BigGameHoundsmen.com

No doubt you got to keep the best and cull the rest. Do you hunt your dogs all over the country or just in your region?

I believe what you are trying to create has already been done a splash of thiis and that breed into a hound I just call it a cur dog! Andy

Dan have your friend call me or PM me or PM me his phone #. I would like to talk to him to see what he is up to. I have never seen a lurcher hunt. It is hard for me to imagine them doing well cold trailing or hunting in our brush country. I believe speed is the last thing one needs in a bobcat dog it is the ability to trail fast that is important. Dewey

Goose- I'm watching the kids much of the time now and won't be able to travel around to hunt for at least one more year. I do like hunting all over the country. None of my lurchers have been tested elsewhere, just in Wi. so far. One of their littermates is in Az. working in a pack of lion dogs helping make the catches faster. I haven't checked in to see how this last season has gone. He would be a littermate to Tommy & Vicki named Ace.

Twist- Not by me and not with the lurcher combination I have. Dutch Salmon did some hound x stag crosses and wrote about them a while back but I believe he did that for coyote and wasn't using the same type of dogs that I am. I've never heard of anyone specifically using stags that have been proven to run track and certainly not one that trees well, those don't come along very often because it's not in the nature of the breed. I'm on an entirely different path with different ideas. I haven't failed yet in any area of game dogs so I can only expect that at some point I will be successful in this also. That's a little heady to say out loud but if the past is any indicator, I'm the odds on favorite.

Just because things don't type the same way as they are meant sometimes, I want to say that the above paragraph is said kind heartedly.

Dewey- They aren't cold trailers at all. My buddy's dogs are hot nosed speed demons but they do better than you would expect or at least, they do better than I expected. I'll send the info along. No matter what happens, he kind of like a jagdterrier, you just can't go out with him and avoid having an adventure. You'll have a good time regardless.

Dan,
What percentage of cats are you catching on the ground with these first crosses? Are these first dogs bay dogs or catch dogs?

Colobbcat- It's changing as they get more experienced. It's tough to tell all of the time but the GPS gives some hints. They seem to be getting better at locating the animals and aren't over running as much. Lucky for me they retrieve.

I didn't read the whole thread, are they half stag and half border collie? I bet these would be excellent hog dogs

The pups are 3/4 stag, 1/4 border collie.

Day 21 is here and it's time to start dealing with the pups and get my hands on them. The work starts now. The next stage change will be in one week. At that point I'll take down the higher threshold on the whelping box door and leave something new out in the pen each day. Right on que they started flopping out of the box so I had to put up a higher threshold yesterday evening.

By the way, I don't sell dogs for hog hunting. Hunting hogs won't tell me what I need to know about a dog and therefore will be of no benefit to the breeding program. Nothing against hog hunting personally but if it doesn't benefit the breeding program than I'm not doing it. There's plenty of other dogs out there for hog hunting.

I think a better title would be. The Ultimate Dan Dog. What you've got dreamed up is pretty cool, and I hope it all works out. You've definitely got a lot more patients than I do. Sounds to me, if you can catch cats without cold trailing or rigging or walking into those hard to reach areas that you know cats like to be then what you have is the Ultimate Bobcat Population. Or the Ultimate Bobcat Hunting Land. The Ultimate Luck possibly. All that said, I think you should add a picture with every update. I like to read pictures lol.
Nows here's what I'd do if I was trying to create the ultimate bobcat dog. First off, I'd get a hold of the guy who won the competition they had last year. Was it JC? I would figure he'd have a good thought on how to get the best dogs around. A guy with the confidence to throw himself and dog into a competition against anyone, and win has my respect! And my belief that he knows what the hell he's doin. I've looked at tracks before when I've had some of my best friends who don't even care about hounds and drove off making excuses just so I didn't embarrass myself and hounds lol. Secondly and third and fourth. I'd find a good female. One that has hunted and proven herself in the region I'd be hunting. Better yet one related to the boomer dog that created all the drama a few weeks back. I might have my wires crossed but seemed like he made his rounds from region to different region to different region with the title as a cat dog throughout. Pretty impressive to me, even though to some he may have been a cull at one time or another. Anyway...
Another thought, for the guy wanting to try one for a hog dog u gotta think. If you're lucky u won't have a cull. But if u do who's to say that wouldn't be a hell of a hog dog. Some cull whipped bear dogs make cat dogs. Some cull coon dogs might make a bear dog. Some cull border collie cow dog might be crossed with a stag and make an ultimate Midwest cat dog. Never know. Doesn't really matter, just seemed a little rude and one track minded to shut the guy down. But you feed em so that's why I said it doesn't really mater. Just a thought. I'm bored. Good luck

RDR- I'm not trying to make the best example of what has been already done. I've had a dog that would fit that bill. I have others that are good, just not that good. Like I stated earlier, I'm taking an idea posed by David Peightal in his Bobcat Dog book to heart and trying to come up with a type of dog that was made specifically for bobcats. I'm coming at it from an angle that seems right to me. I'm not a rookie cat hunter but I'm also not into doing things to impress anyone. This thread is almost entirely altruistic in nature and takes a fair amount of time away from family and dog time...maybe not a lot in one day but over the life of these threads it adds up. That's the spirit of this bobcat section, or at least it is to me and most of the guys that have been involved with this section of the BGH board. It goes all of the way back to the first internet place for bobcat dog men to exchange ideas and learn from others around the country. It all started on the original Shadetree site. It's all still alive here and I'm showing a certain amount of loyalty to that original idea.

As for the hog hunting. I'm just sticking to my guns on that one. I'm not going to elaborate on it because I don't want to attract the same kind of attention that the Part 1 thread did.

As for the country I hunt cats in, it is rather easy here compared to some places. We do have very large swamps of various types and places that take forever to walk through. There's not a lot of elevation change and it's moist most of the time except for the roads. You can have a dusty road going through a swamp here in the summer months. Snow is around for most of the good running time and it's just about how you would expect it to be if your familiar with Northern Wi. We have certain places that mimic other areas at certain times of the year and I test my dogs in those places. Usually when I make a dog here they do well in other parts of the country also...if it can handle all of the different types of running here. I tend to keep dogs that can hunt in anything, from anything during any kind of weather except for the hottest days we have in the summer when the humidity is very high. Those days will kill a driven dog. If the humidity is down it's a go.

I'll get some more pictures up today. I just couldn't put together the time to get it done yesterday.

RDR- Keep in mind that this is just part 1.5, it's a twist on the first part. When I come up with what I'm looking for in a dog I will be crossing something else in and it that will be a little more familiar. This first set of stages should (when it works) take care of some things I see lacking in the general character of traditional hounds.

I'm working on the theory that it's actually pretty difficult to breed brains out when your selecting FOR them. The one thing that is certain is that you can not select for something that is not there in the first place without taking many thousands of years to get there. God had seen it fit to limit us to a maximum of 120 years and that's not enough time to do it the long way given those limitations. To get a super smart dog you have to bring one in. Enter the border collie.

For the physical ability to take the advantage of sneaking away you need to take the distance away between the game and the dog. Speed does that if the dog isn't making mistakes. There are no more agile and fast dogs than in the combination of dogs used to make lurchers. Take away the collie and you loose some of the agility. Take away the sighthound and you loose the closing speed. Pick dogs within those ranks that don't show the extra talents that make good locators and all you have is a really good competition dog for agility. I'm being careful to pick dogs that are more than just fast and agile and smart. They all have to be good locators.

By the way, if the squirrel dog folks ever caught onto what a whippet could do for their dogs they would feel like it was Christmas every day of the year.

Day 28 was yesterday and I've started feeding the pups some puppy food by hand an talking to them. They have oddly strong bite force for their age. All are getting around nicely and already have it down. When I whistle they come to the door. The net three weeks will involve a few tests to see if any of the pups are naturally shy and which noses are activated first from sleep to food and a few other things to see which pup has the inborn intelligence at the higher level than the pup next to it. I'll wait on the intelligence tests until they are used to going outside of the whelping box and comfortable with their pen. I'll hide treats in places that are difficult to get to and see how they solve the problem. I like to see them use their paws to reach where their noses can not. Once in a while I'll catch a pup using another object to help them get what they want. If you ever see a pup doing something like this keep it because it's a canine Einstein. Also the ability to wait for a better opportunity to do something or the ability to hold back, knowing something will get them in trouble if they do what they want now. These last two things are very rare and you can't test for them when they are young. It's just something that is WAY t the top of the intelligence scale and are a few of the things I look for in a lurcher. You get stuff like that in a dog and it's the difference between having the local union wire the electric in your house and Tesla coming back fromt he dead and doing it. Sure, the union guy will get it done but it won't be free and limitless.

.