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There are a lot of atmospheric conditions that contribute to or detract from how well a dog can move a track but the one that I have seen that consistently produces good running is a temperature inversion where the temp near the ground is lower than above with a high barometric pressure and less than 3 mph wind. When that happens the smoke coming out of the chimney goes up a little and then flattens out and just hangs there. On my way to my hunting ground I go past a plant the makes frozen potato products and I can tell how good the running will be by the way the steam looks and acts. Typically, temperature inversions happen on real cold days. We had real good inversion conditions this morning and I'm glad I had to work because if I didn't I would have had to break my no hunting below zero rule. It's -26 this morning!

Twopipe,

I agree with you on the inversions factor although I have found at very low temperatures older dirt tracks don't give up a lot of scent. Hotter tracks allow airbore scent to be trapped and most of the time a good dog can run it without grubbing.

Some of the best I have found is decent cloud cover, low barometric pressure and moderate temperature say betwen 20-55 Deg. and some subsurface moisture so you can scrape your boot heel across it and see it moist under the dry surface. At times under these conditions I have seen good trailing dogs trail lion tracks that are several days old, and carry them at a brisk pace all day long.

This is what makes this hounding business so great and challenging. Mike, you just described the almost exact opposite of the conditions that I was talking about but they both produce well in the different areas. Since we are dealing with God created living animals that we can't talk to there will be days that leave us scratching our heads because the opposite of what we thought would take place happened.
One thing I failed to mention was that during our bobcat season we usually have snow.

Twopipe,

I agree and as most know I am pretty much a lion hunter and do quite a bit of it on bare ground but I won't pass a chance to run one in snow if I get it and I also can't resist a big bobcat track although regardless of the conditions they usually beat me up humble me big time and leave me laying awake and night wondering what happened. LOL!