Registered: Jun 2008
Location: Burlington, CT
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Glad to have you, Travis! Enjoy a cop of virtual coffee, and join the conversation.

So far this experiment has been a success. Great discussions without the trash talking.

David Schmidt

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David,

Just MPO, I have had my best luck targeting COI of 10-15% for 2-3 generations. Then I look for an out cross based on my target traits, and not wins or pedigree or yada yada.

Then if that out cross is successful I try to breed back into my dogs targeting again 10-15% COI.

This is just my preference.

I do stay below 20% COI.

Of course David, I should mention that I haven't made a cross that produced puppies in about 5 or 6 years. Family has intervened, and I have been able to get puppies from friends good crosses.

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Larry Atherton

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I am here to pose a question that may sound stupid, but i have got to ask. I am by know means a breeder so take this with a grain of salt. I feel that every real breeder that has been at it for a while and that is completely honest hopes that every litter they raise will throw coondogs that are better than they are leading at that particular time. So lets say that you are hunting a strain of dogs that are dogs that tree coons and hunt average and you really want to put more horsepower and put more mouth in your strain of dogs. Do you continue to stay true to the linebreeding or do you step out and go breed to a dog that has a big mouth and the hunt that you want? I always here that outcrossing or crossbreeding may bring unwanted traits into your line of dogs, but if you want to improve your dogs what choice do you have? Once again i"m just wanting opinions and ideas on breeding. It has always interested me.

Bryan Webb

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Bryan,I always try to find an idividual within my line that has the desirable traits as my first option.If I just can't find it then I look outside for another line that has as close to the same original line but may be a slight bit stronger in the traits I am looking for.This came to pass for me just two generations ago in that I had pretty much what I was looking for,and it was breeding fairly true, but being in big game country as well I wanted to add a bit more track speed so I made two outcrosses on one of the most loved and hated walker lines there is.Bottom line is I got my track speed but got an "idiot gene" this other line is known for.So now it is time to cross the outcrossed stuff back into some of my dogs that have been kept strongly line bred and try to settle down the "idiot" part.Ten years ago or so I made another attempt at a line breeding that introduced a slight outcross as I like to put it and it put me behind in figuring out that was the cause of some alligators being born when I had never had that crop up before or since all that blood was culled out of the program.

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Travis Stirek
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quote:

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Originally posted by Bryan K Webb
I am here to pose a question that may sound stupid, but i have got to ask. I am by know means a breeder so take this with a grain of salt. I feel that every real breeder that has been at it for a while and that is completely honest hopes that every litter they raise will throw coondogs that are better than they are leading at that particular time. So lets say that you are hunting a strain of dogs that are dogs that tree coons and hunt average and you really want to put more horsepower and put more mouth in your strain of dogs. Do you continue to stay true to the linebreeding or do you step out and go breed to a dog that has a big mouth and the hunt that you want? I always here that outcrossing or crossbreeding may bring unwanted traits into your line of dogs, but if you want to improve your dogs what choice do you have? Once again i"m just wanting opinions and ideas on breeding. It has always interested me.

Bryan Webb

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Joe Newlin
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Home of Oak Ridge Kennels

Last edited by Oak Ridge on 09-19-2011 at 09:58 PM

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Joe I am with you on the trying to reproduce whats at the end of my leash,but if I get one thats better,I ain't complaining.LOL

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Travis Stirek
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X 2 Joe. I have a female that I have now that I love her turnover a little slow on a track but good enough for this pleasure hunter but she was fixed. So I got a new puppy hoping she is as good if not better than the older female. Like you said breeding to get the same dog is maybe what my purpose is, after all I have not comp hunted yet So I am just looking for a good hound to put in the woods and enjoy and if something good or special comes of it then I will not complain at all.

Enjoying this thread and learning alot.

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Registered: Jan 2008
Location: norlina nc
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quote:

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Originally posted by deschmidt27
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bigdiezel79 - there's no guarantees, but I would say it all depends on what they're barking at in the kennel. If they're winding nearby coon, and you bust them for barking, there's a chance they'll do less of it in the woods. I myself actually found a dead kitten coon in my kennel this spring, and that made me second guess shocking the dogs, without being absolutely sure what they're up to.

David Schmidt

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Jeremy Harris

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Location: Burlington, CT
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I've had the shocking collar debate before... and in my opinion, it's a huge mistake to make use of a training collar when you don't know exactly what a dog is up to. I happen to have a "long range" system, but will never use it to it's capacity. If I bust a dog for something, they'll be in front of me where I can see exactly what they're doing.

I've used a collar to break dogs off of deer, but they're in the bean or alfalafa field right in front of me. I'm not going to risk shocking them on a coon they switched over to, once they got out of view. Personally I think shocking a dog a mile or two off, is irresponsible.

David Schmidt

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So back on the breeding topic... who do we have to thank for the deficiencies we see all too often in the breeds of today? You can hardly read a dozen posts on this forum before you come to one, with folks complaining about babbling, slick treeing fools, that are "independent to a fault" or uncapable of drifting a track.

How did we go from pack style, less independent, dogs that checked in, to the dominance of independent go yonder slick treeing, babbling fools of today???

And it's not that we have just a few too many of these hounds, it's to the point that you struggle finding a hound (especially a Walker) that will hunt close and isn't completely independent. And the ability to drift a cold track seems almost non-existent.

Since we're not dominated by breeder's practicing selective breeding, line-breeding, or even culling, shouldn't all of these genes still be in the pool? With as little thought as goes into many's breeding decisions, shouldn't we be randomly producing a little bit of everything, in one generation or another?

Yes, I know that many are breeding to the latest hot winner and that explains the traits dominant in the studs, but if they're breeding anything to them and not culling out those with less desireable traits (from a competition perspective) how did those traits go away in about a decade???

David Schmidt

Last edited by deschmidt27 on 09-26-2011 at 04:37 AM

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quote:

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Originally posted by deschmidt27
*** Please read first post, prior to posting a reply.***

I've had the shocking collar debate before... and in my opinion, it's a huge mistake to make use of a training collar when you don't know exactly what a dog is up to. I happen to have a "long range" system, but will never use it to it's capacity. If I bust a dog for something, they'll be in front of me where I can see exactly what they're doing.

I've used a collar to break dogs off of deer, but they're in the bean or alfalafa field right in front of me. I'm not going to risk shocking them on a coon they switched over to, once they got out of view. Personally I think shocking a dog a mile or two off, is irresponsible.

David Schmidt

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Location: Central Michigan
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Dave,

Shock collars are very useful, but they become even more useful when you know the dog inside and out. Another tool for starting young dogs is the poor man's garmin (the lighted collars). I learn a lot about a young dog when I stay back a ways and follow them. It isn't a fun way to hunt, but you learn a lot about a dog.

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Larry Atherton

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Another new topic... what's everyone's philosophy on handling split trees in a competition hunt? How do you go about letting people leash there dogs after their five minutes are up, and yet still try to keep the cast together?

I experienced an extreme case of this, twice, Saturday night. We have four independent dogs, splitting treeing a good distance from one another. In the first case, my dog treed first, very deep, and then the other three treed behind us while we were shining my tree. The dogs weren't that far away, so I let them go leash there dogs, and respectfully they all returned to finish shining my tree.

But... the next case was really out of control. We were hunting near a 100 acre corn field, with patch woods all over the place and we had a dog treed in each one. Cutting across ditches and plowing through corn consumed over an hour before it was all said and done. One guy withdrew his dog, we believe one dog was in a hole and eventually left(or maybe killed the coon), my dog was barely barking when we got to him, but the fourth dog was treed for well over an hour and eventually stopped or just got tired of barking.

You can argue that a dog should never leave their tree, but it was pretty warm Saturday night, and a hard tree dog, can wear themselves ragged treeing for over an hour. I was running the watch to log the time between split trees, and it was at 82 minutes when I started the 2 on the last dog treeing, who coincidentally was in the woods next to the trucks!

Again, I can hear the argument that a dog treed should stay treed, but they're only required to hold a tree for 5 minutes by themselves, and only bark once per 2 minutes during those five... not 82 minutes.

Now, this never became a debate, because nobody wanted to walk all the way to their dog and then all the way back to everyone else's, and had they done so in all that corn with the distance between trees, we may not have made the hunt deadline. So how would everyone else handle it? Keep the cast together, everyone walk to and from their own trees and back to shine, or something else???

With all that said... a big thanks to Terry, Danny, Bobby, Jamie, and Eric. Nobody complained or argued, and even helped find one another's coon.

David Schmidt

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Wow..Dave sounds like a good night...or a bad night depending on how you look at it. Im a pleasure hunter so i will stay out of this one but am very interested to see the responses. Good to hear that everyone helped out on that one.

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Registered: May 2008
Location: Gillett, Pa
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live buy sword die by sword minus is the rule when a dog quits treeing for more than 2 minutes no matter how long it takes to get to them with that said it must be nice to have that many coon a dog can get by itself without getting out of hearing goodluck with that here!!!lol

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groworg1 - I can't technically disagree with you, as that is the rule. But that rule would lead people to start breaking the unwritten rule of keeping the cast together. The next time that person, who got minused, has a dog split treed and the 5 is up, he's going to be more inclined to leave the cast and go leash his dog, and as a judge you really don't have the grounds to deny that request. This means you either wait for their return, and hope they come back to your tree, or start shining the first dog treed's tree and hope they show up to see the coon, to acquire a majority.

The issue is this... we're in the gray area between the rules. The rules say your dog only has to hold a tree for 5 minutes, and they say you need a majority to plus or minus a tree, and they say there's a hunt time limit and a hunt deadline... and sometimes these come into conflict with one another.

David Schmidt

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As long as all dogs are treed, if its more than a 15 minute walk between trees you can call time out for the hike and then start time while you shine.

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Understood John, and we had done so. That's the 82 minutes I referenced in my first post. The point is, that with the walk through the corn fields and across the ditches, it was about a 20 minute walk each way, to each of the trees. If we had all split up, to leash our dogs and reconvene at the first dog treed, we would have come very close to the hunt deadline without consuming the 2 hour hunt limit. If we had ran the clock, without calling time out, we would have killed our whole hunt in one drop.

Now if there was only one NtCh cast, we would have let the dog's and leaves decide who won, but we had 3 other casts to compete with.

It was really a lose-lose situation, that could have gotten out of hand, if folks felt like being argumentative. I got lucky...

David Schmidt

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thought this should be brought back.

i have a question. i have a female that is horrible about rolling in coon manure whenever i hunt her. my future father in law has bird dogs and i've seen his female roll in manure. she's not near as bad about it as my dog. now its not something i cant live with but it is irritating as all get out when you go to take collars a off and they are caked with steaming manure. why do dogs do this. is it mostly a female thing. i cant think of a male that i've seen do this.

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quote:

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Originally posted by markknepp
thought this should be brought back.

i have a question. i have a female that is horrible about rolling in coon manure whenever i hunt her. my future father in law has bird dogs and i've seen his female roll in manure. she's not near as bad about it as my dog. now its not something i cant live with but it is irritating as all get out when you go to take collars a off and they are caked with steaming manure. why do dogs do this. is it mostly a female thing. i cant think of a male that i've seen do this.

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quote:

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Originally posted by deschmidt27
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Understood John, and we had done so. That's the 82 minutes I referenced in my first post. The point is, that with the walk through the corn fields and across the ditches, it was about a 20 minute walk each way, to each of the trees. If we had all split up, to leash our dogs and reconvene at the first dog treed, we would have come very close to the hunt deadline without consuming the 2 hour hunt limit. If we had ran the clock, without calling time out, we would have killed our whole hunt in one drop.

Now if there was only one NtCh cast, we would have let the dog's and leaves decide who won, but we had 3 other casts to compete with.

It was really a lose-lose situation, that could have gotten out of hand, if folks felt like being argumentative. I got lucky...

David Schmidt

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Registered: Jun 2008
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Mark - I have had several dogs both male and female that liked to roll in coon poo, but I'm not sure what possessed them to do so.

Lee - I'm not sure there's a rule change in order. This was just one of those examples where the right decisions aren't so clear cut.

David Schmidt

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quote:

---

Originally posted by deschmidt27
*** Please read first post, prior to posting a reply.***

Understood John, and we had done so. That's the 82 minutes I referenced in my first post. The point is, that with the walk through the corn fields and across the ditches, it was about a 20 minute walk each way, to each of the trees. If we had all split up, to leash our dogs and reconvene at the first dog treed, we would have come very close to the hunt deadline without consuming the 2 hour hunt limit. If we had ran the clock, without calling time out, we would have killed our whole hunt in one drop.

Now if there was only one NtCh cast, we would have let the dog's and leaves decide who won, but we had 3 other casts to compete with.

It was really a lose-lose situation, that could have gotten out of hand, if folks felt like being argumentative. I got lucky...

David Schmidt

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Glenn - it's certainly BS when all 4 dogs do it! You no longer have an advantage. I have several times argued, on this board, that the hunt-close "pleasure dog" could clean up, in a lot of casts I've been on.

David Schmidt

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Ok... I have a scenario that would likely become a controversial debate, so I decided to bring it to the coffee shop for discussion.

I was in a hunt last weekend, and we made a drop in a patch that had a woods behind it, that doubled as a cow pasture, with a 5' tall, tight fence with a strand of barb wire across the top all the way around it. It was a nice fence!

We heard all the dogs burn the track across this little field, and then heard them pull-up momentarily. My dog crossed, as we could hear him back in the woods, and then he crossed it again, as we could hear him out on a fence row. But then he came back and fell treed... and was barking very solid. When we got to him, he was opposite the fence from two big den trees. The closest one about a foot from the fence.

Here's the question... was he treed on the fence, or on that den tree across the fence??? I've never seen him pull-up on a fence, and we listened to him cross this one twice! He may have been winding the coon in that den and felt no need to cross the fence. Or maybe he ran the coon up the tree and saw it, and didn't feel a need to cross it. Or maybe he was just tired of crossing that dang fence!?!

But... I was the judge and didn't want to end up a "cheater" again on this forum, so I decided that I couldn't declare which tree he was on (although both trees touched, and he was clearly under the umbrella of them, with no others around), minused him on tree, and subsequently scratched him for having 400 minus.

What would you have done?

David Schmidt

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