Full Cry Column
January 2004

Clint Stubbe (Northern Working Airedale Terrier Association correspondent)

Happy New Year! Hope this year is better then the last for everyone even if the last was great.
Winter is upon us here in the West Kootenay region of Southern BC. For those of you unfamiliar with southern BC it is a nice mix of a couple of contrasting biogeoclimatic zones. The West Kootenay region where I am located is characterized by moderate temperatures, substantial winter snowfall and lots of big drainages with plenty of thick timber. However if you drive just three hours West of here you get into a Northern finger of desert where summer temps are higher and rainfall is much less than here, this region lying as it does in the rain shadow of the coastal and cascade ranges. There you can find such creatures as rattlesnakes, scorpions, borrowing owls and praying mantis, animals you would never encounter here.
A mere four hours to the East puts you in the Rockies with much colder winters without benefit of the warm Chinook winds which roll off the East face of the Rockies. Summers temperatures are similar as is the terrain although the elk and deer fare better over there in large part I think due to adequate winter range on lower elevation slopes less densely forested.
Three hours due North puts you in an almost coastal rainforest type of climate where yearly rainfalls are quite high as the moisture laden clouds are forced to dump their load of water as they are pushed up over the Columbia range. Here you find moose and mountain caribou thriving in the old growth forests as well as many more wolves and porcupines than one would encounter here.
This fact had just surfaced in my brain as I pulled off the highway just East of the Rogers Pass for a week of work camping out on Kinbasket Lake. A little late to realize that Bar who was along as bush dog of the week had never encountered a prickle pig and the outcome of such an encounter likely wouldn't be good. Three corners down the dirt road and what's waddling down the centreline but a porky. Not a good sign, we actually made it four days and were working through a grove of giant cedar, spruce and white pine that would make anyone in the business of making wood get pretty excited when I heard the howl of pain from Bar and knew exactly what had happened. He came back and what a mess he was with quills in his head, shoulders and legs. I got all the quills out from around his eyes, muzzle and body with my trusty Buck tool but realized it would be easier on both of us if a vet got the ones that entirely filled his mouth all the way down the back of his throat. Two hundred dollars later I figured I had better start a shocking program since I don't even want to think of the cost if an entire pack of dogs got onto a porcupine. I have heard that fisher and lions will kill and eat porcupine but I have never witnessed signs of this although if an inexperienced animal got as loaded with quills as Bar had I can't imagine how it would survive.

MY STEP DAUGHTER TAMARA AND A NICE BUCK WE GOT

I really don't have much to report this month personally as I have been doing a lot of deer hunting but deer season is over now and it is safe to get the dogs out. It seems a lot of times when an uneducated hunter encounters a dog running through the bush the first thought that goes through their mind is that it is running deer and if that person is of the shoot first ask questions later type your dogs may be better off at home until the bush is pretty much empty of those types. I have got out twice in the last couple days but have only found some two day old lion tracks and a set of lynx tracks and they weren't open at the time

Martin from Germany sent along a report on his Annie dog, a redline type Airedale he got from Matt Thom in Arizona, he wrote:

"Hi Clint,
I just thought it is time to let you know some news from across the ocean regarding Annie, the first redline Airedale in Europe. Annie is one year now and she is still more a pup than an adult dog. She is a happy girl and always brings a smile to my face. Everything she does she does with pleasure and her tail is always wagging. Around six month ago Annie had a short fight with Maggie my Westfalenterrier bitch that I had to stop. They seemed to take it serious but when I broke them up they looked at me, as they would like to say: "What are you doing - man? No need for human intervention!" They had never had any serious problems anymore. They lie together or play most of the time and each of them knows the invisible border of the other, which they do not cross. I send you a picture of Annie and Maggie playing in the famous river Rhein.

Last weekend was the premiere: Annie's first official hunt on boars!
I would like to explain the system we use to hunt here first. The hunters who should shoot the game stand in special places where they have been told to stay by the leader of the hunt - mostly the leaseholder of the hunting area. Than we have "Treiber" = flusher = people who go through the wood and make noise. And we have the dogs. The dogs are from different breeds. Mostly smaller breeds like Jagdterrier, Wachtel or Jack Russel, but also Wirehair, Longhair or Weimaraner. The dogs are loose all together and have to push the boars out of the thorns and make them move so they can be shot by the hunters. It is usually free to shoot boars of smaller and medium size and fox. Sometimes also roedeer, red deer and big male boars.

ANNIE - A REDLINE AIREDALE

At first before the hunt I was asked by certain hunters what breed Annie is and all have been very skeptical about an Airedale as hunting dog. Some of those hunters even could not believe that Annie should be an Airedale. On the other side a few have been impressed by her coat and they thought that she had the optimal size for boar hunting - not too small not too big. I asked the hunters I talked to, to watch carefully what Annie was doing and to tell me later about it.
To make a long story short: after the hunt there were a few hunter who couldn't believe that Annie is an Airedale but there was no hunter who was skeptical anymore about the hunt in this dog (what ever it was ;-)).
I had her on the leash the first time but released her after a while. She hunted with passion and worked very well in the thorns. Also Annie hunted in good distance and she was always back after a few minutes. Two hunters told me after the hunt that she was loud on a fresh roedeer track. I told them that I knew that Annie is loud on sight but they both said she had been on the fresh track with out the possibility to see the roedeer. No boars had been seen in the hunt this time but Annie was good and I was invited to join another hunt on boars in three weeks. So I have 3 hunts until the end of the year and maybe some more if they see my dogs hunting...

Until now Annie is close to the "optimal dog" and I like to thank Henry S. Johnson and Billy Harkins for their help and Matt Thom for this great dog.
Best regards from Germany
Martin"

Martin wrote Kevin a short time later after returning from his second hunt.

"These are the boars we got on Annie's second hunt last Saturday (there are two smaller pigs under the sow you can see). Annie, Maggie and my Malinois Max had been the only dogs in the race and Annie was most times hunting on her own, because the others had to stay on the leash. "Old boy" Max tracked the boar and caught it after it got a bad shot.
When we (Max & me) saw the boar the boar also saw us and decided that attack is best defense. This little pig threw my old Max pretty nice through the air first but then changed direction and tried an escape. Not more than 30 metres when Max got it and locked his jaws. When I got there I threw it on its side and stabbed it through the lung in the heart.
Take care
Martin"

ANNIE, MAX AND SOME HOGS

Thanks for keeping us posted Martin, good to hear that Annie seems to be coming along well and from the pictures he sent she doesn't seem to mind water or retrieving as well. Interesting hearing how things operate in Germany, very rule oriented and structured.

I gave Max Searls in McLeese Lake BC a phone call to talk Airedales and he told me a couple stories of his old Buck dog. In his words:
"I got a call from the game warden regarding a cat with three big kittens that had killed a goat and knocked down some rabbit houses down around 100 Mile House. It was about a month later and I was onto a lynx that my son had seen the track of the day before. It had warmed up a little bit and I always figured if I could get within 36 hours of a lynx it was mine. Anyway I started to hand track him and old Buck he'd follow the holes in the snow and come back and along about the afternoon it warmed up enough old Buck didn't really want to go so I made a big circle and headed back. The wind was coming out of the South and soon I looked around and old Buck was gone. I backtracked a ways and saw where Buck had turned off the trail right into the wind. I kept following and got down about a half mile and heard Buck treeing I kept following the track and came right onto a deer kill with Buck treeing about thirty yards away. It was one of the big kittens about 70 lbs. or so and the Game warden had told me to do them in if I came across them so I took care of that one. There were tracks all over so I made a big circle and cut a good track and followed that a bit and the old big one was sitting up in a tree so I did away with the old female then back tracked and there was another one up the tree, got it then went a little farther and got the other one.
I was trapping for a living at that time and I found if there are lots of rabbits around a lynx won't go into a cubby. I checked my traps at least every third day sometimes oftener and if I saw a lynx track at one of those cubbies that didn't go in I generally got him with the dog.
I was out on the trap line one time when a lynx track crossed the trail and so why check the traps when you know you can get him so I turned Buck loose and there was about 18 inches of snow and it was loose snow and it was cold. I just started following the tracks and I come to a long meadow maybe a hundred feet across but maybe three hundred feet long and the dog went around it but the lynx was lying under a tree on the other side. He saw the dog go by and of course old Buck would never say a word unless he was looking at it. So we went around the far side of this meadow and up the other side and by this time the lynx had been gone several minutes and of course we were bucking snow going right to the bottom, well four hours later we caught that lynx. Buck just kept after him and after him and in a while we got down into Buffalo Lake where there was a little less snow and some fir type timber and be dog gone if we didn't catch him. So here I am quite a ways from my snow machine and it's dark but I just walked an old cat road around cause I knew that country pretty well and I got back. The big thing is to getting lynx is to have a dog that never says a word till he comes upon it but the deeper the snow gets the tougher it gets. I've run them with other Airedales I've had and when the snow got deep I didn't tree them but old Buck he treed them all, but he was a big dog about seventy-five pounds and boy he was powerful. Yep that old guy was a good one.
Another incident I had with Buck was when I was coming back from trapping and here was a cougar track about a quarter mile from the house, it was a big tom. Just South of me my neighbor had just weaned his calves and you know what kind of racket they will make bawling and raising heck and that old cat was headed right for them. So I went home and got a couple candy bars and a flashlight and some warm clothes and told the wife "I'll see you when the cat's dead" I knew it was going to be today or tomorrow and if it was too late I'd just build a fire. Well the old tom he went right down where these cows and calves were and they had some steers in there from the year before and he killed a year and a half old steer. He was laying under a tree about a hundred yards from the kill. Buck got after him and put him back across an old road back toward the house and treed him. I took care of him and was home and never even had to use my flashlight.
I treed a big tom one time with Buck's Grandson Corky; I got to where it had killed a moose. I got to the moose the same time the dog did and while the dog went on I gutted the moose because it wasn't even opened up yet just had the ears eat off and some hair pulled out where he was going to go in and get the liver right behind the ribs. By the time I had the moose gutted the dog was treed. That cat lacked one sixteenth of an inch from going Boone and Crockett. I called the game warden and asked maybe he wanted to use the moose at the dorm at school, he declined but said use it for bait but he sure wanted a ham off the cougar. I told him he could have it all I just wanted the hide so I went back the next day and finally got the hide off as it had started to freeze and I took it and we ate it all. Another time Corky treed a cougar that had killed a yearling doe that it had opened up, it was still steaming so I cut the hams off and ate those. They go in after the liver and lungs anyway so there was nothing wrong with it."

A COUPLE MAX SEARLS` CUSTOM KNIVES

It's good talking with Max and maybe one day I can get back up that way and visit in person. Max is in his seventies now but still gets out after bear, moose deer and the odd cat. Max told me in a previous conversation that while his early moose trip this year wasn't a success a later outing had two mule deer bucks gutted and in the truck and a moose down by 8:30 in the morning. The knives pictured are a couple I designed and had Max make up for me. The larger blade is 6 1/2 inches but the cutout ahead of the grip allows you to choke up on it making it effectively a 5 1/2 inch blade for skinning etc. The skull popper on the back makes the whole knife just under a foot. The companion skinner is from 1/16th stock and is 6 inches overall and works great for caping.

Well that's it, the quote of the month is: "Time and tide wait for no man. A pompous and self-satisfied proverb, and was true for a billion years; but in our day of electric wires and water-ballast we turn it around: Man waits not for time nor tide." Mark Twain

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.