Re: Track Speed
Posted: Tue Jun 20, 2017 9:28 am
There is so much to this post I kinda stayed away, but sitting here on rain delay thought why not. Most discussions on this topic I feel are more generalizations. Through the years I've been lucky enough to see a few dogs that just " have it". The breed or strain may vary but the but the ability to start and finish, I feel is what we are really talking about.
The start is kind of simple, a dog that gets gone and puts desired game on their feet, simple right? I run coyote, bear and cats, so desired track style is going to vary somewhat. A really cold nose is not the best coyote hound for our style, we have a ton of em and I don't prefer a dog that hits a day old track and wants to follow every move that yote made and take hours to get jumped. I like a dog to have enough nose to handle a poor track but brains enough to cover some country to find him. Our bear style is simular. Cats are a little different in that a dog has to take the hand he's dealt and move a lousy track miles and stay on it , more nose more brain in my opinion.
So I guess track speed needs to be broken down into two categories, moving a cold trail efficiently and moving the critter fast enough to stop him.
The article above from 1956 pretty well sums up desired traits we all have been searching for, unfortunately I haven't seen July hounds in my area that even come close.
I feed plott dogs cause they fit my style and show me enough fur to keep me happy.
Perk, many of the dogs I keep show this (harder, faster) trait as the chase goes on. I've tried to figure exactly what it is, but can still only speculate. For a time I thought it was simply when turned to a sight chase, or just the scent so good they just went to overdrive and desire to put fur in their teeth just made em "crazy"
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The start is kind of simple, a dog that gets gone and puts desired game on their feet, simple right? I run coyote, bear and cats, so desired track style is going to vary somewhat. A really cold nose is not the best coyote hound for our style, we have a ton of em and I don't prefer a dog that hits a day old track and wants to follow every move that yote made and take hours to get jumped. I like a dog to have enough nose to handle a poor track but brains enough to cover some country to find him. Our bear style is simular. Cats are a little different in that a dog has to take the hand he's dealt and move a lousy track miles and stay on it , more nose more brain in my opinion.
So I guess track speed needs to be broken down into two categories, moving a cold trail efficiently and moving the critter fast enough to stop him.
The article above from 1956 pretty well sums up desired traits we all have been searching for, unfortunately I haven't seen July hounds in my area that even come close.
I feed plott dogs cause they fit my style and show me enough fur to keep me happy.
Perk, many of the dogs I keep show this (harder, faster) trait as the chase goes on. I've tried to figure exactly what it is, but can still only speculate. For a time I thought it was simply when turned to a sight chase, or just the scent so good they just went to overdrive and desire to put fur in their teeth just made em "crazy"
Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk