00:00:01 Speaker 1: Hey everybody, and welcome episode number thirty of The Hunting Collective. I'm Bet O'Brien. Today I am joined by one of my favorite people on the planet Earth and probably one of the best better guests will ever have. And that man's name is Charles the rabbit Man Roden and I first met Charles about two years ago on a rabbit hunt on Maryland's Eastern Shore, and since then I have been infatuated with his passion for rabbit hunting, just his personality, the man that he is is life and times and why he loves rabbit hunting so much. And hopefully this podcast will shed some light on all those questions. Um, and it's enjoyed. Charles is a family man, a man of God, and a man who is the He is the preacher or the pastor at the Church of Rabbit Hunting. Uh. He could talk about it all day and all night. He loves it that much. So without further ado, please enjoy this conversation I sure did with Charles Rodney. He's the man. Alright, we're recording, Charles. How are you, sir? I'm doing fine. Well. Thanks for having me to your home. Well, you're quite welcome. My pleasure. UM. I want to start by saying, you know, how long when did we rabbit hunt? It was a year. It was about two years ago, two seasons, two seasons ago, um on Eastern Shore, Maryland. And I wish we could have done it last year. We were just talking about having chilled, that being busy, and how that that does it. But when we hunted together on the Eastern Shore, it struck me that that was a hunt I would do every year, and I think you should. It was an awesome hunt. Yeah, it was a great hunt. And it also struck me that the one the first thing we should talk about is how delicious rabbit meat cotton tails are. Rabbit meat is one of the best meat and it's it's it's all natural and there's hardly any fat. They eat only natural things, grass and leaves and twigs out in the woods, and they're running and they literally eat soybean and stuff that they can get to. Uh, but they're running, so they're healthy. There there are no fat on them, and uh, it's one of the healthiest foods you can find. A lot of people don't know that, and a lot of people see them running around their backyard. They don't even think about what's right. So after that, we hunted in February. After that hunt we did, my dad was a long. We went Super Bowl Sunday. We cooked up a bunch of rabbit legs. We soaked him in milk, a little bit, fried them up, put a little old bay on him, served him at a Super Bowl party. Great, everybody that was there eating him like these chicken. These chicken legs are great. These the best chicken legs in her hat. So that's a rabbit. Most city people don't know. They were what where'd you get this chicken? Well? I got it on the Eastern Shore. And it's a damn rabbit that always struck with me. Is not only is rabbit hunting fun were talking about it earlier here. Not only is it fun, is it easy to do? But you end up with, you know, a bunch of rabbits to go home, skin and eat. That's fun for a kid to do. And rabbits um. Not only are they good and good for you, but they're one of the easiest game to clean. Yeah, you can clean. I can clean a bunch of rabbits by the time I cleaned two squirrels, and and it you just cut a little slit and you pull them opposite in and all of her come off. You slip behind the tail, I slit. I usually slit over the back, around the stomach and put my finger in and just pull out with yes, right, and it comes off the off the back, legs and over the head. Now a lot of other guys do it a little bit different. And then I just take a knife and and got them and I'm done. And if they're if they're a little bloody, I soaked them. I got a big one of them, big wash tubs. Soak them for eight to ten hours overnight usually, and all that blood comes out, and then you clean it off, wrap it in, freeze the paper. A lot of guys you shrink, wrap and label them and there you go and you're you're ready and so forth. Did your wife cook up a lot of rabbits? My wife actually is a city girl. I'm a country boy from Louisiana and we've been married tomorrow September to twenties, that will be forty six years. Can't get her to even go out and look at the dogs when I get a new one, but she gives me support, so I do all the rabbit cooking. I do all the rabbit cleaning. I have a special freezer just for a wild game because a lot of the people I take rabbit hunting give me other games elk, moose, dear, whatever they hunting while waterfowl, and we eat some of it. But there are loads of people that I supply rabbit every year. I have names to give rabbits. In my cut of the take, in my group, we'll get over two hundred, and in my take, I usually get about forty forty five. So some guys come just to shoot the hunt, shoot the breeze. Some guys take one or two. Some guys said, well, I don't want many, So whatever they don't take, I take because I have a market for giving them away. I don't sell anything. I don't expect anything in return. All I expect is to thank you, and and if I don't get that, or a big smile on your face, and that's thank you enough. So there are lots of older people who lived in the country of Maryland, southern Maryland, and some city folks North Carolina, South Carolina, they did it. Uh, the family hunted and they can't get them anymore, and they say, hey at church, I got a lot of people say you take rabbits to church? I say sure, I said, all these older people, I said, well, what mass are you going to tomorrow? We're Catholic. And I bring them a rabbit. It's clean, it's wrapped, it's label and um, they enjoy it and and that's my treat to them. That's awesome. Yeah, and get people. You know, there's a lot of people like you said, I can't go out and do that. That's right. They don't have place to go or time to go, or if the physically unable to go and share it with him, that's awesome. So you you're from Louisiana, you found your way here to Maryland. And we'll get into that, but I want to just kind of go back to your upbring and when you first started hunting, because I know we talked a little bit about swamp rabbits, which I thought was fun fun term. When did you first start hunting and when did you first start rabbit hunt? What was the thing that got you excited about it? Well? Growing up, we grew up we were share croppers in Louisiana, so we lived on somebody else laying my dad and my uncle next door farm and when we would go hunting, UM, he just walked behind the house into the fields and you would hunt there. I started about eight years old, mainly following my big older brother who was eleven years older than me. He loved to hunt and they would let me follow him, but the rule was I would walk right behind him. I didn't have a shot GUNNA had a bb gun, and most time nothing carried whatever he killed. And I learned that way, and as time got I got older and teenager. There was a friend who had a couple of dogs, and uh, we hunted. We hunted in the cotton fields and on the ditches and in the woods, and we'd get cotton tails in the field. And then if you wanted the big rabbits, you're going in the woods, in the deep woods, and which was only probably half a mile walk, and we we would get one or two. But we never had being poor, we never had quality dogs. Okay, we had your dogs that could hunt rabbits too, and and do a lot of other things. Uh. These were multi purpose dogs, so they would get something. And then I hunted, uh throughout my teen years and after college in in Baton Rouge, I moved here in seventy two, got married and started hunting a little bit here with my wife too uncle, and we'd go down southern Maryland. We had a couple of little small spots. We'd get one or two rabbits. Then when the kids started coming, I quit, And then as they got older and in college, in in up, in high school, I started back. So I told my wife, I said, you know, I was relying on another fellow who wasn't too dependable and and didn't have good Dogess. I liked this so much, I'm gonna start doing it. So I had an old truck that my family was, our dads, and when he passed, they gave it to me, and I brought it up from Louisiana and we built a little common dog box. I got some dogs, made all of the mistakes, brought the wrong dog. What the dogs by. First I bought a dog name um Rowdy, and then I had one name Slim or something like that. Well, I didn't know much about dogs, and and the guy that sold them to me, he took me for a ride because I just wanted two dogs, and he told me one dog that was slower and a fast dog. Now I know what I know Now that's a bad mixture. You want all of your dogs the same speed. You want them all medium, all slow, are all fast. You want them when they're running to be in a bunch together on the scent line. You don't want one to be here in won fifty yards away. So I made all of the mistakes, bought the wrong dog dogs, and then I got some other dogs and I didn't know they ran deer, so I lost dogs dogs, spent the night in the in the woods. So gradually I started talking to some veteran hunters that I trusted, who raised dogs and bread dogs, and they gave me a lot of tips, and I started reading, and I started using better judgment of people that are bought dogs from. Because I don't breathe my own dogs. I buy them when they're started one to two years. So they gave me loads of advice, which I I'm proud to have received this advice from them. They told me all of the dudes and don't And I learned from my errors, and I learned how to break dogs using it was try tronics at the time, the training collars. Some people call him the shock callers now Garmen, and I use those faithfully, and I put them on live deer and break them. Now I don't have to because the deers have invaded the neighborhood where we live, so I can break them right here in the yard. And he's got your dogs chasing deer in the in the yard, he had the deers. The deer's coming to yard to eat all the flowers and things of that sort. So recently last year, I built an eight foot fence around my vegetable garden so we can have vegetable It looks like a prison camp. All I need is a little towel on there. But this is a multipurpose dog. You're trading your dogs on deer, keeping them hell out of your time. Well, the deer, now that the dogs are in the pin, the dogs, only one out of six will look at the deer and bark. The other five go about their business, and the deer know that they can't get out, so they go about their business. They just trot alone. But I learned from these people, so all of this valuable knowledge. Now I know how to select dogs, and have known for many years. So in the last fifteen or twenty years, twenty years, maybe I have not had one dog run off. Deers will get up in front of them, will cross the track, will be laying in the brush. They'll see the deer. They paid no mine because you know that deer scent is much hotter than a rabbit sense. So they don't paid any mine, and we keep hunting. So when they go in the brush and they start barking, I don't have to panic that a big bucket is gonna run out the other side. And they're gonna run, because if they chase year, then they're no good to us as rabbit hunters. And a deer will run straight for miles. The dog will if he survived the highways that they're gonna cross, then he's no good for you because you don't trust him. But now when I go with six, come back six and and guys will tell me, Charles, the deer just got up. What do you want to do, I say, don't do anything. They're not gonna chase him. Just wait for that rabbit to come back. And and it happens over and over. But when you pick quality dogs from quality people, because um a lot of guys dog tree, they'll tell you that this dog will do all sorts of things, and so forth, and you've got a deer running, You've got a dog that's gunshine everything. So I buy quality dogs, I work them, and I buy my dogs only in the summertime so that I have time to train them and let them get used to my voice, other and so forth. Because the season starts always in Maryland the first Saturday in November. So I'll buy dogs in April, May, June and work them and train them, and when the season come they're in shape. And so I don't have that problem. I have none but rabbit ramas. Only rab runs. And I've seen it in action. It is unbelievable. That's what those dogs can do. Let's go back, uh, because we'll we'll talk dogs forever here. But when you were you mentioned a few things. You came up poor. Yes, um, you came up it seemingly close to your family and you came up hunting. You feel like, uh, how that shaped you as a person? You know how you became. You know you've been married for we say forty eight years, six years when I get that number correct. Your wife cooks the hell of a breakfast. You probably we just got finished that. Sure you've eat many of those, um, but it seems like you know, kids, wife, you have a good life. Everything has turned out well, you know, very happy and productive. And I always try to look back and and how you were raised and what that might have given you. Do you have any insight as to your upbringing and what it meant? Well, we were raised in a in a Christian family in South Louisiana. Most of the people are Catholic, there are other faiths there and they're good people. They taught us the value of working together. We lived on a farm, so if we finished early, we helped the next guy and my uncle next to them. We help people up and down the road, and they helped us. And Daddy grew a large vegetable garden. When I mean a large vegetable guard. He wasn't selling. He grew and we kept wondering, why are we growing all of this stuff? Well, back then we didn't have freezes, so the old mason jars. We kenned everything and what we what we didn't use, we gave away. And I was the youngest of seven, so I got the luxury of picking when my older brothers and sisters started leaving and so forth. So we were raised up in in two family and a mother and a father um and we were raised up in Catholic school. We went to Catholic elementary and then on the public school. But we were raised with good Christian values that you help people and you do for people, and that's you thank you, and that your enjoyment. And that sticks with me today because I do some of the same thing, even though I hated it. When we grew all those big gardens and Daddy with somebody would come and there were certain people who came by. Then you when the sweet corn made, then you when the figs made, then you win this made, and the pecans we had, the countries, and being the youngest, I got to go in that hot sun and go get these things in boxing things. But I didn't know it. In reality, I was enjoying it. I do the same thing today. I grow garden, and many of my hunting friends grow big gardens. There's a guy that grow greens and he plants him for the deer so he can stick an arrow on him because he can't shoot a gun where he lives, and so he plants the greens for the last full or five years. He doesn't sell them, he doesn't give him away guess what he does. He tells me, Charles, going there and take him, because you give him the people. And we, my cousin and I will go and we'll pick two pickup trucks the load and we'll give to everybody. And their brother will take him to church, to his church, to my church and the people, and we can. So we're giving back the way we were taught to give back. And his old country boy from Maryland too. So those family values stick today. And when where we live, everybody knew us. Okay, the races were separate, Okay, predominantly white and black. We will creole. My folks spoke creole. I know a little bit of it. But they have that intrinsic value that you help you, fella man, regardless. And I do the same thing today. Uh. I give people. I give service to the church. I give service to people. I have a lot of older friends, I mean older friends in the up and nineties and close to a hundred and one. Man is ninety three, and we still I take him rabbit on twice a year, the last last two hunts. He wrote on a little cart, and he just come to here on a little John, Dear little John, dear four wheel of things, and he rides along and he hunts, and we've become friends in three years. And he hate. He grows a big truck garden, so he sells everything fifty cents a pound. So I go sometime and I'll buy a truckloader. You'd be surprised how much stuff you can buy for fifty dollars. And I give it away and so forth. So I even take something to that. We have Nun's sisters at the convent, so I take stuff to them. They tell me they lie deer. So I got some friends who are gonna who gives me a couple of deers and I give it away, and so i'm I said, And they're from all over the world. They're about twelve of them there, but they're about ten different ethnic groups. And they move them in and out, so they enjoyed. I give them all kinds of vegetables and so forth. You spread the gospel of wild game, Oh, wild game and vegetable and service. People call me and and so safe Charles, you have this? Can you tell me why? I said, I'll get you something. And I get in and they said, well, what can I pay? You said, there's no money. There's no money. You give back. When you give back, it comes back to you. And and we'll talk about that in detail. How um, the many people who have invited mina hunt on their lands, and we'll get to that too, because I want to kind of go in order here. Okay, go ahead, But but there is this amazing thing that you do. You said that a lot of people think you're an outfitter. Right, well, I remember you when well, when I mentioned we hunted the other you gave me your business card and it says it's to some effect like Charles the rabbit Hunter Rodney, and it says the only game in town for me. It's the only game in town for me. Because I don't I don't want to insult any of the other hunters. But this is all that I do, which is wonderful. And it did. It doesn't say like call me for hunts. It doesn't say an outfitter a guy, there's nothing of that. You literally, for no money, go hunting rabbits with anybody who desires to do so. And that well, you'll take the time to do it. And I tell people, as my wife made the cart up, she said, you could call started company. She said, you need a card so these guys can call you. So it's got to sell in the house and THEMB and the email thing on there. And this was way before texting. So I passed my out to various people, and UM, a lot of people say, are you an outfitter? Well, how do I get on your schedule? What do you try to say? Up? Let me clear this up. I am not an outfitter. I'm just a guy that love I'm passionate about rabbit hunting and having good dogs, and I enjoy people, and I meet people easy people. We we tend to take to each other. I can tell the ones that's laying a lot of bs out okay. And I don't hunt with half crazy people. If if they talk foolish, they won't get invited. And if they come and hunt one time and they do something wrong that's not good hunting mannerism, then they're on their first and their last and they only hunt. But I'm a good judge of people. And some of the people I've been hunting with for ten twelve years, and they've bring many of their friends and family members and so forth. Uh, and most of them have some of the same hunting times It's like in February when the waterfowl and deer seasons over. Um, the four saturdays in February and presidency, they belong to the same four people, and nobody can break that lineup. They enjoy it so much they won't give it up. That's what it's about. I mean, if it's it's I think it goes back to what you're saying, having a garden, eating what you kill, having a community people that share those same values enough to the fact they want to come and get your vegetables, but they know they're they're ready to be plucked. That's just a life of giving, right, a life of sharing, a life of you. You become passionate about something, the first thing you think of is to share it with people, right. And we grew up that way. We shared. Um, we shared with many people. And there were people just as poor, poor as us or poor and the rich people we knew who they were. They were the big land on us who want all the land. Uh. And you know they didn't congregate around you because you of that other class, whether you're black or white. But um, you know that's how it was, and the value was instilled loop in me. Two treat people the way you want to be treated. Yeah, and it works well, seems to. So you met your I want to hear about just because your life or your wife is as lovely and and I just want to hear about. It's your anniversary coming up, so I want to hear about how you guys met because that's about the reason you change to Maryland. Well, my brother recently, he's a Catholic priest. He recently celebrated his fiftieth anniversary as a priest in May of this year. So he was the assistant pastor after he was ordained. He was ordained in sixty eight. So Uh, I came up in December or of seventy to visit with him, and he was assistant pastor of a church here in Washington, d c. St. Luke's Catholic Church, and my wife uh worked there as a student, typing and entering the phone on weekend. So I caught her eye, but she didn't want to have anything to do with me the first year, so I had my hair long at the time, And tell you the truth, I had been out with some of the local boys and we were drinking uh we call it pluck cheap wine. And gin and my eyes was a little red, and oh I had a big, big, wild looking after back the time, UM quite different. Yeah we're talking. We're talking seventies and we were going through all of the cultural changes, in the cultural shocks. So she didn't want to have anything to do it. But I like what I saw and the next year said I'm going back. So I went back on semester Christmas break the next year, and I cut my hair and I didn't drink anything, so my eyes, it was all intentional by me. And she claimed she didn't have a boyfriend. Then dad broke up, so she was looking, and so we got to talking and visiting. Then we corresponding and visiting, and after college, I came back in the next summer and we got married in September. So so that's the short end of the of the love story. And so what did I move here? Because there were jobs here and in Baton Rouge, most of the jobs were kind of menial, working in the chemical plants, and I never wanted to work in the chemical plants. I knew many people who did that work. I said, I can do better. So I came here and I got a job in the federal government down at the Naval Arden and Station in Indian Head. Mayor M worked there a few years and then work some other federal agencies. And she was working for the Navy Department. And we progress along the promotion chain and did well. We both ended up in human resources. So that's one of my other qualities. I know people from a human resource standford. We hired, promoted, classified, did pay changes. Um. I worked six years in equal employment Opportunity where I dealt with all the people's problems, the discrimination and all of the things associated with that not being treated fairly perception or otherwise. So I got to know people well in handling problems, hiring, firing, all of that counseling. So I got to know people quite well. People people in a part of people. And it all stems back to my upbringing. So UM, and then we just we progress on. We both did about thirty plus years in the federal government. We've been retired for a few years. I've been retired for fifteen years and she twelve years. And we raised out with three children in this house. Matter of fact, the last one who's thirty seven, she was three days old when we moved into this house and they're all gone. So uh, we're comfortable and we give thanks to God all the time for all of our blessing. We have three beautiful kids. They each have two children, and they all went to Catholic elementary, Catholic high school, and college. And two of them have advanced degrees. So and they're doing quite well with their families. So as they say, the apple don't fall far from the tree, so they have they have good quality and good skills to good so well, I mean what strikes me in that whole that is, you know, you grew up in segregated Louisiana, six seasons of it, and then you move here and you you you're working in human resources and discrimination. What was that like kind of going from you know, where you grew up. I mean, as you said, that's how you grew up, how it was at the time, you didn't think much of it, But then you get to a different part of the world and you start to deal with those problems in a more modern sense. Well, it's it's it's a survival thing. You know, the culture dictated how you behave and how you acted where you associated. I remember going not being able to go into many places because the signs were and if the signs were not there, there are certain places you knew not to go into, and we were taught not to go into, and certain people we couldn't associate with because of how things were. But then here I come into a world where I have to deal with some of those same problems as a young adult in hiring people, hiring people of entreating and fair of any color, any belief they have, and treat them and or. And then later on when I was the equal employment manager at this one agency, uh ensuring that everybody got fair treatment, and going out and defending people who I thought were wrong. And I did that. It probably cost me a few things, because I think I fought some battles that some people thought I shouldn't have fought, but I saw wrong and I tried to deliver it and make it right and so forth. And I had some hard cases where some people were uh mislabel for no reason other than somebody down the line with a little bit more power or ump um, I thought they should be treated differently. In that treatment I thought was unfair, and I spoke out about it. And most of those people were not my color, and I didn't. I treated everybody as fair as I can be, regardless of who walked in that door. If they came with the problem, I shut the door and I listened, and I took notes, and we took We had certain steps you have to go into into the the equal employment channel. You have to do certain things in a step by step, in a timely fashion. And I was supposed to be neutral, and I try to maintain that neutrality. And when some of them I thought it was wrong, I told them, you're you're not right with this. And when the managers were wrong, all right, I told them too, and I shared with him. So I didn't choose one side or an other. But some way, ain't there unknownst to me, I must have helped some of the wrong people or took on some of the issues that the management didn't care about. But they never came back and told me so. But I did what my heart felt. And I think today when I look at people, I don't look at anybody's color. I don't look at anybody's religion, whether they believe or don't believe. And we surely don't talk about politics when we go in the field. In a lot of times, when I take various groups hunting. I always try and take one of my buddies because sometimes we have some new guys that don't understand all of the features of rabbit hunting. So while I'm working the dog, my buddy will help keep them in line. And the main thing with the guys is two of them will get together and start talking. And the one thing I find that's a big nuisance, now they need to leave those cell phones in the truck. If you got to talk on the phone, then you need to stay at home. So I bring one of my buddies. And most of the people I take hunting, they're not of my color, my race, but that doesn't matter. I tell everybody we're rabbit hunters. With rabbit hunters, that's what we're doing. We're not doing We're not trying to cure the world of the social ills and all the other things and what you believe in, what you know. We're rabbit hunting. Long as you're safe and and you're having fun. And I tell them my job simply is with the dogs to get some rabbits up. Hopefully you make a shot or two. Now, if you kill, that's on you. If you can't shoot and you keep missing, then there's a lot of teasing. But that's my job. The church rabbit hunt is open and you're safe, and you're safe, and all the guys are hunters. They hunt different things, some shooting them in the air, some waiting all data for that one shot on that big elk or moves or big white tails somewhere and and but they know, they know safety and that's the key, and they have fun, especially because you're a rabbit hunting there's a rabbits running everywhere. There's people going everywhere, there's dogs everywhere. Right, you have to be aware, very aware of what your point. And people don't understand it. They said, well, Charles, that I get all these questions. So they say, how close are the dogs are the rabbit of the dogs gonna catch the rabbit? I say, very rare, very rare. They'll they'll they'll get a wounded rabbit or down rabbit underneath the brush and they'll bring him out. Okay, But when the rabbit get up, I know that the rabbit is up by the sound of the dog's voices. Sometimes I see the rabbit, sometimes I see the grass shake. And for safety, you never shoot in the grass. You or your target. The dogs are running twenty five to a hundred yards behind the rabbit. So when you see that rabbit make its turn and come back, he's given the dog to slip because he's gonna run zig zag. He's gonna make a double back on his trail. He's gonna circle, he's gonna loop, he's gonna do all sorts of things to make you look bad. So yeah, yeah, but you did good on the hunt. I was. I was very thrilled. I think we got fourteen that then you must have got four or five. But you will, you feel pretty good about us. I wasn't too sad about it. You did well, I'll say, I'll take that compliment, especially on the recorded recorded conversation. So let's go back. Let's go to the start of a rabbit hunt, right because I want to get your tips and strategies and and what you look for. But so you have, you know, let's say the property that we hunted on, okas back there, what do you look for and where you're gonna find rabbits? What's the first thing that you show up to a place and you're looking at the area you can hunt either whether you're looking at a map or just looking at the tangible wood lot or open field. What are you looking for. What you're mainly looking for is cover. Rabbits need cover. They hide under the cover, and they need to cover to protect themselves from predators because rabbits, uh, they're food that most they have more predators behind them than any other animals. And hawks, owls, eagle crows, all of the flying predators look for rabbits. Then you have the ground animals. That's look from foxes, coyotes, feral cats, feral dogs, wild dogs, man in the road when they cross the road in the darkness, the light of the cars blinding, so you see plenty of dead on the road. So that's about ten things that's trying to kill a rag. So when you look, you're looking for cover. Briars, thick briars, honeysuckle in a mixed with briars, grassy fields, weed fields, uh, small trees. You're not gonna find many in where the woods are open. Now of the woods, on the edge of the woods, you've got a lot of briars and a lot of honeysuckle. Where we hunted. They're gonna they're gonna be in there because they can hide, and they'll cross woods, they'll cross water, and they'll come back. One thing about a rabbit, when he gets up, he always returned to where he got up. So the dogs will chase him in whatever direction, and he'll loop. He'll make a turn. Sometime you'll go twenty five yards. Sometime you'll go out of hearing. As long as they're pushing him and they're running him on scent, he's gonna keep moving. He runs so far and he stops and listen to those dogs, and he's listening up ahead. So if the hunters are up there bs and talking and making noise, moving their feet around his dry leaves, those long ears are not just there too for pretty to show they are there, because he's listening. He's got a keen sight and he's got a keen hearing. And everything is brown. The grass is brown, the ground is brown, the rabbits brown. So it's hard to see him. So he'll fly by. He used camouflage and he used his stealth speed to get away from you. So you're looking for cover. Now. I've hunted some woods in particular, like in Louisiana when we go when I used to go there and hunt those swamp rabbits. They hunt a lot in the woods because they are big briars in the woods. And so we'd go down in the woods and it might be water. Those things run in the water, sit in the water. They cross those little streams in Louisiana they call them bayous and none but a mini river. They will swim across it. They'll hide in the water, and and and uh and everything. That's why shocked people we're hunting together. Where these rabbits would end up places where you'd find them. They be chased into a freaking rock quarry and crawling they they will find. In Louisiana, there are a lot of oak trees, so there are a lot of holes in the trees at the bottom, and they'll climb and go in those holes. Now in Maryland, we have a lot of groundhogs. So groundhogs have holes and burrows all over the We hunt a lot of hedgerows. Hedgerows or nothing but a big wide ditch that separates fields. Farmers will grow corn and soybean and ryegrass and wheat, and they plow the field so it's clear, and then there's a hedgerow and that separate this section. Then maybe a hundred yards over theres another hedgerow, or when it ends up with a with a weed feel or a little briar covered area. So those rabbits come out and eat, and then they live in those hedgerows. So we hunt those hedgerows down. And I tell the guys, I said, do not be afraid to take that long shot. Take that shot, but go check where you shot, because it only takes one or two pellets down a rabbit. Rabbit is one of the easiest thing to kill. So you walk up there fast and you look on the ground. If you don't see him, you look around and you stand still because he might be crawling away. So if you see the grass shaking a little bit, then you got him down and he'll crawl away. And he knows this is his neighborhood. He knows where all of those holes are because that's where he lives every day. And he'll find a hole and going in. Now, we gotta lost rabbit. So if they take that time walking up that rabbit is crawling, he finds that holy go away. Sometime I've been able to pull him out of the hole with a stick. But those holes curves and so forth. So you lost the rabbit, and if he if he's broken down, broken down, mean you've broken the back leg or one or two legs and he's crawling. And if he if you see him and he's still moving fast and you try to shoot him in the head, okay, But if he's down and he went under something, my dogs will find them. They'll go under the bar. They do not eat the down rabbits. Two or three of them will bring him out to me, and boy, through my face glows like I won the power ball. My face is big when I when I first saw a couple of dogs doing that, because we lost the rabbit and here they come out with the rabbit in their mouth. On one hunt last year, a boy shot at a rabbit. And when I use the term boy, it's not a derogatory, it's something we hunters call each other. So he shot at a rabbit and the rabbit ran across a gully and they went on the other side, and the dogs pulled up. When when we say pulled up, that's after you shot at a rabbit and the dog stopped barking and stopped running in the milling around. I said that rabbits down I said, I hope he's not in a hole. So I go over on the other side, because these guys don't move fast enough. I'm sixty eight years old and most of these guys are half my age, and I out work them all in the woods. So so, but this is all I do, so I know all of the shortcuts. So I go up there and two of the dogs had the same rabbit in their mouth trying to bring him back to me. One had him by the front leg in his mouth, and the other one hand and by the back leg. Now I needed a camera for that. Oh that was just awesome. You figure out where the rabbits are, I mean most places, most places you go find the cover. It's not very it's not a hard thing to do most times. No, especially here in southern Maryland and the east eastern Shore of Maryland. You find the briers, you find you find the rabbits, right, and rabbits are plentiful here for sure. So then you you're getting your dogs out. So what how many dogs? What kind of dogs? And give us a breakdown and kind of that part of it. Okay, these dogs are pumped up. This is what they live for. This is their excitement. So you you you got the cover. And when I let them off the truck, they're coming out like F fourteen jets off of the tail gate. I gotta ramp for them to come down. They don't want to walk on the ramp, they want to jump off the top. I got all these photos of these dogs, ears flopping around. They're hot, they're barking, and normally what they do. They've been in the box for maybe a two hour ride. So they go and they do their bathroom and then they saw it searching and they're going through the briars and they're looking for that first cent. So they get that first cent up and the chases. These are beagles. Uh, their medium speed A run all male. Medium speed. They're all pure bred. That is medium speed, the blank of their legs. Medi even speed is how fast they run. How do you determine? Well, Uh, if you have a slow dog, he's gonna be hunting right in right near in front of you, moving real slow. Is that just the physical ability of the dog. The way that's a that's bread into the boy. If you you a lot of guys, there are three speeds slow speed. Most guys don't use. Most guys use medium speed. They're moving fairly quick. They're searching, and when the chase get on, they're moving out fairly quick. Now there are some guys like fast dog. Fast dogs are gonna go through the briars, and when they push the rabbit, they're gonna push him fast. They're gonna push him far. And uh, when he comes back, he's coming back fast. He's gonna come back fair. But that medium speed gives you time to set up. Okay, because when the dog get the rabbit up, the rabbit's gonna run in a certain direction. So I tell the guys, okay, he got up right here, he's gonna come back close to that same spot where he got up because this is his home. So if it's four of us hunting and we're hunting a stretch of cover, I'll put one guy on one side so he can wash the inside. Then he can watch if you run on the outside or try to cross over. One guy on the other side, and he can watch that side if he comes running down the side, and two of us in the middle. Okay, and you find yourself a clearing that you can shoot a shooting lane. So when he comes back and you see him. He might come back hopping and listening. He might come back at full speed, and you said, don't there, you go, So the kids, you yelled to your buddy, he's coming to you, so he can get prepared if you miss him. And then the two guys and you can only shoot in front. You can't shoot sideways because you've got people close to you. And we we must write orange. According according to Maryland, way is orange at least one one or more pieces of blaze orange. So I carry caps in the truck to give those guys who come with the other color caps. And so you shoot in front of you. The two side guys can shoot on the side because there's nobody there. Now, if he runs between us, and he runs behind us, you can turn and shoot that way as long as it's safe because there's nobody back there but your man, your ground, and he's want to come back. He's gonna sit long as you stand still, and he will come back. And sometime he'll pop up right near you and he'll sit still, and you're looking to your left and he's over to your right, and he sees you well before and hears you well before you see him, so he sits there, So if nothing happens, he might stay sitting there and he had no reason to move. Say the dog loses him and he'll sit there, then he'll take off. But most time, uh, they come back and somebody get the shot, as long as they're teeny. But you don't look at where the dogs are barking, look way in front of the dogs, because he's way in front of the dogs. It is a strange it's a strange situation because as a hunter, you're you're trained, especially with upland game. Right dog on point, you got a pointer, right point, you're looking where he is is gonna flush. I'm work close to there. In this case, like you said, the dogs are running in front of us, the rabbits are in front of them. There's a bunch of times where I'll just be walking along and I'd look up and be a rabbit standing there now and he'd, like you say, he was standing there looking at me while I was walking around. Or I'd be standing there and there'll be a rabbit comes shooting back towards me like a missile. Well, that happens to now. Some of the places on Marilynis and Shore, there are a lot of farms where they have fur trappers. They trapped the foxes. The foxes on the man thing that eat up a lot of rabbit because they hunt them night and day. So they trapped the foxes for the hide. And so when they trapped the foxes, and some of these guys get hundreds of foxes. You don't know where all these foxes come, but they tell me they get hundreds of foxes. So when you kill all the foxes, then the rabbit have time to multiply. And a lot of the places I'm privy to hunt on, I'm hunting on land that eat the fox fox trappers on it, or they have permission to trap the foxes. So the rabbits multiplied. And where we hunted there is a trapper who comes in and trapped the foxes, so they multiply. We've hunted there, uh each year, maybe twice, except we didn't hunt the last year due to family matters and illness of our hosts. But we get double digits in there, uh, and that's plenty. I remember back in the day before I knew all of these people, twenty five years ago, we would go hunt, we'd get one or two, sometime none. You're telling me yeah. And that's it's a big thing, folks to understand. I mean in the American West, back in the in the turn of the century, where your rabbits stacked up two three high. I mean the fields of thousands of rabbits. And so when you know, you said you devote your life to rabbit, honey, you shoot all these rabbits. You're not putting a dent in the poppet, that is correct, not a dent one. Give you a couple examples. You mentioned you were walking in the brush and you saw a rabbit over to your right, and the dogs are running one. Many times where there are lots of rabbits, the dogs will run that one rabbit, but you'll see two or more side rabbits. These are rabbits that are getting out of the bushes because the dogs have gone through that and they don't know where to go. They hear voices, they hear shooting over here, they hear dogs over here, but the dogs go through, so they hop out for safety. Unbeknownst to them, there's a hunter nearby, and I tell the guys it's okay to shoot that one. Shoot him, pick him up, put him on a tree. Branch, put him in your in your pouch, and the dogs are gonna run that one. And rarely do they break and split. Occasionally, maybe twice a year, I might have the pack running two rabbits, but most time they all gonna stay in that same rabbit inside rabbits. And I tell the fellas. Some guy said, well, I saw a rabbit run over here, and I saw one run over there. I said, if you didn't shoot, because a lot of those guys are scared to shoot. They don't know what's the optimum distance to shoot. See myself and a few other people, we have no scared shells because we're gonna that's right, and they're gonna make more, and we keep Remington Federal and all the people win Chester in business. We're gonna shoot and and we go check. So I tell them, if you don't shoot and the dogs are running one, we're gonna kill that one. And then if you saw one, mark a spot where you saw him. I saw a rabbit run by that down tree. I saw a rabbit run over by the ditch about whatever over here, and we'll work our way around. Those dogs will come. And they picked that sent up and we got another chill stone, and we get that one and and and and just move and move quietly and be on your gar be attentive, because as I told one fellow, I told him the rabbit was coming on him, and he gets all excited. So he had that over and under twenty gauge or twenty eight gauge ready, and the rabbit bursts out of those bushes, coming straight at it. And that is the hardest shot to shoot a rabbit when he's coming straight at you, because he's running fast and you're aiming and he's shooting over him, so you gotta drop down. So he shot boom, You miss him. Rabbit ram by boom, he said. Dog on Charles and had to beat on him. I don't know how I'm missing. I said. Look, let me tell you something. A rabbit will make the best shot, the best hunter, look bad on your best day. So suck it up, get ready, and you can redeem yourself. Said that like the good rabbit will make you look bad on your best day, the best day, four or five, four or five good shots today, you should be happy. That's right, Thank you, Thanks to the rabbit. Rabbits. Now you have a unique way of talking to your dogs in the field. I think probably most people are. And I enjoyed listening to you work those dogs at I think that's probably the most unique thing about hunting with you, was just listening to your run them. So give me an example of al. You know, if we were hunting right now and there's dogs, how would you How do you talk to them? How do you command them? Well, that's that's one of the traits that a lot of guys say. They come out to hear me. They don't care if they kill anything. They say it's lack of it's like a stage performance. And I get teased a lot, uh and and and so forth. So when all of the dogs have names, the dogs I hunted with now my two best dogs on Hank and Rattler. Rattler is seven, Hank is six. That are two best there. They'll bring a rabbit out, they'll stay on the scent. When the mother dogs lose them, they will find it. Then I have Bozo and Blue Blue is a blue tick. All of these dogs were named before I got them because I was going to ask you. I wanted to pick some of those names because I buy them when they're one to two years old. So the owners have named them and they raised them and they and they're all good dogs. Then I have Buckshot and Sam. They're like twenties seven months old. So they're coming along good. So when I put them down and they take off, to get them going and where I want them to go, I call them and I said, come on over here, come on over here, come on over here. We're gonna hunt over get in the bushes. And they understand. Now blue lights to hunt a little wide. So and when they when they when a rabbit is up, I said, come on, find him, now, find him, get him up, find him. And they respond. And when they lose one, I could be fifty to sixty yards away and I'll yelled to him. Find them. What that does? That give them encouragement? And they're searching a little bit harder. And I yelled to him and I ain't come on board, get them, find them. Don't make me look bad in front of these guys. They're gonna laugh at me. And Teesney and the guys are rolling and next thing you know, the rabbits is coming and their teas and so when they shoot. When I was shooting and kill a rabbit, and I try not to do too much shooting because my wife gave me a hard time. She said, how many did y'all kill on one hunt? I said, well, we kill eight? How many? You killer? Said? I kill six? When are they gonna start killing? I say, when they get there behind and hunted. You stuck a few in everyone. Sometimes there's a rabbit, you gotta shoot it, and I'm not gonna let them. I'm not gonna let them pass. I'll let him run because I want the dogs to run the rabbit. I don't want the dogs to one run one rabbit for an hour and a half, which they do sometimes, and so I want the god's skill. But if they are so out of it, then I killed. But I yelled to them and encouragement, and then I'll yell dead rabbit, Yeah, give me the full dead rabbit. I'll say, damn, somebody, you got him. I said, dead rabbit. Pick him up. And what you want to do when you shoot the rabbit, you want to stay where the rabbit is down. Now, if he's crawling, you don't shoot him again and put pepping him up with lead because you just put your foot on him. Rabbit is one of the easiest thing to kill. Hit him with a chop behind the neck with your hand. You can kill him, or hit him on the gun barrel, hit him on the tree. You put your foot on him and leave him on the ground. So when the dogs come, they're gonna follow the scent line to the down rabbit. This is their reward for running. When they sniffed that down rabbit. A couple of mines don't even come. They just look at him and keep on going. They know, they know they have scored a touchdown, so now it's time to go searching again so they can score another touchdown. And they know because if you don't let him see that dead rabbit. And some of the boys tend to pick him up fast and said, no, no no, no, pick him a fast, let him let him smell it. And sometime I'll walk over and hold a rabbit up and let him hold it up and shake it in front of their face and they'll look at it, they'll smell they know it down. But if you don't do that, they keep searching because they think that rabbit is still up until they run out of scent line. So they'll foll him up that scent line, and when they run they are running close together when you know you've got a good pack of dogs, they're running. And I tell people this, and I write. I write articles for a couple of magazines, Better Beagling, a national magazine and out of Indiana find people. And I write for a local magazine called the Maryland Hunting Quarterly, maybe a couple of times a year, but I write five or six every year for Better Being. The ones I write for Better Beaglan they're they're either about hunts. I take pictures of the guys, the rabbits and put them in and send everybody a copy and they can brag to their friends. And I'll write stories sometime about a hunter. You wrote a story about our hunt. My dad and I came out hunt with you, and you wrote a story about our hunt. Now I'm a writer, that's my profession too. And I read this story you wrote in Better Biggling magazine and I thought, how the hell does Charles remember all this? You had the most intricate details of stuff that I would never remember. Do you take notes? Uh? Or do you just have a photograph? Remember, I'll tell you this. What A fellow who introduced me two the starting introduced him. He was the first person to introduced me to people who were in the business of land and long story. I'm a long winded but I'll cut it shot. He This organization was called the Maryland Legislative Sportsman's Foundation, made up of about thirteen guys who UH promoted hunting and fishing issues UH pros dot com and we testified UH before the legislation and we worked with the Department of Natural Resources. They asked me to do and all I do charity auctions for a lot of groups for hunting and fishing groups. And he said, Charles, I got your name from some folks. You did a charity auction. Now I don't charge for any of these things. Susan B. Coleman for a big cancer raising thing twice and our auctioneer couldn't make it. Can you do an auction for us? I said sure? But what are you charge? I said, well, let me ask you something. I said, aren't most of the members hunters and fishermen and water fowlers. He said yeah, but that's gotta do anything. I said, I don't want any money. I want permission to hunt on the land that you guys own. AlSi said, that's it. I said, that's it, I said, Plus, you can come rabbit hunt with me. So he told me. After a couple of hunts, he said, and read some of the article, he said, How do you remember all of this stuff? He said, you remember everything from the first cup of coffee two, everything like the shape of the briar past the first round. I do have this great memory that I can remember who's doing what, who was standing where, who shot, who missed? How many times? And I'm just I'm not trying to remember, but I remember it. I remember to cover the type of cover. We're hunting on flat ground, were hunting on the slope, were hunting where there's a where it bottoms out in a big slope, there's a creek running through it. There's a pond over here, and and and there were ducks on the pond and they flew off. I remember all of this stuff. Who killed what, and how many times they shot and so forth. I have this memory, and when I put the story together, I don't take notes in the field because the action is too fast. But what I do when I come back home, All right, First rabbit killed within ten minutes by being Second rabbit killed by field two shots. Third rabbits five guys shot at him, rabbits still running. Because I had a little human to it. I can remember nineties some percent of what goes on on a hunt, and I can hunt multiple hunts, one behind the other, and I can still remember with a different group of people, and I can still remember. But when I come home, I make a little cryptic note, just a few words, we killed fourteen. Sometimes I I'll itemize all the rabbits up to eighteen rabbits, who did what? And the other time I just lumped the story in, and I'll make it short because my wife telling me I'm writing too long. But I'm long winded. So I can remember all of that and and everybody on it. How do you remember that? I said, well, I write nine of it, and I make up five. And one guy's pretty good writer. One guy said he was a joking. He said, you're sure you're not making up and ten percent is the truth. I said, well, I'm the writer who knows who the hell knows. When I read the story you heard about our hunt, I thought he could be baking that up. But it sounds damn right. It's I don't know how he remembered exactly how that rabbit came shooting out of that brush. But well, and I tell people this, being I tell people this, this is all I do. So I'm not hunting with a bow on deer one day, and then I'm dove hunting the next day, and then black powder comes in and I'm hunting black powder, and then I'm hunting with the gun the next day. Then I go waterfowl, and i go try to kill a deer. I'm not doing all of that. I'm doing one thing, and I'm passionate about that one thing, and my memory rolls with that one thing. So when I when I say, it is pretty well covered because it doesn't take me long to capture. We're hunting a hedgerow and the head row is made up of this, and we're hunting in a in a in a wooded field or grassy field and so forth. And I can remember all of that, and I don't think I've gotten any arguments back now. Jeff Crane, who is president of Congressional Sportsman's Foundation, he likes to tease me, and he's a great friend and a great guy. So Jeff in one store worry and I send Jeff a magazine whether he's in the story or not, and they get to go on about three hunts. He and Phil whom who works for him and whose family owned property, so that we hunt on. So Jeff said, he's at Charles. I don't think I missed that many you put in the story, I said, believe me, if I put in the story, you missed that many. I said, Jeff, why are you always bothered about what you missed? You shot at four rabbits, you missed two and you killed two. Yeah, but I don't think I missed that many, I said, next time we write the story, I'm gonna draft that. I'm gonna send it to you, and you you market. You're telling you if rabbit hunting was baseball, you'd be in the Hall of Fame. That's right, that's right, just like hitting the fastball. But teasing one thing about hunting and fishings. As many of the listeners know this teasing company. So if you got thin skin, listen, if you ever come hunt around Charles and you don't have a good time, that's on you. That's right, it's on chart. Part of my job is to make it, to have you get to shoot, hopefully kill, and to have some fun. And I'm disappointed if you don't shoot, and if you don't have some fun. Now they're missing you on your own. You're on your own. That's a t shirt. Miss You're on your own. Give me the the I don't know what you'd call what you call it a chance that you do, like a call that you do. Give me the it's it's it's just a it's just a call, a chant for the dogs. And and they understand it. Each hunter, who each owner of dogs have their own china. Okay uh. Some say yipe yipe. I say hey, come on there, get him in there, boy, find him, now, find him and they look a little day. They reached back and they they pull a little something out. It's like the old fighter. You think he's knocked knocked down and he pulls something up out of his sleeve and he finds an extra punch somewhere and he to fight. They pull a little something up. I've seen dogs tired and they get up that last rabbit and it's a marathon running. You yell, and in its encouragement, you're coaching them. You're telling them what to do. Is just like any any coach encouraging their team to play defense, to block that shot, to watch that corner, to to do whatever it is, uh there there whatever game they're doing, and it's the same thing. I'm the coach. So I encouraged them. I call the commands and they listen to them and they respond to it. Yeah, there's like and you do like what's yea? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yea. And when when they when we when we see a rabbit running and the dogs or someplace else, they'll find that set. But maybe they thirty yards away and somebody say, I just saw a rabbit run over here, because you walk up on them and you can spook them up. And so I'll say where, And I'll call a dog. When you call him, you gotta call him with enthusiasm in your voice. You just can't say here, boy, come here. They're gonna look at it. What's wrong with you? So you're calling with enthusiasm, and you gotta be consistent. Come on here, yeah, yeah, yeah, come on, get him up over here, just jump up, come on over here, find him, find him, find him. And boy, they're running through the brushes, and all you need is one to pick up the scent. And he picks up that scent and he gives that certain bark the rest of them in about two seconds. They all together. And when they're running a hot scent, I tell people with my dogs, they're running a pattern so close together you can pull a blanket off the bed and throw it and cover all six of them. They running that pattern that close. Now they are dogs that's gonna keep the lead. I got a couple that's always in the lead because they a little bit more peppy than the rest. Is it a more excitement or is it a veteran dog. I think it's a veteran dog, and they gotta lead little bit more pep They're a little bit more peppy. They got a little bit more speed in their makeup than the others. The others are within a foot or two apart, but these are always in the leave. Okay uh. And then I have the veteran ones that when they lose him, they don't give up. They're gonna find him. They're gonna be searching, and they're gonna they're gonna think like a rabbit, and they're gonna go Those other dogs might go to the left, that dog will figure out that rabbit didn't go to the left. He went to the left, but he doubled back or he tripled back and he's over here somewhere. And they figured that out because you can have multiple scent because that rabbit gonna crisscross his own scent a lot of time. He'll run down and he'll run back on the same scent pattern. So the dogs don't know which way that scent is going. So it's confusing. But those veteran dogs, and it takes a dog three to four years to become masters. Okay, when they are about four years, thing they own it. If they're any good, you can't touch them. Okay, yeah, how do you uh, if somebody wanted to get into rabbit Rabbit hunting is is your passion. It's the thing that you do, right, and so like you said, a lot of hunters just go by the season, right, it's waterfowl season, deer season, just going to the thank you. But there's a lot of people that that just hunt waterfowl, a lot of people that just love turkey, says a lot they just love a certain thing. Now, But if somebody wanted to pick up rabbit hunting and kind of take it to your level, how where how would you tell him to start? What would you tell him. Think. First of all, I would tell them, fine, a veteran person who's been doing it, one that you can trust, and take you out and teach you the fundamentals of hunting, what to buy clothing, what kind of gun preparation for that time frame should is best to go? And when you start getting into dogs, how to select dogs and who to trust is best to buy? Well, let me start back, So, so talk about a good gun to hunt with. What I would say? I would say, stay away from the twelve gauge. They're large, and if you're shooting, you tend to put a lot of pellets in the rabbit. Now, you can't eat them because you don't want to break up all your teeth, and you're gonna prep them up with shells. Okay, a lot of people use that. Okay, a good twenty gauge. The most fellas use twenty gauge number six and seven and a half. I use a twenty. I use a twenty eight, and I use a four ten. Okay, at four ten, you gotta be on the money, but it'll bring them down. In that twenty eight gauge, there's nothing but a rabbit killer. It's got good power and it doesn't knock him on. And I use six says when I can find them, and all of them, and I'll go to seven and a half. So the guns, the clothing you're gonna need. You're gonna need some orange. You're gonna need a vest with a pouch on it. You're gonna need a jacket when it started getting cool, with a pouch on it to put your game in it. You're gonna need some good gloves, leather gloves or some kind of material that resists the briars because you're gonna go through briars. And you need briar pants or chaps, because you can't go out there and hunt with blue jeans on, because you're gonna have you'll be picking stickers out of your leg for a week. Okay, So you need briar pants and you can bond from all of them distributors go online wherever you chose, or you can get chaps. That's what mistake I made. I came out here just I can't remember what kind of pants I had on, but they and you were in the bushes, and I told some people, I said, boy needs something like a veteran. I have some guys who never want to go into bushes. So if I said I need a guy on the clearing, I got it. Then never want to go into bushes. Then I asked some other guys go into bushes because a lot of time you gotta go in the bushes and walk through. And so you need you need that kind of gun. Barrel is good? Okay? Uh, the some guys come out there, A few guys come out with a single. Lot of guys like a double over and under side by side, pump see me, whatever is your preference. Um, try that, And you need something that's light. You don't need a big heavy gun because you're gonna be doing a lot of walking. You gotta swing it. You're going through vines, you're going through dishes, you're going through gullets, you're going over logs, so all of that. You're walking in mud sometime and all of that weights down on your Plus, you got your shells, you got your knife, you water bottle, two, three rabbits in your pocket if you're good. So you need all of that and now, um, and of course you need a nice place with with a lot of cover to hunt. And the acreage doesn't matter. My buddy and I hunting on some land about three acres and we kill one day, we kill our limit. We went back. We kill our limit, two little narrow dishes. There were rabbits in there. Uh, but your main things you need cover that houses rabbits. I hunt on some people land there on thousands of acres of land. We hunt one little piece. We'll hunt maybe a hundred yards two hedgerows, and we hunt back. We'll get more coming back the second time. Because the first time the dogs are running, one or two rabbits, we kill them. And when we come back through the second time, those rabbits that didn't move, they're spooked up and they're ready to run. We hunted on a on a ditch in the middle of a field. This is a spot loaded with rabbits. I trained there. We we killed three one at the beginning. We killed two at the uddy in about a hundred and twenty five yards loan and it's about twenty five yards wide. We hunted back there. I want to say, let's walk to the truck in the field and walk to the truck and go down. I said no, no, no, no, no, let's walk back through slope. We got plenty of rabits. We killed seven going back. Now, if we had walked in the field and just went to the truck, we would have missed seven. And we hunted there a bunch of us last year and we went across thirty. There was a bunch of us rabbits was running everywhere, and he said, there's probably another thirty in there. And so I went trained. Because I trained my dogs right after the season in the cooler months March, April, me then it get hot and in June, July, August, September, I just started running them again, not training running because they already trained. But they're athletes, so you need to exercise them so they can get their stamina. They can lose some of that summer way. So I started. I went um two days ago and I jumped to They ran him for fifteen minutes. That's enough. I'm going tomorrow and run them again. A lot of guys don't run their dogs, and when they come out there at first day, they expect miracles out of these dogs that's been laying around all summer. Man and these dogs look like they don't want to hunt. That they never heard of rabbit hunting. My dogs. When I let them off the truck, they read it a roll. So you need to you need to work that. But I went trained on this ditch a couple of times, and I took a older friend of mine, he's about eighty nine now, and I just want you to walk on the other side. And so we walked with a stick. We're doing the same thing when we when we're running, except we don't have a gun. We have a stick. In about an hour and a half, we we counted at least twenty rabbits, he said, Charles, even at my age, I could have killed my That's I'll tell you this now. You give say you got a lot of older fellas that you hunt with. If it just doesn't mean like you can get like you said, you can be made to look a full by these rabbits. You can go one day and shoot tenant rabbits or what shoot your limit? What's your what's the limit? You can shoot four rabbits one day and be like I am a rabbit hunter. Yeah, I want to pick this up and the next time you go, you should you go over ten or something like that. Yeah, yeah, and that happens. That happened. Look, that has happened to me. And that happened to a lot of guys. They go out there one day. One day I hunted with some guys years ago. I shot sixteen times. Rabbit came at me straight. I put three on him with a pump missing. He went down, ran right by me, went down. I loaded up. He came back the same pattern. I put three mode that six shots. I killed one rabbit that day with sixteen shots. We hunted. We hunted at the end of the season on some property nearby. This was in Salisbury, Maryland. I made seven shots seven rabits. Slack fishing. You go one day, you think there's no fishing in the bay. You go to the next day, the boats tipping over with fish. It's the same thing. So you just have to be patient. It's called hunting. It's called hunting and not killing. So my dad always said to me, and and and at some level that's what keeps you coming back. That's right. But the key, the key is to have good property. And I tell a friend of mine who hunts a lot with when I tell my wife we're religious people, I give thanks to God all the time for all the people I've met, uh, including you and all of your comrades, and a bunch of other comrades from a lot of organizations that I've been introduced to, and just a lot of regular everyday people that I'm blessed to know. So many people who allow me to come and hunt on their land when they're finished what they're doing. And when February rolls around, the text, the email, the phone is ringing, my wife telling me you're one person. And I try not to go back to back two days in a row because I need a rest and the dog need arrest, and and I tell them the Saturdays and Presidents they've been gone for the last ten years, so you gotta go week days. And some of these people got all of these reason why they can't go hunt. And I say, look, and if you want to go, you tell me if I can, if I invite you. But if you can't go, telling me too, because when I go to when I pull the sheets upple on me at night, I want to know who's going in the morning. I don't want you to call me in the mornings. I can't make it or out of out of this and that and the other not there are emergencies. But if you can't go, I got five guys standing in line behind, and all I gotta do is call one of them because I want to know who's going, who I'm picking up, who's meeting me here to go hunt? Yeah, uh And and it works pretty good because guys noted I'm I'm serious about this and so forth. So I've got people coming to me and i'm i'm I'm I'm in oval ouds. So I don't I don't need anybody else calling me asking me for uh that. I mean, it strikes me that you've kind of taken your upbringing and what you love and your your religion and it's all kind of wrapped up into the church of rabbit hunting to like you get it's people for you. You You know, it's not just killing. It's not just the pursuit of the animal. It's the people. It's it's the relationship with your dogs, it's the relationship to the land and time has spent outside. Like this seems to me like all that is wrapped up in the passion. It's not you know, you're not measuring, of course, rabbits are different. You don't measure the ear on the rabbit, say how big it is. It's did you have were you with good people. Did you have some laughs? Did you did, were you safe? Were your productive? You have a good time? And once hit once we started losing all of those things, and it's time to quit. And I don't think we will because a deal with a deal only with quality people, okay, and we have some fun and if there are any person who are any anti people that we run into, we eat everything that we kill. And if we don't eat it, we got a ton of people who wanted that we give away. Even there's a lady my wife takes acupuncture from a lady. She and her friend rescue straight cats and dogs, and so she asked my wife, what do your husband do with the ears she's out. I guess he throw them away. So she's asked him if he can save them for me, because they've been buying ears from China. So they rescue these cats and dogs and they make treats for the cats and dogs. So the last four or five years I've been giving her ears. I give a full five years. So the guys laugh at me when I when I'm there on the tailgate and I'm cutting all of these ears off. You probably did so, and I'm cutting all these ears off. So what I do. I take them whatever I have on a hunt, I put them in a couple of bags in the freezing and at the end of the season, when my wife go for her treatment in March, she take them to it and she just loved it. I even wrote a story about her, got her in the magazine. And so nothing goes to waste other than the other than the guts and the blood. Yeah, well, it's it's it's it's a good way of living life. Yes, you have a good time doing and I know you do. Oh, I can't wait. I started when the season's over, the last day of February. I'm already counting a month now. I'm counting there about about six weeks away. Yeah, gosh, that's good. Yeah. Yeah, there's just certain things, you know, That's what we were talking about for this. I've hunted around a good bit. I'm from Maryland. I spent a lot of time on the Eastern Shore, spent a lot of time hunting. Think big credits are big antlers, big horns, big top of mountains, things like that. But there's something about freaking Saturday spent hunting rabbits that I could do every year on the year and if I lived here, probably every weekend, on the weekend, your buddy, your buddy feel whom said, and I quoted him in a magazine. You said, the only bad thing about rabbit hunting you gotta wait ten more months until you do it again. It's fun the end of the season. But people who have never done it say, uh, I didn't notice thing was this much fun. And some of some of these guys have gone. They go and they still do. They go all over the world and hunt all sorts of things. I mean, they go to Argentina, they go to Mexico, they go to New Mexico for all kinds of doves and sand hill and the big deer here and the elk and all of that stuff. And they go out of the out of the South Africa and hunt all kinds of things. They say, man, one one guy who's a who's a good friend and a associate of Jeff and and fill them. Uh he comes out. He came out on one hunt. He had a cigar in his mouth. And and of course I've made this. I tell a story A lot of people in the cigar I've gotten longer. Sigal was probably whatever the every length of a cigar or six seven eight inches, I said, man, when Greg was hunty, he had a cigar that sigal was about fourteen inches long and his bough. He never lit it, but when the hunt was over he had about an inch left in his mouth. Now, I said, Greg, I don't know if you ate it or what you did with that cigar, but you got enough, he said Charles. His hunt was so fast and action so heavy. I don't know what I did. I probably swallowed the cigar. The cigar, so I tell him us, I keep telling that, so he said, keep telling that story and making a cigar longer. I said. By the time I finished that, he thought that was a great No, it is fun, and they're, uh, well, we have this kind of deal in the hunting industry, you know that I run around in where like we do celebrate the bigger at critters and the bigger pantlers and the more adventure like going to the top of the mountain and going far, far, far away. We tend to celebrate that a good bit, which is fine because it's awesome. Don't get me wrong, But boy, I'll tell you if you get if you start going weekend rabbit hunt, you'll never have much more fun than that. I don't believe, because what happens in a rabbit hunt. And I taught my brother in law, who's a city boy, out a rabbit hunt's I want to try. He's like thirteen years younger than us. He went with me, and he carried a stick for a couple of times in carrigun. So I learned him a single shot four ten. He said, that's all I need. And he bought a couple of common pieces of clothes to see if he liked it. Well, he liked it. The next year he said, I'm in. He bought him the whole outfit, and you shot gune et cetera. And he said he told his sister, my wife, He said, rabbit hunting is like playing basketball. You got to second left, the score is tied, and you got the ball, and your adrenaline is pumping, and you make that final shot and you win the game by two points or one point. You know you might be one under. He said, that's what it's like. And I've been doing this since I was eight, so for sixty years, and my adrenaline pumps. I don't smoke and I don't drink. Uh sometimes I'll put a pepper mat in my mouth or stick, and I'm like Greg with the cigar. I'll chew a whole lot of little branches off, a little dry twigs. Because when them dogs are barking, I call it the beagle music. When they're barking in hot pursuit, your anxiety and your adrenaline is up high because you're looking all over your eye. Your eyes are going like a windshield wipe on a car on fashion. I don't know where he's gonna come out. He might you might see him way in front of you. You might see him crossover, he might come right at you. He might run right past you. And that happened all the time. So your adrenaline is pumping. So don't come out there with a weak heart. Okay, we don't want to carry anybody, but you're adrenaline will pump whether you're like I've heard of people having heart attacks when they see this monster deer appear that you read about it. I've only read about it, but I've not had anybody have one with me, and I hope I never. But even at sixty years doing this, my adrenal still pumping anticipation because it is just so exciting. Yeah, well, I think you may have talked a few people in they're going rabbit hunting in this last Well, I hope. So wherever wherever, and I wrote this in one of my article, wherever you are, it can be upstate New York and anyway in between North South Carolina, anyway down south if you got the right cover, the right people hunting with you, and they've got some dogs in there, and they have some good dogs, and you can find out who have good dogs. And most of these guys if you offer them up some land or something, they want to go because uh Land is getting away from us. So if you approach some of these guys and let them into your world when you finished doing whatever you're doing, you can have some good fun and you can find some rabbit because they were everywhere. Yeah, and if you've never hunted before, there's a lot of people listen to this podcast that people I interact with and are part of our world that I got excited about hunting but have still never done it. That that want to eat something they've killed, but it's still never found a way. They may live in a place like you said, where there's no access. They may think they can't afford the equipment. They may. There's a lot of things they that might stop them from going to do it. But but rabbit hunting in particular has all like you can get a four ten for almost nothing. You can get a pair of brush pants for almost nothing. There's just borrow a pair of somebody like like yourself and and find some land. Most people aren't gonna say no, no, no, we we want all our rabbits. Don't shoot any of those. And it's acts, it's accessible, it's easy to do, it's it doesn't cost much money at all. If any really just get a tag and it's you know, when you shoot four rabbits, come to the Eastern Shore, shoot four rabbits and cook them up. It's more meat than you can I mean, my dad and I both shot. We had what we left with eight probably and we fed. I don't know how many people that my dad my dad might still be eating those rabbits. Well, we kill fourteen that day, and my buddy Max and I didn't take any because many time on the hunt we get plenty and if the hunters that we're taking one of them, all we give them all to them and we help we help you guys clean them, but they have many hunts. I go on. But a hunter said, well, I don't want any one. Guy said, my wife told me, whatever you're hunting, don't tell me and don't bring anything back. So we got his portion. And some guys said, man, I just came to hunt and shoot. I don't want any and I don't eat them, but I like to hunt. So whatever they don't want, I take, and I give to all of the people on my list. So uh yeah, if you get that opportunity, and I tell people list, if you get that opportunity to go, and you got a good, responsible, safe person and with some good dogs and gonna teach you and guide you, and you're gonna have some fun. There are some people that you go with they want to do all of the shooting because they know where to stand and how to move and when not to move and where the rabbits gonna come. I know that, okay, because I can tell how my dogs are moving, how fun they are, and if they're coming back and so forth. And I tell the guys spread out and move and getting a clearing and if he's going down, he's coming back, and watch and look around you because there are others sitting around. And when you see a clump of grass or bush, they can sit in a little clump of grass the size of a small pumpkin and you can walk by because everything's brown, and they won't move, and you walk right past them. But what I do, I kick those little clumps and when they get up, we don't shoot the rabbit when we kick them up like that, particularly the first rabbit, because you want the dogs to run the first rabbits to get their adrenaline going in, the excitement going. Once you get that ascitement going on that first and second rabbit, they're looking for more rabbits. This is what they live for. So um, you kick them clumps and you stand back and you you watch them and then the dogs will will get them up. The dogs gonna bring them back. Everybody out there is listening. Joined the join the congregation Church of rabbit Hunting. I like that term. Well there's one fellow. He's a father in law, well almost farther in law. I don't know why that boy hadn't married his daughter yet. Uh, he's been dating the young lady, and I said, you need to marry them. Well, she wanted a big ring. I said, what the heck, by that big ring? She want a big stone to show her girlfriends, I said, by that stone. So his father in law to be he had so much from this man and never hunted rabbits before. He didn't even have a gun, and he didn't even have a jacket. And so he come out there the first time with a bar of gun from his son in law and a kind of like a a coverall suit that the workers used when it's cold outside. He didn't. I saw the guy giving him shells. I said, every time he shoot, he shot three times, whether he hit or not, he stopped three times. He shot at three rabbits, three shots a piece, miss all of them. So he he want to do it. So I said, you need a smaller gun. So I brought her twenty gage Simi and loaned to him. On another hunt. That man out we kill about nineteen that day. He must have killed six or seven. They were running on him and he was popping him and we tease him about practicing during the summer, and um, he said, Charles, I'm gonna call you a different name. You are the doctor of rock rabbatology. I know there's no such word. You say, I'm giving you a new handle doctor Rabbatology business card. I saw him this someone, Well, no, I don't need a boostiness card because I got I got enough action already. So but he's a he's a fun, fun, fun guy of a business card with of just you know. It struck me like this guy's got a business card on charge of dime. It's just he's just like a friend that wants to come out and the rabbit. And people say, um, what do you get out of it? I say, it's my passion. I get to meet new people, I get to see other people hunt. I get to share what I enjoy and I get to hunt on new lands. Okay, A lot of guys I know don't get that. And I'm I'm single out on one of the few that gets that. Because I worked on these committees, volunteered my time, I met people. I deal with people great. I have no hang ups, they have no hang ups. If any if they do, then I don't deal with them. And I've met I've been blessed to meet all kinds of nice people from all walks of life. And we don't judge nothing about either. And and I know that manities individual a very affluent in life. But I'm not into that. I'm into taking you rabbit, no matter if you're a king or queen, just a regular guy. So so when you put all out of side, and I know a lot of people outfit, that's their passion. They make a living doing it, doing deer and all kinds of things. And that's fine, that's great. I'm not into that. If I own twenty five acres, maybe I would have I would have done it. But when you start taking people money for rabbit hunting, there's no guarantee that their rabbits in the bushes. And then people have an expectation. Right now, all I can deliver is if they're there, the dogs are gonna find them. If you're in the right position, you're gonna get a chance to shoot. And some of them guys have just as much fun when they kill as when they met. I'm telling you, like I said, if you come out with blood MUDs flying, you come out with the doctor of rabbitility, you don't have a good time. I am sorry, but it's on you. You have done something wrong, something terribly wrong. Well, I appreciate you have me in your home here. Um, and your lovely wife cooking his breakfast and spend a time with you. I think anybody can learn from something from you. It's it's sixty years of passion for whatever it is. It doesn't matter what it is, rabbit hunting or whatever you're doing, but your passion for that thing is it's it's inspiring. And and I thank you, Ben, I thank you uh in meeting you and the things you've done for me and introduced me to your dad, and and I feel so blessed and so swingle out have been given this opportunity to do this interview. Uh. This just gives me a big boost. And I hope the world that's listening, I hope I was clear and I hope you understand uh and followed through what I said. But it is my passion, UH, and I enjoyed tremendously. And like I said on my cord, it's the only game in town for me. I don't criticize anybody else for the things that they do and they love and that's fine. But uh, I hope I've given you but those who who want to try this somewhere, I hope I've given you some good tips. And that's the luck to all of you. Well, thank you and and uh I'm glad it's the only game in town, because the hell of a game. Yes, sir, thank you, Charles, thank you. That's it. That's all episode number books. Thanks to Charles Rodney for having in his home and his lovely wife for cooking me breakfast. It's so welcoming there, um on a rainy day in Maryland. It was fantastic to be with Charles and to hear about his passion, his life story which is amazing and um why he does what he does, which is rabbit hunt. That's all he cares for, that's all he wants to do, and he has made an amazing life, an amazing hunting career of doing just that. So enjoy I hope you enjoyed it. I did. I really think he is one of the better guests, one of the better people that will ever have on the Hunting Collective. So until next time, go to the Hunting Collective dot com, visit me at Benyo B three oh one on Instagram. A lot of conversation to be had about this podcast and all the others we've had recently, including Jeff Crane and Andy Treeharn other Congressional Sports Is Foundation, including Adam FoST including our Texas series, Wyman Men'ser and Russell Cunningham and Bryan and Ryan Cedars of Founder's Vietti and many more. So get there, listen up, and send us some comments and questions and criticisms. We love to hear it all. High short, do and stick with us. You're done in collective. We'll be back next Tuesday with another great guest and another podcast for you, ye