Okie Hunter
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Jan 2012
Location: Mounds, Oklahoma
Posts: 1070 |
Can of worms...
Oh man. You ask this question to ten different English breeders and you'll get ten different answers.
I will try and put some of my experience in perspective as I hunted English in the late eighties through the nineties. I retired from hunting to raise my young kids between 2000 and 2012 and am now back to hunting English again.
Now my experience since I returned to hunting is limited as I have not participated in a lot of hunts to get a good feel of today's English dogs, but what I have seen is a lack of nose and that's with all breeds. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but I haven't drawn a dog in a hunt yet that struck a colder track, worked it up and put a tree on the end. Twenty years ago, I treed some mighty big coon that dogs would work the track up from being cold, drive the track once they got it warm and forced the coon to climb in the end. While not good for competition, it was an accomplishment to tree these old tough coon.
Another thing that has changed is dogs are a lot tighter on the ground than the dogs of the past. That could go hand in hand with the amount of nose they have though. They are also a lot more independent than they used to be. Twenty years ago you could turn a cast loose and gather them a lot of times on the same tree. Now, you turn a cast loose and your probably going to walk to four separate trees.
It's a matter of preference really and what goals you have in mind as a breeder. I think if you try and breed for a combination by mixing some of the strong traits of old (nose, track power and accuracy) with the strong traits of the new blood (independence and tree power) you will have a pretty good balance.
JMO. I hope others will chime in on the subject as I am far from an expert on the "new" blood.
__________________
Freddy Wells
Plus Point English
Mounds, Oklahoma
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