X2...I was fixing to bring up what you said but in a different way...tight family breeding with best to the best breeding from within that family will be producing consistency...so quite a bit of desirable traits are displayed because they are doubled up recessives...a recessive trait to be displayed must get one gene from each parent of the same so lets say it is for ranging and hunting...so the tight bred dogs carry those recessives for that trait but when bred to an outside dog, and that outside dog just might be carrying a dominant for not hunting and when the dominant matches up with the recessive hunting trait then the dominant trait will be displayed...so lets say quite a bit of the desirable traits in that line of dogs are paired up recessives and the outside blood has quite a bit of dominant genes for the opposite....the result will be lots of culls...but since the tight bred line has to pass a recessive and the outside dog is carrying a double dominant or a dominant recessive then some of the pups will hunt but not more than half of the litter when dealing with averages...
The biggest thing about dog genetics is that I have not seen any studies on hunting traits...
Regarding what I have hi-lighted in red.......answer me this if you can........My smoke dog bred to an old gyp named sue a little over a year ago resulting in the male pup that I was speaking about in my above post that is perfect conformation wise but has yet to put it together in the woods, I have owned 4 of the pups out of this same litter and have traded or given 3 of em away here and there to close friends for one thing or another but have held on to him since 6wks of age as far as I know none of the 4 that I have been around have made dogs which is VERY strange for the line...... My male has produced some great dogs and the female used in this breeding has produced ALOT of great dogs....... both of these dogs are as breed worthy as any i've been around, solid hard hunting no nonsense type dogs and i'm not trying to toot my horn in anyway or saying that because I own one of them, they just are. ( I did not make either of these dogs the dogs that they are today, I was got lucky enough to be involved with them) Anyway what would be your opinion as to why none of these pups have worked out thus far? Smoke was also bred to a daughter of sue last year named bonnie also resulting in 1 puppy, that puppy started hunting at 6mths old and has been on over 20hogs as of now at 10 months old, she is doing great........... I am currently making the same cross again breeding smoke back to bonnie and hopin n prayin for a decent sized litter to raise, with exception to a very small group of people the pups will all be staying with me..... Anyway, all this genetics/ breeding talk interests me but when I see 2 great dogs breed and the pups not work out it makes me wonder why.... To be completely honest Sue is a better dog than Bonnie, however bonnie has nowhere near the 12yrs experience as sue so it kinda all comes out in the wash, just weird to me......
