Our Best…

[Goose87]

Goose87…I seen the same thing with some of the plotts…
I’ve done quite a bit of looking for a certain line known for their grit.
A while back I spoke with someone who hunts with the owner of that bloodline and also hunts that same line…so I asked how they hunted their bear dogs…they said almost always rigging or starting them from a bait…

Once I heard that I will not buy a pup because it does not fit my style…my number one priority is casting and finding…some of the Plott dogs are weak in casting and finding and I believe it is because of the hunting style I mentioned…

When we cast a dog in fresh sign I expect a dog to be running a track in less than five minutes…bayed or hearing a squeal…5 minutes is a long time…

The nose…I agree that a colder nose goes with the better hunting dog…but I differ on how it works but cannot prove it so it is a personal theory…

It applies to both winding or starting a colder track…there is a connection between the nose and the brain…some dogs trigger will trip very easily and others won’t…the gold nugget bred kemmer mountain curs can really wind or start a cold track but what I do like about them is they would rather start good tracks…

In open marsh I have seen none of the dogs get interested in the wind currents but one or two dogs…but it is not like blowing up the dog box interest…I just noticed a little interest…I looked to see exactly where the wind was coming from and turned into the wind…went close to a mile before I turned the dog loose and they went straight to the hogs…

I think the right Mt Cur line crossed with the right Plott line we produce Mt Cur type dogs from the old days…I believe back then there wasn’t much difference in the two…

Getting back to the nose…I’ve seen dogs come running by…two run right over a track and the switch doesn’t trip…a little later another dog comes by and opens a couple times and takes the track and lines it out…the same place the other dogs went right over…

Same thing with winding…if the scent is fairly strong in the wind they all can smell it and the trigger will trip but on a weaker scent the colder nosed dog might be the only dogs trigger that trips…and if it is a very weak scent it is up to the handler to set them up for success when one dogs shows little interest but doesn’t react…it is up to the handler to decide if it should be checked…

It’s all about what we do as breeders and handlers…we make the dogs better by how we breed and how  we hunt them…

When we test pups at a young age we can see which has the hair trigger for winding and also which pups have a knack for finding which proves 3 things…nose, ability to find and the right type of brain to go with the nose and finding ability…to me it is all about selecting for natural ability first…

Rubs your last sentence is something I pay a good bit of attention to, I'll sit a bowl of food or scraps up on truck hood or anything elevated and watch to see who detects the scent initially and who can locate the source....

[jwal65]

Reuben have you ever hunted with any Dennison catahoulas?

[Goose87]

Reuben have you ever hunted with any Dennison catahoulas?

I'm not Reuben but I have hunted with a few....

[jwal65]

Were the ones you hunted with cast dogs as Reuben described in his post?

[Goose87]

Were the ones you hunted with cast dogs as Reuben described in his post?

Yessir they were....

[jwal65]

There aren't a whole lot of them around, or at least that I am aware of. They are a pleasure to hunt with.

[Goose87]

There aren't a whole lot of them around, or at least that I am aware of. They are a pleasure to hunt with.

The few I've seen were some nice dogs, there was a pocket of guys in south Alabama that had some of it, they're just like anything else and look good with the variables stacked in their favor and look horrible in the days they are stacked against them, there wasn't many of them dogs from what I've gathered, just a good solid strain of cur dogs that Joey Denison put together, the ones I've hunted behind, one in particular, was ignorant gritty, he would bay a pig all day just the same as a boar hog, but just as soon as he heard and even got to be be where if he could smell him coming to a bay he'd try to catch out every time and was on his death bed quite a few times bc of that, ole boy got to where he had to approach him bayed going based off the wind direction bc he would get himself wrecked if he knew help wasn't far behind...

[Austesus]

This has been some good reading gentlemen, so I’ve gotta question y’all may have the answer to. A few weeks ago I took a buddy out with me and we’re walking down the main road that goes in to multiple different properties. Well it’s about 6:30am, 75ish degrees, high humidity, and there was a bunch of dew on the ground. About 10 minutes in we come up to where there a big cutover on the left with some grinded mulch left behind. We see 3 shoat a laid up, only 50 yards from us. Well we decide to get low and wait to see if the dog’s hit on them. Right about then the dogs caught a hog that was on the right side of the road about 30yds off in some real thick stuff. By the time we get that once killed and back out, the hogs had slipped out. I watched them trot towards the woods in the back of the cutover.

I called all of the dogs over and they really didn’t seem to smell it. After 10-15 minutes they did try to line it up but the furthest they went was 200yds and they kept coming back. It was like they legitimately couldn’t smell it. These dogs have caught plenty of hogs so I have no doubt they would’ve taken the track if they could smell it.

Could this have been the dew on the ground? I was also told that the sign might have been too hot for them to line up with all of the fresh rooting that was around them


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Goose87]

This has been some good reading gentlemen, so I’ve gotta question y’all may have the answer to. A few weeks ago I took a buddy out with me and we’re walking down the main road that goes in to multiple different properties. Well it’s about 6:30am, 75ish degrees, high humidity, and there was a bunch of dew on the ground. About 10 minutes in we come up to where there a big cutover on the left with some grinded mulch left behind. We see 3 shoat a laid up, only 50 yards from us. Well we decide to get low and wait to see if the dog’s hit on them. Right about then the dogs caught a hog that was on the right side of the road about 30yds off in some real thick stuff. By the time we get that once killed and back out, the hogs had slipped out. I watched them trot towards the woods in the back of the cutover.

I called all of the dogs over and they really didn’t seem to smell it. After 10-15 minutes they did try to line it up but the furthest they went was 200yds and they kept coming back. It was like they legitimately couldn’t smell it. These dogs have caught plenty of hogs so I have no doubt they would’ve taken the track if they could smell it.

Could this have been the dew on the ground? I was also told that the sign might have been too hot for them to line up with all of the fresh rooting that was around them


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Very well could've been mass confusion, last summer we looked plum pitiful hunting a section of the swamp north of me, this place was literally gutted in rooting everywhere you went and all the dogs turned out left out going every which a direction with intent in each step but not nere one of them got a track lined out and a hog jumped that day, here's something folks don't give a lot of thought into, and are quick to make the assumption that if your dog can't smell a hog as bad as they stink then you got junk, that's couldn't be further from the truth, a hog pen has a strong odor but a hog itself does not, hogs only have like 6 glands they excrete scents and pheromones from, and their body doesn't produce any natural lanolins, so there's not much for these dogs to work with to begin with, another you have to look at is the vegetation growth, the more dense the brush the more surface area of solid objects for scent particles and bodily scurf to adhere to if the area is wide open and void of very little vegetative undergrowth that scent will just disperse itself amongst the surrounding atmosphere, this very same instance has been a phenomenon in the bobcat hunting world since it was developed and that is spotting a cat visually and putting dogs down and they cant even smell their own breath, come back later and chances are they can move the track and sometime they can't, go 2 miles down the Rd an same dogs rig a cat that had crossed earlier in the evening, again this another one of some university study that can be found where it was proven, at least in man, that sudden and unexpected fear will actually change the scent of the pheromones the body puts out, I've seen exactly what you've just experienced so many times in just about every form of hunting you can do with a dog in the south, it all made sense after finding that study done, I've started to try and take notice that when we're running a hog, if it makes a road crossing Undisturbed by anything other than the dogs in pursuit that the dogs never really hiccup on the track much at the road crossing, but let that hog get spooked by whatever it may be and and it seems like more times than not they have some difficulty keeping it going at a steady pace unto they get farther along on it then it picks backup......

[jwal65]

You are right Goose. A few guys here in South Alabama bought dogs from Joey Dennison 25 years ago (give or take a couple of years.) Those dogs were very well suited for the terrain and hog population in this particular area, so a few guys here locally have line bred off those original dogs since that time. We still refer to them as Dennison dogs, even though that was a long time ago. As I stated earlier, they are well suited for this area, but they seem to do pretty well wherever they are hunted. For whatever reason, the guys who have them seem to breed only for themselves.

[Austesus]

Thank you for the input goose. At the time I was getting pretty ticked off that none of the dogs would do anything. Ended up giving up after 20 minutes or so and we kept on walking and caught a different one then called it quits before it got too hot. Where they were laying at was completely rooted. Rooting was about 1ft deep and it covered an area that was probably 40ft by 60ft if not bigger. This place is slap ate up with hogs so I try not to go more than once a month so that it stays a pretty good spot for working young dogs. But that makes sense because I’ve come across huge areas of fresh rooting, I mean it looked like the hogs left 5 minutes before we got there, and dogs would have their noses to the ground all excited but wouldn’t ever line it out. I’ve wondered if it was just too much scent all over the place and they weren’t able to single any of it out.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Judge peel]

Something to look at is are you trying to push them or letting them be. Try this next time you run into that stop and set there until they do something if it takes two hrs just sit there. Some times when you walk you might be doing the hunting for the dogs and not realize it. Pushing them and following them is totally different nothing wrong with that method but it tends to make the dogs depend on you when there not confident enough to search out no matter what they smell. But like goose said you could come back two hrs later and lined one out


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[HIGHWATER KENNELS]

Just from my experience in the country and hogs we hunt...   It dont take long for a group of hogs in a steady trott to be a half mile in the matter of 15 minutes if they want too..   Now ,, that might not be the case in yalls neck of the woods but here again,, if the dogs thrown out on this sign has a tendency to only range 300-500 yards on no scent in their noses like the cur dogs I have hunted in my time,,  they might not have been able to wind em or drift the track long enuff to be close enuff to the hogs.    I remember one night we loaded up the dogs cause hogs were on camera on a lease a hr away from us..   We pulled up to the parking area to suit the dogs up and collar up ,, and the cameras were still going off while we headed into the spot..  Ended up being 6 min from the time I dropped the dogs out on this corn pile from the time the hogs had left..   I dropped a 9 yr and a 6 yr old on it and we aint even bayed a hog off that drop..  I was mad as a hornet ,,  these cur dogs were no rookies but still couldnt produce off that drop..  

Judge,,  I always said there is two type dogs I have hunted in my life....  One that I gotta put on the hogs for them to produce and the ones that put you on the hogs ,, no matter what I do..lol

[Judge peel]

High water no mater what kind or style of dog you have that is the truth. Some you carry to the hogs and some carry you to the hog


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Goose87]

Something to look at is are you trying to push them or letting them be. Try this next time you run into that stop and set there until they do something if it takes two hrs just sit there. Some times when you walk you might be doing the hunting for the dogs and not realize it. Pushing them and following them is totally different nothing wrong with that method but it tends to make the dogs depend on you when there not confident enough to search out no matter what they smell. But like goose said you could come back two hrs later and lined one out


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's some truth right there judge, I've sat down before and took a nap letting two young dogs work a track I knew they could smell, it took about an hour and a half for them to walk it out and figure it out, once we put and end product with their hustle they were a different set of dogs after that and got to be where they had a knack for pulling a rabbit out of a hat, it was a good day in the hog woods that morning, had I not hung out with the dry cows the night before I probably wouldn't have decided to take that little nap so reluctantly.....

[Austesus]

I agree with you completely judge. I’ve sat around and waited quite a few times. That’s actually how I started with them as young pups. I would take them to the creek and sit while they casted out. I’d make them check in and go back out a few times before going a little further down and doing it again. If the weather is right when that happens again I’ll try it out. We were racing to beat the heat this particular day and there’s hogs all over that property so after they quit really trying it we walked another 600-700yds and caught another one.

I agree with you on some dogs needing to be walked to sign, I can’t stand that. I like my dogs to hunt in circles around me. They will typically go 300ish yards out making a big loop before checking in and going out again. If I’m walking they won’t check in very often, they’ll get close enough to smell or hear me and then roll back out.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[t-dog]

Austesus the one word of advice from me is don’t always make it about catching a hog. In this case, finding that set of hogs would’ve done your dogs more good than finding and catching an easier one, even if you didn’t catch one of the hard to find ones. That’s sometimes a big hurdle for a hunter because the end goal is to catch hogs. When I have a young dog or a young set of dogs, EVERY hunt is a training hunt. Catching  hogs is second place to training and helping a young dog develop for me.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Reuben]

Reuben have you ever hunted with any Dennison catahoulas?

I have hunted with different lines of catahoulas but I haven’t hunted with a Dennison catahoula that I knew about…

[Goose87]

I just about positive they were never really so much as set as a strain or family as they were more so like several generations of dogs who were put together from Joey Dennisons selection and pairing of individual dogs who complimented each other well and produced good, I think he didn't hog hunt to many more years after he had started putting together good crosses, not talking down on them by any means bc the ones I hunted with were nice, that one in particular that had originally come from Danny Drinkard, but there's nothing special about them for them to have that almost novelty like label on them, and one thing I do know  and won't mention a name or timeframe other than it was in Alabama bc for whatever reason, there was some crossing of English coon hound bred into them and also some Florida cur blood, I haven't been on FB or hunted with any of the mutual associates I had with Danny Drinkard or Don Bradford in about 4 or 5 years so I don't know what's come of them now...


Last I heard anything out of Mr. Joey was also on FB and he was living in Jessup Ga and was breeding training and selling Mt Cur squirrel dogs, close friend of mine went and bought one....

[Austesus]

T-Dog, thanks for the tips. We’ll do that next time and see if they can line it out.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk