Message #578104

[Austesus]

Thomas, I probably should have tried circling that area a little more. That one area is a little tricky because there’s a sliver of land that separates it from the main tract. It used to be one big tract and the timber company separated that piece in the middle and we don’t have permission to go on it. I got to within a few hundred yards of the property line and then figured I best pick up and drive in the other side. I picked up and went to the other tract about a half mile away since that’s where I thought they were heading to (there should have been corn piles out on the roads in that tract, but they ended up all being eaten already). I agree with you about the dogs trying to hustle. That Ranger dog has kind of shortened up some, he was hunting around 300yds and now he’s hanging out at 100-150yds sometimes. It’s kind of hit or miss whether or not he gets out when there’s no sign. I’ve also had a string of bad luck and been dry holing him a lot so I think the lack of pigs may be a factor in that. I can’t stand a dog that wants to sit at my feet or just be lazy though. I’m not a huge stickler on range, as long as the dog is busy the whole time, and I prefer them to be independent unless there’s a good track that they all pack up on. Once deer season ends I’m hoping to be putting these young dogs on pigs 3-4 times a week.

On the topic of dogs of yesteryear being better, I had an old deer dog hunter talking to me about that exact topic Saturday night. I brought it up to him and wanted his opinion and he said that 40 years ago almost every hound he bought would at least make a decent dog, even if it wasn’t a great dog. Nowadays it seems like you have to go through 30 just to find one that’s halfway decent. As you know, that is why I am going down the road of breeding my own now. I think social media is a big factor. 30 years ago you only had so many people you could pawn a dog off on, and they likely would have known you and your reputation because they live fairly close to you. Social media makes it easy to post up a crap dog for $200 and sell it to some stranger that doesn’t live anywhere close to you. I think that has led to many dogs that would have been culled being passed around and they eventually get bred and then those pups are passed on, and then dogs as a whole have a lower quality on average. That’s just my opinion but it makes sense in my head. That on top of the hobbyist hunters that don’t hunt enough to actually make or prove a dog and so they’re breeding subpar dogs because they want one pup off of a parent and then they’re passing those other pups off as coming off of proven hog dogs just because the dog can stumble across one every once in a while.


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