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As much as I try with a e-collar to break him of it on the 5 acres the walker lives on he chases down cottontails even brought me a jack a few times. I can't be outside with him 24/7 but Ill catch him running down rabbits unless the rabbit makes it to the fence to go under it.

Its almost imposible to break him from it cause theres rabbits are every where down here guess Ill have to live with a lil Hasenpfeffer German rabbit stew...toooo funny. Someone put that on the recipe board Wonder if the cottontails in the southwest are good eattin?

Kiddin aside this can turn out to be a big problem and I don't like locking him in a kennel all day. Hope it won't mess-up the lion and bear training. Any suggestions or Im just gonna have to live with it.....anyone a rabbit hunter I have one fast hound that can run down any cottontail trust me... If all else fails he's one killer rabbit walker....lol

thanks, Robb

Hey Robb,
You guys need a boat down there? Send some of it my way. I think it has rained everywhere else but up here in Phx.
As far as your cotton tail hunting dog goes, i wouldn't try to break him off of too much until he is solidly running the game that you want him too.

Zach

yeah.....its not that big of a deal. When he's in the wood if he gets on a rabbit I just give him a lil juice.

I kid you not Zack I was ready for a funnel to drop from the clouds. Its was black out at 7pm... I was lookin for a new career as a storm chaser man did it poor hail, rain, lighting winds 40 + at times ...........









Robb

ya that same storm just hit us a few days ago. We had 12 fires in one day and three are still roar, sad part is the only fires still goin are chewin up my huntin ground

the way I got my dogs to quit chasin rabbits is take the rabbit from them and beat the crap out of them with it. Kinda cruel but it worked

well u could take a trip to vermont next winter--- id trade you one that wont run a rabbit lol i wouldnt even worry about it--

alot of old timers i knew used to start dogs on rabbits if a dog can run a rabbit he can smoke about anything else -

Pete,

You said a mouthful there.You see a lot of young dogs that sight chase rabbits, but can't really do much with their trail and lose interest fast. they don't leave a lot of scent on bare dry ground with low humidity. My Jiggs dog was a notorious rabbit chase as a pup. It got to be a bit of a pain because he would hang up on some mesa and that had a pretty good batch of jacks and just spend the afternoon running them if you would let him. I would be wanting to move the pack along with my horse and check another crossing for lions, and here this pup with a huge bawl mouth would be going like crazy. well ofcourse the old dogs got this figured out quick and just ignored him, but I would have to go get him or come back later and fetch him off the rabbit trails. He was trailing them, and he got faster and faster at it, and really got obsessed with it. Well I had to guys from Michigan with me hunting lions, and we had ridden a pretty good ways away from an old abandoned ranch house, and hadn't struck a track. well Mr. Jiggs jumps him a rabbit and away he goes, and although I had an e-collar on him I let him go, and we just went hunting. We hit a bobcat track not long after that and the dogs really put the pressure on this cat and he made it to a hole under a big sanstone boulder. well the dog were digging and baying and try as we might we couldn't get to the cat. We spent a lot of time messing with it, and then gathering the dogs away from there and heading back out. well as soon as we could hear i could still here Jiggs up there running the rabbits. I was frustrated by the bobcat, a little tired and upset, and I just decided today was his day to get rabbit broke. I let the other guys head back toward the ranch and I rode up towards him but couldn't get him to pay any attention to me. I just turned up the power to 6 and fried him. Well it blew his mind, he just stampeded in the other direction. Ididn't figure he was going to stop until he hit Arizona. well he finally did, and I got him back and yes it broke him from running rabbits, but the problem was he was so sensitive to shock that he wouldn't run anything for a couple of months. This was a real set back to him, and I really had to work to get him back trailing on cats and lions. He is ok now and is a good fast trailer to boot, but I think a good scolding and a little spanking a time or two would have been a better way to handle the rabbit proble,.

Every dog is different but like Pete said a lot of old timers loved to see their young dogs just hunting rabbits like crazy, and they knew in time with the right game they would come around.

Moral of story: don't e-train your young dogs when you are tired and upset, it will usually come back to haunt you...

Pete and Mike------you guys are right on as usual. The best all around track dog I ever hunted with enough to REALLY KNOW was a bluetickXwalker female who was raised from a pup running loose in an area several hundred acres large of sandy land grown up in oak shinnery and briars.

This female was owned by a friend with whom I hunted a lot. When a pup she would spend all day, sometime helped by cur dogs, running cotton tail rabbits in those thickets. After she got older and we began to hunt her on coon, etc. she quit the rabbits. She worked a track tight, but was very fast. She was not a "drifter", but would hush on a lose and would very shortly be back on track. She could take those old Jan- feb. traveling boar coon tracks and move on.

briarpatch

thanks for the info guys....

Robb

just sock the piss out of him till he quits because that will cause a big problem you for besides the deer and elk hes gonna wana chase. its hard to see what hes chasing in the woods so i would say get the rabbit problem out of your way while you can see him doing it. but then put him on the right game and praise him up. just my suggestion.

is penned in our yard, with freedom to run around about a half acre. When he is bored in the yard, he will hunt anything handy--crickets, frogs, snakes. He's not really hunting, just playing. He uses the same silly high-pitched voice on those that he uses when his tennis ball rolls outside the fenceline. When he's really outside hunting, he is as straight as they come and you can hear the difference.
I wouldn't let yours keep any rabbits you know he's caught, but chances are good that a grown dog out hunting with you will know that you're not interested in rabbits and will hunt what pleases you.

Emily,

I agree I think he does it outta boredom when he's in the woods he does not pay attention to rabbit at all..

Robb