Lion Hound Athletic Factor

[Mike Leonard]

I know when we discuss the qualities need in a top catching lion hound usually the first thing that pops into our minds is:

Nose: How well can the dog trail? Cold trail ability to sort out losses and keep the track moving on to a productive end.
Locate and tree power: How well can the dog locate a treed lion and then stay on the wood barking until we get there.

Then then the talk will generally run to things like, how tuff are the dogs feet, and how well can he stand the heat or the cold or how much or how little mouth he gives on the trail.

All of these things are very important factors but a couple of other things really make a hound that has these former traits really stand out to me.

DRIVE: Is absolutely a top requirement for a free cast lion dog, you may walk him over a track now and then but usually he has to find it on his own he has to be loaded with desire and drive to search hard for a track, and the drive to put as much speed on the track as possible to overtake the lion.

Last but not least:

Athleticism: This may be more important in certain areas where lions are often caught in bad ledges and bluffs which are so much of the time in the desert southwest. Also many of today's lions have been run several times and they get up and are moving out once they hear a hound bark on their trail. If a dog continuously gets ledged up or bluff out and can't get up down around and use his head and athletic ability to close the gap you will seldom catch these lions.


I watched a documentary a few months back of several guys who were helping in a forested area of the US to capture and collar lions. These guys had one old bluetick female and they would find a track and they were tough hard walking hunters and they would just put her on the trail and then stay after her until she got the lion up a tree. I am sure it made many people watching who didn't really know think that lion hunting is a simple matter of a hound plodding down a track barking until they walked up to a tree with a cat in it. Sometimes it can be but not often in the real world especially in a big chunk of lion country that I know.



I thought I would throw this out as a sort of discussion again and see what others feel about lion hounds athletic ability and some of the better hounds you have seen in this department.


I think if a person wants to go on You Tube and watch a few clips of Steve Biggerstaff's hounds in Colorado working you will get an idea of what kind of obstacles some of these hounds have to overcome to stop the lion. Beware some of it is not for the faint of heart!

Thanks

[LBell]

When your spend some time trying to dig, coax, or carry dogs out of rock ledges or bluffs you you see how important athleticism/agility is especially when it's in the dark!

When I was brand new into hounds and we lived in se Idaho I went coon hunting near some lava beds/ ledges. There were some deep cracks and holes thru out it. We had caught some and the dogs were doing OK then they had one fun up into the rocks there were 4 dogs out the coon went down a hole and there was only 2 dogs there. We started searching and then my female started screaming like she was being eaten alive. We found her in good health on a leaner that had split off the main rock it was a pain to get her back, my friends dog was also stuck it was the end of what was a good night.

[tigger]

When I exercise dogs I go past this dairy that has a bunch of cement barriers stacked together,the field lions tend to hang in those barriers and can tell the pups I keep because they can run a nd catch in those barriers. Some have that athletic ability and some just looking dumb trying.

[1bludawg]

I was able to get a pup out of the last litter Steve Matthes bred before he died.Ernie Strahm of McMinville ,Oregon got Velvet and the pups after Steve passed .
I drove up and picked a male pup that looked like Velvet ,red with a black saddle .
When i started hunting the pup he couldn't step off the road without getting hung up.One of the worse dogs i ever owned at getting around.I thought that was odd considering Steve had inbred his dogs for generations to catch lion.The pup(Mose ) was such a good looking ,well built dog with a tenor bawl mouth that i kept hunting him.At a year old he figured out he could jump and there was no holding back after that .
I was working a cat one day below a cliff.My 2 females Bess and Babe were running around trying to figure out how to get up or around to a shelf above us .That Mose dog found a small crevice in the cliff and crawled and wiggled his way up to the shelf .I was impressed ,i've never saw a dog do that before or since!

[1bludawg]

I should add that Mose layed down and died at 2 years old.He had a thyroid problem and the vet said probably a brain tumor.
I was sick over losing him .If he was an example of Steve's lion hounds (i believe he was) then they were extremely athletic and caught what they were bred for and then some !!!

[Mike Leonard]

1bludawg,

Yes nearly all of the Matthes dogs I have been around were super athletic and get around like monkeys. I have several friend that are still hunting this strain and they hunt some horrible rim country that are extremely treacherous, and these little red and saddle back dogs catch game.

Good comments guys and Tigger I like how you use the dairy barrier setup that is awesome innovation!

[mark]

I love real athletic dogs. That being said, they can be like a winch on the front of a pickup. They can get you out of jams but can also get you into some real jams that require serious help to get out of lol

[Mike Leonard]

Mark you are correct they can at times get you in a pickle.

That being said really good rock dogs can and will catch lions at times that you would never stand a chance with dogs that don't push the limit.

I use to have two male walker dogs that I got from Jeff Allen in Utah. When I got these dogs I had some pretty good lions dogs and was catching pretty good but in some areas my success was just not too good. Seemed like I could strike a good track and work it and get it up and running and we would end up in these giant boulder piles and bluffs and at times I felt like some of these lions were actually playing a game with me. I am sure most of these had been run before and lost and they sort of figured me out.

I was over hunting with Jeff in that north rim Virgin River country and it has some real bad bluffs in there actually a good place to get dogs killed if it is too icy but I saw his dogs do some amazing things in those rocks and that is what prompted me to lay out some cash and buy those 2 dogs.

When I brought those dogs back to my country they proved to be game changers. They were so athletic and fast in those rocks that those lions old tricks just didn't work. They would jam them up a tree or just catch and stop them on the ground. They would get in places I thought there was no way out or up or down and in just almost no time they would have it worked out and be gone. Next thing you know you had a lion caught and most of the time that lion would be panting hard and looking pretty bewildered.

These dogs taught me a lesson: you can have tons of the first attributes but if they can't get where the lions go in real bad country the tough lions will send you home empty handed and tossing and turning in bed wondering what went wrong. LOL!

[Jeff Eberle]

Mike, Not to hijack your post , But how you getting to them athletic dogs ? These cur hound crosses I have get into some pretty nasty places here, and I'm sure you have bluffs that make Are's look like Disneyland. After a bad fall 3 weeks ago I'm thinking about some beginner climbing classes this summer.

[Mike Leonard]

That is an excellent idea.

I hate rapelling off rocks but I have done it. I always carry climbing ropes and also a couple of Weaver flat nylon horse halters which can be fashioned into a neat dog harness for lifting dogs out if need be. Usually I can work around and get to them if the hounds can hold them.

A few weeks back three of my hounds had a lion bayed out on a ledge that dropped off about 40 feet to the next shelf. I could see 2 of my dogs right in the lion's face, but I couldn't see the other one but I could hear him. We worked our way around and got in close and the lion just walked down the ledge about 30 feet from us and I got down where it originally was and I could hear Little Red just barking like a wild man. I looked down in a big crack in the ledge and there was Little Red about 6 feet down in that crack. I guess he had run in there and that old lion just swatted him right down in there. I don't think he could have ever got out on his own but he was sure making sure I heard him. I got down on my belly and had my wife hold my legs and he reared up as far as he could and I grabbed his collar and pulled him out of there. Well he ran towards the lion and Ben one of my other dogs was missing. I looked off the ledge and he was staggering around down below. That lion was getting way too rough so Mama fed him a little lead from her Colt to tame him down. Luckily old Ben must have hit in some soft sand and brush and was only scraped up a bit but it could have been worse.

This rock hunting can be tuff. Although I have never ran curs there is a fellow pretty close to here in Colorado that got completely out of hounds and went to them yellow cur dogs. He hunts some terrible rim country and he said they can get thru them rocks like a pack of monkeys and catch all kinds of stuff. Said one day he caught a coyote, a 6 point bull elk and later danged if they didn't catch a lion! LOL!

[Joshg223]

Not to get off topic mike do you know how them yellow curs are bred?

[Mike Leonard]

I honestly don't know much about those curs. Garnett Weise of Dove Creek, Colorado has them and I know he got some of them from Mike Dillard Riley Miller's son in law out of Justiceberg, Texas.


To me they looked a lot like the curs Darrell Frye runs in Nevada.

[houndhunter450]

Mike are you now crossing those Allen bred dogs into what u are breeding?

[Mike Leonard]

Short answer: I have had some Jeff Allen blood for 20 years, and one of our main stud dogs right now came directly from Jeff. We are crossing some on him with the Nance and getting good results early. We also have a few other strains of big game walker blood we are hunting. As for the dogs that are advertised as SW Nance dogs they are all line bred on the old Nance blood and they are PR eligible.