The BEST dog you have ever owned/hunted.......

The best dog I've ever hunted behind...

That's pretty easy one for me.

I'd like to tell about the best dog I've 'owned'. I have a decent one and hunt with a few decent ones of my buds. But the best dog I've ever hunted behind was special...a once in a lifetime type dog.

Now I'll preface this with the fact that maybe his former owner and I don't really see eye to eye on alot of things and don't hunt together anymore and have mutually chosen to take seperate paths after many years hunting together. But, really, as time goes by there ain't to many hard feelings. Just Humans being humans, sometime cognoscent reasoning can be our downfall as a species even tho it is what sets us apart.

Now to the best I've seen...

A dog named Stan. He was a mutt. Nobody knows what he came out of. He was picked up as a free dog from a pc of paper in a store window. Paper said he was a coon hound.
He was no coon hound, tho he was Black and Tan. He was no catahoula. He was a mutt. He had physical traits resembling dif breeds, but he was an obvious mutt.

What Stan was tho, was a hogdog!
He could get trashy in deer sometimes but wouldn't run em long. But if there was a hog around he'd more often then not find it. He also had the bottom in a race and the grit to make one sit.
He didn't always strike a hog first, and had a wierd sense of pride for a dog, where that would totally piss him off...
He didn't like to honor another dogs bay and if he did wouldn't be there long like he would on his own find before he'd roll back out to try and to top it with a get even look in his eye...

I've hunted behind a few big named breed curs and hounds that were good dogs...but Stan was better from my viewpoint. Maybe I just liked his style. True hound guys like what those breeds do and I can dig it. But I like a cur style more. But I can say he wasn't just some close range dog by any means...he would go for miles and hours after tuned in.

Unfortunately for my bud. Stan being the mutt he was just never could reproduced 'himself'. After trying from all kinda directions and makin guesses and feeding litters it just never happened. So it goes and is one of the curses of breeding on a mutt of unknown breed lineage. It was frustrating for me watching so I can quite imagine how it was for him breeding litter after litter to be let down.

Regardless Stan was one hinting sob in his own right! ...and a true hogdog.

He died of lymphoma a couple years ago at a pretty decent age and believe me he lived plenty of life!