BigGameHoundsmen.com

I'm real green to hound hunting, but It's pretty much the only way we've been hunting bear- free cast in front of horses or on foot in wilderness type areas. We run some pretty cold tracks, but all of our pups are turning into trailing hounds, not just 'me to dogs'
Mr. White is for sure correct, good broke dogs are sure handy- get you going in the right direction, and tell on young dogs starting trash.

Did a bunch of casting last year and it worked out just fine for us.

The only problem is if you ride or walk far then the dogs dont have the extra burst of energy or either do you in order to keep up on a bear race.

I know this is an old thread, but I thought I'd ask for tips on free casting. The areas I hunt have very few roads, so rigging isn't really an option. I do not have access to private land, so bait and trail cameras are not an option for me either. Other guys in the areas I hunt bait on private property next to the game lands and run their dogs off those bait sites. This training season I have been hiking in with dogs on leads until Lola, my Plott/Walker cross starts going nuts, then my boys and I fan out and look for tracks, once we find a track (or at least don't find any deer tracks) we turn the dogs out, and let them have at it. It's sure been a lot of fun but it is a lot of hiking in hard territory. I think that if I just keep at it eventually it'll work out. From reading this thread it sounds like I'm already behind as my best dog is still young at 3yrs old and not 100% broke. We have only put them on 1 bear for sure this training season, and had a good long run but nothing treed. I'm pretty sure that bear crossed a hiking trail after visiting a bait site operated by other hunters on private land. I guess this brings up a hunting ethics questions about putting my dogs on bear tracks I know are coming out of another guys bait site. I don't want to "steal" another guy's bear, and my hounds picked up that track a good 2 miles as the crow flies away from that bait site. Am I violating hunting ethics by turning my dogs out on that track? When I did it, I couldn't hear any hounds, and I never saw a hound the whole day during the chase and while catching my dogs, so I'm not turning my dogs into someone else's chase. any advice on either question is appreciated.