Full Cry Column
January 2003

Clint Stubbe (Northern Working Airedale Terrier Association correspondent)

Happy New year everyone! It seems I just wrote these words and here it is again, another brand new year. I have been real busy this past while working and getting ready for winter. Consequently I haven't had a lot of time to get out with the dogs. I have been getting out with my 11 year old daughter trying to get her to take a deer but haven't had any success yet and it looks like we may not as the season is about over. The last kick at the can will be a late season deer hunt for whitetails in early December. This is a get together for our bow hunting club and usually draws about 30 or so hunters. It is a great hunt and I usually bring the dogs along for a cat chase if the weather is good. We have got a nice tom there in the past (photo enclosed) and I managed to spend a winter night in the bush another time when I was too late getting to the tree. Last winter I saw more wolf tracks than cat and didn't get a chase. I am always leery of cutting the dogs loose in wolf territory and with any luck they will have moved on. I have seen the odd wolf track in my area but they are few and far between and hopefully just passing through. What a beautiful fall we've had here with October setting records for cold and dry with November being almost as nice. Hopefully the snow will come soon and I can get out on some tracks. The photos this month are unrelated to the stories but I didn't receive any by mail or email so I am using what I have. Any and all submissions related to working\ hunting Airedales are welcomed for this column.

I received an email from a Mr. Pat Giles in Texas who has young Airedales and if you're in the market and in that area you might want to look him up. He wrote:

I used to use a full blood Airedale big male dog for a catch dog on hogs a friend of mine a very well known hog hunter in the East Texas area Mr. Robert McDonald owned. This was probably 10 years ago. When we turned him loose to catch a bad boar hog our dogs had bayed in about 3 to 4 feet of water he ran up to the creek bank looked one way down the creek bank then looked down the other bank decided to go down the right hand side of the bank about 40 yards slipped into the creek swam down the creek up behind the hog, swam right up beside the hog & grabbed the left ear and held on. Our cur dogs catch the other ear when this happens. I would not have a cur dog that won't help catch when the catch dog catches. I have seen bulldogs in this same situation jump head over heals on top of a bad hog & never think about it. I am not cutting down bulldogs I've seen some good ones but Airedales are smart & use their head when catching a hog. I'm sure some don't but most will if bred right. About 5 years ago I bred a 1/2 running walker- 1/2 Airedale over one of my good ring neck brood gyps. Some of the pups were grittier than the others only one came out with shaggy hair the rest were solid red & black & tan colored. I then bred one out of this litter back over my ring neck stud dog making 3/4 cur 1/8 running walker 1/8 Airedale, made some of the best hog woods dogs & bay pen dogs I ever saw. The Airedale was from the Tennessee River Kennels a female crossed together the male pup looked just like an Airedale. Dudey Allen & I crossed him over my ring neck brood gyp and started from there. These full blood hunting Airedales I have now are the first on my place & they are smart & I like what I see so far. They make good hunting dogs & family pets. I've never heard of one turning on a child or grown up. I like that but remember you have to breed good blooded dogs to start with that are proven stock to get good hunting dogs, at least that's my theory.
The pups I have are from sire jones quachita cherokee hobo - dam jodie ann ellis
Mom weighs about 60 to 70 lbs. dad weighs 70 to 80 lbs. My Airedales are now at 9 months old the biggest male weighs 60 lbs. smallest male weighs 40 lbs. I've got 1 female weighs about 50 lbs. mom is a good find dog but will catch. She is a real gritty dog and the sire is real gritty too. The pups I have at 9 months are all good. One of the males at 6 months old kept a hog bayed for 2 hours in this Texas heat and brother it gets hot in these Piney woods, briar patch thickets they have in a place here in East Texas called the Big Thicket. Yeah the hunting is tough down here especially in the middle of the summer it gets at least 103 degrees
I've been hunting with my dad Pat Giles SR. for about 45 years. He started me on running fox-wolf-deer with running walker & coon hunting with English & treeing walker dogs we used to feed nothing but cracklings, pure protein we cooked ourselves. Those running walkers could run a dry week on cracklings. Well I wanted to give you an idea of my hunting history but there are lots more exciting stories I can write, some real good ones about my hog hunting Thank You for your time & patience. Well Happy Hunting
.
Pat Giles. ph# 936-637-0634 email Gilespt1@aol.com

Thanks Pat and I hope to get some of those hog hunting stories in the future to print here.

In the October Working Airedale Terrier column Kevin printed a story of a man who was attacked by a cougar on Vancouver Island. Details were few at that time but the man injured in the attack subsequently gave an interview for the National Post newspaper in which he gave details of his life and death struggle with the cat. I will reprint it here.

VANCOUVER. David Parker's frustration over his slow recovery from a cougar attack is eased these days by satisfaction that he stabbed the 41-kilogram cat to death after it jumped him. "I would say I had a hate on for that cat," the retired mill worker says, recalling events in early August that riveted residents of a province that has seen eight fatal cougar attacks in the last century. Fifty-three were not fatal. "I was desperate to survive and determined to get that cat" In an exclusive interview with the National Post - his first comments to the media since the stunning attack - the 62-year-old man said he is angry "I focus it on the cat and on cougars in general, right now~" Mr. Parker said from his home in Port Alice, about 500 kilometres north of Victoria on Vancouver Island.
After being jumped while on an evening walk - and bitten so severely that one eye socket was wrenched loose - Mr. Parker used a pocket knife with a three-inch blade to kill the cat The father of two grown children spoke of fighting for his life with the howling cat, struggling to get an edge so he could end a torment that caused him the worst pain he has ever felt After he won, he left the cougar dead by the side of the road be-fore walking a kilometre to get help from a logging operation where a worker rushed him to hospital.
Mr. Parker is not a hunter. He says he was acting on instinct. "I wanted to kill. I wanted to do him some damage, at least, for what he had done to me."
Mr. Parker will be living with that damage for a while. He figures he faces at least two years of surgery "It could even go beyond that;' he says.
"I am frustrated at my lack of progress. The healing process is going to be along time."
At the time of the attack Mr. Parker's six-foot frame easily carried 170 pounds. He has since lost 25 pounds - "all muscle." A routine one-kilometre round-trip walk to the post office that used to be a snap now leaves him exhausted. He is too tired to continue his former passions of playing old-timers hockey and curling, suggesting he has turned into a "couch potato."
He lists his injuries. One of his ears was torn loose in the attack. His right eye socket was ripped loose along with the tear ducts and sinuses in both eyes. The cat took a small bit out of his skull, removing a layer of bone. His right-ear canal swelled shut. If it does not naturally correct itself, that will mean surgery Mr. Parker faces operations to realign his right eye, which is patched shut, and repair the eye-lid muscles of his left eye. Some plates of metal and screws in his face that he compares to a mechanno set" may be removed; some will remain.
"It's going to be a long haul;' he says.
Until Mr. Parker was attacked on Aug. 1, he said he had only seen a cougar once. That was in about 1981 when he, his wife and children saw a cougar run across a logging road near Port Alice.
Cougar sightings have recently become routine in the isolated forestry community of about
1,300 people. The last cougar attack before Mr. Parker's experience was in February, 2001. A mill worker used a lunch pail, bicycle and his fists to fight off a cat attacking another man.
Mr. Parker's nightmare began when he went out on a walk to work out leg cramps that developed while he was working on the roof of his house. During the walk, it started to rain. Mr. Parker took shelter under a rock outcropping by the side of a logging road . "That's when the cat managed to creep down beside me," recalls Mr. Parker. "He came up beside me. He came right along a ledge to my shoulder. I heard a very soft sound. It must have been it's pads touching down. I happened to glance over. And there he was a foot from my shoulder. Mr. Parker tried to flee. "It didn't work."
The cat jumped on his back What came next remains blurred, but Mr. Parker ended up in a ditch about a half-metre deep by the side of the road. The cat was on top' of him. The fall had broken his jaw, he believes. The cat bit the right side of his face, breaking loose his cheek bone.
The next thing Mr. Parker remembers was a feeling of pain as the cougar bit off his scalp, which flapped loose and dropped in front of his eyes. "That was quite some pain;' he said.
Then the cat took a bite out of Mr. Parker's skull.
Throughout, the cat was howling. "He was ferocious. He just kept coming at me:' Mr. Parker tried to go for his knife, which was in a pouch on his belt. Mr. Parker routinely carried the knife for protection from wildlife such as bears or "some mad 'dog or whatever" or to make himself a crutch if he got injured while on a walk. When he went for it, the cougar bit him in the face.
Mr. Parker knew he needed his 'knife. The cat "had all his weapons out, his fangs and everything wrapped into me. I thought I had better get some-thing going:' Mr. Parker said the pain was excruciating, especially when the cougar bit his face, loosening his eye socket.
"That was the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. You could also hear it. You could hear the muscles and sinew and whatever 'else snapping and popping as he bit in;' he said. "It was a horrific feeling:' Mr. Parker thought he was going to die. "[The cougar] thought he had a meal right there. I thought he was right after that first attack, because I didn't think I was going to survive. The cougar was on him, its paws on his shoulders. Mr. Parker reared back, and pushed with his feet pinning the cat on the road and creating friction as the unruly tangle of man and feline moved along the pavement. At one point, Mr. Parker had the cougar in a scissors-grip. He tried twisting its forearm. He got the cat in a half nelson wrestling hold, but it twisted free. Eventually, Mr. Parker gripped the cougar in a bear hug, figuring that was the only way to control it while he went for his knife. While hugging the cat, Mr. Parker withdrew the knife and unfolded it. He stabbed out, accidentally stabbing himself in his shoulder.

Finally Mr. Parker - his vision clouded by blood and dirt - thought he saw an opening at the cat's shoulder and neck. He slashed out, sticking his knife into the animal. He ripped down as far as he could. "I think I hit his jugular because he didn't last too long after that" Mr. Parker continued his embrace then let go. The cat went limp. "Some muscles twitched. I grabbed back on to the cat again. The muscles rippled through the whole body:' Mr. Parker got up. "I didn't feel too good;' he said.
He felt weak. So he lay down briefly. Then he got up. It was getting cold. He knew a logging operation was nearby. Before he left for the one-kilometre walk there, he threw his knife back at the cat.
He is not sure why.
When Mr. Parker reached the logging operation, a worker there rushed him to hospital. Eventually, Mr. Parker was flown, by air ambulance to Victoria. His first few days in intensive care were a blur due to drugs given him. He worried about losing his sight. "As I told my wife at the hospital, 'If I didn't at least have my eyes, I didn't care. They could pull the plug:" Eventually, he knew he would be ok. "Everyone was telling me I would have a good chance;' he said.
He used to dream vividly and often about the attack. Those' dreams have ended.
As he recovers, he says he has been aided by his family. "I have a patient wife Helen who happens to be a registered nurse, which helps a lot:' Port Alice residents have also been terrific. Residents took care of his home while he was in hospital. A neighbor now takes care of his lawn. Another man offered to drive Mr. Parker to Victoria for medical appointments - a seven-hour road trip.
"Just the other day, I got a new knife in the mail. It said, 'From your friends in Port Alice:" Recently, Mr. Parker spoke to' the conservation officer who reviewed the situation. The man said, based on an autopsy of the cat, that it was a healthy three-to-four-year-old with fat that suggested it was in good shape.
It had eaten 10 to 12 hours before the attack.
"I just wonder why it attacked me;' says Mr. Parker.

Quite the story and I would hate to look over my shoulder and find a cat staring me in the face. I used to live about a half hour drive from where this attack occurred. I have never had a close encounter with a cougar in the bush where dogs weren't involved but a friend of mine was stalked while bow hunting and was forced to shoot the cat. Another time his young daughter was also stalked and frightened very badly by a cat that was scared off when adults were alerted by her screams possibly averting disaster. This also happened while bow hunting. Makes you want to keep an eye out behind you. I was out running the dogs on the weekend and I ran in to the local conservation officer. We talked for a while and he told me of an incident recently where a man was attacked about an hours drive from here. It seems this fellow was out deer hunting and was following a deer trail when he was attacked by a cougar, which he managed to kill with one shot from the hip at five feet. Tracks indicated that the cat had not stalked the man but had lain in wait beside the trail and likely was just ready to pounce on the first animal to happen along the trail. This man was wearing a buckskin jacket at the time. I don't know if this may have contributed to the cats charging him but I would say wearing a buckskin jacket during deer season is a bad idea at the best of times.

The last couple of items I want to pass long are:

Billy Harkins has bred his Molly (Steel / Lucy ) to Slim and the pups should be ready to go the beginning of February. These are both good dogs and if you're interested call Kevin or myself and we will put you in touch or email Billy at lucylucy@alltel.net

Also I received an email regarding two stolen hounds as follows.
On November 10th the two hounds in the attached picture were stolen from
my back yard in Lillooet BC. I have filed a police report but would like assistance in finding the dogs. One is white with brown patches (Gauge) and has one toe missing on the front right foot. The other is a black and tan (Leroy) with a white patch on the chest. Both dogs were wearing orange collars with my name and address on them. If you see someone with a dog box or out cougar hunting please take a closer look. Thank you for your time.
Aaron Kilback
Conservation Officer
Lillooet District
Office 250-256-0591

Well that's about it for this month, the quote of the month sent in by Henry Johnson is: "Dogs and men are born with instincts. Everything else is a conditioned response programmed by life experience, exposure, and repetition." (Clint Smith)

As Henry Johnson always said: "Until next month, let me hear from you Airedale people and don't forget to put your arms around those black and tan dogs with the beards and the moustaches and talk to them. They are people dogs and family members.
Respectfully submitted, Clint Stubbe, Northern Corresponding Secretary for the Working Airedale Terrier Association. No rules, regulations, officers, dues or formal affiliations. It's more a state of mind.