thefootman
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Everything posted by thefootman
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.. Judge the day when you finish and not before you start.. and get out as much as possible. I'm surprised no one else has brought up another major factor on scent? What pack of hounds it is To me ''scent'' and all its ins and outs is one of the major excuses men use for hounds. Too dry/wet/cold/hot/windy/frosty/snowy/ whatever else you hear being threw around sometimes. Don't get me wrong.. scent is scent and it can be a mystery sometimes. But theres packs that seem to pull results when others lack. Then on the other hand as an eejit once said to me '' a bad un will know more
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What Johnny85 says ties in with what I have been told, that when you can smell the fox the scent has risen, that the fox is a long time gone and it is too high for hounds to hunt. We hunt both fox and hare with our pack and their is a big difference between fox and hare scent. In general, unless a fox has too much law on the pack, no matter how bad scent is they will always manage to hunt a fox to ground or a good distance, It may be slow work but they will have enough scent to keep going. As for hare, if scent is bad they may not be able to hunt a hare two fields. It appears that soil and
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Typical, the one week during February I can't get holidays of work, looks like I will have to catch the "cold" that week!!!
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Does anyone know if the Abbeyfeale hunting festival in County Limerick is on this year? There is usually some fixtures up on the Hunting Association of Ireland website by now, but I can't see anything on it yet.
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There is no hard and fast rule on this , I certainly wouldn't worry about her not giving tounge yet as she is still learning her trade. How big is your pack? Maybe give her a run with just one or two other hounds just to see if the extra responsibility makes the thing click. I have heard of dummy hounds but have not come across them myself. Some hounds are naturally "tight" with their tounge, some lads do not like this, but it never bothers me as I would rather have a hound that is right when it gives tounge, even if it is not that often and that you can rely on than some yoke going around b
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Hello dic head, that is a useful contribution. For your information in some parts of Ireland the native foot harrier, the Kerry Beagle, is often called a beagles and standard beagles are refered to as foot beagles, hence my question. Now, you have learned something today, probably for the first time in a long while. A word of advice, keep your opinions to yourself if you do not know the full picture behind other peoples conversation. CarraghsGem Is your friend in Ireland? I hunt a footpack on the Monaghan/Fermanagh border. He really should see a foot pack in action and see how to ha
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How does he intend to hunt them, is he going to use them as beating dogs to beat cover for guns or is he going to actually hunt them as a pack across country? If he is going to hunt them as a pack he should get a couple of old experienced dogs who will come back to a call or to a horn, as they will bring the young dogs on. If the young dogs are reasonably well bred you will not actually have to train them to hunt as instinct will do that, you need to train them to behave around livestock, return to a call, listen to you when you cast them and not to hunt everything that happens to cross thei
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Are you coming over to hunt Old Dog? If so who with?
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Just to point out that in the post I made earlier I wasn't running down anyone who uses hounds or dogs of any description to provide them with a shot at a fox, each to their own and may they enjoy their sport, I was just wondering what their motivation is, is it enjoying a good hunt or is firing the shot the only important thing? I read Old Dog's post again and I don't think he is running down lads who like to hunt/shoot foxes using bobbery packs, I think that he is asking a question as to what all this cross breeding is going to achieve? (correct if I am wrong Old Dog). A few of you l
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There are a good few lads keeping gun packs to shoot foxes along the border in Ireland. They would get most of their hounds from the local foot packs. In our pack we usualy pass on the ones that don't make the grade with us to the local gun lads. We usualy get rid of the ones that are too soft or too free (babbling) and the lads seem to be happy enough to take them. Most of these lads would say that they go "shooting" rather than "hunting". What they want is enough noise in cover to push any foxes out to the waiting guns or at best to push the fox for a while to see if he will go to ground
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Good Man Des. Always listen to the Old Timers as they have probably seen more than you can imagine. By the way where did you come across lads hunting their hounds for a week, how many days in a row did they do? Three days in a row would be as much as we would do, after that we would have to give the hounds a days break or you would start to pick up to many injuries, any hounds that are hunting well on the third evening would be considered decent hounds. We would consider a well hunted pack to be at least three days a week, Wednesday, Saturday and Sunday, any decent pack of hounds should be w
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It would be very rare that a pup of 7/8 months would be allowed to hunt with a pack for a full day but it does happen. The best bitch I ever had hunted from 6 months. She was exceptional and was brought on "set" hunts (thats a kinda of competitive hunt with another pack) at 8 months and was leading packs of hounds at 10 months, she won a drag hunt at 14 months (thats a hound trail). She hunted up until 10 years old and died of natural causes at about 12 so the early start in her hunting life did her little or no harm. One of the first hunts I ever attended was in 1986 when I was 10. I was
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If the hounds are well bred instinct will more or less start them for you, the only real training you will have to do is in relation to putting some manners on them, teaching what not to hunt and to come back to you when the hunt is over. Though it would be a bad idea to let the pups start together on their own as any bad habits they might be inclined towards will only get worse. If you start them with a couple of old hounds the older ones will keep them in check. With foot harriers the northern packs all start them at around six months old, usualy letting the pups out late in the evenin
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There is some draghunting with trailhounds in Co Cavan but it would not be as big as in Cork or Kerry. Up until about ten years ago there was a big draghunting scene across Cavan, Monaghan, Fermanagh and Armagh using foot harriers. The same dogs were hunted over the winter and raced in the summer. Towards the end of the 90s lads started buying up trailhounds from Cork and Kerry to race. The trailhounds were all faster over the drag trail than the harriers and with a few exceptions they were all next to useless on a live hunt. It led to a split among the Northern lads as a lot of lads wante
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For any of the Irish lads who might be interested there will be an interview with members of the Middletown hunt club in Co Armagh on RTE 1 on Monday 23.8.2010 at 7 o'clock
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If you want to buy in Ireland try the website Done Deal, always lots of beagles and harriers for sale on that. Don't buy hounds myself as we breed our own or swop pups so can't tell you how reliable it is.
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Oh Really Saw the photos on some of the other threads and guessed you were a member alright. Velvet is well settled, took her to the drag hunt in Cavan yesterday. She went round the course but finished well back, I didn't here her tounge once so I guess she twigged it wasn't the real thing. We were first, LS 2nd, SH 3rd and MT was 5th or 6th so the pack nearly made the clean sweep. It was a good afternoon but the lads were a bit dissapointed with the turnout. There were 35 hounds at it but there was over 50 last year. With the good weather there would be a lot of men busy with silage an
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Well lads, new to this site. I hunt with a foot harrier pack on the Fermanagh/Monaghan border that hunts hare and fox. There has always been a strong tradition of foot packs in the counties around the border. The Northern packs have a long connection with the foot packs in Cork, Clare and south Kerry and I always thought they were the only other areas with foot packs, but over the last year I have met lads from around Wexford and Kilkenny who also hunt with foot packs. Does anyone else on this site follow foot harriers and where?
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Jack Try Potassium permanganate crystals (also called Condys Crystals). They can be hard to get but you ask around your local chemists someone should have them. You dissolve them in water and dip the hounds feet in the solution. We have used them for years with out foot harriers and they are as good as anything else. They act as a disinfectant and they toughen the skin up. Dip your hounds feet a few times before the start of the season and it will help prevent problems, still if a hound has bad feet you will still have problems no matter what you use. Wear gloves as its a bugger to s