At first Doug would handle Lula and be dragged behind her at the back end of the leash through the thickest of brush. I kept badgering him and he eventually consented to let me handle her. When she was trailing, she was determined. On one of the early trailing events after Fred had wounded a deer with his bow, Lula was hot on the track but after a while we poor-nosed humans lost confidence in her and decided she had lost the track or trail. Even though Lula was insistent on the direction the deer had taken, we pulled her off and tried the direction that we figured the deer had taken. We never found the deer.

Lula and I helped a lot of folks find their deer. Her most difficult effort took place after two fellows had come to us relating how they had shot two deer within minutes of each other from the same tree stand. They had trailed and tracked one deer, finding it, but hadn't been able to find the second. They relayed that the wounded deer had both fled down the same path after being hit but that the deer had been in different locations when wounded. They had found the first deer hit, a buck, but the second, a doe, had eluded them. To make matters worse, these fellows had put deer scent on their boots when they went to their stands and had walked all over the deer trail in their search, leaving this false scent everywhere. Doug was not at camp but Lula and I went to aid these hunters. Finding the second deer seemed like an impossible task but I enjoyed taking Lula out so didn't mind if it was to be a futile effort.

When we got to the site, I asked the hunters to pinpoint as much as possible the location of the second deer when it was wounded. This was to assure that Lula fixed on that scent instead of that of the found deer. They did this and we found a track and a small spot of blood. Lula set out on the track and eventually we came to the spot where the hunters had found the first deer. Lula seemed to want to continue past but I figured she had lost the fist track and picked up on the other deer. I took her back to start over. We did, and she went right back to the same place. I figured that she had become confused and I was about to give up when she performed a maneuver I would come to know and respect. As I was turning to drag her back to start over for a third time, she lunged back toward the trail we had been on, put her chest to the ground and dug in with all four feet trying to pull me further into the woods. She was adamant so I gave in and followed her. We hadn't gone ten yards beyond where the first deer had fallen and died before I spotted another blood drop. The second deer had run right by the first deer and gone deeper into the woods. A half hour later ... we found the wounded deer and it was put out of its misery.

Lest you forget! Deer hunting is a gruesome experience. Be reminded that the death of an animal is the goal. Also, the chase was not a game and a hunting dog, including the loveable Lula, would tear into the deer to devour it if they did catch the animal. Lula, like many of her kin, would go to the soft underbelly or the soft area below the deer's leg similar to our arm pit and gnaw through the skin, pulling out large tufts of hair that protruded from her mouth if she looked away from her grisly, but thoroughly enjoyed, task. It was a scene from the wild. Animal eat animal, the natural order of things; however, it is a grotesque sight and not one that I really took or take pleasure in.

Lula, in a "scene from the wild."

Pam got to meet Lula in 1994. That year Doug was not able to make it to the woods for archery season so I asked him if he would let me take Lula and he said yes. I picked her up a week early and brought her home to stay until the next Friday when we went up to camp. Lula had never been inside a house before. She had always stayed in her run. I was planning on keeping her outside but she got tangled in the rope to which we had tied her. Pam would have none of that so Lula got to be a house dog for a week.

Lula took to the easy life very readily, a life that for the first time in her existence included sleeping on the couch or with Pam and me in our bed; ice cubes in her drinking water; —air conditioning! She did pee on the floor one time. As we have done with all of the dogs housebroken in our home, Pam put her nose in it, whacked her on the bottom, dragged her outdoors saying, "Bad dog!" Lula never went to the toilet in the house again. It was a joy to have her visit and apparently it was a joy for her too. One way she seemed to express her joy was by mad fits of pure pleasure where she would jump up and just fly through the house, running to every corner, wagging her tail and barking as if a deer had run by. After that week, Pam was as hooked on Lula as I was but she still wouldn't let me have a dog, so Lula went back to Doug after her "vacation". She did come for such vacations again in 1995 and 1996.

Some of this pampering Lula received at our home on her vacation spilled over to the hunt camp. From then on, Lula would sleep in our camper with Fred and me, disdaining being tied to a tree or stuck in a clammy doghouse. It was Fred who showed her that it was much cosier under the covers and she liked to sleep this way on cool nights.

Lula had her first set of puppies in 1995. I think she had five at that time. I don't recall what Doug named them but they were precious. I would go over to his place and visit him occasionally, also visiting with Lula. I saw her puppies then. It was later in that year that I had my first experience with Florida redneck dog hunting. Doug invited me to hunt with him, Lula and her pups at a camp he used on some private land near Oak Hill, Florida on the east coast. Several other humans took part in the hunt also.

The terrain that most dog hunting takes place in in Florida is usually flat or with low rolling hills, with woods roads forming a grid with the roads crossing at about one-quarter-mile intervals. This is not exact but close to the layout. The pieces between the woods are usually mostly scrub pine and these are routinely logged for the wood. When harvested, the loggers come in and cut everything down leaving a large bare area which is called a clear cut. These cuts are usually encircled with a fire break or fire trail made by a grader to help in the control of fire and delineate the cutting areas. The woods are interspersed with these cutting sites which are in various stages of regrowth. A cut with short growth from four to ten feet tall is called a 'green' or 'short pines'.

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