Twisterless

This is Bell. She's got a voice on her, the Patsy Cline of hounds.

Twister has decided to go off and become a hermit refusing to hunt and grow is Amish beard until the Catholic Church agrees to stop practicing organized religion. Actually, no. Twister didn’t hunt with us because he was on call for his job, he went Bow Hunting Deer instead. I went over a night early and had the run of Twisted Palace since he laid up at his girl friends house.

As it was going, it looked like the usual gang was spread out and it would just be me and Mike. He had two dogs loaded, his best bitch, Princess and another, Glory. I had Squeaky, my new Blue Tic/Cur combo, Bell and Twister’s Sally. We made the simple plan of heading to Otto, raising who we could on the radio and rigging. As it turned out we ganged up with the usuals on Coweeta Creek. A couple of others and their dogs walked a road around the side of the mountain to strike a track. I rigged Squeaky up Coweeta Creek and up to Albert Mountain with Mike behind me. With the boy’s below and me and Mike above we were making a pincer movement. Squeaky barked, a few times but he was just excited. Before we got to the end of the road a track had been struck down below. We stopped and listened…We didn’t hear anything. On our way back down, Mike caught them on his tracker .I headed out into a gap to catch it as it came across. A Bear, Hog, Deer, any game spooked or being ran will about always make for a gap. I could hear two dogs. At one point it sounded like they were coming right at me, then back down the mountain. Once, directly below. It got quiet after a period, I had been listening to broken transmissions over the radio and it seemed the race was heading away from me. Then the two dogs were hollering again. The entire time it was real hard to get a baring on the two hounds I could hear. Two of the guys said the treeing switches were going off, the dogs tracking collar was sending a faster signal meaning the dog was looking up. One decided not to pack any more dogs on it for the Bear may break and make it across the road into the Standing Indian Bear Sanctuary, where it is illegal to kill one. I got a baring and headed out to the hounds. It’s a rough country there, steep as a goats face. It was not going to be an easy go. Then it got quiet. I’d stop and listen, then they’d howl again, I’d go. It was beginning to sound more and more like they had not treed one. I was having to make across a broken, moss and leaf covered rock when Mike came across the radio telling me to come out. Coming out I had to use my rifle as a climbing stick a couple of times. Then it was back down the mountain to catch up with the others.


I came across one of the fellars trying to find his dogs, the race had came apart, old track they figured. I got down to a fork in the road called Reynolds Gap where I got out to check a young buckskin Plott male. My truck wouldn’t crank, it was my battery, had juice but not enough to crank. I ended up taking my connections apart and cleaning them good with a Coke Zero that one of the boy’s had dropped off ( a lady hiker from Florida had offered to jump me off, but I didn’t have her wait for me to put my connection back together). Fortunately, Mike had a jump box because we had to use it all the way back to Franklin and for me to get back over to Transylvania. I dropped off the dogs and went into Wal March down in Buttholeville, where I ran into the other half of Transylvania County that I ain't seen in years.

Sadly other than Squeaky being rigged, none of my dogs, including Twister’s Sally, got out of the box other than for me to water them and let them do their business. I was really looking forward to seeing how they did, and, Squeaky was itching, you could see it in him. Fortunately, I may be getting Squeaky bred. One boy has a registered female Plott Hound that is coming into heat here soon.

While I was on top o the ridge waiting in the gap, both me and Mike caught radio transmissions out of Blue Valley, the other side of Macon County on the Atlantic side of the devide. We had hunted it last year, that’s where me and Twister had the one Bear break out on us. The same boy’s that killed it about 45 minutes later downed one at 475lbs opening day according to story. Here in Transylvania one estimated at 550lbs was taken. It broke a 450lbs scale. During the race it killed a dog and messed another up. It’s said to have had fat on it as thick as a man’s hand is long.
Someone got paid to do that...

Sunday I went tromping back into a place I Deer Hunt. I hardly seen any Deer sign along the old road, I didn't see any acorns. I did flush a Grouse. It's an open south facing ridge looking off across the French Broad Valley. I saw a hickory tree just as green as summer. Yesterday evening I was looking around the house. In back there are two hickory's bright yellow, in front there is one still green. No lie, I have looked in the back yard and seen ice hanging on the limbs bending them down up the mountain side, and not a bit of ice in the front yard down the hill. It's an amazing world we live in.

This post is about long enough, so I'll stop right here. You'l can comment now.
The Appalachainist