Question for you squirrell dog hunters

[416wbymag]

I have been thinking about picking up a dog and giving it a shot... I grew up with coon dogs but that was a long time ago.

I want to make this dog a house/hunting dog, which I don't think would be too big a problem but I am hoping to find out a few answers.

I would of course try to pick up a started dog. I luckily have a brother that used to swap around with Rita Barger and her Jack Russells, so I am thinking of going to Bill for one of his feist.

The questions I have are:

1. Do you guys use tracker collars, or are the dogs as a rule easy to call off hunt. I have 1800 acres in wartburg I can hunt and would hate to lose a dog.

2. Do you have to hunt the dog often (once trained) to keep them sharp or is it in them for life (like a border collie herding)

3. Do different types of dogs hunt differently? I know with bird dogs, some hunt close,some farther away.

I am hoping to find a couple local guys I can tag along with and watch the dogs work before I make the plunge.


Any answers or ideas you guys have would be greatly appreciated...

 

[cruff10]

1. No I don't use one. But if I did I would get a Garmin Astro! (I want one bad but $700 for 2 dogs is hard to fork out right now) I have been lucky and my fiest mind pretty good. They generally stay within 400 yards unless they are chasing one around the tree tops! Come pretty good when called.

2. Some dogs are just naturally good and don't need much training. But to have a great dog just like in any sport you must keep them in the woods as much as possible. It all matters how much time you really want to put in a dog.

3. Yes, different dogs will hunt differtly. Some far, some close some mid distance away. Some will hunt by sight some by noise or some will wind. A squirrel dog will come in many different hunting styles.

If you want alot of trees, and don't care to go to a empty tree or den trees then a stronger noise dog you may want. If you want a dog that when it barks the squirrel is there, you may want a more sighted tree dog.

Bark is another option as well. Some like a dog that will bark on track, some only want them to bark when treed.

A fiest is breed to bark only when treed and a cur is mostly breed to bark and track and treed. That doesn't mean a fiest wont bark on track, or a cur will, just that is mostly what is breed into those type of dogs.


Luckly I have a ok setup, one of my fiest will mostly tree on sight/sound but will track one up if it is a HOT track. The other one will lay back and bark on sight if the squirrel timbers out, she just now started treeing on hot tracks, but is young and this is her first treeing year.

Barger fiest has a very good reputation.

A website you need to invest alot of time in is www.sqdog.com it has a great forum section and will answer any questions you may have about squirrel dogs. Bill Barger is even on the site as well.

I live 7 miles south of Wartburg and would not mind going with you one day.....