cold trailing in cool temps

[dhostetler]

I didn't mean to side track this post, I guess I misunderstood the original post. I thought the problem was the dog was sight trailing and not actually smelling the track, my apologies. My idea of a solution was on trying to give ideas on how to get the dog to smell the track hole to hole or keep his nose we in the trough. With further clarification on how the dog actually ran the track, I think the dog just needs to be continually tried on bobcat tracks, he will get it figured out.

I am currently running a 3 year old dog for a friend, that is directly related to my hounds that do excellent on cats, this dog has been run strictly on bears till now. Knowing this line of dogs I figured she would get right into the groove. I have found this not to be the case on the several tracks I had her on, she is completely clueless on running cats. She is a smart dog and will get it figured out but it has been an eye opener for me on how different opportunities affect dogs.

[Smattila]

I started 2 tracks yesterday waited till 10 am for it to warm up to -13 one was with a young dog that would stick her nose in a track and then try pick her head up and go but there just wasn't enough sent there took her awhile to figure out to go track to track but she did get it jumped after about two and a half hours, the other as a huge Tom with an older dog and he was able to go with his head up but somehow ended up on a two night old track and could still smell it a little but wouldn't bark, I don't think the older dog has any better nose but maybe the big Tom just gave off more scent or could have been a little fresher track but both were frosted in pretty good

[J.T.]

Ok so I started walking them down the track and they got interested. A couple days ago I found a night old bobcat track in patchy snow and dirt. They lined it out and ran it hard like a bear track. They were showing treed for about 20 minutes but blew out when I was walking in. I found the tree that had been pounded by the dogs. Then they got stuck in a rockpile. The cat may have been in the rocks somewhere but I couldnt locate it. Yesterday I turned out on another bobcat with same results except the bobcat stuck around while I walked in. He was bayed up on top of a big rock. I jumped him off it so they could run him but after 800 yds they were down to cold trailing and eventually lost it. I think that is pretty good progress over the last month. Going out tomorrow to try it again.