Doing it Right

0:00This episode of the sportsman's empire is brought to you by Interstate Batteries. Since 1952 Interstate Batteries has been evoking compassion and a trustworthy spirit into the surrounding communities. Interstate Batteries is a mission driven company fueled by purpose and guided by their values. If you need help locating a specific battery, stop into your local Interstate Batteries retail store and speak with a battery specialist. They even offer cell phone repairs. Interstate Batteries out-ragiously dependable. You've never been one to settle. Stand down or stand still. You're a lifelong learner.

1:07Energized by excellence. There's a fire inside you. You can't ignore. You've got competition to outrun, momentum to build on, and your own high standards to meet. Stop now? Not a chance. At Capella University, we help you catch what you're chasing because you've always had the drive. Now go earn the degree. Capella University, what can't you do? Visit Capella.edu to learn more. Parents, have you heard your kids say, I'm not a math kid. Well, with Mathnasium, every kid can be a math kid. They customize their math instructions so kids who are struggling are able to catch up and get ahead. An advanced kids are challenged to reach higher. Mathnasium makes math fun, so kids learn to love it. Parents say that Mathnasium has not only improved their kids' grades, it's given them a new level of confidence. In math and in school overall, visit Mathnasium.com to find a location near you. Daylight breaks over the ridge. The hounds strike. No crowds, no cameras, just a track,

2:13and the hounds that bring the story to life. That's what this shows about. Dogs, dirt roads, early mornings, and the people who live it. This is Creekside Chronicles. Hounds, hunting, and heritage. I am your host, Heath Hyatt, Houndsman, Hunter, and the lifelong student of the outdoors. Here we chase more than game. We chase knowledge about hounds, hunting, and living the outdoor life the right way. From bare country to back roads, this is where the hunt meets heart, and every story runs a different trail. So pull up your chair by the creek, unleash up your best town, and let's get after it, together. Performance starts in the sea. A nook shook, high fat continent,

3:18fuels long runs, and hard runs. Giving dogs a steady energy they need, while quality protein supports faster recovery after the work is done. That's why I trust a nook shook dog feed. Packed with energy and nutrition, dogs need to go further, run harder, and recover stronger. If you want extreme performance, you can look them up at a nook shook professional dog food or cori-nutrition.com. Welcome back to the Creekside. What we talking about everything, from the woods to the water. If you've been followed along, know you have your part of the Creekside crew. To pull out that chair, I'm going to grab into the log, throw it on fire, and we're going to get this episode started. First and foremost, I got to get a shout out to a good friend, Marshall Nester.

4:23I had a dog box built, Marshall bit me a dog box. Been two years ago. I took it to Canada. That was the first time I got it. I didn't go to Canada last year, so two years ago. He built it for my OH Chevy and loved the box. I ended up selling that truck and then got another truck. It wouldn't fit. I tried to sell the box and that just didn't happen for whatever reason. So, Marshall and I had talked and he's like, just bring it back. I'll fix it. I'll modify it. We'll make it right. I drove up a couple weeks ago and dropped it off. He called me last week and said, hey, I got you box ready. This box is going to go on my travel truck. And for people that say that hunters do not invest in the economy.

5:30And everybody hunts in different areas and different stuff. I would love to be able to hunt out of a side by side. That would be my perfect scenario. But here in Virginia, we're not allowed to do that. And I know my buddies up in West Virginia do, North Carolina, Canada. Everybody has their own way of doing things, but we can. And our mountains are rough. It's rough on the vehicle. It tears them up. You can't go through a hunting season without doing some type of mechanical work to the vehicle. At least not where I'm at. So, I bought a travel truck. That's what I call it, my travel truck. And Marshall made this box, modified it, it fits right back on my truck. And I couldn't be happier. So, you guys want a grade A box built? You should look Marshall up because he does a fantastic job. And I know there's a lot of people around the build to do good work. I just haven't used those. I've used Marshall. And I'm very pleased. So, Marshall,

6:37thank you. I got a lot of messages last week about the podcast on LASTS. So, I just want to touch on real quick because I left a very, very important piece of that out. And when I was talking about Frosty, people, the message me says, you could tell that that was still, you know, weighed on you. It was emotional. It meant something to you. And I've caught absolutely. But the reason that that one was so hard, first and foremost, it was my first first and last, right? He was my first bad old. The first old that I really had that connection with and that was a super, super nice dog. And again, easy to be around. That

7:39makes it 10 times better. I want their easy to be around. Listen better in a kid. But when he got sick in Canada in September, and if you go through them, do the math, I mean, I was in Canada the first or second week of September and then he died on October 4th, I didn't have time to prepare myself for that. I had never dealt with that before. And me and Wes was talking about it. And like, I thought that was important that I did not have time to process it. I didn't have time to prepare myself for it. You know, like, since then, I've had, I've had a lot of dogs. And most of them die from old age. I mean, we'll go back frosty-dotted eight. Again, wasn't prepared for that. Out in my mind, he was going to live forever. And then Brandy, who I had at the same time, she lived to see her 16. Ring lived to his 15. My first police dog, Otis, my lab

8:42lived to he was 16. Bale was 12. So when you can prepare yourself with that, you know, five of times going to creep up on us. You know, every day's marked. Every day you get out of bed should be a blessing. Every day that you own a hand and that hand is healthy and able to go and you spend time with him in the woods is a blessing. I just didn't have time to prepare myself. And that's why it was so hard. And it's taken me years to understand the gravity of that. So thank you guys for the messages, the emails, the, the, the messages on Facebook and Instagram. I appreciate it. And yes, so prepare yourself. And it's not easy. Training season. So we're in her. This will be when this drops, it'll be our last week.

9:51I mean, it's taken me. All right, we have basically eight weeks, nine weeks of training season. Here I'm into my last week and the last two weeks, I finally started mixing and matching and kind of putting things together and getting the dogs where I needed to be. And then have a female coming heat. Last Wednesday, the last podcast dropped. I had one of those runs that just they just kick you but like they struck right four day light, put them down. I mean, they were off the races. And I mean, they they covered some ground and they covered some rough ground. The bear actually made two when I say circles, I mean, a lot big circles into this country that is nothing but rocks and cliffs. And they pulled up out of that twice, come up into the flat ground, made another loop back in there. And I mean, this this race went on for way longer than I

10:56wanted it to. And if I could have cut the dogs off knowing the country they were in, I would have probably have done that if I could have got in front. In fact, I did cut some the the second loop, some of the back some of the dogs got strung out. So I ended up cutting the back dogs off. And I had two dogs, I mean, they run for another hour, hour and a half and I won them still laid up. I had three dogs out of that race, six dogs. You know, what I heard? I had six dogs, I had three dogs out of that race. And you guys know, when you're hunting and grounds holler, we ain't had any rain. And when you're hunting in country that's rocks and and clear us and stuff, like they're all coming out with like swollen joints, you know, front legs will be swollen down in lower joints or their feet will be swollen. And I think I had three that was like that. And I'm scared that one of my better females, I'm not so sure she maybe didn't break a toe or something. Um, it's very sensitive when I squeeze on it. But I don't know, but she's out. She's been out for

12:05four, five days now. I actually took her with me yesterday when I let her out in the mornings. You know, of course it's dark. And I noticed that she wasn't her, you know, her self, like she wasn't like, you know, they'll dart around the yard. And I mean, they're here. They're there. They're full of energy. She, she was not acting that way. And I went to put her in a truck. I thought she was a little bit slow. I'm like, okay, but when I got him out to put collars on him, I know she was favoring that front right way a little bit. And that is the foot. So I had her with me yesterday. I did not turn her loose. But it's just, I mean, that's the part of it. Like, there's going to be some dings and scratches and some twists and tweaks and everything else. But I thought it was just one of them races. I had two of those last week. I had one that went on forever. I mean, it covered two mountain ranges. And I ended up saying thing happened. I ended up

13:10catching some dogs off. And after a couple hours, it was getting hotter. And I was able to get everybody caught off after like several hours. And then in Wednesday, I had that that same thing happened. And it'll get dogs in shape and get them in shape pretty quick. But I don't, I don't care for it. But I have kind of found the, the right combination. And it's crazy to think that mixing and matching dogs like that makes such a big difference. But it does. It does for me. And literally, I've been, I call it the girl. I take the girls. Like, I'll have the girls and either Briggs or Chief or a couple of the guys with me or Sput. I got to take Sput and the girl. So the girls are putting on the guys right now. I hate to say it. But

14:11they make it, they make it shine. Couldn't, couldn't be pleased. They couldn't be more pleased. They're doing well. And you know, we're catching, catching game mostly. And they're doing it in short order most most of the time, except when you get on those ones that want to run circles and places you don't want to be. So it was a, it's been a good week. Which leads me into the topic for the day. I'm going to tell you a story. When I was a sophomore in high school, that's 15 years old, we had just built a new house and moved into it. And the backyard had a pretty good grade to it. And the barn set up on top of the hill. So for you guys that don't know,

15:11not, of course, I was raised on a small farm my whole life. But we had a barn. We raised, we had horse. My sister and I were pretty, pretty thick into the horses at the time. So we had a barn. Dad had chickens and we always had a few cows. And sometimes we raise hogs. He's into the goats, goats, chickens and horses now. Well, we do have a couple. We still got us some cows. But anyway, so he'll come down and dad decides that he wants to build across Ty wall across the backyard. And this is, I don't know, this is 25, 30 yards, maybe 40 yards past the back of the porch. So me and my brother, my dad, we had, dad had a friend that he worked with that

16:15had access to a bunch of cross ties. So we went and got several truckloads across ties. And we started building this wall. And we got the wall pretty much finished, all wrapped all around this hillside. And in some places, it was up six, seven cross ties, some places it was three or four, just depending. So they were stair-stamped. One evening, they come in from school. And dad's like, we're gonna take a cross tie wall out. And as a 15-year-old, you can only think what my mind was like, what are you crazy? Why? So dad took a level up to the cross tie wall. And the cross tie wall was leaning half of it was leaning back. And I mean not far, but it was leaning back. It wasn't, it wasn't square up and down.

17:18And I thought it was crazy. And we spent the next couple weekends, tearing half of that cross tie wall out, almost three-quarters of it. And redoing it. And we had the braces put in there. We was driving rebar down through the cross tie wall. Like, I mean, it was done the right way. And I was mad about it. Like, he was tied up my weekends and I didn't want to be doing this. I thought it was crazy. I thought, who in the world is going to say this is a cross-tie wall? Why? Why are we putting so much effort into this? Why are we redoing something that really doesn't matter? And I never understood it. You know, like Heath? Why are you telling me that's this story? Well, there's a reason why.

18:24Because I feel like that was one of the lessons that I learned very young 15 that taught me there are no shortcuts. If you don't build a foundation right, you go, go back and you're going to have to redo it. And how often do I, talk about foundation, how important the foundation is? It's the main thing. You can't skip it in hand training and expect to have a finished doll. You can't do it. And I was thinking about that probably a month or so ago.

19:25I had ran into a situation where, and I'll actually tell you an example here in a minute, but I'd run into a situation where I know I needed to go back to the foundation. I needed to go back and make sure that the doll understood what was being asked and the results that I expected, what my expectations are. And I don't know why that that cross-tie wall come to my mind, but it did. And I'm like, you know, this is a lesson you learned when you were 15 and it carries through you today. If you want solid dogs and you want dogs that perform at a high level, the foundation is the most important.

20:27It's got to be done. And if it's done right, as the dog gets older and he matures, you can always go back and it always makes being around that dog more pleasurable. Easier to handle, easier to call off if you need to. Just fun to be around. You're not having to constantly holler or correct that dog. So we'll talk about Zeke for a minute. Zeke is turning seven months old and I want to put him in the woods so bad. Like I've been hauling him around. I've been taking him on short trips, hauling him,

21:28you know, getting him to load. I don't have him leading. It's like I won't yet. And I don't want to put the pressure on him. You guys know, if you take a dog, it's not lead broke to the woods. And the first time you time at a tree, they're fighting around. They're, you know, they're back and forth. They're putting unwanted pressure on their cells. And the whole experience of going out and running and having fun and chasing is kind of negated because the end result is I don't like being tied. So I've held off a little bit because I don't have that established like I want. But also, every day when I come home from hunting, I just dropped my tailgate. I left the dogs out. And, you know, they come out in the yard. And most time they'll go to a water source. I've got a couple. In fact, I've got a big rubber bowl, one of the big like cattle bowls around behind the deck

22:30at the water spiket that I keep for vice when he's out with me in Zeke. And they'll go get in there. And they'll do the thing. Well, when I get the food, I go on the basement and I feed. When I come out, I let Zeke out. Well, I've noticed over the last two weeks, especially that his, his play meter is at a hundred. When I have him out with other dogs, he literally wants to run and chase and frolic and be a puppy. He wants to be a puppy. So yesterday when I came home and I'd let the dogs out and Kate, I had Kate with me, which is one of my older female. And she didn't want no part of that. Like she was avoiding him. He was trying to run her down and he don't puppy things. Nothing, I'm not, I'm not saying anything bad, but he was trying to

23:31run her down and play with her. She just didn't want no part of it. And they were tired too. I mean, that makes a big difference. Dogs get grumpy. So she was avoiding him. She actually run in his pen, went in his house and was like, hey, me alone. And I told myself then, I'm like, I want to put you in the woods. Like I want to, to get you started. I need to be getting you started. But man, your maturity level is just not there. And yes, we can go back and forth all day. Take them. Turn them loose. Absolutely. And it works. We know that if you if you do that, the dogs got the instinct a lot of times. We know that. Like there's no arguing genetics. I don't want to argue genetics. Remember a couple weeks ago, I was talking about how my law enforcement mind gets into

24:32my hand hunting because when I deploy, I want the dog to complete the task to be successful and move on. And I have to try to get myself out of that mindset with my hands. Like it's more enjoyable. How you do this for fun? You do it because you enjoy the dogs. And he's not he's not he's not mentally there. He's not mentally there. So what my plan is with him. Is I'm going to finish up the leading. And I know seven months old dogs have been leading on his three. I leave them out. I that's leading is probably the last thing I do with mine. I do everything before that. And then I start pining them out on a tie out and feeding them. You guys have seen the post pictures and videos of that. I'll put them on the dogs of tree. Tie out and feed them and start working on slowly into that. That's you know, because they're not fighting it while they're eating and then after eating. So they're associated. Anyway. So I do little things like that. So I'm just trying to finish that up.

25:36But what I'm going to do is after after our season goes out here, it'll be October, week after next. And in our current season of coming in shortly after, I'm going to take one of my younger. I'm probably going to take one of my three-year-olds and take him and just spend some time in the woods with just two dogs, not overwhelm him with excitement with the pack, you know, five or six. Like he mentally cannot handle that. His stimulation level is through the roof. And I want him to be a little bit more calm. I want him to to bring that down a notch. But I think it's important to discuss this because I know a lot of people probably see this. And I don't know how you think about it. I don't know how you process it. I don't know if you even give it a thought. But like for me, I'm fighting. Like I'm fighting myself by not taking him because I want to take him. Like that was got a lot of natural ability. A lot. And I want to take him. And I want to

26:44have him in the woods. And I want him to start learning. But the leading set me back. And then now like I said, seeing the playfulness and seeing the maturity level where like, and you know, the more you take dogs and the more they get accustomed to things, they get into routine of things, a lot of it nonsense will quit. But I thought to myself, putting him with a pack right now, I also he's going to do, he's going to be like a bull in a giant shop or a horn and a glass jar like, he's just going to cause more problems than I would like him to cause. He's going to do things. He's going to aggravate the older dogs, especially when they're business, when they're trailing or running or treing, especially at the churrie, you know, he's going to be running around like, oh yeah, you know, we're having a party, we're having a party. And they're focused. They're lazy to focus. Like, nope, there's a bear sitting up there. This is what I'm focused on. I don't need you bouncing off

27:45me and I don't want to trouble. I'm going to fix it. I'm going to make sure that that's not a problem before I go. And again, I know I'm going to be putting it back a little bit, but I'm looking at the finished product. Like I'm looking at, I'm looking at that four-year-old dog, not that year and a half old dog. And while we're talking about four-year-old dogs, I have to brag on my A letter. And that was actually my second letter of spook. They are four-years-old, four, and man, have those dogs kind of come into their own. They want to bang up job very pleased with the consistency with them. They're in the right place doing the right things. They're starting majority of the races or the tracks. So, you know, I'm looking at my fours. Like that's where I'm at, especially we go through

28:52the whole training regimen. And I had this conversation with somebody the other day. Like, all right, so we got 60 days to train August September. And then you get 30 days in December. So I got 90 days total. And we know that we're not hunting 90 days. It's not possible with weather, family, extra curricular, volleyball, whatever, whatever, whatever. I mean, whatever the girls are doing. Like it's in work obligations. It's impossible for me to get 90 days in. So, you know, my dogs are average in about 45 to 50 days a year. And let's break that down when I do a detection school. So I do a 40 hour or a 120 hour detection school, which is four weeks. And that's straight. That's straight four weeks. That's a straight five days a week for four weeks. So that's 40 days just

29:56to get them started. And then they're training every other Monday throughout the year. So it's difficult to train dogs like that. It's very difficult, especially like when you get those young dogs started, you got them going in the right direction and then boom, seasons over or the end of December, it grows around in the end of December's end, and I'll over. And I think it's why I try so hard to travel and go to places that I can get a couple extra days here and a couple extra days there. Those two or three days extra between seasons help keep things in the right direction, help keeps the focus there, and it helps maintain some level of consistency. But it's difficult. It's very difficult. So my two year old dogs, all right, so they've got a hundred, let's just say a hundred days of hunting. If we're lucky, if we're lucky, and in my three year olds, they got a hundred and fifty days of hunting.

31:00That's not even quite half a year yet, right? It's a half a year, that's six months. And then my four year old dogs are pushing that 200, 200 days of hunting, which we're just now passing that half a year. So for me, the equivalent of training and running and hunting is difficult. It's difficult. And I try to make my expectations training wise, not what the performance wise, training wise for my dogs. Like that four year old dog is where I need to see. Like that's where I need to see it. Now, if I was like you guys in North Carolina, West Virginia that could hunt pretty much a year around my expectations on training would very much change. And I would definitely look at things a lot differently. But for me, for where I'm at, for what I'm doing with my dogs and how I'm training with my dogs, I try to make it realistic. And I compare

32:05a lot to my work training and what's going on there and how I maintain it against what I'm doing with the dogs. So anyway, Zeke, I'm chomping it a bit. I got to get some things worked out with him. My A litter, doing well, very pleased, very pleased with how they've done this training season. So next week, we're going to break down because the season will be over. I want to break down all the data that I've collected and just kind of give you the run through on that. And man, I mean, here it is. We're in the last week of September or yeah, the last full week of September. And it's dry, dry, dry. It is the humidity, the heat. I mean, two weeks ago, I didn't even hunt

33:07the whole week because we were in the 90s. Up in the 90s, it has been a very, very awkward year. Just like yesterday morning, the weather was 64, the humidity 99. And I didn't have to take a whole long scroll either. I mean, it wasn't horrible. And again, I come out of there and I look like I just went through the car wash. It's like, oh, man, like cut me a little bit of a break. This week's supposed to cool down a little bit, being the 70s, which I'm really looking forward to. We need to rain, a comfortable rain. We need it bad. I hate to forgo a couple days of hunting because of the rain, but got to look at the bigger picture and we need it. The mountains need it. The food sources are going to need it and so on and so forth. So we'll catch you guys next week. That's going to be a wrap for this week's episode of Creek Side Chronicles. We appreciate

34:08you spending your time with us, whether you're in the truck, in the woods, or sitting by the creek, just listening along. Thank you for walking this trail with us. And we've got to say thank you to W. Supply for hosting the podcast and supporting everything we do. Be sure to check them out and go to W. Supply.com for all your hound hunting needs. Until next time, keep your dogs fed right, whose leads tight, boots muddy, and we'll see you at a tree. All the cheer from the Virginia mountains to the Carolina clay.

35:14We're burning fuel in miles each day. Every turns another tail through mountain mist and paper trims. We see the sunsets red in Tennessee. Rise through the fog in old WV. North Carolina's pines echo loud with the cry of a hard run-hound. New York forest, maize deep snow, Burmón valley's where the black bears go. Truck keeps rolling, wheels don't care. We're chasing daylight, chasing bear. Rip stops few, the roads are long, but the fire in our heart still burns strong. Wisconsin mornings cutting crisp and clear, Canada's wildwoods drawing near. Still got states, we ain't run but that handoff fever won't let us

36:21quit. We see the sunsets red in Tennessee. Rise through the fog in old WV. North Carolina's pines echo loud with the cry of a hard run-hound. New York forest, maize deep snow, Burmón valley's where the black bears go. Truck keeps rolling, wheels don't care. We're chasing daylight, chasing bear. Gas station coffee, alpha excel on the dash. Another background, another bear track. Friends made fast, the story's told slow. Understarts, where only hunters go. We see the sunrise gold in Canadian air.

37:27And it sits on a trail down in Appalachia. Back in steel and leather, grit and care were built for the role in chasing bear. From all the dogs and slam the gate, there's a trail ahead. We won't be late. Free dawn to dust, we're always there. L farewell. Jason Daylight, chasing them back. Parents, have you heard your kids say, I'm not a math kid. Well, with Mathnasium, every kid can be a math kid. They customize their math instructions, so kids who are struggling are able to catch up and get ahead.

38:29And advanced kids are challenged to reach higher. Mathnasium makes math fun, so kids learn to love it. Parents say that Mathnasium has not only improved their kids' grades, it's given them a new level of confidence. In math and in school overall, visit Mathnasium.com to find a location near you. Hi, I'm Sean Evans from Hot Ones, and I want to tell you about YouTube Premium. It has offline downloads, so you can watch without Wi-Fi. Background Play, so you can lock your phone, and it still plays, baby. Oh, and it is completely ad-free. Yes, I said it ad-free. Try YouTube Premium for two months free at youtube.com slash premium. Trial eligibility varies, terms apply, cancel anytime. From kickoff to the final whistle, trade the biggest moments in football on Kalshi, America's number one prediction market platform. Denver is currently trading at 40% to upset Los Angeles, meaning a $100 trade pays out $197 if they win.

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