Kyle wrote:Steven
The DD is a versatile hunting dog not a hound. They will track a rabbit just like a beagle but they will not abandoned the handler and stay after the rabbit like a beagle will. They are used to flush out rabbits or hares and line them out. Once this is done they will come back. When tracking a bleeding hare they will stick longer in anticipation of the retrieve. The two most common ways to hunt hare with DDs is to walk through cover and hope you get a shot when the DD flushes the hare or some dogs point them and you work the point. The other is driven hunts were you post standers and drive the cover with DD to make sure you flush them all out.
Unless it is legal to use dogs to make deer drives where you live you don't want them chasing deer. When you are recovering wounded deer it is important that the dog is trained to follow the blood. If the dog chases deer indiscriminately you will have problems recovering wounded game. It is common to have several fresher deer tracks crossing the track of the wounded animal you are trying to recover. If your dog switches to these you will not find the deer you are trying to track. That is why the blood tracking training is so important.
As far as problems, that depends on the hunter and the dog. Some upland hunters get pissy if a dog smells anything other than the bird they are after. If spending twenty seconds watching a dog trail a bunny out of sight does not bother you then there will not be a problem. It does not take long for a DD to line out a hare and get back to hunting with you. There are some dogs that are unbalanced in there tracking. Chasing bunnies is a problem with some DDs. It all depends on how much passion the dog has for tracking and chasing.
One thing that does not get talked about much is how many birds DDs point after they have tracked them down. Some bird dog purists are not satisfied to have an outstanding bird hunting dog. They want the dog to look a certain way while finding birds. I mostly hunt ruffed grouse in WI. Sometimes when I am hunting the grouse have fed along the trails and are done moving. My dog will constantly be putting her nose to the ground and trailing off on a grouse track. She will track the bird through the cover and then point it at the end. This is really effective for grouse hunting but some people do not want to see a dog with its nose down. They want to see the dog head high tearing up the cover. As you can see some of your questions are a matter of preference.
Kyle
This is what I said to a guy who was wondering this.
Steven wrote:All this said, I've heard some say that training for tracking furrred game will create problems when trying to bird hunt . . . the dog getting off on a deer or rabbit. It seems we jump a lot in the areas we've pheasant hunted. Has this been an experience of those who have trained for fur tracking or is it easily manageable through training to be able to call your dog off a track. I harken back to my beagling days and remember how hard it was to call those little suckers off a track, though! They didn't quite get the training this dog will because the expectations were different, and often we were content leaving them for a few days to return and pick up later. Usually we'd end up with enough dogs left to make a pack and keep hunting.
Thoughts, please . . . . . Thanks.
After chasing hundreds of hares with no reward other than the thrill of tracking, the time the DD will spend tracking a hare while bird hunting keeps getting shorter. If you go out in the winter with some friends and make hare pushes they will pick up on it and go farther but they will not stay after them as long as a hound. Nor will your airedales. You said...
hicntry wrote:The dogs are wasting time here but learning all the new scents like ground squirrels here at the old corral. At this point, it doesn't really matter what they are scenting because they are learning what that nose is for out here. They are about 70 yards out here
The dogs are about 250 yards out here and you can just see one moving into the brush. As I drive through the area, they just roam and explore all the new scents. One day soon, they will find a hog , I will kill it, and suddenly that one scent will have real meaning to them. Not a good idea to be shooting ground squirrels for them.
So it seems you understand dogs putting more focus on what you are hunting. Just to clear the air if you took a DD and hunted it only on big game it would track and pursue big game as well or better than any other non hound breed. Let's face it Airedales are not hounds or versatile hunting dogs. I have never hunted with an Airedale but many big game hunters have tried crossing hounds with Airedales in hopes of improving grit. It always turns out to be a failure and bear hunters in WI. have given up on the idea. There is no improvement in grit and the crosses can’t track for crap. You would have a hard time convincing me that Airedales are adequate trackers.
I was just following this thread when you made this statement.
hicntry wrote:Actually Jon, if you want to beat that one again, go start your own thread in the appropriate forum. I am showing how a tracking/trailing dog is started here. No leash needed.
Don't bother crying about your thread going off topic. You can't make references to others and expect them to remain silent because this is your thread. Bill Athens took your thread off topic with this post.
blathens wrote:As an example of misinterpretation. Don used the term "lesser" dogs several times in some of the previous threads that got a lot of reaction from some of the DD guys thinking that Don was referring to their dogs and DD's in general compared to his airedales. I viewing some of the older threads I found that Don used that term to refer to some of his own dogs that were not the alpha or dominate dogs in his pack. So, the term was not used to describe a breed but to describe the position of any dog in comparison to an alpha. At least that is how I understood it to be.
Bill
So if you are not happy with the way things are going chastise him.
Kyle
