big dog/small dog

[pegandgun 51]

I like a dog to weigh exactly 75gr.It must have a red tip to its nose and must be rediculously fast. It must be cabable of taking a fox and a deer straight after each other and be able to be slipped on fox and deer up to 350yds.It has to kill all its victims stone dead and before they even move..It must open up as soon as i slip it and get to its victim in a direct straight line.Now thats a good dog J.D

[Gareth12 224]

I keep a 23'' bitch at the moment which is great for running the small fields around

here. But she's not a fox dog and there tons of those about so i would rather a bigger dog in the future perhaps a nice bullcross :whistle:

[MIKE 18]

Game, fast dog 25" to 27" with brains and stamina ....perfick 

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Thats just what I got

[Stabs 2]

I keep a 23'' bitch at the moment which is great for running the small fields around

here. But she's not a fox dog and there tons of those about so i would rather a bigger dog in the future perhaps a nice bullcross :whistle:

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Has she coughed on fox? If so, then that's nothing to do with her size. I've never seen a 23" fox. I've a 23" bitch that won't do fox but she's 55lb so it's nothing to do with her size. I buried a 20" bitch at the weekend that shredded them.

[MickC 1,825]

now i have always liked the big dogs, but which are your preference for a lurcher...give me a 27 incher any day of the week... :ph34r: what size is your ideal?

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as the old saying goes"its not the size of the dog in the fight,its the size of the fight in the dog" but obviously the bigger the game your after a bigger dog will do better if its of the right stuff

[Gareth12 224]

She had a go on a fox as a youngster (about 2 year old) and after getting bitten back wasnt intrested in them anymore As you said probly more to do with her attitude than her size (she's not the gamest of bitches!), Cant complain though cos she was a rescue dog and i only got her to do a bit of lamping with which she does ok at so im happy

[Stabs 2]

Same here Gareth. Got mine for rabbits but tried her with charlie. She did ok on her first four but single handed she doesn't want to know, although she is mustard at finding them for the other dogs. It's all in the mind.

[J Darcy 5,871]

the bigger the better for me 

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thats what my misses says to me :11:

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thats what she says to me too :kiss:

[J Darcy 5,871]

up to roe size i guess you would pull them with most dogs, but if you (ahem, before the ban) planned on doing an upgrade to fallow, then your small dogs would be struggling. I know that you may get the odd one or two easy, especially the does, but if the small dog met a big buck, or even a pricket, then things would be different....forget the dog "flipping them by the hock" cos it dont really happen...those big fellows just keep on running!! ...i have had scoob dragged up a field by a big, old doe once, mind you, she was 100lb on the scales.......for fallow i do beleive that the size of the dog is an important criteria....from the little i have seen good hunting guys

[doxhope 2]

Best Ive seen, between 23-25 but have to be the right cross

[Guest Nightwalker]

MickC said

"as the old saying goes"its not the size of the dog in the fight,its the size of the fight in the dog" but obviously the bigger the game your after a bigger dog will do better if its of the right stuff"

 

I'm afraid that I disagree.

 

The quote might be true of terriers for foxing but its not true for longdogs expected to take heavy game. When you are into taking big game size and weight really do matter. Smallish dogs wil take fox and deer up to roe size though generally not as cleanly as bigger dogs, If you are going to do these things regualrly I think that you should get a bigger dog. When you go up to game the size of sika, fallow and reds you need sheer size and weight to get the job done. I have had my share of game small dogs and seen them fail on large game despite being 100% committed to the task in hand.

 

My preference is for dogs of at least 26" and preferably 27 or 28" although I have seen very good dogs of well over 30" and lost a very good young dog of 30" last winter.

[MickC 1,825]

MickC said

"as the old saying goes"its not the size of the dog in the fight,its the size of the fight in the dog" but obviously the bigger the game your after  a bigger dog will do better if its of the right stuff"

 

I'm afraid that I disagree.

 

The quote might be true of terriers for foxing but its not true for longdogs expected to take heavy game. When you are into taking big game size and weight really do matter.  Smallish dogs wil take fox and deer up to roe size though generally not as cleanly as bigger dogs, If you are going to do these things regualrly I think that you should get a bigger dog. When you go up to game the size of sika, fallow and reds you need sheer size and weight to get the job done. I have had my share of game small dogs and seen them fail on large game despite being 100% committed to the task in hand. 

 

My preference is for dogs of at least 26" and preferably 27 or 28" although I have seen very good dogs of well over 30" and lost a very good young dog of 30" last winter. i also said  the bigger the game your after a bigger dog will do better if its of the right stuff.bigger dogs do have the exta advantage in exta weight and power.I once had a 28"dog that wouldnt take fox even if it had a shotgun licence.But yes a bigger dog is more suited to bigger game

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[Lurcherboy 0]

how many lurcher men run sika and red then ???????? i stay in scotland wer we have both in numbers but for all other work a lurcher 23 and above can kill everything else even roe easily ... imo u dot need a deerhound cross thats muckle to kill deer. my wee bitch thats 24 killed her first roe as soon as she dripped it if the dog has it it has it doesntmatter what size it is..... but red and sika are diffrent but how many lurcher man could tell you what the diffrence beetween a sika and a red is????? and how many will ver have the chance t run them ??????????

[Guest daz halford]

..........

[Guest Nightwalker]

how many lurcher men run  sika and red  then ???????? i stay in scotland wer we have both in numbers  but  for all other work a lurcher 23  and above  can kill  everything else even roe easily ... imo  u dot need a deerhound cross thats muckle to kill deer.  my wee  bitch thats 24  killed her first roe as soon as she dripped  it if the dog has it it has  it doesntmatter what size it is..... but red and sika are diffrent but how many lurcher man could tell you what the diffrence beetween a sika and a  red is????? and how many will ver have the chance t run them ??????????

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I dont know how many lurcher men and women run sika and reds, but some of us certainly do. In my experience fallow are generally larger, stronger and much harder to stop than sika and quite a lot of us run fallow which are very much more widespread across England than sika or reds. I have run sika and reds in the West Country and know other people who have been doing so for many years. I have been running deer as my number one quarry since 1975. Where I grew up there were fallow everywhere and no roe or munties although both are now widepsread in that area now. In my experience (and that's literally thousands of runs and hundreds of kills on deer) a big dog does the job much more cleanly than a little dog on all species including roe.

 

I didnt say anything about specific crosses, simply about size and power. Many people have good results with saluki crosses, bull crosses and many other types as well as deerhound cross dogs. Deerhound crosses are my particular favourite although I have also had bull, collie and saluki crosses, as well as various purebreeds (mostly greyhounds) dogs with both bedlington and deerhound blood and line-bred lurchers. The particular difficulty with dogs for larger deer is finding bitches that are big enough. Its easy to find big dogs - many saluki X dogs are big but the bitches from the best lines tend to be quite a bit smaller and too light and fine for me, whereas deerhound blood generally gives you good sized bitches as well as dogs especially if you use larger greyhound stud dogs.

 

A lot of people only run deer now and again or only have experience with roe, and I think that you should stop and think long and hard before you start to generalise from such limited experience, a fallow buck of anything from 140-200 lbs or so is several orders of magnitude stronger, tougher and harder to stop than a 60lb roe buck, and you need dogs with real size, speed, weight, strength and committment to master them.