Hunting- Farmcollie Working Character

Bud ran and treed his first 'coon a couple nights ago. We've had a couple coons raiding the wife's bird feeders and otherwise being pesky lately. After dark Bud growled out the glass door, and it turned out to be the raccoons at the bird feeder. I opened the door and the coons took off with Bud in hot pursuit. In a few moments he barked down in the woods, so I followed. He came to me when I got close, so I asked him where the coon was. He went directly to a tall pin oak, stood with his feet on the tree and barked treed. I looked up and I could see the coon at the very top against the sky.
Ted Green

Treed Ted Green's Buddy and Trudy

Hunting has always ben a very important aspect of the farmcollie working character- unlike hounds, which follow their prey for miles and miles, Farmcollies hold and hunt a territory. They kill and supplement their diet with rodents and rabbits, helping to control those populations on the farm. This territory is defended against other predators which might compete for the prey, or kill or injure pack members.

This instinct is pretty well ingrained in the dog, but, just as the herding instinct can be modified to suit the master's rules, with a little encouragement, a farmcollie can be taught to hunt as a part of a team with humans. This was an extremely important aspect of the breed's function on the frontier. Here is an example of training technique used with pups.

Training Pups Sherry Farley with her pup Duncan S/W and her parents pup King McAlpine at around 3 to 4 months old (both Lilly/Banjo). Her dad had killed a squirrel and they used it in drag and had the pups find it.

Our sons have always enjoyed coon hunting too. At first my youngest son thought he would be like all the rest of the young men around here and use coon dogs (of which he had several) but one night they took Sheby (Lilly's grandpa) with them and he outshined all the coon dogs. From then on the boys didn't bother with coon dogs and started bringing their friends in on hunts with "their special breed".

Now to make this boundary related, the dog never wanted to hunt coons without the boys but would kill pests around the farm but he knew what was up when the boys came out in hunting gear.

When I was a child my brothers used our Farmcollies for hunting and, seeing as they weren't old enough for guns, they did a good job of finding and getting many squirrels and rabbits. The dogs only left their territiory with us, mama always insisted we take the dogs with us to the fish pond a mile down the road.