Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby Bear hounder » Fri Jun 23, 2017 8:35 pm

So if we know that the coon competition style of hunting has dramatically changed the cold nose hunting then we are certainly talking genetics by way of selection of hot nosed dogs so hear is a thought that comes to mind if we know that it is a 2 fold recipe dogs need to come with the right tools nose drive a desire to hunt . And be given the opportunity to use those tools to get better at trailing colder and colder tracks now with that being said how much of that is learned and stored into a dogs d n. A. And passed on down threw breeding or does this sort of training get passed down at all threw breeding . I guess in my mind if you select bear dogs from lines of dogs that have been bread for 30 years bear dog to bear dog will that line of dogs have a natural desire . Or be more prone to hunting bear that is what I've been taught if you want a deer dog get it from someone who hunts a line of dogs for deer if you want bear dogs get your pups from someone who hunts bear ? So if their is truth to that thinking than is their any truth to the idea that dogs used for cold trailing for years and generations is this trait passed on aswell or not

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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby Bear hounder » Fri Jun 23, 2017 9:18 pm

And yes I would love to have at least a couple of cold nosed dogs some day because their are times when you get a big bear track or get one on camera and he is a dandy you got bear zilla on camera and if you can't starnt that track then you can't try to hunt bearzilla those times might only come around 2 or 3 times a year but you would give your hind teeth for a cold nosed dog right then or when we are guiding someone on a guaranteed bear hunt they come to the house at 5 am and u starnt checking the baits and all the bears were hitting at 6.30 pm the night before well right about then you would trade your dog box for 1 good cold nosed dog that I have never seen but heard they had them before the dinosaurs died off that is why I'm asking is the cold nose dog a fact or a myth and I'm glad to have herd from Mike and others on hear that their are dogs like that in their kennels today alive and well taking dry ground cold tracks yes I would love to have just one dog that you could depend on to starnt a 12 hr track wow I'd kiss that dogs bum and set him right up in the front of the truck and I'd grab that dog up off the first road he crossed and then throw in my dogs that run with their head up to catch that bear and putt that starnt dog back in the front of the truck with the air conditioner on were he won't get hurt but to be honest with you I'm kinda sick of hearing about 12 hr cold trailing dogs . And when you hunt with them they can't even starnt a 4 hr tract 3 out of 4 times and maybe it's the area we hunt but guys come up hear to Ontario all the time say they tree 100 bear a year and their dogs can take 12 to 24 hr tracks and they struggle to starnt tracks 1 and a half hrs old and might tree one bear a week butt it does get a little disappointed after a while you feel like we are lookin for a sassquaetch lol I'd love to hunt with someone who can show me a true cold nosed dog taking cold tracks I'm shure would be more rewarding than shooting another bear but rather a spacific bear now that would be cool we killed a bear this spring that I've been hunting for about 4 or 5 years and often we got pics of him at 9.30 pm and could not starnt that tract he loved to swim a pond that was close by and then he would swim those hounds for the next 5 or 6 hrs and he would loose them sooner or later one pond or river he would loose them or tire them out and once he put some of the dogs back to the truck and one of those dogs never hunted again it was sweet victory this year when we hung him up on the scale he was finally dead 386 bounds of bad attitude put to rest he slipped up and came in at 1.30 am and the hounds caught him trying to swim across his first pond he always swam but it was dry as the beaver dam had let go the dogs made him climb a big white pine only 759 yards from the bait any way I'm of topic and bragging but I say all that to say if I had a dog that could starnt a spacific tract 12 hrs old that would be nice at times for shure thanks again keep looking up and I'd like to hear more stories of true cold nosed tracks that u know how old the track was for shure those kind of storys give me hope

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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby Nolte » Sat Jun 24, 2017 1:02 am

There is a lot of good info in this thread but I might be able to add a few nuggets. First off, the hound world is plum full of bull$hitters. The taller the tales the closer you better watch your wallet.

Second, it is almost pointless to talk hours old because it changes dramatically from day to day, month to month. And that doesn't even factor in different regions. Midwest regions with humidity and dew will be different than mountains with thermals and wind. It all boils down to conditions and you can only judge based on what you're dealing with or have seen.

With all that said there are dogs that can grind out overnight bear tracks fairly consistently. It's not an every track thing but it can be done here in WI and that is what we usually deal with in our fall kill season. In fact many of the guys who pretty consistently bag bears are probably gonna have a dog or two in the group that can do this. But let me tell ya these types of dogs ain't grapes they don't come in bunches.

Many times its not even time that factors in to making a track tough. It's conditions and/or how clean it is. If that critter has been in and out with other bears you can have a tough time lining it out. Similar deal with cats. But your odds go up the cleaner the track is as you spend less time figuring out what is the right end.

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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby dwalton » Sat Jun 24, 2017 1:07 am

Good post. We all have our opinions about cold trailing which I think cold trailing is the most important part of catching game. Cold nose dogs are bred and train to be better at it it. It starts with picking the pup you want. The style of cold trailing should determine what breeding you choose with any breed and picking the pup will give you a idea as to what a pup will do in the future. Looking at a group of pups 8 to 12 weeks old all turned out together a lot of people will see that pup that is at a run appearing to be hunting covering a lot of ground, a very over active pup. In my opinion that pup will never make a cold trailer for me it does not have the patiences to work a cold track just as a lot of hunters don't have the patiences to let a dog work a track out. There are a lot of types of cold trailing a dog can smell a old track and put its head in the air with a long ball maybe smelling the same spot 2 or 3 times or a dog small a track open as it is moving looking for the next scent. Choose which one you like, dogs that are great to listen to or dogs that hunt to catch game not trail game. Good hunting
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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby Nolte » Sat Jun 24, 2017 1:10 am

As for tales of old, some have been stretched as a story always gets better with age on it. However, there is a grain of truth in them. Around here there weren't the amount of bear as now. Those old guys would look all day for 1 track. You didn't walk away from it looking for a fresher one. And if you didn't get it going that day you'd go back and look around where it last was to pick it back up. To have any success in that time period you better have dogs that can grind tough old tracks. Rigging wasn't even heard of then. The flip side is those old boys had a much tougher time finding tree dogs. Many dogs just didn't naturally tree. There was no 100 barks a minute, you were happy if old spot just stayed there and woofed enough to let you know he was treed. There was no garmin telling you the dogs were stopped, it was all done on earshot until telemetry came along.

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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby pegleg » Sat Jun 24, 2017 2:47 pm

What you said about pulling your start dog at the first road seems to be a much more common thought process then I would have guessed. But it isn't something I've done and I always wonder what effect it has on the dog? Mine are never pulled off track. At most I might tie them in spot if they're over heated and just staggering around trying to pick up scent. But if a dog is running track they are allowed to.
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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby david » Sat Jun 24, 2017 3:42 pm

Just a little more food for thought:

The most reliably amazing cold tracker I have known closely was born to a mother who pretty much refused to cold trail; a pure bred OMCBA cur. Her father was a mixed hound with some Plott and long eared Black and Tan, that I know of.

She was not fast but she was steady. She just kept moving and, it's hard to say because I know what you will think, but she just never made mistakes. She was too slow to catch many cats on the jump end of things. Yet many cats were caught because of her that never would have been caught without her. (So is that a cat dog?). So when we talk about speed on the cold trail, Perhaps uninterrupted forward progress equals speed on a cold track. I could usually stay with her on foot. Yet it often did not take her very long to turn a track only she could take, into a jumped cat race.

Another great cold tracker I witnessed, which was on a completely different level than the rest of the full hound pack, was 1/2 Irish Terrier, and 1/2 Walker. He would run on a cold track the others could barely acknowledge. And there is no way I could have stayed with him.

There was also Another great cold tracker I witnessed. I had what I thought was the coldest nosed dog I had ever owned up to that point. She was out of Washburns Boomer and a freak compared to her littermates. I left after a day of hunting very embarrassed that I had thought she was so amazingly cold nosed. It led me toward believing the legends of this other dogs cold trailing ability.
He was a McDuffie bred leopard cur. He was built close to the ground, but he cold trailed, for the most part, with his head up. If I hadn't had the female with me, I probably would have thought the dog was hot nosed because of the head up speed. I probably should not have said it because it puts my credibility at risk. But I guess my credibility is not all that important, and it is kind of fun to remember him. His owner tried and tried to find another like him out of the same dogs and never could.

So while I agree that the safest bet for finding a cold trailer is from a long family line of cold trailers; it is not the only place amazing cold trackers have come from.

I theorize on the cross bred dogs, that cold tracking was more a function of hot desire than it was a function of cold nose. I think maybe a lot of dogs have enough nose, but lack other needed traits of a cold tracker.
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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby david » Sat Jun 24, 2017 6:47 pm

Bear hounder, here is a three page thread on the subject of cold nose You might want to check out. it might say a lot of the same things already said, but I think it might also add some things.

viewtopic.php?f=72&t=45327&p=257888&hilit=Cold+nosed#p257888
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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby dwalton » Sat Jun 24, 2017 10:05 pm

Dave you hit on it a little cold nose can come from anywhere. I really believe most dogs are cold enough to be cold trailers but is all the other traits combine that make a dog a great cold trailer. Which is what is hard to put together. You can have as good or not as good of a hunting dog as you are willing to put up with. Then the other factor is the hunter, does he handicap the dog or enhance the dog. I had an old timer tell me many years ago that behind every good dog is a good hunter. That holds true most of the time one exception was my first hound she was 8 months old when I good her and I hunted with hardly no one but if she was showed what I wanted be it coon, bobcats, bear or lion she did a great job showing me the game. It was many years and several hounds latter before I realize what I had as a kid in that dog. Dewey
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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby Bear hounder » Mon Jun 26, 2017 12:30 am

Did anybody ever have any success breeding one of these dogs that was the supreme cold nose that was not out of cold nose dogs but when it was bread did it produce cold nose dogs or was it just a one hit wonder I guess I'm asking if you don't got cold nose dogs to starnt with and u find one could you breed to it and expect to get cold nose pups saposing a man actually took them to the woods and gave them the right amount of time and incouragment on those hard tracks so if you are putting that amount of work into a hound is the chances like 5 times better or 20 times better if you breed to a cold nose dog or is their a certain breed like I hear of guys crossing blood hounds and calling them magestic and saying that they are getting a hybrid dog with superior nose but speed and grit when crossed to a plott is their any truth to that or what thanks for the pioneers keep looking up

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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby Nolte » Mon Jun 26, 2017 11:50 am

I don't want shoot down any breeding theories here but there are 2 things at play. First is that regardless of genetics you, to make cold trailers you have to try and work on old crappy tracks. You have to give up almost guaranteed races to sit around and scratch your head. It can be painfully boring with a lot of defeats bit that's how it's done.

Second the type of dog were talking about do not come around every litter. You are looking for that 1 gem that pops out of 3 or 5 litters. And that is probably being generous. It's probably much worse than that. You can find serviceable game catchers more often than that but dogs that are special are much more rare. Just listen to some of these real experienced dogs guys on here. They talk about a handful of dogs and have probably seen hundreds if not thousands hunt.

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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby dwalton » Mon Jun 26, 2017 12:08 pm

Years ago a lot of blood hound was dared into fox hound to create the American hound. Used for cold trailing big game. It takes a long time to reinvent the wheel, thats been done I would look ahead. There are a lot of good breeders out there that breed cold nose dogs that can move a track and the drive to catch most of the game that their dogs run. Time and money would be well spent traveling the country hunting with a lot of different breeders to see what they have. Be clear in your mind what you want in a dog and expect from a dog. Heres the hard part you have to know what you are looking at and able to separate the BS from whats so. Good luck Dewey
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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby al baldwin » Tue Jun 27, 2017 3:26 am

[quote="Nolte"]There is a lot of good info in this thread but I might be able to add a few nuggets. First off, the hound world is plum full of bull$hitters. The taller the tales the closer you better watch your wallet.

There sure is a lot of good information in this thread & the quote stated above, in my opinion is the very best advice one can give to young houndsmen.
Will add there are dogs that have a colder nose than average, however, my experience has been hunting young dogs with dogs that are use to working colder tracks can sure train most dogs to work those type tracks. Al
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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby Bear hounder » Tue Jun 27, 2017 9:00 am

What is the oldest track you guys have seen one of your hounds take had how did you know how old that track was and what breed of dog was it give a little history on the hound no tale tales but somthing you saw your hound do thanks in advance

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Re: Cold nose ? Fact or fiction

Postby Nolte » Tue Jun 27, 2017 5:55 pm

I've seen dogs take sundown tracks sat 7 or 8 pm and be able to move them the next morning at daylight up until say noon. You don't catch them all but you never know unless you give it a whirl. Also seen the same dogs struggle at baits hit at 2 am tried at daylight. It all depends on conditions and how far away the critter has traveled.

Times were determined by trail camera pics. Dogs were just local bred stuff out of dogs that could trail. No one line or breed seems to have the market cornered but your odds seem to go up if you get em from parents that were good old trailers.

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