Hunting with Hounds: My Experience

A good start, particularly for wild boar hunting, are boar pens. Driven hunts where the hound can learn from other dogs. And of course taking your dog out for individual hunts every opportunity you get.

@Jacob thank you for the tip, good idea! right now i'm working in a leash and when I find a boar and know it is small i let her chase it. My jämthund can ignore a wildboar if there is a dog already barking at it and find another one just for her but i guess i'll give it a try. at what age do you typically start your hounds?

@Oskar I trained my Polish Hunting Dog (gończy polski) first to bloodtrack to recover game. After that, around 1,5 - 2 years I introduced him to regular wild boar hunting. You can’t do it the other way around because a young dog won’t follow a cold trail if he is used to fresh ones. If you don’t care about bloodtracking but only driven/individual hunts than you can start earlier (e.g., 1 - 1,5 years).

@Jacob i want her to take old tracks when brown bear season starts, wild boars are not that important with old tracks but I guess i can't have both.

@Oskar don’t get me wrong, you can absolutely have a cold nose dog for hunting. I’m specifically differentiating between bloodtracking for the recovery of wounded big game.

By the way, hunting brown bear must be an amazing experience. I heard the season is pretty short though because the quota gets filled quick.

@Jacob i mean i'm focusing too much to get her started by trailing fresh tracks, perhaps i should try find older tracks and let her work on those instead.
brown bear is fun but alot of work and getting the chance to shoot one is very rare.
1.5 years ago bear licenses was filled in 1 Day and 1 hour on my hunting area🙈🙈 happy i have more opportunities and more bears on license now 😅

You use jämthund for bear?

I also find it interesting that in Scanfinavia American breeds are pretty well established. I’m a fan of plott and blue ticks. Here in Poland they’re virtually unheard of.

@Jacob I have not started her on bear yet, i think i will try next year to get her and the bluetick on the same bear. because of moose and wolf i did not freecast last year and she's not coldnosed enough to take old bear tracks.

Plotts are starting to get common, not that I have ever hunted with one but I can find breeders easy on social media. Blueticks are harder to find, I think the breeder I bought mine from had the only litter in sweden that year and she bought both her hounds in the us.

@Oskar In Poland there’s also a big problem with wolves and moose. Luckily, my part of the mountain isn’t that bad.

@Jacob wolves are spreading all over europe and no one can do anything about it... everyone on the countryside want them gone but some environmental extremist in Stockholm want us to have them...