BigGameHoundsmen.com

A bird dog hunts but doesn't eat the game, and a cow dog chases cows and doesn't eat the cows at the end of the day.. I think that a dog hunts for the same reasons that we do..IT'S IN OUT BLOOD!!!... but feeding could be a form of praise...

I don't think that it makes them better. I know that our best bear dogs won't even touch anything from a bear, they just wool it after it's dead, and that seems to be enough for them. I think that a good dog hunts to please, and i know that our best dog lives for it, because when the season gets here he seems to know it and is up and out of his house barking before we get out of the house. So in all i don't think that feeding them anything from a kill makes them any better of a dog, like said before if it did then our dogs would be chasing deer all the time.

Read dogs think with images in Bear Hunting, "Who makes the dog." Dogs think with images according to the Dr's research. If he is correct, then feeding the dogs the bears liver might give them the image of food. Dogs live for food. If this is true, then the dogs should form the image of food when on the bear scent and hunt more agressively to catch the bear.

I can't say for sure if this works on all dogs, but it sure worked on mine and helped to keep them on bear instead of deer. Also, do not feed your dogs any hog meat, because it contains trichinosis or round worms that go through the intestines and bores tiny holes in the dogs muscle until they are weak and worthless.

Keep reading.
Trichinosis is found in bear as well.

BlacktailStalker wrote:Keep reading.
Trichinosis is found in bear as well.

Thanks for the heads up

You mean you actually didn't know that???

cobalt wrote:You mean you actually didn't know that???

That's right. I just asumed that only hogs had it.

Bear and pigs closest relatives are each other.

Oh! Let me clarify something about feeding your dog game meet. I am not saying that feeding your dogs game meet makes them better hunters.
What I'm trying to say is that feeding them some of the kill,immediately after the kill, allows them to associate the hunt with food, and that is what makes them a better hunter. Some researchers beleive that dogs think with images. So, if I plant the image of food at the end of a hunt, it might make sense that this is a good image for the dog. We all know that dogs love to eat.

Buckles: We have in the past after dressing out a bear fed them the heart and liver sliced up . That is all they would eat none of the other hounds wanted anything to do with the gut kit.

You could accomplish the same thing with a dog treat, with less risk.

I have given treats from time to time but for the most part I simply praise the dogs. I have had dozens of dogs that gave everything they had to catch game without ever feeding them any of the game they hunt.

They shouldn't need any game meat.

Your right George, anything positive that you can give the dog at the end of the race is good, as long as it allows him to associate it with the scent when he starts the track.

I read once that while bears can get Trichinosis its only about 3%... Still best to treat it like pork.

Dogs can get parasites from other sorces too, hook worms are found in the soil. Tape worms can come from fleas. Liver flukes from drinking water that snails live in. Bitting insects can pass them on ect. So as a matter of corse you should be using some form of parasite control even if not feeding raw meat.

We got a lion 2 weeks ago, usualy we let the meat age 5 days or so in cool weather but its been to hot so I only went 2 days. I gave my dogs the bones as usual, ribs and legs with left over scraps of meat on it ect. They normaly eat it right away but this time they ran about burying it all over the orchard... last few days they have been digging it up and eating it. Guess they didn't think I aged it enough.

i have been feeding my dogs wild pork since i started running hogs about ten years ago. after every hog, the dog that found it gets the heart. then i trow chunks while boning it out. imo it has nothing to do with how they hunt. just a reward after a job well done. unlike other guys here my hounds dont excactly hunt ''for me''. they hunt because they love to chase and catch hogs. on more than one occasion my dogs have gone ''hunting '' on thier own. i have pulled up to the house only to find my bulldog dragging a dead hog. again i have fed raw pork to my pack for a long timewith no noticable change in hunting ability or disese.

J. Frank Dobie, in his book "The Ben Lilly Legend" says that Ben Lilly was an advocate of feeding his dogs the kill and that he also believed that it made them better hunters.

I kind of feel like this. The evolution of the dog from the wolf started by wolves who chose to stay close to nomadic peoples to live off their scraps and over time they became a part of the group of people and were bred with amiability towards people in mind, so that today our dogs main purpose for living is the approval of their human masters. The difference between dog and wolf then is that wolves hunt for food and dogs to please their owners.