Wmwendler,
to sum up the book you wrote here. If we as hog hunters would just sneak to the bay with the wind in our face and start breeding finesse in our dogs, these hogs will stop giving us the slip and we will start catching all of them!
I tell you what those two things help me allot. I would rather have a dog that stood back 50 feet away and barked than a dog that is known for pushing hogs. Atleast the first dog has Zero effect on the hog, the second makes the situation worse. The dogs are supposed to be there to help not hinder. Nothing irritates me more than a dog that is known for pushing hogs. There is this one particular dog that belongs to the one particular person that I wont mention the name, and she is like clock work she will bay for just about a min and then she starts pushing, and you will either have a shoat catchin' (if its a group) or a race. Now she might get a hog stoped in the next couple hundred yards but only about 40% of the time. She fights hogs and thats totally different than baying and the only hogs that stop running are the ones agressive enough to fight back which is'nt as many as you might think. She is a heck of a strike dog and her owner thinks she is the greatest thing that walks the earth despite it all. To me she is just a waste of hair. I once had a nice sow bayed with 3 curs. She tried to run but they put a little heat on her and she found a ditch for cover and they had finess enough to back up and bay. It was a pretty bay and I was just sitting behind a tree watching it for 10 min or so, when allong comes this waste of hiar dog, from where ever she was, and it wasn't 30 seconds she busted the bay. Now that pissed me off so much I did'nt enjoy the rest of the hunt. That is a perfect example of a totall lack of finesse.
Waylon
