my biggest regret...was selling a line of dogs I created that were as hard hunting as any...accurate strike dogs that did not quit a track...dogs with plenty of grit and some that would hunt and die of heat stroke if not caught or called in...dogs that started out close and if I wasn't moving would range further out until they found a hog...there were times when I sent my dogs in after others just came out with their dogs that said there weren't any hogs in the area...decent dogs seldom miss...
after creating that line of dogs I let it all go in 2007...and I don't have that caliber of dog today...fair but not the same...
a great hunting dog is a dog that looks good in any company and has the genetic make-up to reproduce itself when bred within the family...
letting it go is my regret...
Reuben I'm pretty sure you'll take this as me jabbing at you but it's not and if you feel that way then my apologies upfront, but I have to ask, what happened to this line you created and sold out, I know you've mentioned before that there wasn't but a few years gap in between you selling out and deciding you still wanted to hunt, did they all get killed or die off or the person you sold them to didn't breed them, I'm not trying to pick or pry just asking a sincere legitimate question...
no apologies needed...I was one of those that my dogs a certain way and didn't share my dogs with anyone except a few friends...I tried involving those few friends with the breeding program and set them up with pups...one liked breeding a certain way...the dogs hunted well but he culled what I called his best dogs because he liked close ranging dogs...he did get me out of a bind once when he gave me a female pup out of one of my males...
the other friend mixed all kinds of dogs with what I gave him so I finally just bred my own...eventually every dog I had was all around and I was very proud of them...
In 2006 I retired and thought I was going really make it big in the stock market but that didn't work out...I am making plans to make it happen this time around...however, I really like my job and will work a few more years just to make a cushion...
right after I retired I hunted pretty hard for a while and hunted at night by myself and that got expensive since I drove at least 100 miles each trip...
during that time I lost a dog to old age and lost one to cancer...the first of two I have lost to cancer...I also lost my breeding female to heat exhaustion...she was hog finding and hog stopping machine...on that hunt a friend sent his bulldog to a bay that another dog of my had going and then he couldn't get to them and my dog got his bottom jaw broken bad enough that I had to put him down amongst other cuts...I killed the hog and I took my dog to the truck and spent some time doctoring him there...once I got back the female who had been baying her hog...when I got back to the general area she wasn't baying anymore but I still has a signal...I found her and she was in shock in some water and that was about it...sometime before then an up and coming male was ham strung and he never was the same so I gave him away a little earlier...
then I got cancer and was going to have to fight that so I sold what I had left for almost nothing...these were three pups that were better than average at 10 months old...the forth I had given to a friend and his only real fault was that he was too gritty for his own good...
if I had him or one of his brothers I could have that bloodline going in three years...
I now run vests on any strike dog that will need it...dogs that hunt hard without vests will die from heat exhaustion about as fast as those that wear them...
my wife cried the day I got rid of my dogs and she said I was making a mistake...and she was right...
breeding great dogs is easy when you have the right dogs...the hard part is finding the right dogs that hunt as well as we like that can also reproduce themselves...
