BigGameHoundsmen.com

What do you consider to be a cold track on snow and dry ground? I've been having a lot of debate on what's cold and what's not I have not hunted much dry ground! I know everyone has a difrence idea and awenser and I find them all to be interesting the snow hunters can judge between snow storms and have a fairly good idea and the dry ground boys can go only off of how there dogs act on track or how they strike! What is y'all's opinion on this?

It all depends on conditions. I have see dogs bobcat trail a 36 hour old bobcat track on bare frozen ground and in snow. Dogs open and work on a lion tracks on bare ground that was 9 days old. I have also seen them not be able to work a 15 minute old bobcat on snow in the rain. I have seen several bobcats ran out of a road and not get a open or even a tail wag. Cold trailing and cold nosed are two different things for me. I have seen a lot of dogs that people think are cold nose open on a cold track working really hard and not move the track. I have seen dogs get on a 10 to 12 hour old track in the snow or bare ground skip out of the country, opening once in awhile and jump and tree it many hours and miles later. A cold nose has very little to do with catching game. It is the ability and drive to tack a track and move it as fast and far as it takes to tree the game you started. If a dog has that he will cold trail and can be taught that he can take a old track and catch it. Dogs are taught by how we hunt to be a better or worst cold trailer. If you walk behind a dog and encourage him to work a track ,where to find a loose he will become a much better cold trailer. In the reverse I have seen many hunters that did not have the patience to help or let their dogs cold trail but call them out to go look for a better track, thus teaching a dog to not cold trail. Lion and bobcat hunting is cold trailing for me, most dogs can catch ether one when jumped. Just some of my thoughts. Each to their own. Dewey

dwalton wrote: A cold nose has very little to do with catching game. It is the ability and drive a track and move it as fast and far as it takes to tree the game you started. If a dog has that he will cold trail and can be taught that he can take a old track and catch it.

Quite possibly the best explanation I have read above!

To prove this theory?

Spend time hunting cats in heavy wolf country!

Mike

Thanks for that awesome reply dWalton all of my dogs are very silent on track I have found this to my advantage in most cases in this Rocky crap hole I live in I will explain to you on what I think is going on with my dogs and the. U can chime in again I know I'm saying things wrong after reading ur reply but it's the best way I can explain it I have 3 dogs 2 older dogs I got last year and a 2 year old I'm not new to hounds just Bobcats no more lion for me so I'm restarting fresh... My 2 year old dog has cought a few cats solo on his own but They were very hot tracks he acts like he can't even smell a 12 hour old track ( judging the age from snowfalls) so Where I'm at with him is that if he runs the track it's really hot and if not then it's cold and one of my older dogs is the same way but the other ild dog will run any track it seems he may not catch it but he will run himself tired all dang day and usually he will run that track and the young dog will eventually take over if the dogs will not run a track I start walking and encourage them like u are saying and it helps a ton sometime I walk along ways before the young dog will take that track I may be doing things wrong but it's working the old guys usually fall out the race at the jump or before because the young dog takes over so is my young dog just not smelling the colder tracks or is he just not have the experience to work with little scent and also the one older dog who will only chase a fairly hot track can he not smell it or does he just not have the ambition to cold trail?

Bingo!

Dewey, for a guy that doesn't always put what he things into the words he wants all of the time, you nailed this one very well. You would have gotten the Robin Hood award but no one else has shot yet.

Years ago before gps a buddy and i put out on froze in bobcat track in the bottom of a canyon with a loud creek. We each had 1 dog and heard very few barks before we could no longer hear them over the creek. It took us 15 to 20 minutes to get to a point where we could hear back down a side draw and we could hear my cold nosed dog chipping away at this old track but not a sound from my buddies dog. I was feeling pretty good about my cold nosed dog and how well she was moving that old track and my buddies dog didn't even know the track was there. We listened for probably 10 minutes and decided to drive on up and get above her where we figured she would cross the road. When we got up there we could see in front of us something had crossed but way to sloppy to be a cat. When we got out to look at the track i heard my buddies dog treeing about a quarter mile down the ridge and the tracks were dog tracks on a jumped cat. Long story short it took 10 minutes for my dog to get to the road and another 5 to slide into the tree. My dog had caught quite a few cats by herself but she trailed on more than she caught. I learned that day that some dogs are content to trail and had i not hunted her with that other dog that day would of probably continued thinking i had a cold nosed dog.

Great thread.

how do you know the track is 36 hours old? Not being a smart@$$ but if you did know the track was 36 hrs old, why would you cast a hound on that old of a track???

Sometimes that's all you've got. Trying a track you probably won't catch is better than not trying a track at all.

Time is a factor of how tough a track is but conditions are king. Followed by how clean the track is. Relative straight line is much better than a back and forth, round and round mess. Just wish there was a way to decipher that before the dog was let loose.

Undertheradar: I was hunting started a track one morning had the B team with me, Seen a track in the frost they were going the right way, turned out trailed most of the day lost my dogs. Came back the next morning with the A team, started a track off the rig on the road above where I had started the track the day before, trailed down to where I started the track the day before. It was the same cat from the day before and the dogs quit the track where it had been stomped out. I then looked at my watch and counted the hours.
In the snow cut a track and turned loose, dogs trailed over the mountain and came out on a cat that that had put on the morning before and treed and killed. I can not be sure but know it was a least that old. There are many ways to age a track in the dirt or snow because of the drying or freezing conditions. I hunt most every day, I check the weather condition before I leave, when I get home and before I go to bed. I also check the back country weather station as far as high and lows, amount of snow or rain also. I determine if I hunt, where I hunt and how far I have to drive to get to conditions good enough to hunt in. I have hunted for a living a lot of winters one learns to age tracks and know what conditions cause what kind of tracking. It boils down to it is just how I see it. Not being a smart ass but would you like to bet against me? Good hunting Dewey

Hunting for a living the most efficient way possible would be slinging iron. Which you've done right?

This is happened in the early 70's and is the exception.Didn't do any good all night, met up with another man at 5 a.m. he said at 3:00 a.m. his Buster (a very good hound) wrung his tail and smelled cat on the log that fell off a log truck at the curve, he ask do y'all think Dixie can do anything with it. We took Dixie there, she grunted and whined on the log at 5:30 a.m. And went to working that track, a whine every now and then but it was another 30 min. before she opened. After several miles at 1:15 pm they jumped the cat, it ran less then 15 min. and treed, a small female!
Buster had done some good striking & trailing in the past so I would call that a cold track when he wouldn't or couldn't move it and they didn't ary other dog open with Dixie for over an hour. Now she had a cold nose and was the best bobcat dog I have ever seen, sure wished I'd have owned her.
Don't know why I told that story, y'all talking about cold tracks just made think of it. Sorry guys.
Here in Florida scenting condition can go from good to bad or from bad to good in a short period of time. Typically a hound can not trail and jump a cat here much over an hour or two old, seems like the hounds in the 60's & 70's could trail em older than that but since they're dead it might not be so.
It's sure a lot different here then where Dewey hunts, or I've never seen a good trailing dog in 50 years of hound hunting.
I did have a blue tick deer hound I free cast one Tues. afternoon that struck and trailed a half mile to our property line, she came out on a deer track leaving our place that I had found & marked Sun. morning.
When I got home and told Daddy about it though he said, you wouldn't believe that if you hadn't seen it would you? I told him, no I wouldn't, he said he's about the same too.

Great reading here guys. Thank you for the stories. I laughed about your dad's comment Scrub. Still laughing.

oneguy282 Yes in the 70' and early 80' I trapped as well as hunted.
The last trapping that I did was about 7 years ago I set a dozen traps for a live coyote and caught a few cats before a coyote came along. Trapping taught me a lot about the bobcats as well as hound hunting did. I trapped as a kid several years before the hound hunting bug got me. When you can walk into the woods and lay a trap on the ground so a cat or coyote will step into it you will know the animal well enough to help you hunt them with hounds. I could take more bobcat easier with traps but enjoy it better with hounds. I take far more with my dogs than most trappers do now. There are three or four hound men in the state now that take more cats than the trappers do in the 45 to 65 bobcats a year range
The point of this post is cold trailing, it varies with condition, where you hunt and the type of dog you hunt. The dog that makes the most noise on a track will probably not be your best cold trailer. I probabaly hunt in more types of condition and environments them most of the people that will read this and I use the same dogs. I will drive 250 to 350 miles to get ahead or out of storm be it the coast range ,the Cascades, Central Oregon or the high desert sometimes all in the same week. I love to hunt places that I have never been before and usually catch bobcats in all of them. Not bragging just letting you know. I study Google Earth to find habitat that will hold cats that I have never been in before. Be it Oregon coast or Eastern Oregon ,Nevada[ when I could hunt there], Colorado,Washington, or California I find bobcats not hard to catch in spite of what the locals seem to think. I only let my dogs run bobcats [a purest]. As David said in his bobcat hunting book to hunt this hard, this much for bobcat it will cost you in other places in your life. Hunt your dogs on what you have to hunt, how you want to hunt them. We all have a place it is up to you and only you as to where that is. Good hunting and hunt what you have. Dewey