Part I - The Early Years - Amos Mann

I was born in Billings, Montana in 1938. My family moved from Montana and traveled extensively throughout the United States before settling in Sulphur, Louisiana when I was 10 years old. My first experience with Catahoula "Cur" dogs came before entering high school when I rode horseback with 20 to 30 cowboys who used these dogs to gather 3,000 to 4,000 head of Brahman cattle out of the Johnson Bayou marshlands in southern Louisiana. The dogs followed along while we drove the cattle ten miles down the sandy beach on the shore of the Gulf of Mexico to Holly Beach. From there, we took the road north to Hackberry where we swam across the Intercoastal Canal, then travelled north past Sulphur to DeQuincy. All in all, it was about 40 miles and took three days.

During high school, when I wasn't bronc or bull riding as a member of the Sulphur High Rodeo Club, I was working cattle for Henry Kinney, one of the biggest cattle and rice farmers in southwest Louisiana. Most of the people like Mr. Kinney and McKinley Vincent had several Cur dogs. They wintered their cattle in the coastal marshes and had summer pastures in the piney woods.

After returning from the USAF in 1961, I bought my first Catahoula Cur, a blue-leopard female, from a Frenchman, Kelly Andrus, in Sweetlake. I hunted hogs with her from Starks north to Florene. We hunted all over that country.

My next Catahoula Cur was a big square-headed, grey leopard male that came from Alton Cain in Pitkin, Louisiana. I worked cattle with him and my female for 'Mac' Vincent. We usually gathered the cattle in the woods, penned and worked them, and either shipped them or put them to pasture.

In the mid 1960's, I met Mr. Floyd Reeves (Kenny Reeves' father). He was friends with my uncle Frank Salter, and I got to meet him while deer hunting. We ran deer dogs, and it was at that time that I learned he had Catahoula Curs. He told me some of his stock of dogs came from the Louisiana Highway Patrol. When Louisiana was an open-range state, the Highway Patrol had what they called the 'Stock Enforcement Division'. They would pick up stock that was a hazard on the highways. They had their own patrols with horses and dogs.

I bought one of Mr. Reeves' Catahoulas Curs, a female I named "Chooch". She was a grey leopard with white trim and was as versatile as they come. When I left the house on foot with a rifle, she knew we were going squirrel hunting. If I was on horseback and had a rifle, hog hunting. If we left out at night, it was to go coon hunting. If we went to the pasture, she knew she would be working cattle. After I had her for a good while, I told Mr. Reeves I wanted a male also. Catahoulas were pretty scarce back then so he arranged for me to purchase one from a widow who had a a young male and an older male. She would sell the younger or the older, but not both. She needed one to take care of her cattle. When "Red" was old enough, we worked cattle for the local cattlemen, and we hunted hogs in the woods. I sold Red to a fellow by the name of Bob Baggett from Sulphur before moving back to Montana with my family and Chooch in 1970. About the only thing Chooch did in Montana was run deer in the evening when they would come down to feed in the Alfalfa field there on the ranch at the foot of the Judith Mountains.

In 1973, we returned with Chooch to Sulphur. And I brought something else back from Montana, too -- a pair of branding irons - a "2" and a "diamond".

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