Message #569334

[Goose87]

My first pair of pups that had the potential behind them I got bc they were Black and Tan colored cur dogs and I had been enamored 2 yrs or so prior by one that belonged to another hunter that I saw while camping on a hog hunting trip when I was around 13-14 and my dad was taking me with my uncles and paw paw, a local hunter name Frankie Wheat owned a catch dog competition and I used to go work it, he was my old lil league coach and an old rooster friend of my dads, I laid eyes on them pups and knew I had to have them , paw paw had actually got their sire for Frankie 5 yrs  or so prior, one turned out to be the super star of the litter and the other I eventually put down, I was blessed to have had that dog as my first hog dog bc he set the bar high very early for me, i culled a pile of dogs after loosing him bc they weren’t his caliber, still have never owned a dog like him, better yes, but not his personality or character, the Gumbo dog in my other post goes back to him several different ways on his bottom side, after loosing my pack two different times and started over with the pups I had twice I made a grand mistake and decided to start learning all I could about breeding and genetics so I could raise my own, for whatever reason the lord saw fit I never had much luck with anything other than what I raised, even when given more opportunities and time, some I jumped the gun on by listening to “local legends”,
My Shiloh gyp was the result of an accidental breeding that clicked, her mother  was from a litter made to try and get her grand dam to raise a litter of BMC that wasn’t hers, she turned out to be a blessing in disguise and has forever mad her mark on my pack for now on, my stock bred curs came from my ex paw in law who at one time was a well known and respected hog hunter, we sat many nights for hours him telling me stories of their dogs, he hadn’t hunted in nearly 10 years and had all but let what he had if that blood die off, he finally let me take a few that he used on cattle hog hunting and I saw all I needed after a few times, looking back it now seems like divine intervention bc it was around this time I lost my top 3 dogs within a yr, after doing my homework and digging on his dogs ancestry and finding out who else had them and going and seeing those dogs hunt I knew in order to get where I wanted to be I needed to swallow my pride and face the facts that my dogs I had started with just wasn’t even in that league, I didn’t get rid of what I had left but knew in order to up my game I didn’t need to breed them, same time I was just learning the entry level basics of the science of breeding and was given the blessing to do some of my own breedings with the paw in laws dogs, that first litter was really tight bred and they clicked pretty good, I was then given full rights to breed who and how I wanted and made quite a few crosses of that family and selected the ones I liked on hogs and the others were kept on cattle, and went from there, now I have more of that blood in it’s truest form than anybody including the ones that bred them up, who was friends with paw in law, Just about every successful hunter around here has dogs that go back in someway to 2 crosses made by my Pw n Lw and rob Hobgood, and curt dosset, rob had an outstanding gyp that was on her own level but was scared to breed her on account he was afraid she wouldn’t be the same after pups, even in his death bed Mr. Rob regretted never breeding her, they bred her sister to a dosset male and bred her brother to a gyp off that dosset males sire, I’ve bred around and stayed as close to those two crosses and the dogs that made them and the strategy has paid off in a life changing way for me to put it lightly, a way that very few will ever know and understand, are they the best, heck no, but they sure as heck please me and I’m a hard fellow to satisfy, and can hold their own with other good  company, and produce hogs consistently, I won’t say 100% of the time bc they haven’t, but I can’t recall the last time they were turned out and didn’t show hogs at the end, several yrs ago I started looking for the right running walker to breed in, I didn’t rush it and let a few friends I trust know what I was looking for, almost 2 years later a close friend said he had what i needed and wanted, my butter bean gyp, she was wicked fast, salty as the floor at the Morton factory, and bayed just as hard as any cur dog, she was bred for the speed and drive trials and had two litter mates that were deadly dominant in the coyote pen trials around here while they were campaigned, in the meantime I had read a pile on bobcat hunting with hounds and had decided that I needed a running walker bred for cat hunting based on the type of running walker that was successful on cat and the traits that made them successful and started the search there, low and behold what I wanted was right under my nose the entire time, Harold Parker is a well known and respected dog man and cat hunter and used to turn out around 10k head of stocker yearlings every yr, I worked countless yearlings for free for Pw N Lw to get dogs from him and just to show my appreciation for what he did, just so happen most of those yearlings belonged to Harold, he would always try to pay me but I wouldn’t take it, just picking his brain on dogs was payment enough, we had always had an instant friendship from the first time we met bc of our love of hunting in general and cattle, once I realized what he had I called and asked if I could breed my Shiloh gyp to one of his walkers, the resulting litter changed the game for myself and close friends and I will forever have that blood in high dose in my dogs, it’s in the works through some strategical breedings to tie the Shiloh dogs with the stock cur dogs from Pw N Lw together and breed from there, I took the best gyp I’ve ever owned that’s off the stock dog breeding and bred to the same sire as the first cat dog litter, besides what I personally consider a cold nose these two sets of dogs possess nearly everything I want in a hog dog, and with Shiloh being the only dog in the mix not line bred and by using a small handful of close kin dogs I don’t think there’s going to be a problem with a lot of unknown variables popping up in the intended crosses , good lord willing and the creek don’t rise I’m excited about where we’re headed and have found that spark again for what I love after taking a little break from hunting to re evaluate my life after a few curve balls and low blows thrown at me, I let these young boys that are like my little brothers hunt most of my dogs and sent them pups, last year or so and hunted mostly when my son wanted to go, they thought for sure I was getting out and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t ponder the thought, I was just sitting on the bench catching my breathe and now back in the game...