EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

The Randy Bumpers hunt is an event we look forward to every year. It has become the Super Bowl for the end of our Spring hunting season. This year we hunted different country than the previous 2 years and the change of scenery proved to be just what we needed. TeAm High Yellow consisted of Eric Van Dorn, Jason Thompson, Chance Ward and myself.. Our helpers were Byron Lennox, JJ Jerrel, Trevor King, Cory Cawthorne, Kelly Waller, Scott Rohe, Marshall Mims, Matt and liSa Webb... Not to mention the kids, Riley Webb, Rowdy, Cattle and Tristan Ward. We sure appreciated the Webbs putting us up for the weekend at their Ranch house. Now that I've gotten everything lined out I'll try and recap a little about the weekend.

The Bumpers hunt has become extremely competitive for us. The last 2 years we have been runner up on the big $$ usually winning 2nd in a few categories. Well this year luck was finally on our side and we edged out our rivals LB Cattle.

We don't do the night hunting thing at all, so we got a good nights sleep and got ready for our daylight assault. By the time we straightened our collar systems out and got squared away we put the first dogs down at 7:40 am. 600 yards later Chances dogs are sit down hammering a 250-275 boar hog. Send one of Jason's bulldogs to them but he chunks her and flat leaves the country. 3 miles later we call the dogs out and regroup. We start bumping along any catch the first hog around 10:30 a solid lil 150# boar. Dogs roll on and catch 3 pigs and a 200# mule footed sow. Here it is going on noon and we only have 2 hogs in the trailer. We're kinda kicking rocks around, staring at each other wondering if this place even had anymore hogs on it. But in a matter of minutes, 45 to be exact we tied 14 hogs. 9 of them were solid 175-200# hogs. It was insane there for a while, we'd be tiring a hog and the dogs would be running another through the woods in front of us. It was an awesome experience. We gathered up at lunch and regrouped. We 19 total caught with 12 of them being stringer worthy. Went to the next pasture over and started in on them again. When the dust finally settled on day one we had tied 31 hogs. A personal best for almost all of us. We weighed in 15 hogs on day one
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Here's a funny side note on the day one weigh in. Our biggest goat hog of the day blows through the scales without getting a weight... Needless to say we weren't happy!! But no big deal, there's only about 10 hogs in the pen. Someone will slip a lariat on him and we'll just run him back through. this sob was head hunting, hitting the fence at every weak spot. He decides to pick out Big E and blows through a panel popping all the staples loose and hits him square in the thigh knocking him aside. Runs loose through the arena and hits a fence like a freightrain and is gone. So here we are with our best hog just getting away without being weighed?!? Whoops.. Everything settled down and they gave us a weight of 200# for him which we agreed to even though he was in the the 220 range.


Day 2 started out very similar with a bad to the bone red boar hog bayed around 275#'s sent the jack russle into catch and he never made it. He broke and dumped us over sows. We ended up catching 9 hogs on Sunday with our biggest being a 272 sow that put us over the top.

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We caught a total of 40 hogs in a two day span, again personal bests for almost all of us. It was an amazing weekend with even better dog work!

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We won first place stringer with 10 hogs weighing 1977#'s. We won first place stringer with 26 hogs. We placed 2nd in the heaviest four with 872#. All in all we won $6300, 10 buckles, 4 tri-tronics shock systems and 12 bags of dog food. Not bad for a weekend :) people like to think its all fun but it takes alot of hard work and grit from everyone on the team to get a weekend like this done. I can't thank enough all our teammates and everyone involved this weekend, it's a memory we'll never forget.

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We are already looking forward to the competition and Bumpers hunt next year!!! Can't wait..  Hope everyone enjoys this. Thanks

You guys made a heck of a showing.  Nice job!

good job guys... yall must have been huntin in hog heaven!!

Impressive and unbelievable day and half of hunting!!!!!! Congratulations!

Flat out Impressive Tony.  It's been a long time coming, CONGRATULATIONS.

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Big E won Hog Dogger of The Year and I was first place North Division. Thanks again TexasJ for such a nice event
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congrates heck of a bunch hogs

Congratulations fellas... that's a helluva weekend!

Very impressive!  Conratulations brother!

WOW,thats a phenominal effort boys. Looks like a really close second for the total weight section,Good work guys and really nice buckles too!

Congrats y'all

Thanks everyone, my hands are killing me and my eye lids don't wanna stay open in class but it was well worth it! We caught 3,295#'s of pork with the 26 stringer hogs

Way to show out gentlemen.  Very impressive.   8)

Good job fellas, way to go!

Congrats guys nice to see a new face holding the money

Man my math sucks. 3,925#'s!

Us too :)


Not really, just had lots of country! I've seen places with lots more hogs than these properties.. Judy real good dogs getting it done!

Very nice haul men!  I thought Jamie and his crew were gonna end up with the whole pot when I heard their weights, I figured yall had the stringer sowed up though.

Man y'all suck! I'm gonna go into competitive pie eating or something so maybe I can win a buckle one of these days!!  :D

Great job and heard it was real exciting ;) wish I could have been around.

Oh yeah and Nick Daniels was also a helper(shsu11) sorry nick lol

Y'all sure did bring some pork in! That was a great string and some mean ones at that! Good hogs guys and great looking dogs! It was cool to meet you all as well. Congrats on the win fellas!

That is a crazy number of hogs in two days.  Nice job fellas!! 

heelluv a job tony and big e, awsome hunt. hope red man , briar , blaster get some rest

Thanks Monty.. Briar is the only dog that got cut down and will be out. He took a good shot to the flank on a feisty lil boar hog!

We only had to use the bulldog on 5 hogs all weekend and Redman caught all of them. He's a little sore today but nothing bad

How did y'all do?

That's Impressive - Congratulations Fellas...

Good job and congratulations ! Tell Jason if he dosent start drinking skim milk and light beer that he wont be able to bend over and tie a hog next year ! ;D

tony you got some nice pics of the hunt if hope bryer heels up quick and send some of them pics to me since i still dont have your number 9033900560

 :o ;D  Dammit boy that a pile of pork!!!!!!!!!!!!

It was a great weekend still sore. Great hunt with great guys and dogs. The pork was put on the table this weekend . It was nice to join yalls team. Thanks to the lone star working dog association for making things right. Ya'll really added a more to the event . Thanks.

tony we only caught 5 and there just wasnt any hogs on the ranch . we hunted on the trinity river and the water was tuff to hunt. we caught all 5 saturday morning. hope oh briar makes a good recoverie

hey great weekend guys had a lot of fun helping and dragging hogs out for yall and meeting new people and thanks for letting nick tag a long with me and letting me teach him a little..Great seeing good dogs work and keep rolling on them.. Look forward to getting us all back together and doing it again.

Hell yeah JJ, it's not hard to teach Nick something.. I mean even Rowdy was punking him!! Get your dogs healed up from your last trip down here to the "tall trees", we'll try and make a round this weekend if their cuts are healed up

heck yea sounds good let me know bout that hunt they ought to be ready to roll hopefully.. been 2 weeks nows...

About the only thing to learn from y'all is how to talk s%#€ cause God knows y'all talk plenty of it! I had one heck of a time this weekend. It was definitely the most wore out I've been after a hog hunt but was well worth it! And I would also like to thank the lswda for making things right and I hope y'all are running things again next year.

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Picture of the other 4 buckles we won!

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Dang good job congratulations! Those are some fine lookin buckels too

Sorry Tony, haven't been on in a while. Great job on this comp. That is a he'll of a bang to go out on at the end of the season. Too top it off y'all hunted with the famous Chance Ward. Great job guys.

Congrats Fellas, That was a lot of pork you brought in.....

Congrats and one HECK of a Showing yall put on!!!!  I am just now getting all the briars pulled out and starting to get around pretty good again, but it was worth it.  I really enjoyed another GREAT Randy Bumpur's Tournament and I am looking forward to next year already.

Joey Young

There ain't nothing famous here. There were great dogs and great hands that put all of it together. I would say one of the best team working groups you could ask for. No fighting or fussing everyone new to win this competition we would have to roll and go. There was no better dogs or no better hand everyone pulled there weight even Nick. Tony covered more country a foot than we did on horses.  Great team and one of best memory hunts I could have been on all my kids were there. All that was missing was my wife if she would have been there it would have been perfect.Witch was studying

Big congradulations to everyone involved, very impressive weekend

My favorite part of the weekend.. " Rowdy beats Nick to a sow. Catches her and flips her, nick comes up and starts taking his tie rope off to tie her. Rowdy says to Nick ," boy this my hog, you better not but your tie rope on her!!"" lol  them little kids roped me and gang tackled me like a bull too at the end of the 2nd day!! Good times for sure.. And yeah it's definitely a team effort with our group. People don't realize the work it takes to get that many hogs out of the woods alive. I'm ready again for next year already

The dog work is impressive but you are right it was no small job to get that many tied hogs out of the woods.  congrats on the win.

Waylon

  good deal all of ya'll      congrats!!!!!

I have been down for the last few weeks from an accident and did not have a chance to Thank everybody that was involved.  This tournament is a great one and ran right!  These folks did a lot of work with the dogs and then validated with a polygraph so there is no way to dispute such hard work.  Good job to all involved once again and I hope to see everyone next year.

Joey

LMFAO!!

If y'all only knew the laughs we have had since this tournament has ended. There sure were some "butt-hurt" folks at this tournament. It has been a never ending stream of stories on how we caught so many hogs. It has become quite comical

Where to start... So here are a few of the rumors.
A) we hunted behind a high fence
B) we hunted behind a hog proof fence 
C) we hunted hogs behind an electrical fence?! 
D) we trapped and fed out the 26 hogs we turned in for a few months before the tournament
E) the newest and my favorite: we baited hogs into a cattle lot, EVERYDAY for a year. Feeding at the same time everyday, apparently 100's of pounds a day of cottonseed and corn. On tournament day we rolled up at "our feeding time" and drove the hogs into the cattle lot where we tied them all. 

I could go on but honestly have forgotten all the BS. For the few people that know us and have gotten to hunt with us know our dogs are legit and our TEAM is even more legit! The rumors are funny- funny, but there's comes a point when men get accused of cheating one too many times and someone is gonna popped in the mouth

No matter what happens in life Haters are always going to hate on the people at the top

We'll gladly invite a film crew next year to document our free range hunting or the president of the tournament. We won't make excuses for our dogs :)

That's the purpose of the lie detector test.  No questions asked, no arguements, that's what the rule was put into place for.

I dont tolerate being called a liar period.  You will only do it once, and I ain't much bigger then anybody, but damn't you better be ready to whoop me everytime you see me if you wanna run your head about my word.

Y'all had a heckuva weekend Tony, I'd just go back and best em again next year and laugh in their faces.

Well Ben the man giving the lie detector test didnt show up. There was guite a "toe fight" as we weren't going to be given any of our winnings. And the whole team was asked to come back in two weeks to randomly take one. It was quite an ordeal but cooler heads prevailed, LWDA came through and everything was worked out.

But yes, we've always passed the lie detector test in this tournament the previous 2 years taking 2nd to the big money, and as well the 5 other tourneys our team has won over the last 4 years.

F)You hunted behind Dogs that decend from H. P. Dixie, among others of excellent caliber
G)you put the time and work in keeping those dogs in the woods, legged up and tuned up so their natural abilty can shine.

Im on to you Tony...

I heard you barred them without even catching them, just two perfectly placed shots on each boar with a bow  8)

I heard that ya'll had atleast 50 bay dogs on the ground at the same time, and that most of the dogs did'nt belong to the team members. Haha ! Some people just can't accept the truth. Ya'll have good dogs and a little luck. Sometimes that's all it takes. ;D

Theres alot of pigs in that country over there, you get 4 guys with good dogs and several of them it's a good chance those big groups of pigs are gonna get caught! I'm sure y'all probably have some strike dogs that are kind of rough too.

Well I was on the team and ya'll I can say is we were ready for the lie detector test right then and there. Then we argued for an hour and as we were arguing I never seen anyone call the guy and ask where he was at and why he wasn't coming. Makes me think it was never ordered. Just saying.  The rule also said subject to test not mandatory. Be it worked out the way it should have lswda came through stold up for what was right and got the problem fixed. There was a damn good set of dogs on the ground that weekend. Great times and great memories. Hell Tony the camera man has to follow you he better start exerciseing know.lol

I spit my coffee up this morning when I read this I was laughing so hard. Looking forward to you and Brian coming down next spring man


Man I'm gonna be on a horse if at all possible next year!! Right after goose and Ike Bayed that boar hog, when Libby and Jet went and started that big group, I fought that big sow for a while by myself. I was whooped there, the dogs bayed about 200 yards from me. After a tough run through knee deep water I got there just as y'all did. We tied two more real quick with the cowboys and then everybody scattered. Well the dogs bayed again right in front of us. It was another big sow that was just salty enough she was throwing them off. We chased that bitch for what seemed like half a mile, the whole time baying and breaking every 20-40 yards. It was mostly puppy's on her and they wouldn't stay locked on. Finally she sat down long enough that JJ threw a loop on her. We tied her up and started dragging stuff out. No lie here, I was so tired, on the edge of throwing/heat stroking lol I drank water out of that flooded swamp. It was either that or start throwing up in front of Riley. And I'm a biology major, I know ALL about bad water. Especially from the Trinity. My legs after catching those 11 in 45 minutes literally felt like there a 100# cinder blocks tied to each one. I'm gonna better manage my time a foot next year and spend at least 50% in a saddle!

i hear ya tony , on the rare occasion i get into a group of hogs , i don't wanna walk much further than the end of my reins ... cause the next 1 is just that much futher lol

Haha, Lookin forward to it as well bud!

Impressive hunt and great pictures. I like seeing all those live caught hogs. Great job ya'll.

Cole, Justin, Alan and I hunted a tournament here in Louisiana.  He told me then what I had missed, and he was very quick to point out that it said, "said subject to test" and that it was meant to say mandatory, but it is what it is and it was over.  He, nor did anyone else who had hunted on his team say anything ugly or accuse anyone of cheating to me. He has always had the guy there and I dont know why he didnt show up, but oh well.  Like he and I both agree, that your reputation is worth much more than a tournament and there is no doubt that you and your team did catch all those hogs.   Yalls  team will be the one to beat and the fella who will be doing the polygraph is the most respected fella in the field in the South, so there will be no question of his results and no one will be able to dispute.  He busted the guys who cheated in that Bass Masters tournament on Lake Fork about 10 years ago and put 2 judges in jail and helped write several laws concerning the polygraph. 35 years experience.  Us four hunted the Cutter Creek Tournament and the rules were no helpers and all hogs must be bayed first and then caught with a bulldog/ catchdog.  The only people that could touch the dogs and hogs were the 4 team members during the hunt and this included loading and unloading the hogs.  We caught and tied 26 hogs in a 48 hour hunt and turned in 24, but only had to weigh 7 to win.  I am not sure about how next years tournament is going to be but it will more than likely be just like the Cutter Creek Tournament, or have a limit on the helpers to help load and drag hogs, but I hope only the team members will be allowed to handle dogs and hogs.  Should make an even playing field for everyone and make it about the dogs and the 4 hunters only, which I dont see how anyone can argue with those rules as being fair for all. I am looking forward to it no matter what the rule changes are  next year and hopefully I wont be too tired to visit with folks and get to meet some of yall.

Joey Young

JHY, haha well they can tell you one thing and tell us another. All I know is they called some of our teammates for 2 weeks straight, EVErYDAY  trying to stir stuff up, but it is what it is. I figured there would be a change in the rules after what we did. We've hunted tournaments like that where only the four doggers can catch the hog. That's not near as fun and takes away from the team aspect. It's kinda stupid in my opinion and a way to handicap people but oh well. We'll make do and roll with it

I dont necessarily agree with the four hunters only touching the hogs and dogs, because sometimes it is in the best intrest of the dog and hogs welfare for the first one there to catch the hog, even if it is a helper.  I do think that there should be a limit of four or five helpers to make it a fun hunt that they can participate in as well,  and I believe if there are changes that it will be that, not the four hunters only because I personally like to have a younger more fit helper with me that can help me pull my weight because I am starting to fall apart with every passing year.  My knee is still messed up from the Cutter Creek Tournament and I liked to had a heat stroke during the day on Saturday.  Im sure there was some other talk right after, always is no matter how a tournament is run.  Nonetheless it will be better than last year and still the biggest and best dog tournament in the world.  Once again great Job, and I hope to shake some hands next year. 

Joey

Well I hope to put a team together this year finally and my goal for this coming tournament season is to place in at least one tourney. It's not a huge goal, but it'd be a big deal to me and my ol potlickers. Best of luck to all

I agree with you, it's tough on some of the older more broken down hunters to have to catch every hog. We look forward to it every year, and hope do it to continue in the right direction. It was good that the hosts didn't win their own tournament for the 3rd year in a row. I like the sound of this new lie detector man. Just him alone should silence any critics. It's all in good fun. There were always be bickering and competitive banter in any sport. The main thing is to continue to promote a positive sport and fun filled, tournament weekend

Looking forward to meeting you as well Joey!!

Hell I just hope I get to hunt it, I start the real world when I graduate in December. My hog dogging may take a serious back seat for a while. We'll see

You are so right about promoting the sport in a positive manner, as for Cole and them hosting the tournament and participating I wouldn't hunt if he didn't because I want to beat him myself in his own backyard. Now for the real world business, I'm sure you can handle it. I had triplets a year ago and I hunted it with a wife and 6 kids at the house. A career is priority, but hog hunting is a necessity so I can deal with the real world! If I can get loose from the wife and kids I'm sure you can get off for a weekend. Haha Congrats on finishing school, education is the only thing that can never be taken away from you.

Joey

Triplets.. Yikes!! Power to you man for handling all of that.. Congratulations!! And absolutely, in any competition you want to compete against the best!

Joey breeds them in litters!!!!! ;D ;D