Cold Trailing Bear

[Mr.pacojack]

I got called out on a lion killing dogs and goats this week up around Denver. Anyway we was checking around this subdivision and ran down this road and came back up and this bear had crossed the road in the snow Maybe I will be back up there on a call for him eating People

[Jason Waterhouse]

Looks like a nice track Release the hounds

[blackdog4]

funny that u put that on here, i was just gonna start a post askin bout bears and snow? i was out the other morning and found a bear track in the snow that was no then 4 hrs old i put the dogs down and they couldnt do nothing with it. so just wonder how bear scent differs from lion scent in the snow?

[Mr.pacojack]

We put our 10 month old pups on a leash and walked them down it a little and they went crazy. It was olnly about a hour old but I think we could of caught it even with no swiss dogs.( I left them home)

[Ike]

We started this track mid-morning in back toward the later part of October. The snow had been down for over three days and really couldn't get a feel for it's age, but it was melted and frozen and at least a day or more old. I started my eight and ten year old redbones on the track and they walked it out seventy-five or a hundred yards before they started opening on the track, then began to move out pretty well so we threw down my two-five year old and then my two three-year old hounds.

They moved the track pretty good and stuck with it for about eight hours, as the track eventually went down the country and out into the mud. We picked three of those hounds up after dark and was all day the following day getting the other three back. A couple weeks later these pictures were taken of that boar track in the mud, see the boot, the dried bear and a hound track in the photo below.

We did make a nine and a half mile hike in and cut the run off in the late afternoon and got in behind the dogs as they cold trailed out the head of the canyon above us. As we walked along the bear and hound tracks, I noticed that the bear tracks never once spun, turned or faced a dog which told me the bear was never jumped.



Unlike summer, a bear track in the snow or late October will run for days in my opinion......

ike

[BlacktailStalker]

Larrys dogs would have went 1500 miles to catch that bear and eat it, skinning would be done when you got there.

[Mr.pacojack]

[Ike]

ike

[Houndhead]

I need to go put my boots on.

[jasonrinebold]

One thing I know is bear tracks don't look right in the snow, We don't see many here in the winter. Just before christmas I was cat hunting and caught a bobcat early in the day and was rechecking the same loop to see if anything else had moved. As I cam down a big canyon I about wrecked my truck because I spotted what I thought was a big lion track crossing behind me. After checking the track something just didn't look right about the track but my whole dog box was going crazy. I walked the track for a 100 yards and had to get up under the trees before I relized it was an average bear track in 6 inches of fluffy snow! I went on around and checked the high road out of that coutry and he had already crossed into some roadless rough country so I called it a day.

[PLOTTMAN55]

I woulda dumped the whole box on that track.

[lepcur]

Paco, That's a smoking hot track, the dogs should have it in a tree in 30 min. Mike

[pete richardson]

found a bear track in the snow that was no then 4 hrs old i put the dogs down and they couldnt do nothing with it. so just wonder how bear scent differs from lion scent in the snow?

i dont know about lion scent-

have seen dogs move a two day old bobcat track in snow-

mostly never jump them but have done this just hoping to scare one out or get lucky

same dogs ---have seen when they couldnt run a track a few minutes old

snow conditions mean everything ---- raining-- melting too fast way below 0 overnite -crusty rock hard snow , etc etc etc - all bad


snow at, or just below freezing is normally the easiest tracking there is-- steady mild temps is best .

everything that afects running on bare ground affects snow -


wind, humidity, barometer . etc -,

what im trying to say is

contrary to what you may hear on the internet ,

snow isnt always easy -

4 hours IS a pretty fresh bear track in snow -

but not being able to run a 4 hr old track is not a world record

.

[cat and bear]

I think a day or two days old is an honest opinion of dogs smelling it. Here in WI, seem to bump one in dec, cat hunting about every other year. The ones I got into, isnt that easy to get along with either in snow. Had a jumped cat, it went in a grown over blow down, sent some kids in,a girl had a tag, there was some dogs making noise in the woods, and also on the radio, she stuck her head in to try and see the cat, and looked face to face with a sow, and two yearlings. Lucky they were droggy))). LOL Funny smell in them kids pants))).

[hounder]

I've ran known two day old tracks with my dogs and then this year i tried to turn on a track and the dogs stood on thier heads with fresh snow that night the track couldn't have been more than eight hours old i loaded up looked at the thermometer and it was-15 f so i called it a day i believe snow conditions is everything