Talk To Him Boys

Although the Walker is best known as a coonhound, it is not as cold-nosed as other coonhounds. It is therefore an ideal hound for competition hunts,... more

by Alvin Hepler

Original - Sold

Price

$300

Dimensions

30.000 x 15.000 x 0.750 inches

Title

Talk To Him Boys

Artist

Alvin Hepler

Medium

Painting - Acrylic Painting

Description

Although the Walker is best known as a coonhound, it is not as cold-nosed as other coonhounds. It is therefore an ideal hound for competition hunts, since they excel at following a hot track.

A typical hunt starts with getting the dog from the kennel. Since it has been in the pen all day, it is ready to run. Hunting is a hunting dog's exercise. The hound is checked for good health, then put into the truck. The handler then goes to the area where they plan to run the hound, usually next to or within a woods or forest. When the hound is let out of the box, it runs off happy to be free to run and excited to find a raccoon to chase. When it smells a track, the hound may begin to vocalize sporadically with short sounds that develop into longer, more anxious bawls. As the track becomes hotter, the vocalization becomes a louder, more assertive baying.The hound follows the track up to a tree, stands on its hind legs, rolls over a big whiny bawl as a "locate", and begins a chop bark (a "woof, woof, woof") bark. Meanwhile the handler is standing where he turned the dog loose, listening to all of the different barks, and understanding what the dog is doing and where the dog is going. Once the dog is "treed" with a solid chop the handler walks to the dog's location, looks for the game, and rewards the dog as necessary. This is repeated throughout the night.
The hound follows the track up to a tree, stands on its hind legs, rolls over a big whiny bawl as a "locate", and begins a chop bark (a "woof, woof, woof") bark. Meanwhile the handler is standing where he turned the dog loose, listening to all of the different barks, and understanding what the dog is doing and where the dog is going. Once the dog is "treed" with a solid chop the handler walks to the dog's location, looks for the game, and rewards the dog as necessary. This is repeated throughout the night.Some dogs track and do not tree. Other dogs tree and do not track. So, some handlers have one of each and hunt both at the same time. Other dogs do both and can be hunted by themselves. These types of dogs are hunted with other independent dogs, and handlers can also compete against one another, with objectives such as first dog to open bawl on track, first dog to tree, most raccoons found, etc.

The Treeing Walker Coonhound has powerful, mobile shoulders. The ears are large compared to the head. The upper lips hang well below the lower jaw. The forelegs are long, straight and lean. They are medium to large hounds, weighing generally 45 to 65 pounds.
This breed is highly intelligent, and consequently they require absolute consistency of training, as they look for loopholes to exploit. They may attempt to negotiate, responding to human direction by offering an alternative course of action they prefer. They are close observers of human behavior and learn to respond to subtle gestures and a large number of words, though not always in a manner that the human might desire or predict. Their intelligence is thus sometimes underestimated or misunderstood. Because they enjoy interacting with people, teaching them commands and tricks will help prevent the boredom that leads to bad behavior. They have been known to use objects as tools or to manipulate their environment to accomplish a task (e.g., moving furniture to climb over gates, using household objects to manipulate kennel mechanisms, etc.). They prefer complicated toys to simple chew-toys. They are most engaged by toys meant to be taken apart or stuffed with smaller toys, a toy that makes a variety of sounds, or toys with a hard-to-obtain treat inside
.
The breed's strong tracking instincts make them popular as hunting dogs. Carnivore researchers have used a single Walker and handler team to locate cougar-cached carcasses up to several months after the kill date

Uploaded

January 25th, 2014