The American Beagler Forum

Concerned
I have been to a few trials from spring of -05 thru- fall and spring of 06 till now.the fall of-06 little pack dogs that I watched in this time period are not Little pack at all.they are in the middle spectrum of progressive Pack. .My question is! Is little pack going to the more consertive side. and has anyone else noticed this,I. don't have a problem either way.it 's just getting harder to know how the hounds will be judged,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

Keep'em running
Pine Mt Beagles

Rufus, I award a Check to a dog after 15 seconds swinging or at the point of loss. I give a minus after 3 minutes if a dog dont produce a rabbit.

If people will follow the rule book when judging everything will fall into place

Having said all of that some dogs are getting so rough they cant even run a rabbit, so more upper medium dogs are winning, because they can actually run a rabbit.

MIKE
THE WAY I TAKE THAT IS A YES ????????? HOW YOU BEEN MAN, FINDING ANY RABBITTS...

PINE MT BEAGLES

mike crabtree wrote:Rufus, I award a Check to a dog after 15 seconds swinging or at the point of loss. I give a minus after 3 minutes if a dog dont produce a rabbit.

If people will follow the rule book when judging everything will fall into place

Having said all of that some dogs are getting so rough they cant even run a rabbit, so more upper medium dogs are winning, because they can actually run a rabbit.

Mike I don't think I ever met you. But what you just said is the God's honest truth. And there is a lot of dogs that have been Over breed, Inbreed, or how you ever want to put it. The upper medium dogs are really the old style hunting dogs that we use to hunt, and are the ones that are winning, and that is the type of dog that I like. All by the way GREAT ANSWER.

Catfish:

I havent been running much. Deer season is out now, as of today. Ill hit it hard now til about the end of June.

from someone who has been to 4 or 5 lp hunts and 1 pp hunt let me just say the hounds looked ALOT the same and i could see where the line may be a little fuzzy... and in saying that i don't know if pp is getting a little loose or of lp is tighting up but its like this; the same dog places in both.. and like most everyone that trials i do it for fun but its alot more fun when everyone in either class lp or pp play by the same rules and have a little consistency in the ranks..........




hillbilly

I have been running a lot with champions from both formats, and I can tell you there still is a differance. You can have a good line running dog thats able to do well in both formats, which in my opinion is the best dog to feed. I have faster dogs, not totally wild but fast, and some days mine are best, other days a closer line dog will get the best of them. I see why progressive guys dont want wild dogs to win, but no matter if you like the dog or not, if it runs the line, and runs by the rules, it should be judged the same as the big name boys, that brought their slower than pond water dogs from six hundred miles away. I hear guys say they love to see a pack you can throw a blanket over, well thats like I shoot a deer, and a whole group of us start looking for it all right next to each other, wouldnt we be more productive spreading out, and looking?

i prefer a dog that can do both pp and lp.. but i have a couple that r too wide in the check for pp butn while runninbg the line do ok till the check appears..

Sounds to me like both Progressive Pack and Little Pack folks have their thinking caps on and are still seeking to run and keep rabbit dogs in the trialing world just as they keep in the woods hunting the meat! That sounds purtty good to me and in my opinion beagles are in good hands for the most part as the rabbit dogs of today are pretty darn good. They catch um one quite often and that my friend is due to breeding and blood with some conditioning. Seems that the different formats can and have come together in many ways to change and prevent many of the dogs of a pack to be "just followers that feed off others" to "pack mates" whether the pack can have a blanket thrown over it or is maybe a little wider which doesn't really matter as long as the dogs are working together and "getting ur done". Wayne

Pine Mt.
That is an interesting observation. I believe if you attended a few PP Trials ,you would hear many of those Beaglers say that PP style dogs are becoming more like LP. The older handlers, believe the PP dogs are becoming to fast and to rough, while the younger handlers don't have a problem with it, if indeed that is actually the case.

The problem I see is the 15 seconds that must pass before a check is created and points can be awarded for the dog that recovers the check.

In LP if you have a fast dog that runs close on the line and does not make any 15 second checks to recover, it will not get any points and not do well at all. If another dog in the cast is wild and creates checks, your close dog must still be screwed up until 15 seconds are up before recovering the check.

You hope for a check creater or even several in every cast in order to do good.

A faulty dog that can only run a short distance before creating a check that lasts 15 seconds and then recovers it will do well. One that will lie and run off the line and pull the cast away from the line, create a check, stir around for 15 seconds and then run back to the line and recover its check will do real good. The more 15 second checks in a cast, the more chance all the dogs have of all of them accumulating total points and being awarded a trophy even if it doesn't win the cast.

I hunt as fast of dogs as anyone and it is rare to have a 15 second check and if we do, I want to watch and see who's causing it.

If it happens too often, that dog will be like the Boll Weavel "looking for a home!"

In order for PP and LP to get more alike, in addition to RECEIVING points for recovering a check, there will have to also be a MINUS PENALTY for creating one.
Then a clean, fast, line controlling dog would have a better chance in both.

The friend that got me back into beagles, ran lp dogs, so thats what I wound up with, I wanted to raise a lp. champ, that was my goal. I raised many pups that were a wild mess, no working together, just run as fast as they could, no consistancy in differant conditions, what I have ended up with, are what I call tweener dogs, not wild enough for dominating lp., too loose for most pp. trials. They wont do great at either one, and thats fine with me now, as long as they bring the rabbit around to the gun, day in, day out, thats really what I want.When you start breeding dogs to conform to a set of rules made up by someone other than yourself, are you getting your ideal rabbit dog, or someone elses. If your into dogs like me, you learn early on that just because its a champ in a certain format doesnt mean you will like that dog.

good post jumpmaster,raise and feed what you like.Those tweeners can win too ......by cleaning up after the others.I have had hardcore LP guys look furtively around and then agree with my opinions on tweeners.Seems like there is a movement back to a more conservitive dog because the facts are they can place and win too.

I'm still tring to find in the little pack rulebook were its says a hound has to run ruff before it can run little pack.Hounds are judged by individual accomplishments by a set of rules and judged by those rules you'll have a winner whether they are ruff or clean,basiclly little pack allows a ruff hound to run without penelties.

I have seen those hounds that create checks,dont like'em but dont mind them getting ruff either.I run what i like,if it is clean then so be it.

Rufus to answer you questions,have started seeing cleaner hounds,and seeing cleaner hounds win,such as my Buzz hound.A hound with gears and brains,that hunts hard will take alot of the stupidity out of the rabbit race.All hounds entered should run under the same rules,if he's clean and wins that great,if he's ruff and wins thats fine too,rule book dont say they have to be ruff to be entered.

Something else i have seen,alot of the running grounds that are used to run cast on are getting older,which means also getting thicker.Making it hard on that swinging windsplitter,meaning the closer a hound stays in the check better his or her chances of scoring it.

By saying this is hounds running cleaner or are the ones that have always ran clean starting to get noticed more,due to the fact that the swinger/cutter is swinging his self out and the hound that staying tighter is beating him?

LYNN
I'M WITH YOU THERE,I'VE RAN ""LITTLE PACK"" OFF AND ON SINCE" ARHA" STARTED.I RUN A HOUND NOW CALLED"" BUSTER""HE IS AT THE TOP END OF LITTLE PACK AS FAR AS SPEED GOES .BUT FEW" PP" DOGS RUN CLOSER ON THE LINE , THAN HIM, I DON;T KNOW WHO SAY'S LITTLE PACK DOGS ARE WILD,I GUESS SOME ARE.THE RUNNING GROUNDS, ALSO IS A GOOD POINT,I DON'T RUN A CUTTING SWINGING HOUND BUT I LIKE A HOUND THAT RUNS THE RABBIT WITH THE INTENTION, OF CATCHING IT.ONE THING THAT BOTHERS ME AND I HAVE TALKED TO OTHERS ABOUT IT,IS A FAST DOG RUNS OUT IN FRONT, AND THE DOGS BEHIND MAKE CHECKS AND GET SCORED BEHIND THE FAST DOG EVEN THOUGH HE HAS NOT BROKE DOWN.I DON'T THINK A DOG SHOULD BE SCORED ON A TRACK THAT HAS ALREADY BEEN RUN.I DON'T HAVE DOGS THAT FAST BUT I HAVE SEEN IT HAPPEN!!!!!!!!!!!

KEEP'EM RUNNING
PINE MT BEAGLES