Old Hub Dawson
By Tom Masters
Blue Island, Illinois

The Hunter’s Horn
March, 1980
Page 59

I want to give an account of the old Master himself, Hub Dawson 908. There has been so much said about Hub Dawson in the past that now one has to have known him personally to give a true account of him as a fox dog, but this incident stands out in my mind as to his real qualities as a fox hound as well as a great sire.

Old Hub was in his prime, tough as a pine knot and, as we all know, had an almost iron constitution, and if I remember correctly it was in the late spring or early summer in 1913 that W. T. Woodward, now deceased, had been east with race horses and had come back to Lexington and Richmond to visit his lifelong friend, J.D. Chenault. Also he visited the hunters in Madison County, and in Clark and Fayette Counties who had planned a great camp hunt down along the Kentucky River near Boonesboro. On the Clark County side of the river they had looked forward for weeks to this camp hunt. The appointed time arrived and the hunters from Richmond, J.D. Jep, Chenault, Alex Parrish, Jennings and Bill Maupin and several more of the Madison County local hunters picked ten dogs, including old Hub Dawson, and drove down to Boonesboro and met the Clark County hunters from around Winchester with ten or twelve picked dogs.

They were going to run a matched race for endurance and were to run every night for a week straight, or five nights, in fact. They met and arranged camp and were all talking about their hounds and past races. Nothing was said, about old Hub being above average as he was just then beginning his career. He was whelped February 10, 1910, and died, if I remember correctly, June 19, 1920. He was a big, stout, well made dog, a beautiful color, black, white and tan. The Clark County and Fayette County hunters had heard of him, but had never seen or run him as yet, so they looked him over well, but passed on to many of the others, then called great fox dogs. They sat and whittled and ate fish and talked all afternoon Monday, anticipating the race for that night. A little after dark the hounds were cast, 21 in all, and there was an old male red fox in that locality that didn’t live in the ground and had no hole that any of the hunters far or near knew of. He had whipped good packs of hounds in many a race. I have lain near that same spot and run him many a night and he trained many of the great hounds that today show on the end of five generation pedigrees of the Walker strain, such hounds as Screamer, Hazelwoods Bell, Orange Blossom, Hazel Stride, old Huntress, Lucy Giles, Champion Lafayette, old Rex Dawson, Champion Hustler, and many other great Walkers.

They cast the hounds up what we always called Howards Creek and in due time the strike was made. After some hard work trailing, they jumped him and the race was on, hounds all pretty well packed up and you couldn’t tell very much about any special one dog. The race wore on and on, but most all the hounds ran a fine race that night and only one or two quit. Tuesday night they lit on him again a little after dark and ran almost as well as they did the first night, with only two or three more dogs dropping out of the running. Wednesday night they cast down the river and hit the real old war horse and after an hour or so he would make a few doubles along the river in the bluffs and then take out across the open Blue Grass Country where the dogs could really get up and drive him. He would be gone out of hearing for an hour at a time and each time he came back there would be some dog missing out of the race and by daylight there were a lot of the dogs laying around the campfire seemingly deaf. That night finished the Clark County boys and they left the Richmond hunters there to finish things out and a lot of the Richmond dogs had quit by this time. Thursday night they cast what dogs they had left that hadn’t quit and others just lay around camp with their eyes nearly closed and all cut and with snagged feet almost entirely worn out, blood running from their footpads and from between their toes. Really those dogs hadn’t quit but had just done all there was in them to do. There were about five dogs left the next morning still driving hard and steady, but most of their tails was dragging, tongues were hanging out the sides of their mouths, front legs all covered with slobber and they were not barking very often. Just about good daylight they holed him and the dogs straggled into camp one at a time and it was nearly noon when the last hound got in, so the boys fed them good and they were very content to lay down anywhere for some most needed rest. The hunters then slept until noon time when they got up one at a time and all began to fix some dinner. After they walked around some to pass off the afternoon and when the sun began to get low in the west they got back to camp and fixed supper, fed the hounds a little more and a little after dark turned them loose again. There were only four or five dogs that would go at all. They had to walk off a ways with them to get them to go. After quite a little time they made a strike and it wasn’t long until they had him jumped, but the fox stayed mostly in the rounds along the river that night and the dogs that were left him did fairly good. Only two quit that night, leaving old Hub Dawson and two others running next morning. Those three dogs left had been in every lick of the running all four nights, so the hunters amused themselves that day by eating plenty more fresh fish from the Kentucky River and entertaining some hunters who came in to see and watch the finishing race Friday night.

Every hunter had his fill of good fish and a real old time smoke after supper. They cast the dogs up Howards Creek again that night and they got a few of the other hounds to go that had had a day’s rest with the three that had run the last night; they trailed out up Howards creek out of hearing and were gone quite some time and when they did come back in hearing they were really setting on him. Up and down Howards Creek they went and came down the Kentucky River across Durids Creek on to Shot Factory, then up Boons Creek to the level Blue Grass Country and then came about three miles right across that grassy level country. About midnight hounds began to get enough, the ones that had already quit, quit again and it thinned down to the three that had run the last night and by two o’clock in the morning they had both quit and most of the hunters thought the race had wound up and was over. After a short talk they all fell asleep and not a man woke until way after daylight. They got up, began to stretch and chunk up the fire to make breakfast and some of the hunters began to look over the dogs all around the camp. They couldn’t get a dog to stand on his feet, just run to death almost, so while they were talking, one of them stepped out from the fire and said, “Hush, boys, I hear a dog running something.” Everybody got so quiet to listen and just then he dropped into a hollow out of hearing and when he topped the next ridge so they could tell what dog it was, it was old Hub Dawson by his lonesome coming up the river, driving that fox just like a Beagle hound running a cotton tail, never missing a note, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo, whoo. Every hound that had started Monday night was gone, most of them had quit, some ran until they just couldn’t run any more, but old Hub Dawson was driving right on, had run five straight nights after big running foxes, made 20 good hounds quit and had shown the hunters his mastership as a real he-man fox dog that was Dead Game to the core.

The hunters ate breakfast and got the dogs up that could stand up and pulled the rest up and tied them and started walking down to the river where they would cross a ferry boat to get back to Madison County where their horses were left. They went back to Richmond with one dog, old Hub Dawson, and he ran many great races after that and proved himself to be a super fox hound and one of the great stud dogs that made the cornerstone to our great present day Walker hounds.

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