I hunt with beagle/walker crosses and walkers in north Florida. Hunting with hounds is a way of life around here and alot of the hunters in my county and surrounding counties hunt this way for deer. The terrain here is usually very thick pine timberland and hardwood bottoms-traditional dog hunting areas.
We use cold nose hounds that can trail a track off the road (while barking) that can be up to 12 hours old. We normally look for tracks before daylight and start putting dogs out once we have enough potential buck tracks. We only shoot forked horn bucks all season, so it works for us better to put on potential buck tracks and trail them instead of casting dogs in a block to jump deer. Our county has a very high deer population for Florida and we don't want to run does all day long either.
In other parts of the south they drop alot of standers off in the potential deer crossings, but we stay close to our trucks so we can be mobile quickly when the deer/dogs cross out of the block.
Dog hunting clubs here range from 40,000-90,000 continous acres, so dogs very rarely get off our property. This is the number one problem with dog hunting in other states.
If you ever get to dog hunt and get in a good buck chase, it will get you hooked quickly. The adrenaline rush you get while running dogs is greater than hunting out of a stand to me. To hear the dogs running a buck your way and then hearing a deer running through the swamp to you is very exciting.
I took a relative of my wife's that has never dog hunted this past year. He's strictly a trophy deer hunter from north Ga. and never has dog hunted before. We got on a good buck race and the other standers missed him when he crossed out of the block.
We got around the next block and the buck turned coming our way, I told him to get ready and watch 30 yds in front of us- I knew he was going to come there and cross. I heard the buck coming and motioned to him. The buck hit the road and stopped, and he missed him.
I asked "did you hit it?" but I knew that he didn't. He was visibly shaken up and couldn't even speak. He finally said "I was shaking so bad that I think I knocked down the tree limbs 3 feet behind him. He was hooked to say the least. He said "In all the times I have taken nice bucks, I have never been that shaken up before." I laughed and said "I know the feeling, now you see why I don't sit in the stand when I can hunt with dogs."