Training hounds for hunting

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FlipFlopRanch

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I'm looking for information on how to train bloodhounds for hunting the clean boot. I have five trained bloodhounds that are used for police work in the states-California. They already understand the concept of following a person, but is there anything in particular that should be done for them to work off lead and in a pack?

I'm trying to get a hunting event organized in a part of the world where nobody does this so any advice is welcome.
 
It is likely they will do this well by instinct anyway especially if they are already trained to follow a scent. Start with short runs in enclosed areas where they can see the quarry at the end and keep them together with a mounted whipper-in on each side who would basically just encourage them back onto the line if they strayed. As I said they will do it by instinct anyway but it would be worth getting them used to any voice or horn signals you intend to use while they are still on lead. Good luck and have fun, they are lovely animals, if a little slobbery ;)
 
Ha ha! A "little" slobbery. That's quite an understatement :D I'm just concerned with them taking off so that's a good idea with the enclosed areas. We even thought about getting a long lead and holding onto them while on horseback. I guess we'll just give it a try and see what happens!
 
Yeah, we had a puppy or two on walk and after they had been in the water bowl our other dogs wouldn't touch it lol!

One other thing, you do need to make sure they will turn away from the whip so you don't actually have to touch them with it, just wave it in front of them. it's kind of a good cop, bad cop arrangement where the huntsman is the good guy and the hounds go to him but the whips are the baddies and function mainly to turn the hounds back to the huntsman and reinforce his commands. Ideally the whips need to be mounted on utterly reliable and fearless jumping horses so they can follow hounds anywhere they choose to b*gger off to :D
 
That's a good point. I think our hounds would like at a whip and have no idea they're supposed to be scared by them. How do you train them for that besides hitting them? Or is that the way it's done?
 
Well, the whippers-in need to practice (on your own and on foot not mounted :eek:) making a whip crack really loudly until they can do it reliably every time. Then you get the huntsman on one side of the pack, the whips on the other, and the huntsman turns and walks away, calling the hounds to follow him using whatever command they are used to (or on lead to start with). As he does this get the whips cracking repeatedly, stopping when all hounds are close to the huntsman and turned away from the whips. The intention is NOT to touch the hounds but if the hounds think you are playing then you will have to hold your ground and keep cracking until one of them gets in the way and combine this with your growliest "how dare you disobey me" voice (the command we used was "Away back-to-him"). If you think this is the reaction they will have then do an individual training session with the pack leader on a lead first.

Eventually you will get to a stage when you only have to wave the whips to turn the hounds and at this point you can mount up. I don't recommend cracking a whip on horseback.......
 
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