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am i making a mistake

hi guys, new to this board and new to coonhunting as well. i have my first pup i'm tryin to train and really dont have anybody to ask. this pup is an 8 mth old black and tan that i got when he was 8 weeks and have walked him in the woods since then a coupla times a week. here recently he has started barking in his box when we are driving on the wma. finally, i started letting him out when he did....a coupla weeks back he barked from the box and he went out and treed his first wild coon. my question is this...with the heat it sure is easy to just drive around and let him out when he barks...if i let him out where he's not walking he really doesnt 'hunt'..he mills around the truck, or when i walk him he pretty much just runs up ahead of me smelling around, but its not like i cut him out and he GOES....i am i messing up by riding around letting this dog tell me where to put him out? what should he be doing at this age? or is all of this normal. thanks in advance for any replies, i really appreciate it.

It depends on what you want.

A lot of rigging will tighten them up, Which is probably a bad thing if you intend to competition hunt....But a good thing if you like rigging.

At eight months old he is doing great sounds like. I would not continue to ride him around in the truck though unless you plan on rig hunting.

so is there any danger in walking them too much? i mean can you get to where they look to you to walk them over a track? what exactly should i be doing at this point?

You're real lucky he didn't start off rigging on trash.

he may be going on trash too because he has only treed once...the rest of the time he just petered out and came back out to the road...

What WMA are you hunting on? I know several people in that area its where I'm from I still have a house in McRae. I'll be up there in a couple of weeks if you would like to go hunting I can introduce you to a few people to hunt with if you don't know anyone.

killed the coon on wattensaw...got to thinking there were probably more deer there to trip him up so i've been going to hurricane bottoms here lately.

keep up the good work

sounds like you're doin fine with him. those other tracks coulda been trash, but probably just hard tracks that his young nose got frustrated with. if he didn't run it out of the country it probably wasn't anything bad. fast game is usually a fast, long race. sometimes you will think they blew up all of a sudden and come to the road, some of those times they probably caught a possum on the ground. they shake em a few times then they're done. if you plan to rig him later, keep riggin him, occasionally. too much of that and he wont wanna get out of the road. if you want him to cast, start casting him. keep takin some walks and stoppin and lettin him go ahead. urge him on vocally. i would get him casting good before i rigged him too much. it will take time before he will go and get gone. he'll probably go a little bit farther every time you take him.