Fisher13
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Dec 2012
Location: Pennsylvania
Posts: 2027 |
quote:
Originally posted by ksteppe10
Okay guys so I got another question, at what age should I start teaching him how to trail and hunt and what is the best way to do this?
After your obedience lessons, keep them age appropriate and short, get coon hide and play with him with it. If he don't respond to it right away, find something that he does.
Maybe a hot dog or a treat. Once he understands this,introduce him to hiding the treat,or hotdog, then hide the treat with the coon hide. Once he starts finding both, remove the treat and give it to him after he finds the hide. Begin to make tracks through the yard and hiding the hide.
I also would be exposing him to the woods during the day time, just to have fun and explore.
Keep in mind when you introduce him to treeing, make sure he trees by scent not by sight. Also don't allow him to jump, encourage barking, but avoid any other extra excitement. If he shows to be more track oriented then you may decide to show some more praise. However with hounds today there is plenty of tree power and to much excitement leads to fighting and other bad habits. By this time he should know sit and down. Use these at the tree,but encourage speak and the barking.
Around this time I would begin to take him to the woods at night to practice the lessons. I then will talk him for walks near active coon feeders, exposing him to real tracks, and releasing real caged coon for him to track and tree.
Your obedience lessons establish a good ability to communicate. This communications allows you to develop your game of tracking and treeing. The game of tracking and treeing develops into real life hunting. Do baby steps and work with him every day. Revisit your obedience lessons regularly, also make plenty of time for playtime and just pure exercise, pups are like small children short attention spans, and lots of play.
Read all the dog training books you can, learn proper correction techniques. Avoid any trash breaking unless your positive he is trashing. Most new trainers worry about this to much. Find good hunting spots with thick coon, and he will rarely trash. Lastly find the best spots you can to hunt him in, can't train a coon dog with out coon. Your main overall goal is develop a strong prey drive for coon.
Teach him to love treeing coon, and he should get pretty good at it, over the next couple years. Stick with it be patient expect the world out of him, just not over night. He will struggle transition from the drag to real live coon, but just be patient and keep him in the woods.
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"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you; that is the principal difference between a dog and a man."
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Last edited by Fisher13 on 01-20-2015 at 05:41 AM
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01-09-2015 03:12 AM
also walks in the woods are helpful to get use to all the smells and sounds lol. good luck man enjoy your pup they are a blast when they are little.
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