Cajun are there certain families of plotts that come shorter eared. I don’t mean to the extreme of course but maybe more comparable to the cur types than the hound? I ask because because of my understanding of how the plotts evolved from start to present day.
Let me ask this of those of you that have hunted hounds. Has it ever seemed that the truly long eared hounds seemed slower and the shorter eared hounds were faster? Of course there’s always an exception, but in general it seems like every really long eared hound I’ve been around was just flat slow, more similar to the blood hound I guess. It seemed to me like I looked up one day and started seeing all these hounds with less ear and they were marketed as being fast and fast tracking. Most of it seemed to have started with the walkers around here and mainly with the competition hounds. Now days it seems like you can almost see a head shot of hound and tell if it is old foundation bred or more the modern breeding just by looking at the ear on them. I did say ALMOST.
Here is my answer and opinion to your question, yes it has seemed the extremely long eared dogs have been slower but I feel that is due to having more of the bloodhound influence or bloodhound type dog in them vs the foxhound. Foxhounds tend to have higher set shorter ears compared to bloodhounds. So its not the ear itself but those slower long eared dogs also tend to carry other bloodhound traits such as a heavier set looser build and so forth.
I am not sure on the Plott side of things as they are a breed all to their own, but I did read somewhere that the Pioneer dog had bloodhound in him and that is why he was so huge and had such long ears vs most other Plotts of the time but I am not sure how accurate that is. I am sure some of the Plott guys on here might know more about that and how true it is or is not.
What I have seen more correlation in regards to nose and style is whether a dog is silent or open. I would like to hear if anybody has any observations or opinions about that.
