PRICING A HOUND ?

[Tanner Peyton]

The problem with a good bull shi**er is that they can Bull sh*t them selves. And If there really good, they'll even believe there own bull sh*t.

[1bludawg]

The School of Hard Knocks is the best teacher there is but you can save your self a lot of grief and money by listening to men like David.

[mark]

Its a very rare occasion when someone will up and sell a top knotch dog on the spur of the moment. Usually they think about it and talk about it for awhile before actually making the decision to sell. If the dog is truly a top knotch dog someone in the guys circle of buddies will snatch it up. A SPECIAL CAT DOG NEEDS NO ADVERTISING!!!!!! (If it even comes up for sale)

[1bludawg]

Again i agree with Mark and that's why you ALMOST NEVER see a really top dog for sale BUT i also know for a fact that it does happen
albeit rarely. I attribute this to the fact that houndmen are notorious loners. There maybe a man a few miles down the road that has an Ace cat dog and you've never even heard of him .

[dhostetler]

I am not in the dog buying or selling business but in my opinion a bobcat dog sold for several thousand should catch bobcats. I have hunted with quite a few hound guys and not all hunt like I do but I think everyone I ever hunted with would be able to catch game with my dogs if they bought them from me. I just think the idea of poor handling can ruin a good dog is very overstated. I do think it can happen in extreme cases but I never hunted with anybody that I think would ruin a good dog if they bought one.

[twist]

Some guys can catch cats with just about any dog and then there are some guys that cant hardly catch a cold let alone bobcats consistantly! Andy

[dwalton]

It depends on the hunter and the dog. I have seen dogs that were good dogs become trashy in a very short time with a person that does not know how to handle a dog. I have seen dogs that were treated rough quit hunting. I have seen dogs by being call from a cold trail time and time again just quit cold trailing. Every dog is different and every hunter is different, some can get the best from the dog, some can get nothing from a dog and some hunters don't know the difference. Once of the nice things about big game hounds men is the knowledge that is here if one can see it. Good hunting Dewey

[twist]

Ă—2 with ya Dewey!

[dhostetler]

I think some guys make an honest mistake in selling a bobcat dog. They catch a lot of bobcats with there pack and according to what they see on the ground and on there garmin they are convinced they can sell this one dog out of there pack for thousands. They never hunt this dog by themselves they don't realize how much pack dynamics play into that dogs success. Once they sell this dog and he doesn't perform they automatically blame the handler.

In my career of hound hunting most of the dogs I have run were not bobcat dogs they would catch them here and there but the dogs I have had that I considered good bobcat dogs just flat caught bobcats making bobcat hunting look easy. In my opinion the right dogs are far more important in success than the handler, most handlers in my opinion are just to stubborn to admit faults in there dogs and unwilling to try different dogs.

I still stick to the fact that every hound hunter I have ever hunted with should be able to take a $3000.00 bobcat dog and catch a high percentage of the bobcats they turn on. I do realize that bare ground hunting on the coast and in the south have additional challenges then to other parts of the country where most of the bobcat hunting is done on snow.

There are successful hunters out there that catch a lot of bears or lions but struggle on bobcats. Some of those hunters have spent a lot of money on bobcat dogs to help in that department that didn't work out. In my opinion those guys got ripped off.

[dwalton]

Everybody has a opinion and it is based on what they know which is the truth for them. I have had hunters that have hunted for years 25 plus and are very successful on bear and lion but could not put it together on bobcat come hunt with me. Some did not know what a bobcat scat looked like or what bobcat habitat or where bobcats liked to travel. I have hunted with some guys in there hunting areas that looked like good bobcat country upon asking how they did was informed that there were few bobs here. By the end of the day treeing three their mind changed a little. Snow hunting and bare ground are two different things as most of you know. You need to know your game and your dogs to train them for bobcat. You can walk a bobcat down in the snow with a young dog and tree it with very little experience on the dog. Bobcat hunting is a thinking and knowing game for the hunter and the dog. It takes a good hunter to make a good bobcat dog. It takes a good hunter to be successful with a bobcat dog. Anybody or any dog can catch a bobcat but that does not make them bobcat hunters or bobcat dogs. Every bobcat dog should be able to catch bobcats but few dogs are bobcat dogs in my book just as few hunters are bobcat hunters. It is the combination that makes it so a dog and hunter relationship. I have seen good bobcat dogs soured by lion and bear hunters. I have seen a lot of dogs sold for bobcat dogs that were not and I have seen bear and lion not able to catch bobcats even in the snow or dogs that would not hunt for someone else. It all can and has happen more so with bobcat hunting. So it comes down to what we see is what we know and most of the time we don't know what we see so we just make it up. Good hunting and each to your own reality. Dewey

[dhostetler]

Dewey, I agree with everything you posted you may have missed the part I stated referring to hunting bare ground. I fully realize that it takes a lot more knowledge of bobcat sign on bare ground than snow hunting.

My best bear dog will quit a jumped bear race to cold trail a bobcat has even left bear trees to run cats. (Probably kind of a bad reflection on my quality of bear dogs). Bear hunters whose primary method of hunting is rigging and they are very successful have trash issues taken care of. Those type of hunters should be able to take a bobcat dog and catch a bobcat assuming they have the ability to actually get the dog on a bobcat

[barksalot]

I coon hunted for years at one level until a special hound [and her offspring] taught me what a truly top dog can do. The same was true with squirrel hunting. Many dogs straight from the pound can and will tree "a" squirrel but until that special dog came along, I had no idea how many and how fast and how easy a "squirrel" dog can tree squirrels.
Well, I was seeing more cat sigh [tracks, scat, scent post] in my area than fox, coon, squirrel put together. Soooo, I decided to cat hunt without ever even hunting with a bobcat hunter or a bobcat dog. After two years of frustration and very little sucess I have come to realize that I do not have enought knowedlege or understanding of the task that I chose to do justice to even a talented young dog. Therefor, without that extreamly rare special dog to train me, I could buy a dozen or a hundred adverage dogs and would still be a hit or miss hunter. It would not be the fault of the seller or the dog but rather my like of not knowing what I don't know.

[al baldwin]

If one owns a single hound that catches 8 out of ten bobcat here where I hunted, my advice would be don/t price it unless you are sure you own a replacement. My opinion is one could have a pocket full money & still have trouble replacing that dog. I was lucky when i started bobcat hunting to have a couple good mentors, hard to believe anyone hunting for 25 years could not read bare ground cat sign. However, my experience is all I know. Most folks don/t sell the best dog they own. If I sold a dog I told the buyer the good & bad about the dog, yes they could tree some cat, reliable as a start dog on bobcat & etc. That is all a person who sells a dog can do the rest is up to the buyer. Just my experience. Al

[johnadamhunter]

Barksalot,

Don't beat yourself up too much. There are a few guys on here that want others to think that bobcat hunting is "rocket science ".


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