Lion / cow dog

[sheimer]

Has or does anyone have a dog that is a decent cow dog that will consistantly tree lions and bobcats? I have a border collie that chases cows well and will run a track, but won't go out to far from me without coming back to check in. My hounds do well on lions, but can't chase a cow worth a darn.

Scott

[Benny G]

When I first started hunting lions, I had friends that used their hounds to work cattle. When the dogs struck a lion track, the cow works were over.

[sheimer]

I can only imagine!

My hounds can't quite grasp the "away" and "come by". They sure as hell understand "siccum" though!

Scott

[Benny G]

Scott,
Now that's funny! You can bet those old ranch hounds weren't that refined either. There are, however, a lot of hounds that can pick up the basics of stopping cattle by baying them up, as well as charging them back into the herd. Mostly the commands were laced through blue air.

[guy54]

Believe it or not years ago I had a hound that was half b/t, 1/4 blutick, and 1/4 walker. He would go with us to trail cattle from one pasture to the next and it didn't take him long to start working back and forth behind the cattle just like our australian shepards that we had at the time. He wasn't much of a heeler though, but he would stand his ground and bawl at an old cow when she would turn and want to fight him.

[coastcathunter]

Last spring i was working over by Thermopolis. Some cowboys started moving cows from one pasture to another, they were trailing them right by were i was working and they had some cow dogs and one tall leggy redtick hound. It was a nice looking young dog. I talked to the guy that owned him a month or so later and he said he picked right up on working the cows. i thought that was pretty neat.

[Mike Leonard]

When I use to gather wild cattle I always had hounds with us. Most of this was in the rugged area of southeast Arizona. We had to trail most of those cattle up and then chase them and bay them up to catch them. We had head dogs as well mostly McNabs, and then a few heel dogs to help drive them once you got them caught and schooled or if you had to lead them out. Well occasionaly a hound would get particularly gifted at one phase or another of this game. I had a black and tan dog I called Graves. ( I named him after Graves Evan one of the Evans brother from the famous slash Ranch.) Graves was half old Slash breeding and half Bud Hutchings breeding out of Utah. Well old Graves was just a natural cow dog, and he would strike their tracks and lead the race to trail them up with all those little coyote mcNabs falling in behind him. They would bay them up and I mean he would get ahold of a brute right by the nose if needed. You could find them quick with him because he had a big mouth on him. Most of them regular head dogs ran quiet and had them little yip ass mouths on them. He didn't want nothing to do with the driving part and would just fall in behind your horse. He was also a real good dirt lion dog but just a hair weak on the tree. He wouldn't leave he just didn't bark hard but if they were bayed up he made plenty of noise. He was hell on bear and javelina though and it finally was his undoing. Several other of the hounds did a real good job on those cattle as well.

I knew a guy in colorado that had a blue shepherd bitch that could catch snow lions better than about 90% of the snow lion dogs I have ever seen. She was also on heck of a pheasant dog in heavy cover or corn.

[Brady Davis]

I've seena handful of Catahoulas who would do both,...I've owned a few. But any dog who does both is gonna lack in 1 area. I've never heard of or seen one who is legit good in both areas...But I'd say you have the best odds with a Catahoula

[sheimer]

I was kinda wondering about the Catahoula's. I would imagine it would be hard to get a dog to watch and listen to you like a good cow dog should and yet still remain independant enough to run a track without checking in on you. It seems like your asking a lot from them to be able to do both well. It ould be nice though to cut the dog food bill in half.

Scott

[Brady Davis]

I was kinda wondering about the Catahoula's. I would imagine it would be hard to get a dog to watch and listen to you like a good cow dog should and yet still remain independant enough to run a track without checking in on you. It seems like your asking a lot from them to be able to do both well. It ould be nice though to cut the dog food bill in half.

Scott

Mine did it no problem. They arent the cold trailers like hounds but when it heats up they smoke a track....Out of this world bay dogs and decent tree dogs too if they come from the right strain. I ran mine with hounds. Not on their own

[sheimer]

I'm sure by border collie would go if I sent him with the hounds, but I'm too chicken to send him.....If the hounds got him close, he'd catch one, literally He doesn't posess the patients to let it climb a tree first. He is about 10-15 MPH faster than the hounds at an all out run and they by no means would be able to keep up with him after a jump.

Scott

[horshur]

I was kinda wondering about the Catahoula's. I would imagine it would be hard to get a dog to watch and listen to you like a good cow dog should and yet still remain independant enough to run a track without checking in on you. It seems like your asking a lot from them to be able to do both well. It ould be nice though to cut the dog food bill in half.

Scott

you are imagining that checking in somehow messes up things.....a cougar chase from the jump is twenty minutes to the tree or less so it is not really much of a deal. Though there are exceptions.

and in my experience even leaving a tree to check up never resulted in the cat getting away either....it may be poor form but certainly not always a handicap.

in BC there is a long tradition of using farm type dogs. A fictional book that documents this is "Panther" by Roderick Haig-brown.

Vancouver Island had it's own Ben Lilly in Cecil Smith who did not use trail hounds but collies and Alsatians type dogs.

[sheimer]

horshur - I was mostly referring to the trailing up to the jump. I don't know about your area but around here, If he kept checking in on me, we may never find the track maker.

Scott

[Cat_hound]

I got some friends running 3/4 black mouth cur 1/4 boarder collies. 8 month old pup weighed 58 lbs they're big dogs. Their ain't a cow on the high desert they can't take. Two of them kill every coyote you see. And they put up a few cats every year.

[horshur]

horshur - I was mostly referring to the trailing up to the jump. I don't know about your area but around here, If he kept checking in on me, we may never find the track maker.

Scott

you just walk the track out till the jump. The dog could even be leashed till the jump. I have done it many times.