Registered: Oct 2004
Location: Roosevelt, Utah
Posts: 586

(somebody started this post over on another board and I figured maybe it would be good for this one as well).



My old LionHeart dog was certainly a stand out hound on a cold track. She was a crossbred hound that loved the cats. That ol' hound was silent on track and wouldn't open until she jumped the lion or bobcat, then let out a roar that would probably scare a cat half to death. Shawn Labrum and I watched her jump a tom lion one day laying up under the rocks over a two point buck that he'd killed. She trailed around the ledge not saying a word, then there laid that lion and she and the big cat were nose to nose. LionHeart let out that war cry and the tom was instantly on his feet taking swipes at my dog. That ol' tom jumped up on a ledge with LionHeart baying below and what a picture that would have made, then here came the cavalry and that lion ran past that dead buck and me to the tree.

We watched LionHeart trail out on a bobcat track one day in a couple inches of fresh snow. Most of the other dogs were dimpling the track along and she had trailed out in front of them two or three hundred yards in a short distance, so I watched. She'd dimple a track then run thirty or forty yards, stop and check the track then repeat run. Most of the time a bobcat or lion didn't know what hit them until she screamed in their face...hell of a way to wake up!

I had three or four dogs after a large tom lion down in the Bok Cliffs one spring with Labrum. I got in behind the dogs in the dirt and he drove around and cut the track a couple ridges over and waited for us. While unloading the hounds, I stepped off the truck and turned my ankle pretty badly and was ready to quit when I met up with my truck. I'd short cut the trail and was ahead of the hounds and started gathering them up as the track came past my truck. My LionHeart dog knew what I was up to and ran around the truck the other way hoping to get around me and strike the track past where I stood. I often think she thought she was pretty smart as well.

Most of the dogs I'm hunting these days are out of that dog, and she would have been proud to see how they have turned out..........

ike

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Registered: Jan 2007
Location: Al
Posts: 3069

Good story on the old dog, i had an old Bl&t Female once that was cold nosed to a fault, and when she trailed and Jumped, she sounded like she got hung in a fence, all the racket she made lol
loved that old dog just for that reason shed make the hair stand up on your arms and neck was slow as Christmas but i loved to hear her trail and jump

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Well Stanley,this looks like another fine mess you've gotten us into

Ray Hudson

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Registered: Oct 2004
Location: Roosevelt, Utah
Posts: 586

Yes it did sound like that you enjoyed that old black and tan and the cold nose she had. Those war cries some hounds have that they use when they locate or jump game is also fun for sure............

If I didn't mention that old blue Ryan dog of mine on this post he'd probably never forgive me ha! He and his sister Rowen will both be twelve this summer and are still doing it. I don't hunt them much anymore because I always promised myself that I wouldn't run them into the ground like Dwayne told me I would. I will say that I have beaten that old dog up for alot of clients, and that he ran everyday the other dogs did and sometimes a day or two beyond.

Ryan was blessed with tough feet and a tough body and cursed with a big heart to boot. In eleven years of hunting he's never slipped a pad and been under several lion and bear trees all by himself so some hunter could take home a bear or lion. I don't know what else you can say about a dog like that except I wish I had a backyard full of them. There was a time when Ryan was in his prime that when he opened on the rig it was time to catch a bear; likewise, when I put him on a two day old lion track that seemingly had no end he never complained and pounded down that track all day and most of the night.

I told a story about starting him, LionHeart and Ike on a lion track at noon one day in April and walking in and pulling them off the track around noon the next day. That story hurt alot of guys feelings on the net and they laughed and laughed, added to the story and before I knew it those dogs had been trailing a week when I pulled them. But I laughed the hardest because I knew if they didn't believe that story it was only because they'd never had a dog that would do that themselves.

I was plugging a well with a guy the other day who had owned a couple dogs out of that same litter that Ryan and Rowen came from. He told me somebody took his dogs off the chain one day and he never got them back. This young man told me he tried several other dogs from other houndsmen but got out of hounds because he never found any more hounds like those two. I told him I still have my two hounds, and that I'm hunting them and three younger dogs out of them, so he wants a pup for his boys next time I bred.......he also told me he was putting his boys in for bear and wanted to know how much I'd charge to hunt them on a bear. I suppose if a special hound doesn't bring a guy back into the sport his boys probably will.

It's probably the bond we all get when we raise and hunt a really great dog that keeps us in this sport. Some of us are lucky and those dogs last longer and some are not. But in the end we are all faced with saying goodbye to those really great hounds and it's **** tough..................

ike
http://www.ingramwildlife.com/picture.htm
(my old Blue Ryan dog in his glory days)

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Registered: Jan 2007
Location: Al
Posts: 3069

Great pics, your woods are a lot diffrent than ours ,with a lot more open country, our woods are thick, with lots of blow downs and briars,that would probubly explain why they run so far for yawl, we dont have that much rocky turain here either except up farther in the state near TN,and GA. that kind of stuff would be ruff on man or hound for sure

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Well Stanley,this looks like another fine mess you've gotten us into

Ray Hudson

Last edited by Ray&Luie on 02-12-2009 at 01:59 PM

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Registered: Oct 2004
Location: Roosevelt, Utah
Posts: 586

I think what few large, older type tom lions that are left in my area travel great distances looking for females that are probably harder to find. A guy can get a day or two behind a traveling tom lion in this country and find that the tracks go further than a dog has the energy to finish. Those lions live on the edge of nowhere or no man's land, and sending dogs after them on an old track can result in a guy never retrieving his hounds.

Years ago an old lion hunter I know told me that hunting a lock down pack of trail dogs, dogs that are in shape, can get a guy into lots of trouble. I started a lion the other day around 8:00 AM on the ice and frozen ground in a place the snow was all but gone and had dogs out all night. They weren't treed after dark, nor at daylight, but by 9:00 AM the treeing switching started going off and I found them locked up under a lion tree around 2:30 PM that afternoon. Those dogs had been gone thirty and a half hours when I reached them, and I remembered the comments and advice that old hounddogger gave me about turning dogs of that caliber down a crappy track......

I always figured if a man was gonna turn those hounds down a track he owed it to them to make it to the tree. And I did, but the eight hour round trip to the tree and back reminded me that I'm getting too old for this crap..........

ike

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Registered: Oct 2004
Location: Roosevelt, Utah
Posts: 586

Rowen was the worst tree climber I had, and she wasn't happy unless she was face barking a mean ol' bear or lion
http://www.ingramwildlife.com/russianolivebear.wmv
That little black and white dog jumping and trying to bite the bear is my Rodo dog........

I haven't said much my about little Rowen dog, but she has as great of love for the cold track, the chase and the tree as any dog I have ever owned. Most of my family call her little Rodo, and she is a littermate to my blue Ryan dog. She to will be twelve this summer and has done it all, from hammer down an old lion track and be gone for a week to tree tom lions and bears all by herself. This little dog was under used most of her life because I hated the tree climbing part of her and because that little dog is happier on the mountain than in town any day. All you have to do is follow that little girl to the tree, shoot the tom, and walk out after dark without leashing her, cause with a cash like a fresh lion in the woods she'd keep for weeks! She was is as happy laying under a sandstone ledge with southern exposure as a little hound can be!

Four or five years ago, my son and I were after a good big tom but every time we cut his tracks they were several days old. Anyway, I promised myself next time I got a two day old track I was gonna send some dogs. We cut that tom one morning but the track was old, so I sent my three aces, LionHeart, Ryan and Ike down those tracks keeping Rowen and a six month old pup in case he crossed fresh.

Those three dogs opened and headed up one fork of the canyon and we drove up the other. And yes, you guessed it cause that old tom crossed fresh and I was stuck with one finished dog and a pup that hadn't even been started on anything--I mean nothing!

Well, my little Rodo girl went and treed that lion and I killed it. She was just as proud of her catch as she could be. And it didn't hurt her feelings one bit to be in the spotlight, knowing those three aces of mine were giving up alot of energy and getting nothing out of it but scent..........

I could go on and on about this dog and her brother, but I have probably said enough already as they have stood the test of time and always gotrdone.....

ike

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Registered: Oct 2004
Location: Roosevelt, Utah
Posts: 586

Choco under a a dry ground, November lion tree....


One of the many tom lions Choco has rigged from the box or rig platform.....

Eight years ago, I made a couple crosses between my LionHeart and Ike dogs hoping to somehow get some of the best of each dog. Both dogs were or are dry ground pounders but LionHeart was tight mouthed on track while Ike was open. LionHeart would trail a lion or bear down an ice packed road in the middle of the afternoon when all the other dogs would have trouble and pop off that road with the track. Anyways, I kept this red Choco dog out of the second cross because he was open and seemed to have a love for trailing game.

A few days ago, I put him on an overnight track, with open and frozen ground, around 1:30 P.M. and he opened like always and went down the track. I stayed with him because the track was near town with lots of roads around it, and he was wearing a shock collar for control. Choco and Kody brought that track to a paved road that had had traffic on it all morning and then began to suck and blow as he tried to move that track down the pavement. Trucks and cars would come along and I'd have to call them off the road to let traffic pass then put them back down. Finally I quit the track after 2:30 PM thinking I might get a dog hurt. But I could see my old LionHeart dog coming out in that seven year old Choco dog and knew that cross I made back when was a good one.......

Choco started rigging lions and bobcats on his own while I was hunting bears four or five years ago. Like his mother LionHeart, he had and has a special love for the big cats and learned early on in life that the old man would drive past a runnable track in the dirt, so he started pointing those tracks out to me. And since that day he's shown me hundreds of tracks that I would have missed.

A couple seasons back, I started one of the bears he and the other dogs rigged off a road. It was the last day of the summer pursuit season and the track was a cold one. However, the dogs worked at the track and it started warming up as they crossed the canyon. They treed that boar a couple canyons over, and it wasn't any really great run or race but they had put him up none the less. As I walked into the tree, I could hear that bear come down and the the fight began. The bear didn't go far, maybe a few hundred yards and he popped back up another tree. When I arrived there, there was a nice, three hundred plus chocolate boar in the tree. My six hounds were all treeing hard and Choco was doing the same but holding his left rear leg up off the ground. I walked over and examined his leg and could see where that bear had buried his four canines into the muzzle of that hind leg. Then upon further inspection, Choco had a large, hard lump along the right size of his upper lip, so I raised it up and found where that bear had knocked his right upper canine out of his head. And Choco was still treeing his guts out..............

More than watching a good tree dog I enjoy watching a good rig dog work. And if that dog is explosive on the rig and strike, then man ol man it sure does get my heart pumping fast......

I'm gonna breed that dog this spring and hope some of that stuff comes out in the pups that follow. And if I'm really lucky one of those little guys will be like his old man or grandparents...........

keep'em treed,
ike

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Registered: Oct 2004
Location: Roosevelt, Utah
Posts: 586

Kody and Griz in the foreground......

That orange and white and the blue and white English colored hounds in that photo are of my Kody and Griz dogs. Those two hounds are littermates and will five this summer. Their sir was my old blue Ryan dog and their grand sir was that red Ike dog of mine. The **** was a red dog the kids called Multi because as a pup she was red with a small white spot on her chest and a very light black saddle; she grew out of the black saddle. Her sir was also Ike and the **** was my LionHeart dog, and those two dogs have been running with my hounds since they were six months old.

Kody, like his old man, has never missed a tree on lion or bear since his start, that is if a tree was made that day. His littermate Griz is a little more trail minded and likes to run his own track rather than do much honoring, and his nose has taken him down didn't tracks a couple times over the years. Kody favors his sir from the way he walks to the way he trails and trees; likewise, Griz takes more after my Ike dog and LionHeart with trail and tree style.

When those two hounds were coming two, I had them in on a all day dirt lion run with Ike and Choco. Shawn Labrum and I sat up on the ridge and watched all four of those dogs work that crappy track past the heat of the day, which was sometime around mid-May. Those dogs would do a lose and a different dog would find the track and open on it as the trail lead off of that south facing slope. I remember Labrum making the comment, "watch those two pups find that track ahead of the older dogs on some of the loses." And I responded that those two pups had been running off the rig with Ryan, Ike and Choco since they were six months old, or for nearly a year and a half........they should have learned something by now!

But they are both dirt pounders on bear or lion and bring alot of heart to the run every time they are released. I was up on the hill today and started a overnight bitch lion track on a south facing slope just after daylight. Kody and Griz were among the dirt pounders and they hammered out another dry ground track and made it into a tree. They were out most of the day and had to work for that one I think, but they seem to love it. Their little two year old half sister was there as well, and she is about where those two males were at the same age. Houndsmen have bred good dog to good dog since the beginning of trail hounds and usually had pretty good success. However, if a person really wants to step up their odds at making good dirt dogs they need hunted with good dirt dogs..........

ike

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