The American Beagler Forum

What Do papers mean to a Gun hunters?

To the old gun hunters around here. They could care less about papers.
Me im a gun hunter and papers mean alot to me. Truthfully I wouldnt buy a puppy without papers.
Everyones diffrent.

If you are a gun hunter and don't care about papers just buy a poodle and kill rabbits.

The old guys I hunt around say papers on a dog are only good for wiping your butt

I'm an old guy from the old school and I disagree. I want to know all I can about the dogs I own. Of course, papers are only as good as the man behind them.

Bottom line for some is papers don't run a rabbit. I have yet to see a hound show it's "credentials" before it'll pick up a track. I do agree it gives us an idea of what and where the dog came from but unless you plan on breeding I don't know that it makes a difference in the end. And for the record I do have papered dogs.

certain lines produces certain traits, mine is hunt, line control, and do what you tell them or mind you....that is the reason I like reggie dogs...jmo

bo power wrote:What Do papers mean to a Gun hunters?

They mean you don't have to smoke out of a pop can!!!

Good one. Lol

The papers are for me. Like bunnytracks says, certain lines produce certain traits. I dont think mine know they have papers.

If you don't breed dogs and find a dog that you like, by all means buy it and enjoy, papers don't make it better. If you breed and want to trace certain traits and try to capture them in the next generation, papers are useful to see where they came from and perdict where you are going.
Breeding papers to try to make a buck is terrible for the beagle breed.

I remember hearing of a young man who years ago bred a number of patch litters to help put himself through college, much of that we owe to what we breed today. So in that instance, I'd say "breeding some good hounds to make a buck" was a win/win event...
All I'm saying is, if that boy had not need the money and only ran his few hounds for his own pleasure, the good we have from Randall and Ray may well have dried up...

S.R., just out of curiosity do you know did they also cull?? The only reason I ask is if what they produced was mostly good then I assume they were still fairly selective even though they were doing it to make a buck. They obviously had good enough hounds to have some kind of a demand for the pups so they were breeding right to make goods hounds and being able to make a few bucks off of them was icing on the cake. Like I said, just curious..........I'm assuming they were fairly selective.

I'd say his good fortune was getting hounds from the sources he did. When you put the hounds from Randall and Ray together with their breeding background, selling pups from these gives you the best of odds of what's produced.
Randall had about quit and Ray had cancer, the family hit an extreme bottle neck when this happened. The hounds this young man put out there for others to continue with is one of the oddities of fate...imho
This young man had not been a long time breeder who's fingerprint had change the hounds from what they were originally. It would be like you were one of Branko's neighbors and helped him with hounds and he gave you a few from his best stock to get started with. You breed and the 70 yrs of Randall's work is what follows...but the more time and influence others have on the selections made down the road, the canvas can change that is true.