Have you ever seen those bumper stickers that say, Treeing Walkers do it better? Those stickers run the gamut of every breed out there. Blue Tick, English, Running Walker, etc. A book could be written about which breed of hound is better, and in my opinion not one word of it would be true. There are great hounds in every breed, to me it boils down to two factors, geographical location and hunter’s expectation.
I live in South Texas where the brush is horribly thick and heat takes on a new an improved meaning. We get four months of the year where temperatures are good for hunting; the remaining eight months its hot and the rattlesnakes come in an XL. My father used running walker hounds to run coyotes when I was a kid and thus that’s what I grew up watching. When I was ten I started a pack of cat hounds with puppies out of his hounds. I hear a lot of people talk badly about running hounds and to each their own but, for me there is no substitute. They have the bottom to handle the brush and the heat, and they run to catch. I live near the coast which means that I am always going to have dew and even if I don’t have dew I will have humidity. Both of these make scenting conditions far better than the mountainous areas which makes it better for the running type hounds. Over the years we’ve developed a strain of running hound that we feel is able to smell cats plenty cold, trail them until they are jumped, and run them to catch them. My expectations in my hounds are simple, start a cat, jump it, and catch it. Anything shy of starting, jumping, and catching is a fail to me. Likewise I don’t like a race that goes on and on, once my dogs get him jumped, I want the race to be no longer than fifteen minutes and either be treed or caught. My philosophy is, it’s hard to catch two when your struggling with the first one. The running walkers and triggs that we use fit our geographical region and expectations very well.
Conversely, I’ve taken my hounds to New Mexico or even the Davis mountains in West Texas and they didn’t do well at all. The first problem I noticed was they had to be within minutes of a cat trail or they couldn’t smell it. Secondly, once the cat got into any bluffs or rockslides my hounds hurt themselves really badly. I don’t know if it is because they are so used to running wide open that they fell or because they grew up where there are no rocks but whatever it is they don’t handle that type of country well at all. This country is where the trailing hounds out perform hounds like mine. The scenting conditions in these areas are bad on a good day. Hounds have to be cold nosed and determined enough to take that track step for step if need be in order to get it jumped.
One of the most remarkable things that I ever saw was in Arizona years ago. We cut a lion track in a dry creek bed on a Monday morning. We followed the hounds horseback until dark that day and covered about four and a half miles. Going was slow and these hounds had to keep circling back find it again, and move on. This went on throughout the entire day and the hound owner called them off a half hour before dark. The next morning he took the hounds back in there and restarted the same trail. We ended up jumping that lion about 11AM and treed it by noon. I’m here to tell you my hounds would have been of no use to anyone until 11AM had they been on that hunt. That same man brought those same dogs to hunt with me in Texas and during a cat race five of those hounds quit the race and came out and stood in the road. Clearly those hounds from Arizona made mine look foolish on their own turf, mine did the same where I hunt. This is why I say geographical location is super important when deciding which hounds you want use.
I’ve read that there are 39 breeds of hounds out there, I don’t know if that is true or not but what I do know is that some breeds will perform better in certain areas. Keep that in mind when you start your hound hunting journey. A good rule of thumb is to figure out who the local mentor is (there is always one around), have a look at those hounds because there is a good reason why they are used. Lets face it, no one reaches mentor status by not succeeding in what they do.
