Craig Marcum, Legendary Hounds

Starting to Hound hunt is overwhelming. The best way to learn is to pair up with a patient expert, who can work with you, hands-on, side by side, and teach you the process. This tag-team learn-by-doing approach will make sure you see things that you wouldn't when you go it alone. It's like making biscuits. If I don't know how to make biscuits, someone can tell me how. They can give me a recipe. But when you make biscuits together with them in their kitchen, 'You're like, oh, that's how you do that.' That's what happens when you're in the field with hounds, too. When somebody is an expert, and they've been an expert for years, they don't even think about what they're doing. They do it automatically. If you're a newbie, you can look at that and say to yourself, 'Okay, now I see how that is.' 

Craig Marcum learned to hunt bears with hounds the hard way.

Marcum said, "A couple of years after we got started, we went hunting with a fellow named Junior Alshire and a man by the name Chad Acres. Chad and Junior had been hunting since the 90s in one of the neighboring counties with a hound season. They had been there, done that. They're great Houndsmen, Goodfellas. And so we got to hunting with them. And you know, that got us on the right path. There were some of those things that I was just like? Wow, I didn't see that till now. I see it."

Craig Marcum lives in southern West Virginia and has chased bears with hounds for 15 years.