Great dogs

Cajun I like the topic. Do you consider the “once in a lifetime” dogs to be the same caliber of great that you are speaking of?

When me and my buddy first started getting our own set of dogs, any breed that could bark was a potential hog dog and if they were free or a stray they got an opportunity. We hunted with all older guys because there weren’t any guys our age doing it then, not close to us anyway. We got to experience all sorts of styles and strategies and even a very wide range of breeds. Then we started getting more competitive about it and wanted to have better dogs than the older guys. We started saving money and trying to buy dogs that we thought would be the sure fire answer to stardom. That didn’t work too well. We spent a lot of hay hauling money on gas and dogs for nothing. Then we were fortunate enough to start going with my buddies great uncle. He was the best mentor in the sense of always being legal, but owned the first great dog I ever experienced. This dog was business minded and was getting gone as soon as he was released. He didn’t waste any time getting bayed. If the nearest hog(s) was 50 yards or 5 miles away, that’s where you would see him next and you didn’t bay hogs between you and where he was. He didn’t just hunt but knew where to hunt, hog minded as I like to call it. He was the same dog every single trip. As long as you would go to him he would relay. He was going to stay put and if he got a hog bayed they played he’ll ever leaving again. We drove up on him numerous times out in wide open pasture where the hog would be sitting on his head because he had ahold of his pride and joy, or the hog would sitting because one or both testicles were pulled out. I can remember the guy saying “well I’m ready to go home” after killing several hogs. The old dog would be gone and bayed again usually and he would leave him in the woods bayed. We’d say you aren’t going to go get him and he’d say “nah, he’ll be home in a day or two” and he sure would. He found hogs that you wouldn’t have thought were anywhere close. He could grub a track or wind them equally as good. At home he stayed on a chain. He was so quiet and easy to get along with you didn’t even know he was there usually. He would be the only dog that had grass growing in his circle. He was a Bluetick/Cat cross converted from a coon dog to hog dog. He set the bar for me. It was a couple years after he died that I got my once in a lifetime dog. I lucked into him and he is what all my dogs go back to. He was nearly a carbon copy of the first dog only mine was a lot easier to look at. Both dogs were also very fast tracking dogs. The dogs that I saw keep up with them on a track were just running with them, they weren’t trying to track themselves because that would cause them to fall too far behind. Mine was a Treeing Walker/Cat cross. I had put him on cold tracks with full hounds before and they either couldn’t smell it like he could or weren’t interested in it being that cold to push it. I remember once in the hot summer doing this and they were a half mile away before the full hound started opening and trying to push it. From that point though, my old dog started walking off and leaving him. He would be bayed 2-400 yards ahead every time. The full hound was a bay buster. I’ve had several since that I consider very very good dogs, but I don’t know if I would say they were the same caliber as the old dog.

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