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i missed the part about it being a big bear -- i got to agree that a big bear is less likely to outrun dogs --

BUT a long tall lean bear,,,,,,, can run too lol



ive seen dogs that were capable of treeing an average bear ,day after day for weeks , get flat out ,, smoked --



sometimes-- ya had to be there - lol

i

It's real hard to say without being there on this deal. It might be dogs, it might be terrain, or it might be space aliens beaming the bear up.

All I know is that we get a lot more "space alien" cases when the temps get hotter. Especially when the dogs are NOT in shape and the bear are lean. It gets a little more even when the bear start to add some fat on them. Sometimes the only thing to chalk up a wreck to is a case of WTF.

In all reality, you are probably ahead of the curve if you had visual evidence that your dogs WERE actually on a bear. I know lot of guys who mesh in what MIGHT have happend, with what they THINK happened, to what ACTUALLY happend. It just depends if you're a glass half empty or full kind of guy.

BUT if you're seeing your dogs on bear and they aren't finishing it up, youv'e got a few options. Find different terrain, find different bear, or get different dogs.

In my opinion, 90 percent of those running bear, fighting bear or the bears that chase the dogs of the mountain are not caught or bayed because of the caliber of dogs. I know some are going to get upset but I have seen very few real packs of bear dogs. I listen and talk to hundreds that think they do but fall short when it comes time to catch the tough guys. As far as big bear go, big bear don't get big because they are easy to catch.

Hey I appreciate everyone taking a moment to express his or her opinions on this subject. It is always helpful to have a handful of experienced hunters giving an opinion to help sort out the problem or send a guy in a few directions to sorting it out.

Thanks

Very few bears just flat out run a good pack of dogs unless it is a poor scenting conditions.
Dogs catch the bear almost every time & just can not get him to tree & then will not stay with the bear.
Then the dog owners say I sure did get out run by that bear,
when in truth the dogs did not have what it takes to get the job done.

Hipshooter wrote:Very few bears just flat out run a good pack of dogs unless it is a poor scenting conditions.
Dogs catch the bear almost every time & just can not get him to tree & then will not stay with the bear.
Then the dog owners say I sure did get out run by that bear,
when in truth the dogs did not have what it takes to get the job done.

Are you serious?

I agree alot w/ Hound Dog and Ankle Express and others too, if they don't wanna go in a tree, they ain't gonna. This year is an exceptionally good year for feed in Utah and all the bear are feeling good and wanna run. We caught a 400 lbs. the 1st a.m. of my tag and one more 300 lbs. in 6 days but walked 12 . Oh yah, we also stopped a little sow after 4 hrs. and when we got to the tree her cub was 100 yards away waiting for her to come down. I ended up tagging out on a runner we've chased in the same canyon all summer and finally figured out why the dogs are scattered all over and others walking at bay. We dumped on this 20 min. track and we walked out to the edge to listen and all of a sudden it got real loud and moved slowly away. My fastest blue bitch came back and we knew it was stopping to look at the dogs. (she'll push as long as they go to a tree and don't stop to talk)Prefers cats!!! Anyways, my buddy and I ran out to the edge of a v shaped canyon and listened to the roar move away then hit the pt. of the v and come back.. We saw this walking and loping blacky 30 yds. in front of the dogs along with my new 5 month old Bettis pup. It ran up the ridge away from us and started putting some distance in the pack. It made a big circle on top of and around that ridge and right back down on its trail in the bottom and started up the same ridge again, then stopped, u-turned and went right back thru the dogs and down the original trail it came up when we 1st saw it. By then I got down the ridge and had decided it wasn't gonna tree even w/ 25 dogs and decided to take it. I set up at 200 yds and when it came out of the brush shot one shot from my 220 swift and it died 80 yds away. It took the dogs about 5 min to decide that the dense brush it died in wasn't moving and decided to go in and chew on it. I got there to see only 5 dogs and my pup on the bear. That pup hadn't made the big loop yet but came in on the trail of its 1st pass thru. One by one the dogs made their loop up and around that ridge and came to that bear. By taking this bad gene pool out of this certain canyon, I hope that our catch percentage next year will increase. Yah, it wasn't the 400 lbs.er but that pup is a better dog today cause I didn't tag out on the 1st one and just kept running her whether she made it or not,just getting her lessons in. So if yer in Utah and yer pack gets smoked by a high speed red tick bitch with BB on her tag, make sure she doesn't get to close and tore up please. She's fast and alittle too gritty and I worry about her on her 1st bay up.

I wanted also to express my opionion on a bay up, I seen a pack of 10 dogs this spring work a bear on the ground for 3 hours. That bear backed up against a log and stump and those dogs where two to three paces away with one or two sneaking in and trying to grab some hair from behind, the bear would turn and swat and maybe bluff charge here and there those dogs stayed and loved it. Last saturday I watched as those same dogs had a walking bear and they were about 15 yards away, that bear would look at a dog and take off chasing the dog 40 to 80 yards, not a bluff charge but an all out charge. This lasted about 45min to hour and when the bear was shot on the ground 3 dogs where left and they were really careful to make sure it was dead.. The variables change the way dogs run a bear or not run a bear, The calibur of dogs will change the percentage of catching, so will terrain but sooner or later if you hunt enough you will run into a bear that educates the best pack!

Hipshooter I respectful disagree with you, the dogs can usually catch up because the bear hasn't started running but when it decides to run those dogs aren't catching up unless it decides to stop and let them catch up.

Well, I sure don't claim to have a "real" pack of bear dogs, but we seem to catch a few each year. Enough that the dogs know what a bear is.

In any case, I don't remember a time where scenting conditions on a jumped bear, caused us to NOT catch it. Lots of times it hasn't let us catch one but that is because we couldn't get it jumped. I've had times where conditions were just horrible. Times where we had seen a bear and not one dog would rig less than 5 minutes later. Not just my truck, but multiple trucks of dogs that have rigged on plenty of bear.

Not many guys I now are catching them all the first couple weeks of our training season. The dogs are fat, the bear are lean, and the weather generally sucks. I've yet to see many dogs that do very good catching them when the temps are mid 80s plus and dew points are 65 plus. I'd sure like to though, cause I could hunt more.

In my opinion, 90 percent of those running bear, fighting bear or the bears that chase the dogs of the mountain are not caught or bayed because of the caliber of dogs. I know some are going to get upset but I have seen very few real packs of bear dogs. I listen and talk to hundreds that think they do but fall short when it comes time to catch the tough guys. As far as big bear go, big bear don't get big because they are easy to catch.

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catch..........i agree with you 100%even an outtashape bear dog tho will stick with a big walkin bruin its all in the dog .by the way IKE WHEN ARE YOU COMIN BACK TO CANADA..........I WANNA SEE IF YOUR BIG BAD WOLF PACK WILL HAVE BETTER LUCK...........OR ARE ALL YOUR DOGS STILL TOO TIRED LMFAO

Well, I catch my fair share of bears and I get outrun by those runnin bears a bit to. I certainly don't have the best bear dogs around either but they do get the job done. I am wondering what you are calling getting outrun? I've seen bears go down through ledges that a cat couldn't make it down let alone a dog. They can scale a crack in a ledge that I wouldn't think twice about climbing OR coming down. Just this last summer I was on a little bear and the dogs got ledged where the they just couldn't climb up through. A big tree had fallen against the ledge, the bear climbed up but the dogs couldn't get through. And no I don't have unathletic dogs. I had to walk about 3/4 of a mile around that ledge before finding another HAIRY spot to haul dogs up through. That bear was long gone and I never did get him rounded up. Are you calling situations like that getting outrun?
I havn't seen every dog around but if someone tells me that their dogs never get outrun.....I have to take that with a grain of salt......

What I'm saying is this, 90 percent of those bears that people say just out ran the dogs didn't in my opinion. Now there are circumstances where the bear just gets away, rocks, cliffs, rivers and such. For the most part, 90 percent of those running bear never out ran the dogs, the dogs never really wanted to catch the bear. JMO

Sounds like our man Catch here knows what he's talking about. I used to run with some of them (so-called) bear dogs, and had all kinds of problems with bears outruning the dogs. lol That is until I came across these old blooded walker dogs. Probably other good ones out their, but not in the numbers a guy needs to catch those tough mean running bears. Catch you aren't a walker man by chance are ya!! Oh yeah, some of these swamps are hell on bear chases though. Numbers go way down if lots of water is involved. WW

ok im pretty new to the bear hunting gig but ive bin out a few times and im a fast learner, i trust my teachers and we have caught some big bears this year. the worst is when you get a bear bayed solid and you get a dog that is a bit sly and sneaks around and grabs him by the arse and then the friggen thing breaks bay and they catch him again and you just keep walking a 100 yards and same thing happens, a man told me who has some great dogs and they speak for themselves, he told me that that dog would be culled, even if it was a great trail, tree and had lots of grit, he guides up here in ontario and said he just cant have them doing that.

smiley

Two seasons ago we ran a bear with a track of a 100#. We ran for four hours and finally dumped 3 fresh good hounds on the track. This bear was done...wrong it caught another gear. We seen it cross the road two more times. We dumped dogs we had caught off earlier on it but this thing had lungs. We could have shot this bear ahead of the dogs but we I don't have rabbit beagles. Don't get me wrong bear stopped, bear down.
To make a short story long saturday evening 10 hours after we started the track we pulled the last dog off. On Monday morning another group strarted a bear in the same location about 100#. They ran it for several hours and dumped in several times. They ended up shooting it on the ground ahead of the hounds.
I hunt in WV and there is no closed training season. Someone is hunting just about every day. I think we have some of the fastest bear around.