Squirrel Dog

Admittedly, I love dogs more than most, but most dog owners would agree there’s a unique bond between human and canine. An old Arabian proverb states, “There is something about the outside of a horse that is good for the inside of man.” I think the same phrase holds true for a dog.

And although I haven’t always owned a squirrel dog, I can’t recall one year when dogs weren’t a part of my daily life, even through college. My first dogs as a boy were two female beagles, Phoebe and Hannah. I cherished those dogs throughout most of my childhood. Although my mom would let me sneak them inside the house from time to time, these rabbit-hunting dogs were kept outside. That’s the way my grandfather kept his coon dogs, and dad followed suit.

So, how goes life in a secluded pen out back for my mountain cur, Katie? Well, my wife, Heather, wouldn’t have it. As a result, Katie has been garnished with the luxuries of an inside dog. To Heather, it’s all about comfort for our canines and felines. Pampered daybeds, central heat and air, the life of which a hunting dog could only dream. And so went the journey of raising and training Katie, as both an elite hunting dog and an inside pet.

Katie entered my life just a few years ago. I drove from Vicksburg into the Ozark Mountains of northwest Arkansas to pick up a young mountain cur that would soon know her purpose in life, to become my hunting partner. I was beyond excitement as I loaded her in the vehicle and headed south. While she slept peacefully in the backseat, my mind was racing, thinking about all the adventures in hunting we would share.

From childhood on, my favorite times have been spent venturing into the woods with a hunting dog. Whether running rabbit dogs as a young man with my dad, training coon dogs in high school with my best friend or following squirrel dogs through the woods with friends as a young adult, fantastic memories resonate with me still today. Today, I still hunt with my best friend, Peter Armstrong. He’s a veterinarian, and, while specializing in large animals, his secret passion for canines is what makes him such a valuable asset to have on hand around dogs. I’ve hunted nearly my whole life with Peter, and while I’ve shared my knowledge of the outdoors, he has instilled in me a wealth of knowledge about dogs.

According to Peter’s logic with hunting, it is the dog that makes the experience paramount. The majority of squirrel hunters spend their time hunkered down quietly below a den tree or sneaking quietly through the woods waiting for the elusive squirrel to show. To me, I find hunkering down and waiting for a squirrel slow-paced. I’m too hyper. And since so many other types of hunting I enjoy require that I sit stationary, unless I’m equipped with a flask of hot coffee and a honeybun, my ability to sit still and wait on a squirrel quickly diminishes. Rather, with a dog, squirrel hunting becomes an adventure. I get to walk through serene bottomland hardwood forests, talk freely with those hunting with me, and simply enjoy looking around and exploring the Mississippi Delta until the dog trees a squirrel. Then, the excitement begins. It’s what we came for. The yodeling bark of my cur is music to my ears, no bawling bark as you’d expect from a hound dog. Cur dogs have a distinctive bark; it’s sharp, clean, and clearly resonates, like a drawn-out ARR, ARR, ARR. Once my dog trees a squirrel, she maintains her position at the base of the tree until we arrive to scan the tree and find where the squirrel is hiding. Once someone spots the squirrel, BOOM, it’s ours for the taking. When the squirrel cascades down through the canopy, the dog retrieves it from the ground and brings it to me. The squirrel is placed in my vest and then it’s on to the next one.

When hunting squirrels, the value of using a squirrel dog is that it is able to discern, at least a good dog is, where the last place a squirrel was on the ground and which tree it last ran up. Sounds easy, right? It’s not. Of the thousands of scents for a dog to discover on the forest floor, the skillset to discern which scent is the correct one and where that scent last occurred is the most important possession. Wind and rain make this more challenging. But the dog’s uncanny ability to chase, search out scents and find its target excites me to no end.

Training Katie to hunt squirrels wasn’t hard. In fact, it was a breeze compared to efforts of training treeing dogs with Peter while in high school. He and I worked with several young dogs he had bought to train for hunting coons and squirrels. In our first real training experience, Peter’s choice of hunting, at the time, was coon hunting. Despite their tenacious personalities, young canines can be horridly injured by an adult coon. So, to get a young dog excited, but avoid possible injury by the coon, we used a roll cage, a ball-shaped cage that rolls along the ground allowing the dog to chase the prey inside. This engages the dog safely and eliminates the risk of the dog getting injured. Perhaps more importantly, the roll cage keeps the dog from being intimidated from such an adversarial opponent with a mean bite and razor-sharp claws.

Some mistakes aren’t meant to be repeated, and, for Peter and me, we endured a mistake one afternoon that we would remember for a lifetime, but some mistakes give the biggest laughs. We once attempted to transfer a 25-pound boar raccoon from a live trap into a roll cage. This massive coon was the meanest thing from here to Alaska and his black-masked face only made him look tougher. He was less than pleased to be messed with. A dog warden’s catch-pole would have been ideal, but we didn’t have one. I attempted to make the next best thing, a three-foot section of 1-inch PVC pipe, hay string fed through the pipe section with an adjustable loop that even MacGyver would have been proud to use. I placed the string around the coon’s head, tightened the end, held and lifted the masked villain straight out of his cage. Peter was holding the roll cage in place while I dropped the vicious beast inside. Our plan was flawless. Not a finger was lost. The makeshift catch-pole worked liked magic. But then, the hay string broke. In a split-second this 25-pound furry stick of dynamite was falling right at Peter’s feet, and there was nothing we could do.

When raccoons are scared for their life, they climb. And climb it did. But instead of piercing its claws into the bark of a tree, it clamped onto Peter’s leg and was climbing fast. In just a flash, this formidable beast had dug into Peter, and by mid-thigh, the situation had turned dire. With sheer terror in Peter’s actions, he nearly jumped out of his body. As he leapt and jolted side-to-side to shake the beast that was assuredly as frightened as he, Peter let out high-pitched girly screams no man should make. I wouldn’t wish his torment on my worst enemy. And there’s my dad, watching our mastermind plan unravel before his very eyes. No help, only smiles watching Peter wail and shrill. That day Dad laughed harder than he ever had. But Peter wasn’t laughing. I was trying my best not to. The coon bailed before inflicting physical damage, other than crushing our spirits as “tough” country boys. It was a great lesson learned, but not one to be repeated.

Following high school, I transcended into a more apt dog trainer. Even more fortuitously, I was blessed to find a hunting dog with an innate prey drive and natural aptitude toward becoming a legitimate squirrel dog. Katie was a joy to train with her adolescent and developing yodel bark and funny grinning smirks. I worked with her all spring using dog toys to instill the desire to bark and chase things. Before long, I was tying a squirrel’s tail onto a string and running it around the yard with her in tow. By summer, I had progressed into dragging the tail along the ground and into shrubs and small trees, and I would entice her by saying, “Get him,” waiting until she barked to throw the tail down to her and extend praise. Before long, I could tie her to a tree and drag the tail through the woods to a tree out of sight. I would walk back, make her sit and then say, “Look for him,” enticing her to focus on where I had just walked. Once she had keened in and was alert, I released her, saying, “Get him.”

With time, I could tie the squirrel tail at a random tree and walk all around and zigzag randomly, while out of her sight, before returning to her. The goal was to ensure she was tracking the scent of the squirrel’s tail and not just using my scent trail as the giveaway. Once she identified the right tree, sometimes struggling, I would have her bark stationary at the tree before I would approach. When she worked with success, I’d come to her side, make an imitation sound of a gun firing, and drop out the tail from the tree for her to briefly chew on and play with. She loved it, and so did I.

The most enjoyable part of this journey was watching her learn. I was able to watch her figure things out, and it was amazing to observe her master such a difficult task. Watching a young dog discern and search out and distinguish the right scent from all others in the woods is a true feat. And to see her excitement grow as she “found” the right tree, beyond words.

With repetition and added complexity, she was treeing her first squirrels a couple of months before the fall season opener. Today, her enthusiasm to go hunting is almost uncontainable. At just the touch of the leash I use specifically to take her hunting, Katie is at the door. Ears alert, docked tail wagging and brown eyes aglow. She loves to hunt, just like her master. At the turn of the doorknob, she awaits the command, “Let’s go,” then it’s out the door and a beeline to the truck. She knows the drill.

In January, Katie will turn 4 years old. I wouldn’t change a single thing about the experiences we share with her being a dual-purpose dog, a hunter and a family pet. Katie shares her house with two other animals, our 9-year-old silky terrier and 3-year-old Siamese cat. That’s right. I have a dog that has been trained to crush the spinal column of a squirrel on command, yet she shares a doggie daybed with an 8-pound kitty cat. It’s as though she possesses a hunting “switch.” In the woods, she’s a cold-blooded killer, but at home she’s a spoiled housedog like any other.

Katie has matured into a seasoned hunting dog, and as a result, I often take friends and their young ones to the woods to experience the joys of hunting squirrels with a dog. On one of her best mornings, Katie treed 28 squirrels. With that many “chickens of the trees” harvested, we had enough squirrel meat to feed five families! If you are ever given the opportunity to squirrel hunt with a dog, be sure to seize the chance and go along. I bet you’ll love it.

STORY Nathan Beane
PHOTOGRAPHY Melanie Thortis and Nathan Beane