how do you all go about picking a pup

[hunter93]

how do you all go about picking a pup from a litter, what traits do you all look for at that early age. any help is aprreciated thanks.

[bare.hunter]

I always pick a female that is the most independent.But the biggest thing is that the parents of the pup must be tree dogs and dogs that I would hunt myself if I owned them.It would also be nice but not mandatory that I had seen pups from the cross before and liked the way they hunted.
But every pup is a gamble some work some dont.The best cat dog I ever own would not leave the road untill she was one year old and only then after a cat ran out into the road and she saw it and caught it and it ate her up from that moment on she ran every cat the rest of her life to catch it not to tree it.

[BuckNAze]

Good advice bare.hunter! Similar way I pick a pup

[bare.hunter]

I sure wish I could use my own advice on a dog or two but since the laws changed (no cat hunting)I just cant into coon hunting with no cats to spice it up but i hunted them for years and went though alot of pups and young dogs.

[steen]

When we picked out our pup (Ruby)  She came to me and sat under my chair, numerous times, the smallest dog but not the underdog.  Turned out to be a wise choice.  When she met her siblings again at the vet she growled at them as the Alpha dog.  She's all business in the field but does not put up with bothersome dogs.  She always gives them a warning growl or more and we usually can read her but she is not agressive toward other dogs.

[bearpaw]

I used to breed hounds and sold hundreds of pups and trained dogs all around the country. Breeding and training hounds helped raise my family, my son is still breeding hounds. In my experience, on the average, shy pups do not turn out as well as often as the more adventuresome pups, however I have seen shy pups turn out to be very good dogs. With that said, I like to go for the best odds, look for the most adventuresome pup and the pup that shows the least fear of anything, that's the pup I'd put my money on.

As bare.hunter said, only get pups out of top notch parents. There are good dogs in all the breeds but I had the best reproduction percentages for making big game hounds by breeding house-bred walkers, a higher percentage of the pups made top big game hounds than any other breed or breeding within a breed that I have seen. But, there are good dogs in every breed and even cross breeding can produce good hunting dogs, but, there are more variables when you crossbreed, less chance of knowing what the outcome will be. Some of my best dogs have been crossbred, but I rarely tried to breed them because it was too much of a guess as to how they would reproduce. Pups from crossbreedings often were not as good as the parents were. Regardless of breeding, if you are getting a pup from a proven cross where 75% or more of previous pups turned out good, then your odds are good of getting a great pup. If there was more than 1 or 2 culls in a litter that did not make good dogs, I would never breed those dogs again

When I was raising litters I noticed that as soon as they could walk you could usually spot the best pups by their adventurism. As the pups grew older it was usually the same pups that continued to be the most outgoing and they usually turned out to be some of the best dogs. At 4 weeks I usually had my favorite pup figured out and it rarely changed as they grew older.

When you look at the pups ask the owner which are the most adventuresome and then watch them closely to pick out yours. When you have bought your pup then it's your responsibility to make the pup what he can be. You will only get as much out of the dog as you put into him. He must have lots of opportunity to learn and hunt or you can't expect him to be as good as he should be.

Sorry for the long winded post. 

[bare.hunter]

hey bearpaw. The dog that I talked about in my earlier post was a cross out of one of yourdogs and a hot rod stud from montana or wy.I got the pup from cyril g along with most of the litter he had a guy in forks hunt them and they all made fair or better cat dogs but I got lucky and got the best one.It has been along time ago but man did I caught the cats with that dog and a half running dog and banjo breed dog.
great breeding make the differents.man do I miss the sound of good dogs on a hot cat track.