New to Bobcat Hunting help?

[roper]

Bob cat dog born to be a bob cat hound yes you got better chance s if you breed to hounds that run cats to tree them if your looking for cat dog go with somebody that has cat hounds and buy a pup from a cat hunter is breeding cat dogs you will have a better chance that way

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[eskinner45]

So basically hey one pup from a reliable source get it handling good get it worked on some coons with my coon hounds then when it gets to the point where is running and treeing good break it off coon and hunt it strictly on bobcats and as much as i can. Just use my coon dog as my cold trail dog.

[pegleg]

Yeah pretty succinct.

[dwalton]

If you can find someone that is a bobcat hunter to go hunt with not someone that hunts bobcats but a true person that specializes on bobcat hunting do it you will learn a lot. With anything in life learning all the little things that one can learn from another saves a lot of trial and error. Two or three types of dogs that are experts in their field will catch you more cats than one dog can. You can catch a bobcat with any dog and that is where you are starting, if you are not treeing bobcats with what you have, for me the first step is a lot of leg work to figure out why not and to learn how and why you are not catching. Walking behind your dogs will help you train them but more important you will learn more about the bobcat and how to hunt it. A first time cross with a running dog very seldom works for a bobcat dog. The guys that have running dog cross have been doing it for many years to get what works. Don't try to reinvent the wheel go with the knowledge that old bobcat breeders and hunters have already acquire by trial and error. Bobcat hunting is the elite of hound hunting, it takes very special dogs, lots of time to gain the knowledge to be very successful. Anybody or any dog can tree a bobcat but to catch a high percentage of cats that one starts is a different ball game. Bobcat is also the most satisfying sport you can do with a hound for a lot of us. Hunt what you have and learn what it takes to make a bobcat hunter from that. Good luck Dewey

[macedonia mule man]

I know nothing about bob cat hunting anywhere except the southeast and don't know a lot about it in the southeast. I was weighing up butter bean seeds for a customer one day and he said I heard you are trying to cat hunt and I replied your are right, I'm trying but not much success. He asked wat was happening and I related what was going on with my pack of hounds. He kinda half laughed and said I hate to tell you this but it true, when I was cat hunting with my daddy and cousins in the middle 60s we were never able to train a solid cat dog, they were given to us by fox hunters. Everybody in this part of the southeast had a fox pack and hunted on the outside. There were no coyote pens at that time and another important thing there was no deer. The only game was grey and red fox, quail, squirrel and a few coon and possum. Running off game wasn't much of a problem. Fox hunters in that day considered cat off game. If a dog broke out of a good fox race to run cat, he would wreck the fox race and a real fox hunter couldn't deal with that . A couple of times and that dog was history. That how he came about having a pack of real cat dogs. He said they tried several times breeding really good cat dogs but were never able to train any of their pups to be as good as their parents which were self made cat dogs. It unfortunate we don't have that set up today and don't have access to self made cat dogs. I can have a fairly good cat race once in a great while but not very often. I quess what I'm trying to relate to the new bobcat hunter is when someone tells you his kennel or his buddy is breeding a special strain of cat dogs you need to understand that a very, very, small amount really make outstanding cat dogs due to a lot of reasons, the main one being to much off game in the woods now days.

[scrubrunner]

Macedonia mule, when I was a kid in the 60's and my daddy and his uncles and cousins were cat hunting that's exactly how they got most of their best cat dogs too. Dad's cousin would take a fox dog that cut bad, one that would leave the race hit a road and try to get ahead to catch the fox and make a good cat dog out of it. He said that was a smart dog that was thinking, using its brain and it would learn real quick that it couldn't do that in a cat race and that it had the smarts to learn how to run a cat right to catch it. But I've seen them take a real good gray fox dog and keep putting it in cat races and it turn into a real good cat dog, some of them wouldn't even run a fox again after catching a few cats.

[macedonia mule man]

Scrub, the old men I hunted with in the 50-60s didn't let a swinging road runner live long enough to try on cat.

[pegleg]

Maybe there would be more great dogs if we had less made dogs and more naturals.
But it seems its more a trend to bend dogs now then call the local fox hunter and say come get this fox running sob or other way around.

[macedonia mule man]

Everyone I have hunted with tells me they would give up tracking collars before giving up training collars. I take that to mean there is more bent dogs than straight dogs.

[al baldwin]

I believe there are more bent hounds than broke hounds. I fell with the modern equipment, lots off trash in the woods makes it easier to trash break dogs & for me has never been the big challenge for making bobcat dogs. Once one has an established start dog & experience at training cat dogs ,
trash breaking becomes the easiest part of training cat hounds. Just my experience. Al

[twist]

I'd take modern tracking epuipment any day over modern trash breaking equipment. Andy

[dwalton]

For me all a dog has to offer is his or her breeding, the rest is training. If you have trash trouble it is either the breeding or the training. It's nothing to do with the dog it is the trainer or breeder that causes the problem. So where does the trouble coming from? Look in the mirror guys we have created our own problems by lack of knowledge. Tracking or training equipment are just tools which make it easier. Breeding is the hard part. Breed for what works for you, how you hunt and where you hunt at. Dewey

[pegleg]

Didn't think everyone would feel so strongly about this too. But I agree I've only seen two dogs that were truly trashy. One would kill any skunk in a two mile radius . the other was a deer chasing pro. Only dog I know of that ever caught deer in a regular way. That might have had something to do with it. Or maybe it was training early on. But quite honestly I didn't put much effort into breaking it. I just wanted out of the liability and to get my money back before my trial ended. The skunk killer I worked on until she just did it quietly. She never stopped.

[scrubrunner]

Pegleg, I have a 13 yr old that must be kin to your old skunk dog. No problem till she was about 11 and she all of a sudden decided she was going to try to wipe out the skunk population in the state of Florida. Muleman, cousin snatched those cutters off death row for sure.

[david]