Sounds like a pretty good hunt other than the polar conditions lol.

They look great! That is gonna be one heck of a setup.

One thing I do wonder about is, how hard is the concrete on the dog’s joints? I know there is a big difference between walking on concrete all day versus walking on the ground.

It's definitely hard on their joints no doubt about it. I used to have all my kennels on concrete and you could see the difference especially with the older dogs. My buddy raised a litter on concrete and I did notice a small difference with their pasterns.

Hollow those are nice latches. I think I need to get one to put on my SxS since I broke the latch off of it.

Thanks William, I sure do like him.

Hey red nose what’s your make out of?
T-dog just pulling your leg a little hahaha me and the boys been taking him on walks and my favorite part is the boys asking questions dad why you this and that sharing knowledge to the boys is a best thing a father can do

Mav if you go back to page 3 of this thread and look at the post by Tdog with the pics in it, my dogs sire is the red rednose dog named Loki bred to a nice bitch from Tdog's line of bulldogs we kind of lost.

That is the one and only Hoss. I couldn't let this topic go without braggin on Big Hoss a little hahaha. I am defintiely biased when it comes to him. He is 81lb in shape.

He is retired now but he has caught plenty of hogs and did it in style. He is extremely intelligent and has done everything I have asked of him. He is fast and as athletic as you would want. But as much as I like him, he is not without faults. If he is fresh and not been hunted in a while his first couple of catches back he might take a bad line in and just smash the hog, which is fine and will still catch the hog but it puts extra damage on him that wasn't necessary. But when he has been hunted regularly and is rolling he can really put on a show and do some special things.

He showed himself to be very reliable and I can only think of one time where he out right missed, though there was probably one or two others even though I can't recall them. The last one I hunted with that was as good or better was when I hunted with his half brother that Tdog owned name Hondo. Since then I have hunted with a lot of decent dogs and some not so decent but none that even come close to him. What really stood out about him was how fast he was even though you wouldn't have guessed it, and his mouth, man he can crunch and would crush skulls of small hogs and destroy big hogs as well. If you let another catch dog catch with him you def knew which side Hoss caught on.

I have been looking for a top notch bitch to breed him to for the last 3 or 4 years but havn't found anything yet though I am still looking.

Hey Maverick Rip is a good looking dog, I bet those pups turn out nice!

Good thing yall brought Cannon, nothing would have got done otherwise!

Great pics. Looks like a great setup and always good to get the kids and whole family involved.

To me that's an easy question. Hunt is a dogs natural inclination to find game, and how much hunt they have is how badly they want to find game, simple as that to me. It can be used in different ways.

Range and hunt get confused a lot, dog A may have less range then dog B, but dog A can still have more hunt then dog B. Hunt is in them genetically and that is why it is a natural inclination and not a trained behavior. One of my mentors would always say you're not training them to hunt, you are training them what you don't want them to hunt.

Got any more pic's of him Cracker?

He is looking good, it looks like he has matured really nicely.

Those suckers are stout, they look really good. How rough are they, don't remember if you were breeding them to catch out or back up and bay, interested in their style.

They are pretty uniform as well, looks like you have built a nice line there Cracker!

Looks good, thats how you get them young dogs going. Good vids too.

I'm definitely no vet but it looks like it might be an allergic reaction or auto immune issue? Have you tried changing feed? Depending on what you feed if it has corn maybe trying something that uses something different than what you are feeding now. Just a thought, hope you get it figured out.

This is a good topic and interesting how every one looks at it.

I have hunted with both types on hogs and big game and when hog hunting the best I have hunted with have been casting winding type dogs with a lot of hustle, medium or hot nosed. They were about getting bayed as fast as possible. These types of dogs would not take tracks. Many times we would put them on tracks and they would just blow out the opposite way on their own and bay a different hog. And I definitely never seen one grub a track out, just not the style of dogs they were. We also tried track dogs but we never had one we really liked. They were usually too slow and barked way too much and we would do a whole lot of trailing not much catching. Ours didn't do both but I know people definitely have dogs that can.

In the big game world I have seen both pure hounds and pure curs that were good at both, so I know it's possible. In fact our cats dogs cast until they hit a track and then have to be able to work that track. In my opinion and like someone else stated it has a lot to do with how you start them and how you hunt them. Another example when bear hunting we used to have dogs we could rig, cast, road, or start off baits and tracks. The guys with the best rig dogs rigged the most, the guys with the best track dogs drove roads and dropped on tracks the most. I can think of a time in particular where we got a depredation call on a specific bear, we just drove roads on that ranch until we found paper plate size tracks and put our start dogs down on that, and they took that track straddling it until they got jumped.

Lastly I think if it was me I would focus on trying to breed dogs with big motors, crazy drive, and at least some range because like my old mentor would tell me you can take it out of them but you can't put it in them. I think you would have more success training dogs to take tracks through repetition and patience then to get a dog to cast and really hustle, can't train drive its either in them or not and you can only do things to encourage it and bring it out. My belief is if you have a dog with a ton of drive you can train them to do almost anything. Just my opinion and good luck.

Like T dog said there are a lot of angles to look at this from, and there are lots of debates and even arguments about this in the big game world. This other angle is the type game you are running, I don't really hunt hogs that often any longer and pretty much only hunt cats but I have also bear and fox hunted for years as well, so I look at it from a more holistic big game view. Some types of game it matters less from region to region than others. I would say bear, hogs, and coons translate the best, and cats both types are far more regional.

If 80-90% of people in a region only use one style of dog (notice I didn't say breed) then there is probably a reason for that. There are always exceptions to this rule and sometimes someone will try something new and it will hit with a lot of success but with how fast info travels nowadays people will copy it fast. But people forget how many people failed when trying to reinvent the wheel to the one that succeeded. And just because you were successful once isn't proof of being able to catch consistently.

I’ve never heard of it. I hope I never have to deal with it either. Is there anything (pesticides) that keep the bugs away?

This is what I told you about about 6 months back.

Yes I have heard of it, it is real bad in the area of Texas I hunt. It is moving from South to North and I heard good freezes are hard on the bugs but I have not seen actual scientific proof of this.

The disease can be passed multiple ways and the most common is from feces usually from water pales. The bugs will try and drink and defecate in the water then your dog/s will drink it. From my understanding is it can kill a dog real quick, or slowly, or not at all and lay dormant as I know of dogs that have tested positive and never show any symptoms nor adverse affects.

This is why dogmen in areas where the bug is prevalent are starting to use lickers, build above ground kennels, and use cedar chips instead of hay in their dog houses. There are a few other tricks as well but I am not trying to write a book. There are some experimental treatments and but no pier reviewed accepted ones yet. Google Mexican Kissing Bug and you can see what they look like.

I go back and forth between South Texas and Central Texas and had never seen them at my Central Tex house until last year. I found a couple for the first time.

Unfortunately momma has lost 3 pups. All females. She’s doing her damndest, but she’s got a few bad tits and I guess there just wasn’t enough to go around.

Hey Slim I ran into this exact issue too when I bred my very best bitch who was 7 years old last year. She delivered 7 and we had to give her a shot to induce labor to get the last 3 out (still born). She only had 4 or 5 good tits, and so she picked two she didn't want and moved them out on her own. Pretty crazy that she knew, we ended up losing her due to a uterine infection but I was able to save and raise all 5 pups.

Best of luck to you with the pups, they sure look nice. I've been following along with your dogs progression and it's been fun to see. Stay after it!