EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

I would guess this is more for the guys that get to do both.

Do your dogs readily go from one to the other, or do you have to work/train them to make the switch? I doubt I'll ever get to hunt bear, but it is just one of those things my confused mind ponders.  ;)

In my experience they'll do both if they're so inclined. Been hunting with some boys from TN that use their hounds...mostly Plotts, as both hog and bear dogs. BUT,....very seldom do you find a dog that will do both and be great at it. Most dogs eventually gravitate to the critter that they prefer to run. It takes a hell of a pack of dogs to tree a bear in the SE where I live,....reason being that a bear that climbs a tree here is dead.....period. Most just run.....and run and it takes some real bear dogs to put it up a tree. We have for the most part given up on having dogs that will do both, we now concentrate on hog dogs and it seems that our dog are getting better all the time at being single-purpose dogs. We now have an entire pack of dogs that will make life very hard on a hog as opposed to having only one or two that will. Hope this helps you....just my thoughts on your question.

I had an oldtimer tell me that when he was a kid, he used to get off of school and get his dads yella dogs to got and hunt. He said, "We picked up a shotgun and they new we were going squirrel huntin, we got on a horse and they knew we were hog hunting or working cattle, and picked up a lantern and they were ready to go coon huntin". He said "these YBMC will do anything and thats how they all use to be that they had".

 When I lived in California our hounds ran almost anything we put them on, Bears, Cats, Coon,and Hogs. We hunted them all on a regular basis, but the terrain for all we hunted was different and the dogs knew what we were after.

I don't see it being done. Not saying a dog won't hunt either,but knowing what time it is when your ready to go. Seems far fetched with out alot of trashing....

Usually when my dog run somethin other then hogs. We call it trashing lol  They get shock and boot treatment.   No I do have a buddy that can drop his cat on anykind of track and witin an hour you will know what kind of animal left the track   

when I was a kid my dogs and I hunted anything wild that we could catch. I more or less knew what the dogs were running by how fast they were running and barking. Also knew by the tone of their bark what they had treed. We hunted most every day so knew my dogs well.

i live in alabama and of course we have no bear but we have some guys from tennnesse that come down and hunt with us alot and the man i hunt with sent his dogs to tennessee and they said they had a bear bayed for a long time and could never get a shot and these dogs are not gonna thrash on anything, so i guess if they have never seen a bear and you put them where a bear has been they will run it, and them dogs would get on other bear and go a long ways ,when the bear treed they would come back, but it does take a dog with alot of bottom to tree a bear, some bear will run for over 24 hrs until it decides to tree it takes dogs with alot of bottom and stamina to have a good bear season.

man yall need to hush about those long winded races....i love them and believe you can really test a hounds heart....far as the dual purpose dogs i never owned one but have hunted with a man who has raised plotts his entire life and he uses the same dogs for coon and hog he told me the key to it is finding that one dog that has that IT factor and working the heck out of it

theres a guy down in fl. i met that has bear/hog dogs and he had his pack wrecked pretty good last bear season but i know for a fact that one of those dogs is a jam up hog dog he can strike like no other and has the bottom to finish the deal. also he is the man in the bear hunting world. hes from bunnel fl. i belive. he has hog and bear hunted his whole life and i have never heard anything negative about him or his dogs

i have sum hounds i use on both hogs and bear and they do really good on both.as far as them knowing wat im after they dont.they just run one or the other there not trashy at all but there gonna run the one thay smell first.as far as using your cur dogs for both i think ur wasteing your time.i havent saw n e curs that had the heart,guts, or bottom to stay on a bear for hours and tree him.i have seen sum kemmer curs do a pretty good job but there bred a little differnt than most curs.all u cur dog guys dont get mad just my opinion.but i have seen dogs run an fight a bear for up to 8 to 10 hours and tree him and not ever tree him,just like hogs u dont bay every one u strike.

Know a few guys around here that use their hounds on bear and hog and do real good...  Brad McNaltin(spelling?) is the man ol' geronimo is talkin' about... fine hounds...

My experiences with bear and my cur dogs... well, my dogs will run the chit outta one(a big boar bear will make even the fastest bo-hog look like he's stuck in molasses... THEY ARE SCREAMING FAST)... but my dogs are bred to hit it or quit it... lacking the bottom of a 3 day hound, I've yet to get lucky enuff to catch one in a situation to make him tree... it bound to happen sooner or later if I keep dumpin' dogs to 'em though  ;)  ;D

I'd like to hear of any straight up cur dog guys on here with bear experience.

I remember Michael (Txhoghunter) was gonna try his curs on bear a while back... anyone know if he ever did it?

noah thats wat i meant most curs r not bred to run for hours ,but im sure there r sum that will do it out there but few and far between.

Yeah, I'm still tryin' to figure out the bear thing... but from what I've seen, you damn sure need a dog with some stick!

That Brad guy down here started out with 20 some bear dogs at the beginnin' of this season and was down to 3 last I talked to him... from what I've seen, a bad bear dog makes a hell of a hog dog...

yea its just like hog dogs to rough or not enough.but a to rough of a bear dog dont last long.sent a pit catch dog in to a bear bayed on the ground that would not climb bad mistake.

I would figure some hound in the mix would be the ticket on bear. Jesse Paul has some of the most long winded dogs around and he'll tell you quick, it takes some hound to put that much bottom in 'em.

But to me if you want your dogs to run a bear, it aint trashing. And as many guys around here that mention skunk in their signatures tattles about trashin!! :D

Yeah... we had our CD break off the box chain once and had the same result...

Would like to get more into the bear huntin' in the next life... heard some good stories about it... some of the locals around here climb the tree with a stick to "knock one out" so they can run it some more....  :o :o....  I'd call bullchit, but with these dudes it ain't no joke...

As a side note... any time I hear a man say "just like hog dogs, too rough or not enough"... the understanding of that concept means alot....

You officially have my seal of approval as a dog man!   lol   ;D

Put some pics up of your dogs and bear, I'd like to see them!

Cmon Bobby, I love my skunkdogs, they think gettin on hogs is trashin ;D

My whole front porch still smells like skunk from last wknds hunt  rolleyes ;D 

noah i like the same thing n a bear dog as i do a hog dog.my ideal dog is a dog that can strike and catch his on game all by himself if it needs help get anew dog.not saying i hunt one dog but they got to b abel toget it done by themselves if they have to.i like a dog that will get rough enough to bite a hog or bear to make him stop an bay,but then he needs to back up and bay.if it trys to break grab him again and set him back up.you can have a rougher dog on a bear because if it gets to rough on him he can go up a tree.theres no place for a hog to go but run.thats why so many hogs r bad to run,i dont want to get to a bay an see 7 dogs hanging off a hog,i like to see dogs working like there bred to.berd dogs can b rough but alot of the ones i have seen that r real rough,r bad to fight under the tree which will end up getting a dog fight going and dogs killed,one reason i dont like curs on a bear.but noah as u no its hard to find a dog that does wat u want.

The bear dog guys I've been around have told me a good bear dog is usually too rough to be a hog dog...

I had the displeasure to see a set of good bear dogs fall off onto a boar hog we were runnin' on the same property yrs ago...

One after another, I saw some fine hound dogs come draggin' out of the woods after tanglin' with that ol' boar.... some of the worst cut up dogs I ever seen.... Flat out got butchered....

them hounds r sure willing to please to run something for hours and then try to catch it.but they do it because there bred to do it an its wat they love,if they dont love it theywant never b no good.hog or bear can wreck a dog bad.my best bear dog got bit in the hip and crushed it but he goes on three legs and is still bear crazy.

What size property does a man need to really get after a bear anyways?  I've run bear across a few thousand acres in less than a couple minutes... so I'm thinkin' quite a bit of property to keep it "legal"...

noah kinda like the ole saying idont want to own everything just eveything that joins me.i really cant say because i have run them 300 yards and i have run them for miles before they tree,and i have run sum i never get to see

Ever seen a dog that will work cattle and hogs both?  How about work hogs and blood trail a deer?  They know what they're supposed to be doing by watching what's going on around them.

mtn curs stick for hrs and will put some teeth on dangerous game.

reuben.have u ever saw a mnt cur run a bear for 8 to 10 hours and then tree it for 2 to 3 hours before u could get to them.if u no where sum r that will do this i would b intrested to know wat line there off of.i know the kemmer line has alot of staying power.most curs want stay very long on a race.and i dont need no one to get on hear and tell me how there curs will pull hair and make them climb,ben there dun that.seen them curs get there ass ate up and sent back to the truck.most dont have the guts or nuts to stay all day on a bear.i no all the ybm guys r gonna get there feelings hurt but call them like i see em.and dont say i havent been with no good ones because i have been with sum hog and cattle dogs that wer good at there job.for the most part there just not bred to do wat a hound will do.

I would guess then that since hounds are the dog of choice for bear, and bear race is in full stereo?

Supposibly bear and hogs have close to the same scent and thats why the dogs could hunt both bear and hogs, I have seen it done in new mexico by my father in law and his buddies

Big Dog are you running bears in southeast Oklahoma..

bear and coon are suppose to be close in scent too. My Nimmer dog bit a bear in the face on his first bear hunt and got away with on the second he bit the bear on the face and got swatted across the back, I thought he broke his back but he didnt and know he has learned to apply just enough pressure to put the bear in the tree.

i've owned a dog that would tree squirrles by day an coons by night an she was by no means trash she was one hellva meat dog that wouldn't mess with a deer opossum ect. she was a tree dog deluxe



but thats also not a bear or hog but i think it can will an has been done many of times somewhere along the line 


(before i die i will hunt a bear  behind a pack of hounds an a mountain lion) lol

YES,....as it should be I might add!
I've hunted bear and hog with some boys from TN for about 35 yrs., during that time we've run many a bear and treed a few. I will say this, it takes a tough, hard and fast dog to tree a bear in TN. They have to run to catch, not just to be running. They have to make life so hard for a bear on the ground that he has no choice but to take bark. I've have cur dogs now that I use solely for hogs, I've left the bear for the other guys. I don't want a dog that will run a critter for 5 or 6 hours.....no good can come from that seems to me. My cur dogs will run a hog for a long way if they can stay in close to it.....if it gets too far out in front....they quit and come back to where they started the race or find me in the process. This is exactly what I want them to do.....therefore, I don't spend hours out looking for them and we kill a lot of hogs that way....which is also what I like.

I have a buddy in NM that is a outfitter. He does guided hunts for bear & lion he uses the same pack of hounds. He says the best bear dog he has ever had was a airdale gyp she got killed by a bear when she was 9. He still crosses in a little airdale in to his hounds plus he runs a few airdales still. The last bear hunt I went on the dogs bayed up a big nasty boar hog. Hogs are getting pretty bad in the mountains of sw NM.

im kinda suprised tnhillilly hasnt chimed in...

ive heard of takin coon hounds to bear hunt

I don't know anything about bear hunting but I got a pack of mtn cur pups in 1989 that ran a hog for 5 hrs on the first hunt I took them on in some real thick brush/woods and they were around 10 months old. They were omcba registered. I had to leave them so don't know how long they ran than hog after that. I started my old line off of that and tried to breed silent to semi silent dogs.

Most BMC and Catahoua curs were bred for cow work but the mtn cur was bred for hunting. The problem with some of the mtn curs of today is that some are bred small like fiest dogs and there is so much variation in them. I don't know but have heard of some that are used for bear and mtn lion. More and more are getting bred for hog hunting which is a good thing.

reuben,your right most of the mnt curs r bred to tree,they used to hunt and have more bottom than they do now.i really like the kemmer line but there to open on hogs.but i would luv to have a couple of good mnt curs for hogs.there bred more like hound than a cur.ur asking the bmc and other curs to do something there not bred 4.

Treed and shot out bears on 2 seperate occasions back home in Florida. Tore up our camps two many times. Game commision said they were going to do something about it but never did. Took care of problem ourselves. Two curs put one up and three put up the other. These were short races. We new where the bears were layin up. Ain't nuthin too rough for a couple of good Florida curs. ;)

Me too hitemhard....I called him yesterday but didn't get him...think I'll try him again, this is his deal here for sure.

There is a book Big Thicket Legacy it was published about 1977. The entire book is interviews with old timers that settled in the Big Thicket of east Texas in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Some of the language wouldn't be politically correct today but it is in their own words. Several of them talk about using their cur dogs  for hogs , cattle, bear and panthers. These people didn't just go hunting 3 or 4 times a month. They used their dogs every day. I think that is the key. Knowing your dogs and them knowing you. JMO

Hmm. The bear and cat was all but hunted out of that country by the mid 1900s. Says a lot to me about those East Texas cur dogs and the men that bred and hunted them. ;)

That is a very good read. And from all accounts, they had good dogs, Then again, I doubt they fed trash. If it didnt earn it's keep it didnt stay long. And from the stories, the cats and bears were pretty thick there.

   yeah , yeah ,but the bears and hogs we have now are  "  different  "   ;) ;)

the bears an hogs r the same but the way people r breeding these hot nosed,no bottom,no range cur dogs is the difference.i know sum r still breeding good lines and trying to improving them,but most r just breeding junk.

Im still here, took the wife to gatlinburg for the weekend, and was pretty much banned from the internet all weekend. ;D
       I have run hogs and bear both with my "hounds" for as long as i can remember.   One thing we need to keep in mind is bear hunting is done in totaly different fashion, than hog hunting.
    When bear huntin, we keep our dogs on lead until we find a track, by sight, or dogs striking, or riggin from truck.  Then turn one dog loose at a time, oldest and more experienced 1st. and so on.  til the dogs get the bear jumped. and then try to get into position to keep fresh dogs packed to the race to keep pressure on the bear to bay up or tree.
     As far as using cur dogs for bear, yes, it can be done, because some

because some bears wont run, and with the curs being silent you have the element of suprise, and if put enough pressure will put him up a tree. But most curs were not bred to tree. but like i said it can be done.  but i wouldnt put any amount of time and effort into it, unless i just was flat over run with bear.
      It is 10 timed harder to train a bear dog than a hog dog. I have never owned what i would consider a top notch bear dog, several good dogs but not top notch. I would NEVER run a jam up bear dog on hogs, they are just too hard to come by.
    It takes LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF land up here to run bears, like the hogs they get smart and we have runners too. Aka  stove pipe bears, thin bodies and looong legs, there are the ones that will run for days at time.
    To answer the question,  i run my hounds on both with great results. It has been my experience that if you start them on hogs and then put them on bear, the tend to do a little better, as far as getting cut up.

im gonna find me a bear hunt in TN when i get the extra cash, Tom your invited lol

Posting from my phone, wont let me post but so many lines is why so many.
   Curs were bred for cow and hogs, plotts were bred for bear, cat, coons, and hogs.   And thats how i hunt mine, I hunt them for what they were bred for. Kinda like using pit bulls as bay dogs, they were bred to catch.
   And a question i get asked alot is, how about using pits on bear?  Thats a number 1 no no.  dont work,  unless you got a couple that you dont want anymore, they will get killed. Bear are like coons, and can turn around inside their own hide.  and pits just aint made for that type of hunting.
         Hope this helps,

You just come on up, wont cost you nothin but liscense, gas and maybe a place to stay. I hope to have some vac. left come bear season ;D

i think im coming up to tennesse the first hunt in october, and if we had bear in alabama i would quit hog hunting, that bear hunting is the way to go, when i come up there im gonna bring a couple currs to pack in when he crosses a road just to see what they will do on a bear,

becareful bo if they are ruff i aint heard nothing but horror storys bout ruff dogs on bears they need to have r.e.s.p.e.c.t.....

Not me, if we had the hogs and could run them year round on private land, i would sell EVERY  bear dog i had.  Waaaay too much politics, bull #2, fussin, whining and crying.

 Hog huntin; i can take one or two buddies and couple dogs and do my own thing.

Bear hunting; you have to hunt with EVERYBODY and ALL there dogs.

There aint no honey holes, cause your honey hole is 100 other peoples honey hole too.

I gots a spot down here you'd have a blast in....  ;D  .... Legal to run the handful of hogs there but you can throw a stick and hit a bear!!!

Tom i found a buddy of a buddy who has private land with some small black bears, hes bout 15 miles from Helen,GA

no hunters on this land at all and he says theres hogs and bears everywhere

I may just have to take you up on that noah, i got some kin not too far from you, and my wife absolutly loves fla. She would move down there if i would, just too crowded for me.


Im all ears  ;D

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Im all ears  ;D
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 me too , tom holler if you need some help , i'll bring you a horse !

Im all ears  ;D
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 me too , tom holler if you need some help , i'll bring you a horse !
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Bring me some good dogs too, lol

jdt  give me a holler, your too hard to get ahold of ;D

Amen to that. 

I've always thought treeing came natural to any dog.  I've never owned a cur that would'nt tree.

Waylon

I'm with Tom on the bear hunting in TN.....waaaaay too much BS, too much riding around, too much talking on the radio, too much of the political crap and the little 'clicks' that develop and not near enough bear killin' for me. I'm not new to this bear vs hog thing boys, it's been going on forever and probably will be when I've turned in my dog lead. TN bear are a hard hunted, smart, long winded lot and don't tree just 'cause the wind changed directions. I have just the same as given it up....I'd much rather hunt hogs, not to say I wouldn't hunt bear again if given the chance to go with some jam up, bear treeing, mouth foaming, slobber slingin' bear dogs, but I ain't holding my breath 'til it happens.

There is a difference between a dog that will bark at something it can see in a tree, and a dog that that will trail and locate, and bark treed on something that it can not see.  By scent only.

 I have seen several "tree dogs" that wouldnt tree a lick.  Ive seen them watch game go up a tree, and not tree.

I dont believe every dog is a natural tree dog, i do believe that most dogs can be "trained" to tree.

we had a red tick that would sit and watch coons, never heard him bark unless someone was in the yard