Re: How did you come to hunt the dogs you hunt?
Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2019 12:36 pm
Mule man a lot of people use them and yes they can do the job. There are probably more good crosses than pure ones. Just like with competition coon hounds, they aren't the same as they were years ago. Because they're used for competition so much more than anything else, they no longer possess as much bottom. They also have become so high strung for the most part that they expend a lot of nervous pent up energy before they ever hit the ground which also contributes to a lack bottom. They are pretty salty a lot of times. I've seen several that were straight catch. I once entertained the idea of breeding some in. I had a reputable older man here that gave me three to try because I told him what my intentions were. He was an English pointer man but said if he was gonna use a bird dog it wouldn't be pointers. He said the English were the toughest of the pointers but even they weren't as tough as the lab. He said what the pointers will run around what the lab will stick his head in and push through. He's right, sometimes that is what a dog has to do to locate. My hang up was the athleticism. No way that the labs are as agile as a whole as the pointers. Plus they have the thicker heavier coat, not a plus down here in the south. I have a buddy that has a family of dogs that they refer to as Georgia curs. They carry English pointer and its visible in their confirmation and the way they hunt and move. Some of the ones I hunted with caught pretty much every hog unless it was a bad hog. If they had another dog there with them, they would catch out on the bad ones too. That means dead or cut up dogs a lot of times because they are rangy hunters and you can't get there quick enough a lot of times to help out. That also means you have to keep more dogs if you want to be able to hunt whenever, or if you don't keep more dogs you can't hunt whenever because you are waiting on dogs to heal. Don't get me wrong, I would feed my buddies old dog anytime. He's a nice dog. He's a solo dog though. It's hard to keep a family going if you don't hunt a lot more than I get to these days. If you run a second dog he's catching out period. So your young up and comer gets killed or hammered because he initiated a catch that should be a bay. That's just my observations.
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