nose or tree power?

[twist]

Which is more important to you as a bobcat hunter cold nosed tracking ability or treeing ability in your hound? I am talking as if you can just have ONE dog.

[big saint]

so would the cold nosed tracker be garbage on the tree, and the great tree dog be a bad tracker? I would personally have a great cold nosed tracker and a decent tree dog. If you have a dog that wont track, doesnt really matter how good it is on the tree unless you happen to stumble on a cat at the bottom of a tree and it goes up it! lol.. just my opinion though!

[Nolte]

Give me the dog that can jump nearly every cat track and run it good. I can get in there and figure out where it keeps coming back to, most likely the cat is up right there. Or just look for a good locator dog that will honor, they are easier to find than a track dog. JMO.

[GI Joe]

I have a very good tree dog but is hot nosed. She can close the gap once the cat is jumped but can't trail up a cold track. My buddy's dog is cold nosed and can move a cold track very well. When I hunt by myself it's hard to find a track warm enough to run. When she dose tree she will wait at the tree for hours and 95% of the time the game is there. Getting a race started however painful. When I add to my pack it will be the coldest nose I can find.You have to be able to start a race in order to finish a race. My two cents.

[sheimer]

Andy, this is not the voice of experience, but here's my two bits.....

As was stated earlier, "you can't tree what you can't find first". Hence the importance of a better than average trail dog. I think a good trail dog will trail back to the same spot over and over again if the cat's treed.

I know it's probably against some "code of honor" but the Garmin will show you which tree to look up if your trail dog is wearing the collar

Scott

[cat and bear]

My opinion has always been, if you dont have a cold trailer, you dont have anything. You cant run what you cant get jumped, no matter how many dogs is in the truck

[alphaknl]

In ideal snow conditions, give me a good locator. I can walk the track up.

In less than ideal conditions, I'll need a cold trailer to have any fun.

[chaseb]

cold trailer all the way i want every dog i have to be cold and no how to float the track were i live you cant allways walk the track hardly ever it is to dence just my thought

[George Streepy]

I had a dog that could grind out old tracks with the best of them but wouldn't tree. Had a female I hunted with him that would coast on his tail for sometimes a half an hour before she would start to open on those really old tracks. But she treed really well.

Both dogs did a good job from the rig, even though the cold nosed male was a better rig dog. Her specialty was at the end of a race and his was grinding out old tracks to get them started. Together they made a heck of a team.

If I could pick only one for bobcats it would be the female. She would still start tracks and did a good job running, locating and treeing. With a great cold trailing start dog you will get to run more but won't spend as much time at the tree.

I pick both!!

[twist]

George, I am with you I would take a medium nosed track dog that has tree power any day if i had to choose between nose or tree power. Dont get me wrong the cold nosed pressure tree dog is what I am always after but I would take less nose for tree power. Looking back over the years of cat hunting I have had a few pretty nice medium nosed dogs that were hard treeing machines that put up alot of cats. If they couldnt move the track I just moved on to the next track and when found the right track the race was on and more times than not ended at a tree. Oh and sheimer I didnt say you could use a GARMIN

[Yaak attack]

None of the hot nosed dogs I have owned have had enough track speed to catch the more slippery bobcats. Tree dogs are a dime a dozen. Good locaters are harder to come by, but track speed is the one thing I feel a dog needs to put one up. Without a cold nose, most dogs just can't freshen up and older bobcat track and once jumped, hot nosed dogs struggle with the tough ones. Sure they will catch the pop ups or fat ones. Don't under estimate conditioning. I dog in good shape will catch you some that would otherwise make your day long.

[Melanie Hampton]

I don't want a dog that I have to go in a look for the cat because it is a weak tree dog.. I don't need some stupid high bpm, but the dog better be treeing and it better be there... I would lose some nose power to keep the tree.. I don't want a hot nosed dog for bobs... but no way do I want to do the dogs treeing for it..

I guess I'm the oddball.. Yes I like hearing the dogs work.. But I don't want to trail something and not have an end to it.. I want to hunt to catch...

[dwalton]

Why choose get the dog that goes with what you have. I have seen very few dogs that were good at it all. Build a pack around your cold nose start dog. I have owned both sides, it has not taken me long to get what I NEED or train it. What a dog is is what a dog is. I will work with what I have. You can teach them to cold trail or tree better. Dewey

[George Streepy]

I agree Dewey, It seems I am always trying to figure out where the pack needs help. Even if a pack of dogs are catching 95% of the time in the heart of season, I keep trying to figure out where to improve.

Yaak Attack,

The best dog I have ever owned at running down bobcats wasn't very fast. Boy she could put pressure on a hard running bobcat. She wasn't very cold nosed either. When that track started to heat up a little, that is when her specialty exposed itself. No matter how fast a dog is, it won't do any good if it doesn't make all the corners. Zero mistakes and a ton of smarts is what gets them caught. JMO.

When I made my choice on which one I would pick, I was comparing good bobcat dogs. The type of dogs that can catch by themselves, but really excel with other dogs to compliment them.

[Nolte]

I'm a part time hunter so I've got limited days I can hunt. If a guy waits for good snow conditions in WI, he might be waiting awhile. I can't remember the last good snow winter we had in our country, maybe 8 years ago. Seems we get a good blast, then it rains, then drops below zero. All that good snow just got turned to concrete and is junk. Some of the "skiffs" we run on are more like pellatized ice than normal snow. This stuff holds very little scent, so that why I like the colder the better. But I agree, in good snow a guy can get a cat rolling with a little leg work.

Our other part is we don't have many cats. I usually can't give up on this one to go run the next. It's either not there or someone else has it. The days are real short in cat season too, so there isn't much time to try something else. Where our cats hang out can be A1 hell holes and not the places a guy wants to hang out after dark when it's below zero.

These are more of the reasons I want as cold of nosed dog as I can get.