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If a pup wont go in on a bear at six months old your wasting dog food that could be feeding a good one. I was tought not to start them till 2. now I have a pack of 9 that were all started at six months my 4 old dogs are 6 and they havent quit. but its took 20 dogs to get nine. so keep pounding them good job.

UtahMule wrote:If a pup wont go in on a bear at six months old your wasting dog food that could be feeding a good one. I was tought not to start them till 2. now I have a pack of 9 that were all started at six months my 4 old dogs are 6 and they havent quit. but its took 20 dogs to get nine. so keep pounding them good job.

My question is if you need nine dogs for bear do you really have bear dogs???
I couldn't resist.

I only have hunt five counting my pup And can tell you from experinace that its not a bad idea to have a backup because it only takes one mean bear with an attitude to put your whole pack out of action. twice in the past four years in the first week of our kill season that my four old dogs have got tore up and were not able to run and i was wishing i had a couple more to run till they healed up.

you dont need more than 4 or 5 dogs a day but my dogs cant make 10 days of hard hunting like some I have to rotate them. Like 79 said a bad bear can ruin the rest of the hunt unless you have replacements.

couldnt resist

I hunted with a guy that hunted 8 dogs and one bear killed his whole pack. he only had two that made it out of the woods alive and they ended up dying later on at the vets office. so its always good to have replacements so that one bear dont put you completely out of action in one day.

People always like to say they only use a few hounds to run on bear. It is hard to keep a breeding program going when you only use 3 or 4 dogs. If you are using the same 3 or 4 dogs for 6 or 7 years, what is impressive about that? Of course if you use your best old dogs you can catch a bear. The fun part is when you get the pups in on the action and when they are able to take over the reins. It is also hard to recover from a bad bear or hog when you have 2 dogs out of four cut down or killed vs 2 dogs out of 6 or 7. I like to keep a pup or two coming on every season, just in case.

you always need to keep a young dog coming on . i like to have a good young dog coming on at least every two years at least.

lets she some pics of these bad mama jama's!!

Good for you blackandtan79. We have been raising hounds for over 25 years and alot of them are very young starters. Most people will not believe you until they see it, but guess what you are the one feeding those pups not them. I have an old man here that is 15 now and the first bear race he was on was one of those all-day races, he was 4 1/2 mos. old. When the dogs finally treed it he was sitting right next to his Mamma barking every breath, he was one of our main dogs for about 11 yrs. Most of the criticism you will hear on here is just jealousy so don't let it bother you, just keep on huntin' those pups. When people say something to us about starting our pups too young, I tell them that I only start them when the pups let me know they are ready and it will either make em' or break em'. Good luck to ya'!

the pups made their first full race from turn loose to tree. and were treeing when i got there. the only bad thing was i let my 12 year old cousin shoot it and he hung it about 80 feet in a big oak and had to wait about two hours for my brother in law to get there with climbing gear to get it out. it must have been worth the wait though because the pups enjoyed woolin him good when he finally did hit the ground.

you are correct about bringing along a pup or 2 every season .

Never had a bear tree that high before usually 20-30 feet is about all

Maybe our bears ain't as mean as yours ,most ever lost at one time was 2 hounds .

wow inpressive and yes almost unbelieveable but i think you might be hunting the coast or flat ground up in the north east runnin bear a race will go up a 1000 ft and down a mountain and back up again most time 1000ft up in less than a mile the runnn is tough no pup or even full grown dog that has not been roaded and ran the 8 weeks trainin season will stick with a pack of dogs that has been out already ya cant even let a 3 year old sit in the yard now he is strong but no stamina and try to dump him in the race he might want to get there but cant them hounds are gone
i think this goes back to different runnin in different areas in the south were we hog hunt its flat maybe my pups could of handled that but i like to make sure there teeth are in good before any grabin goes on
yeap im jealos now lets see some pics of the speed demons and well see if they are makin ya smile next year

i don't know if i can believe that. maybe if you post some pics of em actually bayin at it er treein it i'll buy it. but 4 months.. thats extremely young. but i know a guy that gets all his pups finished out at 5 months for free casting for coon with just the one pup. no help from other hounds. but bear is a whole different ball game so to me thats just really hard to believe. but next time take some pics n post em.

i hunt in the western NC mountains the mountains are rough hunting and are some of the tallest on the east coast. if you look up mount mitchell it is the highest peak east of the mississippi river. I see the blue ridge parkway when i load my dogs every morning.As for the pups i don't give a crap if you believe it or not i was just sharing with you guys. The pups are now almost 6 months old and have not been on a chain since training season started.they have been on the ground runnin since august it. they did'nt do so well on long races but i let them run as long as they could and now they are in pretty good runnin shape for pups.as for pics i'll post some as soon as seasons over. because i try not to waste much of my huntin time on the computer. i live at a little over 3000 ft above sea level and we hunt from that up around 6000to6400 feet above sea level so theres plenty of climbing to do in a race.

bob baldwin jr this bear was in the top fork of the tallest oak i have ever seen around here . and that is the most i have ever heard of anyone loosein at one time but he did .