A wet, grey dawn was breaking over Texas last week when a strapping, six-foot figure in cowhand clothes strode out. on the 80,000-acre Storey Ranch near Cotulla. The hard-preaching, hard-riding pastor of South San Antonio's First Baptist Church, Reverend Robert Gaddy Baucom, faced an impressive, tensely quiet assemblage. Lined up in front, 257 eager hounds strained at their leashes. At one side a Master of Hounds and twelve field judges sat their horses. Behind the dogs ranged 150 other mounted Texans, more than 1,000 in automobiles and trucks of every size and shape.
Hats went off, heads were bowed as Brother Baucom boomed a prayer. Master of Hounds John Aiken Rowan raised a Texas steer horn to his lips, blew long & loud. At this signal the hounds were loosed and, amid a great uproar of babbling dogs, roaring engines and shouting men, women & children, the whole assembly moved off into the brush. Thus began :he 1936 field trials of the South Texas Wolf Hunters Association, biggest "wolf hunt" in U. S. history.
When settlers from Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri pushed down to Texas last century, they took their foxhounds with them. Looking around for choicer game than Texas' quickly grounded grey fox, the settlers found it in the wily, hard-running coyote or "Mexican Wolf." At first the new quarry proved too fast, too long-winded for their hounds. Huntsmen sent back to Kentucky for dogs of the famed Walker and Trigg stock, soon bred a hound which could more than match the coyote's speed and stamina.
With their dogs cooped in trailers behind sturdy automobiles, Texas wolf hunters gather at 2 or 3 a. m., motor far out into the brush. Best time to cast the hounds is just before daybreak, when the land is wet and the dogs, running with heads up. can catch the wolf's strong scent from the bushes. Loosed, the dogs spread out fanwise, baying when they catch the trail. Behind them ride the huntsmen, bouncing 'hell bent over rough prairie, plowed ground and fields of cotton stalks. The coyote may run for several hours, stray far afield. As he tires, he returns to his home range, begins to run in ever narrowing circles like a fox. At the kill, the hounds pile on their prey, often smother him before they have ripped him badly with their teeth.
The South Texas Association's field trials began 15 years ago. First day of last week's meet was devoted to the Bench Show, in which dogs are judged solely on build and looks. In this event a 13-month-old black, white & tan Walker "gyp" (Texan for bitch) named Bess, owned by Paul Johnson of Liberty Hill, took the grand championship. Inexperienced, she made no showing in the field trials of the next three days, in which judges picked a 3-year-old gyp named Keno, owned by Robert Spurgeon Guyness of Poteet, as best of the 257 in speed, endurance, skill in trailing and driving.
Tennessee Boar Hunt (Cont'd)