Dogs and Cougars

[jagermiester]

All I know is that every time I've seen a cat the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. I love how awesome they are but they scare the heck out of me, I think I watched where the red fern grows too many times when I was a kid.  If big Dan couldn't handle that Tom its just a crapshoot.

[Special T]

Mostly when you're hound hunting you have more then one dog. Even two dogs are going to seem too much to handle for the average cougar.
That being said I used to have only one hound and he never was attacked. I'm sure though he was not as brave as if he had other hounds with him.
Also I think most of the pets taken by cougar are small breeds. Pointer ought to be big enough to intimidate almost all cougars IMO.

I've seen night time survailance footage of a cougar killing a lab and the jumping the fence with it.

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[wildweeds]

Many years ago, 2000 I had a pointer who was hell on wheels at game he shouldn't have been programmed to get after, his list of kills included half a dozen hawks, an owl, couple of cranes, chased deer and he treed a cougar down around pomeroy. I could always tell when nautiness was afoot, the bugger gave a high pitched yippy bark. His prowess as a bird dog really was sub part for a pointer. Putting the cat in the tree took the cake, I had a heck of a time wrangling him off. He ticked me off and we went back to the truck and to a different spot.

[AspenBud]

Strap an e-collar with a GPS on the dog. Dogtra sells a good one called the Pathfinder if money is an issue.

Also strap a bell (I use a Sunkhaze) or a beeper to make the dog's presence known. Also helps to keep track of the dog.

If you are hunting grouse with the dog the bell/beeper won't make a difference to the birds unless the bell stops.

Most hunting dogs killed in the woods are hounds, largely because of their range. Bird dogs dying due to a bear or cougar or wolf or coyote are far less common largely thanks to their proximity to the hunter. I know of some bird dogs that have been attacked in the woods, but in the last ten years it has been by black bears and a few involved coyotes and most all involved a bigger running/fast moving dog stumbling into the animals at the wrong place at the wrong time and not because they were actively hunted by them.

[bearpaw]

We've chased hundreds of cougar through the years, I can quickly remember 8 hounds purposely killed by cougars. On the other hand I've caught dozens of cougar with a single hound, mostly due to other dogs getting mixed up and only one dog finding the right track and working it out or due to split races where we ended up with multiple cats caught. In most cases one dog alone is in the most danger, the more dogs running together the less the danger. I like to run three dogs most of the time, but will put 4 to 6 dogs on a large tom for dog safety. It seems on the average, the larger and/or older the cat, the greater the chance of him/her not being as afraid of the dogs. A lone dog may be looked upon as an easy meal, especially to a cougar that has routinely eaten coyotes and/or single wolves in remote areas, or cougars that frequently hunt suburban or other human populated rural areas for neighborhood pets. Because WA has not had a hound hunting season for over 10 years, most every cougar alive in WA today has not had a fearful experience with dogs.

Aspenbud mentions bells, I agree with that 100%, we have bells on every hound we own, I'm a firm believer the unnatural sound of those bells dinging make it safer for a dog to be in the woods. I think the bells ward away most wild predators, although I know a few hound hunters who have lost dogs with bells to large packs of wolves, but I think that was due to the wolves having heard the bells on numerous previous occasions and finally decided they were going to get rid of the canine competition, bells or no bells.

We've had a few close calls with wolves coming close to the dogs and hunters and howling and barking at us and then flanking us coming out of the woods. That happened again this spring in idaho.

Getting back to dogs/cougars, I would put a bell or beeper on your dog and I think he'll be 300% safer, unless you meet up with a hungry cat that just has to eat, but I think most cats and other predators will be afraid of the dog/bell/human combination.

[bearpaw]

Let me add this:

When a cat or other predator look at something (prey, a dog, livestock, or even a human) it quickly makes a decision, either this is potential food, this is potential danger, or this requires more observation, and then it begins reacting according to it's impression. The more factors to encourage the predator to be fearful the better.