UKC Forums - Coon Sense

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Posted by Fisher13 on 10-01-2015 11:10 AM:

Coon Sense

Coon Sense is this a real genetic trait or is it pretty much guys blowing smoke. Thoughts and opinions?

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Posted by RLenhart on 10-01-2015 12:23 PM:

Seriously I think what your calling "coon sense" is genetic because intelligence in general is somewhat genetic. A dog that get's shown more may learn more thru repetition but he'll never out think a dog that's just more intelligent. I think the pup that figures out how to open the kennel door when he's 10 weeks old is probably also going to be the 1st dog to figure out coons climb trees also.

Posted by Dan Dogs on 10-01-2015 01:30 PM:

what I call coon sense is a dogs instinct to know where to find a coon rather than stumble across one. and it has to do with brains.

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Posted by The Judge on 10-01-2015 02:03 PM:

Dogs are smarter then people like to give them credit for. A dog that has spent a lot of time in the woods will put together were to find a coon fast. If its hot a dog knows to go to were he smells water because time after time he has hit a track off water. Some dogs remember where they have treed a coon in the past and run right to the tree 1st and check it. I had a dog like that and hated it. The dog would check the last 2 or 3 trees it treed on first before it began to hunt. I believe "coonsence" is learned.

Posted by Fisher13 on 10-01-2015 02:23 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Dan Dogs
what I call coon sense is a dogs instinct to know where to find a coon rather than stumble across one. and it has to do brains.

This is what I am referenceing a genetic disposition to know where to find coon and to hunt coon. Does it exist?

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Posted by RLenhart on 10-01-2015 02:39 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Fisher13
This is what I am referenceing a genetic disposition to know where to find coon and to hunt coon. Does it exist?

I think it does exist and it's probably a combination of genetics and learning. A good example would be a spot I hunt allot. There is a very high steep hill with thick grape vines on top and there is always coons in those grape vines but there's also a nice stream that parallels that hill. Sometimes I really just want my dog to hunt along that stream but it doesn't matter if I walk him 600 yards along the base of that hill when I cut him loose he will ALWAYS turn on a dime (no matter what direction I point him) run straight over that hill and check those vines because he knows exactly where we are and he's probably treed more coons on that hill in his lifetime than anywhere else. "BUT" Take him almost anywhere else and the dog will usually seem to know to check a creek bottom.

Posted by msinc on 10-01-2015 02:48 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Fisher13
This is what I am referenceing a genetic disposition to know where to find coon and to hunt coon. Does it exist?

This is a good subject, and I believe it does exist. I have two young dogs right now that I am working on and they are opposites in this regard. Here's what I mean: the first one, ever since he was a puppy would get in the woods and always go right to the nearest stream or bottom. He will take a shortcut thru the woods to get where coons could be struck. I thought it was a fluke but he continued this trait long after he got started, knew what a coon was and does it to this day. This dog is 26 months old and comes from a line that is known for "ambushing" coons. He was not hard to break off of junk at all.
The next dog would naturally head for the deer woods from little on and got running them pretty bad. This one was a lot of effort to get to stop the junk and was just as hard and time consuming {maybe a little worse} to get off of fox. Now, 6 months and a lot of coons later this dog has learned what the first one seemed to be born with. Both of these dogs were started the same way in the same woods by the same person.
Bottom line, based on what I have seen over time, coon sense definitely exist. But, it can be natural or learned. I believe you are better off with a natural because that dog is way ahead and continues to learn more over the one that is just starting to learn it.

Posted by toe cutter on 10-01-2015 03:36 PM:

its learned.
same breeds of dogs are used for bear, cat ,hogs and so on.
they learn sense for what ever animal you expose them to.

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Posted by msinc on 10-01-2015 03:41 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by toe cutter
its learned.
same breeds of dogs are used for bear, cat ,hogs and so on.
they learn sense for what ever animal you expose them to.

Okay, so who taught my 6 month old puppy to look for coons his first time out??????

Posted by RLenhart on 10-01-2015 03:45 PM:

If it was all about learning and nothing to do with genetics I guess you'd see allot more poodles treeing coons than you do wouldn't you? They're supposed to be one of the smartest dogs of all.

Posted by moonshine man on 10-01-2015 04:41 PM:

50 x 50

It would be a mix of both im not sure on the 50 / 50 split but if it was not bread into the dog you may hunt a dog their whole life and they never run or tree anything or just make a fair dog but if they are bread right they know before they start and the hunting just pulls it out of them.

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Posted by toe cutter on 10-01-2015 05:15 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by msinc
Okay, so who taught my 6 month old puppy to look for coons his first time out??????

if you did'nt do any pre training by exposing it to coon then it was probly just gamey and got lucky and it come across a coon instead of a grinner.
no dog is born with any concept of what a coon is,
no more than its born with any concept of what a tree is.

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Posted by toe cutter on 10-01-2015 05:23 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by RLenhart
If it was all about learning and nothing to do with genetics I guess you'd see allot more poodles treeing coons than you do wouldn't you? They're supposed to be one of the smartest dogs of all.

I don't read all about learning and nothing to do with genetics any where on my post, the only aspect I was answering was the posted question about "coon sense".

no dog is born with any concept of what a coon is.
no more than its born with knowledge of what a tree is.
people use ( for example) walkers to hunt bear, to hunt lions and to hunt hogs.. they are not born with any idea of what it is they are suppose to get after till you expose it to what you want it to hunt. so what ? it is born with coon sense because a coon hunter has them. if a lion hunter has the same cross of walker is it then born with lion sense.
its all about genetics.
a coon hound breed is born with the ability to use its nose to hunt for , track and bark and bay for anything it wants bad enough. a 6 week old pup can track and tree on a hot dog if it wants it bad enough. did anyone teach it to. no, they just got it to want a hot dog.
the only training is what to use those bred in instincts on.
and for a coon hunter ,, that would be coon.. to learn "coon sense".

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Posted by msinc on 10-01-2015 05:55 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by toe cutter
if you did'nt do any pre training by exposing it to coon then it was probly just gamey and got lucky and it come across a coon instead of a grinner.
no dog is born with any concept of what a coon is,
no more than its born with any concept of what a tree is.

I think maybe I typed it too quick or something...my dog did not stumble across his first coon and I am now calling that coon sense...what I said was he has shown a propensity towards looking or hunting in areas that he is way more likely to stumble across a coon naturally as opposed to going for the high ground or pine thickets. Maybe he thinks he will find a lotto ticket in the bottoms, but I doubt it.
Your last sentence is very confusing to me...are you saying that no dog is born with the instinct to tree {know what the tree is} and you, or somebody teaches them how to tree?????

Posted by Richard Lambert on 10-01-2015 06:27 PM:

Some dogs seem to be born with the tree bred in them and some dogs need to be taught to tree. Some dogs seem to be born with "coon sense" and some seem to learn it. There are different types of dogs. In my experience, real "coon sense" is very rare. I have only had one dog in my lifetime that had it. Oh sure, there are a lot of dogs that learn where coons hang out. But Mongo just seemed to have a sixth sense to know where a coon was. If you turned him loose in a pine thicket, he could find the coon in it. If you turned him loose in a patch woods, he could go from tree to tree and tree every coon in the patch. He was almost impossible to dryhole. I tried to do it several times. I would turn him loose in hunted to death public game land 2 mos after the season started and he would find a coon. So, I guess that y'all are all correct. Sometimes coon sense and tree sense are born into dogs and sometimes it is learned. It sure is a lot easier when they are "naturals" and are born with it however.

7 week old pups

Posted by Josh Michaelis on 10-01-2015 07:06 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by msinc
I think maybe I typed it too quick or something...my dog did not stumble across his first coon and I am now calling that coon sense...what I said was he has shown a propensity towards looking or hunting in areas that he is way more likely to stumble across a coon naturally as opposed to going for the high ground or pine thickets. Maybe he thinks he will find a lotto ticket in the bottoms, but I doubt it.
Your last sentence is very confusing to me...are you saying that no dog is born with the instinct to tree {know what the tree is} and you, or somebody teaches them how to tree?????

He is saying none of them are born with pre-concieved notions of any kind. Every complex thing they know must be learned.

Your dog has learned to go to a certain area at some point. He was not born with this knowledge, and it most likely not instinct.

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Posted by msinc on 10-01-2015 07:14 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Richard Lambert
Some dogs seem to be born with the tree bred in them and some dogs need to be taught to tree.

I think maybe we are getting something confused...the words "taught" to tree might be misleading or used in a sense not intended.
Like Roger, I do not believe you can take a dog, any dog, and teach it to tree, period, end of story....
I have, as we all that train coon hounds, taken puppies and fired them up on a coon, hoisted it up a tree and encouraged them to bark at it while it was hanging in the tree just out of reach. Some of those same puppies went on the be good coon hounds and good tree dogs. I did not "teach" them to tree, no more than the doctor that slapped me on the butt "taught" me to breath the day I was born.
All that said, if it could be done, it didn't happen for lack of trying...I have this little Jack Daniels terrier that has more gaminess and hunt instinct than any three coon hounds alive. He truly thinks his job is to try and catch/kill every living thing on the planet he don't recognize as well as many that he does. I have seen him chase way too many squirrels up a tree, many just barely making it, only to see him walk away seconds later. I have trapped squirrels and did the cage in the tree trick several times to zero avail.
If treeing aint there, it aint there and you will not put it there.

Posted by msinc on 10-01-2015 07:23 PM:

quote:
Originally posted by Josh Michaelis
He is saying none of them are born with pre-concieved notions of any kind. Every complex thing they know must be learned.

Your dog has learned to go to a certain area at some point. He was not born with this knowledge, and it most likely not instinct.

Yes, I understand what he is saying in this post. I totally 110% agree with his statement, and yours that {obviously} no dog is born knowing what a coon is, or any other animal for that matter. Totally agree...I mean, how could they be???
No, what I am saying is that when cut loose in the woods this dog appeared to hunt like a dog that had the instinct to look in the right kinds of places to find coons. He didn't know what he was looking for, never said that...he didn't know what to do with it when he found it, never said that either. Just that this dog looked like he had the instinct or what ever other word we hang on "automatically knowing" where to look/how to find/which way to go towards probable coon areas.

Just like if I go out in the woods and blow a chatterbox and a coon looks....I didn't teach him, he for sure wasn't born knowing what a chatterbox was...but he knew to look out of instinct.

Posted by hillbilly56 on 10-02-2015 01:43 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Dan Dogs
what I call coon sense is a dogs instinct to know where to find a coon rather than stumble across one. and it has to do with brains.

x2 some just seem to know where to find a coon quick and some really never figure it out

Posted by David Morgan on 10-02-2015 02:00 AM:

I have a friend that had gyp that would cock her head and listem for frogs when you got her out of the truck. When you turned her loose she would go straight to them cooning. Very smart.

Posted by Fisher13 on 10-05-2015 08:39 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by toe cutter
I don't read all about learning and nothing to do with genetics any where on my post, the only aspect I was answering was the posted question about "coon sense".

no dog is born with any concept of what a coon is.
no more than its born with knowledge of what a tree is.
people use ( for example) walkers to hunt bear, to hunt lions and to hunt hogs.. they are not born with any idea of what it is they are suppose to get after till you expose it to what you want it to hunt. so what ? it is born with coon sense because a coon hunter has them. if a lion hunter has the same cross of walker is it then born with lion sense.
its all about genetics.
a coon hound breed is born with the ability to use its nose to hunt for , track and bark and bay for anything it wants bad enough. a 6 week old pup can track and tree on a hot dog if it wants it bad enough. did anyone teach it to. no, they just got it to want a hot dog.
the only training is what to use those bred in instincts on.
and for a coon hunter ,, that would be coon.. to learn "coon sense".

I have had one dog that genetically as a pup would follow water. If there wasn't water in the area she would find it.
This wasn't taught. I haven't seen it since in a pup. She was a bit gamey also as a pup, but was probably the most natural born coon dog I have ever trained,in my short 3 or 4 years of messing with hounds. What brought this to my attention, was that I was reading an older book by the title of Hunting dogs, by Oliver Hartley.

In the book he brings up the subject that if a hound had a preference or notion to running to running other game then a coon, like fox or bear. Rather then attempting to break it off that animal, it would simply be better to use the hound to hunt that game instead. I thought this was an interesting point, and had never thought of a dog having a genetic disposition towards a certain game.

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Posted by msinc on 10-05-2015 11:11 AM:

quote:
Originally posted by Fisher13
In the book he brings up the subject that if a hound had a preference or notion to running to running other game then a coon, like fox or bear. Rather then attempting to break it off that animal, it would simply be better to use the hound to hunt that game instead. I thought this was an interesting point, and had never thought of a dog having a genetic disposition towards a certain game.

There were some big hunt clubs in Virginia back in the 80's, probably still there...I don't know. You had to pay a fee and join but they had packs of deer dogs. It was legal to run deer with dogs on the eastern side of the state.
I had one dog back then that was a real challenge to get to stop running deer...she just could not help herself. I tried everything. Then one day at a hunt I got talking to some of the guys that belonged to this club and he said, "if she's that way, the best thing to do is put her in a deer pack." He was right, she was born to run them. I didn't, but later wished I had because of the amount of time I wasted.
Later I got to know the guy pretty well and in conversation about dogs he said, "we pick our coon dogs the same way...if they are in a deer or fox pack but keep falling off on coons we take them out and make them a coon dog."
I sold one of this females puppies to another hunter in Va. Later he told me that "we had to put him in a bear pack...that's all he would run."

Edit: Not saying these dogs were born knowing what these animals were...obviously not. But they sure did develop an early "liking" for them, and maintained it their entire life.

Posted by H. L. Meyer on 10-05-2015 02:58 PM:

Some truth and some misconceptions on here

Now hold on and don't get upset at me BUT. First treeing is a instint that was bred into a dog, we as humans have bred that trait into our hounds NO undomesticated dog anywhere in the world trees, a wild animal knows it would starve to death standing at a tree treeing. SO we as hunters fixed that, how you say well by "breeding" way too much treeing into our hounds so now we have treeing idiots today. Now I will bet $ you can teach a dog to tree if you can't how in the world would you ever teach a dog to alert meaning a way to show it is in the odor of a desired substance by a sit, a scratch, a down position or a BARK yesser you can teach a dog to tree also. Now on that same thought pattern if you praise a dog to much on a slick tree then you are teaching that dog that what he is doing is ok so a dog is a creature of habbit and you train it by doing the same thing the same way over and over "reptition" so keep praising him on slick trees and then YOU become the problum not the dog . I guess I had way to much training in the K-9 world. NOW IN CLOSING THIS IS JUST MY OPINION ONLY. Load um up and lets go hunting.
H L Meyer

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Posted by msinc on 10-05-2015 04:20 PM:

Re: Some truth and some misconceptions on here

quote:
Originally posted by H. L. Meyer
Now hold on and don't get upset at me BUT. First treeing is a instint that was bred into a dog, we as humans have bred that trait into our hounds NO undomesticated dog anywhere in the world trees, a wild animal knows it would starve to death standing at a tree treeing. SO we as hunters fixed that, how you say well by "breeding" way too much treeing into our hounds so now we have treeing idiots today. Now I will bet $ you can teach a dog to tree if you can't how in the world would you ever teach a dog to alert meaning a way to show it is in the odor of a desired substance by a sit, a scratch, a down position or a BARK yesser you can teach a dog to tree also. Now on that same thought pattern if you praise a dog to much on a slick tree then you are teaching that dog that what he is doing is ok so a dog is a creature of habbit and you train it by doing the same thing the same way over and over "reptition" so keep praising him on slick trees and then YOU become the problum not the dog . I guess I had way to much training in the K-9 world. NOW IN CLOSING THIS IS JUST MY OPINION ONLY. Load um up and lets go hunting.
H L Meyer

I think there might be a slight difference between a dog that just followed by scent an animal up a tree and stand there barking for two hours....and a drug dog that was trained to sit down when he smells dope....wouldn't you agree????? You say in the beginning of your post that treeing is instinct, bred into dogs. Then, you go on to say it is taught. So, if you can teach a dog to tree, then cant you teach it to tree more???
I don't know if you have had too much training in the K-9 world or not, but I will say this...when you get one of the neighborhood poodles to tree like my female bluetick {she's a good 80-90 bpm for about 3 hours} then yep...load up little squeaky and lets go hunting!!!!!

Posted by Richard Lambert on 10-05-2015 04:42 PM:

How about bird dogs, do they instinctively point or do they have to be trained? How about Labs, do they instinctively retrieve or do they have to be trained? I wonder why "some" people think that Rat Attack hounds had too much tree in them?

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