Well being from Yankee land I did get lucky and live in Georgia for 8 years. During those years I got to become real good friends with a bunch of South Georgia good ole boys. They called me their token Yankee. I was raised in a part of the country that detested dogs running deer in the woods. In fact, I was taught to shoot on sight. I never could bring myself to do it though. I always saw them as some little kids pet just doing what dogs want to do naturally. Their mentality is not the same as we human folks.

Anyway, during my time in Georgia one of my redneck friends talked me into joining a dog club. They had 50 members and 20,000 acres of timber land as their lease. The cost to each member was only $50 a year as the head of the club was the regional manager for the paper company. We joined because the dog season was only 2 weeks long and only 4 of us hunted with the bow. That meant we had about 5,000 acres a piece to bowhunt. LOL It was a no brainer. BUT, in the interest of playing the game my buddy and I said we had to join in a couple of the hunts with dogs just to stay in the good graces of all. We also made it a point to attend every work day and do our part. Besides that, if you didn't do the work days you didn't get a key to all the locks on the chains across the gates.

I must admit, I had a ball. It was an organized disorganized chinese firedrill. I never laughed so hard in my life. I even went as far as to build a dog box on my truck and added a half dozen leashes with snap rings for gathering hounds. As was mentioned, everyone of them had a bunch of dogs. Turn loose a couple truck loads of July, Walkers etc, add 20 trucks zipping back and forth over logging and dirt roads, add in CB radios yacking away, throw in a generous sampling of Southern Drawl and names of such places as "The Coka Cola Stand", "The Dry Gultch Ridge", "Bubbas Bayou", etc etc. Well heck, it was non-stop pandamonium.

The day always started with scouts touring the dirt roads looking for big tracks or bucks themselves. (The dog hunters weren't always too particular about horns though. If their dog was running it you better shoot it. That is the only rule I couldn't follow. Again, my upbringing and I was chastised a couple times for letting deer go.) All the rest of us gathered at the same meeting point for a safety briefing, lies, tales and gawfaws and a little tobaccospitting. That get together in itself was Old South Tradition at it's best. I soon developed a fondness for these people and their way of life and choice of hunts. They were just fun to be around. It wasn't my kind of hunting, but you couldn't help but get caught up in it all. By the second year I was fully into this Southern Tradition and lost my Yankee distain for such things. I became a full time groupie for those two weeks. It's a Southern thang for sure. I never fully adopted all their principals or lack of, but I understood them for what it was. Ole South at it's fullest.

I'm back in Yankee land living now but still travel to South Georgia 2 or 3 times a year. My ole ties with these boys still are strong and I'm always treated special when I visit them. In these times of $10-20 and acre leases I still have thousands of acres of private land I can hunt if I make the trip. I just don't seem to have the time to make the trips during hunting season. Now they're over run with wild hogs. I had one small farmer with a thousand acres tell me the last time down, please come and kill some of these damn hogs. He leases 300 acres to some boys from Florida for $10 and acre but saves the other 700 for himself and friends. Yes sir, I've tried the dogs and it changed my way of thinking. The South won't rise again.... it never fell. It's alive and well.