Legendary Bear Hounds: part 30 - CH. IRWIN'S TREESOLID OJO

Sometimes the most effective things in life are those that simply do what they were intended to do, be it man, machine or in our case, beast.

- STEVE FIELDER

The crossing guard that faithfully and unceremoniously crosses school children at a busy city intersection through rain, sleet or snow. The mechanic, by simply turning a screw, keeps the delivery fleet moving smoothly to its appointed stops throughout the busy day. And, for our purposes, the hound, though not the flashiest member of the pack, that puts the essential elements of striking, trailing, catching and treeing together consistently to produce game, benefits those in the realm of its existence immensely. Our story this month involves one such dog and the hunter that preserves his memory by the telling of his exploits in one of the nation’s most beautiful hound-hunting settings, the mountains and river valleys of New England.

Kelly and Jared Irwin, who now live in New Hampshire, were each born in neighboring Vermont, he in St. Johnsbury and she in Newport. Kelly was working as a herd manager at a dairy farm when Jared stopped by to talk to the farmer about running the bears out of his cornfields along the Connecticut River. As Kelly remembers, “There I was. I didn’t even know that people ran bears with dogs,” she confides. Theirs is the classic girl-meets-bear-hunter story and the couple was married in 2003, the year the hound of our story was born. Jared now works as a fish culturist for the New Hampshire Department of Fish and Game and Kelly is a stay-at-home mom, homeschooling their six-year-old son Reid and bear hunting either alone or with Jared at every opportunity.