i have a male bluetick and a female walker. im 16 and just started. what do you guys think is the best coon dog? Do I have a good pair (bluetick, Walker)? also if i bred my dog so i could get a pup do you think ill be able to give away the rest for FREE?
There's honestly no way to answer the question of what is the best coondog. It depends on every little thing. If you want a dog that hunts with its nose and goes and goes and goes (out of the country if it has to) in order to find and tree a coon, and one that won't come back to its master all the time because it's too busy hunting, then a hound is likely your "best" bet. Some guys like that. Other guys hate that and prefer a dog that hunts a circle or a strip with a mixture of nose, eyes, ears and brains and comes back to check in now and then. For these guys, there are the mountain cur strains and feist dogs. For these guys, curs and feists are the best and they wouldn't hunt a hound if they had to. Other guys would only hunt a hound and wouldn't hunt with a cur if they had to. So the "best" coondog is a title that will always be up for grabs and never really claimed by any one breed, thoughsome guys will always say and act like their breed of choice is the best. It's like trying to decide if a Labrador ora Chessie makes a better duck blind dog or if an English pointer is better on quail than an English Setter or Brittany.Or whether a SiberianHusky is a better sleddog than an Alaskan Malamute. None of the breeds bred for a specificare better. Just different for different variation of the same task. Now, any treedog breed is going to be better in general at treeing game than a retriever breed, but there are probably exceptions in both groups.
Now if you breed your dogs, you could give them away if you want, but your chances will be all the better if the parents are good hunters. Good luck to you!
those two breeds usually make a good cross but hard to get rid of because most coon hunters want a dog with papers so they can hunt it in the comp hunts.
myself i don't coon hunt i'm a big game hunter and perfer plotts. though they do make good coon dogs if ya get the right bloodline.
I've got 2 Bluetick/Plott mix pups (10mnths) and they are great on coon still need some work before I start hunting them real hard but they've done everything I've wanted so far.
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It depends on every little thing. If you want a dog that hunts with its nose and goes and goes and goes (out of the country if it has to) in order to find and tree a coon, and one that won't come back to its master all the time because it's too busy hunting, then a hound is likely your "best" bet. Some guys like that.
i like walkers for all the reasons swosumike mentioned, but you'll need a set of legs cause they are all business
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We have a Walker/Black & Tan cross that is the coonhunting-est dog you've ever seen. She is amazing to watch. We also have a Redtick/Black & Tan cross that looks like a yellow lab with long ears and a curly tail. She really doesn't hunt much. The Redtick or English houndwe have is a crazy hunting lion dog. It seems to be more about the dog itself rather than the breed.
Two suggestions though... 1. treat your coonhound like a family pet. My husband raised coonhounds and beagles most his life, and they were true kennel dog. Hunting is the only time they got doggie-loving (at least they hunted them all the time). I refused to have a dog stuck in a kennel that we just feed and don't pay attention to other than that. My husband now has a totally different outlook. If you treat coonhounds like family, they will hunt harder and better for you. We have an aquaintence that has national treeing champ black & tans, and those dogs are even more spoiled than ours. Nothing wrong with a coonhound on the couch!
2. sometime you can have trouble with very hard hunting dogs getting along with the rest of the pack. We have 5 large dogs, and the W/B & T cross can get pretty rough with the rest if she hasn't been hunted enough.
Either way coonhounds (and german shorthairs) are the greatest dogs.
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No way to say which is best by generalization. In my opinion, there's not a better looking coon dog alive than a blanket backed, red headded, clean (no ticking) Walker hound.
Don't miss the "I want to go hunting" barking in the kennel!
i've got a kennel full of plott and plott cross dogs, like i said before i'm a big game hunter. i've been hunting hard lately and catching a fair amount of game. and as bad as i hate to admit it the cross bred dogs are doin a little better than the pure plotts. i've got a plott/walker cross that's really firein hard on bear and hogs and she's only a year and a half old.
I've hunted quite a variety of dogs from walkers, to redbones, to redticks. It all depends on if you want a dog that will run 2 miles for a coon or a dog that will try the egde of the field for a hot trail and come back if they are all old trails. I don't have a preferance. The walkers seemed to tree real quick when they picked up on a trail. the redticks seemed to be the most consistent. but i honestly think it makes no difference which breed you have. A lot of it relies on the training and where you are hunting.
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Hunt hard and often. One day you won't be able to.
the best coondog
