EAST TEXAS HOG DOGGERS FORUM

You can secretly know you have the best…you don’t say it because you don’t want to brag…Northstar said something along those lines and I felt the same way at one time…
I once had a once in a lifetime dog in over the 55 years of messing with dogs…I’ve had quite a few that I thought were unbeatable…

Some of my very best looked calm with almost no heartbeat until unleashed in the woods…the others weren’t hyper…I do not like hyper in a dog…

You can say that again for me man.  I hate a hyper dog.  They don’t learn as quick to me.  I like the kind that is lookin in my eyes when I’m talkin to em.


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That’s the same type I like highwater. Another thing I think they lack or don’t have as much of as the calm dog is stamina. I think they burn off or waste too much energy. They usually require twice as much feed. I’ve had some dogs I was really proud of, even now. Do I think they are the greatest…no! I have known for MANY years what style of dog I like and what characteristics they possessed. I have hunted with a bunch of good dogs over the years and a handful that I considered great. I owned one that I thought was great. It’s between him and another male for the spot. It would be nip and tuck between them. I wish that I would’ve been able to measure them against each other. I like to hunt with people that are reputable with reputable dogs. It’s not for bragging rights but for a measuring tool. You can see how your dogs measure up and if they have a hole in their game maybe it’s easier to see. One hunt doesn’t usually answer those type questions but 4 or 5 hunts will give you an idea. My dog that I thought was great, I hunted with many other dogs that were very highly thought of. I was NEVER disappointed in him and ALWAYS pulled his weight. He was the same dog solo as he was in the company of other really good dogs. I hunted him in all types of country and terrain and he was the same dog. I didn’t brag on him because his actions spoke for themselves. Dogs like him are the reason I hog hunt today. They’re almost magical and inventive in the things they do. I loved that dog and he loved me. If I left town for a couple of days for work, he wouldn’t eat. When I would turn off the highway a mile from the house, the wife would say she knew I was close because he would start raising he$$, because otherwise he was as quiet as a church mouse. He would eat that evening and the next morning it was game on. There is a way to speak highly and proud of your animals and even family and remain humble. I think a person should be or they shouldn’t be feeding them. To me greatness is in the eye of the beholder. I know people that hunted with my old dog that didn’t like him as much. He hunted as close or as deep as he needed to to find hogs, they liked short range. He rolled over super fast and would bay another hog as long as there were more or you would let him, they wanted to catch a couple and be done. So some of what I like others don’t.


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Being I’m waiting on my wife to get ready like normal I’d like to get in on this - first of all I know what I like but also like considering others strong points and use it to my advantage in dogs - I agree on the hyperness- don’t want it -  as far as bragging I always heard anything that will eat crap and breed their ma will make a liar out of you so don’t brag to much lol
My best= dogs smarter than me - or natural hog dogs
My best was and is this and all they needed was a ride to the woods - I’m no dog man by no means but love hunting them
She done I’m headed to the river now
Happy 4th y’all b careful


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Lol
I like that Muddy. We are headed out too. Headed to the big puddle the river feeds into. Happy fourth y’all!


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I have had them both ways. The calm ones do tend to make a better dogs but don’t mean a hyper one can’t. As a rule they most of the time don’t. I have had a few bird dogs that where hyper as all get out but where good bird dogs. 


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I have no problem bragging on my dogs, and talkin lots of trash while hunting  ;D Kind of like playing dominoes with my buddies its just part of the fun. As kid rock said it aint bragging mo fo if you can back it up! lol

The opposite of that though, that I have always wondered, why some hunters make excuses for bad dogs and keep feeding them well after they have been given a fair chance to make, when I get a bad dog I dont take it personal I just replace it! Seems like some hunters lye about dogs like it reflects them personally. Some hog hunters can rival high school cheerleaders in regards to drama back stabbing etc

Make-em-squeal I have come to the conclusion that I don’t think they are intentionally lying. I think they keep and feed poor quality because they don’t know the difference between good and bad. Most of those types have never experienced “real” dogs and their potential. They are usually the same ones that you can’t tell anything because they hog hunted one time and learned everything there is to know about it on that first trip. Everyone has different standards and what makes you or me happy might not make the next guy happy. Good is kinda like beauty, it’s all according to the eye of the beholder. These know it all first timers usually have never owned even a house dog much less a working dog. 9 out of 10 times they are the ones you speak of with poor ethics too. They are exactly the ones that kill our sport and shed negative light on it. They don’t care if it gets ruined. They will do something else and ruin it. It’s a macho fad to the biggest percentage of them, not a way of life or a passion, and the history nor the future of it means squat to them.


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well said t-dog. Ive seen it with both strike and catch dogs but it really blows my mind when a CD clearly lets go over and over and they keep it. Thats dangerous imo. Again maybe the reason my buddies and I rag on each other and our dogs in a sporting way is bc we all know this is our hobby, it doesnt define the man I am, thankfully Jesus does that. I only want to feed good dogs but when I get a cull I dont take it personal I replace it lol.

I just gave a decent little help dog to a cow guy who loves her after she didnt turn on for a friend, bc she would not hunt in big loops unless she was wih her mom like most of her line does, she would take a track, honor a bay and bay all day without getting cut but I consider that a help dog so shes baying cattle and doing a good job last i heard... but that is whats hard when there not a bad dog there just not what were breeding for and it took me 2 falls of hunting her to figure it out around 20 mo old.

Yeah my bird dog is like a crackhead built like one too. But he's got the hunt.  I have a question not to jack the thread but do yall have a rule for hunting after a heavy rain. Only seems like my hounds can push a track if it rained the day before and they're really slowly grinding on it. My curs act like its nonexistent.

Sounds like those tracks are cold or got rained on enough to wash them out. Moisture is usually in a dogs favor unless it’s in abundance. Hounds will typically try to grind out what they can smell but a majority of curs I would say, prefer hot tracks so even when they can smell a cold track some, they will ignore it in hopes of finding something hotter. 100% there are some dogs that have colder noses, but over the years I’ve come to believe that want to and determination have nearly as much to do with how cold a track a dog will work. That’s just my opinion.


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T-dog I agree 100% I was just having this conversation with my buddy yesterday and I was telling him that I believe you can force a cur dog down a cold track and that I do it if that's what I have to work with I actually read on here along time ago how to do it and I believe it was BA-IV who was saying that he forced his curs to cold trail but I could be mistaking.Either way I will follow a track as far as I can see it which alot of times isn't very far where I hunt and then I stop I don't talk to my dogs other than sending them down it once or twice if they come back I just sit there sometimes I sit in one spot for a hr quietly and watch the dogs and the Garmin eventually they'll trail it because I am not giving them anything else to work with.Like T-dog said if they have the want to then they'll work it out you just have to give em time.I enjoy forcing them down a track they don't want to try but it takes alot of patience to just sit back open a cold drink and wait.

Yeah you’re right. I use to do it a bunch simply cuz the leases I hunted was thin hogs and we didn’t have much choice. Made some of the best dogs I’ve ever hunted behind like that BUT you can’t train a lot of dogs like that. It’s usually a one dog gig. Put anything else down and a lot of times it breaks em off the track no matter how independent they are. It’s a slow process and I just don’t hardly do it like that anymore simply because I don’t hunt nearly hard enough and when I do, I wanna get a few more dogs some exposure.  There is a bunch of times I’ve wanted to kill everything I own because I find a big Barr track at 1-2 pm in the summer and nothing I own can move it, but that’s my fault. I haven’t trained em to or exposed em enough to do it with any regularity.

Ben.   U raising something now that’ll do it for u.   Lol.  And if they turn out like I think they will.  U can bring u some honey buns and sit on the bike and wait for em. They’ll do the rest. 


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Tdog i second the abundance
After a hard hard rain if you jump him at daylight may have a ruff time running him or even finding him - I had that issue just this am- jumped the hog at daylight and never run bay or anything like it pose to till done got hot and everything dried off

As far as pushing a dog not just cur down a cold track - I thought that what everyone had to do- that’s the only way I knew to hunt - push em til they get it figured out then back out - now obviously not all dogs can go like that but we all trying to feed the best we can and I want to feed dogs that I can push and they push me - good way to make dogs far as I see it - but I don’t know much either lol
I e said on here before I’ve learned more bout dogs from dogs than someone telling me


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Oh and highwater if you got any more of them sit and the truck and wait I’ll head that way lol


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Lol.  Them is expensive to buy man.  I’m a poor man and won’t sell em.  Hehehe. 


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Yea I get that +
I don’t walk as much as I use to …. Lol


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This style takes individuals with PATIENCE, and the reason a lot of hunters can't or won't attempt it, I don't think this is true but believe it is and stand firmly behind this thought and belief all day long every day that it has more to do with a dogs desire to find the game that left the track they are smelling, my ex paw in law whom I got part my foundation of my curs dogs from always told me that that particular family of curs always had way better than average noses especially for cur dogs, I've seen them do some things and work some tracks out that even blew me away In their abilities alone and on the ground with or sent in behind some really good dogs themselves, one instance in particular I was past noon getting to a hunt one day and a pack of high power well known bear plott hounds from a state or two north of my location, had been hunting in there all morning and only Only 1 Hog had been caught all day and it was with a daughter to two of my curs and I was told that this blocks had been ran through and hunted out by the two packs of plotts, I trusted my dogs noses more than my friends observations and within an hr my old gyp, whom I hadn't hunted since the prior May and this being February, had one bayed and would eventually relay and bay another 4 more all within 3-4 hours in a section of swamp across the Rd from my house that my other buddy's bear hounds couldn't line a track out and keep it going for whatever reason, they are some great and very productive dogs, I've seen other instances before this that made me have this theory and saw it with both sides of my cur blood, both sides are built and bred around two outstanding females that I was blessed to own both at the same time, they are two totally different styles of dogs in every aspect, I also firmly believe in and have proven this with my own pack vs their litter mates and contemporaries owned by friends, I take one or two of my younger dogs that are showing all the right things and take them right by themselves at night and either send them in a block I know they'll hit a hog track or put them down on a track, and just let them be, a lot of times I'll fall asleep in the truck, I rarely bring a cd bc I have no intent on catching the hog, and if they put it all together and get one stopped and bayed, depending on the time I'll let them bay and work it a while or cause them to break and catch them off at a crossing and picking them up wanting it bad, a dog sees the world through his nose and when it's lights out they have to use their nose to be their guide, and by doing this I'm able to eliminate a lot of the distractions and deterrents that would normally grab a young dogs attention and focus, it's also been the deciding factor in some getting culled, bc if they can't perform at night at least to an average an above as they would in day light with other seasoned pack mates then they don't stay here, by doing that for the last 3-4 generations I've been able to select and breed for dogs that can put their minds to it and grub out a nasty track if needed to, I've tried and tried to explain this simple method to my friends early all of them say the same thing, "my dogs just don't perform or produce well at night, and those same ones also can't figure out why their dogs can't trail out a track past a certain window of time in which it was laid, the one or two that have listened have seen the benefit within a few hunts, I started doing this out of necessity bc of work and not by choice, I also noticed that my very first pack I ever put together got hunted nearly every night of the week and weekends and they just seem to bay a lot better so I tried baying my dogs now a bunch in a Bay pen bc I fooled with my old dogs every chance I could, didn't seem to help, when I started hunting them at night a few summers ago I noticed they started taking tracks in the day that were way colder than they would normally try and when they started putting game at them end of it I took a hard notice at what I was doing different and finally pen pointed that the night hunting was the key, just the other night my best friend and I were hunting some pups out of his old male and my old female, they are 1st cousins and I have yet to hunt behind a pair of cur dogs that can outdo them on a cold track, at least not around here, the pups just hit a yr on Father's Day and were in some god awful thick overgrowth, every time they'd bog down he'd get jumpy and want to put an old dog down, to "help them out", and I'd just say go ahead, send her in there to show them where it went and the next time after that and time after that when they bog down they'll just sit and wait for ol reliable to come and show them, or we can just sit here and let me enjoy my nap and listening to my young boooo tick run with his pups and let them figure out where they messed up and line it back out by themselves, that way they learn something and retain it bc they figured it out on their own and can apply it next time that situation is faced or get them dependent on a crutch that won't always be there to hold them up when they fall, it's taking him some self adjusting and developing patience on his end but this summer he has hunted his 3 at night a good bit and they are looking just as good and better than several dogs with a few seasons of hauling, I also watch my Garmin and see where the dogs either lost a track or had a bad break down they're having trouble recovering, it's not so much an issue with more seasoned dogs but more so with my young dogs, if they turn back and trail themselves back out I'll try to get to the point of the break down to see for myself what's going on and a lot of times entice and encourage them to grind it on out and get it back up on its feet at a brisk pace, if that becomes a habit for a particular dog then they won't stay here much longer, I'll talk to my dogs if I'm walking a hard track out with them but nothing like, cmere boy, or anything not business related, by the time they get to the woods they've already learned my basic verbal commands at home and I'll use them to keep the dog focused on what we're doing if I see track or sign of any off game or notice they're no longer following the track or scent funnel and are trying to take a path of least resistance, of course none of this can be accomplished if the hunter/handler has catching hogs or stacking numbers as his main objective, it takes an individual willing to devote the time and maintain the patience of biblical proportions to achieve the results and an eye for knowing when to pull the plug on a prospect and move on, next most important factor is having your hands on the hides that have the capabilities to work out and line out older tracks, it's just the way the world turns, some dogs have IT, and some dogs don't, once you've seen one do things that make you the one doing the observing say WOW, even if it's just to yourself bc your really not sure you just saw what you think you saw, you'll know it, one thing I've noticed and seen a correlation to trailing tough tracks at least in my dogs, is when they're young little pups is the ones who seem to be problem solvers and can find away out of pens built like Alcatraz, are seeming to make the better dogs that suit my liking, those are the two main most important factors to start with, there's also a number of other contributing smaller factors such as environmental and atmospheric conditions, the dogs physical shape, and how and what they're fed that all play small roles in scenting and trailing that when all combined all add up and can sway success in your favor or against you.....


I'll reply to the original post shortly lol, found a comment and paragraph that really always interest me....

Goose87…I seen the same thing with some of the plotts…
I’ve done quite a bit of looking for a certain line known for their grit.
A while back I spoke with someone who hunts with the owner of that bloodline and also hunts that same line…so I asked how they hunted their bear dogs…they said almost always rigging or starting them from a bait…

Once I heard that I will not buy a pup because it does not fit my style…my number one priority is casting and finding…some of the Plott dogs are weak in casting and finding and I believe it is because of the hunting style I mentioned…

When we cast a dog in fresh sign I expect a dog to be running a track in less than five minutes…bayed or hearing a squeal…5 minutes is a long time…

The nose…I agree that a colder nose goes with the better hunting dog…but I differ on how it works but cannot prove it so it is a personal theory…

It applies to both winding or starting a colder track…there is a connection between the nose and the brain…some dogs trigger will trip very easily and others won’t…the gold nugget bred kemmer mountain curs can really wind or start a cold track but what I do like about them is they would rather start good tracks…

In open marsh I have seen none of the dogs get interested in the wind currents but one or two dogs…but it is not like blowing up the dog box interest…I just noticed a little interest…I looked to see exactly where the wind was coming from and turned into the wind…went close to a mile before I turned the dog loose and they went straight to the hogs…

I think the right Mt Cur line crossed with the right Plott line we produce Mt Cur type dogs from the old days…I believe back then there wasn’t much difference in the two…

Getting back to the nose…I’ve seen dogs come running by…two run right over a track and the switch doesn’t trip…a little later another dog comes by and opens a couple times and takes the track and lines it out…the same place the other dogs went right over…

Same thing with winding…if the scent is fairly strong in the wind they all can smell it and the trigger will trip but on a weaker scent the colder nosed dog might be the only dogs trigger that trips…and if it is a very weak scent it is up to the handler to set them up for success when one dogs shows little interest but doesn’t react…it is up to the handler to decide if it should be checked…

It’s all about what we do as breeders and handlers…we make the dogs better by how we breed and how  we hunt them…

When we test pups at a young age we can see which has the hair trigger for winding and also which pups have a knack for finding which proves 3 things…nose, ability to find and the right type of brain to go with the nose and finding ability…to me it is all about selecting for natural ability first…

Rubs your last sentence is something I pay a good bit of attention to, I'll sit a bowl of food or scraps up on truck hood or anything elevated and watch to see who detects the scent initially and who can locate the source....

Reuben have you ever hunted with any Dennison catahoulas?

I'm not Reuben but I have hunted with a few....

Were the ones you hunted with cast dogs as Reuben described in his post?

Yessir they were....

There aren't a whole lot of them around, or at least that I am aware of. They are a pleasure to hunt with.

The few I've seen were some nice dogs, there was a pocket of guys in south Alabama that had some of it, they're just like anything else and look good with the variables stacked in their favor and look horrible in the days they are stacked against them, there wasn't many of them dogs from what I've gathered, just a good solid strain of cur dogs that Joey Denison put together, the ones I've hunted behind, one in particular, was ignorant gritty, he would bay a pig all day just the same as a boar hog, but just as soon as he heard and even got to be be where if he could smell him coming to a bay he'd try to catch out every time and was on his death bed quite a few times bc of that, ole boy got to where he had to approach him bayed going based off the wind direction bc he would get himself wrecked if he knew help wasn't far behind...

This has been some good reading gentlemen, so I’ve gotta question y’all may have the answer to. A few weeks ago I took a buddy out with me and we’re walking down the main road that goes in to multiple different properties. Well it’s about 6:30am, 75ish degrees, high humidity, and there was a bunch of dew on the ground. About 10 minutes in we come up to where there a big cutover on the left with some grinded mulch left behind. We see 3 shoat a laid up, only 50 yards from us. Well we decide to get low and wait to see if the dog’s hit on them. Right about then the dogs caught a hog that was on the right side of the road about 30yds off in some real thick stuff. By the time we get that once killed and back out, the hogs had slipped out. I watched them trot towards the woods in the back of the cutover.

I called all of the dogs over and they really didn’t seem to smell it. After 10-15 minutes they did try to line it up but the furthest they went was 200yds and they kept coming back. It was like they legitimately couldn’t smell it. These dogs have caught plenty of hogs so I have no doubt they would’ve taken the track if they could smell it.

Could this have been the dew on the ground? I was also told that the sign might have been too hot for them to line up with all of the fresh rooting that was around them


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Very well could've been mass confusion, last summer we looked plum pitiful hunting a section of the swamp north of me, this place was literally gutted in rooting everywhere you went and all the dogs turned out left out going every which a direction with intent in each step but not nere one of them got a track lined out and a hog jumped that day, here's something folks don't give a lot of thought into, and are quick to make the assumption that if your dog can't smell a hog as bad as they stink then you got junk, that's couldn't be further from the truth, a hog pen has a strong odor but a hog itself does not, hogs only have like 6 glands they excrete scents and pheromones from, and their body doesn't produce any natural lanolins, so there's not much for these dogs to work with to begin with, another you have to look at is the vegetation growth, the more dense the brush the more surface area of solid objects for scent particles and bodily scurf to adhere to if the area is wide open and void of very little vegetative undergrowth that scent will just disperse itself amongst the surrounding atmosphere, this very same instance has been a phenomenon in the bobcat hunting world since it was developed and that is spotting a cat visually and putting dogs down and they cant even smell their own breath, come back later and chances are they can move the track and sometime they can't, go 2 miles down the Rd an same dogs rig a cat that had crossed earlier in the evening, again this another one of some university study that can be found where it was proven, at least in man, that sudden and unexpected fear will actually change the scent of the pheromones the body puts out, I've seen exactly what you've just experienced so many times in just about every form of hunting you can do with a dog in the south, it all made sense after finding that study done, I've started to try and take notice that when we're running a hog, if it makes a road crossing Undisturbed by anything other than the dogs in pursuit that the dogs never really hiccup on the track much at the road crossing, but let that hog get spooked by whatever it may be and and it seems like more times than not they have some difficulty keeping it going at a steady pace unto they get farther along on it then it picks backup......

You are right Goose. A few guys here in South Alabama bought dogs from Joey Dennison 25 years ago (give or take a couple of years.) Those dogs were very well suited for the terrain and hog population in this particular area, so a few guys here locally have line bred off those original dogs since that time. We still refer to them as Dennison dogs, even though that was a long time ago. As I stated earlier, they are well suited for this area, but they seem to do pretty well wherever they are hunted. For whatever reason, the guys who have them seem to breed only for themselves.

Thank you for the input goose. At the time I was getting pretty ticked off that none of the dogs would do anything. Ended up giving up after 20 minutes or so and we kept on walking and caught a different one then called it quits before it got too hot. Where they were laying at was completely rooted. Rooting was about 1ft deep and it covered an area that was probably 40ft by 60ft if not bigger. This place is slap ate up with hogs so I try not to go more than once a month so that it stays a pretty good spot for working young dogs. But that makes sense because I’ve come across huge areas of fresh rooting, I mean it looked like the hogs left 5 minutes before we got there, and dogs would have their noses to the ground all excited but wouldn’t ever line it out. I’ve wondered if it was just too much scent all over the place and they weren’t able to single any of it out.


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Something to look at is are you trying to push them or letting them be. Try this next time you run into that stop and set there until they do something if it takes two hrs just sit there. Some times when you walk you might be doing the hunting for the dogs and not realize it. Pushing them and following them is totally different nothing wrong with that method but it tends to make the dogs depend on you when there not confident enough to search out no matter what they smell. But like goose said you could come back two hrs later and lined one out


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Just from my experience in the country and hogs we hunt...   It dont take long for a group of hogs in a steady trott to be a half mile in the matter of 15 minutes if they want too..   Now ,, that might not be the case in yalls neck of the woods but here again,, if the dogs thrown out on this sign has a tendency to only range 300-500 yards on no scent in their noses like the cur dogs I have hunted in my time,,  they might not have been able to wind em or drift the track long enuff to be close enuff to the hogs.    I remember one night we loaded up the dogs cause hogs were on camera on a lease a hr away from us..   We pulled up to the parking area to suit the dogs up and collar up ,, and the cameras were still going off while we headed into the spot..  Ended up being 6 min from the time I dropped the dogs out on this corn pile from the time the hogs had left..   I dropped a 9 yr and a 6 yr old on it and we aint even bayed a hog off that drop..  I was mad as a hornet ,,  these cur dogs were no rookies but still couldnt produce off that drop..  

Judge,,  I always said there is two type dogs I have hunted in my life....  One that I gotta put on the hogs for them to produce and the ones that put you on the hogs ,, no matter what I do..lol

High water no mater what kind or style of dog you have that is the truth. Some you carry to the hogs and some carry you to the hog


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That's some truth right there judge, I've sat down before and took a nap letting two young dogs work a track I knew they could smell, it took about an hour and a half for them to walk it out and figure it out, once we put and end product with their hustle they were a different set of dogs after that and got to be where they had a knack for pulling a rabbit out of a hat, it was a good day in the hog woods that morning, had I not hung out with the dry cows the night before I probably wouldn't have decided to take that little nap so reluctantly.....

I agree with you completely judge. I’ve sat around and waited quite a few times. That’s actually how I started with them as young pups. I would take them to the creek and sit while they casted out. I’d make them check in and go back out a few times before going a little further down and doing it again. If the weather is right when that happens again I’ll try it out. We were racing to beat the heat this particular day and there’s hogs all over that property so after they quit really trying it we walked another 600-700yds and caught another one.

I agree with you on some dogs needing to be walked to sign, I can’t stand that. I like my dogs to hunt in circles around me. They will typically go 300ish yards out making a big loop before checking in and going out again. If I’m walking they won’t check in very often, they’ll get close enough to smell or hear me and then roll back out.


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Austesus the one word of advice from me is don’t always make it about catching a hog. In this case, finding that set of hogs would’ve done your dogs more good than finding and catching an easier one, even if you didn’t catch one of the hard to find ones. That’s sometimes a big hurdle for a hunter because the end goal is to catch hogs. When I have a young dog or a young set of dogs, EVERY hunt is a training hunt. Catching  hogs is second place to training and helping a young dog develop for me.


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I have hunted with different lines of catahoulas but I haven’t hunted with a Dennison catahoula that I knew about…

I just about positive they were never really so much as set as a strain or family as they were more so like several generations of dogs who were put together from Joey Dennisons selection and pairing of individual dogs who complimented each other well and produced good, I think he didn't hog hunt to many more years after he had started putting together good crosses, not talking down on them by any means bc the ones I hunted with were nice, that one in particular that had originally come from Danny Drinkard, but there's nothing special about them for them to have that almost novelty like label on them, and one thing I do know  and won't mention a name or timeframe other than it was in Alabama bc for whatever reason, there was some crossing of English coon hound bred into them and also some Florida cur blood, I haven't been on FB or hunted with any of the mutual associates I had with Danny Drinkard or Don Bradford in about 4 or 5 years so I don't know what's come of them now...


Last I heard anything out of Mr. Joey was also on FB and he was living in Jessup Ga and was breeding training and selling Mt Cur squirrel dogs, close friend of mine went and bought one....

T-Dog, thanks for the tips. We’ll do that next time and see if they can line it out.


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I have been line breeding off those original dogs for over 20 years. I have tried to keep the lines as tight as possible, but there is some other stuff in the blood now. Some of the other guys who had some descendants of the original dogs may have bred in a different direction, but I have tried to stay as much catahoula as possible. The ones I have are much as Reuben described: drop them on a fresh track, fresh sign, or cast them in a block that holds hogs and wait for them to get bayed. If you go back and look at some of Chainrateds posts from years back, you will see basically the same dogs I have.

Whereabouts do you live at?

I have him on FB and he posts a ton of training videos on his dogs. They have tons of go it seems like. They ain’t cheap by no means neither when you buy one.

No they're not cheap by any means, but he doesn't or used to didn't sale pups or started dogs, he sold you a put meat in the badg squirrel dog.....

I live in SW Alabama, in the same neck of the woods as Danny and Don. I don't have FB, and don't post much on the www, but the post about cast dogs caught my attention.

The Dennison dogs sound like a nice set of dogs from what I have heard of em it always catches my attention when you hear of good lines of curs that will get out there and hustle and hunt and find and bay hogs does anybody know where the dogs Joey started with came from or any back story on em

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Hugh Murray put the dogs together and had much to do with the blood getting together. He put together Wager's, Myer's, and Mason's blood. That's how the dogs got started in Georgia. He used the Buster dog of Sam Mason's several times. Hugh's kennel prefix was HCM's. Joey(Nine Run's) and Eddie Denison came into the picture and tried to build on what Hugh has done. A 400acre pen with hogs and lots of puppies on the ground made them a hot commodity for several years; but they got too far away from what made the dogs and lost the blood needed to keep things going. The term 'Dennison Dog" didnt come around till about 10 years ago. Hugh put the blood together 30 years ago.   

Sam Mason's old buster dog sure had a lot to do with alot of good dogs that is for sure

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That’s correct, I spoke with Joey years ago about them dogs and he told me that and I think Danny spoke about it when I was over there hunting with em. They’re like anything else, they’re only as good as what you put into em.

I think we caught 14-17 hogs when I was over there. The Shaq dog was still living and he was producing some real nice young dogs. One of the better ones got killed while hunting on a big Barr. I don’t think I have 14 hogs on my whole lease right now, just different country and different hogs, but the dogs were nice for sure.

Anybody got any pictures? They sound like some good ones


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Search Chainrateds old posts. Pictures and info on the dogs and some pictures of a bunch of dried up, runty hogs.

Stanton thanks for clarifying that and sharing what you know about them, I've heard before almost word for word what you said but wasn't quite sure I remembered it correctly and didn't want to pass along to much misinformation and is why I didn't bother trying to put it altogether....

He certainly did, more so probably than any other spotted dog sire, he was the result of a full brother sister breeding, which is why I believe was one of the reasons he was such a prepotent reproducer, a good portion of the blood that makes up my dogs go back to him, we've line bred off two separate litters from two littermates that were directly off of him, my old little girl dog and my best friends stud dog Walt are great grand pups off him, the sure enough colder nose track working spotted cur dogs that I've seen were with my own eyes have all been descendants of his within a few generations, we have a litter that just hit a yr on Father's Day that are off of Walt and Lil girl and one of the females came out looking and patterned just like old Buster....

Heck yea goose hopefully they sure enough turn out for y'all

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