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Written by Caden Clawson and Cael Howard
Kyler Wheeler has around forty hound dogs year round, sells most of them and uses the ones he keeps to hunt bears and cougars. He has been breeding hounds since he returned from his mission. He enjoys breeding and training the dogs.
“My favorite part is training the young ones and then watching them start to do it on their own, start to catch their own lions and bears,” said Wheeler.
Wheeler has brought in dogs from all over trying to improve his dogs bloodline and to find the breed he likes the best. He’s bought some from West Virginia and North Carolina. He has experimented for awhile and has decided he likes the dogs that he has right now.
“I’ve tried all different kinds of breeds from big-time breeders just to see if there were any dogs that were better than the dogs I’m raising,” Wheeler said. “So far I haven’t found any that I like better than the ones I’m raising right now.”
Wheeler helps out the community by chasing the cougars and bears up higher into the mountains. Sometimes cougars go live under the porches of cabins, so Wheeler takes his dogs up and they go chase it out. This also helps out livestock owners by keeping the cougars away so that they don’t kill any livestock.
“Me going up there and chasing them, it kinda keeps them higher up in the hills so they’re not coming down and killing livestock and causing problems,” Wheeler said.
Wheeler has sold dogs to people from all over the world, and his business has been growing. Since he’s had a lot more customers, he’s had to raise his price of his dogs up to $2,000 from $1,500.
“It’s all over, so I sold a dog this year to Russia,” Wheeler said. “I sell them to Canada, North Carolina, Maine, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Florida.”
Wheeler wants his business to have a good name and so he sells his best dogs to buyers. Some years, he needs dogs to replace his breeding dogs, and those years he keeps the best dogs for that. When he needs to keep those dogs he works on the other dogs longer to get them better trained.
“If I need some to replace for my breeding, then I’ll keep the best ones out of the bunch but most of the time I sell the best ones and keep the other ones and work them longer,” said Wheeler.
Go watch the video about Wheeler and his hounds at nstimes.org.
