Remember a Redbone may be able to swim, but do you want your redbone diving into icy water several times a morning to retrieve a duck? A creek crossing or two in the winter coon woods is one thing, but Redbones don't have the coat of a lab or golden, and jumping into cold water over and over again could take its toll on the pup. I think if you get a Redbone, you're going to have what's called a meat dog, and you're going to have a gritty dog that wants to kill and be rough and be an old rascal hunting dog, not so much one of these "gentleman's" retrievers/pointers. We treedog hunters are a little different breed and we expect different things from our dogs becuase they require different abilities. Treedogs aren't bred to retrieve so much as they are bred to aggressively push something to a tree. Tracking and treeing should be what they want to do. Now, I have a mountain cur that will point quail, but it was never expected of him. He just did it one day. However, curs have a lot of mix in their gene pool - they've been around a long time and don't have the same refined origins as some of the hounds, but I guess you could still get lucky and have something that want's to do it all. Good luck.