cold nose
Moderators: Pike Ridge Beagles, Aaron Bartlett
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bob huffman
Joe yesterday I asked my hounds if they enjoyed themselves and they each gave that little wink and nod. Boy I fely good about that. You say that a hound only gains experience by running rabbits and not by shooting them. You are exactly right for a change. ( Its about time). I don't shoot the rabbit for them to gain experience. I shoot the rabbit to increase the desire of the dog which will in turn cause them to want to increase the behaviors displayed that are involved in running a rabbit. This in turn will increase their experience as they push to a higher level of pursuit. My experience with Plott Hounds showed me that a dog that wants to catch the rabbit is a better training prospect than one that cares nothing about catching the fur. This trait can be bred into ot out of a line of dogs and I try to breed it into mine if I have a choice. That type of dog has shown me that is easier to train because it has more natural desire to run the track to conclusion. They think about the rabbit and not just the track. I see that you are not familiar with this dynamic so I understand why you don't understand it. It is the "run to catch" trait that I always watch for and it has proven to me over 35 years that it is a desirable trait as opposed to a fault. I have noticed over time, that a lot of beagles do not have this trait. I know this trait helps a dog overcome some tough conditions because they have a higher level of desire to pursue the fur. They have a little more grit, determination, heart, guts, desire or call it what you wish, but it is the one trait that can seperate greatness from average. If your dogs ar not bred for this trait over time then I can see why shooting the rabbit for them is wasted time. I have had many Beagles just like that but always preferred the ones that like the kill because it is a great reward for them and is a wondeful training tool which can really increase the desire of those dogs that show the trait. They "enjoy" the kill and just like a drug addict, they get hooked on it if you condition the behavior properly, and just like a drug addict, they will do whatever it takes to reach the goal of a kill. If a dog has a powerful desire it is half the battle in becoming a rabbit dog. Something to think about when you are selecting traits to put into beagles. Do field trails measure this trait? I am not talking about desire to run the track which is also a good trait, I am talking about the desire to catch the rabbit. I understand that it is not a requirement of a rabbit dog, but I also understand that it does make them quicker to learn and helps eleiminate the fault of quitting and pottering that many beagles display. The modern walkie talkies would be a good example of a dog so captivated by the scent because they don't have any desire to catch the rabbit. A little lesson for you Joe in the finer points of breeding good hunting hounds. Now your job is to quickly think of how you can argue this point, twist my words and prove that I am all wet and don't have a clue as to what I am talking about. Sort of like the walkie talkies, not concerned with catching the rabbit but are in love with the sound of a lot of barking and not getting anywhere. reminds me of a soap opera, always talking and dramatizing but in the end, it is life in the slow lane.
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Steve C.
Bob, is that desire to catch bred in or a product of training? I'm not being smart here, I don't know the answer and am interested in different opinions from different bloodlines and different parts of the country. I have run-to-catch hounds and over the years have found that slightly more than half don't care a bit about the dead hare, while others will maul it or even try to run off and eat it. All my young hounds have hare shot off them at the earliest opportunity. I like them to see the result of their work. But I've decided that it really hasn't mattered most of the time. Some of them even appear to be disgusted that their fun has ended til they find another. Usually I see little change in the pups' attitude toward the quarry as they mature. Most that start as maulers remain that way, while most that show no interest remain that way. What I have noticed is that there has been no difference in the amount of desire to run the hare between the two groups. I'm curious to hear if others have different experiences.
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bob huffman
b
Just blew that theory out of the water. Now Joe won't have to come on here and do it.LOLOL It is bred into them and I have seen what you mean about not caring about the rabbit and the disgust with killing it. The grit seems to be more in the UKC dogs I have seen and hunted. Not so much in the SPO or other formats. I also noticed that UKC dogs have a higher percentage of rabbit hunting dogs as opposed to other formats or registries. Not sure as to why but the ones I have trained have been easy to start and train and go nuts over a dead rabbit. Maybe they have some terrier in them or pit bull.
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Steve C.
Patch, you nailed it again, as usual! Bob, I was reading a post you made on the SPO site a while back and nearly died laughing! I disagree with you sometimes but that was the funniest thing I'd ever read on a beagle message board and I can't help but like anyone that can make me laugh like that! At least you realize that we can disagree without becoming mortal enemies.
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bob huffman
b
Well heck, you have blown my cover and now I will have to be honest. The real reason my dogs like fur is because they come from line of tree dogs. I always had tree dogs that were mostly Plotts. I hunted coon but would train them on squirrels because they would learn more quickly to find the right tree and there were more training opportunities and it was easier to see what the dogs were doing and get stay close to them since it was in the daytime. When I was a kid we had a little female named Betsy that was half border collie and half cocker spaniel. She was a squirrel treeing machine and me and my buddy Bruce Myrick would hunt possums with her every weekend and sell them to a fella down in North B/ham to eat and sell. This is where I learned about tree dogs and have always liked to hunt squirrel with a dog. When I trained my Plott pups this way, they would automatically switch over to coon if you hunted them at night. A family was moving once that had a family of beagles that they had accidentely inbred. They couldn't take the dogs with them so I aquired 5 beagles from this family that had a lot of old time show breeding. One day I was out training them and a little bitch I called Happy sit down at a tree and gave a big locating bawl and then went into a hard chop that any coon hunter would be proud of. This little bitch was treed on scent and had the squirrel. She was out of a son to mother cross and I guess the treeing instinct got doubled up. I shot the squirrel out to her and she went nuts because the squirrel wasn't dead but she fixed that quick. I could not believe what she had done and from then on she was a tree dog. She would run rabbits but would just as soon tree squirrels and did because I would hunt her on them. She was a meat dog and loved to get a squirrel or rabbit n her mouth. All my stock goes back to her and most of her descendants were tree dogs with grit that loved to pull hair. It was like having 2 breeds in one. I could easily train the pups to tree with a squirrel skin and when they did I would tease them with it and they would lock on and try to take it from me. It was a trait that occured randomly or got doubled up because of the inbreeding. I think I have always selected for that type of dog until recently after my Dad died I quit squirrel hunting with the dogs. I don;t like to clean or eat squirrel but my Dad would be your best friend if you took him a couple of squirrels to eat. He loved them but since he is gone, I have sort of gotten away from the treeing instinct in my dogs. I am sure some will still tree if I train them to it, but I would rather eat rabbit. Squirrel hunting with a good dog is fun and a great way to teach a kid the proper way to handle a tree dog. My stock came from a mix of dogs that are most likely as differant from any other Beagles in the country in regard to bloodlines. We have mostly UKC dogs here if you want hunting dogs as there are no AKC trials to speak of and any AKC dog you get around here will be pet breeding mostly. If you want hunting Beagles here you are better off with UKC as there is not as much pet breeding going on with them and they usually come from hunting stock.. We have UKC trials here also. This has been a pretty long thread and tells me there is a lot to be understood about nose in the Beagle. Good Luck!!
cold nosed beagles
Holly cow. 
I just read all those posts in regards to cold nosed dogs for the first time and my head is spinning.All I know is alot of times while hare hunting in cold weather and the rabbits are not moving if you don't have a cold nosed dog your not going to do much running and if you do get a rabbit jumped it won't go far before the dog losses it.You've got to have a dog that will trial them cold tracks to the rabbit and jump it.Then he has to have enough nose to keep it going as it don't take long for the scent to fade.Up here in the evergreen thickets the cold trail left by the rabbit is not long at all but the beagle must get the cold track from point a to point b and get the rabbit jumped.Usually that only takes a couple minutes and the warmer nosed dogs will jump in after the rabbit is jumped.To me that is a cold nosed rabbit dog.I need them and they are worth their weight in gold.They get the job done[rabbit in the bag].Take care and god bless.Sincerly,Bruce[haredog]Thibodeau
I just read all those posts in regards to cold nosed dogs for the first time and my head is spinning.All I know is alot of times while hare hunting in cold weather and the rabbits are not moving if you don't have a cold nosed dog your not going to do much running and if you do get a rabbit jumped it won't go far before the dog losses it.You've got to have a dog that will trial them cold tracks to the rabbit and jump it.Then he has to have enough nose to keep it going as it don't take long for the scent to fade.Up here in the evergreen thickets the cold trail left by the rabbit is not long at all but the beagle must get the cold track from point a to point b and get the rabbit jumped.Usually that only takes a couple minutes and the warmer nosed dogs will jump in after the rabbit is jumped.To me that is a cold nosed rabbit dog.I need them and they are worth their weight in gold.They get the job done[rabbit in the bag].Take care and god bless.Sincerly,Bruce[haredog]Thibodeau
Steve: I already answered the questions on conditions. I said I live in upstate NY and hunt in all conditions. The standard is not just for field trialers.
INstead of teling you about when my hounds looked great I will instead tell you about when they failed. That's really what you want to hear anyway and even the worst dog in the world has a good day we can brag about anyway.
On one occassion we went to the Adirondacks for hare. It had rained on top of the snow and then the temps fell below zero. The day we went up the temps never got vary high into the single digits and it was windy. there was a layer of clear ice on top of the snow and it just had a glaze on it. Snow shoes were not needed because of the frozen ice state of the snow. We got a couple of starts but they lost the hare lickety split and couldn't get any scent.
We have a place we hunt rabbit in that is mostly bare crushed shale and some spots of intact bare shale. Under drought conditions one year we took some hounds over and they could not account for their game. They could go for a ways but would fall too far behind and lost their rabbit.
I've seen times when conditions were great but upon the approach of a thunder storm the conditions quickly fell through; and the runs went from fast exciteing chases to slower checky messes.
We have one spot that has a small dead zone in it and whenever the rabbit goes through there it causes the hounds fits.
One time I took a hound out on a cool summer day when conditions looked great. It was damp and cool and breezy and just perfect but the hound couldn't keep a run going for more then a few yards even though he had run successfully in that same spot many times before and after that day.
Ever see a day where it was cold and frosty and conditions looked terrible but the hounds looked great? Or a day when due to drought conditions the foliage was all dead and brown and you just knew the hounds were gonna have a tough time and only to see them fly on the high scent. That's because temp and moisture are not all there is to scenting conditions. They certainly are contributeing factors but not all there is to the equation. Just like when a thunderhead moves in and for no apparent reason the scenting goes bad. IN short you can't tell scenting conditions by temp alone. Now I already told you where we live and that we run year round which means that we run in temps from below zero to near 100 degrees. But that wasn't good enough an answer for you. You had nothing to grab hold of to try and tear apart. You ask for specific temperatures but that is not the only contributeing factor for scenting conditions as any hunter knows. You should have asked if there were times when other hounds were not able to get scent and my hounds could, that is the true proof of a hounds scenting abilities, if he is down with hounds with proven scenting ability.
I've said time after time that when we speak of faults we are not speaking of anyones hounds but mearly the fault. For some reason you guys always want to bring your hounds into it and mine as well. I could sit here and type for a week off the top of my head and tell nothing but stories of great hound performances that my own hounds had posted. SO WHAT!!! You didn't see them and for all you know I could be inflateing the whole thing so what's the point. You all don't even beleive a hound can have a powerful nose and an honest mouth at the same time so why would you beleive me if I told you about a fantastic run one of my hounds posted especially when you are not interested in an honest discussion of hound qualities but only in proveing that you have the best hounds? That's why I don't tell about my own hounds because this sin't about my hounds it's about hound qualities. Nor do I even name other hounds except on a rare occassion if I tell about them.
INstead of teling you about when my hounds looked great I will instead tell you about when they failed. That's really what you want to hear anyway and even the worst dog in the world has a good day we can brag about anyway.
On one occassion we went to the Adirondacks for hare. It had rained on top of the snow and then the temps fell below zero. The day we went up the temps never got vary high into the single digits and it was windy. there was a layer of clear ice on top of the snow and it just had a glaze on it. Snow shoes were not needed because of the frozen ice state of the snow. We got a couple of starts but they lost the hare lickety split and couldn't get any scent.
We have a place we hunt rabbit in that is mostly bare crushed shale and some spots of intact bare shale. Under drought conditions one year we took some hounds over and they could not account for their game. They could go for a ways but would fall too far behind and lost their rabbit.
I've seen times when conditions were great but upon the approach of a thunder storm the conditions quickly fell through; and the runs went from fast exciteing chases to slower checky messes.
We have one spot that has a small dead zone in it and whenever the rabbit goes through there it causes the hounds fits.
One time I took a hound out on a cool summer day when conditions looked great. It was damp and cool and breezy and just perfect but the hound couldn't keep a run going for more then a few yards even though he had run successfully in that same spot many times before and after that day.
Ever see a day where it was cold and frosty and conditions looked terrible but the hounds looked great? Or a day when due to drought conditions the foliage was all dead and brown and you just knew the hounds were gonna have a tough time and only to see them fly on the high scent. That's because temp and moisture are not all there is to scenting conditions. They certainly are contributeing factors but not all there is to the equation. Just like when a thunderhead moves in and for no apparent reason the scenting goes bad. IN short you can't tell scenting conditions by temp alone. Now I already told you where we live and that we run year round which means that we run in temps from below zero to near 100 degrees. But that wasn't good enough an answer for you. You had nothing to grab hold of to try and tear apart. You ask for specific temperatures but that is not the only contributeing factor for scenting conditions as any hunter knows. You should have asked if there were times when other hounds were not able to get scent and my hounds could, that is the true proof of a hounds scenting abilities, if he is down with hounds with proven scenting ability.
I've said time after time that when we speak of faults we are not speaking of anyones hounds but mearly the fault. For some reason you guys always want to bring your hounds into it and mine as well. I could sit here and type for a week off the top of my head and tell nothing but stories of great hound performances that my own hounds had posted. SO WHAT!!! You didn't see them and for all you know I could be inflateing the whole thing so what's the point. You all don't even beleive a hound can have a powerful nose and an honest mouth at the same time so why would you beleive me if I told you about a fantastic run one of my hounds posted especially when you are not interested in an honest discussion of hound qualities but only in proveing that you have the best hounds? That's why I don't tell about my own hounds because this sin't about my hounds it's about hound qualities. Nor do I even name other hounds except on a rare occassion if I tell about them.
New York Hillbilly. Hounds speak to us in many ways other then just their voice. They are telling you just what you want to know if you know their language. It's not hard to learn with a bit of observation.
I lost a long post the other night too it is frustraiting. Too bad about your post it would surely have been better then this one.
LMAO
I like that one Bev.
I lost a long post the other night too it is frustraiting. Too bad about your post it would surely have been better then this one.
LMAOI like that one Bev.
Bob: Shooting the rabbits to give them desire won't help. They are born with it or they are not. They actually develop it more by running and catching their own game then by us shooting the game in front of them.
I'm gonna try to do this as nice as I can. The desire thing is coverd in the standard. It's old stuff.
Remeber when I quoted the purpose of the hunting hound for you "The beagle is a trailing hound whose purpose is to find game, to pursue it in an energetic and decisive manner, and to show a determination to account for it." Look up the word pursue before you make a statement like "I am talking about the desire to catch the rabbit. I understand that is not a requirement of a rabbit dog"
I'm gonna try to do this as nice as I can. The desire thing is coverd in the standard. It's old stuff.
Remeber when I quoted the purpose of the hunting hound for you "The beagle is a trailing hound whose purpose is to find game, to pursue it in an energetic and decisive manner, and to show a determination to account for it." Look up the word pursue before you make a statement like "I am talking about the desire to catch the rabbit. I understand that is not a requirement of a rabbit dog"
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New York Hillbilly
- Posts: 687
- Joined: Thu Nov 21, 2002 11:54 pm
- Location: Soldotna, Alaska
Ok Joe it's time to see where the bear $hit$ in the buck wheat. I have just had my schedule changed at the hospital and I will know what it is tomorrow. How about you and me and a couple of buddies get together and run some rabbits/hares. I will bring my best and you bring yours. We can do this on your ground or mine because it makes no difference to me. We can run cottontails or hares it will be your choice. I want so bad to see the hounds of yours in action and am hoping they can teach mine a thing or two. We can then post the results of our get together. Warning about my hounds.....will they bark out of turn....probably....will they take a deer......maybe..have not in three years but until they tell me they promise not to I will not promise you......will they try to run the hare and your hounds into a heart attack....I guarantee it......can they do it....we'll see! I will let you know my schedule and you can pick the time and place.
I am an honest man so if your hounds smoke mine I will tell everyone.....but if my hounds smoke yours I will do the same!
Peace,
NYH
I am an honest man so if your hounds smoke mine I will tell everyone.....but if my hounds smoke yours I will do the same!
Peace,
NYH
When my life on earth is ended....this is all I'm gonna say...Lord I've been a hard working pilgrim on the way!