I guess you could say I got started in predator calling through the back door. I had been a houndman for quite a lot of years, and like most everyone else I had read some stories about predator calling. I had never seen it done, and frankly I wasn’t totally convinced it would even work.
What was more interesting to me in those days were stories I had read by and about big game houndmen like the famous Lee brothers, Steve Matthes, Bill Green and others. I read about how they called for jaguars in Mexico and the jungles of South America. They used a gourd and produced a sound that resembled the roar of a jaguar. The idea was to get the jaguar to roar back so that the hunters would know where to go at daylight to put the hounds on a fresh track. Occasionally the jaguar would also approach the caller.
I reached a point where houndmen occasionally find themselves. A couple of my old hounds died, and I was suddenly left with 3 young hounds and no old timer to train them with. I began to reason that if there was any truth at all to this predator calling, I should be able to call in some bobcats, fox, ect., and get my young hounds started on the hot tracks.
One day I picked up a magazine and read an article by a couple of fellows who had called in not only coyotes, but also bobcats, fox, bear, and lion. There was a 2 page spread of photographs of game that they had called in. I had an old Pied Piper call that I had picked up several years before on a whim, and it was in the glove box of my pickup, gathering dust. I knew where there should be some coyotes feeding on a dead cow, and I thought there was no time like the present to give this thing a try.
To shorten this up a bit, I did call in a coyote that day. Now I was convinced that calling really did work, and I began to read everything I could lay my hands on about the sport. It wasn’t to much longer, and I called in a couple of bobcats. I was on the right track, and before long I was putting those young hounds on red hot varmint tracks. The day I called in my first lion was a red letter day, and I was thoroughly hooked.
I eventually did make good hounds out of 2 of those 3 pups. Today the mountains are steeper, I am quite a few years older, and I own Airedales instead of hounds; but I am still calling.
