Houndsmen can teach you more about teamwork than most leadership books

I did something recently that’s pretty controversial to some. 

I killed a bear. And I did it with hounds. 

I imagine that since you’re reading the newsletter of a hunting and fishing app founder, you’re open minded about hunting. Hunting with dogs can stir up controversy even among hunters, though. From the outside looking in, it seems “easy.” I have gotten to know some of these guys through GoWild, and when they invited me to come down to Virginia to get the full experience, I jumped at the opportunity.

I went to Virginia to see what these houndsmen were all about. What I saw was some of the best executed leadership and teamwork I’ve ever seen. 

I’m not going to share a photo from the hunt—you can see it here if you want and hear the whole story here. The purpose of today’s share is not to talk about the trophy. 

It’s about how to win as a team. 

First, what the heck is a houndsman?

A houndsman is a person who trains hounds for the purpose of hunting. You, like I originally did, I would guess, are thinking of training all wrong. You’re thinking of how you trained your dog to sit, or maybe at the higher end of your expectations, are thinking of someone who has a dog that listens and will respond to multiple commands. That is like comparing your kid’s basketball coach to Phil Jackson. 

And let’s go ahead and put this out there—these dogs aren’t like the dogs you and I have. They are professional athletes. These guys run their dogs multiple times per week (practice), calculate their caloric burn and intake down to the calorie (nutrition) and have the body fat of a professional marathoner (conditioning). They’re Olympic-level athletes. 

The houndsmen I hunted with are—without exaggeration—among the best in the country (which likely means they’re among the best in the world). They hunt all over the country with their animals. 

These dogs can be trained for all kinds of purposes. They run hogs, bears, deer, racoons, mountain lions, bobcats, and so on. Think about how smart and well trained a dog has to be to even be able to do that—each hunt is so different. To stack onto their smarts, they have to be able to run up to 30 miles per day, depending on the hunt. 

These men and women spend thousands of dollars every year on their dogs and gear. It’s honestly quite mind boggling that anyone loves anything enough to spend that kind of cash on it. 

With that covered, let’s dig in

I met Chris Powell, the founder of the Houndsman XP podcast through our app, GoWild. We did a show together for Houndsman XP, which kicked off a casual friendship at first. As the year went on, we started working with Chris and his team. By year’s end, we were signing a yearlong partnership together. They’ve been a great partner for GoWild. In passing, he invited us to come really see what they do. Without hesitance, I was in. Me and GoWild team member Derek Towles were heading to Virginia. 

Derek had actually had a successful bear hunt back in September, but it was Colorado, and without dogs. In fact, neither one of us had been on this kind of hunt. We’d been on bird hunts with dogs, but this was going to be something else entirely. We just didn’t know what.

Day one was cold. It rained the entire day prior, but we were at such high elevation, all of the trees and mountain laurel was just covered with quarter to half inch sleeves of ice. Given the weather, we were on foot out of the gate. The dogs hit the ground to warm up, then we were off. 

We hiked along a trail that was often partially covered by the laurel and rhododendron. The leaves hung heavy with the ice blankets. Our guide, Heath Hyatt, didn’t care—he busted through at a blistering pace to keep up with the dogs. We went four miles into the woods before treeing the bear. What ensued from here was the absolute craziest and hardest day of hunting of my life. If you’re interested in that story, you can hear me and Derek tell our team about it here.

The amazing part was we were one of several groups. Heath had coordinated our plan the night before, and teams came into this valley from four or five different trail heads. We started maybe six miles from one group, which was nearly an hour’s drive away. The team uses radios to communicate, and high end Garmins to track their dogs. 

Day two was a little different, the teams all met up and “rigged” their dogs, which meant driving with a dog out on the back of the truck sniffing for a bear scent. Once the dog picked up a scent, they’d turn them loose to investigate. If you’ve seen the movie “Twister,” you know what this looked like. These guys and gals are like storm chasers, coordinating via radio where the dogs are running from and to, and trying to figure out how to get ahead of them. 

On both days, I was amazed at the communication, leadership and teamwork. Fortune 500 companies don’t operate with this kind of precision, and startups can’t move at this kind of speed. I came away with several takeaways.

Here they are:

Houndsmen operate selflessly 

The stigma around these guys for both being bear hunters and houndsmen is that they’re blood thirsty. In fact, a guy even called me bloodthirsty when I posted about bear hunting on LinkedIn. 

Nothing is further from the truth.

The truth is these folks love the bear more than any non-hunter ever could. They know its habitat, food source and behaviors like their own children’s. They care and invest in the bear’s future with smart conservation. They treed more than 40 bears in December before I went (I was there in mid December), and the bear I killed was just the sixth bear taken. Another bear was taken on day two, and it amazed me when I asked who shot the bear. Chris didn’t even know. A week later I asked again, he still didn’t know. This team loves working with the dogs and interacting with the bears, but no one really wants to pull the trigger. I know it’s an odd thing, but it was really something to see. 

The night before we were talking about how many people were coming on this hunt, and I was a little nervous that I may not even get a shot at a bear if we found one because of how many people were on the hunt. I was expecting ego, but everyone there considered it a team win if they simply treed a bear. They don’t care about killing them and they certainly don’t care if it’s them who pulls the trigger. Likewise, when Heath would ask someone to do something, no one complained because it made their hike harder. They jumped in and did it because it increased the team’s odds.

Imagine if more teams operated this way. How often have projects been derailed because of ego? How many leaders sandbag a team and culture because of their own ego? How many individuals vie for their way to do a project because it makes it easier for them? Or it sets them up as the hero? 

Houndsmen work as a cohesive team and win together—there are no MVPs

The night before, Heath, who was effectively our Phil Jackson or the coach, was coming up with the game plan. Heath knows this landscape better than you know your own kitchen, and everyone trusted him. Once it was game time, everyone stuck to the game plan until we were forced to call audibles (and if you listen to the podcast, you’ll see there were a lot of audibles). When the team called audibles, Heath trusted them because they were the ones in the trenches. 

My bear died in a creek four miles from our trailhead. Chris said it was the worst packout he’d ever seen. The team immediately went to work on the radios, putting together a plan on how they were going to get in to help us get this bear out. It turned into a nightmare scenario for a lot of reasons, but after about four hours of coordination, we got help. Despite having taken my bear at 8:30 am, it wasn’t until nightfall that we made it back to the truck. 

I could not believe my eyes when we made it to the trailhead—a 45 minute drive from where we started—and every single team member was there waiting on us. The tailgates were dropped. They had celebratory beers waiting. Their kids were playing fetch with the dogs. They were all happy to see us as we walked in, and started high fiving and fist bumping me and Derek. 

How many times do people work late on a project, and teammates don’t offer to help? How often do we fail to take time celebrate wins together? Derek and I had lugged hundreds of pounds together for hours. We walked 11.5 miles that day across thousands of feet of elevation, creek crossings and treacherous terrain. So imagine the power in the moment of Derek and I stumbling in to the truck and being celebrated for the accomplishment. It was one of the coolest moments I’ve ever had in the woods.

These houndsmen make it OK to be new

Derek and I were totally new to this. We asked dumb questions. We did even dumber things (like packing all of the wrong gear, forgetting critical gear in the truck, and failing on a dozen other fronts). I have been on hunts or fishing trips where people or even guides make people feel stupid in those moments.

At no point did Chris, Heath or any of the guys or gals with us make me or Derek feel like we didn’t belong. In fact, it was quite the opposite. They treated us so kind, and made this complex activity so accessible, it actually made us want to keep asking questions to learn even more. Derek even said at the end, “If I weren’t a fireman, and had a schedule that would allow me to do this, I’d be really tempted to get a dog.” (Derek works part time for us, and part time for Louisville Fire.)

I cannot count the number of times I have seen team members fail to embrace this mentality in the work place. Corporate veterans shame younger employees for not knowing how to do something, or hyper talented individuals rip colleague’s performance, or young bosses demoralize a team member for a short-sighted decision. None of it builds a team that wants to go even deeper. None of it creates a culture that allows for the learning. It’s a—puns always intended—dog eat dog world in most offices. 

I hope a few things come out of today’s newsletter. The first is I hope I’ve helped build a better image of what it is to hunt with hounds. Maybe you had never heard of it and didn’t have any baggage—that’s great, too. I hope I did it justice for my houndsmen friends. I also hope I’ve helped inspire a few ideas on things you can build into your teams to operate more like a houndsman. Forget the cliches—you can teach an old dog new tricks. 

3 things houndsmen can teach us about leadership

1) Learn to operate selflessly

Focus on building teams that are autonomous and bought in on selflessness. When individuals strike out on their own to benefit themselves, it builds a weak foundation and creates more self-centered decisions later. If you can check egos at the door, and operate fully trusting that your team is working just as hard as you are to get to the goal, you’ll get there faster and better. No individual is a hero.

2) Win as a team—there are no MVPs

To reinforce how important it is to operate as a team, make sure you’re winning as a team. Remember Chris having no idea who shot the bear? That was because the entire team put in the work to find and tree the bear—it didn’t matter who pulled the trigger. I have never heard of a better analogy for how to win as a team. Take time to celebrate the team, too, not the individual.

3) There are never dumb questions

I used to work for a guy who would say, “Remember, there are no dumb questions, just dumb people.” I thought it was funny at first, but over the years I found that people were afraid to admit they didn’t know how to perform tasks around him. This is horrible leadership because your team is executing without expertise. Create a culture that not only allows but encourages people to ask any question, and you’ll find they learn multitudes faster. 

Who I’m listening to: Iron & Wine

What I’m reading: “Fire in the Valley: The Birth and Death of the Personal Computer”

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