price of hounds these days

[dwalton]

From my experience, yes dogs do cost more out west than on the east side of the country. As far as handling a dog my are taught with a tritronics unit. Electricity is seldom used. They are trained with the toner. Electricity is only used to reinforce what I ask. Never ask a dog to do something that you are not in the position to reinforce. I never or very seldom correct a dog that is with in 10 feet of me. That the safe zone when that tone goes off the dogs are safe and get petted when they come to me. Dewey

[Borderpond]

I have bought almost every bear dog I ever owned. All except for a handfull were at least started when I bought them. I guess I am just saying I have alot of experience buying dogs.
I have paid $3000 for a dog on 2 occasions. Both well worth the money. Most of the others were $1500 ish. I am talking probably 2 dozen different dogs over the years. I was fortunate enough ,years back, to get hooked up with a dog jockey out west that ALWAYS treated me great. I bought solid bear dogs from him for years.Most between 1 and $2000. I had 3 or 4 that didnt work out well for me. He replaced them with dogs that were worth twice what I had paid them. Once, when he needed money asap, he sold me 3 dogs for $1500 total. All finished dogs. I sold 2 for $1500 each and kept the best strike dog I ever had, Moon, out of the 3.
I think the biggest factor in a dogs price is the person buying them. I have hunted with several very wealthy houndsmen(believe it or not !! LOL ) For them to pay 6 or $7000 for a dog was no big deal. Same dogs that I would love to have owned if I could have gotten them for $2500 , these guys had no problem paying more than twice that for them.
I am sure there are guys reading this that think me paying $3000 for a dog is nuts.To me , paying $3000 for something I really want, is not that big of a deal. Same as the guys that have a lot of money paying $7000. If youve got a couple million in the bank, you really like bear hunting, know you are going to love hunting the dog, what is $7000 ?

To sum it up, I believe the price a hound sells for is often more about the buyer than the dogs ability.

[doghunter]

I had to chime in. about 4 years ago i bought a 7 month puppy from a guy that would trail as good as any dog in my woods and run all day. he was horn broke. at the time i had an additional 35+ hounds. latter the same year i bout bitch frome him 12 months old that was also horn broke. they could be running a hot race on a wounded animal and as long as they could hear the horn they would come as fast as they were running the game.

so i purchased a trashbreaker. I had dogs that did all the above and spent many nights waiting to get a chance to catch the dogs. one i would turn out on the first race everytime because i could not catch him until his second or third day of running. after the trash breaker all when the needed to be caught i would hit the horn and walk to the tail gate. they would come stand in line to get in.

and now when the game hits the road I catch all the dogs and start my next track. no more running the legs of your dogs on junk. i can also run closer to the highway. if they hit the shoulder of the road i hit the horn and they come single file down the side of the road.

so it does not matter what you start with they all can be trained. because i had some wild dogs before tritronics.

[jcalder]

I like starting my own dogs from pups. I never have paid for a pup and probably wont unless both parents are exactly what Im looking for. I wouldnt pay more than 200 for a pup either. The way I see it I am the only one to mess with the dog, get it to do what I like it to do hopefully. For me half the fun of hound hunting is seeing a pup develop into a good hunting dog. The only problem I realy have is selling the dog after I spent all the time and effort getting it where I wanted!

[Brady Davis]

Borderpond.....Agreed 100%. If a guy wants to buy a broke dog for a grand or a million....Great for him. I get a kick out of people who take great pride in saying they'd never pay X amount for a pup or people who swear by buying broke dogs as well....To each his own.

Borderpond, I don't think you're crazy at all. I'd pay 3k for the right dog or 1k+ for the right pup all day long....