hey thinks for the info and looks like some good dogs.[snip] So I am looking into the breeds and was thinking about getting some walkers when I can get the money and I finish school. I am going to start college in a year. so buy the time that I start and finish college I hope to get some hounds and some exprence with hunting with them.
I generally recommend against new hound hunters buying new/young/green hounds. You'll be learning how to hunt and learning how to train hounds, so plain and simple - you will be a crappy teacher for a new/young/green hound.
Everyone wants a pup to start out with and learn together, but it generally doesn't work out well, and the dog is the one which suffers the most to have an inexperienced trainer.
Find a local to hunt with, learn how to hunt before you ever consider buying a dog. Then either buy a proven dog, or buy a pup and ONLY hunt him with your local guy's proven dogs. Dogs learn from eachother 100 times faster and 100 times better from other dogs than they ever will from a human. Dogs don't learn well from trainers who don't know how to train - remember that, at admit that about yourself before you ruin a potentially good dog (or 2, or 10).
Do you have any experience with Plott hounds?
I've hunted with more, but I've only owned exactly two Plotts. One was meant for hunting, relatively disappointing as a coon hound, which is why I don't have him any more. The other was a stray which showed up at the ranch, he made a better cattle dog than he ever did a coonhound. I know guys who do well with Plotts as boarhounds, but I've never seen one hunt fur like a proper coonhound. I would recommend against them for coon hunting.
I want to start coon hunting or maybe coyote and boar.
I would recommend AGAINST trying to have your dogs hunt multiple species. A master of all is a master of none, and it's hard for a dog to understand whether he's hunting one thing today, or another tomorrow.
[QUOTE=Kai;4258991]Do you know any breeders in Missouri or Arkansas?
Not any more, but they're pretty easy to find.
Do the Jacks catch or tree the coons?
Jack's aren't a 1 for 1 replacement for hounds, they're a completely different tool. It's kinda like a rifle compared to a handgun in how they hunt and kill.
It's not their instinct to track and tree coons and they don't have the nose for tracking which hounds have, but they will learn to do track and tree as they hunt with the hounds. Since their short little legs can't keep up with the longer legged hounds on the run, they tend to walk along with us and hunt at a shorter range than the hounds.
Terrier instinct (bred-in) is to go to ground and kill furry stuff, so they tend to be a little less selective for species at first than hounds, and they're more prone to run off and kill wood rats and opossums in the middle of a hunt than the hounds. But when the hounds put a coon in a hole in a creek bank, the hounds stay outside and bay, while the Jacks run in after it.
Where they really shine is during daytime hunting. They're bred to fit where hounds can't, like in holes in banks or under old barn foundations. The picture taken on the tailgate with our Jack's were all killed by the jacks during the day under a grainery and barn foundations at a few abandoned farmsteads I own. Any day after a big nightfall snow, we'll hit old farmsteads and run coons out from under the buildings. We've pulled coons out of the attics in abandoned homes too - stick the Jack's up into the attic and they'll bring them down, either dragging them dead, or with the coon chasing them, mad as he11.
Their little jaws are high pressure and their teeth a lot smaller/pointier than that of a hound. A couple Jack's killing a coon will perforate the pelt like crazy if you don't get them off of it pretty quickly. They're more apt to get drowned by a coon in deep water than a hound dog (got wet more than once saving my dogs from being drowned), and they're a lot more agile in the fight - as well as a lot less cautious. Most hounds will surround a coon and bay until it trees, or wait until a few of them can get a quick stretch together, but jack's will usually bail in on it whether they're alone or not. Odd as it sounds, the jacks are more prone to kill one alone too, since they're more agile.
It's a totally different hunt when using them alone, but when using them together, it's highly efficient.