Common knowledge...

I am a believer in bloodlines, but I also have seen dogs with no pedigree do the things mentioned in uglydog's post. I have also seen some well bred dogs that could'nt find a hog in a baypen, being bred or thought of highly just because of the pedigree. I stick with an old saying that is "Good dogs are where you find them". I do think however that running dogs from stock that has been selectively bred for traits that you are looking for gives you a better chance of getting good dogs or a so called "Ace" dog and also increases your chances of dogs being able to reproduce the traits that make them a true hog dog. "Stacking the odds" I will also add that most of the time, where I have seen someone breed a good scatterbred dog, it was not able to reproduce itself JMO