hunting solo----what "Type" of dog

[horshur]

I have been hunting Cur'ish type dogs....last ones were leopard and leopard cross.

I hunted some Walkers as well but they were incorugable and older which seems to be a big hole to climb out of......it is really hard to teach basic manners to an older dog with little life experience it is like they are missing some channels in the brain.

I asked because were at a sort of crossroad here........it is a bit shocking how you can be dog rich and the poor in a very short time if you are not looking ahead.

I was hunting two pups this year......only two dogs we have...trying to get one started on cougar and had had some good luck..little girl was a pleasure in the woods...only trashed once(squirrel) treed three cougar but on our fourth ran smack dab into a ugly young Tom who had a hate on for the world and been living in someones yard since christmas....I did not appreciate what was going on at the time...the cat was not in the least affraid of me or the dog and killed her in seconds 50 feet from me in a willow choked logging block on the ground......

So now I am at square one... just exploring my options.

what I will say is that there appears to be dirge of houndsmen here about who have any handle whatsoever on there dogs . Some have even remarked how I can let mine out for a leak without trash collars or a leash and even leave the door open......if they let theres out it may be all day to retrieve them

none are broke to lead all are tough to catch it is a two man job to get them in and out of the box...a kid can't walk them even with a lead.....And the standard response regarding what I see as foulnness ......bad behaviour is proof they are a good hunting dog. Thanks for the replies, Andy

[Ike]

I took a guy bear hunting one day last fall that had been around hounds before, but not around me. We got out were I wanted to start rigging and I dropped the tailgate and jerked both doors open and out came six hounds. That hunter got all excited and about started grabbing dogs, then said aren't you afraid that they will all run off? I laughed and said no, those dogs listen to the old man at every stage of the game........

I took another bear hunter out to kill a bear this past fall, and his father came along a few days. The young man's father had ran hounds for fifteen years in this state off horseback for lions and had a pretty good idea what a hound was suppose to do. We rigged bear after bear, found the tracks and usually drove on looking for one worth killing. We did, however, dump on one bear without a track and treed a nice sow. We went in and took photos and I talked them out of shooting the bear, then asked if they were ready to go and they said yes. I had six dogs on that bear and they were pealing bark, and we I called to them they all left the tree and followed us out. Now the father who had ran hounds for fifteen years about chit his pants, between the rigging my dogs did and calling them off the tree.

I had another bear hunter last fall and my dogs rigged a nice boar around 9:00 AM, but the track wasn't any good. I told the hunter odds were not good of a catch, but he knew that we were not going to find another big boar that day as well as I did so we dumped the hounds. I'll bet they didn't move that track three miles in four hounds, and was as chitty a bear track as I ever attempted to run. By 1:00 PM we could see them at the bottom of a thousand foot canyon stalling on the track, and half an hour later they were all looking for a shade tree to cool down. I explained the hunt for that bear was over and then called those six dogs out of the canyon and that's all I'm gonna say about making a lock down, really great handling pack of dogs. Any idiot can sent a dog down a fresh bear track, and the dummest of hounds will ususally take one, but it takes a real trainer to call those dogs out of places like that rather than have to go after them........

ike

[ZeluvaRIP69er]

Every dog I own can and is called off trees!!

Ike, I am so very proud that you stood up for the intelligent hounds out there!

I bet the dogs that we all train to be called off stuff has more heart then those 4 year old pups that need leashes just to find where the hunting truck is!!!!

[Ike]

I'm with Ike and Twist

I don't know how many times I have watched people have to run down into the canyon to pull their dogs off of a track.. Either because they are running it backwards or found where it is smoking hot (and if you say your dogs have never taken anything backwards then you are a fibber) I can't stand a dog that won't call off.. It's a waste of my time and energy to have to run some dumbass dog down.. My dogs are on the track when everyone else is still trying to catch theirs Because after I yelled at them a few times they came back up to me.. (Okay... I might be blue in the face, but they came back to me)

I know I can call them off of a tree.. I haven't yet.. And all be damned if they are still some die hard tree dogs that will stay there as long as anyone else's dog..

And I couldn't have said it better, if those hounds are running the track backwards, or on a sow and you have a boar track, why wouldn't a handler want those dogs to listen and come back the right way or switch onto a bear your hunter wants to kill? I've said it before and will say it again, if a hound isn't listened to it's handler it isn't worth the powder to blow it to hell!

ike

[ZeluvaRIP69er]

Exactly.

The greatest hound hunters, past, present, and future, are the one who have gone more miles, gotten the most blisters, and the most chips in their teeth due to frustration with these hard headed creatures we call hounds!

Just my view on things..

[Redwood Coonhounds]

I notice the people that have a hard time believing in the intelligence a hound can have, are short on intelligence themselves. Or they are the ones making up excuses, and somehow always have a justification for the way their dogs behave.

Like I said before my dogs are as hard hunting, with as much heart and drive as anyones. But they also know how to handle. I can let them out to go to the bathroom without collaring up, holler and they all jump back in the box. I can road them and if I don't feel like messing around, I can see when they start getting excited, I holler and tell em to keep on moving. I can cut a track and call 'em back so long as they are in hearing distance, on a old or bad track they don't give much resistance. On a red hot one it might take a while, I might have to sound a little mad, but if they get close to a road, or I get on top of em where they are gonna cross, they will come to me. This has saved them from a lot of bad situations. At the tree I can call em over to me hook em up and walk a little ways, unclip em and go. I almost never call my dogs off a bear tree, but this year after 14 hrs of being treed SOLID and us not being able to get to them, we called and honked for about 20-30 minutes and they came out single file. Coon hunting I don't need a leash at all. I will say I have never tired calling one off something on the ground, and don't plan on it. This is also without a shocking collar. They are taught with them at a young age, and they come to find out I'm not joking around, and after that I don't need them. I have one young dog right now the only time I have difficulty handling him is at a Competition event like a Field Trial, he is hard to leash from the tree. But there is usually a lot of unruly hounds there and the energy is a lot different than he's used to. Once I actually work with him on it, I know it won't be a problem anymore.

[sourdough]

I didn't know if I would comment on this post or not. But I guess I will through my hat into the ring. There has been a few on hear that have said that heart and drive is what makes a great dog and can't disagree with that thought process. I will say that if you do not have a handle on them you don't have nothing but an uncontrollable mob. There is nothing that make me madder than a hound that has no manners or control they are smart and with a little time can and do respond to voice commands, you just have to make them. I don't like having to drag 6 hound away from a tree, if they do not respond to voice commands then Tri-Tronics is what they get, have not screwed a hound up yet. Same goes to calling them off a track if I am done so are they. I also never let them drag me out of the hills they follow or else. It starts when they are puppies and continues their whole life. If they don't conform then I sure don't want them. If they don't view me as the leader them I have no use for them.....If they don't have handle you will never have them completely broke off, off game and will always have problem if you hunt with others that have hounds that are not broke and that's a fact.

sourdough

[ZeluvaRIP69er]

I didn't know if I would comment on this post or not. But I guess I will through my hat into the ring. There has been a few on hear that have said that heart and drive is what makes a great dog and can't disagree with that thought process. I will say that if you do not have a handle on them you don't have nothing but an uncontrollable mob. There is nothing that make me madder than a hound that has no manners or control they are smart and with a little time can and do respond to voice commands, you just have to make them. I don't like having to drag 6 hound away from a tree, if they do not respond to voice commands then Tri-Tronics is what they get, have not screwed a hound up yet. Same goes to calling them off a track if I am done so are they. I also never let them drag me out of the hills they follow or else. It starts when they are puppies and continues their whole life. If they don't conform then I sure don't want them. If they don't view me as the leader them I have no use for them.....If they don't have handle you will never have them completely broke off, off game and will always have problem if you hunt with others that have hounds that are not broke and that's a fact.

sourdough

+10 kudos!

[Ike]

X2..........or Amen if down south in the Bible Belt!

ike

[sourdough]

I'm with Ike and Twist

I don't know how many times I have watched people have to run down into the canyon to pull their dogs off of a track.. Either because they are running it backwards or found where it is smoking hot (and if you say your dogs have never taken anything backwards then you are a fibber) I can't stand a dog that won't call off.. It's a waste of my time and energy to have to run some dumbass dog down.. My dogs are on the track when everyone else is still trying to catch theirs Because after I yelled at them a few times they came back up to me.. (Okay... I might be blue in the face, but they came back to me)

I know I can call them off of a tree.. I haven't yet.. And all be damned if they are still some die hard tree dogs that will stay there as long as anyone else's dog..

And I couldn't have said it better, if those hounds are running the track backwards, or on a sow and you have a boar track, why wouldn't a handler want those dogs to listen and come back the right way or switch onto a bear your hunter wants to kill? I've said it before and will say it again, if a hound isn't listened to it's handler it isn't worth the powder to blow it to hell!

ike

There is a lot of hound wisdom there. Free casting or roading for that matter if you can't slow those hounds up when you get a strike to check to see if they are headed the right way you have some problems. Well maybe it is just because I have some stupid hounds that can't figure out they are going the wrong direction after all they have a 50/50 chance of getting it right. In all honesty when you can't find a track and you leave with them if you have hunted enough you can tell after a little while that thing are not improving, I have been able to call the dogs and turn them around and if you ever done that you will find them smoke it back and go on to tree. Granted there are some hounds that can figure it out before you can, but truth be known not very many. handle handle handle..............

sourdough

[Ike]

Ain't that the truth? We started a sow size track off a rig where rocks had been rolled and the dogs went up out of the canyon this past fall. We had not found a really good track until I got all the dogs going, but figured it was late in the morning and just let them run...

We drove around and cut those dogs off crossing a two track road that the bear had been back and forth on. Matter fact those dogs were doing a lose and I got out to help them. About then one of my hounds found a fresher track, a boar track, and fired hard and began leaving out down that track backwards. In seconds the who pack was there and they all joined in. Now they hadn't gone fifty yards and may well have turned it around, but I have not patients for that crap and I called them back, and they went and treed that bear after a hard run.

Had I stayed down in that canyon and not been involved in the hunt, I'd never known those dogs did a lose and switched on a boar track backwards. They may well have turned it around and we'd found them under a boar tree, and then wondered how and where they switched. Or, they'd back-trailed that boar until they gave out and we'd never known why they didn't get caught. Bottom line is a pack of hounds isn't any better than the man or woman running them, and if that person doesn't get in there and attempt to understand what, when and why then the pack of hounds isn't ever going to amount to much.

ike

[not color blind]

I just threw up in my mouth a little.

[sourdough]

Good stuff there Ike, bottom line is if a person is not part of the pack, you will never figure things out. I've gotten older and use my head a little more as far as going step for step with the dogs, but I still stay involved with them from the start, if things are going right then I find where they are going and figure a better way to head them off or to get to them. Hunting alone has many challenges leaving the pick up with the hounds and going step for step to the tree and back to the truck can be challenging. If you are not in top physical shape you may pay the ultimate price. Ike, I ask you once about what would be the best digital camera a guy could take with him today, as I use to pack old 35mm and lenses and flash and your response was what ever a guy liked, now this is not a direct quote so please do not take it the wrong way your picture are some of the best I have ever seen. I have limited what I carry with me so that I can have enough water to wet my hounds lips and keep me hydrated. I have much more in my pack but it all has to do with staying out over night. The scars I carry from doing it alone are many, and my advice to anyone would be to get a trusted friend or start someone from scratch and teach them, I think that is the best. The only old dog you can't teach a new trick to is us. The color of the hound does not matter! Handle Handle Handle.

sourdough

[ZeluvaRIP69er]

Well put Ike.

Numerous times I have seen my dad do what you did...

Not too awfully long ago dad and I was roding all the dogs. Main pack and the young wild bunch. Had about 12 or so dogs with us. A heard of Antelope (I guess they are a heard?) ran right in front of the dogs... Dad and I saw this and just started laughing out butts off, cuz it was a bunch overly fast hooved creatures running from a bunch of overly gritty Plotts... Dad and I stopped the little green Toyota, got out, started yelling at the dogs, and they started coming back, had to shock a few of coarse, no doubt there, but it didn't end up a wreck all day wishing we had Labs instead of Plotts lol!

I am more impressed by a hound-doggers pack for what he dogs DON'T do, then for what they DO!

[Ike]

Sourdough,

Sorry if I pushed you off about choice of camera, but the truth is I either carry a cheap pocket camera and often use my 1.7 meg digital still camera on my Canon G2. Neither of those cameras are high resolution digital cameras but work great for the Internet. I have an old .35 mm F4 Nikon professional camera and lenses that I paid up close to $9000 bucks for back in the early ninties but gave it up because of weight like you talked about. I've been thinking about buying a new Nikon digital SLR that take my old lenses and get back into some high quality stuff, but I have been busy buying snow sleds, Garmin GPS equipment and other junk!

I was down in St George at a funeral last weekend and a nephew was shooting one of those Nikon D-5s (or whatever) and it made me feel bad that I have gotten away from the high quality stuff. It sounds like that you have learned (like me) that every pound hurts the older we get, and that's why my Nikon was retired. Any of those Nikon or Canon camera with a zoom lens should do a great job.....hell the cheap ones do pretty damn good.

The secret to good photography is use the best equipment you can afford, get as solid as you can when shooting, hope for good light, thing about composition, and shoot lots of angles and have lots of choices when you get back to the computer. We use to have to bracket (shoot over and under exposed film) before the digital age came along, and now the camera is smarter than we are. I realize I still didn't point you toward a particular camera make or model but the Internet will give you all you need if you punch in the numbers.

Best of luck,
ike