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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