Cur dog Competion

Well this is just an idea, but I'd love to put it in motion some day if I have the resources to do it.

Krystal.......It would be in some sort of enclosure and I figure on it being somewhat rectangular in shape maybe like a 15-30 acre net wire trap, with a pen on one corner and a wing of some length. Maybe with the holding pen on one end and the catch pen on the other. To tell the truth I've never really tried to drive a hog very far. But they did it in the past and used dogs that are the ancestors to the dogs that some of us use today. So it can be done again, but we are not talking about the kind of hogs that we hunt we are talking about hogs that will tolerate the presence of a human being, but on the other hand not tame enough to go up and scratch behind the ears or even go up too at all. lol. It does'nt take much for a hog to get mean or "wild". My grandpa raised hogs comercially for about 20 years and in that process my dad was bit, chased, put on the fence, you name it by a bad sows who did'nt want you messing with thier pigs.

TrueBlue......In my opinion there are allot of dogs out there today that could do it inlcuding many lacy dogs. Just In my opinion not very many are not used or started in a way that promotes those, more "advanced", abilities of baying a group of hogs and ultimately driving them. But they do have those genetic traits both currently and more so in thier lineage. Those traits are more common in dogs that are used both ways, for gathering cattle and hunting hogs, because they have to maintain those skills to be usefull in the cow part of the deal. And in my opinion the same skills apply to hogs because hogs are a herd animal its just that the wild hogs we have today are to the point that they are afraid of humans more than anything, and individual survival becomes more important to them than the good of the whole group and they will scatter to protect them selves. Sow will even abandon piglets to save them selves. But even today you see that instinct to rally and bunch to protect the group in wild hogs. One time, that stands out in my mind in particular, was a group of three sows all three wet with pigs. They bayed so pretty I am certain that if I could have got them out of that thicket I could have driven them somewhere. But sows with pigs are the easiest to bay in my opinion because they stand to fight and protect the pigs, however I also beleive that sometimes hunters dont to get to see this very often because the bay dogs either single one out and catch it or the catch dog does it for them before the hunters get there and they never new exactly what they had bayed all at once in the first place. I often wonder how often a group of hogs gets bayed only for one shoat to get caught out and the others drift off. I know it does happen even to people like myself who prefer dogs that wont do that type of thing. The other side to this story is that hogs are very smart and it does not take them long after having thier mates get caught or shot out of a bay to figure out that its not as good an idea as thier instincts tell them it is. But on the other hand I know that you can "dog break" wild hogs, As I have experimented with that my self. On one occasion about 4 years ago I trapped two sows one ,black and one red, wet with little pigs and they were big mature sows but not very heavy with having the pigs on them. The buying station prices were not worth the drive and I did not need the meat so I turned them loose for another day. About a week later I bayed the same two sows, red and black with pigs, with my two females that were young at the time so I let the dogs bay and caught them off. I decided I would use these hogs to work my young females if they would stay on this place and did so several times over a couple months. Each time they afforded me more more pressure untill I was not afraid to let them know I was there. Not long after that I was talking with a guy who hunts the same place and he caught both sows and some of the shoats. But thats how it goes.

Some dogs are conscious about a group of hogs and some could care less, as long as they can single one hog out they are happy. Part of that is the breeding and part of that is how they are hunter and were started. Even a dog that has the genetic traits to be conscious about a group can be ruined by hunting him with other dogs that could care less. I consider it to be ruined but some people might not, to each his own. Some dogs will allways be conscious about a group, no matter how they are hunted. A freind of mine once had a big rough catahoula, emphasis on big and rough. That dog might catch (or try) a rank boar one day and bay a pile of shoats the next, but in my opinion that dog was just conscious about a group. Ok thats my 2 cents, but now I gotta stop runnin my mouth.

Waylon