COLDTRAILIN

[S.R.Patch]

(Quote);Nowhere in any post did anyone suggest you get rid of your hounds. A couple of you are determined to polarize everyone into two camps- those that LIKE cold trailing and those that don't. As I've said on several occasions, the standard is there for us to shoot for, and the standard was established scores of years ago by the houndsmen who developed the bloodlines we have to work with today. Few dogs will meet the standard and all will have some measure of shortcomings. Many are content to hunt with hounds that produce game for them a majority of the time, by whatever means necessary. There is nothing wrong with that. Others are determined to produce the best specimens possible, as near flawless as can be hoped for; but few will achieve it. I find it strange that some feel that those who look for the very best hound possible are not hunters, or their hounds are suitable only for field trials. The very toughest to please people I know are avid rabbit hunters who spend dozens of days a year running hounds. They don't settle for many faults in their hounds. No one is more critical of their own hounds than I am. That doesn't mean I cull out every dog that doesn't meet expectations, I just am aware of his faults and weaknesses. I can shoot plenty of hare off any dog in my kennel, faulty or not, but it is those few special hounds who DO meet the standard that will live forever in my memory and accounted for more game than all the rest. It's taken a lot of years, hundreds of dogs and thousands of hare to make me realize why some dogs are better than others and that those who most closely met the standard are the ones that also gave the best days afield, and accounted for the fewest lost rabbits and poor days. There have only been 5 or 6 such hounds I've had the pleasure of owning over the last 30+ years, not many out of a couple hundred hounds, but they DO exist and having hunted with such dogs make it hard to settle for less.(End Quote).

Purdy much says it all. Thanks Steve ...Patch

[Steve C.]

Patch, at the risk of being accused of starting a "Love Fest" LOL, it's been houndsmen like yourself, Tony Konisky, Terry Perry, Tom Sharpe, Mike Blair, Jack O'Connell, Butch Keene and many others who've kept me encouraged to stick with rule book hounds and ignore the fads that we see from time to time. The dogs teach us all we need to know if we keep our eyes (and mind) open but it takes some guidance and advice to keep our standards high when a breeding fails or go through a time when none of our hounds measure up. Nothing like hours spent in the woods, with or without a gun, to keep ourselves from being kennel blind and sorting the wheat from the chaff. Keep it fun though guys, that's the way to stay enthusiastic.

[kjohns]

I can't believe you guys are still going on this.

Tastes Great!
Less Filling!

Tastes Great!
Less Filling!

[beaglebill]

Sounds like a good wrap up to me Patch...Its been great to hear so many opinions regardless of how we may feel we all can learn regardless of how long we fool with dogs

[boxer]

Hey Tom if you would take the time and listen to what I said you might learn something .What would you say the purpose of this so called coldtrailing would be????Now really think about it wouldn't it make more since for a dog to trail with his mouth shut until he hits what he is looking for ,how many time does it happen that these so called coldtrailing huonds come up with NOTHING after all there mouthing??and they call all the other dogs in from where they are hunting.Take care.

[kjohns]

Read the thread boxer. Those questions have all been answered by both sides.

[steve]

time for my 2 cents for all you guys feeding those none faulty hot trail 80-90-100 % dogs bring them on up here to Minnesota and show me what you are so proud of.I went out today up by Duluth, might have got up to 15 deg. all the dogs looked pretty sad seen hare on several occassions but not once did the dogs make 1 full circle so not one shot was fired why reward the dogs when the job wasn't done rite.And these are the dogs I choose to feed.If the dogs made a check for more than a couple minutes you had a cold track and my good female that can do a fair job really struggled and after 5-10 min. would come in and look for another track to run.Now I hunt 3-4 days a week in these conditions so I know what my dogs are able to do,so I need to see the light and invite anyone blowing smoke come north and show me more rabbits with out cold trailing dogs and I my have to cull mine and buy some of yours,and I bet I will still be feeding mine in the end.Will see if tommorrow if dogs can make one circle the rite way so I can shoot the critter.Steve

[steve]

Just to let you guys know in advance I only hunt on state land and along with having snowshoes there is also a nice crop of coyotes and TIMBERWOLVES so if your dogs might be faulty in any way I'm sure the wolves could help cull some of them for you.I bet I just invented a couple more excuses for the 1o1 book like my dog is allergic to wolf tracks or my dog is scared of coyote hair or maybe afraid of bald eagle shadows overhead.Lets hear some of the excuses why you guys can't come show me the real dogs in the world that I'm missing.Steve

[FullCry]

Hey blackdirt beagles,I went and looked at all of your hunting photos and man have you got some fine looking dogs.It sure does look like y'all are tearing em up........up there on a regular basis.I sure am proud to be on your side and hope you have many more good hunts to come with those beagles that know how to track...........whether it be hot or cool................take care ........FullCry

[danny]

hmmmmm Steve, sounds like you got some sorry sorry dogs! lol, ONLY KIDDING EVERYONE, I was hunting with Steve today, I agree whole heartly with his posts. I believe this cold weather would bring most 100% producing dogs down a bit', I could be wrong. But what I don't get is, if the dogs make a loose (not the 100%ers of course) and the track gets cold in a couple of minutes, should they not try to run it when they pick it up??????

confused in MN???

[WELLS WOODS]

Yes , of course Danny, dogs should stay with the loose as long as it takes to find it and sometimes the track gets old if takes the dogs a long time to recover the track. It will take a dog longer and they have to slow down and grub the track and they should give voice while doing so. This is where their nose comes in handy. Good dogs know the difference between a jumped rabbit that has gotten way out in front of them or is on tough scenting conditions and a cold trail made by a rabbit hours earlier that has not been jumped.
Good luck in those tough conditions; I appreciate hounds with the desire and nose to succeed in those tough conditions.

[Joe West]

steve: I am quite sure that we had already went over the fact that we were speaking of hounds opening beofre the rabbit was up. IN your case the hounds produced the rabbit and the rabbit was up as evidenced by the fact that you saw the hare however they were unable to account for it. Yes the line got cold in minutes according to the conditions but that is different then a cold trailer who opens on a line laid the night before or hours earlier and the rabbit is sitting in his form. The distinction between the two has alreadt been discussed but you must have missed it. IN the case where the rabbit has alreadt been produced the hounds are SUPPOSED to open on the line.

It's funny how one picks up on the differences in the manner in which other beaglers do things and I had picked up on a difference in the way you do things in your post. You did not reward the hounds by shooting the rabbit. We do it completely the opposite. We reward the huonds by not shooting the rabbit and letting them run. Hounds get theuir enjoyment from the chase and I have seen many hounds who show no interest in a dead rabbit precisely because a dead rabbit will not run. A successful hunt is not measured by the number of rabbits shot but rather by the performance of the hounds. I can't recall when was the last time was that I shot more then two rabbits in a full days hunt. I can recall vividly our best hare hunts and sitting on a ledge overlooking a dip and watching the hare come through time after time and not shooting because the hounds were doing so good we didn't want to end the chase. And other times on rabbit when we let the rabbit go because he ran so well for ythe hounds that we didn't want to take him but leave him for the next time and hope that he'd breed more like him. But anyway, I bring the difference in the way beaglers do things up because at times in this thread I had asked how everyone does certain things. I was quite sure that we would do things differently but was interested to see if there was a trend among those who like a cold trailer and those that do not. Incidentally, just to make it perfectly clear, opening on a line that has gone cold after the rabbit is produced is NOT cold trailing.

[Steve C.]

That's funny that this point should come up. Any time there's a controversy such as this I try to think of times that I've seen hounds and situations such as we're discussing and how things turned out. Believe me, there are many times while watching the hounds I have to question whether what I'm seeing is good houndwork or faulty action. We like to say that if the hounds account for their rabbit that he has done a fine job. We also know that if there is plenty of game in an area, any dog that can run through the woods and bark will produce some game. I got thinking about last March, temps below zero in the AM, hard crust over 4 feet of snow that would almost hold a man up, nothing to hold scent. We cast 3 bitches known for nose and within 10 minutes they had a hare jumped and spotted by one of us. The dogs struggled to run it but made progress. They had to go track to track with one hound doing most of the work. Some would consider this cold trailing, I don't as the hare was jumped. Although this chase was not in any way HOT, that would be what I'd call it. In the end, the dogs were only able to pick at the track and eventually lost it. Good houndwork, but never accounted for the game. After an hour of this, I declared that it would be impossible to circle a hare til things warmed up a bit. One of the fellows suggested we try his male alone and see if he could do any better. He eventually jumped a hare and WALKED the track for an hour and a half, eventually killing the hare who was 15 minutes ahead of the hound. You could say that the entire run was cold trailed but in reality that's considered a hot track. This "run" was little faster than you'd witness from brace hounds but it was interesting to see that this hound held the line while mine could not. On the other hand, I wouldn't want to hunt with a hound as slow as this. The next day conditions improved, sunny with temps in the high 20's. We had great running, killing 6 or 7 hare, and this "brace hound" from the day before led nearly every time. Pretty impressive. If this situation is what some of you are describing as cold trailing, then the argument is over terminology, not houndwork. Steve, we have 25 to 35 below zero most winters and few hounds will get the job done on many of these days. The last two winters we've had 4 to 5 feet of powder snow on the ground for 4 months. I wasn't very happy with my hounds. Cold trailing would have made no difference. Jumping hare wasn't the problem, running them was. I talked to beaglers from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia to upstate New York and the situation was the same- nobody had hounds that were reliable. Still, we try to find those who can do better than what we have and include them in our breeding program. These discussions are about learning other people's ideas, not about who's right or wrong or who has the best hounds. No one gives a hoot about my hounds or anyone else's other than they're own. But whether we agree with each other or not, it's always good to hear other points of view and really think about how it relates to our hounds or our conditions. I suspect that if I were to make the long trip to Minnesota, my hounds would do about the same as they do here in Maine. Probably there would be little difference in what we're running after all.

[steve]

This question is for all the trialers disagreeing about this cold trail debate.How many trials are there out there that are actually held in the winter with tough running and bad temps.Or is this unexceptical for you guys cause your dogs can't preform say at o-10 deg.weather.And if there isn't I want to know why,and if there are I want to know where so I can see for myself and understand some of this hot nose cold trail faulty hound actions talk.Been to one AKC spo trial and watched guys run around chasing dogs scoring lines ect. told myself that 's not rabbit hunting in my book never went again.