Month: September 2020

Have you ever wished that there was a system or an effective guideline that you could use that would raise your chances of selecting a pup that would mature under thirteen inches in height? I have. I have been fooled more than once by a pup that looked to be the small one in a litter, only to find out later that it grew a lot bigger than I expected.

One time I drove across several states to buy a pup from a well-known breeder. When I arrived and looked over the parents, they were both ‘borderline’, or right on the thirteen inch mark in height. So then I turned my attention to the litter itself. There were five pups in the litter and they varied quite a bit in size. First, there was a very large male pup — obviously going to be a big hound. He was big boned, and had big feet. These were both indications that he was destined to be large. Next, there were three females that were somewhat smaller and were all about the same size. I figured they would be the ‘borderline’ thirteen inch individuals like their parents. Finally, there was a beautiful little male — less than half the size of the big brother. “Well,” I said to myself, “This is easy. There’s no doubt that this little fellow will be a thirteen incher.” So I watched him a little while to see if he was what I wanted in other respects. …

The Johnny Stewart caller wailed away with the pitiful sounds of a young jackrabbit in distress. I had just settled into a cozy notch in front of a large boulder surrounded on both sides by sagebrush. The shaded boulder was on a hillside that overlooked a small, sunny valley and the surrounding sage-covered hills. Three to five minutes into our calling sequence, I saw a large male coyote, in his prime, top the hill in front of me as he came trotting down a fence line. The sun was glistening off his beautiful, silver tipped coat, and the snow accented him like a field of diamonds. He stopped to check the wind, which would be the last thing he would ever do as a 52-grain Speer HP smacked home. The bullet was powered by 27 grains of Winchester 748 powder and a Remington 7 ½ primer in Remington brass. Harvesting this dog coyote was the pinnacle of the hunt.

I was hunting in southern Idaho’s immense, rolling BLM land at the invitation of a friend – an up and coming varmint hunting guide named Joe May of Nampa, Idaho. This wasn’t the first time we have hunted together, as we had spent a memorable week chasing barren ground caribou in the immense open tundra of northern Alaska. On this hunt, the openness and view was awe inspiring compared to the brush-choked closeness of South Texas where I call home.

I’ve hunted coyotes for most of my life, but this trip …

Tow-the-Line Rusty lay under the old willow tree where Clem Badd Sr. had moved him earlier in the summer when the sun kept flooding the dog’s little corner of the world.  Rusty was a reddish color with darker patches of liver, and white tipped feet and tail, but you could never tell it now from laying around in this pool of dust all summer.  Rusty was itching to get back to wabbit huntin’, but he never let anyone know it.  He was from an old beagle line, distinguished, blue blood.  So when Jake came wheeling in to the yard Rusty would raise one eye … look across the red-dog of the drive and give that long basset-type sign.  Oh, he wanted to jump up and strain at the chain like one of his partners in crime Off –Line Louie but he maintained his calm exterior.

No one is quite sure where the Badd family came from.  They just showed up one day at the old, Murphy place and moved in … that was nearly 40 years ago.  Rumor had it that they came from some teeny town down in North Carolina, and that they had to leave town rather quickly.  It was also said that old Ray Murphy moved them in to help take care of the place, but even after years of living there little changed.  Murphy later died, and as the Badds began to keep the taxes paid on the place, the farm was one day put in …