I agree with Silverton on his opinion about the cow dog lines. Although none of the dogs I hunt have been bred for cows in over 12 years it seems the good ones always take to cows right off the bat.. The first thing I do with my pups is take them down the road to a buddy of mines house and let them see his cows. I can tell a lot about them by how they react to the cows.. 95% of the time if they like them cows they will like a hog..
I went huntin about 2 weeks ago on a place where they have 200 or 300 cows on about 2000 acres and the cows just roam the whole place . My Rain dog bayed and I went to her and she had about 100 cows bunched up. When I got to her and she saw me she got all excited and started circling the whole herd and lookin at me like HEY look at what I did, you could tell she was proud of herself lol..
In my opinion it's not so much the "line" of dogs that makes a good "line" , it's the person breeding that line..
If that makes any sense..
It makes perfect sense to me!
I have also seen the same thing with the well bred mtn cur pups, they will bay cows at a young age. They might not have the natural ability for cow work as a well bred cow dog pup but they will bay tight.
I read a story in full cry where a professional big game hunter said that if his hound pups didn't bay a cow that he would cull them because he had learned that his bloodline of hounds, the ones that showed a high interest in cows were usually real gamey toward any game he trained them to hunt, and he also said that they made the best hunting dogs.
