Storm99
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Jun 2010
Location: Missouri
Posts: 1151 |
quote:
Originally posted by msinc
You guys must be a lot younger than me...I don't consider Lipper "old blood"...and the dogs you are describing, pass up easy coons???...to go tree a deep one just to be by their self??? That sure sounds like what everyone wants today to use in the competition hunts.
I started hunting with a man that was a lot older than me back in 1977. He had a little walker female that was the best dog around. This area has always had a very good coon population. We never did have a lot of coon hunters or coon dogs around here anyways, but she was the best here her entire life.
She was small and might have weighed in at 40 pounds. Didn't have a really loud mouth and wasn't no where near as fast on track as some of these dogs today, but a nice bawl on track and a nice locate and chop on tree. The entire time I hunted with her {77-82} she never ran anything but a coon. She was already 6 or 7 when I came to know her. Here's the thing that made her so great...if she barked, and she barked every time I ever hunted with her, you were going to look at a coon. Not a den, not a leafy tree or a hollow, not a hole in the ground. It was about 99% guaranteed you would see a coon.
What I wouldn't give to have her back to life today. The sad fact is that if I did most coon hunters today wouldn't care to own her. She wasn't fast and she wasn't independent. She went to the first coon and treed it and if another dog struck first she ran and treed that one.
I never knew her in her younger days as a pup but was told she ran some off game until she was about two or three {no shock collars back then, you had to run 'em down and beat the deer out of them!!!}
Nobody was concerned about when their dogs ran and treed their first coon by themselves...we always hunted several dogs together, at east two. Almost never was a dog hunted alone. About the only comment regarding a dog doing it by themselves was "if they cant do it by themselves you aint done training." I remember that the biggest challenge back then was just getting a dog to tree. That was number one and the next in line was being straight.
That quest for tree power was about solved in the 80's and I started comp hunting around 85. I remember then the big thing was having a dog that could take "tree pressure" which was another way of saying "tolerate a mean dog."
The old gal was not purple ribbon bred but had Johnson's Banjo in her pedigree, I think he was her grand sire.
There are differences in the dogs of today vs. old blood. In my lifetime I have seen the dogs get louder, tree harder, start earlier, run tracks much faster and definitely act more independent. I would say that a higher percentage of pups make the cut and that the ones that don't are sadly in the hands of some guy that expects a miracle. In fact I don't know what some of these people want, I don't even think they want a coon dog because they never seem to find one. All of these improvements in dogs are good things.
I wish some of the real old timers could see our modern dogs. I truly think they would not only be amazed but they would tell us how lucky we are. Technology is in our favor too. Imagine handing an old time coon hunter that last hunted in the 70's a Garmin Alpha and a Sunfire Ultra HD light.
There were a lot less titled dogs back then too. Three hour hunts were harder. That last hour always seemed to cost a lot of minus points and more dogs entered hunts then too. Today, if you see a Walker dog pedigree that aint all grand it's a strange thing. I remember when Logan's Wild Clover was one of if not the first dogs to be able to produce pups with everything grand in the pedigree.
Some of the differences today are funny...what we used to call the sort of rare slick tree is now a squirrel...and there seems to be a lot of squirrels these days. Dogs back then ran tracks slower too. You could always tell by the speed if it was a coon or what we used to call "fast game." That's where that term came from the speed over ground of the dog running it.
Edit: I guess I didn't really answer your questions...all dogs are naturals, you cannot teach them to tree or hunt out or run a track. You cant as a trainer adjust their nose power and you cant really force them to start hunting. I think the best way of saying it is that some are not as "natural" and wont do much of any of the above. Some are slower to rise to the task and some go right out of the gate. What you are describing is a matter more of the owner/handler/trainer and what he is willing to tolerate. Think of the dog as sort of pre-programmed and you cant really change it much. The biggest thing that little Walker female taught me was after she died...I spent the next ten years realizing just how rare a good dog is.
I've hunted with a few old timers and they say the hounds today aint got what it takes to tree coons consistantly night after night!
Summer time they cant take the heat and in the winter time they cant track a coon track in 2 inches of snow! Just what some say about the hounds today. "SOME NOT ALL" I dont want to offend anyone that thinks they got something better than anyone else.
I have seen it myself, and I wont forget all the slicks that I walk to in todays hounds also, Pleasure hunting or Competition hunting. But now the old Rock blood I liked hunting it because I was guaranteed a coon every time, never once did I walk to a slick and I didnt own a hair on him! That Spring Creek is just about the most accurate blood I think you can get in a hound, slow starters, but coon treeing SOBs'.
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07-23-2014 05:25 PM
