Az High desert

[SASS]

Awesome video! Thanks for posting it. What lines of hounds are you running out there?

[1bludawg]

Love the video! Some people think a 70lb hound is to big,I'm not one of them.
Would sure like to try a pup out of Clyde if you ever breed him to a good female and sell any pups.
Robin Powell
Oregon

[Goose]

Really enjoyed this, hopefully one day I will make it out west to run hounds, could careless about harvesting anything but some great memories and photos....

[Wht]

[Wht]

[Wht]

[david]

[SASS]

[perk]

Great video, beautiful scenery, definitely different than the country I run in I like the markings on that blackback male, He is a looker! How is he bred?

[Wht]

Well David, she and I not only live together, we work together 7 days a week, and even hunt together sometimes. Pretty sure if I told her that, she won't let me hunt him at ALL...lol, besides she hunts her own dogs, and often comes in after I do. But seriously, I'm not prejudice, I'll hunt whatever gets it done best. So far I like a lot of things about our cur. But I'm not seeing the track power that is required here, on all but hot tracks. He's still young, 18 months, and only one individual of the breed, so we'll see. That young english is off of my Clyde dog, but he's the only surviving dog of his litter, so not much of a barometer on Clyde's production yet.

And perk, he's out of a Mike Kemp female(from Mike), and "some big walker dog", That's all I know.

[perk]

Gotcha, he is a good looking sucker

[Dan McDonough]

David, that sounds just like you singing. You should do a cover of that song. I like that video. It came at just the right time for me.

[Liz ODell]

Wow I haven't been on here in forever, kind of a nice break from Facebook.
I moved to the northern Arizona/southern Utah border in 2015 from north eastern California.
The terrain within 40 miles of here varies from cactus type desert to high sagebrush desert, pinyon juniper, pine forest and big tree forest and lots of dumb cliffy crap.
There is some cliff rose in places and some other brush further north and south but most of it is somewhat barren of any understory other than a brief period during spring or monsoons there are some grasses, I wish we had brush here and more understory because it would definitely improve the conditions and I also miss hunting that thicker stuff makes good races.
I was told by quite a few people that you couldn't catch bobcats without snow here when I moved here, well yes, you can and I do and can catch bobcats year round here and have in other parts of Arizona and Utah as well.
As other folks have mentioned your window of opportunity here can be really short, the worst thing here is the wind probably followed by the sun and it changes rapidly here between wet and dry but that damn wind is like every day here.
I have 9 dogs, most are all related in one way or another and most are registered blueticks except 2, one of those is mostly Trigg with some tree hound and the other is mostly bluetick related to mine with a little west coast running x tree mixed in.
My biggest obstacle has been moving to a new place from the place I lived my entire life until then, I went through times where I thought maybe I needed different dogs when I first moved here but I later realized the problem was me, and also there was a lot more game where I came from, learning to enjoy (or at least try not to be bored) cold trailing has been hard too, especially the days when you trail all day and don't get jumped before the conditions take it away or you run out of day (no night hunting here either which sucks!).
I will say I feel the more lions my dogs are on in a given period the worse in my opinion they run the first couple of bobcats again, but I've also caught both in the same day as well, it's something I notice when they are consistently on one or the other more for a period of time, as a side note to that my dogs cold trailed bobcats just fine already when I moved here although I think they have definitely gotten better but they did not cold trail lions at all because I had never asked them to, they did learn (or become more interested perhaps a better description) to cold trail them though once I started figuring out how to find them better here. The running dog seems to be able to smell what my other dogs can as well, so I'm not convinced cold trailing ability is always a genetic thing especially when I watch man trailing dogs of non-hound breeds working bad scent lines, I think there is a lot of room for learning it.
I don't really have any idea how cold nosed my dogs are or aren't compared to most other peoples dogs here.

[dwalton]

Cold trailing is a is a expression of what we thing is going on as hunters. I think we understand it very little. AS you may think, I feel there is a lot to learn from service dogs training that are use for things other than trailing game animals. I feel most dogs can smell about the same what makes the difference is what a dog does with what it smells. There are a lot of traits one needs in a dog to make it effective in trailing game. There are dogs or groups of dogs out there that can take a track be it in any conditions or the age of a track and move it to tree game. I think it has very little to do with being able to smell better than another dog. It is all the traits one has in a dog that puts game at bay or in a tree. What do you all think that a dog has that makes it a dog that always comes up with the game no matter how old the track is or the conditions that it is hunted in? If it was ability to trail we would all be hunting with blood hounds, if it was smarts we would all be hunting with a border collier. Think about it. Dewey

[Dan McDonough]

Well I went down around in a circle around the Phoenix area. From Wickenburg to Prescott to Payson to Globe and back into town. My family and I were on a mission to find out what area we'll live in.

I really enjoyed going through the whole area around Prescott. That is a beautiful place and seems like I'm driving through a movie. I wasn't to threatened by the area and feel like I could catch a cat there if they stay away from the cliff walls.

Down in the valley I will need a dofferent kind of dog I think. I have a feeling that my lurchers will shine down there, at least when they're not melting. They have the kind of nose to work there and their speed will take some of the time and wind away from a cat.

The area around the Teddy Rosevelt lake looks pretty fun and I'll give that a shot as well.

Payson and all of the area around there doesn't look to terrible. I can see running that but it's not at the top of my list. It does have a few creeks that look decent but there's more cactus between Payson and Phoenix than I would like to see.

From Globe to Phoenix is another planet. That is some severe terrain and I don't know how humans or dogs could stay alive for long in any weather. The way that area reads on a map is that it looks like a serious continental bottleneck and just perfect for a lion to go through undeceted by humans. I think a half dozen people die in there every year. Some are found, some are not.

I should be there sometime this year. It depends on the sale of our WI home but I will figure out a way to catch cats in that country. I won't have any other choice really.