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getting dogs on bears

I am a coo hunter and I love to hunt with hounds. But here lately I have been going woth a buddy bear hunting and want to get into it myself. My question is how many dogs does it take to tree a bear? I mean everybody i see has a whole truck load. I was just wondering how many dogs it takes to do it. thanks

I've treed a number of bears with one hound, never started a bear with only one hound but had split races and ended up that way. When I first started running bear I hunted three dogs and they seem to either hold at bear or tree about anything they caught. However, five to seven gives a guy all the stopping power he ever needs. Presently I hunt six hounds and they getrdone............but I would never hold back on a bear if I had two good hounds(meaning two bear hounds) in my box and needed to catch that bear!

ike

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Living the Dream, making it happen and taking photos to share with others along the way!

I'd have to agree I've got a dog that has treed two by himself just this year. But I think if you had four or five dogs to stick together it would be good if you got on a mean bear. My cousin and I hunt together and have three main dogs we run together and they've been getting the job done this year. The main thing to remember the more dogs you have the more confusion you have for you and the dogs.

this was my first yr runnin bear wow nothing like coon the more dogs the more confusion thats for sure and the dogs end up in places far from the dump site but fun as hell i run 3 two blues and a walker

ya when i was going with my buddy there was about 5 differant trucks and all was packing about 5 hounds that they would dump on a bear. but I already have a bunch of coon hounds and cant get to many more to bear hunt with.

It's probably easier to have straight coon, bear or lion hounds than it is to cross over from one species to the next--meaning they'll be easier to keep on the intended game if they only hunt a single animal. However, most western hunters cross over from lion, to coon to bear to keep their dogs in shape and just deal with hounds switching as it happens. Some dogs will not switch off a cold track to a hot track of a different species and others will. However, dogs tend to pack and honor and only the hard headed, single minded hounds will stay on a tough track when the pack takes a hot fresh one or switches.

About all I hunt is lions and bears, and on a rear occasion maybe a bobcat (but you can go to my website and see what I hunt). And I cross over on lions and bears during the fall and spring, but they often stay to what they're after because our lion and bear populations aren't that dense. They will, however, rig what they rig and then a guy has to sort that out. A buddy and I were bear hunting a couple weeks back and my two old red dogs rigged a lion both days over a single weekend hunt, so if they are good rig dogs they will rig both species you hunt.

Good luck on the bears and let us know how you do........

ike

__________________
Living the Dream, making it happen and taking photos to share with others along the way!

thanks for all the great help i think im gonna get me a couple straight bear dogs and just hunt them dogs on bears and my coon dogs on coon cause we have tons of both coon and bear here in west virgina around my area.

1

1 is all it takes if it does it right.ideally 4 to 6 is perfect and definitely is all it takes anymore than that is not going to help anyways