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I have a three year old bluetick that was started on bears. he does really well on bears he has a real cold nose and is very smart. the problem is i cant get him to put his head down to run a bobcat track. He will strike them off the box if they're hot but once he hits the ground he runs heads up and overruns the track. Does anyone out there know any tips that would help slow him down? he seems like he'll make a good cat dog. any help will be much appreciated

Leghound,
I probably should not be the one to respond, since this is one of my pet peeves, but your post looked so lonely

I have heard of great bear dogs that were also good bobcat dogs, but I think in most cases, the dog was started on bobcat before ever used on bear. Every time I have been in a situation of hunting bobcat with a great bear dog, I have wished I had enough money to buy the dog so that I could make sure I would never have to hunt with it again. The problem you pointed out is ONE of the reasons why.

I know a lot of bear hunters that like to run bobcat in the off season, and They could answer you better, but I think they find that the dogs will settle down eventually if you just keep them on bobcats for a period with no bear in-between. If he is smart, and likes to catch stuff, he will figure out that what he is doing is not catching anything and he will begin to change what he is doing. Some very good cat dogs will hunt head up anytime they can and only put their nose down when they absolutely have to. If a dog can handle this style of track work, it can be amazing. If they cannot, it is a disaster. But I have seen young dogs that start out as a disaster and end up amazing.

If you can hunt him with a good bobcat dog, it will help. You just have to hope the owner of the cat dog has some patience, and that his dog learns to ignore yours completely for awhile. Just keep him on the cats and off the bears if you can. I am sure he will catch on. Some amazing bobcat dogs have been made out of dogs that were culled from bear hunting because they were too smart to enjoy getting their guts ripped out. But they were switched to bobcat and never again allowed to hunt bear.

thanks david that makes sense. i was wondering if i messed up by starting him on bears before cats. i guess i'll try starting any pups i get on cats first

Ha! Glad to see I'm not the only one with that problem. I have two extra nice Trigg/English pups I started this year. I emailed Mike leonard about starting them correctly. He warned me not to start them on bear if I wanted to catch cat and fox with them. He advised me to coon hunt them first other wise they wouldn't want to slow down and trail. Bear season was in and I would rather catch a bear than a coon any old day so what did I do...first bear track I came acrossed out go my pups. They did AWSOME! Caught the rascal and treed like crazy. Few more bear races and they were bear dogs.
Bear season ended so I started coon hunting. Them rascals ran through the swamps head up looking for that good ol' strong bear scent. It took about 8 hunts before they learned that they have to get into the brush and grub out that track.
Wish I would have listened to Mike. Funny how us young guys listen to experienced hunters and then go off and do the exact opposite of what we were told. Oh well I won't be making that mistake again.

yeah its hard to hold em back when they're wanting to go. its so much fun watchin a young dog get started. but you know what they say - in order to be old and wise you must first be young and dumb

You guys can have combination dogs; I would say that keeping them hunting is the best thing you can do. If you want a deluxe bobcat dog then I would say break them off everything but bobcat even then it take a damn good dog to be a deluxe son of a beach. You can catch bobs with a bear dog and that heads up style can come in very handy on a jumped bobcat it just does not work very well when it’s not yet catchable. Don’t give up just keep trying you will catch a few.

sourdough

after bear season it seems to take my dogs 8 or 10 varmit races to start to settle down and a good month to look good again dogs get bear simple alot faster then they get varmit minded

leghound you may try roading your hound till he slows down then take him hunting it should slow him down on track ,it should only take a few times, it has worked for me in the past but all dogs are differnt good luck with your hound.

thanks to all for all the pointers this forum is such a great thing lots of helpful advice its great for this sport

In my opinion you want your dog to run a bobcat just like he does a bear.Run it to catch it.Alot of people seem to think that a bear dog never has to put his nose on the ground.Bear dogs have to put thier nose on the ground and cold trail just like every other dog has to.Then when your dogs jump whatever they are running they have to pick thier heads up and go or they will never catch what thier chasing.Thats when the big differance comes,a bear gives off alot more scent than a cat and a cat plays alot more tricks.The dogs can't drift a cat track like they can a bear track.If they do they will make to many losses to ever catch it.If you have a smart dog it will figure it out and if you don't you won't catch many cats any way.Young dogs are just like young kids,they have short attention spans and are a little to hiper.Thats not a good combination for bobcat hunting.Run them as much as you can and be patient.

i would try putting him with some good cold trailing stock, like stated before it makes you pull your hair out watching a dog run around barking and the other dog is rooting and grubbing an old track but ive seen it and if the dog has a lot of hunt eventually there will be pissing posts or a stump along the track where the cat spent some time or a spot where there is just more scent and the dog running around says woooooh and puts his head down and begins to trail. it might take several trips. or just wait until its jumped and turn him if you dont have any hair to pull out. good luck.