The Team
An unreasonable amount of bird seed. Somehow it all works.
The Wolf Creek crew · Traer, Iowa
The People Behind the Pack
Wolf Creek is and always has been a family operation. LeRoy trains. Roman runs. Sarah organizes. Maverick supervises the pigeons. River causes problems. It works.
LeRoy
Founder · Head Trainer · The Guy Other Guys CallWaylon on the radio. Red Bull in the cupholder. Dogs loaded before you're awake. LeRoy runs an ag co-op by day and a whole pack of bird dogs the rest of the time — not because it's a business, but because four wasn't enough and the next one always feels necessary.
He spent a year studying bloodlines before buying his first pointer. A full year. Pedigrees, phone calls, patience. Then Hackberry Kennels called and that was that. Today the dogs run UFTA field trials — the United Field Trialers Association — plus Bird Dog Challenges (BDC), the National Upland Classic Series (NUCS), and hunt tests. Back-to-back 1st Place Pointers at Harms Hide-A-Way in 2024 and 2025. Fields run across six states.
He always answers his phone. That's just who he is.
Xander
LeRoy's Son · In the Field · Day-to-Day CrewXander grew up hunting with his dad and never stopped. He's in the field and in the middle of the day-to-day at the kennel — when there are dogs to run, birds to flush, and cold mornings to get up for, Xander shows up. He loves being outdoors and it shows every time he's out there.
By day he works with Sarah at Bradley Insurance Solutions. The rest of the time he's out there with LeRoy and Roman doing what they've done together since they were kids. He was in the blind the day of that last deer hunt — same land, same afternoon, all three of them tagged out within minutes of each other. That's the kind of day you don't forget.
Roman
LeRoy & Sarah's Son · Setter Guy · Day-to-Day CrewRoman started hunting at age two. Not a typo. LeRoy put him in the field before he could barely walk and Roman never looked back. He grew up outdoors — it's all he's ever known and all he's ever wanted. He's in the field and helping with the day-to-day at the kennel, and he runs Moose and Lady, a pair of Ryman Setters he's training from scratch, patient and steady, exactly the way his dad taught him.
A little over a year old and those setters are already doing long water retrieves. Moose is third in the kennel for pointing dogs. That's not luck — that's Roman paying attention.
Field trial weekends: Roman runs the dogs. LeRoy watches. Both pretend LeRoy isn't nervous. Nobody's fooled.
Ashton
LeRoy & Sarah's Son · 23 · Back in TownAshton just moved back to his hometown — which means the field crew got one deeper. He joins the hunts when he can, and "when he can" is about to start happening a lot more often.
Full bio coming soon. Sarah's still deciding which stories are legal to print.
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Lexie
LeRoy's Daughter · Maverick's Mom · Back Next SeasonLexie has hunted on and off over the years, and she's planning to hunt next year. In the meantime she's raising the kennel's most important recruit — Maverick is her and Dawsen's boy, which makes the next generation of Wolf Creek officially her doing.
She also took home one of the roadside pups the day Dawsen found them — River's sibling. Chaos, it turns out, is hereditary.
Photo coming — soon as she stops dodging the camera.
Mikayla
LeRoy's Daughter · Deer Camp Regular · Shed HunterMikayla likes shed hunting and deer camp — the one week a year that needs no explanation in this family. It's the tradition Dan started, and she carries it like she was born to it, because she was.
When the seasons close she's out walking timber picking up sheds, which around here counts as both a hobby and a scouting report.
Photo coming — she's usually the one behind the camera.
Dawsen
Lexie's Husband · Deer Hunter · Upland NextDawsen married in and fit right in — he's quickly become one of the crew. He enjoys deer hunting, and he's planning on getting into the upland game next. Around here that's not a question of if, just which dog.
He's also the one who found River and the roadside pups, so technically all of that is his fault. The family has decided to keep him anyway.
Photo coming — he doesn't know it yet.
Blade
LeRoy's Brother · Uncle to the Crew · In the FieldBlade is LeRoy's brother, which means he was there for the hound dogs, the night hunts, and every chapter of the story this page keeps telling. Same dad, same fields, same raising — Dan didn't make just one outdoorsman.
Full bio coming soon. Sarah's collecting the stories — Blade's version and LeRoy's version, which are reportedly two different hunts entirely.
Photo coming.
Sarah
Wife · Mom · Business Owner · Laptop in the TruckSarah keeps Wolf Creek connected to the rest of the world. The website you're on, the social media, the emails you actually wanted to read — that's her. At every field trial, somewhere nearby, keeping the rest of the universe from falling apart while LeRoy and Roman do their thing.
She also built and runs Bradley Solutions and Bradley Insurance Solutions. Three jobs simultaneously. Won't slow down.
What most people don't know — Sarah loves the outdoors too. She used to get out more, and was a solid bowhunter in her day. Blessed enough to take a beautiful elk, a bear, turkey, and some deer. These days she's deep in mom mode and running two businesses, but she gets out in the field when she can — whether it's playing with the dogs, watching the boys run birds, or just breathing some fresh air. River is her dog. Not sorry.
Maverick
Lexie & Dawsen's Son · Age 3 · Papa's SidekickLeRoy's grandson. Three years old. Rides with LeRoy in the ranger, shed hunts when he can keep up, and helps with the pigeons at Wolf Creek Lofts. That's about all it took.
Nobody had to convince him. He just showed up and started doing it. Sound familiar?
River
Pomsky · Allegedly · 40 lbs · Chaos AgentRiver is Sarah's dog. This is important context for everything that follows.
He was supposed to be a Pomsky. Eleven months and forty pounds later, the jury remains fully sequestered. Found on the side of the road by Dawsen. Sarah took one. Lexie took one. Whatever River is, there is apparently a lot of it running around now.
He is not a hunting dog. He is not a field dog. Every bird dog at Wolf Creek has filed a formal complaint. River has acknowledged receipt and chosen to ignore it. He is loud. He is wild. He is loved completely.
A Note on Dan
LeRoy's dad. Always in the field. Still showing up in the quiet mornings.
In memory of Dan — who never turned down a good card game.
Tap the deck to deal his hand. Every card is a memory.
played well.
Dan liked his cards. Consider this his hand.
LeRoy learned to hunt the way most good things are learned — young, outside, and with people who loved him.
It started with hound dogs and coons — running them at night with his dad Dan and his Uncle Lynus, who taught LeRoy what it means to be a houndsman. They learned it themselves from their dad, Albert, who hunted to eat. Hard work and dog work, handed down like a last name — five generations of it now.
Being a houndsman is one of the oldest traditions in America — the first pack of hounds landed on these shores in 1659, more than a century before the Revolution, and hunters bred them into treeing dogs that kept meat on family tables for generations. Night hunts, a good dog's voice in the timber, furs sold to make ends meet — that's not nostalgia, that's how families got through. By 1948 the night hunt had its own World Championship. The Bradleys were living that tradition long before anybody gave out trophies for it.
Then rabbits. Then squirrels. A 20 gauge single shot, nothing fancy, nothing wasted. They ate what they hunted and sold the furs. That was the deal. Dan was a necessity guy — meat on the table, no bull. Deer camp every year at Dan's place, family and friends rolling in, the kind of tradition that doesn't need a reason because it is the reason. They fished. They camped. They traveled the country together. The outdoors wasn't a hobby in that family — it was just life.
And it runs on both sides of this family. Sarah's dad Kelly hunted behind dogs with his dad and his uncles, and her mother's father did the same. Two family trees, one story — dogs, fields, and people who passed it down because it mattered.
Dan worked John Deere for 25 years. Then he and LeRoy worked construction together for 15 more. They talked most days. Right up until the end.
As a father-in-law, Dan was steady. He'd tell you straight — and then help you anyway. He'd give you his last meal if you needed it and never bring it up again. He believed in what mattered and he lived in those moments. If you paid attention, you might just learn something.
Wolf Creek Bird Dogs exists because a dad took his boy outside and showed him what mattered. Every dog in this kennel, every tradition carried forward to every kid, every morning in the field — it all traces back to Dan.
Last deer season, on a quiet Iowa afternoon, LeRoy, Xander, and Dan sat together in the same blind — on their own land. The land Dan helped build. All three harvested a deer within minutes of each other. Same afternoon. Same blind. Same family. And Roman had harvested his the day before — the whole family, one last season, carrying on the deer camp tradition Dan started decades before.
Dan's deer camp. Family land — built together, hunted together, passed forward. Nobody talks about that season without going quiet first.
The outdoors in the cool mornings whispers his name. I can only imagine what it says to LeRoy.The Wolf Creek Field Journal
Six moments worth keeping. Flip through — tap a page or use the arrows.
Field Journal
The dogs keep making memories
faster than we can print them.
— Wolf Creek Bird Dogs
One family, five generations deep, doing the same thing on the same kind of mornings. The dogs just made it official.
