Ep. 166: Pure Americana - Plott Hound Royalty, Berry Tarlton (Part 2)

This week on Bear Grease, your host Clay Newcomb, brings you this second part in our series on Plott Hounds and how they’ve been interwoven into the lives of the Appalachian people. Developed in isolation deep in the Great Smoky Mountains, the Plott breed was tailor made for the rugged landscape, its people, its bears. The folks who’ve dedicated big blocks of their life to this bear hound are called Plott Men and Women. If you cut them they bleed brindle and in the very niche hound world, some rise to the top as Plott Royalty - and one such man is the late Berry Tarlton of Greenville, Tennessee. His life will give us a much bigger vista than just dogs, but a rare, authentic peak into Appalachia, its culture, its people, and ways. It will be told to us both first person through an archival interview of Berry and also through the collective voices of his grandson and great-grandson, Tracey and Ben Jones. Berry started the Houston Valley strain of Plotts, he’s in the Plott Hall of Fame, the Tennessee Bear Hunters Hall of fame. He was also a legendary lawman who took up a badge and gun in the name of family honor and spent decades chasing down and busting moonshiners in East Tennessee. The stories are as wild as these mountains themselves including car bombing, shoot outs, and being bushwhacked with a Tommy gun. You’re about to see that Plott Hounds are just part of the plot. We really doubt you’re going to want to miss this one…

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