Full Cry Column
November 2002

Clint Stubbe (Northern Working Airedale Terrier Association correspondent)

As I write this it is the end of September. The snow is dusting the mountaintops and soon enough it will be down in the valley bottoms. Recently I just got back from a weeks high elevation helicopter camp in the Selkirk Mountains where our crew were putting in some blocks and roads for some logging development. The weather was gorgeous for mid September although there was still snow in the grassy slide where the chopper dropped us on the first day. A fairly comfortable camp was made after three sling loads of gear were lifted in and dropped in camp which was set up with a creek on one side and on the other a crystal brook running literally close enough to dip a cup in as we sat around the fire at night. The old growth spruce and balsam had had time to put on at least 250 rings since the last fire had roared through this valley but unlike most old stands the under story was thick with rhododendron, azalea and huckleberry making walking difficult and working a chore. The berry crop seemed wasted though as there was little sign of bear except for some older scars on a few Balsam where the bears had been scraping cambium. Here it seemed too remote or inhospitable for large mammals to even reach before winter snows would drive them lower and in truth most of the larger mammals tend to shun the old growth stands favouring the edges of logging cuts where new growth is more abundant. One caribou track was possibly spotted, these animals having no problem with deep winter snow and preferring the old stands, which provide them with the lichens that make up a large part of their diet.
I had elected not to bring a dog along on this trip but one fellow did bring his Rottwieller lab cross having to wrestle it into the chopper. About midweek I pulled out my short gun for a little target practice whereupon the fellow with the dog asked that I hang on a sec while he got his dog, which he said was gun shy. After he had a hold of the dog I let rip and so did the dog, which proceeded to vacate the country. The fellow was quite distraught for several hours but cheered up the next morning as his dog had returned sometime in the night.
I have never seen quite that bad a case but I have talked to some folks who have had trouble with the occasional Airedale being gun shy. It’s hard to tell where this may come from in that it may be inherent or it may just be too harsh an exposure right off the bat. Obviously if you are going to be using your dog around rifles start them off small and build up to a large caliber or shotgun after they are fully accustomed to the sound of a rifle and they realize it will do them no harm. In fact the sound of a gunshot should have a positive association so starting a dog on squirrels or gophers with a 22 should be an excellent way to build this positive reinforcement. Henry Johnson has mentioned in the past of firing off a 22 pistol or cap gun around puppies at feeding time to accustom them to the sound while being exposed to the positive reinforcement of food. I would suggest just being aware of your dogs temperament and looking for signs of possible aversion to loud noises and taking steps to counteract this before firing off a 12 gauge over the dogs head then wondering why he wouldn’t retrieve the grouse or duck. Still some dogs are hard to read so starting off small is always safest. I say some dogs are hard to read because my Grizz fooled me a while back. Grizz is just over a year old and since I do most of my hunting with a bow he had never been exposed to gunfire. He is not a spooky dog but I wouldn’t describe him as bombproof so I was unsure as to how he would react to gunfire but I suspected he might not like it. We were up a mountain road and took out the 22 so my wife could practice a bit. With the first shot he went nuts but his reaction was just the opposite of what I had expected. He tore off running and barking in the direction of fire like he had game shot down to him all his life then back jumping and barking at the rifle. Next shot same thing running and barking at the puff of dust then back leaping and barking. I honestly had never seen a young dog react with such a positive reaction to gunfire in all my life and had no explanation for it but like I said it was not at all what I had expected, had I just up and fired a large caliber rifle or a shotgun as his first experience the results may have been different.

I got a letter and picture from Odon Corr of South Dakota as follows. “Clint I haven’t talked to you for some time and I thought you might like to see a picture of Turtle Peak Jack. Jack is now three years old and he has sired two litters so far. I will mate him with Tyke this winter. I have pretty much cloned Buster with my Airedales at this point. Turtle Peak Jack is the son of Sandhill Dakota Steele and Grandson of Mo Breaks Buster. He is also the Great Grandson of Buster on his mother’s side - Maxwells American Rose from Dakota Belle by Buster and Dakota Toby. So you can see the Buster legend is alive and well here at the Corr ranch. If you can get the video “Doggin’ coyotes” it may interest you, the dog “Stubby” in the video is a Buster pup.”
Thanks for the letter Odon. I had inquired with Odon about possibly buying Jack some time back as Odon thought he might finish out a little large for his taste but from the picture it looks like Jack ended up as a nice compact Airedale who is suiting Odon just fine. I phoned Odon after I got the letter to talk dogs a bit and he will be having pups out of Jack ready to go in mid January. Odon also mentioned he lost a second male Jack Russell after it picked a fight with his Airedales near a gyp in heat. Odon uses the Jacks to get coon out of the tight places around barns and buildings.

Well I did get two nice little female pups from Al Kranbuhl out of New York. I have named them Ursa and Terra. Ursa is the larger of the two and has a softer coat but has lots of leg, which is something I want in a dog although she may end up being a little larger than I would prefer. Terra is a more compact dog and has a nice working coat and is the more independent of the two. They have a much leaner build than any of my pups and I am well pleased with them and hope they will do good things for me. I can’t say enough good things about Al and hope to get some of his bloodlines out to some folks here on the this side of the continent if all goes as planned. I have had lots of conversations with Al on message boards when I used to frequent them and on the phone and can honestly say I have never disagreed with anything he has said which is something that is rare if you have spent any time around message boards. He seems to expect the same things from a dog and not accept the same faults I would find unacceptable so I was quite happy to let him select me two pups sight unseen which is something that I am generally not too comfortable with. These two girls have definitely made a home for themselves here and I can’t wait for spring bear so they can tag along and join in the fun.

I received another letter from a fellow serving some time in a federal penitentiary. He prefers to remain nameless but I will share his letter here as follows.
“After I finished my stint in the army in ’68 I roamed around from pillar to post seldom staying more than a year or two at the most in one place. I pulled my dogs and horse and mule around with me and one wife after another it seems and never put down roots as such though always returning to Montana my home. And so back in 1972 or 3 I believe I found myself working in Tucson Arizona for about a year. I lived in a small place on the edge of South Tucson in the Mexican area, South of the airport and there I gained some experience hunting Javelina of which I am about to write. I had previously lived in Pinos Altos N. M. North of Silver City for a while but at 7000+ feet elevation the country where I was never had many Javelina and I never got into them but soon after moving to South Tucson I did.
I was pretty busy but any weekend and whenever possible after work I’d saddle a horse and turn the dogs loose for exercise or on the hope of running across a bobcat or whatever. The country was all thick chaparral there all the way to Nogales and the Mexican border and the Tucson airport owned a big area South of it’s runways that was a virtual jungle.
I was riding along a trail through this are early one morning at dawn with the dogs and a strange bunch they were. I had Curly the Airedale, a big old well broke 7 or 8 year old Walker (the biggest Walker I’ve ever seen), a young male Plott, a male Greyhound I used on coyotes and a young long legged female pit bred pitbull about 18 months old that I’d gotten from Howard Heinzl. You might say I was ready for just about anything with fur or claws that might be unwise enough to stick it’s head up. But I’d never met Javelina before. Anyway though 30 years ago I remember distinctly, I dropped down into an arroyo onto a whole swarm of the tiniest deer tracks I’d ever seen. They were all sizes but the biggest number were tiny, not much longer than your thumbnail. I was looking at all those hundreds of hoof prints when I suddenly smelled what seemed to be a badger and I swore. I quickly looked around and the only dog in sight was the old Walker poking around ahead of me and right then I heard the fight about 200 yards down the arroyo. I kicked the horse and was there in a few seconds. The dogs were fighting like crazy only about twenty yards in from the arroyo and I jumped off the horse with trepidation, having been told by an old timer in Mexico never to get off your horse when in Javelina.
Anyway it was a jungle, filled with “wait a bit” bushes, some kind of mesquite or palo-verde with wicked curved fish hook like spines that make you wait a bit when they hook you and it wasn’t over a minute at the most before I got to the dogs. The Greyhound was just standing there, his left upper lip hung down over his lower jaw from the angle of the jaw to his nostrils. Curly and the other three dogs each had a corner of a big male Javelina (the Walker forgot he was trash broke when he heard the fight) and surprisingly it was almost dead. I had a 22 mag. long barrel strapped on so I shot it anyway but what a mess the dogs were.
They were deeply bitten on the head, chest and shoulders but the young pitbull was the worst. She was what they call an ear dog in the pit, that is she would only go for the upper neck just behind the ear when fighting a dog and her chest and shoulders looked like she had been hit at twenty feet by 00 buck over and over.
Two things surprised me, that such a tough animal as the Javelina could gasp his last so quickly and that he could do so much damage in such a short length of time. The fight may have lasted more than one full minute but not by much. I dressed the Javelina and took him home and weighed him and he weighed 44 lbs. before I skinned him. People tell me that that is a big one and others I have seen have weighed less.
Javelina’s teeth don’t form tusks like a pig but remain in the mouth like a dog however the teeth are triangular in cross section unlike a dogs and are a good two times as long. They come to an ice-pick point and rub on each other just sharpening each other it seems. When they bite they hit bone and they like to give their head a fast shake after biting, like a dog shaking a coon. Anyway they are anyplace where the chapparal is dense as in low lying areas between the hills. They were all over the area owned by the Tucson airport and to get away from them and look for cat or coon I had to get into hilly country with sparser vegetation.. There is a hunting season on them and I read there was only about a twenty percent success rate for hunters. That seems hard to believe as I could not help but keep catching the things. I could never get the dogs broke off them, except the old Walker who was sure dead broke off all other trash. After the encounter the dogs hated them as some dogs take a hate for porcupines.
Once when we were out of what I thought typical Javelina territory we got into a small bunch. The dogs caught them and were fighting two females. I shot one and the dogs killed the other. They were both about 30 lbs. or so. I then noticed the pitbull was gone. I rode all over the hill but heard nothing but she fought silent anyway. I tied up the dogs after applying the necessary sutures ( I carried cat gut, needles and scissors with me), ate my lunch and took a nap. About three in the afternoon I heard her coming and she came in. She was buck shot again and her whole side was laid open from above the shoulder to the last lower rib. The hide was all sliced as if with a sharp knife and I could look and see all her ribs. There were dirt, stones and small sticks etc. in the cut but surprisingly it was hardly bleeding.
We went home and I washed her up and sewed her cuts and gave her 80 mgs. Of depo-medrol I.M. (Methyl prednisone, a real dog saver to keep a badly traumatized dog from going into shock) a bunch of pen-strep and next day she was fine.
Anyway I would not advise hunting Javelina unless you have some dogs you are eager to be rid of.”
Name withheld by request.

I really enjoy getting letters like that which describe animals and places I will likely never see. I know Matt Thom in Arizona has had run ins with Javelina with some of his dogs with some bad results but luckily Javelina are one animal I will never have to worry about.

I also got this email from Rick Schell of Somerville, Al.
“Man I see my ugly mug made the last issue of full cry! If it wasn't for the good looking Airedale I wouldn’t of had a chance. So I thought I would tell you how my hunt went with Billy. I have to admit, being a hunter from the west I will always treasure hunts in the Olympics, the Blues, Cascades and Rocky mountains and will have more. But, these Blue Ridge Mountains are also very beautiful and steeper then I thought and I just got a little taste of them. We started off with lunch with Henry Johnson. I enjoyed the visit and got a picture with Henry and my dog (Copper). Henry is really how I met Billy when I was looking for a new pup. He said in a email this is the guy you want to hog hunt with. After lunch the Author who wrote the book “THE LOST CHAMPION” showed up and we visited some and talked dogs and guns a bit. Then with a couple of hours left we went out with Billy’s Boozer dog and Copper and treed a small bear in about an hour. Now I have been working bear scent with Copper but he is no bear dog yet. Old Boozer treed the bear himself and Copper recognized the smell alright and ran around the tree booger barking. He just never knew to look up the tree. I guess it is because hogs don't tree even though I put his bear drags up into trees. That was good fun though. I stayed at Billy's that night and felt right at home. The next day we went looking for hogs and found lots of sign, but the hogs eluded us. It was a good time and went by fast. I will have Billy over my way too as we have some areas you can hog hunt here during deer season. I am also working with some timber and state agencies here for hog removal and have been doing them a service. Billy and I are going to do a little horse-trading. I am going to mount a deer head for pick of the litter from his little redline bitch. I believe Billy and I will become good friends and I see more hunts in the future. If he can put up with my plott hounds some? Ha! That Steele dog of his is a real dog. Very impressive dog and good-natured. I hope to come out west with a couple of guys from here in the south and do some hunting. I know some real good cougar and bear areas in Washington State. But you can't run hounds or any dogs on big game there anymore. Idaho is a great state and I know I can get on bear, but you about need snow for cougars and that is a long drive from here in Alabama if you hit snow out west. I'll have to work on that as I have cousins in Idaho who run walkers mostly on bear. I know Billy would like to kill a cougar. I have seen quite a few cougar in Washington and Oregon deer and elk hunting. Stop hound hunting and it doesn't take long before you see more cats and less deer and elk. When I was a kid we never saw big cats just hunting the woods. I would drive around with my grandpa looking for cat tracks in the snow to turn his hounds loose. But you never saw a cat without the dogs. Now they’re a problem. My cousin works for the Washington game dept. and they have had to kill 14 in one year in one small little town and the only way to get them was with dogs. Anyway no need to beat a dead horse. As you know I have plotts too and am wanting to work Airedales and plotts together. So far Copper stays in lots closer then the plotts and I like that. I hope the new pup I get from Billy will do that too as when the plotts get out and bay a hog I don't want the Airedales there too fast. They will give that additional grit when we’re close and not get killed if I am too far from them. With bear it doesn't matter so much unless it is a bad one. But that’s hunting. As I tell my wife I would rather any hunting dog die doing what it loves to do rather then being hit by a car in the city. We take what precautions we can and leave the rest to God and just plain hunting risks. I’ll keep you posted on the Airedale and plott combination. I like to hear a hound race and sometimes you just want to sneak in with some quiet dogs like Billy does. One last thing, I went hog hunting Wednesday and Copper got into a bunch of little hogs about the size of swamp rabbits and they were running him through the thickets squealing and mini grunting. It was good for Copper just being a pup and good for them little hogs learning about dogs. Next time they meet they will all be a little older and things will end up a little more exciting. Good hunting to ya'll.”
Rick Schell

Thanks for the letter Rick. Well that’s about it for this month, the quote of the month sent in by Henry Johnson is: "Gettin old ain't for cowards." (Sam Young)

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.