? for the lion hunters????

[Smith]

I have sold my Texas bobcat dogs and looking to buy some lion dogs to replace them, do you lion hunters let your lion dogs run coons? With my bobcat dogs I didnt let them run nothing but bobcats and feral cats, but I am going to have to travel 2 to 5 hours to get in to some lion country and I can hunt here close to my house on coons and bobcats. When I was running bobcats, If i let them run coons that would be all I would catch. So would you lion hunters let your dogs run coons or just straight lions and bobcats? Thanks for some help, Casey Smith.

[Eric Muff]

In this neck of the woods our hounds do it all.
We run lions,bears,bobs',lynx,coon whatever.They should pretty well finish what they start.

[BEAR HUNTER]

When I lion hunted in Oregon (back when it was legal) our dogs were coon,cat, and bear. We never had any problem with our dogs taking anything but lion tracks when we wanted to hunt lion. Of course we always looked for tracks before we turned out and if our dog rigged we judged the country etc, on what the dog was rigging. I've only had one incident on a bear hunt where the dogs left a cold bear track and treed. We hiked down in a steep canyon and had two stinking coon in a tree. The rest of the pack went on and treed the bear. So we ended up with the bear and two coon. To this day I have no idea why two coon were running around in a canyon at 12 in the afternoon.

[Big Mike]

Thats a tuff question, it depends on how/where/what you are going to hunt. If your only goal is to hunt lions with your dogs then I wouldnt let them chase anything but cats(long and short tailed).

Hunting coons isnt going to hurt them but if you do it to much they are going to think they are coon dogs and coons is the goal. If your going to hunt the lions in the snow where you can easly see the track and its easy trailing and you can start and help them along, hunting coons wont hurt them.

Now if you hunt bare ground and free cast i wouldnt say its going to hurt them but be ready to chase a lot of off game such as bears (bears dont sleep much in NM.) and waste time you could have been hunting lions. Believe me I know i caught more bears in dec, Jan, feb on accident than I did lions(which aint saying much with as little of lions as I caught last year).

If you took a poll of all the top bare ground lion hunters you will find that they 95% hunt lions only with there dogs. Probably a good reason for that!

[Shorty]

Smith,

Knowing where you are and the coon population I'd just hunt them on cats. Here in Texas there are coons around every corner due to all the corn/protein feeders. If you let then catch coons thats all you'll be doing. I'd stick to the cat's either size tail. JMHO

[Big N' Blue]

I think it has been said before on this site that most good bobcat dogs can catch a lion but not a lot of lion dogs can catch a bobcat. Coon dogs usually cannot do either on a regular basis.
If you want to lion hunt I would do as Shorty said and stay away from coons. JMO

[Brianshounds]

to start my dogs run bear lion bobcat and coon and i am just as happy no matter what they catch just cought two lions last week while bear hunting but if you are trying to catch just one of the above mentioned i to would brake my dogs off the other three.