Big boys for sure! That was a heck Of a big hog y’all tied Friday night. Hate to see what he did to Brett’s old dog. Congrats man!!


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Thanks guys! I appreciate it. It’s frustrating to say the least. You go through so many decent dogs, then you raise one that exceeds all your expectations and she gets killed. Just tough to swallow. I would have traded any of the other 10 for her, but that’s just how it’s is. The number 2 eaters don’t ever get it... only the good ones.


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I’m sure sorry to hear that Tony. What was she out of? A little different color than your blacks and reds.

Just some real old east texas stuff Mike. I just passed breeding to the male  again last week. I’m not down and out but she was definitely in my plans for the future building blocks of these dogs.


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My best young pup got killed over the weekend. Her and her littermate bayed a big hog by themselves on the way to the other dogs. She got wrecked. She was everything you could ask for and easily the best I’ve raised save for one dog. She would roll off and start other hogs already, bottom and hunt for days. She was the last dog you were picking up. Makes me sick to lose a good one so young. 10 months old. RIP Dolly




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I don’t think one way or the other leads to better dogs. I know a guy that shoots most everything and he has some sure enough great dogs. A good dog is going to be a good dog regardless of the situation you put them in.

I know I could surely get spoiled on riding up to the dogs and busting a cap in one. I find myself less and less enthused to to go tie one lol.


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Shot a barr hog one time over my dogs but we have never been about that life. My first few years I was lucky to carry even a knife. Threw 4 or 5 tie ropes on and went to them. We would cut anything that needed it after the hunts.

Lots of reasons I never was a gun hunter... you can’t see number 2 in most of the places we hunt east of I-45. Even when you go west it gets tough to get in there and get them in some thickets.

A lot of the old dogs I started with would hit the trailer with the first gun shot fired.

The legality of ending up somewhere you weren’t supposed to be with a firearm never sat well with me.

Guys I grew up hunting with and some I still hunt with don’t like killing hogs. Lots of old school, turn the sows loose and cut the boars. I honestly could care less anymore about not killing hogs... if we can cut a boar hog Im all about it but I’ve shanked and killed more than I’ve tied in the last 5 years.

I like knowing the fact that we can go do whatever we want with the same set of dogs. If we want to go tie 30-40 hogs and put them in the trailer we can. If we want to go shoot them, we can do that too. I do think it’s harder and more work to go catch and tie 30 hogs vs shooting 30 hogs over your dogs but that’s pretty self explanatory.


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Brindle dogs eh?  I'm all out of mine nothing but black around here right now. Looks like a good hunt.

Yessir the brindle side goes back to CB’s daddy and more similar to that stuff that Jasper was. Just east texas junk lol

I still got some black ones.


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Pretty cool man. Glad you got them all back!! Pups are doing good


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Big hog!! Always s blast to catch one that’s given the slip


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Good hog Mike!!


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Good hunt. Grain season should be in full swing next few months, perfect to get some more miles on your gyp pups.


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Yessir we should have no problem getting around hogs here for the next few months. Pups will get plenty use. I personally am not the biggest fan of hunting grain fields for certain reasons, but it certainly is a good time of year to get young dogs around hogs. Just got to keep an eye on them and make sure they don’t develop a few bad habits I think hunting grain early on can set them up for.


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Yeah I’ve never hunted much grain. I know it can be tough and sometimes they will hardly ever bay in it. Just run for days. Any hunt during the summer are a plus though, so you do what you can. Take the good with the bad I guess.


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Good hunt. Grain season should be in full swing next few months, perfect to get some more miles on your gyp pups.


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Good deal. Justin is good people. Good luck with the pups and safe travels back home. Looking forward to seeing their progress.


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I have seen dogs that have trouble finding a hog and others that make it look easy...

Years ago I was surprised to see a big boar come busting through the brush and we could hear him coming...he crossed right by us...the wind was blowing crosswind to the hog from his left...the dogs were not running the track...they were running with their heads up using the wind currents to track the hog from the hogs right side and out about 30 ft or so...the wind had a decent speed so there was no doubt what the dogs were doing.....I have seen similar scenarios since then...

And somehow these dogs are going to beat the head up trackstars to the hog by hundreds of yards? I’m trying to wrap my head around this concept but with how y’all are explaining it, I’m not buying it. I will put my “track straddler dogs” against the dogs that try to run 10 yards beside the tracks every day all day and 2x on Sunday


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Slim you'll only learn in this life as much as your willing to and you seem to have it all figured out, that's good for you, I don't have to explain myself or my style of dogs to you, I've invited you over before so you can come see the Bologna for yourself, since you want to call BS on something you can't grasp and understand and by you not understanding or seeing it for yourself how can you tell another man he's full of it, you yourself have self admitted said you haven't been hunting to terribly long and I have to ask, have you traveled outside of a 4-5 hour radius of your home territory and put your dogs on the ground against other from that area or yours by themselves, how many different sets of hunters and dogs have you hunted with and against, not just in your area, in other states and parts of the state, different terrain and areas, you speak as if you've seen and done it all with your dogs, I could be wrong, but since you always want to turn everything into a pissing match 62524 Bill Ard Rd Angie La 70426, 985-570-7030 is my number whenever you get ready the door will be open, make sure to,bring the bread for all this Bologna I got going on over here.....

It’s not a pissing match guy. I do not care what you or somebody else feeds. Nor did I say you or your dogs were anything one way or the other. The big bad hog hunter mentality is shining through. You obviously haven’t been too far into Texas either because 4 or 5 hours can change scenery about 4-5 time. I’m currently 4 hours south of home with some dogs raised in the blackland Priaire post oaks of south central Texas hunting the caliche brush country and salt grass flats of the coastal bend and sections upon sections of grain fields but no my dogs don’t see much window time traveling


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Like I said before, to understand a track drifter you have to hunt with them, to understand different styles of dogs you have to hunt with them, it can be explained all day long but until you see it for yourself it's nothing more than speculation, kinda like making love to a woman, it can be explained to you in great detail but until you've done it yourself you really don't know, most hog hunters don't pay attention to a dogs track style or let alone know what track style means, very few folks break down and apply themselves enough to understand why things happen the way they do,especially as far as scenting and environmental conditions go and the role they play in your success, it's not complicated to understand once you know what your looking for and at, a good dog knows when to put his head in the air and drift a track, puts its nose to the ground and grub one out, and work the vegetation or whatever to pull scent off of it, for every action there is a reaction and a reason behind everything, it's up to us to try and understand things when they happen, another big factor is in order to truly understand dogs, especially hunting dogs then a man needs to hunt with different dogs for different game to get an idea as to why and how dogs do the things they do....


I've travelled through Texas many times my friend and that was my whole point, the more different places and terrain  you hunt the more you learn, and if anybody has a big bad hog hunter mentality it might just be you, I might stand firm in my beliefs and share my thoughts on a particular matter but you'll never hear or see me call somebody out or tell them their full of sh!t when I don't understand what they're talking about and do so just because I simply don't know.....

Yup. It’s a hard concept to understand if you don’t see it often or ever. People get stuck in their observations of dogs they hunt or what they have seen hunt and it’s harder to comprehend other styles. Just takes time and looking at lots of dogs running hogs.

Most of the dogs we hunt are very proficient at running the scent funnel or drifting. We see it start in younger dogs as well. I’ve always said I thought one reason we were able to stack numbers was the track speed that some of our dogs possess. They arnt faster straight line than other cur dogs but a lot are more effective at running a hog bc of their ability to drift. Like t-dog stated above.. in that hunt last weekend. They went and jumped that last boar hog, he came across the line flying. About a minute later here came the dogs about 15 yards off his track drifting it.

The easiest way to explain drifting in my eyes is the ability to run a track the most efficient way possible. Taking the shortest route to point a and b without leaving the track. This allows the dogs that drift to get significantly ahead of straddlers.

I’ve hunted from Mississippi to west texas and south texas and anywhere in between. 80% of the time we hunt pine plantation, briar and youpon thickets. It’s a lot harder to drift a track and see it happen in a 10k acre thicket. They still do it but at times the hog gets so far ahead they have to go back to tracks straddling bc the scent funnel had dissipated. Where you can really see it in our dogs is when we go west or north. The post oak savannah around Lexington area and anything up north around Buffalo is always a honey hole for us. The dogs can stretch their legs out and really run head up in this open country littered with wood lots and pastures.

Disclaimer: these are just my observations. I’m no dog man, just trying to carry on what all the old timers have done. I did stay in a Holliday Inn once, so there is that lol.


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Goose I agree with that. My clyde dog drifted extremely well also. He was average speed in a foot race but could push a track at an all out run that most other dogs had to slow down to run or others would have to keep making losses on because they over ran their nose. He would be bayed so real hundred yards before most dogs. He didn't have to straddle the track to take it. I really think dogs that are real instinctive about hunting into the wind have a strong tendency to drift well. They understand how to use that to their advantage. That's not something you can teach in my opinion.

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I have a gyp that the one reason she is still making is her ability like you described with Clyde. She is an ok dog. Hunts steady around you but not real far, busy dog. She has crap bottom, but she will get bayed several hundred yards in front of the dogs every time. A very frustrating little number 2! All the ability in the world, but doesn’t hate a hog. She is out of chance wards old Ike dog. Ike was one that was known real well for cheating a track, cutting corners and still getting bayed way ahead of others.


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Seen a few gyps who would backtrack the first hog we caught and find the rest of the group. Sometimes it felt like they could count. Most those same gyps would leave a bay and be running as soon as they saw us walking in with bulldogs.

Boogie was a proficient track dog. When he would slow down and was working an old track, he would hit every leaf, tree or bar wire the hog might have rubbed up against.

Seen a few dogs who were very good at drifting a track. As race was happening they would hit a road and eat up a ton of track and still bay the hog.


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G'day TShelly and other post's,
Great read, TShelly please excuse my ignorance but what do you mean when you write dogs who werevery good at drifting a track ??

Cheers

I dont want to speak for TShelly, but the way i took it in analyzing how dogs run tracks, is you have the ones who follow every step "trailing" the hog, then you have the ones who will run the track from one point to another point, if done properly results in running the same track faster.  As a side not its also interesting to watch if a dog stays with the same track no matte what or if they will take off on a hotter track when crossing it on the original one... different styles all work, i generally like all but prefer the one that runs the track faster

Yessir pretty much this. Alot of our dogs like to run a track a lot more than bay. Some will cheat the system, catch a road, eat up a lot of ground and get back on the track way ahead of where they would have been if they stayed step for step.

Running a track they run the scent trail in the air a lot more than the ground scent of that makes sense. Not necessarily head up or head down all the time, just whatever the conditions dictate. Some of those same gyps as stated above seemed like lighting on track bc of their ability to drift.


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Seen a few gyps who would backtrack the first hog we caught and find the rest of the group. Sometimes it felt like they could count. Most those same gyps would leave a bay and be running as soon as they saw us walking in with bulldogs.

Boogie was a proficient track dog. When he would slow down and was working an old track, he would hit every leaf, tree or bar wire the hog might have rubbed up against.

Seen a few dogs who were very good at drifting a track. As race was happening they would hit a road and eat up a ton of track and still bay the hog.


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Helluva a hunt Tony... ol Matthew is a hand in the woods for sure... and water haha!

That water sucked and we were worried about gators pretty good. Made for an interesting hunt. Matt’s a hand. Always fun hunting with him.


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Great hunt. Man I might have to breed to one of those dogs to put more bark and color in those Plotts.


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I can certainly point you in the right direction to some good male dogs if ever needed. All workings stock dogs. I’ve always been a gyp man, Briar was my only male dog I owned that I would breed to.


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Good looking dogs. I love those stream lined, high flanked built dogs. Nice hunt. Nick said he talked to you. Looking forward to making a hunt.


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