topdog
UKC Forum Member
Registered: Apr 2004
Location: Wisconsin
Posts: 1120 |
First night out this year
I took Gun for a hunt close to home tonight. He hasn't been out since last fall so all things considered, he did a good enough job tonight.
This first track was pretty cool...I drove up in the field across from the house and parked up along the line fence. I led him down the field road for a ways and cut him loose. He went maybe 50 yards and struck...he didn't say much but then opened up more back towards where I had the truck parked. The dogs at home were only maybe 100 yards away from where I parked so they were all going nuts. Gun ran it good and then located and rolled it over. I walked back towards him and he was treed about 20 feet from the truck right off the old gate where the road used to cut through the fence line.
Gun...first tree made.
I praised him up good but didn't give him the coon...I was so close to home I thought it would only make the other dogs more crazy.
I let him go again further down the field road and he struck just before the corn field ended at the woods. He bailed into the corn field and got hung up on the fence but soon got off it and circled around and back into the woods. He went in maybe 40 yards, located and treed.
Gun...second tree made.
I took him on down the woods road and cut him again. He went all the way down around the pond and over the dam. He struck maybe 200 yards down the ditch and ran it out into a really bad weed patch with timber laid down from making the road. He got through it and treed on the last big tree before the next field...
Gun...third tree made..
He only got to taste one of the three coons he treed but it was enough by the looks of it.
I let him go one more time and he got out into a swampy creek bottom and started pecking away at a cold track. I walked all the way back to the truck and drove back down to the road and to the bottom where he was messing around. When I got about half way down, the Garmin said he was treed...I got down and he was treed but it was in a huge brush pile along the drain ditch between two fields. It was enough for me so I loaded him up and headed home.
He was rusty as heck and stumbled around a bit..making a couple of those tracks seem harder than they were but...I guess I can't complain too much considering that he got three coons on the wood.
Next time out, Yank and Dagger will get the work...that should be exciting to see...Dagger is turning into a nice hound in a lot of ways.
I know one thing for sure after hunting tonight...I can't wait for frost so the weed thickets get burned off and flattened out and so the leaves get off the trees...I really don't much like it this time of year but...we gotta get these dogs in shape for the hide season and now is the time to start.
I know that it takes several times out before dogs that are laid up for awhile, get back in the right kind of shape. Even though Gun treed 3 coons tonight...I could tell he wasn't the same dog that he was last fall.
I'm glad to be back at it and I look forward to some good nights while getting these hounds back into shape.
__________________
Tom Solberg
T-Top Redbones
Unrealistic expectations are a roadblock to success, judge your dogs by what they are ready to give not by what you wish they'd do.
Last edited by topdog on 09-09-2012 at 04:01 PM
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08-23-2012 04:58 PM
I sure did have fun, though. Those Indiana coons know that I was there. 
