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NCB. I did not intend to make it seem as though your ground is easy in comparison to ours on all fronts. I can only speak from what I saw on a trip to get a pup in indiana. After we left NY it was like a pancake the rest of the way. Im sure that there are hills and nasty thickets there too. And as you go farther west I know that our mountains look like ant hills in comparison. Its just that here with thick mountains and no roads yote hunting is not as practical as far as interception of the race and getting a shot, finding a yote is easy but killing one on the run, not so much. As is the case everywhere we all have techniques that work and some that dont. I hope I havent offended you in any way, just trying to explain my situation.

Spike no offense taken. Only thing I'm offended buy is this thick sheet of glass we have now on top of the snow, with no damn fresh snow falling on top of it! I like this site but I would much rather be out trashing my bear dogs on some yotes!

I know what you mean we have had a few days of -10 degrees now and everything is like a rock. Cats or yotes would be tough at this point. Thanks for the replies,
Dave

I run my hounds on coyote and train all the pups on coon and honestly dont have any problems come bear season,even free casting, but thats just me.Good luck hunting!

We kill yotes all winter and kill bear all fall with the same dogs. Winters are way too long in michigan just to let the dogs or myself sit around in my opinion.

I guess I like to look at game in a tree as much as I like listening to my dogs. I can't stand it when I get into a coyote race or fox for that matter. It doesn't bother me one bit if my dogs strike and run a coon or a cat when i'm bear hunting. Just another opinion.

michigan_bearhunter06 wrote:We kill yotes all winter and kill bear all fall with the same dogs. Winters are way too long in michigan just to let the dogs or myself sit around in my opinion.

Thats for sure!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

why not run deer then switch back to bear?same reason i wouldnt run my good bearhound on coyote because i dont want to be running them when im bear hunting.keeping a dog straight is hard enough. keeping an extra dog just for coyote is a better option for me i can hunt with lots of other coyote hunters and their is no limit to how many dogs you can put down and no closed season. bear season is like six weeks.i would run bobcat and if they run one no big deal its going to happen very rarely bear hunting not like coyotes that are on every bait. rigging to there chances of riggin cats is rare here coyotes live on the roads at night so chances are real good striking them the roads are to hard to see a track most of the time.99 percent of my runs are bear have a great old start dog named joe bear only the 1 percent is young dogs i started with coon on.but wish i didnt have to start them on coon cause that causes a problem but pups need to start somewhere especialy with the bear season in maine . its getting better here though .thanks guys for putting in the work to get things changed it is not an easy thing to do in todays ways of thinking.

Good deer response kordog I like that

We live in Wisconsin and our dogs are trained to run coyote and bobcat in the snow and bear on dirt. We havent had a mixed run in a very long time. The dogs learn what they are suppose to run. A good dog wont pull off what it is cast on.

houndsman78 wrote:We live in Wisconsin and our dogs are trained to run coyote and bobcat in the snow and bear on dirt. We havent had a mixed run in a very long time. The dogs learn what they are suppose to run. A good dog wont pull off what it is cast on.

Agreed 100% with you houndsmen78 the dogs are smarter than a guy thinks. its amazing what you can teach your dog!

I run the same dogs on yote all winter that I do on bear in the warm months out here in Utah. It took me a good long time to decide to do it though. I had all of the concerns mentioned in these threads. I worried about everything and even made up new things to worry about.

I finally decided to throw caution to the wind because I was done with competing for lion tracks and lion ground. I wanted to run my dogs. Every houndsman I knew and highly respected advised me against it. I was told things like you have good hounds, why ruin them, and they will always just run yotes, etc. etc.

Ive been running yotes hard now for about 5 years, best winter running I have ever had by a huge margin. I learned a TON about my dogs. Who really had guts and speed and brains etc. The only thing running yotes has done for me is my bear catching rate went WAY up in the spring. I mean WAY up.

I only regret not doing it earlier in my hound career.

LCK wrote:I run the same dogs on yote all winter that I do on bear in the warm months out here in Utah. It took me a good long time to decide to do it though. I had all of the concerns mentioned in these threads. I worried about everything and even made up new things to worry about.

I finally decided to throw caution to the wind because I was done with competing for lion tracks and lion ground. I wanted to run my dogs. Every houndsman I knew and highly respected advised me against it. I was told things like you have good hounds, why ruin them, and they will always just run yotes, etc. etc.

Ive been running yotes hard now for about 5 years, best winter running I have ever had by a huge margin. I learned a TON about my dogs. Who really had guts and speed and brains etc. The only thing running yotes has done for me is my bear catching rate went WAY up in the spring. I mean WAY up.

I only regret not doing it earlier in my hound career.

wally, vey well written and i agree 100 %. i also run yotes all winter and bear in summer. i think we had 1 yote chase last summer nad it still sounded good.

Collar Depot wrote:I live in WI, we run our beardogs on Coyotes all winter to keep them active and there is no issues when bear season comes around, but I only let my dogs run coyotes when there is snow, I dont run them on dry ground becuse that is when they sould be running bears. If you do that you should be in good shape, you will make better dogs also.

Amen to that. Same hear the dogs are smarter than you guys think! In the winter whatever track i start my dogs on are the ones they are going to start cat and coyote. And when they are let off a bait(on bear ground) they know there going to chase bear.