Dogs,Dogs,Dogs

[macedonia mule man]

Al, I never had an experience with a dog having too much tree or maby I didn’t recognize it. How did you go about taking some out without taking all out.

[al baldwin]

I f they false treed and I could be sure they were false treed, in old days gave them a harsh talking & switching. In more modern used the e collar. I never got real heavy on unless it was happening too often & dog was not searching well before treeing. Hunted with a good hunter some that used the ecollar just like dog was trashing. Don/t thing all dogs could stand that type correction. But can tell you it work well for that hunter, he had strong bred tree that could sure enough catch bob cats. they were dandies. I have a belief that if one never has a false tree in this area dogs are leaving some cats up that never located on, My vert first mentor had three good dogs when running a tough cat and made a loose he would give them one hour to locate. Might sound like bull story but he made his living as a federal trapper , has they were called in those days, now days they are wildlife specialist.

[macedonia mule man]

I see what you are talking about Al. I contribute false treeing with dogs that were messed with too much when they were pups. Like I said before I don’t use any type hype or early stimulation like hide drags caged coons, artificuial scents. I start a dog completely dumb of what I’m wanting him to do. I want him to show me what what his instinct is telling him to do. When I take a pup to the woods for the first time it will be 7-10 months old. I’ll put him on hot corn feeders like l mentioned before and if he doesn’t run and tree in 6-10 trips off hot feeders ,he is replaced by another pup. Now I’m describing starting coon dogs in Louisiana ,not cat dogs in the NW. I would be lost as a small ball in tall weeds up there. I hunted coon year round, just as much in summer as any other time. We have a tremendous coon population and if a dog can’t do it like I described ,he may tree coons but want be a dog you want to take to the woods and be proud of.

[Beebout-it]

I do the same mule man, I use to do all the drags and cage work but I agree I want to see what’s bred into them naturally. I’m no coon hunter but will go a few times a year, but the river bottoms are so chopped up in private it’s hard to have big enough places to run. It’s tougher having them on tons of game early when your running bobcats and lions.

[al baldwin]

Mule man those three dogs owned by first mentor were redticks, he used them most every day in his job. They were used on coyote, bobcat & coon, he shot most of the coyotes they got by waiting on the places he knew the coyotes would cross, but they did catch some on the ground. they also served as his trap line dogs very good at finding a coyote that got some distance on a light toggle. He was the most patience hounds man I ever knew, if dogs were running a coyote & went into a area where it took considerable to walk into or drive around, he would say we will give them one hour to come back into hearing. He & Tom Barnett were friends & hunting buddies, but Clarence drove tom crazy with is approach to hunting. Clarence/s best dog speck would run most cats for about one hour & if dogs could not catch he was back to Clarence. Clarence would say speck knows they are not going to catch that one. Tom would say how in the hell can they catch it if they don/t stay after it.Speck could & did cat lots of bobcats. Tom used his dogs to help Clarence kill bear that needed killing on the ranches were Clarence worked. I would never got to know Tom if Clarence had not told him about what a bear dog that belle was making, Tom was total opposite of Clarence when the dogs trailed tom stay as close as possible on foot, many times Tom & I would be in some deep hole making our way to the where the dogs were treed, Clarence would drive around and beat us to the tree. But other times we would kill a critter on the ground and Clarence would never see the critter,

[macedonia mule man]

Al, I never had what I thought was a mentor in hunting. I had a few dog people I went to run dogs with that were always telling me how I should be doing things like them. After hunting with them a few times, I realized they were worse off than I was. I guess I too hard headed to have a mentor in dogs.

[perk]

I think as I grow older I become more patient with my hounds and their development. I will credit part of that to kenneling with my father who is slower to cull than me, so I have been forced to see development take a couple years instead of the couple months I would like. Some of the better dogs I've ever hunted are slower starters, some of the better ones are quicker starters.
My rule of thumb is if a dog is 3 and I don't miss hearing or seeing that dog contribute when I leave them at home, I probably cull that specific dog. Up until then all a dog has to do is not consistently draw more negative attention to itself than positive attention.
I guess I'm not worried what an immature dog is capable of I want to judge a dog off what it is when it's had 200+ races under it's belt and and has time to adjust. By this time they start coming into their prime so I wanna judge them based off what I see then

[al baldwin]

Perk here have seen dogs that I and others owned that were three to five years old before they made dogs one could depend on to locate and tree on bobcat. Dogs have a short life spam my experience best years are 5,6 & 7. If a dog is helping catch game always tough decision when to give up on them. Those dogs that treed later were more often than not the more accurate tree dogs on bobcat.

[perk]

Al I wasn't saying that they didn't continue to im prove on certain things once they came into their prime, I think 4, 5, 6 tend to be a dogs peak performance seen some that did more than their fair share up to 10 yr old, not many got that kinda lasting power when you constantly throwing young athletes at them 3-4 year old younger dogs are coming into physical athletic peak I'd say and they put pressure on them 6, 7 year olds to put out and stay up in a hard race if they wanna continue to get their fair share of the business end. But I agreed dogs can get better between 3 and 5, but 3 to me seems like the beginning of a dogs peak athletic performance. Also remember I'm running a larger pack of fox hounds, so there's a lot of competition among those dogs to see who wil be leading the race

[al baldwin]

Perk was not disagreeing with you at all. Good to hear from you had a lot to worry about last five days and used this site to help keep mind off worries. Stay after them Al

[macedonia mule man]

Dog performance advancement and improvement has a lot to do with the amount of game that he actually puts his mouth on. The more catches it is in on the better it gets and it improves quicker. A pack of a dozen dogs in one state that have an average age of say 5 yrs and they are catching 25 pieces of game a year. Move to another location that has a larger population of that same game and start catching 80 pieces of game a year and you can be running a pack of 12 dogs ages 9 months to 2 yrs.

[macedonia mule man]

Fur in the mouth will age a 9 month old pup real Buick.

[macedonia mule man]

Quick, change the b to a q

[lawdawgharris]

Obviously I run different game than you guys but as we all know, certain things in dogs parallel each other no matter what discipline it is. I like the natural dogs and I’m not opposed to waiting on a dog that progresses at slower but steady rate. As said, a lot of times those will finish out the best. Many of those barn stormers peak early and never seem to get any better. My question to y’all is, how much time do you give the young dog that doesn’t seem to show much interest or no interest? I have seen this happen as well. A pup or a young dog is exposed to the desired game numerous times without any reaction, no fear of it but no fire towards it either, just kinda ignores it. I have literally exposed them for what I had decided was gonna be their last opportunity, and told them so on the way to do so, and the rascals fired up and worked like they had been doing all along. Was it luck, did the dog understand me, or was it Devine intervention?


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[perk]

34 trips hunting is the longest Ive personally carried one before she started to go with the dogs. I knew her parents and that she was outta the right stuff so I was more patient. Had a couple others that took better than a dozen trips before they started at least following the dogs. Can't ever remember a fox hound that I tried that didn't start (not that they all made it).
LawDawg I did have a gyp one time that I was fed up with not starting, I told a boy I was gonna give to him if she didn't start that morning because he wanted her, and sure enough she stayed the whole race.
When younger my dad had a litter of beagles out a pair of decent dogs, only one of them ever started and she was 2 before that happened.
I think you should give a dog as much time as your conscience and patience will allow. Also helps if you know dogs in the pedigree and if they are historically slow or quick starting.