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I like a dog to cast, but it must also mind well. As a young dog is not to trusted!!! I don't want to break the kids heart, but get your Hat and Boots on, and get ready for a bad track. (Older dogs will hit a Buck in the Rut and maybe a coyote or two a year). You also have to know something about the way different animals run when pursued FAST or SLOW.
A Coyote when not pushed hard is one of the best cat races you'll ever hear! When pushed it will usually make a fast wide circle and lines out.
A deer when not pushed will run without any loses to speak of. If pushed hard will run down hill "after a couple minutes" and usually caught in a creek or river. JMO

another good post varminator! back in the day before electronics, you had to how each animal ran to be able to catch/break you're dog. if you didn't know how a yotie ran then you would most always loose you're dog.by knowing , you had a chance of getting ahead of the race and busting them red handed. the hardest one for me was the difference between a half hearted yotie race and a cat race. I still get it wrong sometimes. a good loose is sometimes welcome in my book lol

I also like a dog to cast ! but as you say young dogs cant be trusted, I don't own dogs that will cast only road hunt them but the young ones will also go wrong there to, but you can tell when there wrong cause the sure nuff broke ones will be looking at you with there tail between there legs , I have hunted with a few people that had dogs that would cast, but they were hard to get up, took there dearly beloved time coming in and I hate that, time wasted is time you could be hunting, I have had dogs that were so trashy when they were young and you finally got them broke it would take a long time for the broke ones to honor them ! they must have been thinking you idiots have tricked me so many times I aint going to your race, plus daddy will be very mad with you and he aint beating me tonite

Young hunters, I'm not trying to scare you from Casting. It's great when you have a good idea that the Cat is close by, or may be living in the area. You can command the dog to go HUNT'em up.
The dog knows the command right ? It also knows, It's name, Load, Back,Get,Stay, Hole, Come or Here, right??, Some use different words and might even add some choice words. You got to be willing to go where ever the dog takes you. ....Or give it up! TMO

If I'm not comfortable casting my dogs than I'm not comfortable with the dog to enjoy the rigging side....You can rig a trashy hound with a higher degree of success simply because you have better control of what the hound starts and fail miserably free casting the same hound...I take my lumps with all my young hounds by casting for this reason after I get them clean off deer...Deer broke dogs is the key to being able to hunt anything......Once broke from deer go ahead and drop em and begin to sort them out on the rest of what is deemed as trash, once you have one dog that will rat out the rest you are heading in the right direction...I begin my ranch work on Sunday and will walk hunt and cast all my dogs at the same time...You can have a train wreck of mass proportions real quick this way. I can vouch for a deer running in the creek and getting caught in the creek as well, you the handler have an obligation to clean them dogs up to make sure this game remains ethical....I wouldn't hunt any other way! Only caution is to not over correct a dog and this is where I like the consistent control of hunting from the rig deck...I go along and bump a dog off a deer and get the dogs on many good tracks before I toss another curve ball in the mix by setting the dogs up for the next round of education. Just remember them shockers have ruined as many good dogs as they have made....

Mike

Another good reason to cast your dogs is the general movement of bobcats...Here in the N.W. and many other States I have hunted like Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada have locations with lots of old skid roads and hog back ridges and places that bottle neck down, examples of several ridges funneling down to a small contained location...These are good locations to find bobcats, even if you don't detect any cat movement driving to these locations, stop and cast your dogs...Bobcats like most other animals like to use the path of least resistance when traveling and I find by casting dogs in these locations increase your odds of starting a bobcat....

I agree with mike on the control you have while hunting from the rig. not to let my age show, but I remember when a box dog was unheard of and everybody either roaded or casted their dogs. I believe by cast hunting a dog and breaking him that way,he is a more solid broke dog. just seems like I didn't have many bad races after I broke them back then and now I would like to say they are straight or broke but in all honestly I have to just say they are severely bent. jmo for what it is worth.

I have free cast dogs for years, believe some dogs are less apt to trash when cast than if they are rigged. I always turned the dogs down to worked the edge off before rigging them. And like to rig awhile, then back down to road, then maybe walk the pack out an old road or ridge. Hunting dogs in this style became much easier once I could afford good long range ecollars for all the dogs. Hunting several dogs and not leashing them when walking, crawling thru heavy brush at times for long distance from a treed critter to the rig, is casting dogs and that is common practice. Am not saying I would not be uneasy doing this with a dog mixed in the pack, the pack & I were familiar with. I have found dogs to be like teenagers, mixed in a wild one and things can go astray, in these casting situations. Dogs do not live long enough to be turn in dogs in my opinion.Al

This is the only way I hunt, FREECAST, no leads. I may not run as much as a rig setup, but my dogs know the ground. All the clumps, rock piles and dips get checked. It really is amazing how a cat can get from one place to another without leaving much track sign. And I learn what and where all the wildlife is and why. How it travels, what it eats, where it beds. It explains alot about the weather too, and how I should adjust my hunts. The steep nasty is still a go to failsafe most times though.

The best part though, I NEVER see another soul. My dogs get miles, most of my loops are 8 to 20 miles, I get to literally tear gear to shreds, I know what holds up and what doesn't, and at the end of any day I feel satisfied, run or not. To top it all off, the scenery of snow, rocks, and cats, with an occasional lion thrown in for pictures and a short fun race is hard to beat.

Man, is it winter yet? because I'm ready. This post made me think about how ready I am to hit the hills.

I grew up free casting hounds as was the custom of the region(Oklahoma). Originally, a coon hunter , it was important to me that the dog get deep quick, know where to look and get struck. I find tjhat I still desire that style of dog. But my first introduction to roading left a lifelong impression. An Arizona cat hunter had moved in down the road from me and asked me to tag along(I was about. 20) He hunted out of an old plumbers van, since that was his profession. Our first destination was to pick-up dogs from his previous night out. I asked about his pack, and he responded: there are only two catdogs in the truck, the rest are MAYBE`S. The big tall red dog and the short fat walker female will be put on the ground. We roaded less than a quarter when tails began to twist and the night air was invaded by the thundering bawl mouth of Red. What happene d next is what caught my attention. There were 10 trainees in the back of that ole van still laying down( as if disinterested) until he called their name. One at a time he turned them in. When he heared that one open, the next one was turned in. We caught two on the ground and treed one cat that night. He had two solid broke cat dogs too old to push a cat good, and a truck full of pushers who would be eliminated or progressed based on individual performance. There exposure or lack of was based on turn-in position. I was forever convinced of the training advantages of roading versus free casting.

JC and I both like to road the most. But most the time we have all the dogs out, unless one may be sore or slow. We'll stop and let them run out old skid roads or off the end of a dead end road.
May walk out a ridge to a point. If it looks like they are acting catty, sometimes we'll tell 'em to Hunt'em Up!! and they'll go off looking farther. "That's our type of casting".

When "Boxing or Rigging", we usually snap up as many as we have snaps for. Sometimes we leave a dog or 2 loose, mostly a trusted and more open mouth, direction dog. Which would be the same type of dog that would be turned loose first ,if they all were snapped.
Then after the first dog or 2 open, we'll start feeding dogs to them just enough not to blow by an older track and cause a set back or screw it up altogether!

I grew up casting fox hounds, which ment drop the tailgate and they'd better get gone, better be heard before seen again. Those hounds would run fox and bobcat but 90% of our running was grey fox. There was a few reclusive old straight bobcat hunters that lurked around the shadows and they roaded their hounds in front of the truck. Me and my number one hunting buddy got invited to hunt with them in there spots quite a bit, probably because we each had a hound
( both males by the way) that could cold trail a bobcat with the best of what they had. I beleive a little better, and I'm sure they did too or they wouldn't have been hauling a couple of teenagers or 20 yr. olds to their best hunting spots. I like casting dogs but you have a lot more control of what you run and easier to break young hounds off trash roading. I still free cast my deer hounds but road my fox/cat dogs. Going to try rigging, I've seen it done.

Great thread. With so many rds in our area I traditionally began rigging with a little roading. Lots of logging traffic too which also influenced rigging. The more I've hunted over the years the more I've utilized casting. Especially in dryer conditions when the scent doesn't carry as well. When I pass through an area that looks like it hound hold game and we come up empty handed that's when I put the dogs down and most of the time it pays off. Like mentioned above good experienced dogs work best a lot young dogs have a hard time staying true when trash jumps up in front of them. A huge factor I've noticed is obedience I always work with my dogs making them sit and stay loading up and kenneling. I believe this builds respect between me and my dogs, which helps especially when handling the casting. Seems many folks around here I've hunted around treat their hounds as a tool. Get them out when it's time to hunt and store them when they're not hunting and expect the dogs to get the job done every time.

my dogs get free cast. we have plenty of wrecks and some times it gets real ugly. but we don't have near the roads some places do and we hunt lion the same way so it is just a matter of progression. but theres plenty you can do to keep things in hand. start the pups early in listening to commands teach them some basics, goes a long ways. i know how i do it isn't like many guys do. but it seemed to be the only reasonable solution when i started out and has evolved over time. teach the dog to come when called, to keep a eye on you , only exception is if they are on a good track but that just comes with time, they need to change direction if told, to stop right now. is one of the first things that they learn as a absolute. i expect a dog to behave when told to stop and return. they don't get much leeway on this. a dog that "gets gone" or "deep" doesn't fit me or the terrain i hunt. i rather they learn to hunt close and very thoroughly,once something is struck then they can move the track out freely. it just seems to work best on poor tracks in bad terrain. yes young hounds have to learn some things on the job quickly. but if that pup knows hell may follow disobeying a command he is much less likely to go squalling after a deer jumped out of its bed etc. i tried necking pups very briefly and while it might be a solution in absence of e collars, with them and some prior work it is useless in my opinion. but in the end its all about what you and your hounds can get to work.