finishing a track

[pegleg]

That is just the thing he most likely would bring the rest. that is why a trash runner can be such a pain in the and ike if that one dog moved off and started baying that bear you and i both know those hounds could not refuse going and seeing for themselves. so maybe they're from Missouri too. and so they'd be benefiting from that one hound. anyway all I am saying is I hunt each hound alone enough that I have confidence in it. I hate it to be honest because it can get ugly and because I own a pack not a hound for a reason. but in my mind A pack is made up of ONE hound at a time. why build a house on salt blocks then put a metal roof on it?

[sourdough]

We all look at success in different ways when it comes to the ability of our trail hounds. Do I want my hounds to stand on their heads on a cold track or a track that I think to be cold? No way. I want them to move a cold track and try hard to put as much of that track behind them as they can. If that track does not come to an end, it doesn’t matter to me. What matters the most is what each individual hound was doing to put the track to an end. These cold tracks are the ones that give a guy a good sense of what each hound is contributing to his pack. Those balls out fast races do not give a man any idea of who is contributing, as you hear them at the start of the race and the next time you hear them they are treed. I am not saying that I don’t like a race like that once in a while, but with cat hunting on bare ground that is most likely not the way it goes. Not every track that is started is finished and for anyone to say that they finish every track they start either have some pretty hot nosed dogs or they are a liar. Putting an end to a track is what this sport is all about, if it weren’t, we would all own a lap dog for companionship.

sourdough

[Tom White]

Interesting
I catch a slow easy lion once in a while , but I remember a few years ago I had a Bluetick male from Van that would always move to the front of the track and often catch the lion a mile in front of the other dogs. Thats the kind of special dog I"ll buy if I can find another one. Those kind up the catch percentage. Dirt or snow

[Ike]

I use to measure a bear track by how my blue dog was acting, meaning if he was going hard that bear was the same as caught. Then I started paying more attention to the boohoo shit that Ike was giving and looking harder for tracks or what was sitting him off. Part of that was my Choco dog that came out of Ike, as he gets so excited over the smallest amount of scent.

Anyway, long story short when my blue Ryan dog use to go off that was a caught or dead bear. And that's what I ran by for years, but the shit that Ike and Choco rigs is the stuff I'm talking about, the kinda of shit that most dogs won't even start. The kind of dogs that'll rig and show me a brute boar track that I'd never seen, or that a tom lion scratched through that area two or three days ago. My dogs aren't gonna catch that stuff nor will dogs that belong to anybody living or dead, don't matter who hunted it or where, nor the blood they came from. And if I can go find that old scratch from their rigs and know he's come through then it's a plus; likewise if that bear track is too old to touch I still know he's there which is worth it's weight in gold to me.

A tom lion leaving those kind of tracks has probably moved two or three times since he put down that scent, and if he only traveled ten miles a walk he may well be thirty miles away; if he walked twenty then he might be sixty miles away and in a different mountain range. If there is a dog living or dead that could ever do that (finish that kind of cold trail every time) I'm gonna have to see it not hear about it!

ike

[BClark]

I THINK ALOT OF TIMES, BRAINS HAS MORE TO DO WITH FINISHING REALLY HARD TRACKS THAN NOSE POWER. I HAVE SEEN WHEN A MEDIUM NOSED DOG SEEMED TO ALWAYS BE AHEAD OF COLDER NOSED DOGS THAT WOULD STRATTLE AND POUND OUT TOUGH TRACKS AND WOULD GET HUNG UP IN SPOTS WITH NO SCENT, I GUESS BECAUSE OF HIS TRACK STYLE MAYBE, BUT HE WOULD THROW BIG CIRCLES, AND SEEMED TO BE ABLE TO UNRAVEL COMPLICATED MESSES , I SAW HIM ON QUITE A FEW TIMES FROM ACROSS CANYONS AND IT LOOKED LIKE HE WAS THINKING MORE THAN SMELLING. I WOULD THINK HE JUST GOT LUCKY A FEW TIMES,BUT HE DID IT SO OFTEN THERE WAS SOMETHING TO IT.HE WOULD BE TREED FIVE TO TEN MINUTES AHEAD OF OTHER GOOD DOGS LOTS OF TIMES, ALSO OFF BY HIMSELF CAUGHT WHEN EVERYTHING ELSE, GATHERED UP AND CONFUSED. I DO THINK THAT IF I DRY GROUND HUNTED A TON FOR CATS I WOULD WANT SOME OF WHAT IKE AND THE REST OF YOU ARE SAYING. SOME OF THE TIMES I HAVE BEEN REALLY PROUD OF DOGS GAME WAS NOT CAUGHT,BUT YOU LEARN AN AWFUL LOT ABOUT WHAT KIND OF DOGS YOU HAVE ON SOME OF THOSE DAYS.IF IT WAS ALWAYS TO EASY IT WOULDNT BE AS FUN,YOU NEED SOME OF THOSE LONG AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA DAYS WITH NO SUCCESS . I SURE DONT MIND AN EASY ONE EITHER, BUT UNEVENTFUL EASY RACES DONT STICK IN YOUR MIND VERY LONG..

[Nolte]

Let me start by saying, I've only got dogs made of fur and bone. No magic or voodoo tied out in my yard. I've got limited time to hunt. I won't pass up an easy track to go find a tough one. I just take them as they come and sort them out after the fact. Now granted I get a little more satisfaction when the dogs really have to grind out a tough one and put an end to it, but I surely don't pass up the gimmes to go find one. I also won't discount someone else's success if they get a run of a few easy ones in a row. Any dog man who's cleaned up enough crap will know the difference and won't think he's got the world by the nads if he's on that good run of gimmes. They are a very fickle thing and can vanish real quickly. Now if you hunt with a guy who ALWAYS makes it look easy, I'd suggest getting some of what he's got.

It also depends on what dogs I've got in the box. If it's mostly young, green, wild @ssed pups, I want one that they can probably handle. Once they handle a few we will try a few tougher one.

If we all knew the outcome before we turned out, what fun would that be. Most times there are 3 versions to the story. What happened, what we THINK happened, and what gets told. If you find a guy who has the least amount of variance between the 3, you found a dog man. Everybody else is still trying to get there.