Coursing Dogs / Saluki Dogs On Deer??

[Shadow100 1,065]

3 minutes ago, bird said:

very true that above, more so with munjack, Christ  hit cover they just vanish in to thin air lol, but ive had couple in thick cover, the bigger the deer you got more chance i reckon , that looks great place for a mooch in the day, Buck love it in there , he think  he won the lottery  lol

To be fair it’s a dangerous game mixing with big deer in thick woodland. Places like that in the picture I’ve found a clever dog fares best. You’ve got big deer, clear fells, rock faces, steep drops and thick woodland. If the dogs the type to just charge in without using its brain you’ll more than likely end up with a big vet bill or worse.

[Daniel cain 42,953]

I prefer a dog with some substance for that lark, nothing to lightly built

[Shadow100 1,065]

7 minutes ago, Daniel cain said:

I prefer a dog with some substance for that lark, nothing to lightly built

Can’t beat a strong dog techniques important but you need the full package. I think big deer in places like that and on mountains is a really hard thing to get the right dog for, not strong enough they won’t hack it but too heavy they won’t catch in the first place

[Bosun11 537]

28 minutes ago, Shadow100 said:

To be fair it’s a dangerous game mixing with big deer in thick woodland. Places like that in the picture I’ve found a clever dog fares best. You’ve got big deer, clear fells, rock faces, steep drops and thick woodland. If the dogs the type to just charge in without using its brain you’ll more than likely end up with a big vet bill or worse.

Yep, i've always used the analogy that all deer are instinctivley and genetically born to use thick woodland as a means to escape pursuit.

Our running dogs don't have the same genetics for pursuit in there and unless your dog understands woodand from an early age, it is likely to come a cropper at some point.

[Allan P 1,130]

I have found working any quarry in Woodlands on a regular basis results in the dog being laid up from time to time busted up and badly cut feet, legs and chest occur fairly often because of debris on the floor. 

Edited June 9, 2020 by Allan P

[bird 9,596]

27 minutes ago, Bosun11 said:

Yep, i've always used the analogy that all deer are instinctivley and genetically born to use thick woodland as a means to escape pursuit.

Our running dogs don't have the same genetics for pursuit in there and unless your dog understands woodand from an early age, it is likely to come a cropper at some point.

thats true paul, ive had Buck out since he was 9 weeks old, day/night   he just tag along enjoying  him self, but watching old bryn all the while. dont get me wrong any dog can get hurt crashing through cover chasing quarry, but i deff think if they been used to going in woods and chasing stuff  from early age, it deff helps them later on in life . Funny thing Buck came a cropper in the dales at night , chasing rabbits , he caught 38 he prob would have hit 40 , but he crashed into some rocks with a rabbit, he caught  the rabbit, but his momentum  took him into the rocks at  35 mph , bust his feckin  back toe , but never hurt him self in the woods etc, dogs  eye sight not bad in the dark  far better than ours, he caught lot stuff in the dark, out of the beam .

[Vicky Steadman 328]

3 hours ago, SheepChaser said:

From my limited experience, when folk talk about stuff like this, something like ‘heavy woodland’ is a subjective term. To me it would mean proper forestry blocks, close planted, or old growth deciduous, with no clearing, so it’s like a tangled maze. The kind of stuff you struggle to walk through, unless you’re on your hands and knees. Dogs do catch in it, but everything is stacked in the deers favour. Light and open woods or thick stuff with rides cut and clearings, are a bit different. 

Where I go you need trackers on the dogs as you can't see more than 20-30 yards in places. You rarely even see the deer till they're on the ground. I've been out stalking with thermals and you'd have no idea if a deer was laying up in cover 20 yards away, we had a whole herd of maybe 30 fallow appear in the thermal that were no more than 60 yards away and they weren't visable to the naked eye. There aren't really paths apart from what I've trodden down over the years.

[Vicky Steadman 328]

3 hours ago, Shadow100 said:

Can’t beat a strong dog techniques important but you need the full package. I think big deer in places like that and on mountains is a really hard thing to get the right dog for, not strong enough they won’t hack it but too heavy they won’t catch in the first place

Got a spindly light frames dog here no more than 19kg 22.5tts. He gets through woodlands like a ninja, he's incredibly agile but far too chancy and has had some really nasty injuries over the years. He can follow any quarry like a heat seeking missile but he's too light and lacks technique so rarely kills anything and tends to do more damage to himself than anything. Gets into all sorts of trouble trying though the little b@st@rd. On the other hand my heavy set 24.5tts bitch is fractionally slower due to her build she has to go steady and think her way through the trees but never gets those injuries and gets double figures in the woods each year on general walks. She has no trouble holding the big spotted variety.

[SheepChaser 8,082]

43 minutes ago, Vicky Steadman said:

Where I go you need trackers on the dogs as you can't see more than 20-30 yards in places. You rarely even see the deer till they're on the ground. I've been out stalking with thermals and you'd have no idea if a deer was laying up in cover 20 yards away, we had a whole herd of maybe 30 fallow appear in the thermal that were no more than 60 yards away and they weren't visable to the naked eye. There aren't really paths apart from what I've trodden down over the years.

Sounds very similar to some of the places we used to hunt back home pre ban. It’s a case of bringing the dogs up doing it from day one and crossing your fingers. It also seems to help your catch rate if you’re bumping into herds in the thick stuff, as they seem to try to lie up and hope you miss them, and in the ensuing panic when they jump up, not everyone can take the escape route at once at speed and someone or other gets caught up and in trouble. 

[Vicky Steadman 328]

7 minutes ago, SheepChaser said:

Sounds very similar to some of the places we used to hunt back home pre ban. It’s a case of bringing the dogs up doing it from day one and crossing your fingers. It also seems to help your catch rate if you’re bumping into herds in the thick stuff, as they seem to try to lie up and hope you miss them, and in the ensuing panic when they jump up, not everyone can take the escape route at once at speed and someone or other gets caught up and in trouble. 

Problem where I am is it's a heavily woodlanded area, there are footpaths through fields but all small livestock fields where I can't let them have free roam, the farms here and all small and overlook their land so for the sake of not upsetting farmers and having dogs shot we walk in the public woodlands and go off the beaten tracks. I take pups in there soon as they can go outside so they learn about their surroundings from day one. 

If we get to a point where it's getting too frequent we stop walking places but it means there's a lot of nice woodlands round here I can no longer walk. Anywhere with big herds in we avoid but when you havea dog with a good nose and a hunting mind they are good at finding those individual prickets without a herd of their own, even in the areas you'd think are safe as you see no signs of them they still find them. Very dangerous and I know I'll lose a dog some day in those circumstances but other option is to keep a working dog on lead all its life

[Shadow100 1,065]

On 09/06/2020 at 15:20, Vicky Steadman said:

Got a spindly light frames dog here no more than 19kg 22.5tts. He gets through woodlands like a ninja, he's incredibly agile but far too chancy and has had some really nasty injuries over the years. He can follow any quarry like a heat seeking missile but he's too light and lacks technique so rarely kills anything and tends to do more damage to himself than anything. Gets into all sorts of trouble trying though the little b@st@rd. On the other hand my heavy set 24.5tts bitch is fractionally slower due to her build she has to go steady and think her way through the trees but never gets those injuries and gets double figures in the woods each year on general walks. She has no trouble holding the big spotted variety.

I don’t do loads in these type of areas but it’s nice for a change 

 

Edited June 11, 2020 by Shadow100

[fireman 10,792]

The best small deer catching dog i ever saw was a merlin/eve line bred dog,sort of ok on a day time hare but it was a lamping dog really and i saw it take 64 cwd from 64 slips during one winter.It took hundreds of small deer up to roe and as a light framed dog as such it could handle the boggy ground the cwd lived on where  heavy dogs would/and did suffer ,those chinks would skim across it and what sport it used to be...

[Shadow100 1,065]

8 hours ago, fireman said:

The best small deer catching dog i ever saw was a merlin/eve line bred dog,sort of ok on a day time hare but it was a lamping dog really and i saw it take 64 cwd from 64 slips during one winter.It took hundreds of small deer up to roe and as a light framed dog as such it could handle the boggy ground the cwd lived on where  heavy dogs would/and did suffer ,those chinks would skim across it and what sport it used to be...

A lot look down their noses at the CWD but I think they’re cracking sport, not testing but good fun none the less

[C.green 3,203]

Run committed dogs around the woods brought up with or not your gonna get some bad knocks.its all i done for abit was dropping stuff left right n centre still do it now and again but a good dog in the woods probably aint what im after for lamping.

[jigsaw 11,809]

You might remember this, a few years back... Pulled over a tree stump while trying to hold on hard and fast, thought he was a gonner that time