deschmidt27
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Jun 2008
Location: Burlington, CT
Posts: 1758 |
I'm not sure if it's the type of dog I hunt, or the type of hunting I'm accustomed to, but there seems to be a huge disconnect between what I envision taking place in the woods, and what I see people eluding to on these posts... this thread and others.
What I see in the hunts, is four high-strung independent coon dogs, that leave us like a rocket and by the time they get out and away from us, are usually heading in different directions.
One of them finds a track first, and even if the others were inclined to join in on it (many around here would not) they have to now get to the part of the woods that dog is located (could be 100s of yards away) and join in. And by then, the coon may be treed already.
So if you are OK with judging dogs on just one coon, then you must be OK with:
- dogs me-tooing
- the fact that the first strike dog simply, by random chance was the first to encounter a coon track
- and that if the others didn't have their nose up that one's rear end, they have to hurry up and cut across the woods to join in, to get a piece of the tree.
Or... you don't want me-too dogs, and you want a dog capable of treeing a coon without help, and therefore there's a necessity of two coon to be in the same region as one another, hopefully in ear-shot, so you don't have to call time-out before someone trees, because dogs are heading in opposite directions!
I also assume that not every track starts at the coon's tail, so more often than not, your dog is going to cut a track that is quite old, and will take some time to figure out. And then, if it's the only track in the woods, you have the problems I stated above. Or... you stack the odds in your favor, and cut your dog in a woods with a lot of coon and tracks, and increase your odds of a dog cutting a track that is hot, or finding one on the way.
Now I can hear, those folks saying, "I want my dog to finish the track they started, not leaving for a hotter one!" and to those people, I must ask, have you ever watched coon??? I often see them from my tree stand, in the early morning hours. In fact I watched two, not that long ago... those two coon wandered all over the place, this way and that and back again. Often times they crossed their own tracks, as well as each others, as they made it through the woods. So I really struggle with the concept that a dog should guarantee that they finish the exact track they start... unless of course, your coon are miles apart, then they really don't have a choice!
David Schmidt
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10-11-2012 11:08 PM
