The American Beagler Forum

I've been told not to buy a beagle bred to run hares for running cottontails.Why?If they are well bred and can run a hare why can't they run a cottontail just as well?Are they too fast?Is a hare bred beagle that is considered medium speed faster than a cottontail bred beagle that is considered a fast dog?Does one typically have more nose than the other?Can a hare bred beagle compete with a beagle bred to run cottontails in an A.K.C SPO trial?Just what is the difference between them.

Newby, I'm not going to be much help to you but I'm going to say that the opinion that hare bloodlines are no good for cottontails is both right and wrong. Just as saying cottontail bloodlines can't do well on hare is both right and wrong. The hare bloodlines IN GENERAL are specialized to have more nose, speed and endurance than cottontail hounds. Too much speed without nose and line control will result in lost rabbits just as sure as not enough speed and nose will result in lost hare when the thermometer dips below zero. That being said, I have seen many hare dogs that will hold their own against any cottontail hound and vice versa. My advice to you is that if you like what your running buddies have, try them as they should run good together. If yours are too fast or too slow, your friends won't want to hunt with you.

Steve,
i would have to agree with speed and endurance. But not more nose, I have judged quite a few SPO R trials and LPH trials and have seen probably equal noses

I think the speed is the most important factor that some folks don't like when dealing with hare breeding. The main thing I like about it is the gears that the dogs have to run under all conditions and their toughness. Not knowing where newby is from limits the response. The only problem I have seen when bringing a dog that is not started to the South is their great dislike for heavy cover and not liking to run in briars and getting cutup. As for me, I wouldn't run anything else but the hare breeding because of their overall performance. Pups started here don't mind the cover. I've seen some cottontail bred dogs that are rough as any of the roughest hare breeding. When you get right down to it, the breeding is like buying car or truck, you can get the bare bones model, get one loaded that can do it all or one that is bred somewhere in between that is a combination of hare and cottontail breeding. It's all preference.

It is much easier for a hound who has been raised on rabbit to switch over to running hare then it is for a hound raised on hare to switch over to rabbit. It requires a much better hound to be able to adjust from hare to rabbit.

From what I have seen and have there is no different. I have mostly all Northern bred dogs and they seem to run cottontails just as good as hares. I run in Spo in the south and have been in four trails and made winners pack all four times. I have been to Ny to run on snow for hares at the end of Dec and then when its snowed in VA I have run cottontails and have not had any problems at all.

from what i have been told by experienced beaglers, joe wests post is correct. lots of hare hound guys even say that they prefer to start dogs on cottontail and then switch over to hare as it makes a better dog. cottontail pull a lot more tricks and zig zags where a hare has heavier scent (ive been told) and generally runs a LARGE circle. i would bet that a hare hound would have a speed advantage over a cottontail dog and a cottontail dog would have better line control than a hare hound. those are generalizations of course and it would really depend on each dog. i have never run hare, but this is what i have been told.

I live in VA and have run and started my dogs on cottontail. From what i have seen they will pretty much run with anyones have they suit me well for cottontail and are hard hitting and fast. I run hare as often as i can and i can tell you from experience that on good days anything can run a hare.

I can also tell you from experience that the good running days are far out weighed by the bad. The hare lives in a harsh environment and if you wait ten minutes the weather is bound to change usually for the worse and if you do not have a dog with alot of nose,brains,experience you might as well go home. I have had a post on this site for months looking for a proven hare hound. I will spend good money for the right dog.

How many times do you see a good hare hound for sale and i have been looking.



Hare breeding does not make a hare hound. I will run my dogs with anyones on cottontail but when i go hare hunting i'm usually the spectator as mine cannot get it done on hare. Why ? Unless you hunt them alot you can never fully reconize the difference in ability it takes to run a hare.

If you have run hare before and been successful i congratulate you. Now go on the the bad, cold , crusted one week old snow windy below freezing temperatures days and tell me how the dogs perform?

I'm still looking for a proven hare hound!\


Brian

I live in Mid-Michigan and run cottontail during the week and hare on weekends. I prefer to start my pups on cottontail, but have them running hare by 8 months. As much as the bloodlines get mixed these days, I dont think you can say there is that big of difference. Many of the FC dogs around here have wins in both LP and Midwest SPO. UGBF and LP is a different story.
I see one major difference and it has nothing to do with speed or line control. Its the closeness of the check work and closeness of the search. Running hare, a dog can reach much faster and wider and come up with the line and be gone. When running this style of dog with a CLOSE in the check dog, your close dog is frequently playing catch up. When running cottontail it is very important to have close check work to pick up the line. This also applies to search. A good cottontail dog will work within 50 or so yards from you, bumping every blade of grass. A good hare jump dog will get out 3 or 4 hundred yards many times to get the jump.
In my opinion the single hardest trait to get in a hound is close check work, exspecially with medium fast to fast hounds. I think your medium speed hounds do a much better job staying close in the check. If you like a dog close in the check and contol most of the line you will most likely be best served with a slower style cottontail hound. If you like speed and hard driving go with the midwest or LP hounds. Good luck

mybeagles wrote:I live in Mid-Michigan and run cottontail during the week and hare on weekends. I prefer to start my pups on cottontail, but have them running hare by 8 months. As much as the bloodlines get mixed these days, I dont think you can say there is that big of difference. Many of the FC dogs around here have wins in both LP and Midwest SPO. UGBF and LP is a different story.
I see one major difference and it has nothing to do with speed or line control. Its the closeness of the check work and closeness of the search. Running hare, a dog can reach much faster and wider and come up with the line and be gone. When running this style of dog with a CLOSE in the check dog, your close dog is frequently playing catch up. When running cottontail it is very important to have close check work to pick up the line. This also applies to search. A good cottontail dog will work within 50 or so yards from you, bumping every blade of grass. A good hare jump dog will get out 3 or 4 hundred yards many times to get the jump.
In my opinion the single hardest trait to get in a hound is close check work, exspecially with medium fast to fast hounds. I think your medium speed hounds do a much better job staying close in the check. If you like a dog close in the check and contol most of the line you will most likely be best served with a slower style cottontail hound. If you like speed and hard driving go with the midwest or LP hounds. Good luck

Very good post. The only thing I'd disagree with a little bit would be the single hardest trait to get in a hound -- I think the single hardest is enough nost, but I see 100% where you're coming from with the checkwork thing, and I do agree with your synopsis of the differences.

Have had quite a lot of folks from down south and out west bring cottontail born and raised dogs up to hare hunt, and the biggest difference between their avergae dog and mine (aside from nose when the scenting isn't very good) is that they don't reach at all on a check and have to play catch up a lot of the time. By reaching I'm not talking about really gambling or anything, but when there's a short loss there's quite a difference between a dog snapping right back to point of loss and wasting a bit of time and one of my type dogs that usually looks for it first 5 or 10 yards out front (with a hare it seems they're right virtually all the time), then snaps back if they don't find it where they know it aught to be. What usually happens is my dogs get the 2 or 3 second jump and are 100 yards out with it before the other dogs get back in it. Dogs aren't dumb, though and if someone hunts the dog 2 or 3 days they'll usually be doing the same thing and shortly running like a pretty smooth pack with mine, unless there's just that much of a foot difference.

I've seen the same thing with the same dogs that have come back the following year, after only running cottontails at home for a year, only that second time they come back it doesn't usually take them very long at all to get right back in the groove.

That's why I think it's said that it takes a better dog that's started and run a lot on hare to make the conversion to cottontail, because some of them never get out of the (fautly) racing mindset and can't do squat unless it's a really good scenting day; then they can look super (you see a lot of this in LPOH, by the way).

Of course, the ideal would be a really close check working dog that always quickly claims right where they lost and shoots out of a check quick enough to stay with a bit of a reacher, but they don't come around every day (almost as rare as a dog with a really big nose), and when you get one it makes you want a pack full of them.

Let a dog run with a pack of fast 'hare' dogs a bunch of days when it's good scenting and things can start to look pretty sloppy. A way to balance it is kind of like mybeagles said; occasionally running them on cottontail in real tight cover, and running hare on a lot of poor scenting days (running solo helps too), will keep a 'hare' bred and raised hound tightened up and under reasonable control.

Chris,
do you want your hounds to reach? or would you want them to pick it up from point of loss?

KanesIrish wrote:Chris,
do you want your hounds to reach? or would you want them to pick it up from point of loss?

Ideally I'd like them to pick it up from dead on the point of loss, but run a dog on hare enough and the dog learns that 9 times out of 10 the hare went somewhere in front of them they'll reach a bit first, then come right back if they don't find it. The dummies don't come right back and that, to me, makes them faulty. I don't think they're faulty for being intelligent and a bit rabbit smart, and reaching a bit first before they come right back, because they show you by being right. Over a whole season I think a dog that reaches a bit will run a bit more rabbit (well, hare actually, probably not so with cottontails, but that same good dog that gets conditioned to reach a bit on hare quickly learns that reaching at all on cottontail doesn't benefit them). If they're not picking up their share of checks then they're probably reaching a lot more than what I'm talking about. I've heard people measure it in a matter of just a few feet before and calling a dog faulty for that, but that doesn't really make sense to me because momentum plays a factor, and the air scent's usually enough to allow them to run off the track that far and more anyway. I don't particularly want my dogs running 100% of the hare's track like I probably would if I regularly hunted cottontails. I'd like them to run 100% of the scent, but that's far from keeping the track between their legs at all times. I like for them to get the job done and shag the rabbit, and unless you get one of those rare superstars you'll have to settle for something medium speed if you want every inch of track to be run, and I just don't find that efficient for hare hunting.

Not saying that's the gospel or anything, but it's just what I've seen from a lot of dogs.

Like I said: "Of course, the ideal would be a really close check working dog that always quickly claims right where they lost and shoots out of a check quick enough to stay with a bit of a reacher, but they don't come around every day (almost as rare as a dog with a really big nose), and when you get one it makes you want a pack full of them."

I hunted over a pack of hounds a few weeks ago, all of these hounds were comeback sort of hounds. To the direct point of loss. This made for a good chase, it was exciting to watch for 3 hours, it was on hare, but we had a mix of dogs in there.

One was a Canadian LPH FTC, another was a Ranger Dan bitch with a win, another was a line bred Northway hound with places on hare, and the other was a cottontail hound with numerous places on cottontail and a couple places on hare. All of these hounds took their licks, and I saw that Ranger Dan bitch and the cottontail bitch challenge the Northway male for the front on a few occasions.

After this rabbit was shot, a friend put his cottontail bred Field Champion on the ground and she worked a cold trail for 20 minutes with the other getting a piece of it here and there before the pack turned it into a hard run. I hope this shows that yes...cottontail hounds CAN show nose in a hard situation.

The fact of the matter is, I've judged quite a few hounds while judging field trials, and seen quite a few dogs running at clubs. I do not see much difference between a "cottontail" hound and a "hare" hound, except with conservative type cotttontail hounds and the very liberal hare hounds I've seen run. I really think it is in how the dog is trained.

The best hare dogs I've seen were the comeback to the check type of hounds, and the same on cottontail. I will say that the main difference between these two hounds is speed and endurance, but with that said there are gentlemen that frequent the Small Pack Option circuit in New York and Pennsylvania that have hounds that CAN MOVE, and will run a hare hound into the ground, just from the ways they've been trained and bred. I know several gentlemen with little bitches that could come and very well dominate Large Pack on Hare with the speed, power, and nose that their hounds have. But with that said I know gentlemen that run hounds in Large Pack, that run hounds that are close and careful enough to look good in SPO.

But getting back to reaching. It is my idea that a hound should 9 times out of 10 get the check from the point of loss. A reach is only acceptable when it appears that the rabbit has been lost, or no hound could pick it up from the point of loss. So then the hound that has to reach out and save the run should be credited in both the eyes of the hunter and the field trialer with a check or what I like to call it, "a rabbit saver". However if a dog behind this dog takes the line out from point of loss while this hound has reach, that is the hound that should be credited. And this hound that stays and works it out might be playing catch up with the hound that reached out and got it. However in my book it is showing more brains, staying, and nose.

KanesIrish wrote:It is my idea that a hound should 9 times out of 10 get the check from the point of loss. A reach is only acceptable when it appears that the rabbit has been lost, or no hound could pick it up from the point of loss. So then the hound that has to reach out and save the run should be credited in both the eyes of the hunter and the field trialer with a check or what I like to call it, "a rabbit saver". However if a dog behind this dog takes the line out from point of loss while this hound has reach, that is the hound that should be credited. And this hound that stays and works it out might be playing catch up with the hound that reached out and got it. However in my book it is showing more brains, staying, and nose.

I have nothing on which to base how you define 'reaching', so I really don't know if I agree with you or not. How far from that last footprint that they smelled do they have to go to be reaching? 6 inches? 2 feet? 8 feet? 5 yards? 10 yards? 50 yards?

Isn't reaching really in the eyes of the beholder? If one hound is able to pick it up from the point of loss, and another has to go farther away from that ahead of the hound to pick it up, then thats a reach. Its not a defined distance. Anyway, with distance half these guys that run dogs don't know how to eye ball distance anyway. I hear people talk about large pack trials and dogs that overrun one hundred yards...which is absolutely obsurd.

There is no determined distance, its just common sense. If the rabbit is lost for a moment at point A and two dogs are running, what is more impressive the hound that stays and picks up the line at point A or the rabbit the picks it up at point B.