Gordy's daughter got married so I went up to the reception. I had a caged coon so I brought it and Ruby. Gordy was way too busy so Marne went instead and he brought a running/bear dog. They ran the track nice and then it blew up by the corn where it meets the woods. We were too far away to know just how the dogs screwed this up. Maybe Ruby treed and then left to follow the running dog, or the coon just gave them the slip in the corn, or even that they killed the coon in the corn without us hearing. I wonder if the coon wasn't just sitting in the corn too. We caught Marne's dog and let Ruby try to work it out. Ruby was just running around in the corner of the corn field, trailing a little and then once in a while just stopping and treeing like a 5 month old puppy. I gave her about 10 minutes to recover but she didn't so I just caught her.
Interesting to talk with Marne about dogs. He doesn't coonhunt anymore, it's all bear, bobcat and coyote. He trains dogs the opposite of the way I do. Tries to put young dogs in bad or complicated situations, sits back and won't help them figure things out. He's looking for an all natural dog. And he goes through a ton of puppies.
I will train a "pretty good" dog that "I like". I put them in easy situations, stay close and correct and help them as much as I can. At 2-1/2 to 3 yrs I start hunting more and training less. With a little luck, they will be solid by then and handle the tough situations.
I think either approach is fine, but they don't mix well.
If the two of us hunted together too much, we'd probably argue about how to handle the dogs a lot.