Man I'm no expert on this but here's what's been working for me, I'm fortunate enough to live where I can let my pups run loose and are exposed to livestock from the time they open their eyes, once they start baying the cattle hard enough that they are keeping them bunched for an hr or two I'll lock them up this is usually around 6-8 months, I have a 5 acre baypen that the pups are in and out of from the time they are big enough to follow me down there when I feed my dogs I have down by it, they usually start themselves by following older dogs I'll work in there sometimes, once they will bay in there day or night I just let them grow up and grow then start hunting them usually around a yr, get them to a point where they are familiar with a hog and can take a track on a mock hunt and bait you an area up good and find out when their coming in and keep taking your pups to them, folks ruin pups way more often than not by trying to force stuff on pups to early in life, let them grow and be pups and if by a yr old their not even making an attempt to want to do anything I would consider cutting your loses and move on....
Goose, sounds to me like you have the ideal set up for raising and training dogs! Me on the other hand...I live on 1.5 acres but have a bay pen 3 miles down the road. If I let mine run free, they would be road kill and buzzard turds within a few hours. Thx for your info though. Our club is slam full of hogs, so putting them down on a fresh track shouldn't be a problem. I also thought about turning one loose and giving him a min or 2 head start and then cutting the dogs loose. Sounds to me like training techniques are all about repetition, so that's what I'm gonna try to do.
