Switching Game

[john porter]

For you all that train pups on coons then switch to bobcats how do you go about making the transition? I haven't tried switching to cats but have without a hitch changing over to bear. Just looking at different ways everyone trains young dogs to make the transition.
John

[mike martell]

Back before owning a finished hound...I started all my dogs from scratch and rather enjoy doing it the hard way for a reason, if I lost every trained hound today? I would start from scratch tomorrow...I don't believe a drag is good for a hound...I think all that is necessary is to "trigger" the natural instinct in a hound and coons are what I use to replace a drag....Easy for a dog to trail, locate and tree on.

1. If a hound can't handle the basics like locating, why bother with switching to bobcats? It will only go down hill fast from this point.

2. This allows a close handle on your dog, opening doors for the handler to evaluate natural ability to watch and allow a hound to develop and helps the hound build strengths.

3. I patterned many of my basics hound training standards from an Old college basketball coach named Ralph Miller from Oregon, his fundamental core beliefs? Get the basics down and the rest will follow...Good Advice for sure.

4. From here? I keep hunting the dog to the point of being broke well enough to not have train wrecks of mass proportions, you will always have wrecks, I just try to minimize them until you build a pack to the point of solid trust. I strive to make the dog do more of the work instead of me as time goes by, if that makes sense?

5. Once you have all the basics down, it is time to advance the dog to what ever you expect and want to pursue. Dogs should hunt for you and not the other way around. Pack dogs are made not born. All dogs should be your next replacement dog and this is a solid formula to make sure you achieve excellence and "only when you don't have a dog to hunt left in your kennel, should your catching be over". Bear included!

6. Most dogs find a niche that they enjoy from one species over the next and this is what I look for in the individual hound, if the dogs is content being just a coon hound? I cull them....I enjoy switch hitting and find you will never have the same caliber hound as one that is target specific, but switch hitting to me is more enjoyable than treeing a higher percentage of bobcats.

7. Sure it is easier to train a straight bobcat hound with another straight bobcat dog, the scratch method will require more time and patients getting the hound off coons and transitioned over and if you want the best bobcat hound, hunt it with another straight bobcat hound...A person will be amazed what a hound can do, if you simply ask it too and turn it loose...

Most problems come from the dog being too trashy to get up on a bobcat....You first must be able to stick on the intended game before you ever can tree it and I find this plagues 90% of the hound hunters attempting to go from coon to bobcats while going from coon to a stinky bear is like a dog chasing a garbage truck!

Mike

[john porter]

Thanks for the reply Mike. I hardly ever run a young dog with an experienced dog until it has coons down to a T. If they cant handle treeing coons then they don't stay here long. Got 2 young dogs(4 months)that are getting ready to be trained and coons will be what they see first. I don't do caged coons or drags, just let their natural instinct play out until around 1 to 1.5 yrs old.

[david]

John Great question. And great of Mike to put so much heart into a reply. I don't exactly know your situation, but will add the following to what Mike said: A lot of people who run bobcats with coon dogs have one or both of the following advantages. 1) they can find a bobcat track to send the dogs down. They see it in snow or sand. 2) they live in regions where the coon and bobcat are, for the most part, separated by their habitat preferences. In many mountain regions of the west, if you hunt high country away from rivers, you will hit cats but very rarely if ever hit a coon.

My concern for you is that you might not have either of these two advantages. If you don't, hunting bobcats with coon dogs can be extremely frustrating. I am not the only one who has seen that coon have broken up more good bobcat shows than any other type of trash. Give it your best shot. Have fun with your dogs. And be prepared to have them break off of a large percent of your bobcat tracks to jump a hot coon. As Mike said, you might end up with a dog that loves bobcat so much he can push through on a cold cat track through the hot coon fight temptation. I have never known a coon dog that could do that. I know people say a dog that switches track of any kind is a cull. That is how I know all my coon dogs were culls as bobcat dogs.

If your first love is coon hunting you can ignore the following "out of the box" suggestion. But if you want more than anything to have bobcat catching dogs and don't have a lot of cats to train them on, consider it: Start your young dogs on squirrels and or rabbits. Then switch them to bobcat once you have them deer broke, gun broke, reliable and steady. I have never had the negative effects associated with starting my dogs on coon, when they were started on squirrel or rabbit. Most could not even be coaxed into hunting these timid creatures once they experienced a good cat fight.

[al baldwin]

For you all that train pups on coons then switch to bobcats how do you go about making the transition? I haven't tried switching to cats but have without a hitch changing over to bear. Just looking at different ways everyone trains young dogs to make the transition.
John

John I have never had much of a problem breaking most hounds off coon when switching to bobcat. There was one exception that sticks in my mind. Of coarse those dogs had always ran some bobcat. Once my mind was made up to break them off coon, just started gradually letting them know coon was no longer a desired critter. Coon, unlike say coyote, usually always end with a tree, so much easier for me to break a dog off. At some point I turned up the punishment if required, ecollars have sure made training much easier. Agree coon can sure wreck a good bobcat hunt, but treeing a coon is not the worst thing that can happen & IF REMINDERS ARE NEEDED NOT THAT HARD TO DO.
Must say I have found coon on some of the highest ridges in this area. aL

[david]

Al, how did you find coon on the highest ridges with dogs that were easily broke off coon?

[al baldwin]

Al, how did you find coon on the highest ridges with dogs that were easily broke off coon?

David I can assure you have treed coon, some hot races in the day time on most of the ridges around Powers. I too used to think coon would only be found along the rivers and streams.
David I sold a hound once at six years old that was allowed to run coon and cat, until he was about three. If you and I make it to the gathering & Wendell is there, will have him tell you about that dog checking coon races for him. He was very easy to teach coon was no longer desired. Not to say that any dog will never run a coon again, anyone who would swear to that is a newcomer or fool. Most my hunting has always been day time, so dogs were used to sticking to lots of older tracks. So just a matter of teaching them to leave the coon alone. Believe most anyone who has hunted here will tell you coon can be found on most of the highest ridges here. David we all hunt different to some degree, fine with me, I would never let my hounds fight a cat on purpose, too much chance for a dog laid up with an infection. Al

[david]

Al, how did you find coon on the highest ridges with dogs that were easily broke off coon?

...have treed coon, some hot races in the day time on most of the ridges around Powers. Believe most anyone who has hunted here will tell you coon can be found on most of the highest ridges here. ...I would never let my hounds fight a cat on purpose, too much chance for a dog laid up with an infection. Al

Al, I have caught coon on the high ridges of the Oregon Coast Range at times also. It was always a little surprising and more than a little frustrating because I was hunting bobcat. I assume that you were not hunting the high country in order to kill a bunch of coon, but you were most likely hunting bobcat and your dogs treed you a coon. And that is one of the points I was hoping to make for John who, like you, has to hunt bobcats where there are coon there in NC. Coon was by far my greatest frustration as a bobcat hunter. If I start talking about it, I am mad already and cant seem to help it. When you only have about 5 weeks to hunt cats and 1 or 2 of those can not be hunted because of ice dangers and weather problems, every coon side show is one less cat caught and a tremendous disappointment.

As far as dogs and cats fighting like cats and dogs, that is just what they do in my experience. You are blessed to have cats that readily climb. In the Midwest, we were not blessed that way. When the dogs confronted cats on the ground there was generally some type of fight.

Any way John, we wish you the best in making the transition. Hopefully it will not be as frustrating for you as it was for me. Al's attitude is probably the best: just go have some fun with your dogs, and if they tree a coon, well enjoy that too. You started hunting hounds because it was a blast to tree coon. It should always be a blast unless you are a little unbalanced like me. Have fun.

[john porter]

Thanks again for the replies and good read. When you have hounds that run hogs, bear, and coons- it never gets dull. I have 2 young hounds and am going to try running something besides the normal around here so cats will be it. It will be fun no matter what the outcome is due to being able to switch to bear or hogs which stink of high heavens if they don't make the grade for cats.

[South Texan]

Knew of an Ol'timer one time that hunted coon & cat for hides. With cat hides being worth more than coon hides, he wanted to get his dogs more cat minded. So...every time his dogs treed a coon he would shoot it out but wouldn't let his dogs wool it but every time his dogs treed a bob cat he would keep jumping him out until they finally caught him on the ground. In time they said his dogs would hardly every switch off a cat onto a coon.

Didn't know this old gentleman personally but this was related to me by a person that hunted with him. His theory sure made sense to me. He was quite a houndsman, so it was told.
Robbie

[Big N' Blue]

In the country i always cat hunted, you better have a dog broke off of coons or that is all you would run. 100 coons per cat.

[Nolte]

I've got to jump in here to defend us stinky garbage truck chasers and throw my limited thoughts out on cats/switching.

As you guys know, in the Midwest we hunt cats in snow and many times our bear dogs are cat dogs (or at least wannabe) and vice versa. If I had to bet david's crisp 20 on whether I could jump an overnight snow bobcat track or later fall bear track, I'd pick the cat track every time. And using the same dog. Now I'm talking about a standard winter track, not one that is in the melt out stage. Now granted if you had a winter snow bear track, they'd trail it better but I'm just going by the hunt vs hunt conditions we normally see.

As for switching, we try to get that first game encounter on a small critter. Be it coon, or just letting the young dog spot the barn cat and chase it in the yard. But that is only for the first couple game exposures, then you have to hunt them on the desired critter. If you really pound them on coon here, you are going to most likely end up with a dog that will pull off on coon on other hunts. Some guys have luck having bear/coon dogs but I never did. Then again, I'm a crappy trainer. I always had better luck (and headaches) hunting coon with dogs that were mainly coon dogs. If I was only a cat hunter here I'd probably hunt more coon to keep the dogs sharp so as to maybe develop or notice a dog that is a real slick locator. I think our (or I should say MY) Midwest dogs usually always lacked in that department on cats.