I enjoyed reading the various posts regarding the topic of what hounds and how. As some of you might know I hunt leopard, lynx and jackal all with the same hounds.
The leopard is predominantly for trophy hunting purposes .The jackal and lynx is our daily target and what we hunt year round ( predator control ) 5 days a week. We catch double or more the amount of jackal than we catch lynx .Jackal are more abundant so you cut their trails more frequently.
A team of hounds normally consists of at least 8 cold trailing hounds, up to 4 pressure dogs, 2 catch dogs and a bunch of terriers for underground work.
Our cold trail hounds are the type favored by the dry ground hunters in your South Western areas and our bloodlines stem from there – New Mexico and Arizona.
Our pressure hounds look almost identical to dogs I saw in pictures of Wolf hunting here at this site. I believe the guy was using Trigg Walkers. These hounds are essential to up our kill rate on jackal. Our dogs do the killing we hardly ever shoot a jackal ahead of the hounds.
The catch dogs or what the Englishmen call – Lurchers are tough Scottish Deer Hound and Fell Hound outcrosses. They have a bit of nose for a really hot track but essentially work on sight. We use them when possible to shorten the race to save the hounds for the next days hunting. They get cut in if the jackal is visible to them or if the tempo of the chase is reaching climax.
We can and have caught many jackal with just the cold trail hounds , it just takes longer.
We have caught many jackal with just pressure dogs but the scent has to really hold well and the track has to be recent. You can consistently hunt and catch jackal with only this type of hound but you have to know jackal and where you can best locate them to cut a fresh trail.
I believe if I kept a separate team for jackal keeping the above mentioned ratio of hound types this would be ideal.
Then a separate team of maybe 6-8 cold trail hounds and 2 pressure hounds as a unit for cats this would be ideal. It is what I am working toward at this time. I have 6 young cold trail hounds I will be introducing to only cats within this month as a new project and I am really looking forward to that.
As an example the best kill rate I had was 28 kills in 31 days on lynx and jackal with the mixed team as I described. The ratio of cats to jackal then was about 50/50.
We hardly have snow compared to you guys and our winters are harsh and dry. Hope this gives a bit of insight to our type of hunting here at home.
Good hunting ,
Roy Sparks – Sparks Hounds.
