mmarshall
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Oct 2012
Location: east ohio
Posts: 1277 |
Re: Re: naturals
quote:
Originally posted by ahallada
Great story Kelly and so true. Unless you've actually had a natural, none of this makes much sense. When I first started in coonhunting it was a common training method to stick a pup in a barrel with a coon and roll the barrel down the hill. If the pup had what it took, it would go on to hate coon and be a coon dog. There was no way I was going to subject my first female pup to that barbaric method of training. I kept searching for different methods and read Millers Training Manuals 1 & 2 and tried a few of those. They actually worked and got me a good start. Not long after that I met a couple of the smartest houndsmen I've ever known, John Adametz and his dad Jim Adametz.
These guys had years of knowledge and Jim was one of the pioneers of the Bluetick breed. Nothing gets you to where you want to go faster than having good mentors. They hunted every breed of hound on about every species of animal so they understood the differences between a good bear dog vs a good coon dog and a cold nose tracker vs a medium nose or hot nose dog. When a dog opened they knew what the dog was doing, what it was running, and what kind of track it was. It was like a young stock investor hanging out with Warren Buffet. I wasn't the only student of theirs, and a few of my friends went on to win some of the biggest hunts in the country with their Blueticks.
I got to see a bunch of pups started and trained and helped train a few pups that went on to make a good name when I was 14-20 years of age. These guys never messed with cage coon at all and laughed at the method. In fact the only coon these pups ever saw were the ones that were treed naturally and hit the ground. They believed that a natural coondog shouldn't need unnatural training methods to develop. If they didn't tree coon by the time they were a year old they were either culled or used on pigs or bear. They had a dog by the name of Dual Gr.Ch. Adametz Little Bruiser that became my yardstick for coondogs and of over 50 years of breeding dogs he was their absolute best. He was a double Hammer 2 bred dog and is still one of the best I've ever walked behind.
Through them I became friends with Dave Dean and learned another level of techniques on breeding and training of coondogs. Interesting that Jim Adametz and Dave Dean both started with Blaksley bred Redbones. Dave later named his kennel after Blaksley's Northern Red Kennel, Northern Blue Kennels. He said Roy's breeding programs were a major influence on his future breeding program and he thought that Roy was years ahead of most in breeding techniques. In the 1970s and 1980s the hunts in the Midwest were dominated by Dave's Hammer bred dogs from Hammer 2-6., including Northern Blue Jet, Northern Blue Rebel, and Northern Blue Trapper lines. Some of the most natural pups I ever saw were from this breeding program. It wasn't uncommon to hear of a 3 month old pup treeing coon with other dogs from this line of dogs.
By the time I was 21 , I knew what I wanted in a Redbone after hunting with some of the best blue dogs of that era. They were smart, fast, independent, big mouthed , pressure tree dogs. I wanted all of that along with accuracy. The first Redbone I hunted with that had those traits was Gr.Nt.Ch. Smokey Mountain Brandy.
I was hunting a Gr.Nt.Ch. blue dog named Jessie at Autumn Oaks for a buddy of mine. She was a daughter of the Bruiser dog above and she was a decent enough dog to win it that year. We drew Alger and Brandy and we were in for a battle. We were leading the cast with a good score with 20 minutes left in the hunt. Jessie hit a track and drove it into a bean field and couldn't get her head off the ground. No other dog was open and with 10 minutes left I thought the hunt was mine, when Brandy opens up behind us about 200 yards on the edge of the woods and trees. Yep he had the meat and won National Gr.Nt.Ch.Redbone that year.
That was one smart dog and the closest thing I'd seen to the Bruiser dog. I didn't think he was super fast, but he had the big mouth and was a smart pressure tree dog. I'd say his daddy Gr.Nt.Ch. Smokey Mountain Dooley was the most underutilized stud dog of that era and a huge loss to this breed. Bill Wallock came real close to breeding TJ's mom Nt.Ch. Cane Spring Dawn to Dooley but decided to make an outcross on Lookout Luke instead. I can only think about what that would have done for our breeding program.
Bill was making his big move in the Redbone breed in about 1980 when he purchased Dawn from Max Hunter. She was heavily line bred Timber Chopper 3x and won US Redbone Days at 2 years of age. She had an unbelievable cold nose and one of the best strike dogs of that era, and was a good solid hard tree dog. After breeding her to Luke, he went back for a recommendation from Max Hunter. With the recommendation of Max, he bred her to a son of Gr.Nt.Ch. Timber Chopper Jr. named Gr.Nt.Ch. Toussaint Red Talker and that is what created Gr.Nt.Ch. Timber Jack.
Timber Jack was a natural early starter and placed at National Redbone Days at 9 months old. By the time he was 1 1/2 years old he had won 13 straight hunts. He was a really good dog at 2 and 3 but I wouldn't say he was a world beater. He actually never peaked until he was 5-6 years old when he was dominant on the big stage. That seemed to be a common peak age for the Timber Chopper bred dogs including Smokey Mountain Brandy, Toussaint Red Talker, Famous Amos, Burning Ben, and others. So I don't think it's true that dogs that start early peak early, or that dogs that start later peak later. These dogs were all early natural starters.
Now the Little Man dog was an early starter and peaked early and that is the way my Too the Max dog was too. He was as good as he was going to get at 2-3 years of age. Bill Wallock said he did become a better track dog later on however. So maybe for some of these dogs the dominant tracking abilities come out later in life. I know that TJ was a decent track dog at 2-3, and a great track dog at 5-6. At 7-8 years he drove tracks that most of my dogs and others couldn't smell. He also became rangier as he got older and it was not uncommon for him to go 2 miles when he was 9-10 years old. I've never hunted a dog with so much drive and heart right up until he died at 12 years old.
Contrary to what I heard by a prominent but misinformed Redbone Breeder at Autumn Oaks, TJ threw pups that were generally early starters, depending on the female he was bred to. Every big name dog he produced started early between 3 and 6 months of age including Max, Moon, Girl, Jack, Page, Rock, and Shock. These dogs were in competition hunts by the time they were 15 months old and they dominated at 2 years of age winning every major Redbone Hunt in 1992, including Opposite Sex and Overall Show Winners. No other stud has ever done that that I know of.
Great post doc
__________________
mark marshall
favorits ive hunted and or owned
grnt nighty nite moonlight kate rip
grnt moonlight pepper ann
Grnt jackpot Jackie rip
grnt rocky top jet
ntch moonlight katie rip
ntch moonlight madona
ntch beaver creek blaze rip
ntch moonlights dirty danny b.rip (ntch moonlight kink x ntch sawblade reckon)
Current
Grnt moonlight ky Kate (grnt ranger x grnt moonlight Kate
Ntch Pr beaver creeks easy peezy three 1st place wins (jet x moonlight Bree)
Pr beaver creeks moonlight coon buster ( moonlight shock x moonlight Bree)
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03-11-2016 12:00 PM
Re: naturals
