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"Bullyson" About The Legend
“Bullyson” was whelped sometime in the 1960’s, I belive by the old “Eli” dog. He was just one of many well thought of dogs in that litter. I was living in Oklahoma at the time. A while later “Bullyson’s” littermate was doing well in our sport, but we in the game hadn’t heard much of “Bullyson”.
Then one weekend we travelled to a north Texas town for a big show. There were lots of dog folks present. In our crowd there were the likes of Earl Tudor, Don Maloney, Waymon Davis, Jerry Beene, myself and many more.
It was Bert Clouse vs Bobby Hall with Maurice Carver the referee. When Bobby came over the pit with “Bullyson”, you new something different was going on. The dog acted like a crazy dog, or a maniac, or the devil in disguise.
When they turned them loose all hell broke loose. Everybody there, was at attention. This black son-of-a-gun just simply ate Bert’s “Red” alive. At the final scratch, Bobby couldn’t hardly contain the dog in his corner and he was scared that the crazy son-of-a-gun was going to bite him. This was the worst kind of man eater when conditions were normal, and they sure weren’t normal then.
When turned loose “Bullyson” zipped across and the match was over. Number one for Bobby Hall and “Bullyson”.
Sometime later, for reasons unknown to me, Bobby sold “Bullyson” to Red Walling and Mr Walling decided that Maurice Carver was his man with this dog.
Again, this dog was known on several occasions, when someone was moving him a car and he was loose, to sorta go off his rocker Despite these problems, they often hauled him loose, I think because it was so hard to put him in a carrying case. On the move from Hall’s in Houston to Carver’s place in San Antonio, Mr Raymond Holt was elected to carry the dog. As usual, “Bullyson” was carried loose in the car. Raymond told me, that the only way he could keep “Bullyson” from jumping on him during the trip was by playing with his testicles. That’s a helluva deal, No?
Anyway, Maurice got the dog and he was scared to death of him all the time he had him. I stopped by Maurice’s often and I could park my big rig right by his house. I have seen “Bullyson” jump two or three times right up into the sky above his cable, opening his mouth and biting the air, making terrible sounds.
At the time, Maurice said to me “You know me, and you know how I am when I have a dog in a keep. I like to move my wife into another room and bring the dog into the house with me, watch TV with him and such and just become the best of friends” Maurice had the feeling that if he was going to the pit with a dog he wanted to be his friend. He often said, “If I’m going to get down on my knees and ask a dog to take a killing for me, I want him to be a friend of mine” Both he and I had our doubts that “Bullyson” had any permanent friends.
Eventually, “Bullyson” was matched into Ed Weaver’s “Sir”. Several of us from Oklahoma came down for this one, including my oldest son Bobby Lee. Again it was the same old story, “Bullyson” just wrecked Ed’s “Sir” dog. Maurice said to me shortly after the match that he thought Ed would have brought something. Number two for “Bullyson”
Don Mayfield made a comment right after this match that I readily agreed with. Don said, he thought Ed Weaver should be commended for even going into “Bullyson”, as most people were already spooked by him. This was
certainly the case after the second match.
Later, I heard that “Bullyson” was matched again. This time it was into Rick Halliburton. The dog Rick was said to be using was reported to be a son of “Bullyson”, which turned out to be true.
It was a big match. My wife and my son Bobby Lee travelled some 200 miles for this show, staying at a real fancy hotel. On the morning of the match, Maurice and I almost overslept.and it was Don Mayfield who woke us up and led us some 50 miles to the place. Maurice, Pat, “Bullyson”, Doris, Bobby Lee and I were the last ones to leave following Mayfield. There were people present from all over the US, Canada and Mexico. I was kidding Maurice later, about him wishing that Mayfield would not have found him that morning.
I, along with many others, had the belief that “Bullyson” could whip Russia and China too. We thought that this was the dog of all pit dogs It was the last time I gave 2:1 odds and lost (not a good bet if you win and hell if you lose)
Anyway, speaking about how sharp a dog man I was, I didn’t even go and check with Halliburton to see what he had. He was a good friend of mine and would have told me. But I just thought “Hell Rick, you’re crazy! This is Bullyson and you don’t have a chance”
At match time, Maurice made a deal that he would enter the pit last. He didn’t want to stay in the corner with “Bullyson” for an extended time. When he entered, Rick was ready and so was the referee, Floyd Boudreaux.
Maurice didn’t even set “Bullyson” completely down. He dropped him two or three inches and turned him loose. The match was on.
As Don Mayfield said in his report, it was obvious pretty quick that if “Bullyson” was going to get there today, it was not going to be a blowout. After a while “Bullyson” turned. He scratched good and then “Benny Bob” scratched good. After this “Benny Bob” started to get faster and “Bullyson” got slower.
I want to note here, that “Bullyson” was a smaller dog and about three years older than his opponent. Everything that “Bullyson” did, “Benny Bob” came back and did it better. At the end their stifles looked like you had shot them full of buckshot.
Finally, it was “Bullyson’s” turn to go. Maurice faces him...When released, “Bullyson” turned his head a little to the right. His tongue is out. He don’t move! At the count of 6, Maurice stepped over the dog and threw in the towel. He then asked Mr Boudreaux to see if he could get him to go, since Floyd had had a small part in raising him. Floyd took him, straightened his head and released him. The result was the same. He tilted his head a little to the right and stood there.
After this, Floyd picked “Bullyson” up, handed him over the pit to Maurice, who turned and walked off with the dog.
I talked to a man a few days ago who lives in Huntsville, Texas, some four miles from Jerry Clemmons. Clemmons who oened “Bullyson’s” dam, is a Lab Technician. He told this man, that he had taken blood from “Bullyson” the day before the match. He’d said that the blood count was about half what it should have been, maybe because Maurice had been breeding him.
But again, both Maurice and I thought that there was no dog that could whip “Bullyson”. Don Mayfield, who had a fine magazine at the time, put a picture of the pit on the cover of his next issue. The picture, taken just before the match, showed Rick holding “Benny Bob” in his corner with Norman Hooten and Robert Conn looking on. Mr Mayfield wrote a nice story about the match for that issue.
Years later, he wrote another account of the same match. That latter account was quite different from the first. To me, it was a shame to see a story written later that downgraded a man who was dead and not able to defend himself. I understand from reliable sources that when Jerry Clemmons took his bitch to Floyd Boudreaux to breed her, he intended to breed her to one of Boudreaux’s well known brindles, “Boze”. However, when he ran across a solid black dog, he thought that he’d found just what he needed. So he backed her up to this black dog and made dog history with the litter of pups.
The black dog was the old “Eli” dog.
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From The Bull Terrier Times Magazine
