Training a mountain lion hound is a time consuming process. Unlike coon hunting, a lion hunter may have to look for several days to find a workable lion track.
Hounds are energetic and the good ones want to run something. I believe the trick is to try and focus this energy toward desired game and to not break their hunting spirit. When I start a young dog that’s never been hunted, I usually let them have a free pass for the first season. Meaning if they want to chase deer, elk, or coyotes, I don’t try to stop them. The exceptions are javelina, cattle and other dogs. There’s a “no tolerance” rule when running these animals.
After they’ve seen some mountain lions and are taking an interest in trailing, I’ll start to discourage them from chasing after other game. When they start trailing lions pretty good, I’ll break them from running other undesirable game. The amount of time it takes to get to this point will vary from hound to hound.
With dog’s that haven’t been out before, the very first lesson they must learn is how to hunt and trail you up when they get lost. After they master this, the older dogs will help teach them what to hunt for and how to trail it up and tree it. Once in a while, I’ll run across a hound that has no desire what so ever to hunt. These are few, but it does happen.
I have a very experienced pack of bare ground mountain lion dogs for your dogs to hunt with. Your hounds will go hunting as often as they are able to go. I take only a couple of untrained dogs at one time period. This keeps them from learning bad habits from other young untrained dogs and they’ll pick up lion hunting much faster.
$800.00 per month per hound