Best Dogs...

[twist]

I'm no cat dog aficionado, but in my experience a better than average cat dog is smart while a good bear dog is persistent and tough. Not just with the bear but tough to keep grinding on a fall track when the other dogs are ready to go try something else.

Also in our snow country besides smarts, good conditions catch more cats than anything while bad conditions need more smarts and maybe a hunter who's tough and wiling to put in some leg work when all seems futile.

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Very well put.

[pegleg]

I've seen a few dogs run near 200 days in a year. There's generally two types those that won't push hard and the lucky ones. Out of all my dogs I've got four sound enough to run. Ones in Mexico and three at home. The trick is knowing when they can't because they sure don't. Its easier when they don't have to walk into the hunting area run and then come walking back out. We ran a bobcat yesterday morning on ice and rock's. They came out of that deal covered in cactus spines and several cut pads. Then we got where we had planned to be and trailed a lion the rest of the day. They looked sorry dragging back home. When they don't eat and start snoring before you can get the horses loaded its a pretty good clue they need a break. Even though they'll keep hunting its not in your or their interest to let them after a certain point. I'm guessing the old time houndsmen spent more days not hunting and used more hounds along with probably using slower trailing dogs. I've got several that will run themselves bald if you let them but there's something about a hairless hound face that's unappealing.

[Dan Edwards]

The hairless thing only happens here in the summer running in the cornfields. They get pretty skint up. Funny too once it starts getting dry them dirt clods are harder on their feet than a guy would think they are.

[pegleg]

good feet a topic for the ages. its the only thing i might consider on par with ability when breeding. a dog running its feet off lays it up for a month and gives it tender feet for even longer. vet wrap makes decent emergency boots but i should own stock in the company

[Dan Edwards]

My buddy had this walker dog that ended up hunting towards the end of his career. Top 2 or 3 dogs I ever seen run a coyote. Feet sucked. Neither of us ever bred him. Both of us are pissed at ourselves for not just trying to see if maybe it wasn't genetic or who knows. He never let it stop him but man he was in pain all the time til they went numb. I loved that knuckle headed sumbitch.

[Mike Leonard]

Although I I have looked up at quite a few cats since my first one over 50 years ago I have never considered myself a real cat hunter. But I will say I have learned more about hounds and cats in general from real cat hunters than anybody I can think of. Wallace Griggs old-time cat hunter from Vermont I use to correspond a lot and he sure cleared a lot of things up for me.

Cats are hunted in so many varied places that what works in one area may not exactly work in another but I can tell you for sure the guys that are catching consistently have done their home-work and have the dog power.

I guess the best cat dog I ever saw mas a non-descript sort of wavy haired high tan owned by an old hunting friend and mentor of mine from Montana. The first time I looked at that dog and he told me that was his top bobcat dog I could hardly believe it. He was short sort of bench legged didn't have much ear on him and I suspected there was something other than a hound hiding in his background. If I looked at that same hound today not knowing what I know I would still feel the same way, it would be hard to believe.

Old Ike was just a cat master and whether it was on snow or bare ground he was going to catch the cat or give 100% trying. I was green as a gourd back in those days but the first time I walked into this old guys skinning shed my eyes bugged out. He was a master with furs and very meticulous and he had them big beautiful spotted bellied cat hides on stretchers all over that shed. Surely he must be trapping these I thought. No way he said these are dog caught, and if you want to tag along I will show you. I did and he did show me! We hunted three consecutive days in good snow conditions and skinned 13 bobcats. He also showed me later he could also catch them when the ground was bare but in that old clay soil area the catch percentage wasn't as high.

He usually hunted 2-3 dogs is all and although all the dogs he kept could catch a cat he didn't keep many, and that old Ike dog was by far the star. Not completely sure what his gift was but thinking back today I think that old dog just thought like a bobcat and beat them at their own game.

It was certainly a great experience!

[Patrick]

I have hunted with some darned good varmint dogs, cat and fox. The best dog i have hunted with was several decades back, and of course his name was Blue. He wasn't mine but I hunted him as much as I have ever hunted my own dogs.
What made him the best?
During the time he was alive we were hunting quite a few dogs that didn't need any help. But if you took Blue by himself or just with some pups we would catch just as much game as if we took any or all of the other good dogs.
If he got after a varmint (cold or hot track), I expected to see it in a tree.
Even in the California summertime, if we were hunting at night and had Blue I was expecting to tree something every time. Not that we didn't still get skunked some times.
At times he wasn't a fun dog to hunt. I have always roaded and free cast. If you put Blue down he was going to find a varmint and tree it. He wouldn't just road along forever, he would go where he could get a track started. A lot of times you would just hear him going "out of hearing" and find him treed somewhere. When he was young is when we first got telemetry, and it made finding him treed easier.
I had a son to him that was just as fast and tough, but didn't have the same smarts to always come up with the game in the tree.
So I guess the measurement of best is that when we had Blue every other dog (even the best ones) was just along for the ride.
Also whenever another dog would get a pick up or tree ahead of Blue it was something to talk about.

Pat

[Dan Edwards]

Ike and Blue sound like the right kind. Thanks men

[shade]

Dont know who his mom or dad was he was a blue tick bought out of a kennel at three years old.he was started on coon swiched to bear but would run a cat.He thought he had a cold nose but he didnt, that made for some long nights. he was hard headed barked all the dam time ,shock collar ,boot in his but,throw stuff at him made no differance . He would run a medium track like it was a week old BUT when he warmed it up there was no stop he would rip pads off and be torn from nose to tail. He tried to run up a tree fliped over got his back leg hung and was upside down treeing when we got there. He was a dog that would just piss you off when you looked at him.He was a hard keeper always seemed to be to thin didnt listen to a word you said would not call off or come back no matter what you had the level set on you picked him up at the tree. He was the most irritating SOB that i have ever been around ,he died two years ago because the me to dogs were behind him and he could not back up. I would give anything i own to have him back.

[mark]

You sound like an extremley patient man.

[shade]

Maybe i put to much of the bad and not enough of the good.He could fly on a warm track and he was sharp. When other dogs got hung up he figured out a way to get over under or around something so he could get back on it again. Not a rough bone in his body when it came to another dog.The only time he was settled at the house is when you were hunting him down every day so you knew that you better take him or sleep would be short. So there was a lot of hunting i would have missed out on it it had not been for him.Maybe he wasent as good as i remember or maybe not as bad. But its my story so ill tell it however i see fit.

[ONE_TON]

So I have a question. When you're starting a young dog do the early starters that show real well and at a year old are starting to catch their own game, do they tend to make that "best dog", or is it that young dog that progresses nicely year by year and by 3 there your lead dog?
I have been told that "all" those top shelf, or "best dogs" all started early, and I have been told it’s the slower starting ones that by 3 have what it takes to make a top dog? I know there are a lot of variables to this. I know now that I have culled a young dog earlier than I should have, and also given others longer than I should.
So out of every ones "best dog" how did they start? Were they the eiarly starters, or the late bloomers?

[Beebout-it]

My best...a female walker I call May was a late and slow starter but now going on three years old is a dog I couldn't ask more of. I also have a walker male that was a young starter made his first lion tree at 6 months but this year hasn't been very impressive at all.

[al baldwin]

Thinking back, best dogs I have owned have been early starters. Don/t mean all treeing their own game at a year old, but realized at that age they had a very good chance of making a good one. Puzzles me why anyone would desire to work with a late starting dog, with the short productive life span most dogs have. I can think of a female owned by a friend that was a late starter that made a good bobcat dog, and was more productive in years past her prime than she was in her prime years. Hunt what one desires. Al

[dhostetler]

I never had a slow starter make a dog for me. My best dogs all were early starters. I get concerned if a pup at 6 months doesn't make races. I have noticed that there is a period of time between 1 and 2 where young dogs seem to go through a teenage period of being stupid.

Before I get preached to about going off topic: When you start a post on here you it's like turning a lot of dogs on a track. You might get several treed others are stretching a skunk or baying a moose, or even running endangered species into foreign countries.