Track dogs VS Cast dogs

This is a good topic and interesting how every one looks at it.

I have hunted with both types on hogs and big game and when hog hunting the best I have hunted with have been casting winding type dogs with a lot of hustle, medium or hot nosed. They were about getting bayed as fast as possible. These types of dogs would not take tracks. Many times we would put them on tracks and they would just blow out the opposite way on their own and bay a different hog. And I definitely never seen one grub a track out, just not the style of dogs they were. We also tried track dogs but we never had one we really liked. They were usually too slow and barked way too much and we would do a whole lot of trailing not much catching. Ours didn't do both but I know people definitely have dogs that can.

In the big game world I have seen both pure hounds and pure curs that were good at both, so I know it's possible. In fact our cats dogs cast until they hit a track and then have to be able to work that track. In my opinion and like someone else stated it has a lot to do with how you start them and how you hunt them. Another example when bear hunting we used to have dogs we could rig, cast, road, or start off baits and tracks. The guys with the best rig dogs rigged the most, the guys with the best track dogs drove roads and dropped on tracks the most. I can think of a time in particular where we got a depredation call on a specific bear, we just drove roads on that ranch until we found paper plate size tracks and put our start dogs down on that, and they took that track straddling it until they got jumped.

Lastly I think if it was me I would focus on trying to breed dogs with big motors, crazy drive, and at least some range because like my old mentor would tell me you can take it out of them but you can't put it in them. I think you would have more success training dogs to take tracks through repetition and patience then to get a dog to cast and really hustle, can't train drive its either in them or not and you can only do things to encourage it and bring it out. My belief is if you have a dog with a ton of drive you can train them to do almost anything. Just my opinion and good luck.