DEDICATION

    As a child I loved going over to my Grandads, to spend time with him and my aunt, Myrtle Conner. My Grandad was a rather large, rough, tough, and burley man. He stood over six foot two inches and weighed over three hundred pounds. As a youngster I loved helping him on his small eighty-acres dairy farm. My favorite past time was sitting on my Granddads lap or beside him while he told me stories of his tales while bear hunting. In cha...

    In the fall of 1990, I had started a new adventure in life. I had just started a new job as a paramedic, for Carilion Patient Transport. I’ve been volunteering now for 10 years and have become an excellent paramedic. Also, I have hunted all my life from squirrel hunting, which was the first animal I had ever killed, to rabbit hunting, with my Uncle Paul Lowe he had six long legged, blue tick and beagle mix hounds, and they were some excellent rabbit beagl...

    After hunting season that year, I knew before next year I needed to get myself in better shape. The last day of the season had about killed me. I started eating healthier. I purchased a new ten-speed bike, so I could ride and build leg strength, and stamina. I worked hard that spring and summer. I was going to be ready for those long days, of bear hunting.

    In August, training season came in. This is th...

     Well, its January and Magic comes into heat. Rob and I had decided we were going to breed Magic with Wahoo we think they would produce some good puppies. I took Wahoo up to Robs house and left him there. I told Rob to take good care of him, he told me he would. I Hadn’t been home long when Rob called and told me, “To go to the emergency vet because Wahoo had been bitten by a copperhead”. I headed to the emergency vet and Rob...

    After a great season last year, we loaded up to attend Walker Days. I enjoyed going down and looking at what all the vendors had. I found automatic dog feeders that could hold twenty-five pounds of dog food and I got four of them. It makes taking care of the dogs easier. I also got more collars and dog leads that have a heavy nylon strap to hold onto, and a chain so dogs can’t chew through them. The dogs if tied to a tree will chew on the leads t...

    We went to walker days again; this is a yearly event we look forward to. They always have beautiful puppies and dogs there. I just enjoy walking and looking. I didn’t buy any big items except for a couple of collars and leads. I also brought back a dog that was a new breed for me a Catahoula {leopard dog} named Butter Beans. She was a smaller size for a Catahoula but I was told she bayed bears very well. I took a chance on purchasing her she w...

During the summer Rob always have a cookout. We are usually unable to make it to this event, due to I worked every weekend. I took the day off so we could attend. I was shocked when we showed up the place was packed. He has bands to come in and play some great music and a bar. Rob always barbecues a whole hog and it was delicious. I knew he said there usually a lot of people that shows up but I wasn’t expecting this many. We played some horseshoe an...

           I was an only child of my Mom Irene Joyce Conner Thacker, my dad Earl Legar Thacker had three children by another marriage. I was only close to the youngest of his other children, Michael Wayne Thacker. My dad was a conductor on the Norfolk and Western Railroad, which became the Norfolk and Southern Railroad. My mom was a stay-at-home mom and also cleaned houses for several folks that lived n...

During the off season we look at some new technologies, GPS it is similar to what you use in your vehicle but it is a handheld unit like deer hunters may use to mark a stand, blind or deer scrape. It has topographical map so you can see ridge lines and valleys. But these units take GPS to a different level they will connect to a GPS collar on your hunting dog. So basically, you have two different GPS units, the handheld unit will show a map with an arrow to mark your location on th...

           After a good but shortened season last year, and with learning the new technology the GPS we were excited to get the chase season started. As we are going into Stone-Cold-Gap, Cody was first one to arrive, as he was driving up Stone-Cold-Gap he ran up on a one-hundred-and-fifty-pound bear in the middle of the road. He said it was in no hurry and once in wondered off the road into the woods he just sat back...

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In this chapter I’m going to be telling about some of the bear hunting stories that isn’t going to be in chronological order, but rather than going back and placing them in the right chapter I’m making this chapter to tell you some of these tails. Some of these tails are quite bizarre.

One day while we were hunting in Kelley’s holler with Fox, and Gusto, we were rigging the Kelly’s Holler Road when we get a hot strike and all the dog...

           Chase season is here again and we head up to Franks and are planning on sending the dogs up at Franks to the left side of the road. Rob opens his tailgate and up the trail they go everyone else drops their tailgate and all is headed up the trail. When the dogs had top out, they continued on out the top of the mountain but the dogs begin to split up now, and is going in three different directions. We...

           About fifteen years ago Rob and a couple of the other hunters from our hunt club, decided that they would go hunting up in Maine, they took Robs dogs up there to hunt. Everyone who went up there the first year that they hunted in Maine, came back with a bear. Everyone seemed to really enjoy hunting in Maine as though it’s totally different hunting than in Virginia. Oxbow Outfitters ...

Our hunting group had a good chase season this year. We mainly saw sows with cubs or just small bears. We didn’t see many large bears during chase season, even though we didn’t see many large bears, there were good number of bears we were able to put up the bush. Landon my grandson is now getting through the woods a little better now due to it being his second-year hunting. Landon saw his first bear in the tree last year, it was his first-time hunting with us. H...

   I started this book with telling you a little bit about my granddad. Now I’m wanting to introduce to you my Great Grandson Landon Levi Gutshall. At places in this book I have already been speaking of him and if you have seen Grandson, actuality he is my Great Grandson. My wife Judy and Myself has had custody of Landon since he was three years old. Landon is the sweetest child I have ever known. We noticed at a young age that he wasn’t qu...

Join me as I take you through this exhilarating journey that is sure to keep you on the edge of your seat as you read through every suspense filled chapter. I will introduce you to my granddad within the first chapter and tell you all about his old-time ways of hunting bears and how he incorporated his part of the Appalachia culture into his hunts. You will feel as if you are right beside me as we embark on all my adventures with bear hunting, hanging onto the suspense of what is yet to come...