your first dog

[Tim Cook]

What was your first dog that you started catching game with. Mine was a 3/4 plott 1/4 walker, I was 17 years old and man did I catch alot of coons with that dog. You could speed walk as fast as he could trail but I didn't care. At the time to me he was the greatest dog in the world and nothing could beat him.

[Buddyw]

By Catching Game.. You should be more specific..
Of Coarse You already know my answer since you were there the first time I ever took a dog in the woods. But I'll ad to it for the others.

Copper was well above the rest and was catching allot of Game, Deer, Elk, coyotes, Porkypines, and even a skunk. I'm pretty sure there were other animals that she caught There were the few times that she caught a Bear, Bobcat and Coon.

Since this is the bobcat section, The First Bobcat I caught with her I was actually so damned pissed at her for running Elk all night that I wouldn't let her out the box after I watched a Bobcat cross the road on the way home... Well after 45 minutes of screwing around with some other dogs that couldn't get it off the road I went and dropped the tailgate and I'll be damned if she didn't Put that Cat up a tree by herself 15 minutes later...

Dang that girl could run.. Just wish I could go back now that I"m learning how to break off game a little better.

[007pennpal]

I started with a pair of black and tans catching coons in nothern Indiana. Real boneheads the ones I had, but man they were game crazy. They had no brains though. It was fun and I could put up 200 bucks of skins a night (5 or 6 good coons) if we didn't have deer races. That was good money for a kid.

[Tim Cook]

Your right Buddy, since I put this in the bobcat section what was the first dog that caught you your first bobcat. The dog that caught me my first bobcat was a little walker dog named Sally. I started her on coons and when the snow started falling I just took her out and put her on some cats, she ended up catching me a few that year. Wish I would of got to see her finished out, when she was a year and a half old she hung her self on a log and died. All part of the life style of bobcat hunting I guess.

[fox hunter]

my first was a little tri colored bitch named foxy. got her as a pup from billy thomas. she was a 35 pound game catching machine. at 8 months old she would rig and catch bear cat and fox buy her self. 20 years later i have never owned her equal. she got killed on a bear at 5 years old

[al baldwin]

Had several yard dogs as a kid growing up in Va. & had hunted with a few hounds in Or. that could tree some easy coon. At 19 was married, working in a mill when a friend & coworker decided we were going to get us a real hound pup. After working enough overtime we headed to Mcminnville OR. to Jack Sheppeads & bought 3 registered walker pups. I got a 5 moth old female, Jack had picked for himself, but his health failed. Thinking we needed a pup trainer, about a month later headed to California to see Frank . Can/t recall seeing so many dogs tied in one yard. There had been several dogs listed in American Cooner, but according to Frank, only one dog would fill our need. Big red, Frank assured, was perfect for us. 100 each & back to Powers we headed so eager we got a couple hr. sleep and freecast red to tree some coon. Well red found a jump track every time we turned him loose for the next several days but never treed anything. One night after red had ran with no tree, headed home a feral cat ran across the road. Red was suppose to be good on those, so we dumped him, off a steep brushy hill straight to the river & seem to have lost the track. Disgusted, Cotton, co-owner of red said let your 6 month old female go. Over the hill 50$ bell took, but never gave any track mouth, seemed it took for ever but once in awhile, bell would give a long bawl. Then it happened Bell settled into a steady chop. Cotton & I arrived & found a cat in a large tree leaning over the river, don,t recall red treeing a lick. Cotton, in his Tennessee draw, said Albert, lets cut our loss & hunt these pups. The deal was Frank would replace red until we were happy. Cotton being a little older said no sense wasting our time & gas. Cotton if you ever read this back in Tennessee it will bring a lot of fond memories Al Baldwin

[George Streepy]

I started with a couple dogs my girlfriend bought me when I was 22 years old. I had never seen a hound dog in my life. I started tagging along with a seasoned cat hunter and had the time of my life. When those dogs got to be 1 1/2 years old they caught me two cats in a long season of hunting. It was in the snow and far from gracefully done. I was getting them on cats when I hunted with the other guy but just wanted to do it myself. About half way through my second hunting season I decided it wasn't worth all the work, you had to be a complete idiot to own hounds!!! I didn't have a lot of money but had thousands into shockers and tracking equipment. I got a loan for a more dependable hunting truck and before long I couldn't afford the steam off a free lunch. My girlfriend left to the grocery store, and I told her I was going to call a friend and sell all my equipment. I was done!

When she got back from the store I let her know that the friend of mine had a nice dog and I bought him for $2500. Flabbergasted she asked just how in the hell I figured we could pay that? The buddy let me make payments and before long I was in the woods with a real bobcat dog. I will never forget the first time that dog struck off the box and started a track. They had a bobcat twisting and turning, I saw it come across the road with the dogs right on its tail. They ended up catching it on the ground. 32 lb 9 oz tom. What a thrill!!!!

[007pennpal]

One hour into my first bobcat season. Blue Daisy, cameron hound, caught one fat tom in the heavy rain at 8 months old alone. She didn't locate it, but it peed from the tree and even I could smell it so I just looked up and there he was. I put her down on about a hundred snow tracks before we got our second one treed. I almost gave up. Everything wrong happened. Before season was over we caught five, but there were other dogs involved on some of those.

[Unreal_tk]

A little background first, I had no clue we even had bobcats so common in our area much less seen a hound 5 years ago, I was just out of high school a couple of years and one of my buddies moved back here and we started hanging out alot and now we are great buds. He got into trapping real heavy and I started going on the line with him (to this day I've never seen a cat in a trap), another friend of his had hounds and he got laid off at the same time as I did that winter and I hopped along with him and that was the start. I hunted with him off and on for 3 years or so, finally he talked me into buying a couple cameron pups. I trained them all summer and fall on drags and every coon I could find. Snow finally came, I started trying every bobcat track I could find. It took all winter but a another guy had a dog he wanted to get rid of so we went hunting. His dogs got a cat jumped and I tossed my pups in on it. They did awesome that night. The dog he wanted to sell me turned out to be less than said so he just gave her to me. A week or two later I cut a fresh bobcat track on my sled and I turn out my 10 month old pups and after alot of circling the cat lined out with my rose pup hot on her heels and treed, a little later her littermate caught up and started treeing. Now this year is a whole different ball game. Dogs have done well and very little trash and whatnot.

[CatCrazed]

LOL well this was my second season and I have not seen an official Bobcat in a tree on my own. I'm at least 10 grand into this and feel completely defeated. Ohh well feed them all summer and try again next year. PS if I hadn't seen other people dogs do it I would think everybody's just making up stories and Bobcats don't tree anymore than deer.