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Some young kids getting into running hog dogs asked me to help them out the other day. All thier dogs have been in a bay pen but never cought one in the field. theyre not trashbroken yet so we decided to keep their dogs on the leash and let them go to my dogs strike. I only brought 2 dogs as the kids had plenty. Now my dogs are 100% clean and havent trashed since they were young. We head out on thier property and my 8 yr old lead dog is acting real gamey. Shes working tracks out, zig zagging. Nose in the dirt and strait in the air. Now she is a really easy and predictable dog, But shes acting like the whole property is one giant hot track. She ends up goin strait down a steep canyon and we wait. I track her at the bottom for 45 minutes. No bark. No bay. I should be able to hear her if she is bayed. She finally comes back. I figure she just lost the track or something, but she almost never ranges that far unless she strikes. We start again and shes acting like shes gonna strike again and runs up a small hill and we wait. One minute later shes howling like ive never heard. It wasnt her normal strike chop bark. She came back 2 minutes later. Now im scrachin my head. I feel stupid cause these kids have all their dogs on a leash cause their not trash broke and my veteran dog is hot tracking ghost hogs and striking god knows what. I asked some of my hunting partners what they thought of the whole thing and they all had the same conclusion. Lion. Now i dont know about that but I know my dogs have no interest in trash. Theyre broke on everything. Skunks, opossum, deer, elk, cows, yotes, coons, sheep, bobcats, the list goes on. I have dumped my dogs on everything listed with no bark or have been shocked clean. I cant say that ive ever had the oppertunity actually break my dogs specifically off lions. I cant say that I have ever come across a lion while runnin the hog dogs. All I know is that I went to help those kids out and my lead dog acted strange that entire hunt. What do all think of this? Have you ever gone out with your dogs and they act or hunt really out of character? Or do strange things?

nobody?

Hard to say without knowing the area and your dogs. Personally, I wouldn't say it was a lion without seeing it or at least finding a track. If you were really curious you probably could have turned the leashed dogs loose and walked up the hill to where your dog howled. Might have gotten into a really fun wreck, but might have found out what your dog was messing with.

I catch a lion from time to time with my hog dogs, but then I encourage them to run cats, so I don't consider it strange.

It is a little strange that a good dog would trail and vocalize(howl) at any animal and then not bay it. Maybe it was a bigfoot , I've heard dogs act funny around them.

Unless you found a lion track, everybody is just guessing.

Bill

Yah, I guess its hard to describe how my own dog is acting funny to folks whom never seen it hunt. Dog did act weird though. For me it was a spastic kind of behavior. They were on high alert as if they knew something different was going on that made them nervous and uneasy. Their posture was crouched as they ran. Almost is if they were sneaking. I have a few dogs that wont hunt around large groups of cattle. They kinda act guilty and stay close to me as if they had just trashed on the cattle and were giving me the "im sorry" routine. It definite wasnt a "guilty" posture. I guess to simplify the question. Has anybody else gone on a hunt and the dogs acted extermely odd?

Just got off the phone with the kid who I helped out. His dad told him he saw a lion sitting on the edge of the barley field at sundown on two different occasions in the last month. He also said he hasnt seen a hog in the barley field since he first spotted it. So mabye.

Some folks say my dogs act odd every time I turn them out, but I'm used to it so I think it is normal. I would expect dogs that have been broke off lions to act guilty if they were messing with a lion track. I would expect dogs that have not been broke off cats to run it. You say that your dogs are broke off bobcats but not lions, that might explain it, dogs were unsure, scent was sort of like bobcat, which they knew not to run, but different, so they thought maybe they could run it. I can't explain the howl, if she trailed a lion and got close to it, she should have given a normal bay bark, otherwise she should have kept quiet. Unless that howl you heard is her version of a "booger bark".

In the final analysis, I don't know. I have treed lions with hog dogs that also did duty as lion dogs and I have caught lions with hog dogs that had never seen a lion before, but I can't say that I have ever seen what you described

Bill