Most of my dogs cast out and hunt. Range depends on the size of the place we are hunting. We have a lot of huge tracts of heavy timbered ground so a lot of times they will hunt out 2-3 miles and circle back a few times before they decide to leave the area.
You obviously have more spare time on your hands than I do if you can sit around and wait for dogs to make circles like that. Wow, have you ever tried taking them to some place with hogs?
I'm in Missouri so hogs are few and far between at times. The area I hunt is 985 square miles of timber with a few fields dotted around here and there. The hogs get down in the bottoms of some pretty serious hollows sometimes and are a log ways from any road.
I run hounds and hound crosses so for them to hunt an area out like that does not take them all day. I also have catahoulas but they will only cast out to about 6-800 yards and circle back. The hounds on the other hand will hunt and keep hunting.
As far as spare time, father of 3 and a 60 hour work week, I'm a weekend warrior unless we get a snow, then I burn some days to hunt. I've spend hours and hours riding around looking for sign to turn dogs loose on, or I can cast some dogs, and continue to ride and look for sign while their hunting. I run a garmin alpha with an antenna on top of the truck. I can track around 5-6 miles with it so while the dogs are hunting, I can be driving looking for sign.
