Big game bred hounds vs coon hound bred?

[24Vford]

More specifically leopard hounds. I have a female that's out of coon hound stock. I'm just curious what makes big game bred different from coon hound bred hounds.

[Gary Roberson]

She should be fine if is it not bred like so many of the pure competition hounds. As you know, the competition boys don't want their dog wasting time on an old track.
Adios,
Gary

[ALEX]

When hounds men throw terms like that around to describe a dog, or family/line of hounds, it essentially means that those individuals have been selectively bred for multiple generations to produce hounds with an inborn propensity to prefer a certain type of game and hold physical/mental traits that translate to better big game hounds. Big game could mean bear, bobcats, hogs, lion etc. Within that though, some hunters have bred families of dogs for decades to be even more specific than that. Say, dogs that are extremely bobcat minded first and foremost. The competition coon hunting world in your neck of the woods is similar in that dogs have been intensely bred to prefer coon and to be hard tree dogs.

A lot of hounds can work out to be useful for certain combinations of game, whether they are big game or coon bred. Many times, coon bred hounds take to running big game like ducks to water. I've seen some do a nice job with time and exposure and then there's some have no interest in running anything but coon. People may argue that while you could hunt big game with coon bred hounds, a fair amount of them will not have all the desirable physical/mental traits that go hand in hand with exceptional big game hounds. The game the hound is run on and the geographic location/topography/climate etc. all play a part in what works in some places but not others and what traits a dog should possess to be successful. The flip side to this is that there are also dogs from established big game lines that have no interest in running coons. Whether they have been hunted on big game previously or not, some just don't get excited over coon scent even as pups.

I don't know a lot about leopard hounds, but I will go out on a limb to say they probably haven't fallen victim to the breeding will's of competition coon hunters out your way like most of the other hound breeds have, simply because of their lack of popularity in the competition coon hunts. This could work out in your favor if you are wanting to try her on big game.

[david]

What is the breeding of your leopard?
And what is the specific game you want to hunt?

[macedonia mule man]

Brought a red tick male puppy back from New Mexico to louisiana. Parents were excellent bear dogs. I don't know how many generations of big game they had but he made as good a coon dog as I ever had. We don't have enough bear to hunt here but I believe he would have done just as well on bear. A good dog that will hunt , strikr,run and tree will make a good dog on anything anywhere if hunted. Such and such bred is a good selling term. His family came out of Texas coon dogs. And he produced some excellent coon dogs. No doubt he would have taken a cougar track just as well. Forget about such and suck bred, take what you have available and hunt.

[david]

[david]

I might add that o have never seen a leopard yet that I would call "competition bred", so that also puts the odds in your favor.

[dhostetler]

My dogs are all out of coon lines from the 70's and 80's. I think good dogs will do good on anything you put them though some excel better on certain things the only way to know is just try them. I think where a lot of issues what people talk about in competition hounds came from the breeding in the last 20 years. Coon hunters don't think a false tree is such a big deal and come up with the excuse that it climbed part way up and jumped to us big game hunters a dog that false trees is almost the worst trait in hounds the number 1 in my opinion is a tree fighter.

[Gary Roberson]

So true David. I attended two different UKC hunts and was shocked with what I saw about slick trees. The first hunt I guided but did not score as I did not know the rules, dogs were cut loose and two TW dogs broke running to a huge live oak tree about 150 yards away in an open pasture. They fell tree as if someone had a coon in a cage in that tree. We walked down there there five hunters shined a fairly open tree for ten minutes and then said, "well there could be a coon in it and circled the points". I told them that they could do what they wanted as it was their game but there dang sure was not a coon in that tree.
Next hunt about a year later, I was going along with my eldest son who was hunting a pretty good country coon dog. The guide and fellow scoring the hunt drove us to a ranch and everyone lead their dogs toward a big brush bottom. The guide said, "I have a coon feeder down there" and pointed in the direction of the feeder. "Do any of you have a problem with that?"
Long story short, his dog knew exactly where the feeder was as did his hunting buddy's. When the dogs were cut loose the two "homers" had a match race to the feeder while the two non-residents went the opposite direction. The two locals feel treed under the feeder and yes, I did see a coon in the tree.
I never had the nerve to hunt on a PKC event when I found that they do not strike a dog for fighting on a tree and even heard a couple of hunters bragging, "No one's dog could put old Fido off the tree".
Adios,
Gary

[BAR BAR 2]

Give it a few years, Gary. The competition hunters will soon have the cur dogs just as screwed up as the coonhounds are. The competitions started out as a fun thing to check the quality of one's hound against others, but human nature being what it is, people sure screwed up alot of good hound lines.

Cur dogs used to be the type of hunting companion that were owned by someone who just hunted for fun, fur and meat. With the competition organizations realizing how much money they were losing by not including those country coon and squirrel dogs though, they decided to remedy the situation and exploit that revenue stream and they are starting to take the cur dogs down the same path as the coonhounds.

If someone ever decides it might be a good idea to create some sort of big game competition, I think they will probably get a good swift kick in the rear.


Tex

[huntinwyo]

I recently got into hunting hounds so I am not an expert by any means. I have been to a few competition hunts with my dog and do see some big differences what I would think most big game hunters want compared to a consistent winner. The dogs that I saw win would straight run in a straight line basically when unleashed. These dogs are just looking for a hot track. I mean they will get a mile or more very quickly. First strike first tree dogs win the hunts (not always but more consistently). The other big difference is a desirable comp dog will be very independent. They won't honor another dog. In a pack of big game hounds this would cause problems I would think. My dog did win a hunt by treeing coon behind the other dogs however because he hunts out. He treed 2 coon behind the other dogs. He won't ever be a consistent winner though because he has to know a coon is there before he will tree and he is rarely a first strike dog. I have some good guys at the hunts I attended and had a great time though. The hunts aren't all bad!

[huntinwyo]

I meant to say most big game hunters wouldn't want!

[david]

[Nolte]

The main difference that has been mentioned are the traits desired to be successful. As a general rule for bear, big game guys will want cold nose and dogs that will stick on a rough bear. Most coon dogs most likely haven't been evaluated in this department. It doesn't mean they wont, but that isn't where I would look first for those traits.

Just like I wouldn't look for a top notch locating tree dog from a guy who is primarily a bear hunter. Bears as a rule are easier to locate.

Competition bred dogs are a different animal all together. While some would be good pleasure coon dogs, others would be far from enjoyable.

Regardless of what kind of dogs you have or get, all you can do is get them in the woods and figure out what ya got. If what you got isn't what you need, go look up someone who has it. And that person is probably not someone who is trying to sell it.

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[Dan Edwards]

And a lot of this stuff has to do with the way we raise and handle the dogs fellas. We would have never dreamed of handling our coon dogs the way we handle our coyote dogs nor the way I seen big game hunters handle their dogs. I don't need to go into all the differences but we raised our coon dogs more like bulldogs than pleasure hunting dogs. We had to or else our dogs would still be takin a piss on a bush while the rest of the cast was done treed.