Gray's Mountain Feist: February 2012

I am asked from time to time whether this line of dogs is good for a whole variety of tasks. From herding livestock to being coyote decoy dogs to being good house dogs, I hear it all! I often get questions from hunters about the different things they might be able to do with a Mountain Feist. I usually start out by saying they are a versatile breed of dog and then describe all the things I do with my dogs.

Depending on the part of the country where you are, people have different hunting styles and preferences for jobs given to their dogs. An activity legal in one area might not be legal in the next so my advice in that regard is to check with wildlife law enforcement personnel before getting into an activity.

Using a dog for blood trailing is a topic I am running into more and more. Many breeds of dog have been used to track and locate wounded big game, several types of dog similar in many ways to the Mountain Feist. Well, last year one of our new pup owners decided to test the versatility of a Gray's Mountain Feist by training for squirrel hunting AND blood trailing. Recently, on the Gray's Feist Forum, Phil gave us an update on his male - Phil's Texas Bandit (aka Tex).

From Phil:

"We just got back from Texas. Unfortunately the hunting was slow and I did not get a pig or Javelina. Didn't have any good bloodtrails to put Tex on, but my buddy did hit a pig that didn't leave blood to start out. I put Tex on the track and he took off through the brush. He followed the trail about 75 yards and we found the nock end of the arrow. We followed the trail another 100 yards or so. I know he was on the right trail because we found tracks and some small blood smears on the brush. We determined that the hit was high on the shoulder and non-lethal. Even though we didn't find the pig I think Tex did an outstanding job following a minimal trail, particularly since it was the first real blood trail he had been on and was his first exposure to pigs. "