You just described how my Outlaw dog looks right now. The old coon hunters use to say they wouldn’t buy a dog that had  slick healthy ears. They said if it was a real coon dog and was being hunted, those ears were gonna be rough as heck, split, and notched up from briars and coons. I think my circle has had more dogs with eye injuries in the last 5 years than I’ve had the previous 25. I think it’s because of the way they push through brush on track, running it a lot more aggressively and faster.


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Well obviously I agree with pretty much everything y’all have said. It’s just my opinion though that y’all are all chasing the wrong thing if you want to leave the woods satisfied that your breeding was successful. Follow my lead because I’ve about got it down to perfect. I’m not gonna charge y’all for this secret because we’re all part of the Bull$hi++er family, very large family. The secret is sorry dogs. There ya go I let it out. If you hunt sorry dogs they will never let ya down. Every time you go to the woods you are gonna get the same result. They are consistently and naturally gonna be sorry and it doesn’t matter if you hunt them once a year or every day, they’re sorry. You can cast them in a pig pen or in the desert, they are gonna produce the same quantity of hogs. They don’t eat any more than the good dogs do either. You aren’t out nearly as much money because you don’t have to have a buggy to chase around behind them although they really do enjoy riding. You don’t need a tracking system because they are always visible. They’re purt near as good as a seeing eye dog, they aren’t smart enough to keep you or themselves from getting ran over, but they’ll keep you from getting lost. Hot nose, cold nose, who knows? Don’t matter because they don’t need a nose. They don’t need speed because they are stealthy. There’s no attitude problems because they all just want to get along. You can name them simple names like Peace, Love, and Joy. Vet bills, what vet bills? They never get hurt unless maybe they hang a nail, but you can usually take care of that yourself at home. You will never pick the wrong puppy to keep out of a litter either because your litters will be producing 100% every single time. If by accident you get one that forgets how he/she is bred and decides to be good or great, you’ll probably have to grit your teeth and do a hard cull. You can’t put up with that or it will screw your whole breeding process up. Another benefit is the breed you select. It doesn’t matter if you select the slowest basset hound to match against the fastest greyhound because performance, well it just doesn’t matter much. You can just find the collie dog that can’t circle up a sleeping floc, a few plodding plotts, or walkers that can’t run, you’re going to have a short cut to your goal. Consistency is the key guys. I’ve got a pile of these dogs here the house that have been genetically engineered for years that I would probably part with for oh, I don’t know, maybe $3000 a pup, but if it’s for one of y’all family members I’ll take just the $1500 I have in each one. I guarantee them to be sorry on level y’all  didn’t know was possible, and those aren’t just the genetic freaks, it’s the norm of the line. They may not be for you purists out there. You can’t get this kind of sorry without mixing and matching to create the ultimate dog. Give a call if y’all are in a bind and need some help selecting your brood stock. Yeah y’all just don’t understand until you have it how much less stressful it is to know what you’re gonna get and how your dogs are gonna do every time!


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It’ll be interesting to see if he gets rougher or smarter after this. I’m glad there was nothing life threatening though. It sounds like they are starting to get hog minded leaving like that. Do you ever worry about the Yotes getting your jagd? I ask because we’ve definitely had them get after our bigger dogs at solo bays, even single one out with several dogs baying. My buddy Tommy Crump quit hunting those feists because the yotes would snatch them off a tree before he could get there.


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Lol Cajun I said it was a load of bull when I heard that at first. Two things caused me to believe it. There were three other young guys with the old man the morning it happened. Two of them didn’t really care for the third one but all were there by invitation of the old man with the dogs. He was up in age pretty good for a hog dogger, late seventies at the time. He always had young guy’s going so they could do all the heavy lifting. All 3 young guys told the same story at separate times and I know they wouldn’t have done that with the relationship they had. Second, the old man was a Korean War vet and he wasn’t quite right in the head. He was always super good to me and it made most of these other young guys mad because he would give me stuff that he wouldn’t sell them. The old man wasn’t about nice fancy stuff. He had money from some businesses he had sold. He would buy a truck and in no time it would be beat all to hell and homemade bumpers and contraptions on it.  The cab was full of guns, trash, MRE’s, sardines, potted meat, etc. He eventually went to prison and died there for pulling up to a business and killing a man that owned it over a land dispute. He went and turned himself in and told the Sheriff he would’ve shot the man more times but his gun jammed. So he wasn’t wired right and is totally the kind of fella that would say no just to prove he didn’t need you. I said it was where two fools met. Him for declining and the other for offering.


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Of the dogs I considered great, mine and the first one I hunted with were the only two that I ever saw offspring from. The first one was only bred once as far as I know. In my opinion, the gyp was subpar. The best of the pups turned out to be on the lower end of average. My old dog wasn’t bred a whole bunch but he did produce well. The first gyp was a registered black mouth gyp. She was junk honestly. Her and her previous litter were given to me. None of the previous litter turned out. They had zero hunt and only some of them would even bark at a hog. Her and Clyde had a 50/50 litter but they all would at least bark. The one that stayed close turned out to be a really really good dog. Another black mouth gyp was bred to him and they had a small litter. She wasn’t mine so I don’t know how they all turned out except for the two we kept close. The male started a little slower (almost a year old)but when he started it was like he’d been doing it forever. He never was scared just immature and puppyish. The female was a Cracker Jack and was a super nice little gyp. Both finished out nicely. Then I bred him to a couple tight bred cat gyps that were related to him. That was really good. I think there were two out of several that were lower end average dogs. I don’t know if they were lesser or just never got the opportunity that the others got because both of them stayed cut up. Both of them died in the line of duty. I actually forgot about two of those. You might consider them great dogs. Man they got it done in style every time. Other good dogs would look silly hunting with them. Every now and then another dog might be there with them on the initial bay but never before. There were at least two more gyps out of that litter that were awesome. They didn’t have the bite that I like is about the only thing that keeps me from considering them great dogs. They were quick locators that hunted hard start to finish. They didn’t over run hogs. They drove a track really fast. If they started it they were going to finish it. Literally stayed bayed as long as it took for you to get there. Good noses and would grub cold tracks or wind either one. Super intelligent and didn’t just hunt but knew where to hunt, hog minded. They were real easy to live with too. I do know for a fact that the old man that had the male and female that I consider great, turned down a brand new truck for the pair. He was guiding for a guy that owned a dealership and after a few hunts the guy offered to buy the pair. This old man had money too. He turned the offer down. Finally the fella said look, I’ll give you a brand new truck, go down to the lot and pick it out what you want for that pair of dogs, he still declined. He said there wasn’t anything wrong with his truck lol. So I guess I’ve seen it both ways Cajunl. It absolutely affected my mind set towards what I kept puppy wise. To this day I’m picking females 90% of the time.


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I think that is a very good definition of a “great dog” Cajun. When I had what I call  my once in a lifetime dog, I hunted him with a lot of dogs that people said were top tier. It wasn’t to embarrass them but to measure my dog. I wanted to see if he was as good as I thought he was. A good buddy of mine that I ran with in high school called me one time. He said hey, I heard you have a bad
a$$ hog dog. I said I have a dog and I like him, he finds me hogs. He said well bring him over here and hunt with us. So we set it up. I had an square body Chevy 4x4 at the time. It was cold and misty the morning I left and went over there. They had catch dogs so all I hauled was Clyde. When I pulled up, my buddy came to the truck and immediately looked over in the bed of the truck for my dog. He said I thought you were bringing that bad a$$ dog. I said I did. Where’s he at he asked? I pointed to the floor board and grinned. He looked and said I wouldn’t let no $hit eater ride in my truck. I just chuckled and said ok. We get to the spot we are going to hunt and I asked if this was where he was going to cast? He said yeah go ahead, he ain’t gonna hunt no way. Lol if you can’t tell, the trash talking was very much alive and well. I cast ole Clyde and we waited. Their dogs came back but no Clyde. He said what’s that SOB doing? I said hunting but we can move if you need to move for your dogs and we did. About 45 minutes in he said where’s your dog? I pulled out the old wildlife and just could get a beep. I tracked him a couple more times in the next few minutes and he was in the same direction and the same signal strength so we headed his way. We stopped about 5-600 yards away to listen and sure enough he was hitting like clockwork. Of course my buddy asked what he was doing and I laughed. I said trying to show your dogs some pork. We let his dogs go to him and ended up catching several out of the group. I think Clyde bayed every one of them except one. When we got ready to leave my buddy said “ ya know I wouldn’t let no dog ride in my truck, but that SOB right can ride in my truck anytime he wants to!”, lol. He made lots of believers like that. He never let me down. He was good on his worst days. I sure do miss him. I see a whole lot of him in my Outlaw dog. I think it’s one reason I like Outlaw so much.

I think I have hunted with 5-6 great dogs and a whole bunch of really good dogs over the years. All the great ones were hound and cur or hound and cat crosses. I think one of them was pretty much a straight cur type dog. He wasn’t pure anything and if he had any hound in him it was extremely minimal. He was a hog dog though. Of course great is just like good when your asking opinions. It’s all in the eye of the beholder.


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Cajun I like the topic. Do you consider the “once in a lifetime” dogs to be the same caliber of great that you are speaking of?

When me and my buddy first started getting our own set of dogs, any breed that could bark was a potential hog dog and if they were free or a stray they got an opportunity. We hunted with all older guys because there weren’t any guys our age doing it then, not close to us anyway. We got to experience all sorts of styles and strategies and even a very wide range of breeds. Then we started getting more competitive about it and wanted to have better dogs than the older guys. We started saving money and trying to buy dogs that we thought would be the sure fire answer to stardom. That didn’t work too well. We spent a lot of hay hauling money on gas and dogs for nothing. Then we were fortunate enough to start going with my buddies great uncle. He was the best mentor in the sense of always being legal, but owned the first great dog I ever experienced. This dog was business minded and was getting gone as soon as he was released. He didn’t waste any time getting bayed. If the nearest hog(s) was 50 yards or 5 miles away, that’s where you would see him next and you didn’t bay hogs between you and where he was. He didn’t just hunt but knew where to hunt, hog minded as I like to call it. He was the same dog every single trip. As long as you would go to him he would relay. He was going to stay put and if he got a hog bayed they played he’ll ever leaving again. We drove up on him numerous times out in wide open pasture where the hog would be sitting on his head because he had ahold of his pride and joy, or the hog would sitting because one or both testicles were pulled out. I can remember the guy saying “well I’m ready to go home” after killing several hogs. The old dog would be gone and bayed again usually and he would leave him in the woods bayed. We’d say you aren’t going to go get him and he’d say “nah, he’ll be home in a day or two” and he sure would. He found hogs that you wouldn’t have thought were anywhere close. He could grub a track or wind them equally as good. At home he stayed on a chain. He was so quiet and easy to get along with you didn’t even know he was there usually. He would be the only dog that had grass growing in his circle. He was a Bluetick/Cat cross converted from a coon dog to hog dog. He set the bar for me. It was a couple years after he died that I got my once in a lifetime dog. I lucked into him and he is what all my dogs go back to. He was nearly a carbon copy of the first dog only mine was a lot easier to look at. Both dogs were also very fast tracking dogs. The dogs that I saw keep up with them on a track were just running with them, they weren’t trying to track themselves because that would cause them to fall too far behind. Mine was a Treeing Walker/Cat cross. I had put him on cold tracks with full hounds before and they either couldn’t smell it like he could or weren’t interested in it being that cold to push it. I remember once in the hot summer doing this and they were a half mile away before the full hound started opening and trying to push it. From that point though, my old dog started walking off and leaving him. He would be bayed 2-400 yards ahead every time. The full hound was a bay buster. I’ve had several since that I consider very very good dogs, but I don’t know if I would say they were the same caliber as the old dog.


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Sounds like they catch better than my catch dog, but that wouldn’t take much, lol. You’re gonna have hog dogs on your hands pretty soon. Not a bad sow, in fact a real good one for those pups. Maybe they’ll get a big rough sow pretty soon that can back them up a little bit, unless you’re wanting them to be that rough?


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Did you shoot him or choke him to death with your shoe, lol? I’m guessing those shoes aren’t briar proof.

That’s a good hog. It sounds like the dogs are maturing. I hope they keep improving.


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Cajun how many times do you figure it takes for a runner to get off across the club boundaries before they know where safety is?


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Lol those young dogs will keep ya on your toes lol.

I’m the same way, I like running gyps. I have 3 males on the yard, my oldest dog Outlaw, his nephew Chuck that’s a year old, and my year old bulldog. I just got Chuck back. Deputy Dawg bred that litter up and gave him to a friend as a little pup. They couldn’t get him to leave and got frustrated with him. I like his sister a lot so I told them not to cull him that I would take him. Brought him home, took the shock prongs off of his tracking collar the next morning and he was gone anywhere from 500 to over half a mile with the other dogs all morning. So I guess I’ll give him a chance to prove out as well. My bulldog is easy to look at and has potential but he’s extremely hard to live with. I’m trying to be patient but man it’s hard.

How are you going to decide which gyp to breed? Do you have a stud picked out?

I could definitely do the eating part. The cutting up I don’t know about. I don’t do much bs’ing, pretty much all business. But hey to each their own lol. Y’all definitely stacked up some pork. It’s always nice when it works like it’s supposed to. Do you have any young dogs besides the plott coming on? How is the plott coming along?


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There ya go Cajunl!

Cajun that was always the impression I was under of Florida. I could be on that geriatric crew myself. I’ll 53 in a few weeks. I’m blessed in the way of young help. My youngest boy (15) and his buddy Kingston (16) are really good hands and they always have  a buddy or three that want to go and some of them are pretty handy. When my oldest boy (25) goes, he’s a top hand. Of course Deputy Dawg (my nephew) and I don’t make many trips without both of us being there. Then there’s Barbie (Kyle), Kohl and Hunter, they are all in their mid 20’s. You couldn’t ask for better help. Amber is old too but she’s still a hell of a hand. Keldon isn’t young but he doesn’t qualify as old yet. He’s as good as you could hope to hunt with as well. Our little buddy Kendal is like hunting with a little jack rabbit. Jay, well he’s fun to bs with and he’s always got a “cold beverage”. He’s semi retired from
hunting. Still sounds like a good idea to him but getting up and going is a challenge. My old buddy Lamont hung it up. The last time he hunted with us he fell out tired and hot. The only thing that got him up going was me getting down next to him to start mouth to mouth resuscitation. He went from dying to revived with just the thought of it. What a miracle! I hate it because he was a heck of a hand. Those guys are our regular hunting circle. Them and a few more all hunt these collie dog crosses. None of us live very far apart so we usually get to go with each other and see different spots. It helps me because I get to see our dogs work that other people have and not have to take anyone’s word about a dog. Then I can see what needs to be tweaked for my liking. I feel very blessed to have the circle I have.


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I knew y’all had bear but I didn’t realize you had that many.

Anyone can be corrupted but I would figure it would be a little harder to corrupt the Fish and Game Dept. than  it would a committee like WOW said they have. Sounds like they sure enough need a new Governor as well. It’s crazy to me how many ideologies run hand and hand. If you know how they feel about one particular thing then you don’t have to ask anymore questions because they more than likely will fit the new mold. We as a society have become extremists in the sense of we can’t share the same opinion of the other side about anything. Right or wrong, our opinions have to be polar opposite. We don’t have the stones as an individual to be our own person and have our own opinion.

Cajunl, you may have to get started building a 4x4 Hoveround chair with a lift on it for Cajun. Maybe put him a dog platform on front so he can see his dogs when they go to winding and he can reach them to unsnap’em.


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I figured there was a strong enough presence of dog hunters out there to fight the anti’s. I guess it’s about like Cali in the sense that the city folk are complete idiots and bulk of the population.


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Dang Cajun, that sounds miserable. I’m sure this won’t have you down long. They have come so far with the replacement surgeries. I think anymore it’s almost like a day surgery. They hurry up and get you in and out so they can put the next one on the table. Just make sure you do what is asked of you in rehab.

Cajunl, what is the bear population like there?


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Cajun I completely understand. I’m almost 53. I look 23 but feel 83. I have a LOT of hard miles on me. If sports, totaling 3 trucks, and  couple hunting injuries wasn’t enough, I had a horse fall on me and dislocate my right hip and another one planted me like a yard dart. He broke my arm, my neck, had to have my right shoulder all sewn back together, and a few other things. On top of all that I have this intestinal disease that’s supposed to be my demise providing a band of wild super models don’t take me out while fighting over me. I try real hard to stay positive and just be thankful for God and his love for me. As bad as it gets sometimes, we have to be thankful for what we do have and remember that it can always be worse. You’re loosing a little time but you sure might be gaining it back in the end. It might be a real blessing that it happened when it did. You have some good young help, like a particular person and his son on this board (wink wink) and ole Mike the Knife, that could go along and let you just drive the boat or buggy while they do the leg work. I’m like you, my dogs are sure that happy place for me or at least one of a couple. They are a lot of work if you’re doing right by them by it’s rewarding too. I haven’t had the success you have but these collie dogs have really given me a lot joy over the years.  This Outlaw dog of mine isn’t a world champion, but I enjoy him so much because I see so much of the old dog that I based this family off in him. It’s almost like a trip down memory lane every time I interact with him. You’ll be back up and kicking higher than ever before you know it. Just remember, the longer you sit the longer mommas honey do list gets.


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Man I hate to hear that Cajun. Not for you so much but for the hogs. If you become bionic those hogs won’t have a chance. You’ll be 20 again, running to the bays through the swamps. I can hear ya telling Mike the Knife to let you out and bring the boat around. Yeah you sure enough won’t have any hogs to hunt. On a high note, momma probably won’t let you go back to the gym. I hope it gets better soon and ready as soon as deer season is over.


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There was a time when I knew a little bit about the cat lines but I haven’t kept up with them in several years. It will be fun to research those dogs though. She’s a pretty gyp. It doesn’t make her a hog dog of course, but it sure doesn’t hurt lol.

Cajun, I hope you’re on the mend. Watch those kennels close. I might slip in down there with one of these border collies to infuse into those striped hounds. I’m a years time you could be running the purdiest brindle ring necks in the swamps.


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Hollowpoint I think you’re doing real
well by the pups. I didn’t mean sound like I thought that was happening, just something I really started to pay attention to personally. I don’t think your pups are going to be shy about putting teeth on them. Hopefully they’ll get smart before the alternative. Does your little cat gyp come from a biting ( hogs lol) line of dogs?


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