From Bear hunting to fox hunting...

[mpritchard]

In 2012 they took away the bear hunting in my state so instead of taking on more lawful recreation like smoking pot, I changed gears to the fox hunting. It has been 3 years and a slow transition but we finally got it. After phasing out the bear hounds and training up a pack of fox dogs that have never seen a bear, we are finally catching fox. What a blast to learn something 180 degrees from the bear hunting, and something that may be less exciting to some, but far more challenging.

The last time I was on this site they didn't have a place to talk fox hunting, so this is cool! I have been needing the exchange, so thanx BUDDY for the efforts!! I have been enjoying reading the fox hunting posts here.

[newby]

Just curious, when you started your new pack, did you go with a different Ind of hound? One bred specifically for foxes/ other varmints? How did you go about training them from scratch? I might be moving to an area with a good fox population, don't think my cat/lion dogs will be able to make the transition.

[mpritchard]

Newby, at first I tried getting my bear hounds to do it, and as some guys can make it work I could not, so I eventually retired them out, but I did use them as start/check dogs as I got pups going, then it was just a matter of getting the new dogs on game, making sure to keep them off bear. After a while though, I needed a good tree dog, because locating fox in a tree isn't easy for me let alone a dog, so I started hunting with a friend that has two good tree dogs and I found out that I had been catching a Foxes all along, but my young dogs couldn't locate them, now they got it figured out, so we catch them every weekend now. My guess though is if your dogs will run bobcats, then you are way ahead of me when I started.