How long to work a lose?

[catdogs]

Here we are in spring time conditions. Obviously if you are with the dogs, I think they should hunt til you say its time to go. But, if you arent with them, how long do you want them to keep working a lose.

Part 2: If your dogs come back sooner than you want them to, do you get after them and send them back down the track? Ignore them completly? Throw them in the box? Give a tone or shock when you see on the screen that they are coming back?

Just curious of your thoughts. We hunt lions and with these spring thaw conditons, have a lot of loses. I expect my dogs to work a lose for 45 minutes to an hour before quitting. If they come back to soon, I have done all of the above, but walking them back to the lose and helping them find the track again seems to work the best.

[sheimer]

I guess it depends on where they are....Uphill from me, it's acceptable to come back at any time before I get climbed up to them If they are on the level with me, they better still be trying when I get there and if they are downhill the had better have it moving agian before I have to walk down there and climb back out!

Seriously though, an hour or so is good in my mind. I have never had them at a loss longer than that before I got there and really screwed them up. Usually at that point we all walk back to the truck and scratch our heads.

My thoughts are they should hunt till I tell them to quit. Same with treeing. I'm thinking that in both scenerios, the track ended and they should stay there. But then again, I'm not very intelligent and you therefor shouldn't put too much stock in what I say....

Scott

[catdogs]

By the way, would like to hear from you bobcatters too.

[dhostetler]

It depends entirely on how determined or stubborn you are. I do a lot of hunting and am single if I turn on a track that I think I should be able to catch I sometimes spend hours on moving a track 1 mile. I find a lot of satisfaction in running tracks that are hard to move and be able to catch it. That stubborness has resulted in me getting to trees numerous times after midnight.

The biggest bobcat I caught last Dec. was 34 lb. and I had to walk it out 500 yards before the dogs could take the track,

[dhostetler]

If you spend a lot of time running tough tracks and don't give up to quick it can pay off. Me and Phil Soucy caught this tom on New Years day for Phil's sister in law. Someone had turned on this tom 1 to 2 days before after some investigation with snowmobiling roads we couldn't cut the track or find where it was drug out. I collared up 3 dogs and they managed to start the track at the same place that the other person had previously turned loose. The 3 dogs had a major hangup at 550 yards in, which was probably the other guys tree or where the other guy's dogs had lost the track. They finally got it out of there and treed it 6 miles further.