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I just bought a new bluetick female and was wondering what I should do first to get her to chase bobcats some day.

I know you don't want to hear it but putting a good handle on her is a great start and pretty important if you are trying to start her on cats with out a trained dog. I know that having a handle on a hound is scoffed at by quite a few hunters but let me explain this to you. if you have a started hound you only have to STOP the pup from doing most things or handle it when it's close to you not real hard. now if you are teaching that pup to run cats by yourself you have to be able to teach it to do things. so a good understanding is required so the dog knows that every time you yell doesn't always mean to stop,go to the truck or come here. It can be difficult to sic a young just starting hound on a track thats less then perfect AFTER you called it off the track to began with. in running cats there are some differences from area to area that need to be accounted for but if you can keep the dog excited and thinking at the same time your doing pretty well. second would be to work the dog on trails until it can handle a rough intermittent trail quickly. the third is treeing as with bobcats this is trickier as they aren't always in the tree they climbed and at least here are normally not so a pup that can check and verify where the cat is actually at is important. after that keep the dog in excellent shape so the cat races don't wear it completely out and it still has the energy to out think the cat towards the end . the last thing is to put down in good areas often and hope the cats will teach her the rest with out the pup getting discouraged. I know there must be a hundred different ways to train a pup but if your training it alone thats the way that worked for me. It also provided me with a pup trainer that i new and trusted that handled real well and it makes teaching future pups so much easier.

pegleg, what are you useing for traling

Deerslayer I am not absolutely sure of your question but I use grawes bobcat scent I have used their and other brands of lion scent in the past but since a bobcat hound in my area switches to lion fairly easily and the cold tracks are a more thoughtful pace. I focus on the hardest thing I plan on asking them to do, trail bobcats. I don't get a lot of hot tracks here so they must be willing and able to cold trail a bobcat . this is the part they have the hardest time with. then the actual race which is why I focus on their exercise. I hunt horse back even though its not the most productive method. so they put a few miles on every day. my recent generations of pups have been started with the help of my older hounds more so then me trying to teach them everything from start to finish. if a new hunter puts in the miles to train a pup by themselves it pays off big. keep in mind not every hound is a cathound or will turn out. It is very important to start with a good cat bred pup in the first place to keep from becoming discouraged if they don't turn out. it takes a long time to train a pup one on one and I don't really recommend it for every one. a experienced hound is so helpful AFTER the pup is truly well started.

The best advise I can give is hunt her with one of them Nance dogs across the river couldnt wait to get home and give you a little razzin. You are on the right track with her, she is a nice looking pup and with your energy I believe she will be a little machine. Keep our fingers crossed for snow. later, Andy

I had her out on a big tom track today and she was wanting to go with the old dogs. She would put her nose in the track and then take off for a while put would come back in a few minutes. I guess that is all right for four months old . We are going to go again tomorrow and see what happens can't hurt her to show her lots of hot tracks.