EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

Here is  a old picture of Lavon Davis's Whitey and Billy Don Blevins Red, these were my glory days of hunting, we had tons of hogs, no deer hunters and we caught hogs until we and the dogs were worn off, Lavon and Billy always were trying to say my dog outstruck yours that time, these were both great hog dogs and would wind on the hood or out of the back of the truck, after we dumped catch dogs to them and stuck the hog they kep rolling out and rolling out, no way I could keep up that pace todays, too old and worn out and slow in the brain, notice no big heads on either dog, I bought  dog named Butler from Lavon and raised a lot of dogs from him, they were very white and had that kind dewlap under there neck and the longer thin ears, he was killed by a hog on my ranch, a kid sicced some catch dogs on a big hog and got Butler to catch, normally he waitted til you got there to stab or shoot or until the catch dogs got there, he was a tight baying dog but been cut and knew how much pressure it took to just hold a hog till you got there, many a time i rode up to him hiding on side of my lil jumping mule with my nitelight, he would come out and see me and go back and bay the hog, i would sneak up to hog side and raise up with headlight and 22 and plug the hog, soon as i shot he would wool the hog some, a lot if it was a sow, less so it a boar, i could tell from the truck how big the boar was by the tone and loundness of his bark usualy, he would catch sows all day long but was not dumb crazy ctchy on boars, i think i hunted him 5 years after i bought him from Lavon, wish i could buy a clone, i think and am almost postive this was a Jude Hart dog Lavon bought from him before he died, might have been in 79  or 80's, i cant remeber anymore.  Blevins dog was just as good but was a lil more stocky, both could road hunt all night in front of the truck if it was not too hot down here at the coast in the summer.  I sure miss all of these dogs for sure.

http://imageevent.com/oddball/whitetail?p=81&n=1&m=99&c=4&l=-1&w=2&s=0&z=2

Good story...thanks for sharing

For a little while, I didn't know if I'd make it through em all, but I did......all 663 of em!

Some great pics in there. Thanks for sharing em.

Cool pic's

i really enjoyed that

Very nice pics!

Thanks - Thats alotta stories in one role.....

I hunted with Lavon but never with Billy Don Blevins but always heard quite a bit about him. Lavon Told be back then that Whitey was the best dog he ever had and he had some good ones. He liked the Jude Hart bred dogs straight from ole Jude Harts yard.

Lavon owned a BMC named Nugget that was a real hog dog. I don't care to own a BMC but I would take that one home any time. Matter of fact I put Nugget up there with the good ones I have known.

Please don't take this wrong but I am wanting to make sure I am understanding your description. Your dog would come of the hog when you got close, check you, and then go back to the hog?
Pretty cool pictures in your photo album.

 


Yes, we talking about 14 foot wall of cactus at night or seeoak so thick you cant see thru it and at night, like 20 to 200 acres like this sometimes on our ranches we hunted, thats why i dont like black mouth curs that have to much bite in them and are wacky catchy at the wrong time, the dog had been hunted so many times it knew you were unloading jumping mule to come to it, if you got lost or could not hear him you could hollar out and the dog would come back to show you were the hog was, we were hunting a 12,000 acre pasture called the straighjacket in spanish which i can speel anymore we used to own all in one piece.  The mules would trample the vines and brush down if they had to to get to the dogs, the mules would also snort or bark if they knew it was a big boar hog and was really giving the dog heck with charging.  I bought a dog named Butler from Lavon and raised  ltter out of a daughter of Billys dogs and got a whole pack of about 10 curs who would bay mostly, this is the litter that i drove hogs up to our working pens with mules in the daytime.  I always knew nothing had changed since Jude Hart did it but peeps were not interested in driving hogs, they wanted to slip in an dcatch a hog or 2 and go home.  lol  Billy raised bmc until recently and i think hurt his back, between Lavon and Blevins we had dog power and really got some good rank hogs, we hunted until we had the catch dogs worn out or cut down many a weekend down at the ranches we used to own, but Lavons and Blevins dogs were about the only ones you could do that will mules or just hunt one and not worry about them getting killed on 1 bad hog, the dogs been hunted and so smart they knew they had to bay until help came with gun or knife and not to catch.

only one missing out of that conversation is "old man john" that started them 2....

I often wondered if it would be possible to drive hogs these days, its hard to imagine doing.

The good old days i wish i was here to see them. Great pics

   


was old man John who exaclly, was that the guy who used to hunt with them both some, i think he came dowm a few times, was from seadrift or angleton i am thinking and died of cancer right after I met Lavon and Billy???   Seemlike he was a big hood dog guy and really loved the hood striking??

 

Yes, its still possbile if one wanted to, it would take somebody who could sort train and select only baying dogs and had to work them with hogs a lot.  I was pretty lucky in that we had a 200 head bull feedlot that hogs used to come up at night and get in with the bulls, we built a lil different lower board fence addition to where we could ride up and get out and shut a hole off in the feedlot pen.  I had my dogs kenneled right by the feedlot and they saw us trapping hogs in with the bulls.  I had those mules in a trap close by and they would come up to be sadlled.  We would turn loose about 5 or 6 hogdogs and go in there and sort the hogs off from the bulls, these pens were 500x1000 feet and we had 10 of them on each side of a feedbunk barn and they all joined,, we got the hogs going together after leting them sit in a corner being bayed for a hour or so and they kinda packed up and sulked, every time one would stick its head out to try to break out the hog dogs would get right in its face and back it up back to the hogherd, after a while we opened a gate and drive them in and out of a empety feedlot square pen with the dogs and mules.  I remeber dismounting to go get the feedtruck and feed bulls and the dogs stayed there for 3 or 4 more hours with the dogs baying them in the corner solo, we encouraged them some when we drove by and they kept baying the hogs like mad.  When we had all of the feed out in bunks we would open the gates to the 1000 acre coastal feild and enter then pen to drive those hogs across the coastal feild to a hog trap fenced off 10 acres we had left over from the 50;s, it had 9 bobwire and a roll of hog wire on the inside and hog trap wooden gate fingers on one way entrances to the hog trap, it was about 3/4 mile across open turff to drive them, we had to let the dogs do it really slow as the hogs would get to hot and drop dead from the heat, of course it helped that the ymcs could jump in the water trough while still baying those hogs up and get right bak out.  These dogs were the dogs i took down to the straightjacket de monte and got into a mess of hogs that bayed up in a seedtick thicket, i left them baying with about 15 dogs surrounding them, all curs, i kep the dogs from getting to close and they kept the hogs bayed up in there, the hogs got into a cirlce kinda with lil pigs in the middle, boars were on outside and sometimes one would try to break and the dogs would bite him some and run em back into the 15 that were in the thicket, I just sat there on mule for a couple of hours going roudn and round talking to the dogs so they not catch but stay bayed, the hogs kinda get a herd sulked up mindset and stay together, after a while i got the dogs to barely move them out of the thickit but in a group, we drove them about 1/2 mile up to the working pens and shut them off in the hog pen we had there, one dog kinda stayed in the lead and enticed the hogs every once in a while to kinda chase him, of course he was getting them to chase him to the hog trap pen where we had cast out in the first place, i think i started at daylight on 1 mule and it took 3 or 4 hours to drive these hogs like that, it was really slow and almost lost them several times but the dogs kept them in a herd and circling over and over without biting them up to makeem break bay and scatter, just like cows almost they never been penned or worked with dogs.  I did this 2 or 3 times until there were no hogs close enuff to drive, prob 1985 i guess, now seems like more russian in the hogs everwhere, i never tried it anywhere but bee county on our place, i not sure it would have worked of 100% Russians i see in hear every day.  We had good feral hogs back then.

Good read, thanks for posting up.  My Dad's rattler dog would do exactly like you decribed.  He would recognize when you got to the bay. Come out and greet you even bump you with his head like some dogs do when they are happy to see you.  Then he would go right back to the hog, most of the time he did this when he was bayed on a hog for a long time before you got there.  If the hog was hung up in some thick brush or matted vines, something that you could not see into and shoot the hog, he would wait unitill you arrived and let you get into position.  Then he would entice the hog to charge him and draw him out of the vines right to you so you could shoot him.  No Joke,  He knew how close to get to draw a hogs charge and knew just the right distance to stay back to keep one bayed.  I love dogs like that its almost like they recognize the partnership between you and them.  They are not just mindlessly barking at hogs.

Waylon

  Waylon, do you have a picture of him and what kind of dog was he as well, I used to never try to tell anybody stuff like this because they would not beleive it, but i just did it myself, thanks for posting up, I had about 3 or 4 rat terriers that were the same way, one was great at finding dead hogs or coon or bobcat trees from the foxhounds who did not stay treed very long if the tree was really high.  We also had thousands of javelinas at one time as well and they were horrible about getting in a tinhorn or cave or some kind of hollow tree and butchering dogs up really bad that you could not hear them due to being underground or in a log, the terriers would take us back to a log full of curs pit/cross's and 20 javilainsslol  Good ole Days, thanks for your post up as well.

I really like this thread and the old pictures!

The hogs really did bay better 20 plus years ago IMO.

x2

evolution can happen over thousands of years or even 20 years depending on how fast the animal needs to adapt if it can, otherwise it would become extinct. In the 80's and 90's I saw quite a few flop eared fat hogs that were black or spotted and those seemed to want to stop and fight. Stop and fight equals to caught hog. The russian looking hogs can and will fight but are smart enough to want to run. These live to breed on another day. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Lavon Davis was/is probably one of the first hog hunters that hog hunted with dogs in Brazoria county or surrounding counties for that matter.

Good pics and stories. Lavon used to be on here when we first started. Search for "HIPOCKETS" and you can see some of his old posts and pictures.

http://www.easttexashogdoggers.com/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=63

KnightStockTerrier,

Was that you that had the large rat terriers for coon and bobcat back in the early eighties? If so, do you still raise them? I talked to someone back then around the Beeville area that hunted and raised them.

   


Yea, thats was me, still have them, I got really addicted to bobcat and lion hunting there for a while was hunting with Joe Rufus Lyne all over and in Mexico before it all went south, now i am back where i began, Terriers and squirrelslol  Lavon Davis saved my life from a cow that was drowning me one time in a  flooded pasture when we went thru the pasture at night to catch a hog and woke her up with a new born baby calf, he got her off of me so i could make it to the fencelol She kept pushing my back down into the 4 inch water with her back every time i tried to rise and run off. We sure had some fine times running swamp rabbits on the Brazos too, I hate those devil fire ants that ruined so much rabbit hunting, did you know a guy maybe named Siszmore or something that came down with Lavon sometimes????

Those are some good pics  8)

"old man john" is from palacios....still kicking....

he has some old pictures in black and  white and them old "shake it like its a polaroid"kind

Them guys were young and every picture u see them in weather they had ball caps or cowboy hats they look like this  O0....it was in 85 when he took me out for my first adventure....

he hunted from brazoria all the way down the coast 2 corpus....

He is stock bred cur dog, still alive but around 17 years old and we dont hunt him any more.  Comes from an old line of Cur dogs from Grimes County.

(http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b364/Waylon8885/E_BarrRattle.jpg)

Waylon

Are you talking about Johnny Rodriquez?

yes i am....

he should be around 80 years old now.