EATON ON HOUNDS

Apologies for a lacklustre edition last time around - I’ve been busy with my new retirement plan and struggle with time and keeping my eyes open after I finish work for the day. I mentioned in the last column that I was heading off to South Africa on safari and that’s now been and gone. It was an awesome trip and I can’t wait to go back. It’s so different to what I have been used to doing here. All up I did 76,000 steps during the nine days there so I was pretty happy to sit down at the end of each day. Some real-world advice for you if you intend to do something like what we did is to stick with beer and Coke. Don’t trust bottles of water. But that’s not what this column is about, it’s about hounds.

This is going to be my last column after almost 10 years and I thought I might reminisce about a few hounds I have had over the last 25 years. Some I don’t have a lot of pictures of but others I have heaps.

I’m going to start with Jerry, the first bitch I had. She did all the right things as a pup and then became the mainstay of my pack. She was an awesome little dog and produced some champions.

Gramps was one of Jerry’s pups. Rob Strecker had a couple of his brothers and when the three of them ran together they didn’t give up. Gramps would sometimes nick off by himself and would take a bit of finding as he would just keep going.

Along the way I’ve had a few handy pack-dogs including Jig, Tank, Mouse and Cheeks.

I kept three bitch pups from one of my litters - Alice, Daf and Flo. While the first two went really well and could be relied on every weekend Flo just didn’t perform. It turned out that she had an eye issue that caused a nasal infection so all she could smell wasn’t very pleasant. I borrowed a dog off a mate and joined Flo and she produced eight pups. I kept four of them and so began the Bill, Mack, Darkie and Dora decade.

These four were incredible right from the start as pups. They ran together, voiced non-stop and stuck to a scent. I put a story in this magazine a long time ago about starting a deer at 8.15 am on Saturday and shooting it bailed at 8.00 am on Sunday morning. They were still with it and still voicing! Colin had a dog box door come open one night on his way up a hill and managed to eject Mack and Darkie. Mack escaped unscathed while Darkie had a hole in the top of his head - it didn’t slow them down, if anything it made them more focused on what needed doing. Dora was the also-ran of the group as she was smaller and would get burnt off, but she would always be there at the end. Bill was the biggest sook around and was everyone’s mate, always keen for a pat, scratch or contact.

Taxi was another hound that I must mention. He was the most ungainly dog I have ever seen - it almost looked like the connection between his front and back legs miscommunicated at times. But if you heard Taxi’s awful yodel he was on and you needed to get moving. I remember well the last deer shot off him. I had sent Colin into the bail and after 20 minutes he still hadn’t made it there. I went in and managed a half-grown animal. While Colin was dragging the deer out of the bush, Taxi was dragging me along singing at it. I managed some video of the event and still play it every now and again to remember an interesting event.

Anyhow all good things must come to an end and Bill, Mack, Darkie and Dora are now retired. Taxi passed a few years ago and I’m sure people will have found his name carved into a piece of timber up the hills. These hounds were four of the best.

Anyhow its goodbye from me and the column as well. It’s been a challenge, inspiring and hard work at times. I hope someone else will take up the challenge of writing a regular item for Australian Deer to inspire and advance the most traditional method of hunting sambar in Victoria – that of using scent trailing hounds.