picking a pup out

When I pick from my own back yard I have weeks to look at the pups and test. I pick for natural winding and trailing and calm pups. I do not like pups that only are interested in dominance.
The most agressive pup in the litter does not necessarily make him a brave hog dog. The timid pup can be as gritty as a bulldog on a hog.

It is good to train the pups and set up training excercises for them. But a hunting dog is born and not made. You can take a below average dog and make a below average but at the top end of below average, or, you can take an above average pup and with little training have a very good hog dog or give him lots of training and have an even better dog.

An extreme example I give to my friends is that a filthy rich man buys a well bred weiner dog and spends millions of dollars training with the best racing greyhound trainer in the world and then takes the weiner dog to the race track with the greyhounds and tries to compete with the coursing hounds....

Same thing with hog dogs, coon dogs or whatever... it is about selection. I reckon most of the time it is a crap shoot because we only have a few minutes to maybe an hour to choose a pup from a litter. We can improve our chances when buying a pup from a good line of hog dogs.