BigGameHoundsmen.com

has anybody tride this? last bear season i tride this and it was pretty fun just woundering if anybody hunts like this

Haven't done it on purpose but two years ago had a dog get out of box on me while placing another up on the rig. She hit the ground and went hunting waited about 20min and she started opening and circled back towards the road and brought a 300 pounder across right in front of the truck. Dumped the truck had him treed 15min later.

Ihave done this in the past( only when we were bored and couldn't find any thing to run) but don't think it is a good idea now for many reasons. We have to many wolves where I hunt, I wouldn't want to take the chance. Another point is if the dog you free cast doesn't strike a track and you can't call him in you could be out there a long time.If you do free cast you should make sure that the dog is straight and doesn't run off game if you are bear hunting you don't want to chase a coyote forr hours. My final thought is when you free cast, you run what ever size bear they bring out. You might want a small one if you are training or a big one during hunt season and you spend half a day chasing something you don't want.

Seems to work pretty good for me. I free cast a lot when hunting hogs, bobcat or fox out here in CA and I am now doing it more on bear. Taking a couple of broke dogs with me and hunting them off of quad trails. I can get a lot more caught this way for my clients.

Tim

I prefer rigging for bears best , but when the acorns make in some hard to get places I"ve had real good luck casting dogs into those areas with lots of acorns. Ya do need broke dogs though to freecast for bear or lions. I have several 100% broke dogs up in my hound cemetary.

We get out about 5:00 AM and rig all the roads and if we don't find anything by daylight we freecast the dogs and start walking.

i do that when the bears are on the rivers eating salmon. theres no other way to get a bear started on the river except to walk them in and its so thick and nasty here that you cant walk em on a lead.
other than that i usually rig em on all the logging roads.
we just put one in a tree yesterday. about 200 pounds with a kinda big head.
now theyre peeling trees good, i gotta get back out there tonight an try again!

I'm real green to hound hunting, but It's pretty much the only way we've been hunting bear- free cast in front of horses or on foot in wilderness type areas. We run some pretty cold tracks, but all of our pups are turning into trailing hounds, not just 'me to dogs'
Mr. White is for sure correct, good broke dogs are sure handy- get you going in the right direction, and tell on young dogs starting trash.

Did a bunch of casting last year and it worked out just fine for us.

The only problem is if you ride or walk far then the dogs dont have the extra burst of energy or either do you in order to keep up on a bear race.

I usually walk hunt my hounds unless I have company. I see alot more and alot larger bear in the steep roadless country I prefer to hunt.
and a lot less people

I know this is an old thread, but I thought I'd ask for tips on free casting. The areas I hunt have very few roads, so rigging isn't really an option. I do not have access to private land, so bait and trail cameras are not an option for me either. Other guys in the areas I hunt bait on private property next to the game lands and run their dogs off those bait sites. This training season I have been hiking in with dogs on leads until Lola, my Plott/Walker cross starts going nuts, then my boys and I fan out and look for tracks, once we find a track (or at least don't find any deer tracks) we turn the dogs out, and let them have at it. It's sure been a lot of fun but it is a lot of hiking in hard territory. I think that if I just keep at it eventually it'll work out. From reading this thread it sounds like I'm already behind as my best dog is still young at 3yrs old and not 100% broke. We have only put them on 1 bear for sure this training season, and had a good long run but nothing treed. I'm pretty sure that bear crossed a hiking trail after visiting a bait site operated by other hunters on private land. I guess this brings up a hunting ethics questions about putting my dogs on bear tracks I know are coming out of another guys bait site. I don't want to "steal" another guy's bear, and my hounds picked up that track a good 2 miles as the crow flies away from that bait site. Am I violating hunting ethics by turning my dogs out on that track? When I did it, I couldn't hear any hounds, and I never saw a hound the whole day during the chase and while catching my dogs, so I'm not turning my dogs into someone else's chase. any advice on either question is appreciated.