BigGameHoundsmen.com

A friend of mine constantly talked about "the best dog that ever lived" lol He hated collies big time. Made my day when i hunted with the man that bred the dog some 20 years later. Turned out it was half english hound half BC!

Haha. Made my belly shake ands. That is exactly what I am talking about. If people only knew what was behind their best hound who ever lived they might find a little surprise on one er two of 'em.

Code for BC is "brains"?

That is one of them. Any hound with the intelligence and understanding and manipulative powers of an eight year old human is suspect in my book.

" Magical" equals "Higher awareness". "Passing gear". "Using all six senses to gather information"
Extreme memory to memorize and predict human and animal behavior, the steel frame between cat and dog removed, desire to get ahead of the game or direct the movement of the game, catagory 3, catagory L, cutting to the game because of hearing it, shutting up in order to hear it, shutting up in order to hear it in order to see it, in order to use the extreme sprint speed to close the gap and catch it. I beleive at one point a comparison was made between the wolves hunting instincts and the border collies herding instincts. There is a very fine line between them/ compared to the huge gaping canyon between the hound and the wolf. (Centuries of unlimited funds for breeding for the counter-intuitive hunting style of a hound)
This is just for starters. Actually, I don't even recommend it. You might become bored of cat hunting as I did. The challenge was gone.

And yes, I realize there are other places these traits can be found. And I realize people went to these other places in order to put the border collie breed together. But it's all right there in one dog. mine had faults, for sure, because at least one of their amazing strengths are on the border line of making them unusable for our purposes. My experience is limited, so maybe I just got lucky. There may be more unusable than useable. My experience was half and half.

But the book would never have been written without the border collie experience to draw from.

Stick with hounds. Enjoy the race for the rest of your life.

There is a great old book that is now out of print call ISLAND GOLD.
It is about the history of cougar hunting on Vancouver Island. It is filled with great history and photos of many great men and women who helped keep the island cougar population in check. What is interesting is the earliest hunters used mostly cross bred dogs with a lot of collie in them. They were very effective but mostly silent trackers. There were very few full bred hounds in that area but they seemed to do just fine with their make do dogs. In fact some of these collie crosses racked up very impressive catch numbers over the years. Later after some Canadian hunters started bringing in dogs from the Southwest US full bred hounds started to show up but many of the old hunters preferred to stay with their silent but deadly cross bred dogs.

I was lucky enough to get a copy of this book from a great friend in Alberta, but I have never seen another copy offered for sale.


I hunted with an old guy in Montana years back that had crossed a black and tan/walker cross on a Golden Retriever, and he ended up with some dogs that were awesome on bobcat and coon. They looked sort of funny but they could really trail fast. The background of the Golden goes back to dogs know as Russian Trackers and they were used for everything up to an including giant brown bears.

So never discount a dog because of his breeding until you see him work.

Wow Mike, speaking of gold, you found some there. Thanks for making me have to repent about my envy over that book. Haha.

Mike it always puzzled me how there could be no bobcats on that island. Right across the Sound a few miles away is one of the healthiest populations of bobcat in the nation. I am just wondering if this book made any mention of bobcats on Vancouver Island. ?

David,

I read the book and I don't recall them ever mentioning bobcat. Great question maybe Jim Shockey will chime in and give his opinion. LOL!

I had a friend that went up with his boy and hunted black bear with Jim. Jim said in some areas there are so many lions they will come right up to your camp. It is so dang thick up there that it is hard to run dogs in a lot of that area, you just can't hardly get to them. They usually take most of the bear along the roads when they come out to eat grass.

I wonder how the small prey species game like rabbits and such is up there? Maybe not that much for a bobcat to eat, or it just might be the lions are too much competition.

"desire to get ahead of the game" This may sound a little far fetched but i have seen this habit used with great results especially with two dogs well used to working together. Both dogs see the fox but instead of them both flat out trying to catch it, say like two greyhounds coursing a hare would, instead one dog overtakes it say slightly to the right and the other dog behind- bad news for the fox- definatley more results than two dogs who's sole intention is to be a canine missile! Another BC habit i've seem many times is when the dog thinks it knows where a fox is heading for and heads it off- awesome when the plan works but pretty memorable when the dog gets it completely wrong too!

Funny you should mention the double teaming deal. those two hound/retriever crosses I talked about would work as a team on jumped bobcats that didn't make the tree. Once the cat gets winded a bit his speed burst wears off, and the female was super fast on a sight race. She would give all she had and run and grab the cat by the butt and just flip him back , and then the male dog who was about 20 pounds heavier would be right there to slam down on over the neck as he hit the ground , the female would grab the rear and jerk and snap! It was all over, and seldom did they get a scratch. Once it was dead they would just back off and stand there. they had way more trouble trying to kill a big northern coon, but for a dog who knows how, most bobcats are fairly easy to kill.