training pups

[Zipp]

I have two 18 month of dogs that will be mainly used for cats and bears. they have been on a few lions in the snow and have treed 2 lions last season on there own. but I want to start running coons in the off season for more exposure . How are some of you training your dogs for coons., ive caught coons in live traps and showed them to my dogs then released the coon giving him a head start. do you think it would be best to release the coon without them seeing it first? the only reason I am catching coons in a trap first is I want to know that my dogs are on the right game. any suggestions

[northwoods]

Just giving you what works for me zipp, I use the John wick method starting pups and if I were to start training an older pup or mature hound I would still start from scratch to see how advanced it is or isn't. If you showed them a live coon and they were coon crazy right off the bat and wanted to tear it apart great! I would probably roll cage them for about five minutes take them out of site and have a buddy release it at dusk and have your buddy stay and watch coon go up a tree. You can bring your dogs back and since they are all fired up they should have no motivation issues. If they track but can't tree to the right tree or are not confident then you may need to reduce difficulty until they master what there given. If they do great and tree and stay at tree then you can slowly increase difficulty. Just don't have unrealistic expectations. The hounds are only going to give you what there ready to give. Sounds like your on the right track. One other piece is I try not to get in the habit of visual stimulation for the dogs. If they count on seeing the coon every time they will never be sure if a coon is up the tree or not because they always see one when you are training them. Teach them to trust there nose and reward them constantly. Good luck and hope that helps. Joel

[northwoods]

When I re-read my post it seems like i am contradicting myself by warning about visual stimulation. what I meant to say was don't let them see coons too much. when you are confident they know what they are doing I would cut them off of the cages and only let them at coon when you shoot it out of tree after they have successfuilly treed the critter. Good luck!

[Zipp]

thanks northwoods. sounds like i am on the right track. the couple times i have released the coon in front of the dogs they are so fired up they are almost dumb. so know it sounds like i need to release the coon without the dogs seeing it and go from there