BigGameHoundsmen.com

Ankle Express wrote:

A lot of times a bear will walk up on a tree to listen or check the wind, then gone again. This could have caused the empty tree.

Somebody with some sense and experience. Not surprised in the slightest we are on the same side of the big river Hi-Tech! Slick trees and pulling up short are two completely different animals for one. I could go on and on about this but if you've never seen or realized how much or how many bear use their hearing, nose or whatever else they can come up with to stay in front of dogs you don't really have much experience or you got the most inexperienced, never seen a dog, easy bears anywhere. Bears around here are capable of anything. Have you never seen a bear take one dog and drag it around from point a to point b and c and then d all the while the calvary runs their hearts and guts out wide open playing catch up only to eventually be ran out and never catch up to the bear or one dog? Dog one stays longer than all the rest but it moved with the bear. Calvary was killed by never stopping for a breather at a,b,c or d. I guess some bear can get lucky once and pull that off. Dogs could just be behind and that happen. However I've seen some that will purposely listen and not let that second, third, first or fifteenth dog ever catch up to it. Killed a few of them and thats exactly what it took to eventually do it. I know of alot of bear that won't/didn't go any further than they had to, don't/didn't run any harder than they had to and made dogs work to catch up. However they do it they will listen back at the approaching dogs. Alot of bear will mark, tap, jump up or whatever you want to call it to a tree and listen back. I’ve actually seen it happen. Its just what they do to try to stay ahead of the dogs. Some bear get good at it and can get away at will. We like to say we got out ran but in fact you just got abused most likely. The coon reference ties to this because a lot of folks use coons and or coonhunting to start their dogs. Me too. However it can bite you in the butt so to speak if dogs are taking the first track up. Multiple coons on track dog trees first one up. This can be inherited or learned. Learned you can fix. Ideally for bears and biggame we want the dogs that naturally takes the last track and trees it. Most natural skill set available for big game if they can pick up their head and run. We don’t usually know what we are re-enforcing in pups heads in these situations coonhunting. They accidentally learn it sometimes and you can accidentally fix it in the right situation is all I was saying. It will show up sometimes when dog(s) are pulling up short on bears. If they learned it, then its not completely their fault. JMO