance and could see Bane working the possum. I could hear Garmin but didn't know quite where she was in the den. That precluded any thoughts of shooting Ol Smiley, which I really didn't want to do. It wasn't doing any harm to crops where it was and I don't like killing something I can't use for meat for the dogs. I cut through some roots and then ran my trowel next to Bane. When I touched the possum both dogs grabbed hold and began pulling. I think Garmin was pulling against Bane so not much happened except the possum kept growling. Eventually I could see the possum's foot and helped Bane pull it. By then it had 'sulled' and there was no fight or growling. When I slowly pulled the possum out Garmin was attached to it as well. I think this work was good for her as I let her work and Bane didn't keep her away. Sometimes if Garmin doesn't stick with her quarry I'll pull her out and let Bane work it. That surely isn't good for her confidence but I am always anxious to get to the quarry.

Next time out Garmin bayed a groundhog I saw run in. This den is a difficult one because it is under a heavily trafficked farm road, basically compacted clay. The road drops off about ten feet to a railroad track. The ground under the clay is very light sand and there is one den opening at the bottom of the slope. The groundhog also had an entrance at the edge of the road. It was a tight opening because someone had shoved a big limb into the hole. Garmin squeezed her way past the wooden obstacle and began barking. I let her work because I've lost chucks in this den before. Her barking moved to the middle of the road but at two feet. I thought I ought to be able to dig that much. I started to dig and bar met very, very hard clay. Meanwhile my noise moved the groundhog a few feet further along, and Garmin's bark and the locator collar indicated her whereabouts under ground. Then she shifted to the bottom den opening and I alerted the lurcher, who was resting in the shade of the car, the day being very sunny and hot. He went down to the hole, sniffed and came back up. I heard Garmin bark near the hole but then her barking receded back up the slope. No bolt today.

I found her again and pounded and dug and pounded and dug, feeling as if I was making no progress at all. Very frustrating. Garmin came out once or twice, coated in yellow sand. She would sniff the hole down the slope then re-enter the top hole. I got the feeling the groundhog was walling her off or going deep, burying itself in the sand. After awhile I took a break to get some water and Garmin came out again. I let her wander around and gave her water also. The she went down the slope. I waited awhile and didn't hear her bark so I got out the locator. I couldn't get a signal so  presumed the groundhog had indeed gone quite deep, off the box. I turned the box to search mode and still couldn't find the dog. I looked along the rest of the slope thinking perhaps the chuck had bolted and she was in a different hole. I walked along the edge of the roadway and used the locator but got no signal. Had the battery gone dead in the collar?

Suddenly I heard a yip from across the railroad tracks, in a thick bit of brush, trees and briars. I saw Garmin come out, her tail wagging and her nose down. She trailed back into the briars, gave some more yips. I knew then she'd given up on the woodchuck and was running a rabbit. At first I was disappointed but since the digging was so difficult and I was making no progress, I had to laugh. Garmin knew we weren't going to get the varmint and since she likes to run rabbits she left me to my worthless efforts and went and found herself some quarry that ran and left a nice track. I let her run for awhile as hawking season is approaching and she needs practice on cottontails.

On another day I took Garmin to a big woodlot bordered by peach orchards on one side and a river on the other. Squirrel season is open and I know Garmin will tree the bushytails. The leaves are still thick on the trees so seeing a treed squirrel isn't easy. Basically I just wanted to again work Garmin alone. She did a good job of hunting out through the trees and swamp and barked tree once but the tree was full of holes so no squirrel was on the outside. We even bumped a deer but Garmin is so soft I yelled at her and told her no and she came off the deer right  then. Running deer will just get a dog killed as the deer often go right to a road.

As we came out of the woods there appeared a three hole den right at the edge of the woods. Hello! Garmin indicated one hole and barked into it. Good enough. I called her off and walked her to the car. I drove back to the den and let her go in. She soon was barking and digging. I located her and the den seemed to curve right back to one of the openings. I quickly shoveled it full of sand since I only had the shotgun and not the lurcher. If the chuck had bolted it would have been gone to another den. I dug to Garmin after I cut away greenbriar and shrubs. There were lots of roots to cut away as I dug into the soft sand. Garmin kept going each time I opened to her and each time I cleaned away the roots. The last time she moved up I heard a lot of growling from the quarry. I thought I was digging to another possum. However, Garmin kept moving sand back, as if something was backfilling. After one time I opened to her there was a wall of sand and roots ahead of her. She came out and wandered off, as if she felt she had lost the quarry. I let her go and waited. When she came back I encouraged her to re-enter and she did. I had cleared the den while she was off thinking and she smelled her quarry and began digging and barking again. It was as if she decided she could do this with my help.

The den went a big deeper, running under one of the exits so I had more digging to do just to get to the the den. I barred and found it, then opened to it, cutting roots and using the post hole digger to clear the sand. I guess I got to the quarry because Garmin forced her way up the tunnel and really began barking. The growling continued. I decided to shoot the quarry rather than dig another hole. I put the .22 to use and the growling stopped. Garmin slid up the tunnel, barked a few times then began tugging. She pulled and yanked and bounced up and down in her efforts. I let her work, feeling she had earned this reward by staying with the quarry after all. I then saw the back toes of the critter and I took hold too. It was a big groundhog and it wasn't quite dead so Garmin and I pulled it slowly out and I administered some more lead. Then I let Garmin pull it all the way out. It was a very fat, heavily furred groundhog. I let Garmin chew on it a bit and of course took a hero shot with the camera. I was pleased that she stayed with the quarry after one mental setback. I think she will continued to stay at back-filled walls know that she better knows I will help her and that she can succeed.

Karl's first rabbit

Just a quick note. We got our first rabbit Saturday. Had no tracking calls so I took Karl to the park by my house. I was dressed in my brush gear and I really wanted to see if we could get some rabbits going. Karl and I were working the briars when a rabbit shot out and went into another thicket. Karl was working so I just watched. Soon Karl was on the track and went into the other thicket as well. He opened and I saw a rabbit shoot out across the stick trees with Karl a couple of seconds behind .I was listening to his voice when all of a sudden everything stopped. I thought he was working a check and I moved to get a better view. I saw Karl across the wood patch laying down. I thought the rabbit went in a hole .He wouldn't leave so I went to get him.I was very surprised when I saw Karl had caught the rabbit. I slipped the rabbit into my vest and took it home for dinner.

Darren Doran

 

 

Dachshund (teckel) puppies bred for blood tracking and hunting

Today I can really see that spring is just around the corner! It also means that it is time to start thinking about breeding. I have created two stand alone pages, which are listed in the right column of the blog. These pages will be updated on a regular basis.

First page gives info on our breeding plans for 2011: 
http://borntotracknews.blogspot.com/p/our-2011-breeding-plans-first-litter.html

The second page lists puppies bred out of hunting lines by other breeders:
http://borntotracknews.blogspot.com/p/upcoming-dachshund-puppies-out-of.html

Hopefully this info will help connect hunters with breeders of working dachshund puppies. I listed only the breeders who expect litters in the next few months.

Our 2010 puppies at the age of 9 days.

Jake, a Blue Lacy from Texas, recovers a wounded deer in Wisconsin

This e-mail was forwarded to me from Cheri Faust from Madison, WI. She received it from John Hepfler.

We talked last Thursday-you were on the road. Mack McGowen came over from Mnpls to track my buck. His lacy - Jake - found it!! He would have found it sooner but I told Mack it was going in the wrong direction - I watched the deer run east - Jake wanted to go North. Soooo, we searched going east for over 2 hours - nothing. Later, Mack decided to just give the dog his head to go wherever he wanted. No blood trail at all, anywhere, by the way. So, in 10 minutes, Jake found the deer. It had made a 90 degree turn - no blood at all, ever. If I had believed the dog, we would have found it in 10 minutes. My fault! Per the laser rangefinder it was 439 yards from my blind to where Jake and Mack found the buck.


Mack is a VERY patient, very professional young man. Obviously Jake is very competent. I would recommend them to anyone - and I will! You may pass this along to Mack - he is a credit to your organization. I did not have a camera, but Mack took cellphone pics - you may use them on your website if you want.

Again, Thanks!!

John Hepfler

P.S. It was a very nice, heavy racked 10 pointer! Actually, this was more exciting than the hunt itself!


I asked Mack for permission to post the e-mail on the blog and received his reply:

Thanks for the email, it's quite a treat hearing from you, your husband's book made a huge impact in the way I trained Jake!

This was Jake's second track of his second season, he's a 2 year old Blue Lacy, we tracked last year on my deer lease in Coleman County, Texas as well as attending a UBT training day hosted by Marlo Riley. He did really well, although he had to learn the hard way not to growl at Marlo! Tracking in Texas is a lot different than up here in Wisconsin!

There really was no visible blood, barely any under the deer where Jake found him. With hardly any wind to speak of, when Jake went hard north down the hill and John was absolutely positive the deer had headed up the ridge and through a stand of trees on the fence line, I brought Jake back up to the point of loss (Trust your dog!). I worked him all the way up the top of the ridge, hoping to pick up a blood trail along the fence line. He didn't show much interest in anything, except one crossing on the fence line down the hill from where John saw his buck cross. We started working that area, and Jake made two fence crossings and we wound up in the middle of a field with tall grass, he was checking scent on the tops of the grasses as we worked along, dipping his head to the trail. He checked himself twice when his trail crossed deer paths, both times I asked him, "Are you sure Jake, are you sure?" Both times he responded with a definite, "Yes!" which for Jake is a hard pull in the right direction. He went down to the corner of the pasture, through some nasty brush and back through the fence. The lead went slack and I could hear him growling to himself. When I peeked up over the fence and saw that big Wisconsin deer lying there I let out a whoop! Jake, the only Texas Blue Lacy in Wisconsin had just found the largest deer we've ever tracked, with no visible blood!

John was a real pleasure to track with, he was very patient with us and held back any doubts he had in Jake's ability. He very generously took me out for a beer, burger, filled my truck up with gas and with enough money to buy plenty of kibbles for my Tracking buddy! It's being able to help guys out like John that keep me coming back for more!

Huge congratulations to Jake and Mack!

Hawking with Teddy Moritz - hunt hard, kill swiftly, waste nothing, offer no apologies

In the United States dachshunds come in two sizes (minis and standards) and three coat varieties (smooth, wirehaired and longhaired). Teddy Moritz from Rockaway, NJ whose bumper sticker says "hunt hard, kill swiftly, waste nothing, offer no apologies" is a falconer, and she uses her pack of minis to hunt rabbits. More info on Teddy is given in the article published by Outdoor Life. Here are some recent pictures taken by Brian Bradley - thank you Teddy!

Harris Hawk 'Gripper' watching dachshunds work.

Gripper and rabbit dachshunds flushed.

Teddy with Tar and Fitz after some hard hunting.

Big Game Hunting with Dogs in Frontier Maryland and Pennsylvania

John Jeanneney © 1997, Full Cry

Speculation and debate about cur dogs and hounds of the American frontier has been going on for a long time. Sometimes new pieces of the complicated puzzle show up and add to our understanding of the big picture. Two autobiographies by hunters of the early 1800s describe dogs and how they were used on deer, elk and bear in the frontiers of western Maryland and north-central Pennsylvania. This style of hunting had little in common with modern bear hunting with hounds or with the hunting of deer with hounds as it continues in the south.

The man who tells us most is Meshach Browning (1781-1859) who was born on a small, poor farm in Frederick County, Maryland in the year that the American Revolution ended. Browning's father died shortly after his son's birth and by the time he was ten Meshach's mother took the boy over the mountains to western Maryland. Meshach stayed and hunted in this area for the rest of his life. Deer and bear were plentiful and mountain lions were still present.

Young Meshach spent several years on pioneer farms belonging to his uncle. Here he "hunted coons and wildcats and sold the fur which was in brisk demand." For this he used his dog Gunner, a jack of all trades dog who also hunted rabbits. Before he was 16 (B.25) he was on his own. By this time he also began to hunt deer accompanied by Gunner.

Browning hunted deer and bear with the dog in close, not ranging out. The dog was kept at a loose "heel", or if not so well-trained, was restrained by some sort of a cord. The hunter "still hunted" moving slowly through the timber looking for deer and watching his dog who would wind scent the deer and indicate its presence through body language but without barking. The dog acted as nose and ears for the hunter and could also follow the game after the shot. This hunting method is still used today in Scandinavia by moose hunters who use Norwegian Elkhounds and related breeds.

In reading Browning's narrative it is obvious that these needs to follow wounded deer were frequent. The flintlock rifles that were generally used on big game threw a .45 caliber ball. The quality of the powder available was also not the best. By modern standards the energy delivered would be considered marginal, and these flintlock hunters had difficulties if placement of the ball was not ideal. Under the circumstances putting a dog on the hot line of the wounded deer was a time-saver and often a game saver as well.

Meshach became best known as a bear hunter and at the end of his hunting career he estimated that he had killed 300 to 400 bears. It was an old bear hunter, Mr. John Caldwell of Wheeling, who introduced him to the use of dogs in bear hunting. Meshach obtained his first great bear dog, Watch, out of John Caldwell's stock. Watch was what Meshach wanted, a large, powerful dog up to the task of pulling down wounded deer and baying bears that would not tree.

Bears were more numerous and much less wary in those days than they are today. Sometimes Meshach hunted bears with his dog on their feeding grounds as he did deer. He would use a dog to locate denned bears, to roust them out, bay them and follow after the shot. He would also cold track bears on snow by sight, and after jumping them turn his dogs loose on the hot line.

Browning described his preferences for deer and bear dogs in some detail. From the start he wanted big dogs that were strong and fast like Watch. At the end of his career Meshach seemed to have a pretty clear idea of how to breed what would be useful to him. He worked with variations of the bulldog/greyhound cross. "Take a half-blooded pup," he advised, "a cross between the bulldog and the greyhound...." He did not stick to a rigid formula and "bulldog" and greyhound were generic terms for kinds of dogs less extreme in type than the breeds of today.

Clearly Meshach liked jaw power in his bloodlines. "I had lost my old hunting dog and had with me the slut from which I raised my good dogs...."When (the buck) found her so close, he turned to fight her off. Being partly of the bulldog breed, she seized him by the nose, and held on until she mashed his nose up to his eyes, and crushed both eyes entirely shut." Browning liked to work with variations of the bulldog greyhound cross, but he did not stick to a strict formula. "I have had some very fine dogs which were a cross between the bulldog, the greyhound, and the fox hound; but the only objection to them is that they are so noisy that you can never steal on the game, but keep it always on the look-out."

Meshach's preferred dog was fairly tight-mouthed and apparently more a windscenter than a specialist for old, cold ground scent.

"The extraordinary success which I had in bear-hunting requires some explanation which I will endeavor to give. I always kept two good dogs; one of which walked before me and the other behind. The one in front would wind the bear, and lead me up to him on that side on which he could not smell me, and I would come on him unexpectedly. If, by chance, he found us coming on him and ran, the dogs would overtake him before he would be out of sight. The moment I would see one run, I would send the dogs after him; and as I could run almost as fast as any bear could, when the fight began I was close up and a shot was certain death."

Sometimes we have to take a small grain of salt with Meshach's statements and realize that he was describing his ideal of dog work rather than what took place most of the time.

None of the adventures which he recounts in his book required much cold nose work by modern big game hound standards. Cold trailing ability would not have been very important in this style of hunting.

There is no basis for assuming that Meshach's dogs were ancestors of any modern cur breed although clearly they resembled curs much more than hounds. We have no sure way of knowing what they looked like. Engravings and etchings provided by Browning's editor Edward Stabler show dogs which have the outline of a rather rangy southern black mouth cur of the Ladner or Nolan strains. The plates from Meshach Browning's book do not prove how the dogs actually looked. Edward Stabler, the artist/editor who produced them, knew Meshach personally after his hunting days were over, but we can't be sure whether his illustrations in the book depict specific dogs or just showed generic big game dogs of the 1850's. An engraving identified as a "bear dog" looks like a modern pitbull.

What we do know is that Meshach's dogs acted like curs and were useful in the ways that a cur-dog is useful. They were used by Browning to wind game. They worked very close to him until a deer was encountered. There are hounds that will do this, but it is more typical of cur work. Browning's dogs also formed close associations with individuals and were more protective than is characteristic of hounds."I asked Mary if she would stay in the house by herself while I went out to shoot a deer for she had been a long time wishing for some fresh venison; and I told her that her brother wanted to go with me. She said yes, if I would leave Watch (her favorite dog), which would not suffer man or beast to touch her in a rough way; for, if I was playing with her, and she called Watch, he would jump at me, and would bite too, if I persisted."

We will never know if these dogs ever became part of the great gene pool from which modern curs derive. Meshach does describe what canine traits he found useful for his frontier hunting. These traits could be bred for when needed by combining certain types of dogs, as has been done with the deliberate greyhound collie crosses that produce "lurchers" for taking hares and rabbits in England.

Browning also took great pains to train his dogs to handle well:

"Take a half-blooded pup, a cross between the bull dog and the grey hound, FEED HIM WELL - FOR A STARVED PUPS WILL SURELY BE A THIEF, - and when he is able to follow you to the field, make him lie down at your feet and do not allow him to rise until he is told. When he gets a rod or two from you, either make him return, or wait till you come up with him, and then make him lie down again. In all cases where he does his duty caress him and he will soon learn to love his master; after which he will not be afraid and run away to avoid correction. Whip but lightly, until you have so trained the dog that you can depend on his obedience to your command to stop, or to return at your order. When you have taught him this, you may venture a little more severity, according to the offense; and when he is taken into the woods he must be first taught to trail his game; for if a deer is wounded he should trail it carefully, going but a step or two before his master, until the game is killed. When the master can see the deer which he has killed, he should let the pup go toward the carcass, and then call him back; then, advancing a little nearer, he should let him go to the deer a second time, and call him back again; then let the master accompany him to the deer and flatter him as much as possible. By this means, when he is sufficiently instructed, and is sent to catch a wounded deer, he will kill it, return to his master and guide him to the spot where it is lying. And he must never leave his master more than two or three steps, lest a deer bound off, and he run after it and be spoiled.

When in the woods, and your dog seems to desire to run after deer, pretend you see some, and take the gun in your hand as you would if you were creeping toward a deer; when if the dog misbehaves, you can chastise him. By treating a dog this way every time he becomes unruly, he may be entirely cured of his faults."

While Meshach Browning was thinning the deer and bear population in western Maryland another hunter Philip Tome (1782-1855) was hunting with his dogs along the same Appalachian ridges some 250 miles to the Northeast along the Pennsylvania-New York Boundary. By his own account, Tome's parents were of "German extraction." He was born a year after Meshach Browning near what is today Harrisburg and his family later migrated north up the west branch of the Susquehannah. Tome's methods of hunting big game with dogs were a little different from Browning's, but the techniques overlapped in some respects. In northern Pennsylvania Tome hunted deer and bear, but his specialty was elk which very uncommon down in Browning's country.

Tome credits John Mills, an old hunter who lived near his father for giving him his best instruction, although later Tome certainly expanded upon the art of his master. Before moving to Canada Mills sold his farm to Tome's father and then made another deal with the son. Meshach reported that he offered "to sell me his dog, and to teach me all he knew about hunting for fifteen dollars which I accepted. I had already hunted for several years, but his instructions were of greater value than all my previous experience."

Tome seemed to want a "houndier" dog than Browning:

"The best kind of dog for hunting deer is a large variety, half bloodhound, a quarter cur and the other quarter greyhound. I have had two dogs of this kind, for one of which I paid ten dollars and the other six. They were of more practical value than four small dogs would have been. When they were one in a chase on a deer they would not lose one in ten. So famous did they become for their prowess, that if any of the neighbors saw them running, they would exclaim, "there are Tome's dogs; the deer cannot be far off." The deer could never baffle them by any of their usual stratagems, and they often ran them down before they reached the water. Those wishing to hunt successfully should always procure at any cost, the largest and best dogs to be found."

The bloodhound genes in these cross-bred dogs should have produced strong aptitudes for working ground scent. When we compare Tome's hunting stories to those of Browning, we see that Tome places much less emphasis on wind scenting, and his runs on deer tend to be longer. Tome did not work his dogs in close as much as Meshach, but he definitely expected them to be obedient and handle well. "We owned three well-trained dogs. If we put them on a track they would not leave it for any other; they would come when called, and never go until we gave the word." They were hounds but they were very well-trained.

A posed, not very clear photograph of Tome which is in the collection of the Warren County Historical Society shows him with a rifle and dog. This dog seems to have more the features of a cur than a hound, but he may not have been typical of Tome's elk and deer dogs.

According to Tome:

"The most favorable time for hunting elk is in the month of August, when they herd together and the bucks are very fat. I have sometimes seen as many as sixty in one herd. At this season they utter a peculiar hollow roar, which can be heard at a great distance, and are constantly fighting with each other. The hunter approached them cautiously with dogs, and when near enough he let the dogs loose, and the elk, instead of running, would face the dogs. The hunter now crept nearer, and shot them, keeping himself concealed. They would gather around their fallen companions, making a great noise."

In the winter, snow cover made it practical to scout for elk tracks. He would follow these tracks for many miles before jumping the elk and releasing the dogs. In heavy snow the dogs had a good chance of running down and baying the elk.

It was Philip's father, Jacob Tome, who had created a sensation in January of 1800 by using dogs and ropes to capture a large bull elk and bring it out of the woods alive. In his own career Philip repeated the feat a number of times.

Tome hunted deer with dogs in a number of different ways. Especially in the fall when the deer were fat he cast his dogs like hounds; hunters were posted along the steams to ambush the deer as they picked their way along through the water and rocks in an effort to lose the dogs.

Tome also jacked deer at night from a canoe or at natural or man-made salt licks. Close to salt licks he would build a "scaffold" (this sounds like the German Hochsitz); when the deer came he would lower a burning torch to give himself shooting light. "I generally had a companion and a dog, and one of us remained at a distance with the dog, while the other watched from the scaffold. In the morning, if any were wounded, we set the dog on the track, if we could not track it by blood without difficulty."

Both Meshach Browning and Philip Tome hunted primarily for the market. Meshach estimated that he killed, in total, 1800 to 2000 deer. Philip Tome, as well as his brother, about whom we get little detail, took a lot of game. "My brother killed from twenty-five to thirty-five elk and twenty to twenty-five bears each year. I did not kill as many.... During one season, my brother killed of bears, elk and deer nearly two hundred.. The greatest number that I killed, in any one season, of the same kind of animals was about one hundred and thirty." Bear meat was the most valuable of all. "If we saw a bear track when we were in pursuit of elk, we would always leave the elk and follow the bear."

The methods of Browning and Tome would be illegal today in most of the country; there is also a real question of whether their methods would be as effective. Black bears were certainly much less wary in the early 1800's. Elk, in the habit of standing up to wolves, did not fare well when responding in the same way to dogs and hunters with rifles. There may well be some over-simplification or exaggeration in some of the accounts, but we do know that wild animals responded very differently before they came to know of humans with firearms.

Black bears then also tended to be more aggressive than the ones which survive in the East today; they were a real threat to livestock, especially free-ranging hogs. Browning saw the bear as a respected adversary, but he fought them no holds barred. Describing a rough bear fight, he wrote:

"When I saw him laid out at my feet, and thought how manfully he had fought in his own defence, and also how unfairly he had been taken, without the least notice at the onset, it destroyed all pleasure of the fight. But then it occurred to me that, if he had escaped at this time, he would perhaps have killed a dozen hogs for some of my friends; and that if he had received the least notice of the attack, he could not have been taken by all the dogs in the neighborhood."

Both Browning and Tome hunted deer as if they were harvesting apples for the market. They picked everything in sight, always confident that there would be more for the following year. They were hard men living in hard times, but they did not hunt for the love of killing. Tome wrote:

"I never want only killed an animal, when I could gain nothing by its destruction. From October to May their skins are good, and at this season I always killed all I could. With a true hunter it is not the destruction of life which affords the pleasures of the chase; it is the excitement attendant upon the very uncertainty of it which induces men even to leave luxurious homes and expose themselves to the hardships and perils of the wilderness."

For these two frontier hunters dogs were as much a part of big game hunting as their flintlock rifles. Dogs and men had much in common. They were equally driven and equally tough. They lived up to one another.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Browning, Meshach, Forty-Four Years of the Life of a Hunter Being Reminiscences of Meshach Browning, a Maryland Hunter, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1859. Reprint. Oakland, MD: Appalachian Background Inc., 1982.

Tome, Philip, Pioneer Life or, Thirty Years a Hunter, Harrisburg, PA: Aurand Press, 1854. Reprint. Salem, NH: Ayer Company Publishers, 1989.