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Just thought ide pick your brains. What makes a cold nosed dry ground hound, is it all in the breeding, or is there training methods that can help a dog become a good dry ground hound. I know there are a lot of guys on here who have a lot of knowledge with running and training hound, lets hear what you think. Thanks.

I personally believe its 50% genetic and 50% learned. What im mean by learned is teaching them what to trail and starting them on training like Mike L cat training method then hunting them with older finished hounds to really show them how its done.

But you cant beat it in them you cant train it in them unless its genetically already there.

For ex. take a hound that has the genetic ability, desire all the traits needed. Hunt him on snow all his life then bring him down to dry desert country and expect the dog to cold trial lions. IT AINT GONNA WORK. Now hunt that dog in the desert conditions for a year with a pack of dogs that can do, the dog will LEARN how to do it

You have to have genetic ability and learned in my ever so humble opinion!!

Big Mike,
I agree with you that is both a nature and nurture issue. I would agree that most hunting traits are at least 50% genetic.

I can't nothing to what Big Mike said he is right on in my book.

Yup, I'll agree with Big Mke as well. A hound has to learn to push a cold lion track on open ground, and there are many, many levels of scent in those tracks. A hound has to be given the opportunity to learn those things or it never will......and hunting with a veteran pack of open ground dirt trailers is the best way to jumpstart that dog. Rigging a hound is no different, a hound has to learn those things and working with old pros is a big leg up!

ike

there's different types of dry ground hounds just like there's different snow hounds etc. a hound needs desire. most hounds have the ability in some form it just takes one hell of a work ethic for them to make it. one thing that really helps is a hound that has the ability to calm it's self down and work. by this I mean it has to be using that front end to it's best advantage. it can have it's tail and hind end just a windmilling but that brain and nose must be focused. oddly enough the higher energy hounds seem able to maintain focus pretty well and some of the lazy follow the trail types plumb loose their minds on a little cat scent and end up screwing themselves out of a catch. I think this is why the old timers found big hounds to work well they had the track desire and were hunted enough to keep them calmed down enough to think. some hounds just aren't interested in a catch, enough to put in all the hot, dry, hard work that others are. Another thing that's been mentioned is acclimatizing them. if your raised up in the north you can deal with the cold conditions better then some one who thinks 40 degrees is cold and the opposite young adult hounds adapt better then older adults also. genetics has a lot to do with track style and game preference also. it makes the training easier dry ground trailing is getting the response from a hound on lesser amounts of scent. my 2 cents

That brings up a good question...along the same lines, why don't people hunt dry ground out here (NW MT.) like they do in the Southwestern states. Ever since I moved out here, I've heard people say you just can't hunt lions or bobs without "good" snow, but with years like this year, one would never hunt if you always had to wait for "good" snow. Wouldn't a "dry-ground" dog work just as well up here in bad or little snow as they would in the Southwest and if you raised the dog hunting on dry ground, not waiting for good snow all the time, wouldn't it just adapt? Thanks.

Yes, a dog will adapt from snow to open ground to dry dirt, if not how in the hell have i rigged and caught lions in about every month of the year? I think most guys only hunt snow cause they don't or can't find a lion track when it's gone. Some of the places I hunt in winter a guy might cut a hundred miles of road without a lion track, so I believe they wonder how the hell a guy could ever hunt the dirt. Truth is lions tend to layup more on the southern slopes near big game pockets and just don't cross alot of roads during deep snow months--and the ones that do die!

Lions move more freely as the ground opens up, and in fact finishing a lion from the wrong end can be a problem if you have some cold nosed dogs. I've started tracks in the dirt, early November or early spring, no snow anywhere, and had my hounds trail all day and night and never get to the end of a traveling tom lion--twenty or thirty miles. I read how some people believe their dogs will finish about everything they start, and my response to that is they must have never started anything old on open ground or don't have dogs thatg will start those tracks.

The best lion hunting in northern Utah is from now until December in my books, a time when a man can feel rock under his feet instead of crusted snow. If a man or woman has never hunted behind a great set of rig dogs, dogs that will strike an old lion scratch or track from in or on the box, then that person has missed the best lion hunting has to offer in my opinion. The guys around you might not be hunting but the guys around me are......matter fact I just telephoned Hal Mecham and he was walking into a treed or bayed lion, and he kept me on the phone long enough to let me hear the dogs. My point is load them up and get after it!

ike

I had a guy email me (hope he doesn't mind) saying to stand by my guns on the lion rigging thing. He told me that he an another buddy were invited down to hunt with a couple of the famous dry ground lion hunters and figured the only reason was to see if their dogs could really rig a bobcat (this guy was from the north country and I suppose the old lion hunters didn't believe him either). He told me on the third cat the old loin hunters started taking notes..........

ike

I haven't been doing this long but I am a good observer and I think people get some wrong opinions about hunting snow verses dry ground.
The guys who think they can only hunt in snow think that way because they either don't have a handle on their dogs or don't trust their dogs to find a track the hunter can't see. On the other hand guys who only hunt dry ground are wrong in assuming hunting in the snow is so easy or that scenting conditions are better in the snow than in the sand. From what I've seen and learned dirt rock and sand can hold scent alot better than some types of snow and its real hard to find a hound that can smell anything at 20 below. Maybe I'm wrong but the guys I like to listen to and learn from are the guys that hunt in all conditions year around. JMO

Mr Cottontail, I don't have any idea how long you have been at this, or who you hang around, but it would be interesting to see if , after , say 5 years from now, your beliefs stay exactly the same as now. It's true that conditions vary, and not all tracks are cut and dried as to their ease or difficuty in trailing, however, with the exception of deeply frozen scent, dry ground is tougher. Rocks and brush hold scent far better than open dirt or dry sand. If producing lions in dry conditions was just as easy as producing in snow, EVERYBODY would be catching lions without freezing their tail pipes off! I agree that for a lot of folks the trust factor is huge. If you trail lions enough, and keep up with your dogs, you will learn how the lions travel, and the sounds of your dogs will also tell you what's going on. Good luck and keep learning!

Conejos wrote: On the other hand guys who only hunt dry ground are wrong in assuming hunting in the snow is so easy or that scenting conditions are better in the snow than in the sand. From what I've seen and learned dirt rock and sand can hold scent alot better than some types of snow and its real hard to find a hound that can smell anything at 20 below. Maybe I'm wrong but the guys I like to listen to and learn from are the guys that hunt in all conditions year around. JMO

I know and have hunted with some of the old lion hunters that have dumped dogs with just about anybody with a name that ever hunted the southwest, and believe me they'll tell you hunting that frozen ground, in the ice, snow and open south faces can be as tough a track as they want to put out on. Lions can be tough to catch in about any situation, from snow to a variation of snow/open ground to dry dirt. And like most of us know, it's time, amount of scent and distant that allows a good dog to finish a track. I don't buy into the fact only the super dogs finish tracks, sorry. Truth is, there isn't much difference from one hound to the next after they reach a certain level, and acquire the skills they need to getrdone. People are always looking for the silver bullet, or hound that will do it all for them--truth is there aren't many shortcuts in this sport and a man and his dogs have to earn and learn their way (just my opinion).

What I mean by that statement is if only one dog is doing it for you then the others haven't learned yet or just aren't any good.

keep'em treed,
ike

I just got to thinking about this.

Last fall, before the snow really started hitting, I was out looking for tracks in just a skiff. I didn't find any, and think I walked a bit that day. I was coming out of a canyon, and some construction workers with Idaho plates were going up to the little pond. The one guys question "there's enough snow to hunt lions?" I said, yeah, how much do you need?

I was out yesterday and today in similar conditions as we got some small storms to bless the ground with another couple skiffs. I hit some canyons yesterday where I thought for sure I would find some lion sign, as I have found it in the past. Just two weeks ago, I found a tom lion track two days in two consectutive canyons, and trailed it both days. In both cases, the lion crossed after the freeze, and once the sun hit the south slopes, it was all over. On the second day, I found a small lion track also prior to finding that tom track. I have seen that small track several times, but never fresh, and never within a couple days after a storm, when the conditions get bad, the snow freezes, and it just is a pain to trail.

I went into both of those canyons yesterday and today, and did not find a single track. Yesterday I walked into some rock piles in another canyon to try and find some sign, but again was unsuccessful. The pups thought it was fun to trail chukar though

A storm came in yesterday and I was in a white out. The storm hadn't hit yet today, but it is here now, and I am at home, probably the same thing the lions are doing.

I am ready for the snow to quit so I can actually get out and hike the hills and not freeze, and not fall through waist deep snow to follow the dogs. I enjoy watching them work the ground then listen to them growl everytime the dodge hits a nasty bump. I have always had trouble cutting lion tracks on fresh snow for some reason. I am not sure, but it just doesn't seem to be my luck. I think they just get layed up in the rocks waiting for the weather to clear before they move around, or they find a nice little honey hole full of deer or horses or whatever, and sit tight.

Hopefully with the spring and summer coming and everything moving more and breaking up, it will cause the lions to change their patterns also, and make for at least some more trailing on my hikes.

Later,

Marcial

Bottom line is to this whole thing,If the traits are there.The handler has to do his part on helping them out[dry ground]and not call off tracks and cruise along till he finds a hot one.This promotes and teach's these dogs to not grind on atrack.I've never seen a cold nosed,long staying,track grinding dog-belong to a impatient,trying to find a hotter track type hunter/handler,they don't go hand in hand.
Tim

your right on that one