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Hot track question

I was running my dog with a older dog Saturday night and we seen a coon in a field so we cut the dogs and it took them about 10-15 to actually start following the track after they started following it for about 20 minutes try just quit. It's not normal for my dog just to quit on track, the other dog slicked treed. Is it a bad idea to cut dogs loose on a coon that crossed a road and or in a field that you can see?

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'PR' Iron Creeks Buckshot Britt
'PR' Rough N Ready's Rosie Red
Rough N Ready Kennels

Some people say that when a coon gets scared their body produces a different hormone (like adrenaline), which has an effect on their smell.
I dont know how you can prove this but we turned out a grnite and a nitech on a coon in a field and they BOTH had problems, took both about 10 minutes to figure it out and both slicked, which neither does very often... idk what happened but i dont turn out on seen coon anymore lol

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Jealousy is the most honest compliment anyone can receive ~ L. Key
He who stirs the pot, deserves to lick the spoon.

From my experience with highway coons or trapped/release coons,50% of the time the dogs will never tree these coons, many dogs will act if they cant smeel the track and I have seen a small percent that would hardly ever fail on a coon like this.I don't have the answer but if I am on a night hunt ...I WILL PASS UP ON A HIGHWAY COON, MANY TIMES IT HAS PROVED TO BE A BAD MISTAKE.I had a pup Sat night tree a lay-up on his first bark,next drop he ran a hard running coon for 20 minutes in a bad briar bed cutover in knee deep water.The pup carried it to the highway and I called him in.Just about 10 min earlier a coon runs wide open behind me across a wheat field.When the pup came in on my command I put him on that track and he moved it 6/10 mile making circles but he never did run it wide open, more loke a colder track,I finally took him off after he started back tracking.He not once attempted to locate a tree on this track....Sometimes they look good sometimes they just look like dogs

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Reedy Creek Kennel

I thought it might be to hot of a track and the scent wouldn't be able to settle into the ground it'd still be in the air

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'PR' Iron Creeks Buckshot Britt
'PR' Rough N Ready's Rosie Red
Rough N Ready Kennels

There is no such thing as magic.

The good ones tree coon easy, the poor ones struggle......Only difference is you can see which they are with your own eyes.

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Bad decisions make good stories.

hot tracks

Man I was wondering what was up with my dog the other night when me and my buddy turned a caged coon out for his puppy ! We turned the coon out walked 150 yds to truck got collars on dogs and turned his puppy out. She picked track up but couldn't move it any where waited for her to try to get on it and turned my broke dog loose. He moved it but was checking alot of trees and not sure of hisself finally treed coon 475 yds from where we turned it out of trap at. Never seen a caged coon go like that although it was a young bo coon.

hot track

I don't know why,but I've cut dogs out many a time on a coon that had just crossed a road and have the dogs run right by it like they never even smelled a thing.Go figure.Cuz I can't.
Rob Gregory

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High Lonesome English Kennels
Robert Gregory
Williamsville,Virginia
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It makes no sense to me, you would think if you put the dogs on a smokin got track they would run it and tree it in a matter of minutes. I guess I seconded gussed that

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'PR' Iron Creeks Buckshot Britt
'PR' Rough N Ready's Rosie Red
Rough N Ready Kennels

sounds a whole lot like a cage coon for pups not all go the
way you plan may of went in the ground.

That's what I was starting to think that night. You would think when two dogs are opening up like crazy the coon would go to the closes tree there is but nope! That little sucker decided to go on a run!

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'PR' Iron Creeks Buckshot Britt
'PR' Rough N Ready's Rosie Red
Rough N Ready Kennels

After more than 40 years of coon hunting I never have figured this one out. I can tell you if a person hunts hard enough and long enough this situation will come up and It won’t matter how good a person thinks their dog is, it will happen. I’ve seen similar things happen to some very good hounds over the years and I have yet to figure out what really happened. Lots of people will say it’s because of this or that but I’ll be darn if I know. I just know it happens and in the right situation will happen to the very best.

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Yadkin River Ti'll I Die

Bad luck

I have learned not to do that. Nothing but bad things have happened. I have had luck on waiting about 30 min and hunt mine in the area where it crossed. I no i'm going to catch some grief over this but here's what I thank happens. When you pull you're hounds out of the box it takes them a few minutes to get into the hunt mode. Like my hounds smells the tires and takes care of mother nature ect ect. So I thank when you cut them loose on a hot track there just not ready for it. I always wait at least 30 minutes before I turn loose on a cage coon. Guys this is jmo.

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Shawn Abshire

Home of: My Blues!!
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Had an English dog on trial one time, had about an hrs. drive to get to our hunting area. Had a young man with me that hunted with me all the time. We saw a coon run across the road and dropped the dog out and he couldn't do any thing with it. We saw it go up a tree, still nothing out of the dog. I said let's go home . I'am not buying this dog. He said let's go on to our spot and hunt. The dog treed 6 coon that nite and I bought him. One of the better dogs I've ever owned.

Makes no sense to me, I'm only 15 so I have to walk everywhere I hunt and when we were walking I seen a coon in a field and decided to cut the dogs. That was a bad move on my part I tell you what

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'PR' Iron Creeks Buckshot Britt
'PR' Rough N Ready's Rosie Red
Rough N Ready Kennels

It's a weird scenario for sure. I've seen one cross the road, slammed on the breaks and the dog acts stupid. It's so hard to pass up doing it, but I don't anymore. That same dog would sometimes strike from the box and I let him out and he would go get treed. Go figure

ive turn dogs loose on coons that just crossed the road,the only problem ive seen is sometimes the dog will run it backwards,i figured the scent was so strong they didnt know which way the coon headed,but they would turn back and head in the right direction and tree the coon after they went a ways. maybe the dogs just got lucky and picked the right tree.

i turned loose on 2 coon crossing a logging road and them suckers put it on my dogs bad. long story short, they missed the coon and treed wrong. i should have known better after 30 yrs and making the same mistake before. but when you see them coons and you have a young dog in the box its hard not to give it a go.

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Danny VunCannon
Home of :
Amazing Grace
Mossy Pond Modacious (MO)
Mossy Pond Amazing Gracie

I have only ever seen one hound that could consistantly catch those coon. When I say catch I mean catch too, she catches on the ground way more of those than she treed. My buddy has a little Jagd Terrier that rides around in the cab if the truck. If a coon crosses the road he just roles the window down and that little bugger bails out and has that coon caught or treed in real short order.

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Lonetree Kennels "Where dogs are made one tree at a time."
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The only difference in a coon that crosses the road and one you tree in the woods is you actually SEE the one on the road.

I dont know why, but for some reason most of us feel like we know what our dogs are doing most of the time.....Seeing what happens when we turn a dog loose on a coon that crosses the road goes against everything we think we know.

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Bad decisions make good stories.

If you ask 100 different houndmen about scent and tracking conditions you will get 100 different answers.
Heres a few things that i believe. An aged track is easier for a dog to run than a red hot track, how aged depends on conditions but to much scent seems to overwelm a dogs sense of smell to a point where they either cant take the track away or may take it backwards. Let that same track age 20 minutes and the dog trees his coon. I also believe that a high percentage of slicks on hot tracks are trees that the coon came from.
Throw a top hound on a big fresh scent pool and he can look like an idiot (to much scent).

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Everything that makes them a COONDOG is on the inside

i have had two dogs that i could turn on coons crossing the road,and they were finley river and clover bred.

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hayrakeswildjoe Bob Myers 304-369-0849

Ive been told when you release the coon you need to wait for the track to settle down.

I'm pretty sure I just jumped one last time out,the pup I had been hunting was hanging around, like he sometimes does. So I started walking him, he struck, about 30 yds in front of me, right at the same time I heard something in the brush right next to me take off through the woods.

He tracked the track for a good 300yds like it was blazing hot then he got hung up, and finally about 30 minutes later ended up on a den tree. We ended up circling back to where he struck and I let him go again but he ran into the same direction, so I called him off, hoping he had right the first time, but my gut tells me he backtracked it.

The whole concept of it does not make sense to me, I guess dogs have a mind of their own some times

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'PR' Iron Creeks Buckshot Britt
'PR' Rough N Ready's Rosie Red
Rough N Ready Kennels

The following was posted several years ago on another forum regarding this exact topic...I'm not this smart and these are someone else's words, but it's the best explanation I've seen to answer the question:


It has everything to do with the science of how scent actually becomes scent. The animal is constantly sheding what is known as body odor and is shedding skin cells. This is a constant. The body odor is NOT SCENT by definition, it is odor. Scent comes from the gases which are produced by bacterial activity on the skin cell. When the bacteria is eating the skin cell, it is digesting gas. This gas is called scent. Body odor is the musky/uriney smell most animals have. It comes from a different chemical reaction and not so much bacterial gases as we define in scent.

Now having an understanding of that, dogs have been specifically designed to primarily follow scent. It takes a certain ammount of time, given the apropriate environemental conditions for scent to become available for a dog to follow.
A lot of dogs are not as "good" at following body odor as they are true scent. When a dog is cold trailing they are reacting to scent. When they are chasing jumped game or freshly crossed game they are primarily chasing or following body odor.

Many, many jumped lion and bear and bobcat and coon and yotes and whatever your chasing has been lost by the dogs who have done a magnificent job cold trailing and even baying the animal. This is because they are having to switch to body odor, because the true scent has not been able to interact with the environement yet and is thus not available for the dogs.

I can't tell you how many times I have heard houndsman swear on all that is holy to them, that critters can somehow magically turn off their scent in order to elude the dogs LOL. NOPE they don't. It is simply a matter of biological science.

One of the best races I ever heard came from when we turned my dog loose on a coon that crossed a dirt road. The coon shot across the road like a blur. My dog Ran it about half a mile and treed it and had the coon. I love to hear a race like that where the coon is running hard and fast as it can run and the dog's pushing it. I agree with Josh. Only difference is, these times we can actually see the coon.