decio

1)Is it possible to hunt (boar, deer, bear, moose) with a single scent hound, for example, with only one american foxhound or a bloodhound alone? Or every hunt with a scent hound involve a pack with dozens of dogs? I only see videos of people hunting with a lot of them.
2) What is the best scent hound for hunting big game?
3) Are there good books or dvds about training scent hounds for hunting?
4) Are they really necessary? For example, I know you can't train a non-pointing breed to point, but can you train a lab or a gsd to trail the game the same way you can train a scent hound?
5) I don't know about scent hound field trials. How do I know that the parents were bred to work?

Thanks.

MudderChuck

I don't know exactly what your expectations are. Even in the same breed, there are lines of that breed that have slightly different tendencies or talents.
The last true scent hound I had was a gun dog, pointer retriever stock. I watched the puppies and picked the one that was most interested in the scents around him and seemed a bit more independent of the pack. His nose went right to the ground and he followed his nose and not the other puppies.
Prey drive is another tendency, it is stronger in some dogs than others. If it gets too strong it can get hard to control your pooch.
Most dogs have good noses and most can be trained to scent track. to some it comes more naturally than others.
You have to understand a dogs nose, one guy put it the best, a good nose dog can smell a single turd in a cesspool. The trick is a dog has to learn what scents to follow and some are born with it.
I knew a guy who often went Hare Hunting, Hare tend to bunker down and hide, You can hunt them with dogs that flush them or dogs that scent them and point. This guy had a Dachshund, that he often had to carry around. That dog would smell a Hare, pin it with his eyes while riding around in a shoulder sack.
My scent hound could follow a blood trail near 40 MPH. I mean tiny drops that you could barely see.
If you are going to hunt a single dog it behooves you to train it to stay close. And one that is prone to baying rather than closing and fighting. A thousand dollar dog, with hundreds of hours of training invested, can be torn up pretty badly by a Hog, Bobcat, Puma or pack of Yotes. Vet bills aren't cheap.

One year a Weimaraner won the German tracking trials, uncle of my Dog.

I have a Terrier now that is scent dominant. I use him for tracking wounded game. I have to keep him on a long leash, he has poor judgment and has no idea about self-preservation. I've baited Hogs with roadkill Deer. Tossed the carcass out in a likely spot and came back the next morning and only found some bone splinters and fur. My first thought was that could have been my dog.

decio

Thanks for answering. So I prefer to use a GSD or a lab, whom are used to track missing people and drugs, than an american foxhound or a bloodhound.

Oldtimr

Don't forget, there are no out of the box ready dogs, unless you want to spend many thousands getting a fully trained one. It takes time and consistent training to make a good dog that does what you want no matter what the breed. After you gt the pup you train, train, train for the results you want, if you don't know how to train you find someone that does or you buy references that tell you how to train the the results you want. I don't even know what to make of this,
(Is it possible to hunt (boar, deer, bear, mouse) with a single scent hound) unless it is a typo. Your profile says you are in Brazil. Are there even bear in Brazil and on the chance you meant moose instead of mouse are there moose in Brazil. I could be wrong but I don't think so.

decio

A meant moose of course, sorry for that. In Brazil, you can only legally hunt wild boar because they are not from here. Usually, the hunters use american foxhounds as track dogs and dogo argentino as catch dogs, but I don't like the idea of using catch dogs. In the neighbor countries like Uruguay and Argentina you can hunt deer. I used moose and bear just as an example.

Oldtimr

You cannot hunt moose with dogs in North America and only in a few areas can you hunt bear and deer with dogs.

decio

I did not know that. At least you can hunt boar with dogs, as they are a plague. Looks like you can hunt moose with dogs in some part of Europe, like Estonia and Finland (I can't post links).

Mike Salyards

I hunted bear and cats with scent hounds, ( walkers, plots and a lot of hounds that were mixed breeds including black and tans, redbones and blue and red ticks. ) After 22 years the state I live in outlawed dogs to hunt big game . I normally ran 3 - 4 dogs and spent half of my yearly income hunting them and training them . Everyday! Not all dogs are cut out to hunt big game. A good coon dog may catch a cougar for you and be totally worthless on bears.

Idaholewis

Mike Salyards

Ya bear hunting with dogs is defiantly a younger mans sport and very addictive if you get hooked. If they ever brought it back I couldn't do a good dog justice. All though I'd still be doing it if they hadn't pushed us out of the woods. I was supposed to be dead from cancer 6 1/2 years ago and just passed my July 24th date when I was told I prolly had 6 months in 2012. Didn't have time to die I guess. The dog hunting was the most fun I could have ever had. I hunted with a few guys from the coast, both here and over there. It's funny, over here some of there dogs were pretty slow. But when I hunted over there , my fast dogs were almost like cripples. They didn't know how to get threw the brush. But every race was fun! One time we had a bear bayed up over by Mt Baker. I couldn't figure out why everyone was standing there listening cause it was right below the road. So I charged in to kill it and got introduced to devils club. Live and learn.