The American Beagler Forum

We often hear tallk about hot nosed dogs that won't open until a rabbit is up and moving. We also hear others complain about dogs that trail around and are reffed to as cold nosed. Is the trait of tight mouth or loose mouth genetically linked to the scenting ability of a beagle? Is it possible to have a hound with a powerful nose who still is tight enough to not open until he is close to the rabbit? Does anyone know of any scientific studies on this subject or of any Beagles who have a powerful enough sniffer to run in snow or very hot dry conditions that won't cold trail.

yes it is possible for a hound to not continuasly open on a cold track but still have a very good noise.

I run cottontail rabbits mostly.
I do it up here in Michigan where scenting can be Hot and dry in the summer and cold and snowy in the winter.
I have seen alot of dog's and there aren't to many that can trail with there mouth shut untill they get a rabbit up. But they do exist and I've been lucky enough to find a couple.

My one male out of FC. Sure Start Spencer by a bitch that is a litter mate to Haunted Hills Shaker has a very good noise but he will only open when the rabbit is up.

I think more than anything it's just time in the field that makes the differance they learn what they can and can't run..

Just my opinon..
Rob

It is possible, and I have seen vary many with powerful noses who use their voice correctly. It is not the strength of the nose that causes a hound to open on a cold trail. There are vary many hounds who run on snow and hot dry weather and who do not cold trail.

I don't think there are any scientific studys and I wouldn't put much faith in them if there were. I do agree with Joe and Rob. I have a male that has run rabbits every time I have had him out and I live in Minnesota. Yet I would call him a little tight mouthed. If you hear him there is a rabbit somewhere running hard.

if i was running cottontails i can see the advantage of a tite mouth dog maybe. . rabbit could go to ground before the dog gets close. i also have seen tite mouth dogs with decent noses. most of them werent beagles though,some were were bird dogs , seen silent trailing coon hounds only barked when treed. and i have seen beagles like this but they are rare. i disagree with joe who says dogs shouldnt bark when cold trailing. joes dogs cold trail but he calls it working and old line . they communicate that by wagging their tail. my dogs wag theyre tail too .they do this on scent they can detect but not good enough to run. i swear they do this just to show off sometimes. watch them wag their tail twice as hard if another dog is near or even if they think im paying attention if scent is good enough so thay can make progress. most of mine will bark. i prefer them to bark if they are following a track and making progress. . there is a point where this becomes a bad trait but i like a dog that cold trails a little for hunting hare. my rule is that if they can move it they should bark. i want to know where dogs are.if winds blowing or a lot of snow on trees they can get out of hearing quick enough without trailing silent . i do agree that tite mouth and hot nose or cold nose and a lot of mouth are not the same thing. dogs triggered to bark at different levels of scent. im not sure a dog thinks about it ever . i dont think he can help it . just like a person might scream in pain. i have one dog that will whimper and moan on old track. sound like shes hurt. she also will boogie bark one long howl when she cant move this track. i heard somebody call it a frustration howl . sounds like a lost pup. when she can first run the track she will squeal. when you hear her really barking good you know she is very close or on some very hot scent. this dog is kind of an extreme case of having many different voices. i can tell what shes doing by the sound of her voice. i hear a lot of guys say they like the dog that doesnt open til its hot cause they know when he barks they really got something. most of my dogs i can tell pretty quick by the sound of its voice what its doing. i run hounds to hear them bark. i consider a tite mouth hound a disadvantage. i dont know of any scientific studies like tom said they arent any substitute for time in the woods watching and listening to hounds run. i used to get the study thrown at me saying they all have the same nose. ok maybe but they sure dont all have the same ability to use it. . pete

Pete: Sounds like we have different definitions of cold trailing because I would cull a cold trailer. Cold Trailing: opening on old scent made the night before or hours earlier. Certainly my hounds can smell a cold trail but they won't open on it because they know it's too old to bother with. A cold trailer does not.

Hounds should remain within hearing of their owners voice while hunting and THEY should keep track of the handler and not the other way around. A hound who will not keep track of his handler and will run off out of hearing is untractable and a nusince to hunt with.

Hounds should not open until they can move the rabbit. Certainly any hound will silently work a line that he finds interesting but lacks sufficient scent to open on. As he evaluates the scent he will feather until he either gets the rabbit up or decides the scent is not viable and leaves it. Often we see hounds who are searching find some scent and feather while they evaluate it for just a couple of seconds and then leave it without ever opening. Other times they will find some scent and then feather to a point where the rabbit is found and then open and we know without a doubt that the race is on. That's an honest hound saying I have the rabbit up and moveing. If they open on scent that they don't yet know is viable or not; then when they open all they are saying is they smell rabbit and MAYBE I can run it. To me it is vary annoying for a hound to open on scent and then not produce the rabbit. It also interfears with the hunt when he pulls his packmates away from their work and then when they learn to ignore him if he does make a real find they may still ignore him for a short time until they are sure he has rabbit.

Certainly a tight mouthed hound is disruptive to pack work and we want the hounds to proclaim every inch of the line, and we also agree that we want to hear the hound music. I would not hesitate to cull one that was too tight either. Proper use of voice is what we are looking for. That's a voice you can depend on. You know instantly when you hear it thats the point where the rabbit was started and you can follow the progress of the chase by listening to the hounds. You know exactly where they loose contact with the line and when they make progress on the line again just by listening. When they open you don't think to yourself, well maybe they got one we'll wait a couple of minutes and find out.

Dogs have a different degree of nose. I have hunted with cold nose and hot nose in same pack. prefer the dog that when he barks I know a rabbit is close. My question is when cold and hot nose dogs run together and lose the track they all lose it at exactly the same time and seem to all pick it back up at the same. Are some only following the lead dog. seems like the cold nose dog picks the track back up first. When I say cold nose I am talking about the
dog that barks before all the other dogs before the rabbit has actually been
pick up again not one that barks on old trail .

Joe, I think Pete and I want almost the same thing you do. I will not keep a dog that opens on tracks he can't run. I want a dog that I can depend on to jump and run a rabbit he opens on. If he is barking he better produce a rabbit and not take all day doing it.
By the way, if you do much hare hunting you won't get many if your dog quits and comes back every time he gets out of hearing.

Have all the debate you want, but here's a fact...
MANY (darn near all) hot-nosed dogs simply can't smell a rabbit/hare good enough to run it, when conditions are bad (below zero, old snow, etc.)

Soooooo, you decide what you want to hunt when you have to kill a limit of hare/rabbits in January.

A dog that can run when others can't WILL pop off occasionally when a hot-nosed dog would remain quiet. But, you won't get runs, many days in winter, without them. That's just fact.

Soooooo many folks equate cold-nosed to cold-trailing babbler. It's just not so. An occasional misplaced bark is well worth it.

Chris and Pete,
We have been down this road before and for that reason I will try not to be drawn in again. But as you know by now at least the three of us are in the same truck so to speak as we again go down this road. I will take it to the grave with me the belief that hounds open at varying levels and that level is determined by the amount of scent they can can pick up. It has nothing to do with a dogs intelligence or lack there of! I am now 44 years old and have been at this since I was 13 and all my years of fooling with these critters have taught me this. I personally think a hound should and by nature is supposed to open when it smells enough rabbit in order to call it's packmates to the spot, not only when it is off to the races. This I think is something we humans have developed in our attempt to make great solo, champion, trial type hounds so we can compete with each other. While it may be fun and nice to own a single hound that can do it all alone it is I believe contrary to the idea of being a pack member. It is like trying to put a bunch of lead dogs together and then expecting them to either fight for the front or figure out in moments where they fit in with this strange new pack. I believe nature evolved hounds behavior to work as a pack because there was greater success in catching game thus ensuring the ability of the pack to survive. Think about survival of the most successful as opposed to the survival of the fittest. If single hounds were as successful as any pack of dogs wild or not in the past "they" would be around and the whole pack phenomenon would not exist. I think the way it is supposed to go is like this. "hey I smell one guys .....everybody comes running over adding more noses to the mix and the ability to cover more ground quickly...saving lots of individual energy spent as they work together....they find the line and take off running.....as a pack. Now a hound that barks just for the sake of barking is soon learned to be ignored by the pack as a babbling idiot and they will quit harking in to that hound as a result. This again has been my experience perhaps others have had differing ones. Over the years I have worked on building a pack of hounds that I can go to field with on any day and come home with a game bag full or at least an excellent chance of doing so. Each knows it's place in the pack and each others behaviors. I know each ones strengths and weaknesses and can tell you while they all can "do it alone" some are better than the others. Some push the pack harder and speed up the run, some are masters at check work and seem to be the one that always straighten out a loss. And then there is the so called "COLD NOSE" hound that is the one who seems to be the first one to find the rabbit / hare and get the pack going on those cold snowy, frosty , rainy....nothing is moving...might as well go home..days. The one that opens and the pack mates run to her and as she slowly works the line they quietly follow along because past experience tells them she is honest and can smell what thy can not. And as they get closer one by one the others open untill finally ole mister hare better get a going cause baby it's gonna be a rough day! Now you call that a fault? Gimme that "COLD NOSE" hound and I'll be smiling. She may not have a place in a trial but she will always have a place in my kennel, pack and heart!

Tommn: I was refering to hounds getting out of hearing while searching not running.

Chris: I reckon I already decided I like a hound with plenty of nose who uses his voice correctly. Again I say A hound doesn't have to be mouthy to have a powerful nose and that, is a fact.

New York Hillbilly wrote:I personally think a hound should and by nature is supposed to open when it smells enough rabbit in order to call it's packmates to the spot, not only when it is off to the races. This I think is something we humans have developed in our attempt to make great solo, champion, trial type hounds so we can compete with each other. While it may be fun and nice to own a single hound that can do it all alone it is I believe contrary to the idea of being a pack member. It is like trying to put a bunch of lead dogs together and then expecting them to either fight for the front or figure out in moments where they fit in with this strange new pack. I believe nature evolved hounds behavior to work as a pack because there was greater success in catching game thus ensuring the ability of the pack to survive.

Yup.

New York Hillbilly, You got that wright, Very well said and i agree with you 100%.I have seen what has happened and what is happening in the beagle world in the coon hound breed.Try as we might you cannot take away the instinct an animal is born with..

had 4 beaglers from NY,hunting with me yesterday, it has been way below zero all week. dusting of snow that is a week old. they brought 3 beagles. these dogs are hunted on cottontail alot on bare ground and snow. these dogs did not bark one time yesterday.... poor scenting is the reason. or so i was told. meanwhile 3 of my best culls ran very good most of the day. they strugled about an hour when snow was melting in the sun and i thought would have been the best part of the day. nobody wanted to wear snowshoes.so not a lot of hare killed , we ran one hare 4 hours in one thicket without a major loss. it just wouldnt cross skiddoo trail to get shot. i just cant listen to those dogs run like that knowing they are culls and believe its poor scenting. the hare that were shot , the dogs were fairly close. there was plenty of times the dogs were not hot on them but kept it going. i can tell what dogs are doing by their voice. ive seen 2 of these dogs cold trail. ive seen one of them backtrack. they are definately culls yet they run a hare when other dogs that are perfect are useless. i cant say these hot nosed made any mistakes, they searched and handled well. they are ribbon winners. i can tell by the gouges on their ears and hair worn off that they are hunted somewhere and can run sometimes. but they are useless for hunting in my world and yesterday was one of the good days. joe best way for you to educate me is to show me some of these non faulty dogs. id like to have had everybody on this board witness some of the stuff ive seen. to me the dog that is faultyis the dog that cant do the job. ive seen these culls run lately at 30 below zero. and in 3 feet of snow or now we have a crust that doesnt quite hold them up and week old snow i think this is worst of all. one of these culls is sleeping on my couch right now thats how much i appreciate the job she did yesterday. your right hillbilly weve been down this rd before . the only reason i keep pounding on same old thing is that if we keep breeding hot nosed dogs everybody will have perfect dogs that never bark out of place but are useless for hunting here in the winter. there are a very big % of dogs like that now. a friend recently went to a snow trial , i think 26 dogs . one that could run. thats not a great average. ill bet he has a few faults. i sure would like him tied in my yard. some people only hunt rabbit on bare ground and may not have a clue what im talking about but the guys hunting hare on snow in the winter and always having an excuse why scenting is bad is the ones that absolutely drive me nuts. by there definition scenting is bad most the time. its obvious to me that if we dont turn this hot nosed dog thing around we can forget about hunting with beagles inthe winter around here, anybody got any pups out of COLD NOSED dogs im in the market for one. pete

I for one do not want to hunt excuesses, Iwant to hunt rabbit hounds, start um anyway it takes,trailum, and run the hair off um. YA, never done that before, Can't smell or run it, to hot , to cold , to windy, to early, to late, must be a doe,?. I've heard it all. Excuesses B.S.