Hunting stories at Coffee time

Neighbor fellow was over for coffee time yesterday. It was pouring down rain. I left a styrofoam coffee cup outside stuck in a barrel and it has two inches of rain in it this morning.
The neighbor was on a roll. He was telling hunting stories. They started off talking about my Uncle's Black labs. There were two. The first that people remember was named Champ. My cousin started hunting pretty young. The dog weighed almost more than her and she would have to hang on to the leash very tightly or Champ would run into the duckpond and scare the ducks away. My cousin sparked the whole discussion. She bought a new pickup and gave her old truck, a late 1990's Ford Ranger 4wd, to my uncle. This may be the first Ford he has every owned. Funny...
There was a photo of my cousin with a good sized four point buck on the coffee table and the discussion started from there.
Somehow they got on the subject of lions and bears. Two of our other neighbors were sure there were cougars down on our river bottom. This proved to be only Stanley running around and chasing deer. Stanley is a great dane/Aussie shepherd mix. He has huge feet. One of our neighbors thinks he is Natty %^&ing Bumppo anyway.
The visiting neighbor was talking about hunting bears and cougars with dogs. It was actually a pretty interesting discussion. I wish I would have taken more note of the terms he was using. I was only half listening as I was trying to wire a complicated switch for my grain drill flow meter.
The dogs now days have tacking collars. Sometimes people pay thousands of dollars for a dog with a good nose. One of his friends lost his dogs for 18 days in the California mountains . They showed up at a ranch skin and bones.
Hunters use radio direction finders to locate the dogs.
Dogs can actually run the wrong the direction on the trail.
Bears are harder to tree than cougars. Cats don't have as much lung capacity. You can hear what is going on from the sound of the dogs. Bears tear up dogs for than Cats. Sometimes the bears chase the dogs.
Uncle told about his coon hunting experience with the neighbors father. The old coon dog had been tied up in the back yard in town for several years. The father decided to take him hunting one last time. Uncle and neighbor turned to old fellow off and away he went in full cry. Then everything got quiet.
They went looking for him. He ran so fast and he was so old, he just lay down and couldn't go anymore. The two of them had to carry the old dog out of the woods.
In Oregon you can't hunt cougars with dogs. The idiots who live here thing that it is a cruel sport. It is okay for a cougar to eat a deer while it is still alive but it is not ok for a pack of dogs to tree a cougar.
Sterilization drugs should be an essential part of things like organic coffee, alfalfa sprouts, the air in Portland. Um, and Methamphetamines...(just to be fair)
So we have lots of cougars who are no longer afraid of people.

For the recond...
I am not a hunter.
I like to shoot guns at tin cans. I like to shoot nutria's as they are a nasty pest. I like to shoot rats and starlings. I don't shoot coyotes as they eat lots of mice.
I don't really like hunters as a general group. But that is another story. We rent from a fellow who has a couple farms just for the joy of shooting ducks, pheasants, and geese. I support goose hunting. They are a pest. This hunter is a pretty nice guy. Someday I may feel inspired to express myself about hunters. Probably the next time they pull in the driveway and get the dogs going nuts at 4 a.m. on a Sunday morning.
People who are all alone in their world-which is a very important world, I might add...