Goatcher, What line of curs do you prefer and why? What line of Plotts does your son run? When you were feeding the Jadgs into the hound race did you have any trouble with your bay dogs getting cut up? What makes a hound slower on track? If a hound nose is on average colder than a cur nose would it make sense that a colder nosed hound may be slower on the track than a cur because the hound is overwhelmed by the amount of scent on a hot track?
Outlaw14slayer
The curs I like fit the Parker Cur model, but I have never owned a full Parker. I am starting to hate the NALC bay pen stuff. Some of my friends have them and they fight a hog well, but a 6 month old jagdterrier will out hunt most of them. I was a bay pen judge over 15 years ago when it all started and I had no idea back then how that nonsense would ruin the world of woods dogs. My old line of curs were from cowdog lines off the NB Hunt ranch. Mostly BMC, but they mixed in some leopard catahoulas. I now have a good brindle long-legged female, about three years old from Mississippi lines, she is not high energy, but just drifts way off, sometimes a mile or more and ends up where the hogs are. Totally silent. I am no expert on curs, just I have caught a mess of hogs and have great memorys with the dogs over many years. I am very partial to cur x hound crosses, and find 25% redbone or plott in with 75% cur to be my best dogs and the best dogs owned by others I have hunted with. I currently do not have any mixed breeds.
Between my son and I, we have 5 plotts. Three of those are from Orval Robert's breeding, fine legged, 35 to 40 pound females built like running fox hound types. They are not rough at all, but have stick and good noses, and hustle. The other two plotts are the big old boys, the big game strain from the breedings by Mike Cauley (Bayou Cajun) and Trey Love. The male is catchy, more than twice the size of the Robert's plotts, and I try to run him alone because he is slow and catchy, while he is still young and learning.
My son has the two blue plotts from Roberts. I had two black ones from same litter, but gave the slower one to Joey Young (JHY). She might not make his standards. But she has found and bayed me a few.
I did not notice more injuries after the jagdterriers go in, until you mentioned it! Dang, you may be on to something there. Last spring we had a nasty boar bayed several times. My son turned in a jag and we got three dogs cut and my cur almost got gutted. And right before last Thanksgiving we had to leave the dogs and drive around a big bayou, took 2 hours, and my favorite plott Ziggy got cut, as well as all three jags by a 350 pound barr hog that ended bayed in a ditch. The blue plotts did not get cut. However, most the time we do not get hurt dogs, we just catch the hogs.
You said: What makes a hound slower on track?
I think many things, the first is stupid. The second is youth and inexperience. I think gamey hounds realize they are going too slow and eventually get faster because they want the game. Sissy hounds stay slow their whole life because they like to chase, not catch up to dangerous game. But your theory (above) is also a major factor. Maybe the most important one. I notice when my cur runs with the hounds she runs head up and off of the actual track 50 t0 100 feet. The hounds run the hog's hoof prints. When they get close to the hog, the cur is 100 to 200 yards ahead of the hounds. But that was when the hounds were young, now they are so fast none of the other dogs can keep up. I have a jagterrier that ran with the hounds when they were slower for 5-6 miles almost every hunt. Now even she cannot keep up for very long.
I was given a plott puppy by Orval Roberts in 1997. I started her behind a good silent cur dog, so she had a handle like a cur, and was only semi-open. My son got a big old cold nosed blue tick hound, Roscoe, as a pup a year later. The blue tick and the plott eventually became a team. He would rig strike off of an ATV, she never did. He would run a cold trail from the day before that she could smell, but she would not line out on. But when the hog turned on the track or made little loops like they do, Roscoe would scrub the track there for an hour if you let him or even worse, back track. The plott would figure those things out in a second and they would be off on the right track again. The plott was the fastest track processor I ever hunted with, she could track on a dead all out run, she just did not have the cold nose of that blue tick. But sometimes she was running a line so fast, she would overshoot it and the slower blue tick would find the turn first. He started out his career fairly mouthy, in fact I would complain to my son about that a bit. But eventually he learned to shut up to catch up and they both made quite the pair for a few years. Roscoe got killed when my son hand caught a big toothy boar with just those two bay dogs on it. As he rolled the hog, Rosco piled on and took a tusk directly into his heart. Roscoe was an example of what you stated, he was so overwhelmed with processing scents, it slowed him down. I think real intelligent hounds get over this over-stimulation and learn to process scent very fast. I believe curs are as good as they are because they are smart dogs, maybe more intelligent than most other breeds. But they too can have their contrary ways.
