EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

How do my pups look? half blue tick/ half boxer at 6 months old. Been working them for 5 weeks.
swish
http://s1109.photobucket.com/albums/h425/jassenswisher1974/?action=view&current=baconandprincess.mp4

well since you asked you are training your dogs into being too rough and breaking a bay. That hog is too much a sissy and the pen is too small. I know I am being harsh, but thats the truth as I see it.
Working pups in a pen too much is WAY BAD, IMO.

however the pups look like they really like to work and really enjoying it, so I say your pups are doing good for what you have done with them, but if I really wanted to work my dogs into being good for long term and not just for the easy hogs before they become educated then I would start trying to educate my dogs to the next level. Back them off and teach them respect the hog, bigger tougher, meaner hog, in a very large pen a couple times then start dragging trails and let them find a hog, get away from pen training all together and get them out of the habit you will show them were the hog is and that you will be with them cheering them on.

Your right brother. That unfortunately is the meanest hog I have acces too. Not too many people selling mean boar in ohio. We absolutely need to make the pen bigger. We borrow that pen from my buddies cousin. Whats the Ideal pen dimensions? I am desperately trying to find a mean hog it has been tough. I am building a trap to catch one just need a goos idea on the door.
thanx
swish

not bad at all i think, and we can always find a mean boar somewhere just aint lookin in the right place.

these gonna be RCDs right? they got the team work down for it, maybe just some field time to work with their noses should do the job

Bacon is absolutely a running catch. Princess wont catch the pig till bacon does, she just bays. Once we get a meaner pig Bacon wont be so catchy, that pig will clean their clock. But considering that 3 months ago we didnt have anything and no one to help we've made progress. Do we have the perfect set up... no. We really just have this forum and LSHD forum to help us. we need not just negative critism but positive as well. There isnt a lot of hog dog people here and the ones that do hunt dogs guard what they are doing like the gold in fort knox and they wont help or take any help. I want help, and where I am now wont be the same place I am at next year. The few guys around here with dogs seemed to went to florida or georgia and bought trash dogs for a couple grand and hate what they ended up with. TNhillbilly told me that no one gets rid of a good dog unless under harsh circumstances. So we want to get pups and take the time ourselves to train them ourselves so we just don't buy a dog, we can train our own.
swish

i like bacon a strike vest on that thing and you will be happy O0

your workin with what you got nothin wrong with that, ill help out where i can if you need it. ive made a pen, made traps, trained pups. reason why they guard it is cause they dont just show off their stuff cause they dont know you, build those pups up and show em how its done and i bet they will show you more

My buddy is going to a stock sale in Gallipolis, OHio wed, we hope to find a gamey pig there this week. Going to try to finish our trap next weekend. Anytime you wanna come down your more than welcome. We'll hunt, work the dogs, and have a blast. Our catch dog brownie will be back in service the 4th of july. So maybe after then.
swish

i know im down for a august trip ;D

im goin back to sc for 3 weeks in july to see family so all my PTO days are set for it right now lol

if you need any info on your trap just ask

I would not go through the trouble of building a bigger pen, because I would only want to use the pen 3-4 more times "training" at all. that does make sense to build it for that. You can get a 80 lb pig with attitide to do the same thing your pig is just teach them if they bite me I will move so we can play more. The goal is to teach them to back up and leave the hog ALONE when it stands still, but to bay it, touch, nipping and al that teaches hogs to run and move to get away from the harrasment.

You are in Ohio, there should still be some hog farms there. You can "rent" a hog pen and bad attitude hog for 10-15 minutes at a time I would think, from a farmer. Yes one of my very best training hogs was a 400lb domestic from sale barn I paid like $50 for.

Good Luck with your pups there sure are intrested and like the pig you got.

JMO

Uglydog you do have a point but i think bacon is gonna be a rcd. on a second note would you recommend a mock hunt then? and i know what you mean on domestic trainers

this was our trainer for our pups, she was meaner than a hornet in a box of shake and bake
(http://a6.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc4/72515_159174034122437_100000895242855_291089_1571856_n.jpg)

Well if he is going to be a running catch dog I would consider him not a very good one, too much barking because of the hound, and that bite and bark and bite will give you guys in OHIO runnings hogs before you ever get alot of hunting time. Why not just bay them? then shoot or catch whats the point of chasing them? If you are a hound guy that likes to liten to dogs in a chase I guess it would be good. Our goal here is to get em bayed, get em caught and then go get another or go home. WE don't like to make a long chase.

IF That was my own personal dog, I would not put a vest, on him I wan't him to earn to respect a hog, bay when it needs baying, if its standing still Bay it, if it runs try to stop it. when it stops DON"T harrass it until it runs again bay it till the handler gets there to catch or shoot it. Thats what hunting is to me.

Yes a bad hog to teach them pups to respect and quit harrassing it. The pups look good but are harrassing the hog and then mock hunts to get them to trailing finding and baying- NO Biting- until its time to catch it, catching means COMMITTED, latched on and not turning loose, no regripping, anything in between is a problem dog that causes headaches for me the hunter and passes on bad habits to other dogs.

Yes I do own a dog that will bay and catch solid, but if he played and nipped the hog in between making the committment of catching I would cull him. My other dogs bay, or catch not messing up my or breaking my bays.

Ugly, I hope you have considered that I am not going out in the Ohio woods with just those two pups. I have Two bay dogs and a catch dog. Those are the first pups we have trained and they are 6 months old and been in a baypen 5 weeks. Ohio Feral hogs run and run and run and run. I have never heard from the dog hunters I know here of a pig ever stopping to challenge a dog. Could it happen... sure. Some guys here use 3/4 pointer and 1/4 pit so there dog can run for miles to catch a pig. We have been using dogs for 3 months and a running catch dog will be an effective dog here, why? We are in southern Ohio. We have about 500 hogs in a 50 square mile national forrest with mountains and briars. This aint Texas and short range cur dogs will not work here. These pigs are deep in the brush with thickets and mountains. We dont have massive 20000 acre tracts of flat range with about 100000 hogs. I do hear what your saying, these pups prolly wont work in texas. But the  good thing is at 6 months they absolutely know the smell and taste of a pig and thats all they know. They are half hound which means they will go deeper than a cur. I have hunted here with guys that bought dogs from florida, texas and georgia. Florida dogs dont work here. Georgia dogs dont work here. A deep going Catahoula might. But we need nose and a dog with an unrelenting drive to catch a hog and the grit to stand toe to toe. I do have a question; You keep giving me a criteria for my pups that sounds like a finished bay dog, What do your pups do at six months? Did the first pups you ever trained meet the same criteria that your holding for mine? We need a hound as a strong foundation in our pack and if that means having an open mouth dog.... so what. A caught pig is a caught pig. Let me finish with this, I need help learning hog dogging, I ask for it, I take advice, Please understand I am not where your at, I am taking baby steps. But I dont have  alot of help here. Just this forum and LSHD forum. I dont have ten buddies with bay pens and mean hogs. I have the only bay pen in my county. The farmers here sell 90% of their hogs to 4H and dont want them tore up. So do I lay down and die?

You have some bad misconceptions about the hogs in Texas. Sure, there are places where hogs are plentiful and it doesn't take much of a dog to find them. But there's tons a places where hogs are scarce and run like hell... most of mine are like that nowadays. If you don't have a dog with some nose and bottom, that goes deep... you probably won't find many hogs.

You say you want a rcd, but want dogs to go yonder... what are you gonna do when they catch a bad one a mile or two out? Recipe for disaster.

Bout a month ago TNHillbilly came and hunted here with us (we had a blast) and his catahoula and his black mouth and my mountain cur were baying up about 250 yards out, we started heading that way and it was so thick that it would have taken an hour and a half to CRAWL that yardage however someone started shooting and the dogs were gunshy and broke bay. What I'm trying to say is sometimes here in southern Ohio 250 yard in the bush like a mile of flatland. We had some guys from VA come here with some deep Kemmer curs and they said southern Ohio is one of the toughest spots to hunt hogs in America.

I hear you... that sounds like most of East Texas. Old pine cut overs with brush so thick it's hard to push a dozer through.

But there's also every different type of terrain in this state that you can imagine. ;)

I know you guys do, Someone in this thread kept generalizing hog dog training scenerios in Ohio.....so I was generalizing as well. This has been a good healthy discusion about bringing up pups. I am really enjoying the interaction.
swish

i second swish on the terrain, i did live in the mountain side in sc but its nothin like this, so thick and the hill grades can really slow down a trek through the woods but also in defense i have seen some bad stuff in east texas visitin family

well you asked for an opinion and i gave it to you and tried to answer the questions to the best of my opinion.
If it offended you I appologize.
I still stick to my beleif in my answers and to answer your last questions I train the pups to work like I want them to be thinking when they are grown. I plan ahead and condition them to be the way I want combined with genetics predisposition and then hope for the best, and if they don't do what I want I find the person that they will suit or I cull them if I think they are not good for anybody. A dog that breaks bays by biting a hog that wants to stand still is not going to suit anybody I know. Therefore I do not allow a pup to work that way when its young or older.
Exactly why I don't keep working pups in the pen maybe only a hand full of times until they are old enough to run with the big dogs, depends on the pup and what it is showing me, and when you asked an opinion of your pups in the pen, if they were mine they would be then moving on to the next step and not working them to build confidence at that point but rather continueing education to keep them working towards the next level, rather then holding them back in kindergarten and hurting the oppertunities for them to go to the head of the class in 2nd grade.

I know what you are saying about sometimes it tough to find the best situation to practice and train, but again I wish you the best of luck, and remember where there is a will, there is a way.
 

Ugly,
I want offended in the least, For what ever its worth I think you all in Texas are a great example of what I need to be one day. Unfortunately I don't live in Texas to really have the mentorship we lack here. Today we are going to work "Princess" by herself in the pen today by herself and like you say we want her to be a strong bay dog and no touching the pig just baying. I have a strong will but still working on the way ;). Thanx for all the interaction, I do hear what your saying and am listening. Bay em hard and solid. Thats prolly the best advice.
thanx
swish