About
After retiring from the Air Force, Dad started a small business serving coon hunters. He began by designing and building coon hunting lights and wholesaling parts to other light manufacturers. There’s a good chance that if you’ve purchased a hunting light in the last 20 years, some of the components came from Dad’s shop.
He later went on to create the RATS tracking collars—equipment many coon and hog hunters have relied on to track their dogs. Today, he offers super-bright LED hunting lights under the Superior Lites name.
Growing up in an Air Force family meant we moved around—a lot. But one constant in our lives was coonhounds and coon hunting. For more than 50 years, there have always been hounds somewhere around me.
I remember riding on Dad’s shoulders as a little kid just to go hunting. I carried one of those big, cheap yellow 6-volt push-button lights and depended on Dad’s old metal hand warmers—tucked inside felt cases—to keep my hands from freezing. I remember going to dog trade days, listening to Dad talk to absolutely everyone about dogs, and stopping by the pelt shops afterward to sell furs.
Dad once owned two of the biggest Treeing Walkers I’ve ever seen—or at least that’s how I remember them. Their names were Thunder and Lightning, and they were both males.
One snowy night in Missouri, Dad decided we were going hunting. We loaded Thunder and Lightning into the truck and headed to the woods. Snow was already ankle-deep on me, and just keeping up with Dad felt like a chore. We cut the dogs loose, and before long they had a big Missouri coon treed. We knocked that coon out and decided to turn them loose again.
They struck again quickly—but this time they were a good distance away. I don’t remember who carried the gun and who carried the first coon, but I suspect hauling the coon was my job. When we reached the dogs, they had an even bigger coon treed. We knocked that one out too.
The walk back to the truck was long. We took turns carrying two very large coons and leading two massive hounds through a foot of snow. My feet were frozen, my arms were tired, and it felt like miles to the truck—but eventually we made it. Dad swears that was the night he broke me from coon hunting.
In 2006, I launched a website dedicated to bird dogs called Gundog Central. I’ve always loved running that site, and it’s grown into a popular destination for bird hunters across the country. But having spent half my life around hounds, I always felt the pull to build something specifically for them.
In 2012, I created a sister site — Hounddog Central. It was live for several years, but it never attracted the same level of traffic as the bird dog site. Managing two separate platforms with different audiences and content demands also proved challenging, so I eventually made the decision to merge everything under Gundog Central in hopes of simplifying the workload.
Later, I added terriers to Gundog Central as well. But over time, it became clear that the hounds and terriers never received the same attention as the bird dogs. More than that, they began to feel out of place on a site primarily dedicated to upland and versatile bird dogs.
So I’ve decided to bring Hounddog Central back — this time with a clear focus on the breeds used for both large and small game hunting. A place where hounds and terriers aren’t an afterthought, but the main story.
He later went on to create the RATS tracking collars—equipment many coon and hog hunters have relied on to track their dogs. Today, he offers super-bright LED hunting lights under the Superior Lites name.
Growing up in an Air Force family meant we moved around—a lot. But one constant in our lives was coonhounds and coon hunting. For more than 50 years, there have always been hounds somewhere around me.
I remember riding on Dad’s shoulders as a little kid just to go hunting. I carried one of those big, cheap yellow 6-volt push-button lights and depended on Dad’s old metal hand warmers—tucked inside felt cases—to keep my hands from freezing. I remember going to dog trade days, listening to Dad talk to absolutely everyone about dogs, and stopping by the pelt shops afterward to sell furs.
Dad once owned two of the biggest Treeing Walkers I’ve ever seen—or at least that’s how I remember them. Their names were Thunder and Lightning, and they were both males.
One snowy night in Missouri, Dad decided we were going hunting. We loaded Thunder and Lightning into the truck and headed to the woods. Snow was already ankle-deep on me, and just keeping up with Dad felt like a chore. We cut the dogs loose, and before long they had a big Missouri coon treed. We knocked that coon out and decided to turn them loose again.
They struck again quickly—but this time they were a good distance away. I don’t remember who carried the gun and who carried the first coon, but I suspect hauling the coon was my job. When we reached the dogs, they had an even bigger coon treed. We knocked that one out too.
The walk back to the truck was long. We took turns carrying two very large coons and leading two massive hounds through a foot of snow. My feet were frozen, my arms were tired, and it felt like miles to the truck—but eventually we made it. Dad swears that was the night he broke me from coon hunting.
In 2006, I launched a website dedicated to bird dogs called Gundog Central. I’ve always loved running that site, and it’s grown into a popular destination for bird hunters across the country. But having spent half my life around hounds, I always felt the pull to build something specifically for them.
In 2012, I created a sister site — Hounddog Central. It was live for several years, but it never attracted the same level of traffic as the bird dog site. Managing two separate platforms with different audiences and content demands also proved challenging, so I eventually made the decision to merge everything under Gundog Central in hopes of simplifying the workload.
Later, I added terriers to Gundog Central as well. But over time, it became clear that the hounds and terriers never received the same attention as the bird dogs. More than that, they began to feel out of place on a site primarily dedicated to upland and versatile bird dogs.
So I’ve decided to bring Hounddog Central back — this time with a clear focus on the breeds used for both large and small game hunting. A place where hounds and terriers aren’t an afterthought, but the main story.
