is it best to go right on bear scent???beacause an ol timer told me,,,put the pup rite on the stuff its goin to be huntin!!that means stay away from coons is he rite about that,jus wonderin wut yall think of thiss

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These days my young dogs don't see any game or do any trailing until they are in the pack and after bear or lion, and they seem to take to it well. I socialize my dogs about every day, and after a pup has come from my dogs, was raised with those dogs, socialized day after day and roaded with them, then finishing tracks is a given.........

Start'em on what they are gonna hunt and with the dogs that are gonna help teach them. They will become a team member and fit right in.

ike

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The Wolf Pack's Acomin!

I agree. It's to hard to break hounds of coons I always thought it was a shame to leave the hounds in the pen for 9 months of the year. If you are serious about large game hunting and no trash running they'll have to sit untill the season opens. You and I both know the one thing that can really ruin a bear hunt is treeing a coon in the middle of a swamp off your rig dog.

Jason

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Ontario's Lightfoot English

Jason Bates

Ain't that the truth! About eight years ago I was suppose to meet a bear hunter one day in September. Something came up that day and they bailed on me, so I drove down the country and up a canyon that is pretty darn good for bear. That hunt was in the day when we could pursue in the fall without a kill tag, so I thought what the heck.......

Anyway, I passed some swampy bottoms with Elderberry bushes everywhere and the dogs just blew up so I stopped and sent them. Well, they trailed off down in the swamp and treed a coon in about belly deep water. That coon was just above their head is a short willow bush.

Now understand I didn't have a gun with me cause it was not legal unless I had a bear tag, and it was before the day when I made all my hoiunds run with a shock collar. So there they were bellied up to the coon in waste deep water and no gun to shoot it from the bank, so I waded off in there with a leash to get them.

About the time I reached the dogs and snapped a leash to them, the coon jumped and all hell broke loose. I did manage to hold them but was covered in mud when I reached my BRAND NEW TRUCK. The punch line or kicker is I didn't have a change of clothing, so I striped down to my undershorts and tied an orange sweat shirt around my waste and headed down the road.......

Then I got to thinking, "how is this gonna look if a Highway Patrol, a Sheriff, or a Game Warden stops me?" Well, thank God they didn't and all came out well in the wash.........

But a coon dog ain't worth a crap in bear season.....

ike

just use one scent. doesn't matter what it is. your just using it to get your pups to learn how to trail the drag up. what you use will not determine what the dog is going to be good at or what it wants to run. i hunt bear, fox, bobcat and coon with my dogs and drag scents don't matter at all. unless your taking the urine out of the bear good luck getting something that is real bear pea or scent. not to say some isn't that you can buy. so using fake bear scent is not going to get your dog to strike bear or be better bear dogs or get them to want to leave on a bear track. good luck

i have never heard of anyone breaking there dogs off of coon to run bear. but i also live in the west where hunting along a creek bottom isn't happening so we don't have to do that. we hunt at night and catch coon fox and bobcat and catch bear during the day. i wouldn't know anything about the troubles of running coon during bear season back there so the best thing might be breaking them off. good thing i don't have to deal with that out here. sometimes we catch other game while bear hunting. we don't break our dogs off of that. we just figure if it tree's well run it. might not be the best thing but probably isn't the worst.

Thats the best quote ever. LOL

I haven't been rough on my hounds for starting a coon, but I haven't hunted them on coons for years. And many of the younger dogs have never had a coon. If they rig a coon along the river and the track and trail starts looking like coon I call them all back, and drive on looking for bear or lion. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with coon hunting just that I don't do it and haven't for years.......

http://www.ingramwildlife.com/callinghounds.wmv

I started calling my hounds off a tree or tracks three or four years ago when I got just too many hounds to handle. Obviously it helps a guy hunting alone who has six or eight hounds to leash out; it also helps bring those hounds in in the afternoon rather than leaving them out all night. That little video link kinda shows me calling my six hounds off a bear tree, and when I sing they all come running.......

ike

I use bear scent on coons for pups to get them trailing and treeing and then usually don't have much trouble breaking them off when they get big enough to keep up with the grown hounds.



Tiger and Lily at 8 wks

Tiger at 9 months

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Chris Henderson
http://www.outlawhounds.webs.com/
chenderson@stethensmith.com

nice pix outlaw

I start most all my dogs on coon.win its time for bear thay are more advanced and more of a do it ursalf kind of dog. If you cant break a dog of coon afterwerds you should git out of the sport

Why would you train a dog on coons then break them off? Thats the second dumbest thing I've ever read on these boards. But not to be outdone by anyone, the dumbest is your comment about using a housecat to break dogs off of bobcats. I doubt these training methods are consistantly effective.


Just for the record I have no problem with starting dogs on coon, its the other part about getting out of the sport thats asinine.

If you cant break a dog of coon you are not a dog man and bear is my #1 priority and i like to start young dogs on coon to see wat thay got you can pack hounds all day but i dont want a bunch of me to dogs

new tactic...

we have had good success starting our pups on piglets....strange as it may sound. a pig in a basket for a young pup is a lot of fun! pull him up the tree for step 2 of the training. we have a fenced in area maybe 4 to 5 acres. we have several "hog dogs" that do nothing more than train pups now. the pups get some great baying practice without the bumps, cuts, and gashes of the bear. we found that the hog, being more aggressive, but delivering less damage, does just enough damage to teach the pups that majic step that we have all been wanting them to do....the step (or steps) backwards out of danger. we have cut down on vet bills tremendiously! not to mention the other things we all know go along with our sport. the hog dogs do the trailing work for the pups, so they never get real set in their ways...we have had very little trouble turning them loose on a bear track. one could say we teach em what to do but, not what to do it to until they go hunting for the first time. for us this works great due to the fact that our bears (especially our bigger bears) don't like to tree much. better than 50% of oour bears are taken on the ground. just food for thought...


happy hunting

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Bad Company Tree Hounds
...till the day I die....

Yeah thats a new one about 2yrs a go i heard of this my hunting friends in NC do this it works pretty good i'm told seems to be the way to train in NC and it does work.