Message #61951

[Wmwendler]

Well I think hounds in general were bred for "pleasure" hunting and just for fun, rather than getting a job done quick.  Ofcourse Im talking about WAAAAY back when the different hound breeds were being developed and before that.  Mostly the hound hunting was done by upper class/nobility at that time, rather than dog hunting being mostly a middle class thing nowdays.  Because of that, the open trailing was a desireable trait because the folks back then enjoyed the chase and being able to listen to it was part of the fun.  In my opinion thats why hounds are open trailing/running dogs.

Cur dogs (for the most part) were developed as a type more recently in the past 200-250 years to do a job; Find and gather free range livestock, Hunt FOR FOOD, and protect the house. So open trailing was not desirable.

I from what I've seen most dogs would be considered open mouth dogs, atleast on a chase.  This mostly from seing pets chase deer or other junk and  I've heard some pits yipping on a race when the hog broke.  So I would say in hounds the open mouth was just enhanced and in Cur was depressed or rather dogs that did'nt open on trail were used to develope the type.

One thing to think of is most guys that started hunting hogs back 25+ years ago, were coon hunters before that or cowboys with cow dogs (some both)  So the hound had his chance to take his place as the breed of choice as much as the cur dog did, back when hog populations started increasing and hog hunting started becoming more common.  Personally, my dad had both Coon dogs(hounds) and cow dogs (Curs).  It did'nt take a long time to figure out which was better suited and that was back before people learned how to hunt hogs on the internet.  lol  Now he had some hounds that worked out and one in particlar that was great on hogs, but they did'nt work out as well as the Cur dogs did.

Waylon