Legendary Bear Hunters from the Old School

Tales of bear hunting in Rabun County

by Jessica Phillips

TURNING ONTO CONNER LANE, my brother, Ethan, and I discussed how we thought the interview would go. As we drove up, we heard someone greeting us with a hello. As we got closer to the house, we realized it was Steve Conner. Martha, Steve’s sister, and Bill Speed were on the porch to greet us, as well. We walked in, and made our way to the dinner table where we conducted the interview.

Steve Conner and Bill Speed have been hunting together for more than fifty years. Steve and Martha are two of the children of Minyard Conner, who was featured in many previous Foxfire books. During the interview, Steve and Bill recalled stories from hunting together, as well as how hunting has changed throughout the years. Bill, along with Ray Conner, Steve and Martha’s brother, was the first person to ever hunt bears in Coweeta, an experimental forest located in Otto, North Carolina.

As the stories began to unfold, my brother and I could not stop laughing. We could tell through the looks on their faces and the tone of their voices that Steve and Bill really enjoyed their hunts. They even had special nicknames: While hunting, Steve was referred to as “Hog Jaw” and Bill was “Gray Fox.” Bill had a scrapbook with tons of pictures of bear hunting dating back to his first hunt in 1966.

When asked what this article should be called, he grinned with excitement and said, “Legendary Bear Hunters from the Old School.” We all laughed, and from that point on, this article had a name.

On their early days as bear hunters:

Steve: Me and Bill have hunted together about all our lives.

Bill: We’ve got about a hundred years of huntin’ between us both. We’ve both been huntin’ about fifty years apiece.

Steve: I guess the reason we always bear hunted was because it ran in our family. My twin brothers, Ray and Roy, always hunted, until they went to preaching. Ray’s in one of the Foxfire books. They put Roy’s name on [the picture in the book], but it was Ray. He was standin’ up there at that barn with a bear hide on it; but, they both quit bear huntin’, so me and Bill had to carry it on.

Bill: Steve uses a thirty-five when he hunts. I always liked to use my thirty aught six; but, back yonder when we first started, we just got whatever we could to hunt with. We mostly hunted with buckshot, and that was legal.

Steve: See, the season didn’t start in North Carolina until 1966. That’s when Bill and [his friend] Ray went to bear huntin’.

Bill: That’s when me and Ray Conner got dogs. We started getting us a pack of dogs to bear hunt with. We were the first bear hunters that ever hunted Coweeta the first year bear season opened.

Steve: Coweeta is in Otto, North Carolina. It is all that country around Pickens Nose.

And later:

Bill: I am a year older [than Steve]. I am seventy-two. In 1966, me and Ray Conner were the first two bear hunters that ever hunted Coweeta. Period. One day, we went after a bear. The dogs treed it. Well, we got to the tree. Ray looked at me and said, “You shoot that thing out of there.” I said, “That thing is far up in that tree. All I will do is burn him out.” But I said, “I’ll burn him out of there.” I had a double-barrel shotgun then. So, I pulled up, and I fired both barrels at that rascal. He was in the tip-top of that tree. I call these trees a lynn tree. I don’t know what kind they really are. They are a big ol’ tree and have big ol’ leaves on ’em. They are kind of like a poplar. That was the tallest tree I had ever seen. To make a long story short, I shot that bear with both barrels. He went right up in the air just like that [raising his finger in the air].

Instead of comin’ back down the tree, he fell just plumb out of it. I thought that I had killed him. Well, when he hit the ground—kids, this is no lie—he bounced twenty feet up in the air. I had never seen a bear bounce that high in my life. He bounced up about twenty feet. Well, when he came back down to the ground, the dogs covered him up. The dogs thought the bear was dead. Well, that thing came up from there. He whooped every dog we had. He ran about twenty yards down the hill, and every one of our dogs was right behind him. Boy, they was biting him. Well, he started up another tree. My gun was empty now, because I had just unloaded it on him. Ray’s gun was loaded. So, he just pulled up and pow! The dust just boiled out of that bear. I said, “Well, you got him.” I was gettin’ two more shells to go in my gun. I was puttin’ ’em in, and it didn’t faze that bear when we had shot him. That bear turned around, and he whopped every dog again. He saw me, and his eyes were just as focused on me as me and you lookin’ at each other. I said, “Oh no.” About that time, he laid his ear back like a mule. Ray said, “Bill, he’s gonna charge you!” I was just puttin’ the last shell in, and I was watchin’ him, too. He came wide open towards me. I said, “Oh no.” Boys, I reached for my shotgun, pushed the safety off, and he was then about five feet from me. I shot him from the hip right in the face. I pulled both barrels just like that. That tests your grit as bear hunter!

Steve: One day, I was up yonder, and we had one bayed in a rock cliff. There wasn’t but one way around there, and it was kind of an old trail that went through there. I was crawling around through there on my hands and knees. You could hear the dogs over there. Son, about that time, I heard a racket comin’. I looked up, and there came that bear right towards me. There was nowhere for me to go. I just dove to the left, and that thing ran right up to me and threw his brakes on just like that [pushing his hands on the table]. He looked at me and blew real big. He blew snot all over me. I came down as soon as he left, and I got out of there. That bear had just ran right up to me, threw his brakes on, and blew just like that. They’ll blow at cha’, you know. He blew snot all over me, turned around, and went right back in the rock cliff. I didn’t go that way anymore. The dogs went after that bear.

On their dogs:

Steve: The best thing you can do is take one dog at a time up a little ways and tie him up. Then, go back and get you another one. By the time you get the last dog up, the bear will hit the ground runnin’. He knows when you get that last dog, because he is watchin’ the dogs. I was gettin’ [my dogs] back away from a bear one day. I told Marshall that I got my last dog. I told him, “Get your dog out of there.” As soon as he got to the tree to get it, that bear started down. You ’ort of seen him, boy. He didn’t want to go get that dog! He was afraid that bear was gonna come down. They’ll hit the ground. Buddy, as quick as you get those dogs back, they’re gone. Sometimes, the bear will not come down.

My favorite part about bear huntin’ would be listening to the race, the sound of the dogs. You can tell when they are runnin’ by the sound. Then, when they all lock down on the tree, oh boy! That is beautiful! You can hear that from a long way.

Bill: That’s the best part about it.

Steve: Bear hunting has changed a lot. When we first started, you didn’t have any of this tracking stuff. My brother Ray Conner would take off behind the dogs when I turned them loose.

Roy was a lot like me. He would kind of hang behind. See, Bill and Ray would take after the dogs. You would pull over one top, hear ’em, and you’d go again. If you couldn’t hear ’em, you couldn’t find ’em. It could be three or four days before you would find your dogs. But now, we’ve got a tracking system. It used to be just trackin’ devices that went around their neck. You would hold it and follow it. It would beep, and you would know where the dogs were at. Now, everything is GPS. Oh, son! You can just watch ’em on TV! I love it!

Bill: That’s not bear huntin’ the old way. They like the GPS, though. It will tell you right where the bear is, and how to get there. It tells you how far away it is and everything. It saves you a lot of extra steps and lost dogs.

Steve: You know how a mountain is marked at the top, like Jones Mountain? There will be a big survey thing there that says Jones Mountain when you put your arrow from the GPS on it. It will tell you the name and everything about that mountain. You can see right where your dogs are. Then, you can go right straight to ’em. It ain’t nothin’ to keep up with your dogs now. But, back there years ago, we’ve had dogs stay gone for a while. There was one who stayed gone for over a week.

Bill: Ole Bullet stayed gone for about a month.

Steve: Nobody could catch Bullet. Bill was the only one who could catch him. Somebody finally told him that they seen him up there in the Flats sitting under a tree. There is a big white fence up there above the Flats on the right. They said they seen him, and Bill went up there.

Bill: I talked to him, and here he came just like that.

Steve: But, son, he was a bear and hog dog. The little ol’ dog was a real dog. He’d catch a bear or hog.

Martha: That dog wasn’t registered either.

Steve: The last time we’d seen him was when he left here on a bear. We haven’t seen him since. That was back before we had all of that trackin’ stuff.

Bill: I believe the bear got him. We couldn’t find him. I bet I burnt ten tanks of gas huntin’ for him.

Martha: Bill generally kept three dogs. Ray would keep two or three. They’d all keep about three. So, that was about nine altogether. Then, when Steve came home, he added some more to the pack.

On controlling the bear population:

Steve: I do think huntin’ is valuable to our culture here in Rabun County. You need to keep it a-goin’. There ain’t nobody else goin’ to keep it a-goin’. We used to have to look for a week to find a bear track. Sometimes we would even go a week without finding one. But now, you don’t have to. Son, they are comin’ to your house!

Bill: I was sitting out there on the porch last spring, and I look down the road, and there went one across the road just walkin’. We came in from a ball game, and one was walkin’ right by the smokehouse out there.

Martha: If you live out like this, they’ll get in your garden and eat up all your corn, tear up bee gums and bird feeders, and make a mess out of trash.

On other bear hunters:

Bill: Taylor lived out on Highway 64 out of Franklin. I’d say he was one of the first bear hunters in Macon County. We’ve hunted with all the Legion bear hunters. We hunted with the old ones like Jess Mason. He lived over yonder on Tellico. We’d go over there and hunt.

Steve: Jerry Ayers come out of the Smokies like my mother. He was my uncle. He was my mother’s brother. He hunted with us. He was an old man.

Bill: Jerry went with us huntin’. Me, him, and Ray was huntin’ up on Coweeta. We was about the only four up there. We sat down to eat dinner one day, and we was just sittin’ there. The dogs were off in there runnin’. We didn’t know if they were on a bear or what. But, we would listen to the race and eat dinner, too. He was blind in one eye, and he wore a patch over it. A big, black butterfly came right at him, and went by him right there at his face. Jerry said, “That blame raven like to hit me right in the face!”

On things they’ve seen while hunting:

Bill: Dillard Green and Chris, his brother, lived up on Betty’s Creek. We used to hunt with them a lot. They’d see a bear, and they’d call us until we went up there. They liked bear huntin’. Do you like snakes? Well, we went on a hog-huntin’ trip. Me, Steve, Roy, Ray, and David went down on the river. Well, me and Ray went one way, and the other boys stayed there. They sat down on this old log. They was restin’. Well, one of them said, “I’d be dad-burn if I don’t believe I seen a snake go up in that log.” Steve said, “I know it was.” The log was hollow and rotten. Roy said, “Well, we’ll just get him out of there, and see what kind he was.” Well, ri’ here is what they got out of that log. There were rattlesnakes and copperheads. So, they killed ’em all and put ’em in a sack. They thought they had killed all of ’em. When they opened up the sack, they had a bunch of little’ns in the sack.

Steve: The big snakes would open their mouths, and the little ones would run in there.

Bill: The little snakes run down the big snakes’ throats. See, we’ve done about everything there is to do out there. We’ve killed snakes, and just about every varmint there is. Steve and me are close, and we know each other. We know what each other will do and how we’ll do it. We learned that from each other throughout the years.

Steve: I’ve been huntin’ all of these years. The other day was the first time I have ever seen five bears together. There were two that was a little bigger. They had four cubs up there and one sow.

PLATE 76 Bears that have been left in trees

Two of the cubs were a little bigger than the other two. But, that tree was slap full of bears.

Bill: Like he was sayin’ a minute ago, back then, bears were hard to come by. Tom finally got to kill one. Steve’s and my dogs treed the bear. He didn’t even have a dog that would tree, and he had about eight or ten plots. We let him shoot it. He’d been huntin’ with us for twenty-five years every day the season was open. But, that’s the way it goes.

Steve: Now, we won’t hardly kill one unless we’ve got somebody young with us, or somebody that has never killed one before. If we are just by ourselves, we’ll leave it up there.

On eating bear:

Martha: My daddy loved eating bear. He would even render the fat out of it just like the old people used to do. That is what they lived on.

Steve: Mom would make biscuits out of that fat. They would come out just as fluffy.

Martha: When he passed away, he had two big lard cans of fat for Mama to make biscuits out of. It was good.

Bill: You could taste the bear in it, though, but it was a biscuit!…

Martha: See, the Indians ate bear. Dad and Mom were raised in the Smoky Mountains. They ate anything Dad brought in. Mom was a good cook. We all ate what she cooked and liked it. We don’t eat wild meat much anymore.

Steve: We just divide all the meat up when we kill a bear. We’ll take it up there and skin it. We’ll take all the good parts and cut ’em up. That way, you’ll get some of all of it.

Martha: Steve can cook some good bear barbecue.

And later:

Steve: We skin the bear from the back feetfirst, just like you do a deer. You cut it just down the straddle and pull the skin on down. Then, you start cuttin’ it up. If a big ol’ bear ham is layin’ here like this, we’ll just cut it in about three or four different sections where everybody can get some. You’ll get some of the good with the bad. You just take a sack with you. When you’re cuttin’ it up, you make different piles, and everybody gets ’em a pile to take with ’em. We have skinned a lot of bears ri’ here on that old tree in Bill’s backyard. We had a table to lay the meat down on to cut it up.

Martha: We like to cook bear in the Crock-Pot, the slow cooker, about ten to twelve hours.

Steve: I like bear in Dale’s seasoning. Now, son, that’s good!

Martha: My daddy, Minyard Conner, loved bear.

Steve: Daddy just liked his boiled. He didn’t like anything on it except salt and pepper. That’s how he ate it. My uncle Jerry, the man we was talkin’ about, had a bad stomach. I mean, a real bad stomach. I’ve seen him take a biscuit, tear it open, and put plain bear fat in it and eat it. He said that that wouldn’t hurt your stomach. I believe it because of the way he ate it.

We was bear huntin’ one day, and we accidentally got up on a hog. We killed it, and he was a boar. He had teeth that long [holding his finger so far apart], and he stunk. Man, he was rotten!

We got out of there, and we skinned that hog. None of us wanted any of the meat, so we gave it all to Uncle Jerry. He’d eat anything. He took it home with him. The next mornin’, Jerry came back with a sandwich made out of that hog. Shoo! I smelt that just as quick as he got it out.

When you make old boars mad, it makes the meat stink. You have to throw the pot and everything away when you cook that meat! But, he brought me a sandwich made out of that meat. He brought Mike, my brother-’n-law, one, too. Mike looked at me funny after he had taken a couple of bites and smelt that stuff. Boy, in just a minute, I caught his back turned, and I sailed mine down through the woods. Mike’s seen me do that, and he threw his down there, too. Boy, we really bragged on that meat, but we didn’t want any more.

On their best bear hunt:

Bill: I couldn’t name a best time that we’ve had. I really don’t know what the best time we’ve really ever had. I guess just sittin’ down laughing about somethin’ that happened on the hunt was pretty good.

Steve: We had to pull a bear through a yellow jackets’ nest one time, and everybody got stung. That was pretty good.

Bill: Oh, I won’t tell that now. That’s bad! That was the most laughin’ that has ever been done on a bear hunt. We were bear huntin’ with Uncle Jerry, and we killed a bear. It took ’em to almost dark to bring the bear out. There was an old roadbed there, and I was holdin’ two or three dogs. Ray and Roy was pullin’ the bear, and Steve was leading the dogs. Their uncle Jerry sat down on the bank where the old roadbed was. He wore overalls. Back then, old men didn’t wear no draw’s. Well, we were sittin’ there, and I was sittin’ right beside him. All at once, he just jumped up from there. He had sat right in a yeller jackets’ nest. He didn’t know it was there. He shook them overalls down to his ankles and bowed over and said, “Roy! Get these things off of me! They’re eatin’ me up!”

Well, Ray and Roy are twins. Any little thing like that will tickle ’em to death. One will get tickled, and then, the other one will get tickled. They’ll just get down and roll. They’ve always been that way. Well, Roy was laughin’ so hard at Ray over there, and I just walked off to keep from gettin’ stung. I was laughin’, too, to tell you the truth. They ate him up. Roy was tryin’ to get ’em off of him, and he finally got started.

Steve: Ray hollered at somebody, and they jumped in the truck. We wrapped a rope around the bumper, and we pulled the bear out of the way of the yellow jackets.

On hog hunting:

Martha: A couple of years ago, they killed a bear the first day the season opened in North Carolina. About four hundred yards away, the dogs struck a hog. They ended up killing a hog and a bear the same day. They ran the hog so long that he ran through the cold creek, and it killed him.

Steve: He got in the cold water, fell down, and died. All of his muscles locked down. He was as stiff as a board.

Bill: A bear got into Bruce Kenner and Pledger Thurmond’s bee gums one time. They ended up wounding it, and they called me. I took my dogs up there. They bayed it. The bear was down. This picture is Pledger up on top of it. Now, that was a big bear, too.

Steve: Both of them fellers are dead now.

Bill: Mal James owned Osage Mountain up yonder on Hell Ridge. There had been a big hog comin’ in and eatin’ their corn. He had been rootin’ up their fields. I seen Mal one day, and he looked at me and said, “Bill, do you have any hog dogs?” I said, “Well, I’ve got some hog dogs.” He said, “Do you think you can catch a big boar?” I said, “Yeah.” Well, he said, “I’ve had about fifteen different people up here, and it’s whooped every dog they’ve got and ran ’em off.” He said, “I want you to come and try your luck.” I said, “Okay. I’ll be up there in the mornin’.” He said, “Well, I’ll be waitin’ on you.” So Steve, Ray, Roy, and me went up there. We found some fresh sign. [One of our dogs] had that hog bayed within fifteen minutes. So, we turned our catch dogs loose.

They caught the Osage boar. Mal and ’em were comin’ up from the other side. We could hear ’em talkin’. I told Ray, “I want Mal to see what kind of dogs I’ve got.” They got to see the hog caught, and we brought him out of there.

Steve: Ray had several bulldogs get killed by hogs. Me and Bill have had several good bear dogs killed by bear. They bite them through the back, and they tear the skin open with their claws, knocking out their hip joints.

Bill: Those hogs would stab the dogs. They’ve got ’em big ol’ knives for tusks that are as long as my finger. If they stab ’em in the chest, they’ll go right into their hearts and kill ’em dead. We went huntin’ up on Messer Creek one time with their uncle Jerry. There was a bunch of hogs up there. Well, we all went a different way. I was comin’ in with my catch dog one way. Ray was goin’ in another way with a catch dog, and Roy was comin’ up with a bay and catch dog. If a dog bayed at the top, then somebody would be there to turn their catch dogs loose. If we could hear ’em, we were going to turn our catch dogs loose, too. They’d go straight to where they heard the racket comin’ from. Well, I heard the little bay dog bay, and, boys, I took off a-runnin’. I was tryin’ to get there just as hard as I could go, because I knew Jerry was right there where they were. Well, about that time, I heard the gunfire. I said, “Well, Jerry’s already shot one of ’em hogs.” Well, when I got there, he had shot one. He had a big ol’ sow shot. She was as long and high as this table. Well, she had got up on her feet. Jerry had it by the tail, and it was tryin’ to get away. He was in a laurel thicket with that big ol’ hog holdin’ it by the tail. He had it stretched as long as a cow’s tail. Well, he’d seen me, and he hollered, “Shoot this thing!” He said, “It’s gonna get away, and I’m give out!” I just got down and started rollin’. I was so tickled. That was the funniest sight I had ever seen. There is a man with a wild hog by the tail, and it’s tryin’ to get away.

Steve: The hog was pullin’ him down the laurel thickets. Jerry was puttin’ his feet against everything. We now called that place Cal Laurel.

Bill: I finally quit laughin’ enough so I could get my gun out, and I was still tickled. I aimed at its head, and I shot and killed it. He said, “I couldn’t’ve held it another second!” That was all he said. He was just plain give out.

Steve: He was mad because Bill didn’t shoot it fast enough.

Bill: One time, we was up at Coyle Justice’s house. Coyle had a garden up there on Betty’s Creek. Steve, Ray, Roy, Jerry, George, and me went up there. They were rootin’ up his ’taters like a plow. Well, Coyle said, “You boys are gonna have to come up here and do somethin’ with these hogs. I’m not gonna have a ’tater for this fall.”

We went up there at night, ’cause we had to work during the day, and the hogs would come out at night. So when we got out, the hogs ran up the hill there above Coyle’s. There was a big ol’ rock cliff up there. It was about as high as this house. We turned the dogs loose, and then, that hog came right straight over the top of my head. He landed in the brush pile. Roy was standin’ to the side of me, and we had just unlatched our two catch dogs. They took off, and Roy went about six feet. That was right where the hog had hit. My dog was black, and he passed [Roy’s dog, which] thought that was the hog that went by him. There was a dogwood there. It was about this four inches around and eight feet high. That crazy bulldog locked on that dogwood bush, and he thought that he had the hog caught. He wouldn’t turn loose. We left him locked on that bush until everybody saw what he had locked on.

Steve: We had to choke him off of it! A lot of times, you would have to carry a choking stick with you. You would put it in the dog’s mouth behind their teeth and twist it. It would make them open their mouths. You could break ’em loose. Pitbulls will lock down like that. You can’t get ’em loose. That’s the way that dog was.

Roy’s ol’ Rock was cut all to pieces here. We brought the hog in and put it downstairs. We carried that dog in, because he was cut all to pieces. We laid him down over there on a coat. He saw that hog, and he went to wobbling towards it. He was gonna catch it again!

On other hunting adventures:

Bill: We would go anywhere that people called us about a bear or hog. We’ve had some times, and some good times at that!

Steve: We’ve been at it fifty years, buddy. That’s a long time to be huntin’.

Bill: We ran a bear through the Owl’s Den over a rock cliff. In our party this time was Steve, Eddie, Clayton, Conner Speed, my fourteen-year-old grandson, and Marshall. Eddie and Clayton went to the barking dogs. Two were hung up on the cliff. The bear had jumped off the cliff and left.

Clayton’s dog was about forty feet from the ground on a tree that was leaning up the rock. They watched the dog go as far as he could up the tree. The bear turned around on the dog and came back down. They knew if he fell that he was a dead dog. He made it down. My dog was on about a ten-foot ledge. He had fell over the top and landed on the ledge. Eddie and Clayton looked at him about seventy feet up, and they couldn’t see any way to get the dog out. They said, “You’ll have to shoot him.” They went back to the truck where Conner and I was, and they told me what they thought. Conner and me wanted to see what we thought. I had two dog leashes which I tied together, and I found a ledge to put my toes on to creep around to the dog. I saw I needed some help, so I called Steve on my handheld radio. Steve and Marshall came.

Steve: When I saw Bill up on that cliff, he was tied to his dog leashes and holding on to a little old scrub tree. I said, “I can’t believe you are out on the face of this cliff holding on to a scrub tree that is coming out of a crack.” Conner was on the top telling his grandpaw to come back because it was too dangerous. When Marshall came, he had a short rope that he tied to a tree on the top. We retied ourselves and sent Marshall to Dillard to get a longer rope about one hundred feet.

Bill: When Marshall came back, we were about twenty-five feet from the dog. I tried to lasso the dog four or five times, but I couldn’t get him. Steve said, “Let me try.” He threw three times and caught the dog on the last throw. We pulled the noose tight, and together, we pulled the dog up over the ledge and on up to the top on his side.

PLATE 77 Bill Speed, Martha Speed, Jessica Phillips, and Steve Conner

PLATE 78 Steve Conner and Bill Speed with Steve’s hunting dog

Conner and Marshall said that they were glad they saw the dog make it out, because it looked impossible. Eddie and Clayton’s eyes popped, because they didn’t believe this rescue. That was one of the most dangerous hunts we have ever had. That is what a hunter will do for his best dog!

Steve: My dad, Minyard Conner, hunted in the Smoky Mountains before the park came in. He said he had heard the old men saying a bear would pack his wounds and get well. I killed a bear that had a funny-lookin’ place on his back leg. I showed this to Dad. He said, “He has packed his wound.” As I examined his leg, the hair stuck straight out and it had crushed acorns in it that had been half digested and threw up. Both sides of his leg had this packed into his hair about a half-inch thick. The bullet didn’t hit the bone, just the flesh wound. The old people always said that the animals knew how to doctor themselves. I have never seen this before or even after that.

One training season on Commissioner, the dogs were after a walking bear [a bear that is too big to tree]. They were going up the small creek because the hill was steep. I went up on a rock cliff where I could see where the dogs and bear had come below me. I watched them go behind the rock, and in just a minute, the bear came up on the top of the rock where I was. I couldn’t run or jump. I went to yellin’ and wavin’ my arms. The bear kept coming towards me. I thought maybe that I could hit the top of a tree when I jump. The dogs were after him real close. They must have nipped him. He made a sharp turn and went by the dogs. Now, that was when I was between a rock and a hard place.

We were huntin’, and I had killed a hog with about an eight-inch-by-two-and-one-half-inch stick. It was comin’ out of his chest. As he was runnin’ through the brush, a limb off a dead tree had went between his rib cage and his shoulder. The wound had healed with scar tissue all around the stick. This had tapered and sharpened on one end. This is probably a once-in-a-lifetime sight.

Two hours had passed by, but I felt like we had just gotten there. As we left, you could hear Bill’s hunting dogs barking in the distance.