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Mr.Martell these should answer you're question about whether I have problems with dogs climbing trees, sorry I didn't get back to you earlier. -2 days I've been in the woods the last month or so. had a pretty good month and half or so.

Mike Harris

azgogetem, do you rig hunt your dogs on lion, or freecast?

i rigged the tom in the second picture, but that doesn't happen in AZ very often, someone glassed a lion in the area the day before so i rigged the area the next day and hit him red hot. most of the time i put down on a track or i freecast.

mike, good job. the reason i mentioned the climbing was the little cat you had treed, looked like a ladder going straight to it. that is a bad trait for a dog. gives new meaning to the stair way to heaven. a dog keeps it up for long that is were he will end up.....lol. looks like you are having a great season mike thanks for sharing. mike

Thanks Mr.Martell, I just had a streak of luck from early december to about a week ago thats all, still the same worthless one eyed hunter chasing the same worthless hounds. I've got a 1.5 year old thats seen 8 lions in the last month and still won't cold trail peerrrrrty FRUSTRATING if he didn't do so well during bear season he'd probably be gone. oh well one of these days the light bulb might go off .
Can I break these mutts of thinking they are monkeys? They pushed that tom out of that tree and when i got to the next tree my best dog was 30ft up in the lions face, NOT GOOD, would've been great pictures but I was worried about more important things. is it like a genetic thing(tree climbing)? The people I've asked all say you ain't gonna stop em from doing it, I just try to tie up the climbers first thing when i get to the tree.

Well gotta get to bed gonna go try and catch a wild tom in the morning.

Mike Harris

mike. hound hunting in general is frustrating. generally a hound ends up being just what it is. it can always get better over time. i find the cottling of a dog is a waste of time. they are either born with it or not. i know many will argue this point.all i know is this, i have babied some hounds until they were three years old. when i turned the dog down on a track it was still the same worthless dog. i cull by one year old.unless the strides a dog is making are well increased it is gone. if a hound lived to be 25-30 years of age it might be different. some are blown out by 7-8 years. i have always said 90%of the game is treed by 10% of all dog hunters on the planet because they too are just like the hounds they hunt, either got it or not. mike you dedicate your time. you are rewarded simply because this is what you do, as for the tree climbing. i have no sure fire method. the one's that i have had that quit climbing did so because a lion knocked them out of a tree from 40 feet up. no pain no gain....a smart hunter will always tie a dog back from the tree upon arrival. keep up the good work. mike martell

those are some good looking pics do you have any troubles dry grounding them? or are they fairly easly to catch on dry ground up there.
Pat

Pat_kemp Lion hunting in my experience is NEVER easy. Dry ground is probably the hardest of any type but tough snow conditions can be nearly as tough. The hardest part about dry ground is knowing what your dogs are doing you very seldom see tracks, so if you've got a dog or 2 that will trash (I DO!) it makes it pretty hard to keep em on the right track. But when you hunt em enough you can usually tell what the dogs are doing. In my opinion.

Mr Martell thanks for the kind words. I actually was ready to get rid of the dog before bear season because a dog a few months younger than him continually showed him up hunt after hunt. The other dog leveled off and stopped improving during bear season while this dog kept improving by the end of bear season it looked like out of the two this dog was the only one with a real chance of being a top dog. So I got rid of the other young dog. He just has not taken to lions and I don't know why, he comes from a long line of lion dogs but for some reason this line takes a while to mature he is also a very large dog and a male. It's my opinion that males take longer to mature than females generally, especially when the dog is a bigger dog and he is definitely part horse. I'd love to hear some opinions about that, bigs dogs taking longer to mature and male vs female which starts/matures first. I love hearing people theories on dogs it's all food for the brain.

Mike Harris