BigGameHoundsmen.com

I have not been able to run around my house for about 15 years now because of increased traffic on the roads and outsiders moving in. I had some logging done last week and had to move my hounds to a smaller pen and take down a section of fence in my big dog pen. A female I call Tiny climbed out of the smaller pen yesterday, but was just laying around the outside of the pen so figured she wasn't going anywhere. When I turned the tv off about midnight to go to bed I heard her opening. She was trailing pretty good, it didn't take her but about 15 or 20 minutes to go to running. She would go right up to my neighbors house a couple hundred yards south of me than turn west and go almost out of hearing than go north to a deadend paved road and turn east and come back to my house and than the neighbors again. I sat in the backyard and enjoyed it till almost 3 am, it was all I could to not pack more to her. It just brought back a lot of fond memories, i used to sit in the back yard and listen to hounds driving a fox 4 or 5 nights a week. Trained a many a fine young hound letting them run loose here. Don't remember it being this hard to get up to go to work the next morning back than though! I really enjoyed it, just wanted to tell somebody.

Thanks for sharing with us....it don't get much better than that!

Good deal Scrub !!!! Gave me goose bumps at the thought of being able to do the same !!!!!

Yeah it don't get much better. When I was growing up we could let our dogs run loose. Many a spring night I would fall asleep with the windows raised in the house listening to a race. Where I live now I could do it for a while but now too many people mess with them. One thing about raising and running a dog around your house is they become homers. When I was in high school I could load up and hunt 15 miles or more from home and my dogs would come home if nobody messed with them. Had better dogs then too. Good ol days.

Yes I believe it makes them better homers but I never had any come home from that far. Kind of glad they didn't, when I hunted with my friends we ran only 6 or 8 miles from my house but was on the other side of Interstate I-75. I don't believe they would have made it across! Had a problem a few times with young dogs hanging up at somebody's house only a mile or so from home. They'd call and say my dog was laying in their yard or on their porch, I'd tell them to point them toward my house and wear their ar$$ out but most wouldn't do it and I'd have to go get them. A couple of friends of mine built a fox pen 3/4 mile from my house but they got to where they wouldn't let me run on open nights with paying customers because my hounds that ran loose most of the time made a lot of theirs come to the truck. And sometimes their customers would tell them that they heard a better race outside the pen than they had inside. Yes Jkohnke those were the good ol days for me, I sure don't have hounds like that anymore and probably never will again. But I have a terrible addiction and don't know how to quit!

I know u wanted to pack some more in there ! but I know where u coming from 1 car could wipe all of them out at 1 time ! used to hunt with a guy some he loved hunting on the highway, would turn dogs out 50 ft from it, i hunted with him a few times late at night when the traffic calmed down , but when they wasn't a car coming the fox would leave from beside it and just as soon as one rounded the curve he would start making the turn, put them there same time the car did , had the cops there one night and when they came to the road he would stop the traffic ! he was a top notch cop in my book, but i had to quit up there by the road , my nerves couldn't stand it !

Southern fox I had my pack wiped out on the highway that's when I quit running here at the house, that little jyp is still out though she was running when I left to go to work this morning. We were running one morning 4 or 5 of us had 25 or 30 hounds running a fox that went into a soybean field that was almost dry and ready to harvest. That fox was going up and down those rows it looked like a whirlwind with leaves flying every where with that many hounds going up and down those rows. One of the older men with us was yelling, o my gosh we are going to have to buy that mans whole field their nocking all those beans off. We had pulled out to the highway at the end of the field and that fox was coming to the highway, we got on both sides of the road with our flashers on. About the time the fox shot across the road a rock truck was coming and the driver saw it. The truck driver got stopped and turned his truck across both lanes stopping all the traffic in both directions while we ran around like crazy and got all the hounds caught up. It wasn't real hard as we had been running that fox for 8 hours but if it hadn't been for the truck driver's actions we would have surely lost some that morning.

Scrubbrunner we've deer hunted next to a major state high way for years and I've lost several on it. I've seen times where I just closed my eyes and squinted when dogs crossed the highway after a deer. Bad thing is they always seem to loose it in the road and they run down the center line with the nose on the blacktop trying to make the pickup. A few times we've had them to cross interstate 59 and when that happens you can bet your gonna loose some. I'm like southern fox though. Those busy high ways make me nervous.

Yes I deer hunt pretty close to a highway too, we have some close calls every year but a lot of times those ol big bucks will layup right side that highway where other hunters won't turn out. The traffic is just bad enough you can hardly hear the dogs if you are sitting by the road, just befor one car is out of hearing another one is coming. I'm bad nervous running those blocks too but felt a little better about it this past season since I got the gps collars.

I am not a fox hunter, have never lived in a good place to hunt grays. But I used to coon hunt highways because the hunting was so good. Would use the dogs I didn't like all that much, so of course those kind never get hit. They got so much good practice, sometimes I would get to liking one of them, then would have to retire it from the highway before fate could realize I liked the dog.

David I know where you're coming from, I've got a bad swamp beside our deer hunting woods, miles across and no access from the other side. When we run a buck across the last road about a 1/2 mile before the swamp starts, if the younger guys in my hunting party want to run down to the swamp on foot I'll catch most of the hounds and let the ones we don't think that much of go on to the swamp with it. Some will get in there and run off and on for 2 or 3 days before they come out. Has changed the way I've thought of several of them.

Scrubbrunner since we got off on deer dogs. I had a fine looking young male about 15 months old at the start of deer season also had 2 litter mates to him. They were really running except for him. He was just happy to be last in the race and bark every now and then. Knowing that males sometime take a little longer to turn it on and he was probably the best looking male dog i had hung a collar on I gave him chances all season. Second to the last day a guy that had been hunting with us wanted some dogs so I pulled his collar and said there's you a start and I loaded the male dog in his truck. Next day I'm on a logging rd listening to a good race going away from me. I hear a dog coming from the south of me running by itself and I mean running. Came right to me running a small non legal buck and yeah it was that male I gave away. That night at 9 pm he was still running in a big block of woods. The guy was so proud of his new dog and I wanted to kick myself.

Jkohnke I know what you're talking about, I had a litter that I had real high hopes for but only one pup survived past 8 weeks old. She was 7 months old when 2012 deer season opened. She went with the hounds from the first time I turned out but babbled so bad behind the other dogs all season that I didn't think she would ever quit so I gave her to one of my hunting buddies that loved her dam and ask me for her every time I cussed her when she was babbling the last week of the season. When deer season opened this year she is a running machine just like I expected out of that litter but without a babble in her. My buddy sure is proud of her and I wanted to kick myself in the butt. But he really needed her worse than I did so I guess it all works out.

Scrub I also got a lot braver this year with the highway & my Gps collars this year and it almost cost me greatly....about lost all mine on a deer that I freshened up the race with going to the highway in windy conditions.....the game turned and ran a quarter mile up along side the highway causing the hounds to steadily blow out on to the road...winding..I couldn't stop them....got them back off the road twice, but the third time was fetal...a semi almost jacked knifed trying to avoid them........I will never forget the sight or feeling of that and thinking for a few minutes in all the may-ham that I had lost one of my best.......I was fortunate when all the smoke clear and I got a head count........but not for my buddy who did loose his very best.....

Henpeck, I got the alpha collars with the shock capability and have mine trained pretty good to come straight to me if I call or tone them. it is amazing how much more enjoyable hunting is when you can call the hounds and they come immediately. It can save their lives, if you haven't trained yours to do that yet try it, it's not that hard some dogs will amaze you how fast they pick it up some take quite a bit of patience but it is well worth the trouble.