EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

excluding a blood hound. i've read a lot and im really interested in what you guys think!

would love to hear some different opinions!! ;D :o

I would say a Basset hound as far as "Best" nose besides a bloodhound but as far as hunting hogs I would have to go with ridgeback, Foxhound or of course a Plott will take care of the job. Just my .02

micheal spiehler told me that he (and this was just his opinion) that he thinks a plott hound doesn't have as much hound vs like a bluetick, walker, etc..

he said that is probably why a plott tends to be more closed mouth than other hounds..

again...this is just his opinion and what he personally thinks....just want to clear that up. i don't want any rumors getting started.

we were talking about my buddies plotts, and that all his plotts are completely silent. I've personally never seen some plotts that quiet. He's got some good blood in his pack.

my bluetick has got the biggest mouth ever... ;D she was completely wide open when i got her. as soon as she hit the ground, she would start bawlin' then she would bump here and there sometimes worse than others. she gets super excited when she has been on the chain for a while. after she hunts for a bit, she settles down (closed mouth) a good bit while she hunts. she does real well with my closed mouth dogs. at first it seemed to be messing up my other dogs hunting. a lot of false alarms you might say. :P after a couple of hunts we all (me and the dogs) learned to distingush between her real strikes and (im happy to be hunting bawls.)

recently, she has been keeping her mouth shut pretty good. however, she is still wide open on track. as soon as she strikes, believe me when i tell you, your definetly gonna know it. :o ;D

I can't complain though, her voice is the reason why i bought her. Besides, she has a perfect record. we haven't lost a pig since we got her. might take her a while to work it out, but in the end, she finds the pig.

this makes me wonder....just how good is her nose compared to other hounds. ive read a lot, but would like to her your opinions as well.

In all hound breeds, there are individuals that excell in tracking.  From there, it would be a struggle.

   Hello stoked, I been hunting hounds for about 28 yrs and I can tell you as for nose on a hound I have hunted with every flavor of hound and they very in every breed, you may hunt with a walker that has a better nose than your buddy's bluetick, then the next night you may hunt with a redbone that has a better nose than them both, I mostly hunted walkers and some had a very good nose and some didn't it vary's from dog to dog and breeding, one breed doesn't have a better nose than the other it just depends on the dog and alot of times the dog just need's to learn to use what he has. I have hunted with a dog one time and dogs out strike him and then the next few times he'll do the strikeing, cold trailing and do more nose work than the others just my opinion but I beleave it all depends on the dog, not the breed.

Hog Stalker your 110% correct, all dogs can smell and use nose but it to what level that they have been taught or have developed on their own on how to use it.

Most all will be different to a level.

Food for thought (I am no expert by the way)....maybe it isn't about the nose, but about the desire to run older tracks... Perhaps it is something in the brain that triggers a certain response...

Do you feel that all dogs with full length tails hunt harder than bob-tailed dogs?

This is the same style question.  Of 25 people polled, you'll hear 25 different "expert" opinions.  It is all subject to interpretation.

As far as noses on hounds, I raise big game blueticks.  I do so because I feel they give me an edge.  That being said, I've hunted around plenty of dogs of all breeds that made their owners want to feed them the next morning.  Different strokes for different folks.

JMO!!!!!!!

I agree that it depends more on the dog than the breed.  Shoot, the coldest nose on my place belongs to a dog I'm pretty sure is a border collie or border collie crossed with something. 

I think all dogs can smell about the same just some have cold trailing instincts and some don't.  You put a two dogs down on a cold track and one is a cold trailing hound the other is a Cur that does not cold trail.  Both dogs can smell the track but only one (the hound) has the instinct to take the cold trail.  Just my opinion.  We think because they don't work the scent that they cannot smell it but thats not necessarily true.

Waylon

(Beagles) lol  ;)

Like you I have been hunting hounds for 30 years, and agree with most of what you say. I believe the Bluetick and the Black and Tans as a norm have a much better nose than the others.

well guys, i sure thank you for your info, it really helps to get opinions from people who have been dealing with certain breeds for a long period of time.

very interesting information!

again, thanks...

The with the best nose, the one that stops the runners all the time or the bulldog that never misses "is always the one back at the house."


I knew I should have brought   old  " insert name here".  We would have had that hog caught in a second if old "insert name here" was here. O0

Dachshunds............AKA wiener dogs!!! 8)

Plotts did indeed originate from different stock than the other American hounds. In theory, they don't have any English Foxhound in them, they trace straight back to German hunting hounds. That probably isn't true anymore, I'm sure people mixed in plenty of other hounds before the registries came along, but that is supposedly why they are a different sort of hound than Blueticks, Black and Tans, etc.

But I don't think an open mouthed dog has any better nose than a closed mouth dog. They just have an open mouth. It's a behavior, not a symptom.

Is it really a better nose, or a stronger hunting drive and the smarts to figure it all out?

Plotts originated from brindle cur dogs out of Arkansas bred to Irish fox hounds like the July and Sugarloaf. Or, at least according to the Plott family they did.

Generally speaking, all dogs have about the same capacity for smelling. It all comes down to the hard wiring that determines what they do with it.

The percentage of folks who misinterpret what their dog is doing is so close to 100% . . I wouldn't bother calling it 99.9%. Forget the myths and legends. Pay attention and you'll see something new everytime out.

"Plotts originated from brindle cur dogs out of Arkansas bred to Irish fox hounds like the July and Sugarloaf. Or, at least according to the Plott family they did."



Plott history

http://www.plottdogs.com/asp/modules/userpages/showme2.asp?subid=174

Some more good reads on plotts

http://www.plottdogs.com/asp/modules/userpages/showme2.asp?subid=170

http://http://www.akc.org/breeds/plott/history.cfm

Found this on plott hounds, says the plotts brought over Hanoverian hounds.

Now you've done it  :o :o...Barlow is a plott guy, so he knows all the glamor stories...

I based my comment solely on what I've read. But I know all about glamorizing a breed's history, I'm battling it as we speak with the Lacys. According to the people who want to making money off them as the State Dog, they were bred and created entirely in Texas from a coyote, scent hound and greyhound. According to the Lacy family and the granddaughter who actually grew up working Lacys, the brothers brought the original dogs from Kentucky and they were a wolf-hound cross. And they certainly didn't call any of the red ones Blue Lacys. Sigh...  rolleyes

I've read all the fairy tales.

Hanover Sweisshunds weren't even developed til 50 years after the Plott family's ancestor supposedly came over. Vaughn, John and Little George Plott all said the same thing . . . their family had no dogs prior to 1838 when a cousin came back from Arkansas with brindle cur dogs. Vaughn's and John's father Mont was a fox hunter and bred them heavily to July running hounds. Big George Plott was a breeder of registered Goodman fox hounds. The leopard colored dogs appearing in most of the old Plott family pictures were Goodmans. Herbert Plott (their cousin) said many times that the leopard color phase and the large doses of white on lots of early Plotts came from Goodmans. In the background of one of the most important crosses in Plott history is a dog that Vaughn registered as Trigg Plott. He was a Trigg Hound that Vaughn bought and put papers on. A famous reproducing bitch owned by Vaughn was named Bill's Belle . . . she was a Bluetick x bird dog cross. In the 1930's Vaughn and John bought 7 Airedales from a breeder in Ohio and bred a few of them into their dogs. I have photos of registered Plotts that have the Airedale whiskers. In 1937 Vaugh went along on a Mule deer hunt in New Mexico with baseball legend Branch Rickey. He brought back a Lacy pup.

They were mountain people who raised sheep and hunted for survival. They would have bred to a wiener dog if he would fight a bear.

Having said that . . . I've hunted with Plotts that were hot nosed, silent trailers and I've hunted with Plotts that were as slow as Bloodhounds. If you consider all the different hunters and how differently they use dogs . . . it is impossible to make a blanket statement about the characteristics of any breed.