Sammy

First off...I wasn't knocking the dog. No reason to get all defensive.

If you re-read my post, I never mentioned anything about pure-bred dogs other than to say the only pure-bred BMC I own and others I have hunted around are very rough. Actually my personal preference (and what the majority of my dogs are) is BMC/Plott crosses. My question was simply what a person hoped to achieve by crossing a pit with a strike dog (of any type)...not saying it won't sometimes work but I would also agree with pig snatcher that in my opinion it would be a crap-shoot.

I think there is a difference between a gritty dog, and a catchy dog and sometimes people use the term "gritty" to describe both. Here's how I see it...A "gritty" dog is a bay-in-the face, sit a running hog down, not afraid to get nasty when it needs to but smart enough to back up and bay type dog that will also catch once the catch dog does his job. This is how I want everyone of my dogs to be; not to mention they usually live longer. On the other hand, a "catchy" dog is a dog that will bay a hog, but is always looking for a chance to get a mouth full and usually when they do their not going to stay caught. In my 13 years of owning and hunting dogs, I have had some like this and to me they are worthless. They put too much pressure on a bayed hog by trying to catch and not staying caught, usually busting bays and leaving you frustrated as you chase them and the hogs all over the country. A pit is a straight catch dog (at least I've never seen a full one used for anything else), so in my mind crossing one with any other dog would put "catch" into the cross.

Here's another example. Douglas Mason breeds Catdo's which are Catahoula/Dogo crosses (50/50), I forget the exact number he has told me but out of all the pups he has bred and sold over the years, 100% have been solid catch dogs. I was surprised when he told me that and thats what got me to thinking sometime back about the pit crosses and wondering why some of them make bay dogs and some don't. Perhaps training has something to do with it, but I would suspect that of all the people who have gotten a catdo pup and trained all their own ways one or two along the way would have turned out a bay dog which they haven't.

Once again, don't mis-read my post and think I was knocking the dog or discrediting how many years of experience you have or how many hogs you catch. I asked the question simply out of curiousity, and hoped someone could answer.