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Re: after hours

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Originally posted by Rush Run Rebel
word to the wise, if you plan on using a 4 wheeler or sidebyside to hunt out of, don't let your pups run with it.....they will associate it with coming to it and will complicate your hunts......the pups will pull and come to the wheeler if they hear it.....I haul my dogs in the sisde by side box and hunt from it, I do not let the dogs run with the machine.....just sayin.

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Re: Update on female puppies

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Originally posted by After Hours
Forgot to post an update on the female puppies that a third friend has. They are doing well. They are being raised quite differently than the boys are. I have to keep the boys kenneled most of time due to my proximity to a major highway. The girls get turned loose pretty much all day every day. They are being tutored on the ways of the world by a beagle named Sugar. From what I understand, Sugar is routinely taking Fenix and Kate on excursions. Todd said he walked the girls down in the woods on Wednesday afternoon and in no time, they had tore off down the hill, disappearing completely out of sight. Todd said he was surprised they would just leave out like that. He didn’t have any name collars on them and got worried they would get lost so he whistled and they came back in after a few minutes. They haven’t had any exposure to a coon yet.

Question(s) to the group:
Will the females turn out better than the males? Will the way they are being raised effect the type of finished products they become? Will their raising effect their hunting styles? Etc, etc, etc

I would love to hear everyone’s thoughts on letting puppies grow up while running loose mostly versus trying to train them as you go while raising them mostly in a kennel.

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__________________
John Burns

Sure is a healthy looking pup

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Originally posted by ING 194
Sure is a healthy looking pup

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That is probably a good idea. I believe that a balance works best. Too much "seeing a coon" is not good but then too much running loose is not good either. How much is "too much" is different for each individual pup, even if they are littermates. But it sounds like/looks like you are doing pretty good at this balancing act. Keep letting us know how they progress.

Lucky

Haven’t had a chance to run swap Lucky out yet. Decided to take my old dog hunting tonight. Have a ‘project’ male that is at my house now and planned to hunt Badger and the other male and see what happened. Right before I took off walking to the woods I thought, heck, I might as well let Lucky tag along. I figured I would regret it, knowing he would be right under my feet all night. And before I cut the old dogs loose I was already thinking, this was a bad idea as Lucky just was aggravating the fire out of the others, jumping up in their face, wanting to play. I went ahead and unsnapped both older dogs and of course Lucky took off with them. I was pretty worried when he didn’t show back up in 10 minutes or so. I thought to myself, ‘you will be out all night looking for this pup’. About 25 minutes in, ol Badger got treed. He had went across a 300 yard long field and then turned East and went across a 40 acre tract and then turned north and went a few hundred yards....then he struck and went back to the west about 100 yds or so and was treed. Believe it or not, when I got to about 50 yds from Badger I heard Lucky bark...2 times. I was blown away that the little feller had went with Badger all the way. I just hoped he would burn off some energy and get some exercise and he made the whole trip with Badger. Pretty impressed with this little sucker right now. Can’t wait to see what he does after being turned loose for a couple months.

Sounds like he's getting some exercise and a education

All right, where is our weekly update? Has the weather been too bad for any pup training? I have found that once you start, you have to keep going.

Sorry for the delay in updates. Last wknd got a good pup training session in with all 4 pups: Lucky, Mack, Kate, and Fenix. Went hunting with Badger and a young male I am hunting. Treed 2. Brought 2nd one home and made a drag and hung in a tree. Puppies trailed it to the tree and treed it. Kate probably treed the best of all of them, but all 4 puppies showed the desire to track and look up at the tree. I couldn’t be more happy with them. I traded out Lucky for Kate. Lucky is now at Todd’s with Fenix, running loose with the yard dogs, hunting every day. I have Mack and Kate at my place. Figured I would bring Kate home and go thru some of the same steps I have went they with Lucky and Mack.

Fast forward to last night- a buddy brought a cage coin over and I figured good time to see how Kate acted. Used a rope to drag coon around yard and turned Kate and Mack loose. Mack has had this exposure before but I knew he would help give Kate confidence. Sure enough, Kate didn’t really know how to act at first...Mack was baying the coon right out of the gate. Kate came around pretty quick and got excited. I pulled the cage up and down in a tree and both puppies got up on the tree and treed, with Kate being much more impressive on the tree than Mack. Mack wants to stand off the tree and tree at this point. He is also the smallest of all the pups so maybe he is just getting out of the way?

Steady progress

Lucky update

Lucky has been at Todd’s place for about a week now. Todd lives far off the toad and can allow pups to run loose most of the time. So Lucky has been loving life, not having to be penned up. I spoke with Todd last night and he had what I consider to be a good report. He said Lucky went hunting with the beagle Friday evening. Said he heard both dogs strike in in the back of a field and they took a track all the way to the bottom of the holler. He said Lucky was plenty noisy on the track. His beagle will tree coons sometimes, but he said the dogs never did tree. He wasn’t for sure what they ran but I was glad to hear that Lucky was running a track on something. He said Lucky stayed gone for 3-4 hours yesterday with the beagle. I guess they were just hunting. Hope the beagle is giving Lucky some good life lessons!

Kate and Mack

Had family show up this evening for the Christmas festivities. I was out finishing up chores of feeding all the animals, etc. And, of course, they had to ask about my redbone coonhounds. Well, in true redneck fashion I didn’t just tell them about them, I just had to turn them out and show them to all the family. Smoky and crackerjack, the barn cats, didn’t catch the memo. They hung around looking for attention for too long. And then one of them decided to stop swatting at the pups faces, and run for the nearest tree. Talk about a race. Music to your ears. These 2 puppies sounded good opening after them cats. Didn’t last long before they hit the tree. Both got bellied up and treeing immediately. They have always messed with the cats, but today is the first time the cats ran from them. My 7 year old and 3 year old didn’t know whether to try to help the cats or to praise and pet the puppies. What a deal. You can’t beat a couple redbone puppies. Kate has a real stylish treeing quality about her. Very fancy on the tree. Mack is more of a hustler and not as much style but gets the job done and a little more personable.

Merry Christmas!

Man o man how times have changed. Kinda sad in some ways. 6-8 years ago there would have been Merry Christmas messages all over this redbone breed message board. Seems as though many people are now using the fancier, more main stream, social media sites. I guess I am getting older, but I miss the old days. There was a lot more camaraderie it seemed like. I still enjoy getting on this site every chance I get and reading about all the dogs, hunts, etc. I hope everyone on this board, whether a redbone fancier, or any other breed has had a Merry Christmas. Hope everyone has had and continues to have a good holiday season. I love coon hunting with friends and family members this time of year. Hope everyone is as blessed this Christmas as I have been.

We will be back at it training and hunting by the wknd. I imagine at least one of the puppies will get a chance to go on a wknd of coonhunting in mid to late January. Exciting times are just around the corner. I cannot wait.

Oh my goodness, a mid January hunt in the Mississippi/Arkansas River Delta would surely be nice. You should try to get one or two of them ready by then. And it would be a great warm up for an older dog to get them ready for the Winter Classic.

Merry Christmas

To you as well. I have enjoyed your thread immensely. Every one who is contemplating training a pup should read all you have written.

__________________
John Burns

Update

As you all know, I have recently been working with a young male, along with all the puppies. I currently have Mack and Kate(puppies) here at the house. When I got home from work today I was messing around in the yard so I turned the pups out so they could play. They messed around for a while chasing each other and checking out the horses, other dogs, calves, etc. I decided to go feed all the calves and they ran across the barn cats in the process. Treeing contest commenced. Man what a sound. They made it sound so good I had to pet them up. I needed to run over to a buddy place to look at some cattle and I planned on stopping by Dustys farm and setting a coon trap afterwards. I threw the pups in the dog box. Figured be good for them to travel in the box. Thought I would let them tag along to set the trap. Well, after looking at the calves at the first buddies place I told him he had to look at my redbone pups(naturally, he has always been a walker guy)- ...about that time he remembered his neighbor had trapped a coon last night and he offered to let me have it. I was like a kid in the candy store.

After a bunch of consideration, I decided I would make a little training run tonight. I made the decision to use the young male as a ‘trainer’ and also turn the pups out. Figured instead of the drag training I would turn the coon loose and see if they could track and tree it. I am very particular about how I handle this situation. Right or wrong I go thru the same steps every time. I transport the coon and dogs to the spot I want to turn loose...separately. Coon on four wheeler and dogs in truck. Big thanks to my wife for helping tonight! I always leave dogs in the box(ready to go with collars of course) and I carry the cage coon out in front of the truck a good 20-30 yds. I turn the coon loose and let it get to the woods. ((Very important IMO- remove the cage at this time and get it somewhere the dogs won’t focus on it-I have had them tree on the empty cage on the ground before)). Next I get the dogs out of the box and normally keep them on a leash. In this instance I let the pups run free and kept the ‘trainer’ on the leash. My plan was to help the trainer find the track- to ensure we didn’t accidentally fail(it happens, even on older dogs sometimes)- my belief is that some dogs just don’t handle cage coons well- - -and once I knew he was on the track I would cut him loose and watch the rest unfold. I think I have stated before I started in with the ‘look for him in here, look for a coon’ talk that I always use when trying to get a pup/dog to locate(or hunt) for a track. By this point the puppies have definitely already stumbled across the track and ain’t wasting any time moving it across the pasture.((forgot to mention, I normally turn the coon loose 70-100 yds from field edge where I can see what is taking place on the track)). Young male has a little trouble tracking after I cut him loose. Have been told before that other dogs or other tracks(from other animals) could overlay original coon track and make it difficult for dogs to find track??? IDK. Just saying what have heard before. But young male acted like he could smell coon everywhere. He was so excited he was trying to run it with nose in the air. Pups did what I perceived to be a better job of tracking the coon. Took male Dog too long to hammer out which tree it was in. Pups had found tree and somewhat lost interest by time other male treed. Shot coon out, didn’t let male dog get ahold of it. Shooting it out exposed the puppies to the whole concept...gunshots, tree limbs swinging, crackling, thud on ground, leaves crackling, coon squirming, etc. puppies dove right into chewing, shaking coon. Hung it in a little tree and they treed really well on it. Mack is going to have a clear, ringing chop mouth. Kate is going to have a coarse, loud chop. On the male dog- I have always felt like not letting that dog get a sniff of every coon was a good thing. I think it helps them stay a little tighter on the tree when treeing and also drives a fire inside of them to find another one.

It was an enjoyable time to see the puppies work the track and take it all the way to the tree. If I had it to do all over again, I would have not used the male dog plus puppies. Should have probably left them segregated and used the coon for the old male only. Shot it out to them and just used carcass for drag training. Felt like the ruckus from the pups probably hurt the other males learning experience....wallering all over original track, pestering male dog, etc. Still pretty happy with how all of them acted.

Re: Merry Christmas

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Originally posted by John Burns
To you as well. I have enjoyed your thread immensely. Every one who is contemplating training a pup should read all you have written.

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Captain Obvious note

When you decide to let your pups run loose, make sure they have collars on with name tags and phone numbers. Good way to lose track of a nice young puppy by not doing that.

Lucky decided sometime yesterday to go hunting. Never showed back up at Todd’s. Todd called me last night and I just blew it off said surely he will show back up. Todd called me this morning, still no sign of Lucky but all the other dogs were at the house. So I made the hour and a half trip, sick at my stomach the whole time...got up here about 12:20pm. Just found Lucky over a mile from Todd’s house at another house right on the highway. Pulled up in the driveway to knock on the people’s door and saw his head pop up from the lounge furniture on the porch. Whew what a relief.

That’s the part that makes it hard about letting one run loose I guess. Man I was worried. We will make sure he isn’t turned loose again until he has collar with name tag and also garmin tracking unit. Ranging out too far not to do it.

Poor Lucky......

Mack and Kate

Mack and Kate

Did a little pup work last night. Old dog and the young male treed a huge boar. I had taken the pups along for the hunt so couldn’t resist making a drag for them. They tracked and tree it. The video sure sounds good ...but I guess pictures will have to do for this forum.

Project youngster tonight

Big boar coon!

Youngsters

Took these 2 boys tonight. One is a coworkers son and the other is the coworkers nephew. Nephew is from Texas and had never been coon hunting. We let him shoot out this coon pictured. Hard to tell in the picture but a beautiful hide, full of blonde color. That boy was on cloud 9. Said he is taking that pelt and getting his grandpa to help him tan it. Haha. Old dog did his thing and looked good on 2 rutting boar tracks. Young male is steadily improving. Hasn’t treed ahead of old dog yet. 4 trees and 4 coons the past 2 nights.

Has anyone ever treed and had a opossum and coon in same tree?

You got the young guns looking good. You give that kid a memory he'll never forget. I'm always looking and hoping to find that coon above ole smiley face lol