Handling Hounds on Dry Ground Hunts

[Brady Davis]

The last post about finding lion tracks in the dirt got me thinking....

How do you guys handle your dogs when dry ground lion hunting? What I mean is do you keep your dogs right with you until YOU physically see something you want them to try out or do you cast them and let them hunt kind of free around you?? When you cast them, how far out do you let them get while they are still looking for a track? And, if you do cast them, when they strike do they immediately take off or do they open and wait until you get there?

I knew an old houndsman once whos dogs would open and wait until he got there an inspected a track....

Also, do you handle dogs any differently if your on horses or a foot or the same? I'm not looking for rigging/hunting in truck info because thats a little more clear....

Let's hear from the guys who hunt foot/mules all the time in the dirt....

[Big Mike]

I hunt mule back. I hunt with 6-8 dogs all free casted. I let the older ones go where they want and "try" to keep the younger ones with 50-75 yards. The older dogs will cast out then come back and and check in every so often. If im riding down the bottom of a canyon my dogs will go half way or more up the sides checking. You have to give them a lot of room and time to strike dirt tracks, they take awhile for the dogs to get the track going sometimes. With the 6 dog shocking systems it a whole lot easier to keep them in control. The beeper mode is the best for reeling them back in.

I ride the same circles alot and the older dogs will remember places they found scent in the past and will always go check them. I find that very interesting how the dogs learn to look for the likely places to find lion sign. There noses find the lion sign before me.

Once they strike I try to check them and find a track, make sure they are right and going the right way. 99% the dogs strike the track. 75% of the time i cant find a track in the areas i hunt so i have to trust the old dogs and hope they picked the right end. Spent many a day trailing the wrong way and by the time i figure it out its too late to get it going the right way.

In the dirt dogs dont usually blow out and move a track unless its real fresh. Its slow and methodical which gives a guy a chance to catch up and check it out.

[Ike]

I like to walk and sometimes use my wheeler to hunt with six dogs on the ground. Big Mike touched on the subject pretty well, as I have a six collar tri-tronics shock system that will slow my dogs down if they get out too far or moving too fast. It's always best to try and find the track they strike for direction, size and species. If lion and bear are both open, and if I'm hunting alone and not looking for a trophy animal to kill, it doesn't really matter what they strike (either lion or bear) unless it's the colder months when there's some snow, ice and open ground. In those conditions, a veteran pack of hounds will take an old track that may not end until the following day or more, so in those conditions I check for freshness.

My youngest dogs at the present time are coming three and the other three and a half, with the older dogs five, eight, ten or twelve, so letting them cast is no issue. However, I have to get to the track pretty quickly or the dogs will be gone in cooler weather (in the dirt) so it's not smart to let them get out too far. I can call my dogs off a track, a bayup or a tree, all six of them, so if bear is closed and I want to stay legal and honest I shut them down until I verify the track. Hell sakes, I rigged a hot bear this fall and couldn't find the track, so I put my eight year old Choco dog down to show it to me. He went to it, lined it out and I called him off until we looked and measured the track for trophy quality--so it can be done!

Last winter I let those mutts get too far ahead of me and they left out through an old tom lion scratch, which made me think that's what they had. By the time I decided they were on a two day old bitch lion they were out of hearing and gone. I was there the next morning at 9:00 AM when those treeing switches started going off, and it had been twenty-five or so hours since they had left. The ground was mostly open where they had started that track but crusty snow lay above us in the foothills. It took me eight hours afoot to retrieve them off that bitch lion tree, so it's best to keep those hounds close (in cool weather or not) if you don't have a couple days to gather them up.

ike

[crusherscott]

Great stuff, i hope Mike chimes in on this one, i take his advice to heart.

[Mike Leonard]

Scott,

Hunting with me is so damn relaxing I would almost enjoy it if I didn't have to be in charge. LOL!

No just kidding Big Mike and Ike have this deal pegged. You know your dogs and you have that handle on it and it is the joy of their life being out there on the hunt with you as a part of the pack. Guys that track find and dump enjoy a lot of catches and take a lot of photos but once they find the real joy of joining the pack they realize just about everybody that has got there has whole damn closet full of photos that their wive's hate to see them drag out. In fact their wives really enjoy when they go hunting take all the barking dogs and seldom bring home a stinky lion. Welcome to dry ground hunting. LOL!

[Huntintony]

Mike, You couldn't have said it better.. I just converted over to horseback and what a difference. Wish i would have done it all along. I am now seeing places on the ranch that i have never seen in 5yrs. Nothing like it. (the truck is nice though in Jan..)

Tony

[Ike]

Horseback? Heck sakes that's too much like sittin in a rocking chair.............

Seriously that would make lion hunting too easy and too much fun!

ike

[Eric Muff]

Very interesting to see your thoughts on this boys.
It's a place I have only been for a couple of years.
Sure changes your whole thought process.

[walker83]

I'm sure not qualified to give any advise here but I do have a good story. This last year I collared up and started hiking up this canyon that was dusty dry. The dogs were covering a lot of ground and almost right off we struck an old lion track, we screwed around with it for a while but couldn't get it lined out. A couple of hundred yard further up the canyon the dogs blew up and headed out of dodge. I got excited and started moving through the cliffs and ledges trying to keep in hearing range. After about thirty minutes I could hear them treed up the canyon right in the bottom, got up there all excited only to find a damn raccoon in the middle of the desert. Praised the dogs, chuckled and headed out.

[Brady Davis]

Mike that's so true...and funny Ike, I had to chuckle, I've let them out too far too and had some long walks the next day...only problem mine didn't end at a bitch lion tree...they were usually in the bottom of some canyon after a good deer run! I wouldn't mind so bad if they had a good tree

So, Mike, when you're hunting horseback how far away do you let your dogs roam?

[Brady Davis]

Mike, You couldn't have said it better.. I just converted over to horseback and what a difference. Wish i would have done it all along. I am now seeing places on the ranch that i have never seen in 5yrs. Nothing like it. (the truck is nice though in Jan..)

Tony

Agreed. Riding sure is fun and relaxing eh Tony?!

[Ike]

Like most of you, I've had alot of train wrecks on Sunday that took all day Monday (if not all week long) to clean up. I told myself years ago that I was gonna stop turning out on bear on Sunday because of having to take Mondays off to gather dogs; likewise I've told myself I wasn't ever gonna start a two day old tom track and still dummy up mon most chances. But talk is cheap. It's funny how little a hounddogger learns over the years, as he just turns those damn dogs loose and then wonders if it was the correct thing to do. But aging does have a way of making most of us think through a situation a little more than we did in our youth.....

ike

[Big N' Blue]

Big Mike and Mike nailed how I hunt.
It is not about the catch it is about the total experience.
But Big Mike it sure is frustrating to realize that you have trailed all day backwards!! LMAO Been there done that! LOL

[Cowboyvon]

What the Mikes said is just about the way I hunt but I'm still learning ..I hunt with anywhere from 3 to 8 dogs.. If I'm at camp I collar the dogs and ride right out on one of my mules.. if I trailer to an area I get the dogs out collar them get my gear together while all the dogs are milling around and emptying out, and as I ride off I holler "here we go" and they all go. I have some young dogs that will try to range out a little further than I like but the tritonics with the beep works well along with the Garmin Astro. The Astro is great if your hunting in some thick stuff because you can tell right where they are and if they traveling with you or what..for the most part now they all stay with me pretty tight. If we are riding the tops and the dogs strike you usually cant' find a track because its all rock you just hope that your on the right end of it and let them go and keep watching sometimes if they pass through a saddle or across a little arroyo you can find a track.. sometimes there's these ant beds right in the saddle where there isn't any grass or anything and you can usually find a track in there. If one of the younger dogs strikes I don't do anything until one of the older dogs verifies it and then I still watch them. They are broke most of the time but they will still mess with a fox from time to time and then for some reason if they know we are headed back to camp or the trailer they will mess with a coyote.. but I'm getting alot better at being able to tell what they are doing if I don't like it i just holler at them "come on guys leave it alone lets go come on here we go" if they pick up and come along it wasn't right. When they strike on a lion track it isn't anything fast .. it takes a while and down here it just doesn't move that fast. When you hunt in the bottoms you can usually see tracks but the scent isn't as good as it is on the rocks so I keep looking when I get off to check something out the dogs seem to know and look around in that area a lot harder. I make the same circles alot and try to check the same spots I'm finally getting to know some places where the lions cross so I try to check those. I have a lot of country I can hunt so I try new places too and try to recognize places that look good and check them out for sign. I'm still learning but free casting the dogs and riding along with them is about the only way I like to do it.

How many miles do you guys do in a day typically?

[Mike Leonard]

CV

I usually ride in about 3 miles and then back about 15 LOL!

Maybe that is just the way it seems. In reality I am just like most guys and try to cover too much ground in a day.

Now i fugure that my average riding horse moves along at 3.3 mph if unchecked and open gaited free like with not a lot of obstacles. That is too fast to keep moving a pack of dogs and be sure they are really covering the strike zones. So you need to slow down a bit do some stopping and looking and letting the dogs fan out a little more. It takes patience because I just always feel like there is a hot strike over that next ridge. LOL!

George Goswick said if you are not striking many lion tracks and you know there are some about you need to slow down, still not striking, slow down some more, still not get off and lead the mule or horse. Since I learned to slow it down I can say it works out better. So you don't need a gaited singlefooting or mule or horse for this because they want to walk out too fast. Just drift along slow like and guide them into the haunts you think might hold a panther.

I rode out of a patch of brush one day and there was a guy standing out there watching me. He said are you allright? I said sure why? He said well I was watching you and that horse just going really slow and circling around in those bushes and you were bent over looking at the ground. I said oh that I was just trying to figure out where that lion went. Lion! He said what lion? I said look right down there in front of me and you will see his track. He looked down there and said that is a lion track? I said yep sure nuff. He said I am getting the hell out of here, I just thought you were drunk or having a heart attack or somthing.LOL!

My little red horse is really good at slowing down and just poking thru there and letting me try to help do some trailing. Some of my horses are a little too chargy for this and I know I have to stop more often with them.