Bernard Pyron
Old Box School House (Benton City, Northern Atascosa county, Texas). The one lane dirt road - in the forties - turned off to head south toward Atascosa Creek beside the School just to the east. Down in a live oak mott John McCain often set up his camp and turned his hounds loose.
The last hunt I was on was at Christmas time in 1961 with Warren Healer, who had a few hounds, Uncle Casey Pyron, and George Pyron. Healer's dogs didn't jump a coyote and all we heard was an occasional bark by his trail dogs.
I have not heard a pack of hounds barking on a hot trail many times. In 1946-47 when I went with Daddy to sit at the camp fires of John McCain, he had only five or six hounds and they were not as impressive as 40 or more hounds all barking at once, as George describes for some hunts in the thirties.. And when that many were sounding on a hot trail, hound dog men like Luther James, John McCain, the Preacher, Daddy and George could still hear individual dogs and their voices.
I looked again at some of the hunts George Pyron writes about in his Journal. George was my brother and he was fourteen years older than me. So, when he wrote his Journal of Wolf Races, 1934-1935, I was only three or four years old. But I have memories of George, Daddy and Uncle Casey Pyron talking about coyote hunts back in the thirties and remember some Sunday trips my father made to sites, often in the Black Jacks, looking for lost hounds, where they had camped and turned dogs the loose the night before.
"November 30, 1934 - Caught one wolf in south-east part of Ballard pasture. Ran one hour and fifteen minutes. Caught two more in McDonald's pasture, first one in two hours, second one two and a half hours.About 45 dogs. S. Guynes, Ed Pakowitz, Woods, Jasper Newman, McKon brothers. Pep and three others caught in traps. Left Jack and he came home."
He mentions S. Guynes, Ed Pakowitz, Jasper Newman and KcKon brothers, all of whom I have never heard of before.
They caught a coyote in the south-east part of the Ballard, and that same night they caught two more in McDonald's pasture. McDonald's pasture may have been on Senior Road or in that area, east of Somerset. This suggests the Ballard might have been east of Somerset.
"December 8, 1934 - Ran first wolf five hours and was lost or caught by hog wire fence on the Poteet Road. Jumped in Wheeler pasture. Ran second one four hours and caught on creek below. Beulah, Cricket, Speck, Lad, Young Runt, Patsy and Crumy ran last one. Lost Old Aunt, Elgin's four pups and Qed. L.M. James 4, Bob Woods 5, we (George and Blake Pyron) 9, Elgin 4 and Simmons turned loose one."
Elgin is Elgin Kilburn, brother of Ernest Kilburn, mother's brother in law
This hunt was also east of Somerset somewhere, since the coyote was lost near the Poteet Road. The assumption is that coyotes did not usually go too far from their home areas. He says they jumped a coyote in the Wheeler pasture, probably also east of Somerset and maybe near the Poteet Road.
I wonder what the first name of this Wheeler was?
"December 29, 1934 - John McCain and Luther jumped in Reed Thicket at 5 PM, ran to Black Hill, Kirk, Vogt, Bilhardt and Quesenberry. Ed Kampf tuned loose at 12 P.M., Otto at two A.M., we at five A.M. Ran on this side of Elm Creek when we turned loose and caught ay 8 A.M. under a house on a road below the light line. Curley cut bad by wolf."
This hunt was apparently north of Somerset and he does not mention the Ballard.
"January 26, 1935 - Went to pasture below woods and heard wolves howl in Byrom's pasture. Drove up road and Jerry and Dixie jumped hot and Jack and Pep trailed to Ballard and came back to the others.
Ran about forty five minutes and house dogs broke up the race. Beulah and Mack jumped another and ran an hour, and Jerry got caught in a trap and broke race up. Beulah and Smut and Mack trailed and jumped another one. About 2: 30 A.M. caught in Ballard. Elgin 4, Woods 3, We 10. Stars: Beulah, Dixie Smut, Pep."
So, Pep was still alive for this January 1935 hunt. Byrom's pasture could be just south of Somerset in the Old Somerset area. He says they drove up the road and Jack and Pep trailed to the Ballard, suggesting the Ballard might not have been too far from the Old Somerset area, if Byrom's pasture is that of Andrew Byrom who owned part of the I.N. Cooper Survey number 378, and apparently also part of the G.W. Caruthers place. This is not the same Byrom family as that of Charley Byrom and his brother Fred Byrom, though the two Byrom families might have been related.
"February 2, 1935 - Went to Ballard and Jack, Beulah, Queen, Pep and Smut jumped and ran for three hours and out of hearing. Finally located them in lower Ballard and turned young dogs loose. Ran back toward Wilson's goat proof fence. Left Cricket, Speck, Arp and Red in McDonald's still running. John McCain, Woods and us."
He does mention a Ballard land and a lower Ballard tract. Coyotes tend to stay within their territory of a few miles when they are jumped by a pack of hounds. By Woods, he may mean Robert Woods, who I think lived in a house on Ernst Road east of the Gus Kurz place.
There was a small Wilson tract not far east of Somerset and a larger Wilson tract
farther east of the town close to the Poteet road.
Screen Shot: John Wilson Survey 265 East of Somerset
Screen Shot: Andrew Byrom owned part of the I.N. Cooper Survey number 378, and apparently also part of the G.W. Caruthers place. The dotted line is the Bexar-Atascosa county border. Somerset is north.
I looked on the Bexar county Clerk's office, 1879 and 1897 Bexar county landowners maps and the Texas General Land office sites for a Wheeler tract of land on or near the Poteet road, or the Palo Alto Road.
George Pyron in his Journal of Wolf Races mentioned going to the Wheeler pasture.
There was in the 1879 Bexar county landowners map a Wheeler tract of fairly larger size south of the Samuel McCulloch Republic of Texas grant. The SE corner of the Samuel L. Wheeler tract joined the original A.M. Pyron northern tract just west of the intersection of Somerset Road and Dixon Road along the Somerset-Lytle Road. The Kenney Addition which was the southwest part of Somerset was out of the Samuel L. Wheeler tract,. Survey no. 130.
This Samuel L. Wheeler tract dates to a document of November 6, 1846.
I could find no Wheeler land near or on the Poteet highway. But the Texas land record system makes it difficult to locate land because unlike many states Texas does not publish plat map books showing the names of owners of land more of than five or so acres, every year or every few years.
When I was four to six I heard George and Uncle Casey Pyron tell stories about great Wolf Hunts on the Ballard, so much so that the Ballard became a place of legend for me then. Daddy didn't talk too much, but I remember him sitting and listening to Casey and George talk on a Sunday afternoon about Wolf Hunts, sometimes on the Ballard.
John McCain's name is mentioned many times in George's Journal, and I used to go with Daddy to join John McCain at his camp fires south of the Old Box School House. Remember that John McCain's son Charles Webb McCain (born 1924) married Patricia Kenney. Patricia told me a couple of years ago that when she and Webb were married they had a pack of coyote hounds. She said that her father Billy Kenney hunted a lot with Luther James back up there north of Old Bexar apparently.
Billy, she said, also hunted with Cecil Walsh of the Walsh Ranch probably on the ranch. I talked once on the phone with the widow of the last older Walsh, who had died by the time of the enactment of the classical Range War Western Story in which Henry Cesneros and San Antonio took a large part of the Walsh ranch on the Medina for a giant mosquito bog.
Mary Louise Walsh, then 96, told me on the phone in November of
2006 that Cecil Walsh came to visit them once as a boy and wanted to
live on the Walsh ranch and did live there. She said that Cecil had a
pack of coyote hounds and ran them on the ranch. Once, she told,
Cecil's dogs got on the trail of what she called a "wild cat" near the
Medina and they wouldn't have anything to do with that cat. It might
have been a panther. There were panthers in the Quesenberry in the
late thirties. I remember hearing one scream when as a child I was on
a coyote hunt but in the back seat of our Model A. Cecil Walsh was a cousin of her husband, Edward Patrick Walsh, descendant of Frank T. Walsh and Concepcion Linn, who was a descendant of the holder of that huge Spanish Land Grant, Juan Ignacio Perez de Casanova, a Canary Islander.
If stories and names of the Somerset Wolf Hunters could be gathered from the past, it might be called "Legends of the Ballard: Hound Voices and Camp Fires of the Thirties." But where was the Ballard? Its possible i was on the Ballard when I was four or five. I have vague memories of being in the Black Jacks with Daddy in the Model A looking for lost hounds back in the thirties, once on my fourth birthday. But I can't remember enough to know where the tracts of land we visited were located or if one of them was the Ballard.
I would like to find out where the land George refers to often - the Ballard - was in the thirties. It had to be near Somerset. Byrom's pasture, above, might be in the Old Somerset area in northern Atascosa county.
George's lead dog Pep was shot and killed when she was leading the pack on a hunt apparently on Cleve Kight's place in 1935 probably.
February 2, 1935 - Went to Ballard and Jack, Beulah, Queen, Pep and Smut jumped and ran for three hours and out of hearing. Finally located them in lower Ballard and turned young dogs loose. Ran back toward Wilson's goat proof fence. Left Cricket, Speck, Arp and Red in McDonald's still running. John McCain, Woods and us
So, there was a Ballard and a lower Ballard.
George and Daddy Knew the Voices of Luther's Hounds Running In the Black Jacks in February of 1935.
Here is the Journal entry I was looking for about the voices of Luther's hounds.
"February 14, 1935 - Went to John Caruthers camp and heard Luther's dogs running. Followed them and turned loose in White's pasture, Jack, Pep, Queen, Smut and Beulah. Ran up to Lytle and crossed highway. Caught by Ball's house.
John Caruthers is John P.G. Carthurs, whose name was John Punch Grant Caruthers, father of Hansel Caruthers and son of George Caruthers, who was one of the men involved in the First Town Site Company, with Carl Kurz, A.M. Pyron and Joe Dixon, who founded the town of Somerset. George says above that they heard the hounds of Luther James running. To recognize the barking of particular dogs in a pack requires some listening skill, which many of the Somerset Wolf Hunters had. Many of those hound dog men had "good ears."
P.G. Caruthers had a camp in the Black Jacks. He lived down there part of the time and part of time with his wife in Somerset.
Here is a post I put on my Facebook page a few months ago:
Tulsa, the Dog Who Survived
When Tulsa, the dog shown in the photo here taken September 26, 2014, was born in March of 2004 his mother had only two, and the other looked just like Tulsa. Both got parvo virus in July of 2004 and his brother died. The old Christian Media Network group, or several in it, were praying for Tulsa to live and on a Saturday morning suddenly he was up and playing with his mother. He got over the parvo virus.
Tulsa, who is part Walker, and part Wolfus Spaniel and Beagle was not named for Tulsa, Oklahoma, but for a famous South Texas coyote hound, who was written up in the journal, The Hunter's Horn. Tulsa, the famous hound, ran in the area of Devine. In a Hunter's Horn article from the thirties the the writer said the famous Tulsa of the thirties would "sit up in front of a pack behind a Wolf and scream every time his feet hit the ground."
LIFE magazine on December 7, 1936 has an article on the South Texas Wolf Hunters Meet held on the Story Ranch at Cotulla. Julian Roberson was the owner of Tulsa the hound who won both the hunt and bench show.
Tulsa, born March 2004, as of September 2014
Running hounds after coyotes in the thirties and forties was part of another time and another culture, very different from the one we live under now..........You might say that being interested in running hounds after coyotes is now politically incorrect - and thats partly why it is interesting. Few now can understand why men would go out in the country, build up a camp fire and sit around it for hours in the night listening to the barking of their hounds on coyote trails maybe a mile or two away. See: http://www.texashuntingforum.com/.../ubb.../topics/2473692/2............ ."There are still a few "Wolf Hunters" out there. I just visited with a buddy who had been up around Decatur where he hunted with a couple of fellows who still had running dogs............. Gary Roberson says"My Grandfather, Julian Roberson bred and hunted a dog by the name of Tulsa. Tulsa won the meet in the late 30's and is considered by most of the South Texas Wolf Hunters to have been the greatest of all time. Walt Disney sent a sound crew down to Cotulla, TX and recorded the dog running a coyote and it was Tulsa who actually provided the sound track of the hound in the Disney movie, "Voice of Bugle Anne". He later sold the hound to Preacher Balkham from San Antonio. To everyone's disappointment, Tulsa never reproduced any offspring with his great classic.
.. "Preacher Balkham" is Robert Gaddy Baucom, in the thirties preacher of the South San Antonio Baptist Church, who had coyote hounds and sometimes ran them with those of my older brother and father. Baucom, or as the coyote hunters called him "The Preacher," had a Model A truck which was equipped to hold several of his hounds - and he had built along the sides of the back shelves and cubbords like in the old chuck wagons the cowboys of the open range used. Baucom would arrive in the Somerset area on a Saturday night before dark with his rig and park it at our house near town. When my Father Blake Pyron and my older brother George got off from work after dark on a winter night, they would head out to the Quesenberry, the Ballard, or wherever the group was going that night.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028471/plotsummary. ..
The Movie Voice of Bugle Ann, 1936
"The countrymen in the hills of Missouri take the hounds on night fox hunts. This goes on until Jacob Terry comes into the county and decides to raise sheep and install a woven wire fence. This upsets the neighbors since the dogs would not harm the sheep and they will be hurt running into the fence at night. Jacobs vows to shoot any dogs or people that he finds on his land. But Bengy Davis is in love with Camden Terry and that alone causes problems. But when the hound, Bugle Ann is missing one night, both sides are out with guns to settle the score."
http://immortalephemera.com/.../the-voice-of-bugle-ann.../
Bernard Pyron http://www.tcm.com/.../Voice-of-Bugle-Ann-The-Original. ..
This is a two and a half minute clip from the 1936 movie Voice of Bugle Ann, which has a few seconds of the distinctive voice of a hound, which, if Gary Roberson is right, is the voice of the famous South Texas coyote hound, Tulsa recorded in 1936. The voice of Tulsa, if it is him, does sound like a bugle. And Gary Roberson is the grandson of Julian Roberson the owner of Tulsa.
The Voice of Bugle Ann as a full movie is online, but I did not find one on youtube. The others involve signing up for something.....................
....................................................................................................................... As Bugle Ann, the dog with the voice of Tulsa, was killed in the movie, so the lead dog, Pep, that belonged to my older brother George, in 1935 or 1936, was shot and killed by a farmer, Cleve Kight, when she was leading a pack through Kight's place. There was an article on the killing of the Lead Dog, Pep in the Hunter's Horn, April 1936 page 16, about how in a Bexar county, Texas court trial in San Antonio my father, Blake Pyron, testified that he could tell what his hounds were running by the sound of their barking. He said the dogs "never changed their tune," when the lead Dog Pep was killed. Cleve, or Cleveland L. Kight, who killed her, said the hounds were running his hogs. Since the address of Kight who killed Pep and another Pyron hound that night was given as Von Ormy, its likely that the incident occurred in the general area of the Quesenberryranch on the north banks of the Medina. I am not sure how Kight got in position to shoot dogs running on a coyote trail. George was only about 16 or 17 when his dog was killed. A lead dog is one who gets out in front of the pack of hounds which are usually scattered behind the lead dog. The lead dog is responsible for staying on the trail of the coyote, though when trailing becomes difficult, other hounds who are the trail dogs who first find trails of coyotes, may come up and help the lead dog find the lost trail."
To change subjects, has anyone in the last few decades around Somerset ever heard of the Elm Creek Comet Band? Elm Creek ran about three miles NE of Somerset south of the Medina River.
"Patrick Kenney owned the land which became Old Bexar, and sold some parts of his land to individuals in the area between Bexar and Benton City Roads about two miles west of what became Somerset."
"One interesting land transaction of Patrick Kenney was a tract of land he sold to the Elm Creek Comet Band on March 29, 1889, from Survey No 348 granted to Clemente Bustillo. Probably no one has heard anything about the Elm Creek Comet band in many years."
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