Melon Ranch Hounds

Over the next few articles I am going to discuss some common problems in hounds and my opinion on how to fox the issue. My goal is to help new hunters not make as many mistakes as I did in the early days. Regardless of the breed you choose to use the most common problem I see in hounds is barking out of place. When I say, barking out of place, I specifically mean barking for any reason besides when they smell a track. Although there are many examples of this problem, I am going to concentrate on the issues that I’ve seen most often.

Barking in the dog box: If there is one thing that drives me insane it is hounds that just randomly bark in the box. It is one of the most annoying things on this earth and nothing screams that the hunter doesn’t know what he/she is doing more than this. If you raise this issue with other hunters, many of them will tell you that if you stop them from barking in the box, you’ll stop them from rigging. I am here to tell you that this is a categorically false statement and I have sixteen living examples of it as I type. When I take a puppy for the first time I expect it to do some things I don’t want. With that said, a collar is placed on this puppy and that collar is dialed into the transmitter. As I begin to drive away from the dog pens my thumb is on the button and ready. If for any reason I hear so much as a squeak sparks fly. The second I hear that the sparks have flown, I yell out the window “Quiet.” It usually doesn’t take anytime at all for this problem to go away. The next issue is, when I am driving through ranch property to where I am going to hunt I will inevitably drive past deer. Typically the puppy will see the deer and start barking. Again, my thumb is on the button and I’m ready to make that correction immediately. Stopping the barking in the truck is actually serving two purposes at once. First and foremost, you are making it very clear that barking in the truck is a very bad idea. Secondly, you are setting the stage for barking anytime they aren’t smelling something isn’t a good idea at all. I feel like I need to repeat that you will not ruin your hounds by doing this. Frankly, if you do ruin your hounds by stopping needless barking, your hound wasn’t going to worth feeding anyway.

Turn out barking: I’ve probably seen this in other hunters more than anything else. Hunters will open the gate to their box and out comes a herd of yapping idiots running like hell and barking. Why? My personal favorite excuses are, “There excited to go hunting”, “They’re just fresh”, or ” I like it when they do that.” First of all, I’m excited to go hunting too but I didn’t open my front door and make a lap around the yard yelling. Secondly, being fresh isn’t an excuse for bad behavior. That excuse reminds me of parents these days. Their child acts like a complete jackass and they look at you and say, ” Oh he’s just a kid.” There is really no reason for a kid to behave badly and there damn sure isn’t a reason for hounds to run and bark when turned out of the truck. As for the “I like it when they do that”, no you don’t, you have either been told fixing it will ruin your dogs or you don’t know how to fix it, but you don’t like it. When you walk to the gate of your box and every dog is bouncing at the gate causing your truck to sound like a train coming down the tracks, don’t open the gate. If my hounds do this I’ll simply say, “hey settle down” in a very quiet and calm voice. If something barks, you guessed it, sparks fly. When I do feel they’ve calmed down a little, I’ll open the gate slowly and only allow one or two to come out at a time. As they are coming out I will sternly repeat, “hey, hey”. My voice’s stern tone takes their mind off of being excited and focuses them on me. I have the transmitter right there for any of them that utter a single noise. In no time at all this problem no longer exists.

Barking behind: This problem usually happens to only the rookies or old hounds. A puppy on their first few hunts hasn’t really learned how to travel at the speed old hounds run a race. A young hound (good one) has an instinct to go with the hounds that are barking. Although he/she is trying their best to be with the hounds that are running, they don’t have the coordination or experience to know how. Thus, they will likely be behind the pack on the first half dozen hunts or so. Being behind is expected, barking while being behind isn’t going to happen. This behavior causes more problems than can ever be explained. One of the problems is that the pack is up ahead running and they make a loss. Everything is silent looking like crazy for the track that they were just smelling. Everything is quiet except for blabber mouth bringing up the rear. The other hounds will hear that and think that dog has the track and go to him. It is hard to maintain pressure on game when you take five steps backwards and two forward. When I hear a young hound doing this I will start with the tone button. The tone button is used in hopes that it will take their mind off of the fact that they are behind but not bother them enough to make them stop. However, if the tone button doesn’t work, I start at level 1 and go up until the needless barking behind stops. Aside from the aforementioned problem with the hounds making a loss, allowing this to continue causes another issue. Within a very short amount of time the young hound will figure out how to travel and keep up. But, since we’ve let him bark behind we have in essence made it ok that he bark without reason. Now that the young hound is with the pack he will bark simply because they are barking, I call it, “me tooing”. Why is this a problem? Hounds are running and blabber mouth is right in the middle of them barking like hell. The same loss happens except now that one dog is barking while the rest have hushed looking for the track. The pup continues in the direction they were going barking and the hunt for the track is over. The pack will assume that puppy has it and he’ll pull them away. Sometimes that pull away can be 100+ yards from the track. Depending on how thick it is it may take the old hounds awhile to find it again. Every second the pressure is let off is another second the game has a chance to escape. Option two is the puppy is running with them and barking like hell and the loss happens. This time the puppy doesn’t keep running but does keep barking. The hounds are going to come to him and assume, since he’s barking standing still, the cat treed. Some of the less experienced hounds will likely back him up. This will causes the experienced hounds to slow down their search and the same lack of pressure happens. How can you tell when a young hound is doing this? Let’s say for example you’re running a cat with eight hounds. Only on straight aways or areas of less brush do you hear all eight hounds opening at the same time. Most likely it’ll be four to six here, one or two of them will get quiet and one or two others will fill in. They bark only when they smell the cat, if they lose the scent for more than two strides they shut up. If one or two of them is barking for no reason, you should notice it easily. For example the puppy is in the race, you can cover the whole pack up with your pinky finger nail on your gps zoomed in. You hear a dog that is barking every breath. There is no pause, there are no breaks, it’s just a constant yap yap yap yap yap. There is absolutely no way in hell that the old experienced hounds can run through a quagmire of thorn infested hell and never lose the track for a second. With that being said, there damn sure isn’t any way in hell that the rookie is going to have the track and hold it when the others cannot. When you hear this, you know its a problem. I don’t tone them in this instance because the other hounds are close enough to hear the tone. I begin on a level 3 or 4 and tap the button. Just enough to stop the senseless barking but not enough to scare them into quitting. Barking like this will cause you more problems than it’s worth, it’s best to fix it early and avoid the whole issue. As always, if this causes your young hound to quit, you really need a different young hound.

As I said in the beginning of this article, the problems that senseless barking cause are far too many to mention. I will say that allowing it produces the same result; taking pressure off of what you’re running and redirecting it to losing. Dogs are by default pack animals, who leads the pack, them or you?