SPEEDDOGS
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Great post Eric!!!!!! I enjoyed it very much. Also I am proud to say I understood everything you was saying. Happy hunting!!!!!!!
Scott, Good points. Well said. It is a difficult thing to get a pack of straight, outside hounds that can catch game. Don't think anyone who's ever tried to do that would dispute it.
However, the 'best' houndsman is like having the 'best' hounds. To someone who three-day field trials or a night hunter, it doesn't matter how well your hounds handle -- if they quit the third day or the 12th hour, they aren't foxhounds in THEIR book. Does that mean that their owners aren't foxhunters?
To someone who runs coyotes, a hound that will kill a seven-pound fox stone dead but will not get within shouting distance of a 45-pound coyote the second time he catches one, is a cull. They look at foxdogs somewhat the way bear hunters look at coon dogs. If your hound will not go toe-to-toe with something that can fight back, is he a real foxhound and are you a real foxhunter? Depends on your agenda.
Also, to a red fox hunter, no matter how well your pack can follow the twists and turns of a darting gray, if they can't take the slack out of a wily red and put him to running and keep him running when he lines out for three miles -- you ain't GOT fox hounds. Are you still a foxhunter?
For the 20th and last time -- I mean no disrespect to hunters that can catch gray fox on the outside and certainly none to those who feed and hunt hounds that will only run the game they desire to pursue. It's tough getting those hounds. It's also tough getting a pen hound that can run the front and stay there in tough company.
It's hard to get a hound with the speed, nose and toughness to catch a well-conditioned coyote that has room to operate and then finish the job.
Good hounds -- and we all have slightly different preferences and objectives -- don't grow on trees or computers. It takes work and some measure of ability to consistently put them afield. They DO come in different packages, though -- just like foxhunters.
I guess what I am saying is this... My wife could go and spend a couple thousand dollars and buy some pen dogs, and do very well in field trials, just by simply showing up and turning them out at cast time. She could also buy a well known outside fox hunters dogs, take them on the outside, and she will not catch a thing, cause there is alot more to it than just turning them loose in a bean field. You may have already covered all of this in some of your earlier post. I never read all of them...not enough Redbull in this area to keep me awake that long. Like I said, call it what you want, your opinion, and my opinion are different.Just seems like you keep trying to justify your opinion by these well thought out post. Just my opinion on it though. Everybody needs to enjoy it while we still can anyway. Call it whatever you want to. I am not a foxhunter, just a washed up deer hunter.
Your wife would have to be careful WHAT 2,000 dollar pen dog she bought. Also, if she planned to win more than one, she might have to learn a bit about conditioning, faults to look for etc. because SOME of those guys winning consistently in pen trials do more than just spend a few thousand and turn em out.
You're right. This is getting pointless and tiresome.
You certainly have every right to put whatever label you choose on what you do. Just don't try to define what I do for me.
WoodDuck, You ain't gonna win this one, but, you know where I stand.
is this not getting old. i am just a old deer hunter that use pens in the off season to keep my hounds in shape. i know that i run in the pen and hunt on the outside. but i am a deer hunter on the out side and may be a field trailer on the inside but only if there is a foxtrail when i am running on the inside. none of this make me a foxhunter. get over it. i do like the way you write just find something else to write about.
Chris, Always good to hear from you. How are the wife and kids?
Don't hold much with t-shirts and labels and stuff. It's kind of like the bumper sticker you have on your truck -- ' the b-llsh-t stops when the tailgate drops'. We both know, lots of times, it doesn't.
Anyway, can't chinwag for long. I've got a girls field lacrosse game to cover. Field lacrosse is in tough shape. The real estate boom has turned a lot of lacrosse fields into strip malls and sushi bars.
The game has gone inside. Box lacrosse they call it. They play it in gyms and hockey rinks and such. Same game, but they cut out a lot of the loops and twirls and got right to the speed and mayhem. If it was any faster and tougher, you'd have to call it hockey.
Anyway, the field lacrosse gals hate it. They sound like that dour old Scotsman who used to be on tv saying ' but it's not oatmeal!'. " it's not lacrosse", they say, but of course, it is.
Anyway, when they get ranting and carrying on, I just tell em what my old foxhunting buddy always recommends -- " move on, ladies. MOVE ON".
Great advice and I'm gonna do just that. Have a great week foxhunting in the wild, the wire or wherever. Your buddy in foxhunting, Scoop.
Brad, Great to know you're on board in this sport of ours. The antis don't want to call us anything but finished.
Good suggestion, about replacing 'foxhunter' with 'houndsman'.
Those magazines -- Chase, Horn, Red Ranger -- that we've all read for years -- instead of calling em foxhunting magazines, we can call em houndsmen magazines.
And that Foxhunters Hall of Fame that includes outside hunters, inside hunters, coyote hunters, red fox hunters, gray fox hunters and even the occasional field trialer -- the one you and I aren't likely to be inducted into any time soon -- we can just call it the Houndsmen's Hall of Fame.
But what about that strain of hounds we run -- the Walker foxhound? Somehow Walker houndsmens hound doesn't sit just right.
Aw heck, let's just call it foxhunting.
Chris, This foxhunting world of ours would be a smaller place without you -- friendlier, but smaller.
Michael, I could have said it longer, but I couldn't have said it better.
Eric, Great post !I just love to hear a good race inside or out. Good hunting!!!JC
Good sense is like beauty -- depends on your point of view.
Good hunting, or whatever label you choose to hang on it.
If you don't listen to your dogs your not truly a foxhunter. So it's okay to hang out with your buddies. That's okay in all but listen to your dogs!!!!!!!!!!
YOUR NOT A FOX HUNTER I AM A FOXHUNTER.NO NO I SAID I WAS A FOXHUNTER . NO I SAID IT .NO I SAID IT FIRST . NO I DID. I WANNA BE A FOXHUNTER... THIS IS POTHETIC IF ANY BODY WANTS TO BASH ME GO FOR IT BUT MAN UP AND CALL ME 910-494-4190PATTERSON
I am a houndsman.When I was fourteen years old I read the book WHERE THE RED FERNS GROW---nine times. I wanted some coon hounds so bad I couldn't stand it but we lived in town and my father never liked dogs. I kept on untill he bought me a bluetick started dog.I would hunt him behind the house on the branch and he treed a few possums in town. My dad as I said didn't like hunting or dogs but he took me and that ol dog coonhunting in the swamps where we had hunting rights on. He would sit in the truck and I would hunt the dog. I also would take him occasionally with a guy that had two trained treeing walkers. Well I was young and the dog had red mange so i had to treat him every week with paramite....back then there was no cure for it. I wasn't able to hunt enough so I gave the dog to another coonhunting buddy of the guy that had the two treeing walkers. Ten years later I met a guy that hunted with that ol bluetick named Lead and he wound up making the fella a cracker jack dog.
Then when I was fifteen my uncle was a foxhunter and he gave me a running walker pup and this fella gave me a year old smallish female black and tan hound about 35 lbs. or so. Well I was into deer hunting then and ran them with the club. I had fun but the dogs stayed lost more than at home. The black and tan got stolen and the Walker got out of the pen at the house and got run over and killed in town. By the way my uncle was a true outside foxhunter for this was in the mid to late seventies and there were few deer around here then. I went with him a few times and his pack caught a gray fox at night and in the woods. He was mad cause he couldn't run him again.
I quit the hound hunting for awhile and still hunted deer some but when I got in my early twenties I got the coonhunting fever again. Well I met several guys my age and we all got pups and started training them. Some got run over, some got lost in deer chases and stolen but we persisted untill we got some good broke coon dogs. I had a pair of Treeing Walkers that would have the coon 99% of the time and I never went to a field trial and didn't care to.
One of the treeing walkers...a gyp...loved to tree squirrels and when she got to be about four years old I quit coon hunting her and squirrel hunted her. I will brag on her...I have yet to see another dog tree squirrels like she did. She was a 40lb dog and could move. If the squirrels were thick --and we only shot the ones she treed-- we killed fifteen squirrels in 400 to 500 yds in hardwoods. If they weren't out good she would hunt out and find them and tree and always had the squirrel.If he wasn't there he was in a hole.
A buddy of mine and I were hunting this dog one evening and he took a .410 pump shot gun and I always took a .22 rifle and either barked em or shot them in the head when I could. No offense, but he couldn't shoot. Well my dog treed about a hundred yds. ahead and we walked up to the tree and stood back about 30 yds. I saw the squirrel and couldn't get him to see it and he wanted to try out that 410 but I was wanting to head shoot him for I rather eat a limb rat than a rabbit but he finally saw the dang squirrel and this tree was at least forty foot tall or more. Well he shot the squirrel or should I say peppered him with the 410 and the squirrel started running up the tree. My hound saw it and by the way she was a hard tree dog but when we shot she would quit barking and start looking. So he is pumping that lil gun and peppering that squirrel till he had him running wide open up that tree and when he hit the top he sailed out of the tree and I wish I had had a video camera for my dog saw the squirrel and started running and looking back at the squirrel as she was having to haul butt for she was gonnna catch him. Well she looked like a baseball player running for a ball hit over his head looking back to catch it and the squirrel wound up at least 40 yds from the tree and the hound barely missjudged the squirrel and she lept up six or eight feet and caught the squirrel in mid air. **** that 410 we should have just knocked him out and let her catch him.
Another time my brother and I went with this dog squirrel hunting. She treed and he had a shotgun and I had the 22. Well I had to show him the squirrel and he shot it and the hound ran to where he fell but no squirrel. she started circling wide open looking for him and we knew he was hit. Well it was fall and we were in hardwoods and the leaves were pretty deep. My bro and I were looking where the squirrel landed and the dog was searching out for him.Well I called her over to where the squirrel had landed and she sniffed around a bit then stuck her nose in a hole that leaves had covered up. The hole was only like five inches in diameter or so and then we saw the wounded squirrels head. We knew all he had to do was go down a little deeper and we'd never get him. Well the squirrel bit my dogs lip and held on and this hound very slowly eased her head out pulling the squirrel out of the hole and you could tell by the look on the dogs face that she knew if she pulled too hard he would let go and go back in the hole so she eased him out then turned her head to get him away from the hole then shook him off and bit him and killed him.
She lived to be thirteen and I hunted her untill she was eight.
Then I trained and ran rabbit beagles for ten years and had alot of fun at that. Then about five years ago I got into the foxhounds. I run in pens some and on the outside.
I am a houndsman and hunter. I appreciate any kind of good hunting dog and I have had a lot of fun with my own dogs, as well as, other folks hounds. I also have alot of respect for the cat hunters,mountain lion,bear, and any kind of hound hunter and his hounds along with the foxhunters and coonhunters.
I have learned alot about training all kinds of hounds from other people and some things I figured out myself.
It takes all the different kinds of hunters and hounds to make this good earth go round.
YOU DONE JUST WHAT I THOUGHT YOU WOULD 
HAVE A GREAT DAY. PATTERSON
NAH NO ARGUING HERE JUST CALL IT LIKE I SEE IT. I MUST OF STEPPED ON SOME TOES WITH THE FIRST POST. IF THE SHOE FITS WERE IT. BUT DAGON ITS THE SAME OLD SONG AND DANCE. TAKE YOUR OWN ADVICE AND GIVE IT UP. ITS ALL GRAVY PATTERSON
PATTERSON