One thing I’ve learned over time is that ingredients make a recipe but only the baker can makes the cake.

No matter what they’re born as, they’ll only be as good as the effort you put in to them is what I mean. I’ve long been opposed to crossing bulldog into my curs, but the truth is that one of my all time favorite knuckleheads had 1/4 pit in him.

I’ve got a long list of good stories about him, but my favorite is the time he ran himself crippled.
The dogs name was Snicklefritz and he had gotten a horrible cut under one of his front arms. The tusk had cut up under the armpit and separated a bunch of the connective tissue. I treated it as best I could but he was unbelievably hard headed and wouldn’t stay off of it to let it heal properly. The wound took much longer to heal than I thought it should have and staying home on the chain was pure torture for Snicklefritz. Several weeks had passed since the wound had fully closed and he LOOKED like he was fully recovered, so when I was invited to hunt a rice field where the hogs run pretty bad I decided it’d be nice to have him along to anchor some of them running jokers.
As soon as we dropped the tailgate that evening, a few of my straight curs burned out of sight and fell bayed in a ditch with 1 minute of casting. I let Snick go from the truck, me and the fella I was with headed that way and caught that first hog. As soon as we had our hands on it, Snick let go and went to find the full blood curs which had rolled off the first hog as soon as snick had caught it. This exact scenario repeated itself over a dozen times in the next hour or two until, at the last hog, a monster sow in a rice canal, I noticed that Snicklefritz couldn’t climb out of the water.

I carried him out of the canal and found that his recently healed shoulder had COMPLETELY separated internally and he’d been running, baying, catching and rolling out on his good shoulder at top speed for at least half the hunt! By that last hog, his good arm was so weak that he couldn’t hold himself upright on it even if standing still.

I put him on the ground to make room for him on my ATV and when I turned to pick him up I couldn’t find him. As I scanned the area with my flashlight, I saw grass parting itself like a ghost was headed towards the woods! I ran him down and found this dog with his front legs laid straight under him, his face in the dirt and his backside up in the air, chugging like a locomotive, driving him on to find another hog!


I never did get pups out of him, but in hindsight, I’d say he sure taught me to humble myself a bit when thinking of genetics and cross breeds, and to thank the Lord for a good dog, no matter how he made them!

I saw a post on Facebook a few minutes ago, a picture of Von Plott I think it was and some of his original dogs. Leggy, shorter eared, and across the color spectrum, it reminded me of a theory I’ve always held about the plotts.

I’ve never had a full blood Plott, and honestly I don’t know that I’ve actually been around many, but over the years, all the different cur strains I’ve been around and reading about how the original Plotts weren’t directly referred to as “Hounds” necessarily, I’ve crafted this crazy theory in my head. Here’s the comment I posted on that thread;

My theory on the Plotts;
They were just a family kept strain of general European/American hunting curs. The Plott family held a few traits in high regard and bred their dogs to maximize those traits and over time their name became synonymous with high quality hunting dogs far and wide.

Until relatively recently, “cur” was a pejorative, not a breed description. Meaning, if you respected a mans hunting dogs, you would have referred to them as “hounds” because that has always been the commonly understood descriptor for “hunting dog” Likewise, when referring to your own dogs or those of a close friend, you might fondly refer to them as mutts, curs, potlickers etc. If you think about it, we still do this today. I am incredibly happy with my dogs, but when a stranger asks what kind they are I usually smirk and and say “Ah heck, they’re just a bunch of ol trashy curs”

Now, if I stayed devoted to my dogs for the rest of my life, then my sons and grandsons follow the same devotion, the people 100 years from now who see a well developed strain of fine hunting dog, with loads of nose, speed, grit, bottom and heart will rightly refer to them as “Parker Hounds” even though I never originally intended them to be labeled a “hound”

Does that make sense to everyone else?

And right there, you raise another excellent point. I’ve had online conversations over the years with dog hunters from all over the spectrum and I’ve suspected most of them believe that hogs couldn’t possibly put on any sort of a real race and that hog hunters obviously don’t know what a real race is if they’re struggling so badly to catch a fat farm animal! 

Correction— Chris, not Steve. Sorry

Hey y'all!  Im just up here at work listening to one of my favorite podcasts and caught Cajuns latest episode.

Cajun, I listened very closely when you began explaining to Steve why you decided to go with plotts on hogs vs the curs you used to have and while I know these topics have historically spurred VERY lively discussion in our little hog dog world, I wanted to reach out and personally tell you thank you for the way handled that explanation.

I'd encourage everyone who reads this to give this episode a listen.  It struck me that if I were to read that explanation in text a few years ago, I could be tempted to jump in with a knee jerk opinion and make an ass of myself, but to hear it from your own voice on a audio media, I better understood your mindset. I'd like to thank you for recording that show and thanks for the respectful way you presented cur dogs to a world of houndsmen.

Hats off to you sir.

A couple ways I’ve had good luck with;
1. Rebar- just bend the end of it over in a u shape, stick it through the last link on a chain and pound it into the ground until only the chain is above grade. (This probably doesn’t work in rocky or sandy soil)

2. Auger eyes- I get the 18 inch ones and twist them into the ground until only the chain is visible.

3. Scrap metal, trash etc. - If I can attach a chain to it, I just dig a hole, drop the junk in, bury it and ramp it in place. Again, so that only the chain is above ground

For me personally, making sure only the chain is above ground is the most important part, anything that can fail, will fail. And it will never fail on a POS dog I didn’t care for, it’ll always fail on my favorites, on the hottest day of the year.

Evening fellas!

Let me step in a steaming pile for a moment and really put my foot in my mouth. 

I would like for all good, right thinking, conservative, patriotic Americans to please stop using the term LIBERAL for the authoritarian A-holes on the American Left. PLEASE, PRETTY PLEASE, let’s refer to them as LEFTISTS because that’s who youre actually angry at.

Liberals are not the enemy, Leftists are. A traditional Liberal is one who believes in “I may disagree with what you said but I’ll fight to defend your right to say it”. A liberal is one who wants everybody to have equal rights according to law, they believe in the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness etc. The angry, mean-spirited, puritanical, authoritarians in the Democrat side of the aisle are not Liberals, they are Leftists! They cloak themselves in good liberal ideas but then poison them with their left wing, statist authoritarianism and turn liberals and conservatives against each other. 

I believe that the events of the last 12 years are waking up Liberals to the terrifying authoritarianism of the Leftists in their party and we conservatives should use this opportunity to welcome traditional liberals into our side of the aisle.


Let’s say you hate abortion. Most liberals don’t like abortion either (remember the phrase “safe, legal and rare”?) BUT they want to preserve the ability for women to get them when medically necessary and won’t go along with religious based complete bans on all abortion procedures. You might not realize it, but we can find enough common ground on that issue to find an acceptable compromise with liberals.

How about this Trans garbage? You hate what’s being FORCED on our nation? Here’s a crazy little secret, Liberals want Trans people to be treated fairly and stuff, but most liberals pretty dang uncomfortable with pervert teenage boys using Trans-rights laws as a way to access girls locker rooms too and if we frame our arguments correctly, liberals will compromise with us.

There’s a million more examples, but my basic point is that even though we disagree with liberals on a lot of topics, real liberal HATE authoritarianism and if we do our best to be smart, well spoken conservatives, liberals will RUN away from Leftists in the very near future.

Great looking dog Mr Owens!

Hey Slim,
The hog findin-est dog I’ve ever owned had hers cut smooth through many years ago and I didn’t have the money to even do what you’ve done. Mine just got retired to the back yard for a year. She developed thick scar tissue and will act like she uses the leg, but she’s only using it like she would a crutch or a prosthetic.

After a year of retirement, I took her along one night. She bayed a rally, which busted before we got there, and she went on the relay, baying about 8-10 more singles and ultimately on the last hog she was leaning waaaaaay out over her front shoulders, using the good back leg to bounce forward. It was definitely super strange looking and I still can’t quite figure out how she managed all that.
I’ve let her come along a few more times over the years, but mostly she is just retired.

Give yours plenty of time to heal on her own and I bet she’ll make herself useful again someday!


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Hey Slim,
The hog findin-est dog I’ve ever owned had hers cut smooth through many years ago and I didn’t have the money to even do what you’ve done. Mine just got retired to the back yard for a year. She developed thick scar tissue and will act like she uses the leg, but she’s only using it like she would a crutch or a prosthetic.

After a year of retirement, I took her along one night. She bayed a rally, which busted before we got there, and she went on the relay, baying about 8-10 more singles and ultimately on the last hog she was leaning waaaaaay out over her front shoulders, using the good back leg to bounce forward. It was definitely super strange looking and I still can’t quite figure out how she managed all that.
I’ve let her come along a few more times over the years, but mostly she is just retired.

Give yours plenty of time to heal on her own and I bet she’ll make herself useful again someday!


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I have never had good luck with mineral tubs not cracking over time, they get brittle quick in the sun it seems like.

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Come to think of it, you're right Justin, they do crack pretty easy and if they were upside down with a side door hole dogs would jump on top all the time and break them.

Thanks for the responses everybody

I’m back on night shift, and back to doodling on scratch paper, designing my dream dog yard. I’ve seen just a few pictures of upright or “standing” barrel dog houses over the years and to my knowledge I’ve never seen anyone use mineral tubs for dog houses. I was thinking about the possibility of cutting a door in the side of an upside down mineral tub and using those for dog houses. My curs are mostly fine boned and smallish dogs so I believe they’d fit, but I don’t know how comfortable they’d be. Any of y’all have upright barrels or tub houses?

I sure hear y'all. My dogs spend a lot of their time in a single mass dog yard together right now. I have pens and chains for supper time and estrous cycles, but the majority of the year they learn to go along to get along.

THAT BEING SAID, the only two times I've had mass dog fights, it's left me with long term, serious repercussions. Mike is right, when the curs decide to get rowdy, they go full throttle.

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I'm thinking about trying something new this year. I've got a decent setup for the dogs at my own home, but from time to time, I run into the same issues we all do as dogmen.  Neighbors, noise, smell, escapes etc. I will be attempting to lease some wooded property down the road from home and setting up a dedicated dog yard on it. I'm thinking instead of a bunch of individual kennels or chains, I'd like to build a dedicated pen for males, and one for females. I'm thinking 50x50 each pen, 6 foot high woven wire with a roll buried and tied to the first run and a solar/battery pack powered hot wire around the top of each pen. Inside I'd like a simple, oversized lean-to where all the dogs or bitches can shelter together.

Of course I'd move one set of secure above ground kennels out there for bitches in heat also.

Do any of y'all have a setup like this?
Do any of you keep your dogs off-site?
Tips? Recommendations?

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6+ dogs and not one of em blew in to that sounder trying to single one off... that’s what I like to see. Heck of a haul man


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Thank you, we bayed that set for maybe 30 minutes or a tad longer. I was steady feeding more dogs into it for the last 10 minutes. When they did finally get stupid and catch one, it was actually one of my older dogs who knuckleheaded. Most of mine will give a hog whatever room it needs to behave itself but will catch for me when I make my move. Old Pokeneye was wore out by that time of the evening and got tired of waiting on me to nut up I guess!


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I can’t figure out how to get that video on my phone so just click that Facebook link to see the video

Howdy y'all, I haven't been in the woods near as much as I'd like these days, but hey, quality over quantity right? My good buddy Josh and I were blessed with access to a beautiful piece of property a few years back where we take some guys involved in various local ministries. Of course we haven't totally given up our disreputable ways, but as we've gotten a little longer in the tooth, we decided we'd like to give back just a little to the fellas who help drag us back to the straight and narrow on occasion.

This last trip we were able to host a fella who shares his faith with real rough customers through prison ministry.
On top of that we were able to get our other good buddy Ronnie a hall pass for the day and get him back where he really loves to be, in the hog woods!!

I'll cut to the chase and admit I was nervous about my dogs this time around. They had been put up for a loooong time, unused and out of shape. Back when they were being used, we very rarely ever got them on hogs at all and when we did, it was disappointingly long races, with a majority of the youngsters dropping out before the completion. This has long been a pet peeve of mine. I believe in dogs having bottom, no doubt, but I dispise starting young dogs in situations where they never get accustomed to success. You may disagree with me, but I feel repetition is the key to mastery and if a pup only bays one hog for every 8-10 hunts, even if they out in a phenomenal amount of track time and distance, it puts them at a huge disadvantage over litter mates who may see 8-10 hogs every hunt.

Anyhow, this hunt went wonderfully. All dogs involved casted extremely well from the first drop, they all stayed hustling and it paid off at the end of the day with 12 big hogs and Lord knows how many pigs. The guest went home with a delicious, pecan fattened sow and we all saw lots of really encouraging dog work. By the end of the hunt, just about every dog was rolling off a caught hog as soon a human hand made contact with a rear hog leg and some of them were doing what I love, rolling out as soon as the bulldog hit.

Anyhow, ive typed too much, here's some pictures.

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=869692330143440&id=274075853038427&sfnsn=mo&d=n&vh=e

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Good to know you’re still out there scaring children in the tall pines with your swirly blury face!

A friend of mine used to live up near Lubbock, I loved running dogs up there with him, it always felt like jumping in a time machine and setting the dial to “spaghetti western” lol

Good haul


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Thank y’all. For the sharp eyed, there’s another, less sociable pup growling from the back of that doghouse.
These pups are actually some sort of deer chasing mutts from an elderly relative and I don’t know much about them but He asked that I give them a chance. My old brood bitch hasn’t come in heat in over a year and I’m not ready to breed anything else of mine right now so what the heck, why not.

cracker, I’ve had a couple here and there, I’ve mostly kept a bunch of yellow Woodruff dogs though, it’s 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. All the strains of cur dogs are all so related, I just figure they’re all just family Curs anyway


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