Striking and Winding Ability...

[Reuben]

Winding;
I believe many dogs can smell what other dogs smell and that some dogs do have a colder nose…but the winding response, I call it the winding trigger, comes from the brain and it is genetics at work…some dogs have a hair trigger and for others, the smell in the wind needs to be strong to get a response out of them and there are lots of variations between no trigger and a hair trigger…a colder nosed dog that is a good winder can pick up the scent on hogs a mile away…but I do understand their limitations after all they are dogs…we all know that if the scent in the wind is strong most hog dogs will blow up in the dog box…sometimes we must assist the dogs for them to succeed…
Below are a few examples of when the dogs need a little help…the better winding dog jumps off the deck, goes in the thick brush circles, and comes back and tries again…as the handler, I analyze the situation and can see the problem…the dog can wind the hogs but once in the thick brush he loses the scent and that is why he is starting over…a dog does have limitations when it comes to reasoning…so I look past the thick brush and about 3/8th of a mile or further and directly from where the scent is coming from, looks like it could be holding pigs…I turn into the wind and as soon as we get past the thicker brush the dogs pick up the scent and go…
Another top winder with a colder type of nose…we are about to call it a day and are headed back to the trucks…the dog puts his nose to the wind but does not react other than I interpret his interest as possible hog in the air…I look into the wind and can see a cane patch about a mile away…mostly salt grass between us and the cane…we turn into the wind and once we are about a quarter mile the dogs start moving to the cane and water…the dogs have limitations and sometimes we need to assist…some have said the dog was smelling hog close up and the hogs had moved to the cane…I am pretty sure that is not so. The dogs would have reacted differently if that were true…

Striking;
I wrote my thoughts on winding first because I do believe the better strike dog will have the better nose and they are more inclined to use it for locating game…the difference between the great ones in a league of their own, and the really good ones is brain power…the brain power gets them quicker to game location…most will never own or observe a once in a lifetime dog but there are quite a few great hunting dogs out there but even those are not as many as we think there are… 
The good ones will have a higher level of brain power which comes in handy on where and how to search…the nose will be a little colder for finding and locating older tracks, and they will use the wind to locate and start older tracks as well, they will also drift on the tracks to find the hotter end which gets them on the game…these dogs can make it look easy…
There are lots of other variables that were left out on account of this thread being a little long…I left that to others who want to add comments on genetics, heart, etc…etc…thanks                                   

[t-dog]

A lot about winding is being in the right place at the right time. They have to pass through or enter the scent cone first and foremost. Secondly, if it isn’t a strong scent and the breeze should die down before they enter that cone, then they may ever know it’s there. I have seen this very thing happen with my dogs. Watch them pass through an area and never bobble, then they come back through and the conditions are more favorable and it’s like someone just jerks their heads around into the wind. Nearly a mile later and on a straight line, they are bayed. When I say straight, a ruler couldn’t draw the line from point A to point B any straighter. My dogs are natural about winding and use it very instinctively. I have seen them at times have to drop their head too and really grub out a track. I can’t say I prefer one method over the other because both are impressive to me. I like to see a dog that doesn’t have to straddle the track to move it. Drifting it is fun to watch to me. I have seen numerous hogs leave one area for another so I know where they exited and where they re-entered. Then a dog(s) come out in a different spot and you can tell they are smelling and moving a track only nothing exited where they’re at. Then they re-enter only not in the same exact place as the hog and in just a minute are baying the very hog I watched cross. They were smelling it’s scent, they just didn’t have to be running on top of it to move it. I like to watch dogs try and cheat a track. I mean let’s face it, if you ain’t cheatin you ain’t trying, lol. Let me explain what I’m calling cheating. I have watched my Ava gyp and her siblings at different times, be baying a few feet into a really bad briar thicket. For one reason or another the hog breaks bay. They will come out and in a nearly full run circle the thicket. If the hog exits the thicket they have saved a bunch of time  by not having to pick and choose their way through it and have closed the distance on it. If it just relocated in the thicket, as soon as they have circled and figured out that it didn’t leave, then they will go back in and dig it out. I saw her and her brother Sam do it one day and the hog literally exited 5 yards in front of them. They sucked him up and he didn’t get to enter the next thicket. He had to turn and back up to it because they were mashing his brake pedal. That was really fun watching. I have put my old Clyde dog on two tracks that really impressed me. One was in the HOT summer and just after noon time. We were hunting for a watermelon farmer and hadn’t seen a sign of a hog all morning. It was a good drive for us so we didn’t want to go home empty handed. The foreman spotted one big loan boar hog track and you couldn’t tell if it was a day old or week. I dropped Clyde and a full blood Walker dog out and they didn’t act like they smelled anything. A called Clyde to me and tapped the ground and told him sue pig. He literally stuck his nose in it and went off on it but having to straddle it. His tail said he smelled it but his body language and method said it was not a very good track. The Walker dog went with him but never did smell while they were in eye shot of us. About 2 1/2 hours later they were looking at him over a mile and a half away. I was one proud fella. Another time we were hunting and it was just Clyde and another dog of my buddies. That dog was a local legend. We cast them
and they left. After a while the other dog came in but Clyde stayed so we moved towards him. After a good while, and the other dog coming back in a couple times, we went all the way to Clyde to see what was going on. Sure enough there was a hog track but it was very cold. The other dog wasn’t interested and Clyde was having trouble with it. I called him off of it and we pushed them on another direction. The other dog checked back in a couple times and I tracked Clyde. He was back over there where the cold track was and before we could get there, me cussing him the whole way, he was bayed. We caught that boar and left. I have no doubt he had a better nose than that dog but I was surprised about the Walker dog in the first example not being able to smell that track. I’ve often wondered if that was a case of lesser nose or more want to or both?


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[Reuben]

IK think a lot of today's walker dogs are hotter-nosed on account of competition hunting...hotter nosed dogs get on hotter tracks and that is man-made evolution and not mother nature at work...

I've had a Kemmer Mt Cur gyp wind hogs where the walker acted like he didn't smell hog... the same with working out tracks...

But there are many good walkers out there...

[t-dog]

Oh for sure there are a lot of good walkers. This was probably 28-29 years ago. The competition dogs have definitely evolved.


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[The Old Man]

It definitely doesn't happen often but I have saw dogs wind a cold track in excess of 800 yds from the road, while traveling 30 mph in the truck, go off the mountain to the track and work it up to the jump over a long distance and put the meat on the end. Conditions, conditions, conditions. It's been a long time since I have been around dogs that did not wind pretty hard. The dogs that wind alot can get their head up to run a track and often run a track pretty loose running straighter lines. If they are treedogs they will often go to locating and treeing before they actually reach the tree and smell up it.

[The Old Man]

Oh, a dog strikes a "track" and he finds or comes bayed on hogs hahaha.

[t-dog]

Old man, how old do you figure those cold tracks are that they are winding from that far? I think a “cold track” has a different age to different folks. I personally think conditions play a role in what I would consider cold as well as when it was actually made.


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[The Old Man]

I would be afraid to put a time on it, when I say cold I mean the dogs had to really work. I believe to compare dogs nose power you have to have them on the same track at the same time.
 The reason I am hesitant to put an hour number on any track other than a game cam pic or where someone saw and ran the game off is this, several years ago I had a pair of dogs I put on a hog track that I knew was 10 hrs old they took it in pretty good fashion, once after that I put them on a 45 minute old track where I watched the hog run off and stood there and waited for my wife to bring me the dogs and they didn't even acknowledge it. That really made me aware of how much effect conditions can have both positive and negative. 
Now the dogs I said winded that track way off the mountain and took it have been hunted with a few different sets of dogs and have been able to trail any track the others could and I'd guarantee you there are dogs they can't trail with, thats the best I can tell you. They are just dogs not phenoms although those two occurances were extraordinary and I believe ti was due to perfect conditions. 
They do quite often strike a cold track up to 300 yds off the road "when conditions are right". And I'd bet that they sometimes somehow miss rigging a really good track.
  But how old a track a dog can take is very subjective due to conditions. When they winded those cold tracks I have always said conditions had to have been perfect or not only could they not have rigged it but could  not have moved it had they found it on the ground.  Once in a great while they rig a track that sounds pretty strong that they cannot make go on the ground, I always "guess" the scent has risen high enough they are out of the scent cone when on the ground but it is only a guess.     The way scent and conditions work fascinates me and I don't expect to ever be able understand it all due to lack of intelligence and education on the subject.    I'm sure that the folks that rig constantly have saw all the above scenarios and the majority of them are probably bear hunters that do not bait.   When they bait they have a picture with a time stamp and can see the variation in what the dog can take.
What really amazes me is the dry ground lion hunters out west hot, dry windy and sometimes strike a 2-3 day old track and occasionally even catch a lion from that old of a strike.

[t-dog]

I’m in that boat with you Old Man. Scenting is fascinating to me as well. I’ve mentioned it before, but tell it again. I have seen a sounder move through an area when driving in a gate. They saw us and hurried off and we hurried over there and dropped dogs that did not see the hogs. They ran around and acted like they never smelled anything. 30 minutes later come back to that spot and acted like somebody set their feet afire. They smelling then like you would’ve figured they would’ve smelled it when first dropped. Really weird and the guy that owned the dogs wanted to cull them all. I know they were pretty good dogs because if hunted with them before. I’ve seen that happen a couple of times. Now when I see hogs like that, I tell my crew, slow down and let’s not get in a hurry. Let the hogs settle and the scent. So far it’s worked but next time it happens it probably won’t just so that Mother Nature can show me I’m not as smart as I think.


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[mike rogers]

awesome reading. I always enjoy the post that Reuben post. It's been a while since I've been on here or even hunted, but come 1/31/24 I'll be officially retired.


Drifting it is fun to watch to me. Me too T-dog. The best I had was my Bubby female. She ran a fast track with head running shoulder high. I have lost that. I guess I went too much hound with the crosses I made. Maybe the heavy jug bred dog put a little too much hound in my leopard curs.

Bubby would run tracks faster than anything I had. Ramrod her half brother was more nose to the ground hound style dog. I made that cross and got Handsome Jack from it, but the cross went more towards the hound style dogs. Now I had luck with it, but still the high head drifting was kinda lost. Got more tree power but a little slower on track. See Bubby was different. colder nose, fast track, windy, but a pretty quiet mouth. Ramrod was hotter nose, head to the ground, heavy mouth and hard on the tree. Bubby would set off the tree and under the coon. Ramrod looked up...  Bubby was so much different. very laid back, looked to really please and you knew she was looking back when you looked at her in the eyes. She really wanted to please.

She was the only one to open up going down the road. Could be on a creek, draw or a bottom. I guess just to say " dad let me out, there's been a coon here" LOL. but she was the only one to do it. She ran track different too. Head high and fast while Ramrod and jack just put the nose down like a hound. It's as if she knew that was a waist of time. She always beat them to the tree.

See to me it's not only a warm or cold nose but how much the game or hunt excites them. Bubby always looked forward to hunting. She knew what to do so I guess she was excited and so it didn't take much of a since to fire her up.


I really enjoy the reading. Now to rad some more and catch up. Maybe I'll find another good leopard cur that runs shoulder high on track that I can cross on. I still have my jack dog. He's a little over 9 now. I've a little blue leopard female that I plan on starting after deer season. we'll see how she runs track. Seems to be pretty smart. kinda of a through back pup too. Shorter ears and a pointier nose.

thanks

mike ( frog )