Going hunting—Lula in the dog box.

For the most part, the dogs are transported to and in the woods in dog boxes placed in the backs of pickup trucks. For some reason, I got the sense that the older the truck was, the better. These things were beat up! Many were four-wheel-drive units. The boxes were of many different types; some wood, some metal or combinations thereof. They range from makeshift receptacles to elaborate designs. There usually are a roof and floor in the box and holes in the side for ventilation. The rear end always had a gate, of course, with some swinging, some sliding and some lifting to open. Doug ran the woods on a four-wheel all-terrain vehicle. He had taken the housing of the window air conditioning unit and fashioned a dog box out of it that he put on the back of his four-wheeler.

Water for the dogs is very important because a dehydrated dog cannot run. The water is conveyed on the trucks in several ways. Most just use old liquid containers such as bleach jugs and the like. I came to prefer apple juice jugs of a certain brand. Other folks would design systems using capped PVC piping, old coolers or other receptacles as reservoirs which were filled in the morning, and the water in most of these would be dispensed by a faucet connection. There were some ingenious watering systems out there.

There are several dog hunting styles. Some folks simply go to a site likely to have a deer in it and 'cast' the dogs or let them loose, free to roam wherever they choose. Others will use a handler to walk the dogs through a section of woods or 'piece' as they call it. The last style is to ride the roads early in the morning before daylight to pinpoint a track where a deer has crossed. The track is then cleverly disguised in some manner such as scuffing it out or running over it. The location is then marked with some innocuous sign such as a cigarette pack, a piece of tissue paper or old soda can. This is done as a precaution lest some other hunter find the track and put his or her dogs on it.

Most hunters, including Doug, used a combination of styles. Early in the day he would use the find-and-hide-the-track gambit. In this, a track would be found and marked and the dogs would be brought to the location. One or two of the hunters stay at this site to cast the dogs while the remaining hunters take up positions on known deer crossings along the many woods roads that crisscross the hunting area. This position is called a 'stand' and the hunters stake out these sites where the deer may head when flushed from their cover or 'jumped' as they say. If the dogs strike the trail and jump the deer, which is called a 'race' in dog hunter lingo, the animal will endeavor to lose the dogs and the chase or race is on. The direction of the race is determined by the deer but can be followed by the sounds of the dogs. Eventually, the deer makes its way out of the woods and may or may not be seen, and usually most races do not end with a bagged deer.

The hunters usually keep in contact via Citizen Band (CB) radio but do rely on the barking of the dogs to give them direction also. If a deer gets by the 'standers' and travels from the first piece to a second, chaos sometimes reigns. The race is then not only between the dogs and the deer but between the hunters as they try to get in front of the deer at the next crossing. Trucks speed in every direction, sand spews from tires and parts may fly off as each hunter heads for the next crossing the deer might use. This is where the trucks get beat up the most as excited hunters barrel down small winding woods roads seeking to head off the deer. Trees seem to jump right out in front of you during this time of disorder.

Often the deer will head toward a known place of refuge. Over the years they have learned of areas where the hunters do not let the dogs follow. This may be a restricted no-hunting area, a vast inaccessible area or an area where there are paved roads. Paved roads and the cars that use them are the bane of dog hunters because the dogs are not aware of vehicles and the injury they can inflict. Most have never been near a traveled way. Many hunting dogs are struck and killed when chasing deer across a highway or while trying to find where the deer they were chasing crossed.

In one of the areas where I now hunt the government has a bombing range. This is one of the sanctuaries the deer head to. Hunters don't follow, and they try to catch up their dogs to prevent them from entering as the dogs may stay in that area for hours. Also, the live unexploded ordnance warning signs circling the area aren't there for nothing!

Later, after the early morning chases—which may last minutes but can stretch into hours—are done and when the tracks are few and far between, many use the handler method. This is where a handler walks the pack through the woods giving them some direction. As the handler walks, he shouts encouragement to the dogs. The trek continues through the woods with the dogs searching about and the handler hoping that the dogs will strike a deer track or jump a deer. When one dog does this it starts barking, calling the other dogs over, and the chase begins. The standers are already in position and chaos again ensues. It was while I was accompanying one of Doug's friends as a handler that I first heard and took up adding the 'belle' to Lula's name. Jim called her Lulabelle.

After the chase is over, the dogs may or may not want to be caught. When caught, the dog is usually unceremoniously dragged to the back of the truck by its collar and yanked up into the dog box by this same handle. They are not treated delicately. This may explain why many do not want to be caught. Others, like Lulabelle, just loved the chase and would do anything to escape capture and stay in the woods. On several occasions Lula would escape and follow a deer into one of the refuge areas and be gone for periods up to several days. We would drive the perimeter and often hear her barking away as she chased the deer for hours on end. Other times she would just go quiet as she looked for another track and we would have no clue where she was. Eventually, we would give up trying to find her or coax her out and go back to camp where we (or at least I) could do nothing but worry and fret over her absence. Inevitably, she would stagger back to camp worn to a frazzle, hungry and tired. She would sleep for days following one of these deer-chasing binges.

Continued—»