Silence of the Hounds
By Jason Haley
The ground was wet with patchy snow and steep. We were hustling to stay within earshot of the dogs, without electronics. I kept falling and getting up, careful to keep my rifle clean. I was filthy and soaked with sweat. During the pre-dawn drive, the men coached me on what to expect and I’d been raised around it. Still, my dad, Wayne had to encourage me to “stay up with ‘em!” during the chase.
I already had a houndman’s stride but was still a pre-growth-spurt 7th-grader with little experience. Part of me was wondering if the chase would ever end. The other part would never quit around this bunch. This was my hunt.
The hounds sounded distant at times. When we arrived, my two-and-a-half-year-old bear was WAY up a large-diameter tree with nothing but ears showing. Our crew tied the dogs back as I got my breath and dad talked me through the shot. Mom’s cut-down, Remington Mohawk .243 did the rest. It was chaotic. What an adventure! Routine for the men who lived and loved it, but epic for me. I couldn’t wait to flex back at school.
This was western Siskiyou County, California. The hounds belonged to Paul Black. Paul was related to the famous child actress, Shirley Temple Black and married to one of grandpa’s sisters. The crew included dad’s Uncle Waldo Haley, a buddy of Danny Peterson’s named Rocky Bland, and another man I don’t recall.
We skinned the bear on the spot, packed him out and took a Polaroid. Paul’s pack treed a bobcat earlier that morning, but it was too high to get a shot. We pulled-off. We examined several large, older bear tracks and decided not to “put-in” after them. The small, but fresh, track in the snow was my choice, but I was all-in by then. Danny was dabbling in taxidermy and made me a rug with black and red felt trim. Danny’s dad and brothers had an ultra-talented, traveling fast-pitch softball team, “Peterson’s Logging.” I remember watching them hit screaming lasers out of the park in the old days. One brother played pro baseball and may not have been their best player.
I turned 52 in July and don’t see or hear hounds anymore. I could have never imagined where we’re at now.
My grandpa, Raymond Haley was a houndsman most of his life, hunting in Northern California and Southern Oregon, but also Nevada and Utah, before retiring in the 80s to cowboy. There was hound talk whenever we got together, but especially Christmas Eve. The names Boomer, Sut, Troubles, Nuisance, Kate, and Lady still come to mind. Queen, Lead, Smokey, and Rusty were some other names, although some were friends’ dogs.
Uncle Harvey, Great Uncle Art Reed, dad, and gramps would brag about this dog or that one or run-down another for being “trashy” while discussing the young dogs and their respective tendencies. Ray’s “pen” was in the backyard against Burney Creek. I’ll bet the neighbors loved the inevitable bawling, but gramps was first on the street before the neighborhood built out. He was also likeable, comical, and generous to a fault, but somewhat fierce if you crossed him. Nobody dared complain.
I remember the garage, full of homemade hide stretchers, wooden skis and snowshoes and snowmobiles, one of which had a bobcat seat cover. Grandma’s (Wanda Reed) ride was purple. They were married 72 years. Ray spent winters in Lassen County working the fur sales and bounty system in between logging and truck driving duties. Later, he drove for grandma’s successful Haley Trucking operation in Redding.
California voters passed Proposition 117 in 1990, banning lion hunting, with or without dogs, and reclassifying them as protected. Ballot-box laws became too easy as a means for special interests to circumvent the legislature and biologists. What a far cry from the Fabulous 50s when Siskiyou County paid Ray $50 for a “Panther Bounty.”
This period and the years following corresponded with the “golden age” of deer hunting, in California, which I was able to observe the tail end of in the 80s and early 90s, before the full effects kicked in. Many of these hunts were with gramps. As a young County planner and environmental consultant, I debated bosses and mentors about the steep decline in deer numbers and tags, blaming everything on habitat loss, mainly winter range development. They, like many of my friends who made their living in the woods, blamed predators. They were right. I was wrong. Now we add introduced wolves to the equation.
I personally observed a bachelor group of 23 mature velvet bucks on their summer range and routinely stalked groups of 10 or 12 with my bow as a teenager. As a kid, dad would sit on Main Street bridge (Highway 299) and watch parades of pickups travel town with their head-and-horns proudly displayed in the backs. During his hunting prime, he and his hunting buds would fill Dave Greer’s McColl’s Dairy refrigerator trailer with amazing bucks.
Fast-forward to 10 years ago: we made a scouting trip to Hat Creek rim, below Lassen National Park. After 30 miles of great habitat, we saw one fawn-less doe and one cougar. The cat hopped up on a large rock and looked at us as we drove by. Last weekend, I took Dad for another spin in Northeast California. We observed three fawn-less does in about 40 miles and literally zero deer tracks. I guided him on archery elk and rifle antelope hunts last fall in places he used to operate an archery guide service in the 80s. We were amazed at the lack of deer. Even tracks are hard to find.
There’s an African proverb that says when an old man dies a library burns to the ground. Neuropathy has taken dad’s legs at 77 and those were undoubtedly his last hunts. But I need to keep dragging him out in the woods to jog his memory. I pointed out a giant yellow pine with a scorched bottom, revealing a cave at the base. He recalled a day “before or after work,” when he turned his dogs out on a fresh bear track and they “treed it in minutes.” The bear backed itself against a similar tree. He “rarely shot bears but decided to take this one.” I wondered how he got a clear shot. He said his dogs were “smart and stayed back. Easy shot.”
Grandpa only shared a couple hound stories with me. He would have shared more, but I never asked. When I knew him, he was a fat, jolly old man who liked to camp and play with his cows and horses, but he’d put a death grip on your hand if you shook it. At deer camp, he’d hunt some, but enjoyed hanging around drinking coffee and socializing just as much. He loved bringing his horses in case anyone needed help packing. But if you got him talking about hounds, he’d get animated. That was his thing. One year I took a bear with my rifle. We skinned it on the meat pole in deer camp and grandpa never left the spot. He got super happy and chatty.
I popped into his Churn Creek ranchette before his death in 2017. He wasn’t doing great in those days due to a fall from his roof while trying to fix the air conditioner. He may have lived forever if not for that. He was normally quiet then, but I asked him about a photo on the wall. Talk about a transformation.
He sat bolt upright and slid to the edge of his bed and held court, as he often did as a younger man. He took the 145-pound tom with a .22 revolver and a single hound named Lead. His flashlight batteries went out and his snowmobile broke down. Luckily, there was a full moon when he got to the juniper tree. He packed the lion over 20 miles to McArthur. The newspaper took a photo in the morning. The sportswriter’s account included tidbits about Lead, the fifth hound gramps tried on this big tom in three separate runs that winter, and the pile of dead deer the cat left behind on trails. He’d been after that cat for at least two years.
Another time, dad and I got him talking after I read a story in Outdoor Life about a Redtick female. Ray was hunting with our late friend, Wayne Harris of Burney, and maybe Kenny Wells. It was usually those guys. I had the privilege of deer hunting/camping with Wayne several times. Wayne’s best dog was Crook. Kenny Wells had Roe. Grandpa’s best tree dog was Boomer, a dark Blue Tick that caught every bobcat he started. Boomer would hunt with two other guys and six dogs and always be first to locate and start treeing. Boomer was in on dad’s Nevada cougar in 1975. Gramps also had Sut, and a great female named Lady that dad inherited.
Grandpa said they “treed a big bear, but it tore its claws off on the way down a big yellow pine and wouldn’t tree again. It just backed up to the tree and sat down. Sut ran up on it and got too close, so he (the bear) charged and jerked him up and wrapped both legs around the dog, like a hot dog, and started chewing on him.” It was summer and they “didn’t want to kill it, just run the younger dogs, but Wayne had to kill it with a .22 magnum pistol at 10 feet.” Wayne stayed with the bear and dogs and gramps “snatched-up Sut and took him back to the truck and sewed him up.” The dog lived, but never was the same.
Ray hunted with other characters, including Page Montgomery of Burney and later Alturas. He said they bayed a big bear and it “made a run at ‘em.” Page ran for a small pine and climbed it, but it bent-over and he was hanging 4-feet off the ground. It was hilarious hearing grandpa tell it. He took Carl Switzer, the child actor of Little Rascals fame who also appeared in the 1946 Christmas film It’s a Wonderful Life. Much is written about that man’s involvement with hounds and his unfortunate death.
Dad added that he “skipped school in the 5th grade to kill a bear with Harris and Wells. They told me not to tell anybody, but of course I did. Harris still ribs me about it,” dad said. We laughed. I did the same thing in 7th grade.
Now hunting, farming and anything traditional is under siege, but particularly hounds. Even mainstream hunting/conservation organizations won’t go to bat for the hound guys like they should. Just like that, new cultures and lifestyles are acceptable and traditional ones are not. Good is bad and bad is good. Creation is worshiped instead of the Creator.
The former rodeo grounds (turned softball park) I grew up with went slow-pitch, then co-ed, then unkept dry grass. They want to make the place where the Petersons launched majestic homers into a city-style “dog park” now, where a pup can’t do what it’s bred for, but it can navigate an obstacle course.
In 2013, California joined other states in banning bear hunting with dogs. Many of our friends moved to Idaho or Montana, including Danny who had trouble running hounds because of wolves.
Suddenly, there are oodles of bears. Every elk wallow was crawling with them last fall. They visit every 15 minutes. Nearly every dusty road is covered in tracks. Burney has bears walking town. That was never the case. Trail cams capture packs of lions on them like the Serengeti. Traditional wisdom says cats are solitary hunters. Of course, we didn’t have trail cams then.
Taxpayers remove problem cougars instead of letting hunters pay for tags. There was a “celebration of life” for an old cougar that lived in LA’s Griffith Park where my mom rode horses as a girl. Turnout was large and the comments on social media were beyond description. It’s not just the hounds that are silenced now. It’s the people, too. Science and the North American Model of Conservation, the best the world has ever known, is ignored.
Luckily, legends never really die. They only get bigger through oral tradition and the pages of outdoor magazines like this one. My dad and gramps weren’t the first or the last of the dogmen. Others followed and are promoting and protecting our outdoor heritage from coast to coast. The goal isn’t just to prevent future losses, it’s to get back what’s been taken and break the silence. I can almost hear it now.