68charger_guy

I have always hunted non registered beagles and have always heard that registered beagles are not any good for the places i hunt. I hunt alot of fence rows and cotton fields and every registed beagle i have ever seen has always been too slow to trail the rabbits through the fields. I have always wondered which is better. Id like to get your guys opinions on this matter.

SWOSUMike

I honestly doubt papers have anything to do with the quality of the hound. They simply mean the ancestry has been tracked for the most part.

Dryridge

The One the runs rabbits the best is the one best suited for your area. Papers don't have a thing to do with it.

68charger_guy

Well, i think the that the reason the registered beagle were slower is that theytrainedfor field trial hunts. But i guess that is just in how you train them.I personally have no preference but its just what ive always heard.

Thanks for the input

turkey harvester

I don't have a registered dog in my herd, and I would put all 3 up against any registered dog around. I have had registered dogs in the past and you pay for only the papers.

Criggster

A man once told me, "papers on a man are like papers on a dog, they don't mean nothin."

SWOSUMike

You got to think about a few things. Papers aren't necessarily good or bad. They can in fact be great, or they can be worthless. Papers sometimes mean that somebody cared enough about the dogs to carefully register them and keep their lineage so they could learn about what crosses produce what dogs. That is a very good benefit, and sometimes you don't have that same assurance with grade dogs (and of course sometimes you don't even have that assurance with papered dogs, either). Having papers can mean that someone was meticulous and did things right. They can also mean that a person just bred dogs because they were out of champion lines but not necessarily good parents. That is when there is a problem. Some benefits I see to grade dogs is that there is a chance that someone was not worried about registries but was focused primarily on breeding dogs that get the job done. However, it can also mean that the pups can't be registered because somebody a few generations back couldn't guarantee what the pups were out of.

You see, papers aren't really good or bad in every situation. It varies. To say it makes all the difference or no difference at all could both be incorrect in different situations. You really can't say that papered dogs are bad dogs because, put plainly, there are probably a whole bunch of papered dogs that will flat out work in the field. At the same time, plenty of grade dogs can probably get it done as well. You have to look at the breeding (which is sometimes easier when there are papers) to see what you want, not the fact of whether they are registered or not.

Here is another way to look at it. I have mountain curs. I have puppy papers on them both but have not registered either one of them. If it is true that registered dogs are bad, then that means my dogs are good dogs as we speak because they aren't registered, but if I sent in the papers tomorrow, they could suddenly be bad dogs because they are no longer grade. See, that logic doesn't really work. Just a way to look at it and see just how much it doesn't matter.

PreacherTony

I agree with this statement ... bloodlines can matter though, but the best rabbit dog I have ever seen was a beagle terrier mix ... that dog was small and could fit in the rabbit holes ... unreal!

I currently hunt behind 2 beagles that do not have papers and they are awesome dogs .....

Papers will NEVER replace running the dogs ... period. The more you take them out, the better they will most likely become.

As far as how fast or how slow ... A Basset runs beagles very slow, yet they produce wonderfully ..... great rabbit dog

So don't worry, and put the dog on rabbits as soon as you get it as a pup .. they sell scent you can use also . ..... WHAT A BLAST!!