What is a pack?

[dwalton]

What is a pack of dogs to you guys? I am sure as to where and how you hunt it is something different and for different reasons. For me pack is anything over one dog. I like to hear a pack work a cat track leap frogging a track threw the country they can sure move a track fast. There are problems with pack hunting one thing is the cost of food and care. The real hard thing for me to get in a pack is dogs that work together not barking off track and honoring each other. One dog that runs to wide ,barks to much off track goes past a tree, back tracks or opens in the same spot can sure cause problems. Spotting what dog takes away from the point of a race[ for treeing a bobcat] can sure make everyone look bad. For me it is a thing of beauty to see a good pack work together and to listen to them. One thing getting a pack together is having to know your dogs and cull the ones that take away from your goal. With one dog how can you tell really what he is doing other than having a bobcat at the tree. No others to compare him to when he does lose a track, could someone else got out there a little farther to pick up that dead spot? There are no wrong reason here just different stiles of hunting in different conditions. Dewey

[barksalot]

To me the concept of a pack and a team is the same thing. Each member of the pack /team contributes all of his skill, talent and energy to the same agreed upon goal, be it score points, build a project or tree a cat. A show boater, a lair, a loner or a slacker can make an otherwise talented pack /team much less efficient. Even extra unneeded members that aren't contributing something to reaching the common goal, can interfere [get in the way]. Even a very talented individual that doesn't get along with, play well with others is a detriment to the pack/team.
This is March Madness season, when 64 of the best basketball teams in the nation compete. The team with the most talent does not necessarily win. It is the team that best combines talent with corporation. It is the coach, leader, hunter that chooses, culls, directs the members to create the pack /team.

[pegleg]

The sad thing is that so many competition coonhounds are being bred away from these traits needed to produce this pack mentality

[dwalton]

Thanks for the post guys. After I posted it I thought that maybe we could go to only one dog in a night hunt cast. It would sure be easier to make them night campions. I have quite hunting treeing walkers because of the breeding done for competition bred dogs. Dewey

[1bludawg]

Some of the competition dogs have bred away from traits that we need as cat hunters but the thing i admire about competition coonhunters is that they'll put their dogs up against the best that anyone else has .Even at that some champions can't tree a coon alone .
They do have a HTX hunt now that requires a hound tree a coon alone to get its HTX title,not every dog passes and i understand that entries are on the low side .I guess it just proves that the good ones are few and far between .

[al baldwin]

I do not like hunting one dog now days, but it sure would be nice to find a natural track & tree dog that started at a young age catching it/s own game . I owned a few of those, no need for an old dog to train them, where have they gone. Would hate to go to a truck hunt without a real coonhound on the end of my leash. If you think it/s so easy go to one of those, might be an eye opener. Better still go down to one of those 100 thousand dollar hunts where you have to put up 20 thousand or so to enter. Those guys put it all on the line, have read where in some of those finals there was very good sportsmanship show by all handlers. Recall a handler who lost in the last few minutes of the hunt, two year old female treed a slick tail, someone tried to console him, his answer was not a big deal they are just dogs. Maybe a few of us could take lessons from that handler. Just a thought. Al

[david]

i probably have never owned a "pack". Usually it was a dog that could get the job done, a younger dog that was working on it, and a pup getting exposed to it.

A saying that came from a seasoned Maine snow bobcat hunter was: one dog is not enough, and two dogs is too many.

A similar saying from a seasoned Wisconsin snow bobcat hunter was: your best chance is with one good dog. Every dog added decreases your chances of success by another 50%.

There is something about snow. When I heard one of the foremost big pack bare ground bobcat hunters quoted saying it takes a special bunch of dogs to catch a bobcat in snow; I realized some kind of disconnect. I have some thoughts on why, but I am still baffled by that particular example.

Hunting within the foxhound culture of the south, my eyes were suddenly opened to an entirely different way of thinking. By comparison, individual dogs mean little or nothing. None of those dogs had ever been hunted alone, and never would be. For you to say "I want to see that dog hunted alone before I take him," would make no sense and would identify you as a complete outsider who lacked social graces and lacked understanding of hounds and hunting.

It is all about the pack. Finney used the analogy of a football team, and he felt each dog held a position on the team. He did not want all of them doing the same thing. For the northern mindset, there is a concrete image of a complete dog that can do it all. For Finney, a dog was not complete unless it knew how to take its role toward a team objective. Now, while I was there, I picked out my quarterback, and he was my favorite to watch. But his style would not work at all without the supporting roles. In fact he started out with another hunter who was going to cull him because he was misunderstood. But in an environment where his role in the team was understood, he became the star.

I really have zero experience in pack building and management. It is an entirely different world and very fascinating, and very consuming.

Great topic though.

One of the problems with competition bred dogs is that they have to be very independent to consistently win in competition.

I have a dog here from the northwest who I could buy because of his independence. I absolutely love it when the pack starts off the wrong way or the cat comes back through the pack, and this dog turns it around all alone and pays no attention to the other dogs. I absolutely love it when he rejects a tree that several dogs are treeing on and takes a tree by himself nearby, and he has the cat. It takes a great deal of independence to do these things. But I don't like it when he gets sticky and will not honor forward when he needs to. Suddenly what looked like a strength in the above examples: independence; now looks like a great weakness: independence.

Independence is mandatory in competition dogs who win big.

I am sure he would not be allowed to stay in Deweys, or Marks pack because of this trait, unless he could be broke of it. And he will never be broke of it when I am hunting him alone. In this way, he would win some competition coon hunts. But he probably will never fit in to a well oiled pack of bobcat dogs.

His strengths mentioned along with amazing track starting strengths would make him a great asset to a pack if he would play as a team-mate. But he plays solo. In fact, that was his nick name when I bought him:"solo". And For my situation it was a good match and I sure have had a lot of fun with him.

It seems that it doesn't matter what gifts a dog has, if he will not play as a team mate, he will detract from the packs overall ability to catch bobcats.

I know of a couple examples where a pack minded person evaluated a pack and told the owner they would increase their catch by removing a certain dog or two particular dogs from the pack. It proved to be 100% correct, and the problems were not at all obvious to some one like me. I have read similar things on here saying this certain type of dog is making the cat behave in this certain way that detracts from the effectiveness of the pack.

All that is way beyond me. But it sure is fascinating.

[merlo_105]

David, Always like reading what you have to say you put it on paper very well. I do have a question about the snow hunting. I do try to avoid it but often times it can't be done so I'm in it. I know a lot of people who feel snow hunting is best with one to three dogs and have read about it on here often enough or talked with people from other area's who feel that way. Like you mentioned every dog after decreases your chance why are some dog's or Packs prone to that? I go about it much different then these guys i see a track or I rig one in the snow but either way 8 dog's get dumped whether it's them coming off the box or me opening the box. Never seem'd to have an issue or a race get's blown up or what has it. And of coarse there are plenty of people like me who do the same or close to the same thing. So what is the difference in the dogs or packs? Just curious always something I wondered.

[david]

Merlo, that is the mystery I was hoping you would answer. I had an answer until I heard the sentiments expressed by one of the bare ground legends about snow. Because I know that you and Dewey and Mark and others do not down size their packs for snow.

My answer would have been that virtually all the snow dogs across the North from Idaho to Maine are combination dogs. They are not bobcat specialists, and cannot anticipate bobcat behavior before and after the jump to the level of a specialist. Maybe that ability to anticipate the solution to each problem allows a straight bobcat pack to sail past the problems that snow causes for a group of combination dogs. Just a guess. But is blown out of the water by that one statement from a name you would recognize.

[david]

If you think about it, all problems have to do with scent. If bobcat dogs get used to pushing through and past difficult scent issues (example: very dry where there are only pockets of scent holding on certain types of vegetation, yet the pack progresses) I suppose it would stand to reason that the scent issues associated with numbers of dogs in snow would not impede their progress either. But a bear dog or coon dog or coyote dog might have little or no experience with these issues.

Your guess is as good as mine.

[merlo_105]

The Mysteries Of dogs. Thanks for your reply.

[mondomuttruner]

Idk David, I think it's more of a myth than anything. My theory is, over the years(mainly because of low bobcat populations) most of the guys up here didn't have 3 or 6 or whatever, good bobcat dogs so they use the one that works best. You do that often enough and what you end up with is an independent dog. 3 or 6 independent dogs just don't hunt well together, or start throwing in dogs from a different kennel and it's a disaster in the making. On another note, I don't think this snow holds enough scent for a pack of dogs that don't normally hunt together to put pressure on a cat.
Now lets talk snow, you have midwest snow, mountain snow, lake effect snow and I'm sure there are others. Scent holds different in all of them, different moisture content, how it was made, temperature it was made in...I can drive up a 100 miles into lake effect snow and the scenting conditions are totally different than the central part of the state. Ok, I'll shut up now..

[twist]

Mondo hit it right snow in this area doesn't hold enough scent. You start throwing a pack of dogs down here and your odds will go down I promise. There are single hounds that make bobcat catching look easy in our snow conditions for the ones that haven't seen it they need to look a little harder. There are hounds that catch a very high percentage other than on the west coast! Andy

[Tanner Peyton]

I guess when I think of a pack I think of a group (2 or more) of predators working together towards a conman goal. Like a pack of wolves pushing a heard of elk into an ambush. I do feel as though there are different levels of packs. One side of the spectrum is the group of tottaly independent dogs that just happen to be in the woods at the same time together with a common master. And the other side is a group of dogs strategizing, working together as a team toward goal desired by the entire group. And thus every level in between. Now both sides of the fence and everthing in between has some level of a pack mantality, just some more then others.

[merlo_105]

I'm by far no snow specialist all I know is it's wet cold and white. I have never hunted Montana nor have I hunted the upper midwest. My hunting is done west coast and east coast and I do know the Snow back east is different and I still run multiple dogs there with the same results. There are plenty of people in the NW who feel 1 to 3 dogs is I deal anything else is to much in snow.