Still learning: Florida cracker curs

I don’t know your situation with raising pups but if you can let them run loose until they start becoming a nuisance or running game on their own, if you can’t, but have access to go shine rabbits take them one at a time and go shine when you see one don’t say anything to the pup but walk in that direction and wait for Mother Nature to take over, might have to shine one that the pup sees and keep the light on it and see if pup gives chase, after a few times of this and no prey drive kicking in then you might have your work cut out for you, for the pup running but not staying, has it ever got to complete a race and see the end result, if not it could simply be that the pup just doesn’t fully know what’s going on yet and hasn’t connected A-to-B yet and had that ahaaa moment, if you can hobble a shoat and turn it loose and the pup right behind it, put the odds in the pups favor, a smaller hog than the dog to give the pup a confident feeling, and it can’t blow out and leave the pup standing there, at a slower pace at a level the pup can maintain eye contact majority of the time and learn to connect the dots when using its nose, take her out when she’s extremely excited and leave her wanting more, even if it’s not as long as you’d hope for, some times in the long run less is more, if it’s in her she should progress, if you can do this once or twice a week and hunt her on weekends or whenever you hunt she should come around and figure it out, this is just my opinion and not a golden rule by any means but at the 18 month mark if they’re not at least making the race or the majority of it then they don’t stay on my yard and by 2 yrs if they aren’t capable of producing a hog by themselves at least a few times by that age then they don’t stay, but that’s just my standards as long as I’ve done my part in getting the pup raised up the right way and started the right way I’ll hang on a little longer if for whatever reason I didn’t get to raise and start the pup in a way to it’s benefit, as far as the male goes I’d first try live trapping a coon and leave it in the trap and put a cord on it so you can drag it, get the pup away from any major distractions and tap the trap to make the coon hiss and fuss, or put some sort of treat just out of reach of the coon next to the trap, when the pup goes for it the coon should fight at and hiss at the pup, if that don’t fire him off and ignite him then I’d say you got your work cut out there as well, you might have to turn his littermate loose or another dog he connects well with and let them get the coon fired up and fighting, and maybe it may take the monkey see monkey do route, I have no idea what it is about a pis$ed off coon in a cage that makes a dog fire off like they do, if you have a small terrier or heeler type dog that will bay and fight at the coon that the pup knows then that’s even better, after a few rounds of this if you can take him to an open bay pen then I’d suggest leashing him to the pen and making him watch the other dogs work even might have to let them bay at the coon if he’s fired off on it but leave him leashed and pissed off that he had to miss out, on the next run in the pen if he’s barking wanting loose turn him loose but with a long piece of weedeater string so you can pull him out while he’s baying, only allow him to bay for a few minutes once he starts and pull him out while the others are still working and leash him up again to tease and entice him, a few of those runs and he should start putting it together, I’d even take him when messing with the gyp just to watch and be enticed, the biggest factor to figure out here is what is YOUR standard and end goal, another method that we’ve used in the past on a dog that just didn’t want anything to do with a hog off an all star cross and high turn out litter, we put him in the pen with a hog and didn’t feed either one of them for 4 or 5 days, then we put the dog food in the trough used to feed the hog, hunger is what drives all living things, when the hog tried to come up and get the dogs food he wasn’t about to have that and the savage came out in him and from that moment forward he was a HOGDOG, it just all came together for him at once like a light bulb went off, it may sound cruel and harsh to some but desperate times call for desperate attempts, I’ve started doing the rabbit shining the last 5-6 years and it has become my best training tool, the pups learn to use their nose and how to work a scent trail and can figure out the right end of a track all on their own once they start actually running them I quit and by that time I’ve started baying them, when it’s time to hit the woods for the first time they already know how to use their nose and work out scent, and that puts me months ahead of most right out of the gate, I very rarely have problem with them trashing on rabbits later on, mostly right at the beginning, before making a cross I look at the litter average of the parents if most of their litter didn’t make good dogs then I won’t breed them, everybody has to start from somewhere so be real with your self and come up with a set of standards and don’t stray to far from them even if it means scrapping what you got and finding other stock, if you can keep the whole litter and set a standard and time frame for results at different age stages and cull accordingly what’s not up to par at whatever age you have a standard to meet, hopes all this rambling nonsense can help you out the slightest bit...

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