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Finding hunting dogs

A

Aeds151

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 16, 2018
Messages
2,448
Anyone run across someones hunting dog in bad shape while out hiking/hunting? I have lost count now how many I have found on deaths door the last few years with $600 worth of gps around their neck. I found another one today that couldnt walk. I got him back to owner. Is this all just a part of running dogs? Is this acceptable?


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It’s not acceptable, but it happens. The gps tells you where the dog is, but catching up to him is another story. A lot of times running dogs is more trouble than it’s worth
 
What type of dogs are you finding? A bird dog should be unusual but a hound I can see getting past a GPS easily especially if there is a river or highway nearby. Dog crosses river and hunter goes back to the truck and has to go outside the range of the GPS collar to the nearest bridge and never gets back on the dog for whatever reason. Still not very acceptable and I know great dogs with bad owners, and bad dogs with good owners. Are you in a very remote area that roads are tough to navigate to get within a few miles of anywhere?

Three examples I have been involved with dogs getting lost, two hounds and one bird dog:

I run bird dogs, I ran into a guy that ran hounds and asked if I wanted to tag along one day. Said he had a new rabbit dog he was working and wanted to run it along side my bird dog. He put the collar on his dog and set it on the ground and it was gone. We spent the entire day chasing it. Over two highways and over 20 miles into the dark that dog took about a straight line and ended up a mile from this guys house when we caught up to it and figured it was just headed home.

I hunted with a houndsman another time that had one dog go one direction while the pack went another. We stayed with the pack and went out of range for the dog headed the other direction. Once we got all the dogs in the truck he went looking for the missing dog. He spent a days driving around the mountainside and never picked it back up on the GPS…. Unfortunate but it happened.

My brother had a bird dog, he lives on about 50 acres of woods beside a well used state park about an hour north of the city but down a dirt road on the back side of the park. He was outside working in the yard and the dog was just running around his property like it does every day. The dog was seen from someone in a car saw driving down the dirt road, called him over and thought he was lost so they put it in their car and took it home. Found my brothers number because his dog was chipped and called him. Where they told him they found the dog was 100 yards from his house I his property. They made him drive over an hour to pick his dog up in the city that they basically took out of his yard….
 
Bird dogs and deer dogs are apples to oranges. A bird dog can be a family dog until it is time to work. A deer dog lays in a pin of it's own crap until it is time to run deer for guys that chase the pack around in trucks. The deer/dog drivers actually work. Yes, that is common for guys that run deer with dogs. They are a cheap tool that usually the club pays for out of dues. I have hunted with clubs that run dogs, not anymore though. The dogs are usually malnourished, cut pads, torn legs, scars from fighting the other dogs, very mistreated.
 
Loopwing said:
Bird dogs and deer dogs are apples to oranges. A bird dog can be a family dog until it is time to work. A deer dog lays in a pin of it's own crap until it is time to run deer for guys that chase the pack around in trucks. The deer/dog drivers actually work. Yes, that is common for guys that run deer with dogs. They are a cheap tool that usually the club pays for out of dues. I have hunted with clubs that run dogs, not anymore though. The dogs are usually malnourished, cut pads, torn legs, scars from fighting the other dogs, very mistreated.
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PETA has entered the forum. Lol
 
For every idiot hound hunter there is equally an idiot bow hunter, that’s just how all of the this stuff works in life, I’ve owned hounds my entire life and they are treated better than most peoples pets. We don’t live in a state where hounds can run deer and I can’t imagine the problems that must cause, I have access to 1000’s of acres of private land to run hounds for serious deer hunters that hate coyotes, they know we stay out until deer season is over and has settled down, usually we get a call that they want us to start. My family owns over 300 acres, I’ve already had the law at my house once this year over a bow hunter shooting a deer from the road and not retrieving it, leaving it there to rot… on my posted land… but I don’t blame bow hunters.. idiots come in all shapes and sizes with different hobbies.
 
Loopwing said:
Not at all man. Have you ever been a part of a dog club?
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I was only making a joke it was more in general not about you. I wonder if peta would be more worried about the dogs or deer.

I haven’t been in a dog club but I have been on several dog hunts. My neighbor growing up had beagles that he had in kennels year round and he would barely feed them, and was always yelling at them to shut up. They never got played or exercised and lived a seemingly miserable existence. Most people do not know how to take care of regular pets dogs much less high drive hunting ones. It sucks to hear that so many of the clubs are so hard on the dogs. I know that’s not the case everywhere.
 
Not trying to start anything with running dogs. This dog was either after coon, bear, or hog I believe anyway. Maybe even on private land before I found him on public. Is it common to give/know how to give the dogs IV’s due to this happening in the sport?


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Aeds151 said:
Not trying to start anything with running dogs. This dog was either after coon, bear, or hog I believe anyway. Maybe even on private land before I found him on public. Is it common to give/know how to give the dogs IV’s due to this happening in the sport?


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No it’s not common to know how to give dogs IV’s, the owner of that dog was an idiot more than likely, with the technology now to find and locate dogs there is little excuse for stuff like this to happen, clowns operate like that, does stuff happen, sure… not much though if your diligent on how you run and operate.
 
You can’t put weight on a decent deer dog. I grew up running deer with dogs and a filled out dog will die running a deer. It’s definitely a fine line, but you found the dog on NF land and it was turned out on private…..what you don’t know is when it was turned. Or where it was turned out. That dog may very well have been on its own for a week, who knows. And the comment about the tracking end of the collar is spot on. You have to get out of the range of the collar oftentimes in your search and if you can’t get back in range you can’t track the dog. Lastly, everyone running dogs in that club most likely has that collar’s information stored in their receiver and they’re all looking for it.

Catch the dog, get the phone number off the collar and call the owner of the dog.
 
Aeds151 said:
Anyone run across someones hunting dog in bad shape while out hiking/hunting? I have lost count now how many I have found on deaths door the last few years with $600 worth of gps around their neck. I found another one today that couldnt walk. I got him back to owner. Is this all just a part of running dogs? Is this acceptable?


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Deer dogs.
Nope never in my opinion. Sadly it happens alot more than people know.
I am sorry and i may chap some cheeks on this one but im anti deer drives and i am a total anti dogging deer, bear, hog,lions
its just brutal.
 
gcr0003 said:
I wonder if peta would be more worried about the dogs or deer.
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Dogs first, easier to drum up sympathy for the mistreated cousin of someone's prized possession who lives at the foot of the bed.
 
@Loopwing is not lying. I’m in VA in the heart of hunting deer with dogs. Most of the dogs I see are poorly nourished and in season are run hard as a general rule. The club I’m in now does much better than others I have seen. For example they won’t turn the dogs out when we have had ice and snow because it cuts their pads. But I have seen terrible things from other clubs. One club I hunted with years ago literally left the dogs in small pens all year and they only came out the 5 weeks of gun season. At the end of season they would only keep the dogs who did well. I saw one member pull out a pistol and shoot a poor performing dog in the head and toss it in the burn barrel.

If would much prefer if dogs weren’t used here for deer. I pretty much consider the serious season over once general gun season opens and the dogs come out.
 
gcr0003 said:
I was only making a joke it was more in general not about you. I wonder if peta would be more worried about the dogs or deer.

I haven’t been in a dog club but I have been on several dog hunts. My neighbor growing up had beagles that he had in kennels year round and he would barely feed them, and was always yelling at them to shut up. They never got played or exercised and lived a seemingly miserable existence. Most people do not know how to take care of regular pets dogs much less high drive hunting ones. It sucks to hear that so many of the clubs are so hard on the dogs. I know that’s not the case everywhere.
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Honestly it is the case
bowhuntr09 said:
@Loopwing is not lying. I’m in VA in the heart of hunting deer with dogs. Most of the dogs I see are poorly nourished and in season are run hard as a general rule. The club I’m in now does much better than others I have seen. For example they won’t turn the dogs out when we have had ice and snow because it cuts their pads. But I have seen terrible things from other clubs. One club I hunted with years ago literally left the dogs in small pens all year and they only came out the 5 weeks of gun season. At the end of season they would only keep the dogs who did well. I saw one member pull out a pistol and shoot a poor performing dog in the head and toss it in the burn barrel.

If would much prefer if dogs weren’t used here for deer. I pretty much consider the serious season over once general gun season opens and the dogs come out.
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He speaks the truth. I am a VA boy too.
 
I grew up in NJ and now live in Maryland, never heard much about deer dogs until the last few years. I don't have an opinion as a result, but can see that it would be a fine line, you want the dogs lean and hungry and hardened so they chase the deer and don't give up, but it's hard to walk that line without starting to mistreat the animal. I'm hoping that if you look at the deer dog owners graph, the majority is plenty of people with working hounds that keep great care of their animals, but work them, and unfortunately there's people that mistreat them and people that think dogs shouldn't have jobs at all and should be on you bed on the opposite sides of the bell curve. I've never found one in the woods myself. If I did and it let me get my hands on it, id do the same with a dog I found in the city, check for a number and if none found, call the wife and say we have a new dog before actually dropping it off with local animal control
 
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