The Hunting stories of John F Lott
Posted: Mon Dec 31, 2012 11:45 pm
I was doing a Google search on my grandfather, John Freeman Lott of Goliad, Texas, for a genealogy project when I found his name mentioned in your forum, http://biggamehoundsmen.com/forum/quest ... 29178.html. My grandfather is 99 and 11/12th years old and still sharp as a tack, but he is also deaf as a post. I had my mother ask him if he knew any of the gentlemen mentioned in the forum post, and she relayed this story back to me.
“A big time Houston oilman (he did business in Canada and Saudi Arabia… that kind of big business) named Mr. Crutcher called me out of the blue. He liked to hound dog hunt and had heard about me, so he called requesting a hunt. Mr Crutcher drove down to Berclair in a big truck, pulling a trailer with a Jeep, which was all fixed up. Freeman [John Lott's son] was about 14 years old and he got to drive it a little. He thought it was a Cadillac! Anyway, I took Mr Crutcher on a hunt on the Dial ranch and that lead to a friendship that lasted for years.”
“Mr Crutcher arranged for a hunt down deep in Mexico, almost to Tampico. He flew down to Beeville in a private plane, which Mother [Allene Lott, his wife] said was beautiful, but when they opened the plane door, they had to literally kick the dogs back into the plane. We then flew down to Mexico.”
“Mr Snow [one of the hunters mentioned in the above forum post], Mr Crutcher and I hunted on horseback in a forest, looking for lions. These aren’t panthers, but lions. Bigger than the ones I have hunted in the past. The Mexican guide had a gourd covered in hide and a braided string of horsehair that he used to make a roaring sound to call the lions.”
“Anyway, the dogs hit on a trail. Mr Snow and I couldn’t keep up with them, riding through the forest as we were, and we ended up losing them. Fortunately they came back the next morning, not one of them missing.”
That was about all from that hunting story that I got. I will try to get more details when I next speak with him, as well as any of the hundreds of hunting stories that he has tucked away in his memories.
On a tangent story, my grandfather did add that Mr Crutcher called him and stated that he had tickets to a baseball game in the new Astrodome. So my grandfather took his family (my grandmother, my uncle, and my mother) to the Apr 9, 1965 inaugural baseball game where they watched the Yankees with Mickey Mantel, lose to the Astros, 2 to 1.
“A big time Houston oilman (he did business in Canada and Saudi Arabia… that kind of big business) named Mr. Crutcher called me out of the blue. He liked to hound dog hunt and had heard about me, so he called requesting a hunt. Mr Crutcher drove down to Berclair in a big truck, pulling a trailer with a Jeep, which was all fixed up. Freeman [John Lott's son] was about 14 years old and he got to drive it a little. He thought it was a Cadillac! Anyway, I took Mr Crutcher on a hunt on the Dial ranch and that lead to a friendship that lasted for years.”
“Mr Crutcher arranged for a hunt down deep in Mexico, almost to Tampico. He flew down to Beeville in a private plane, which Mother [Allene Lott, his wife] said was beautiful, but when they opened the plane door, they had to literally kick the dogs back into the plane. We then flew down to Mexico.”
“Mr Snow [one of the hunters mentioned in the above forum post], Mr Crutcher and I hunted on horseback in a forest, looking for lions. These aren’t panthers, but lions. Bigger than the ones I have hunted in the past. The Mexican guide had a gourd covered in hide and a braided string of horsehair that he used to make a roaring sound to call the lions.”
“Anyway, the dogs hit on a trail. Mr Snow and I couldn’t keep up with them, riding through the forest as we were, and we ended up losing them. Fortunately they came back the next morning, not one of them missing.”
That was about all from that hunting story that I got. I will try to get more details when I next speak with him, as well as any of the hundreds of hunting stories that he has tucked away in his memories.
On a tangent story, my grandfather did add that Mr Crutcher called him and stated that he had tickets to a baseball game in the new Astrodome. So my grandfather took his family (my grandmother, my uncle, and my mother) to the Apr 9, 1965 inaugural baseball game where they watched the Yankees with Mickey Mantel, lose to the Astros, 2 to 1.
