Bruce m. Conkey
UKC Forum Member
Registered: May 2016
Location: Palatka, FL
Posts: 5106 |
Stop Watches, Rules and Coon Hunts!
After reading the post on this board for a long time I have come to several conclusions. I would like to offer some Sunday morning advice because it sure doesn't look likes its getting any easier out there in these competition hunts.
First lets talk about stop watches. Many guys use their wrist watches, some use the hunt timer app on the phone and some use stop watches. Let me share something with you about stop watches. Do you know that the top selling stop watch for coon hunters has a battery saver mode. Go to any vendors table in the country and look at stop watches, brand new in the packaging and some of them have had their start buttons pressed through the packaging and they are running. They have an energy conserving mode that will kick in and slow down the watch to prevent it from running the battery down. Same way if you accidentally leave it on running it will swap to the energy conserving mode. They guy using that watch will swear by it, use it to time a cast and jump up and down and call foul when someone disagrees with his time keeping. When we have nothing but an honest mistake that most people don't even know can happen with these stop watches. I suggest that in each cast you take a few seconds at the start of the cast and start and stop every watch together that is going to be used on the cast, to make sure they are all running the same.
Rules is another very important thing we are missing the boat on. Most hunt several registries and each have their own rules. I would say that it has become about common place that during a hunt, especially on dogs split up and being scored in different directions. The rules from one kennel club are confused with and used in another one. Why, because some rules are easier on the people involved. It seems like the fair thing to do and everything is fine. UNTIL there is a PROBLEM. Then you figure out the rule you used wasn't for the kennel club your hunting in. I also think it is very discouraging reading this board day after day and seeing just how little most people understand the rules. What does just about everyone on here tell a new person when they ask about hunting in UKC hunts. They are told to LEARN THE RULES. It is obvious to me anyways. That isn't happening. I blame a combination of things from the hunters to the Kennel Club on this problem.
Coon Hunts and the rules started to have a problem in the mid 80's and especially into the 90's when the independent hound came upon the scene. The rules that were wrote for the pack hounds of of 60's and 70's cannot fairly judge the dogs we are hunting today. UKC has stood by these outdated rules and it has caused a lot of heartburn in some of these hunts. The $kc's saw how things were going and have rules to govern todays hounds. Actually I feel the newest KC which eliminated dogs being leashed locked except when checking trees out of order has the best set of rules for todays hounds. I know someone will want to tell us how it was done back when. But we are dealing with todays hounds so we need todays rules. Not the rules Grand Pa had for his dog that wouldn't hunt 400 yards and not venture away from the other 3 dogs it is hunting with.
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