A coonhound will tell you exactly who he is if you give him enough nights and enough silence to do it.

The problem is, most of us can’t keep our mouths shut long enough to listen. I know I couldn’t when I started. I had this blue tick named Ranger, and I was so eager to turn him into the next champion that I talked him half to death on every hunt. Constant commands, constant encouragement, constant noise. Looking back, I’m amazed he turned into anything worthwhile at all. He did, eventually—but only after I learned to shut up and let him be a dog.

This page isn’t about shortcuts or magic training tricks. It’s about walking alongside a coonhound long enough to let him become what he’s already wired to be. Good night dogs aren’t built with noise and pressure. They’re built with patience, consistency, and quiet time in the dark.

What a Coonhound Owes You — and What He Doesn’t

Here’s the deal: a good coonhound owes you effort. He owes you honesty. He owes you the truth about what he finds out there in the woods.

What he doesn’t owe you is perfection.

Early on, the best thing a young dog can give you is heart. That’s it. A willingness to head into the woods when it’s dead quiet and a little spooky. A desire to keep pushing when the track gets difficult. A mind that stays engaged when the scent goes thin and everything in him wants to quit.

I see people obsessing over mouth, speed, and style in young dogs that haven’t even figured out what they’re supposed to be doing yet. My buddy Tommy had a walker pup that had a voice like a church bell—beautiful, clear, rang through the hills like music. Tommy showed that dog off to everyone, ran him too early, bragged too much. But the dog had no desire. When things got tough, he’d quit and come back to the truck. All that pretty mouth didn’t mean a thing without the heart to use it when it mattered.

Those fancy things show themselves in time. What you need to know first is whether your dog wants to hunt when nobody’s watching and nobody’s cheering.

You can shape a dog with desire. You absolutely cannot fix one without it.

If you’re new to tree dog training in general, it helps to understand the foundation first.

When a Young Coonhound Is Ready for the Night

Age will lie to you every single time. Readiness won’t.

I’ve had six-month-old pups that carried themselves like veterans, and I’ve had eighteen-month-old dogs that still acted like scared puppies. The night is heavier than daylight. Sounds carry different. Shadows move in ways that can spook a young dog. He has to be comfortable with all that strangeness before he can be confident in his work.

A dog is ready when:

• He moves forward into new situations instead of backing away
• He explores on his own without needing you to push him
• He recovers quickly when something startles or confuses him
• He shows curiosity about the world, not fear

I learned this lesson the hard way with a redbone named Ruby. She was eight months old, and I thought she was ready because she was big and bold around the house. First night in the woods, a barn owl swooped low over us and she absolutely lost it. Tucked her tail and wouldn’t leave my side for the rest of the night. I should have waited another month or two. Instead, I pushed it, and it took me three times as long to get her confidence back as it would have taken to just let her mature naturally.

Dragging a pup into the dark before he’s ready doesn’t make him tougher. It makes him careful—and careful dogs spend their whole lives second-guessing themselves.

There’s no hurry worth the cost of a dog’s confidence.

First Nights in the Woods

Those first real hunts should be quiet, low-key affairs.

No crowd of buddies standing around with high expectations. No pressure to perform. No timeline you’re trying to meet.

Just let the dog walk. Let him drift and wander. Let him lose sight of you and then find you again. Let him make sense of the woods on his own terms. The goal isn’t to tree a coon on the first night—or the second, or even the tenth. The goal is simple: come back to the truck with a dog that’s tired, content, and wants to go again tomorrow night.

If a dog comes out of the woods physically tired but mentally happy, you did exactly enough. If he comes out uneasy or shut down, you did too much.

The woods are the best teacher a coonhound will ever have. Your job is to stay out of the way of that lesson.

Hunting Alone Before Hunting Together

Here’s something that might be controversial, but I stand by it: a coonhound that can’t hunt alone isn’t really trained. He’s just supported by other dogs.

Solo nights build something that pack hunting never will—genuine responsibility. When there’s no other dog to lean on, to follow, to let do the hard work, your hound has to solve problems himself. He figures out where his nose fits in the world. He learns to stay with a track when it gets faint and difficult. He learns that quitting doesn’t bring him any company or relief.

I love pack hunting. There’s nothing like listening to a whole cast of dogs work together on a good night. But it shouldn’t be the foundation of a young dog’s education. Bad habits travel faster than good ones in a pack, and young dogs learn what they see repeated.

My old dog Duke hunted alone for his first year. He made mistakes—Lord, did he make mistakes. But he owned every one of them. When he finally joined a pack hunt, he was steady as a rock while the other young dogs were running trash and slicking trees left and right. They’d learned to rely on older dogs to do their thinking. Duke had learned to rely on himself.

Build the dog first. Add company later.

Treeing, Accuracy, and Letting the Dog Be Right

A tree should mean something to a dog. It should be a moment of truth.

Slick trees—where a dog barks at an empty tree—don’t usually come from dogs trying to fool you. They come from dogs learning that making noise matters more than being right. And that lesson almost always comes from handlers who reward effort and excitement without requiring accuracy.

Let a dog work the tree. Let him check himself. Let him walk away from a bad tree if he realizes his mistake. When he finally settles in, when he commits with his whole body and voice, when he stays honest even when it takes a while—that’s when the reward means something real.

I had a plott hound named Jackson who slicked his first three trees in a row. I was furious. My buddy who was hunting with me said I should correct him, make him understand that wasn’t acceptable. But I watched Jackson at that third tree, and I could see it in his body language—he knew. He’d made a mistake, and he knew it. He left that tree on his own, circled back, found the track again, and took me to the right tree thirty yards away.

I praised him like he’d just won the world championship. Because in that moment, he’d learned something more valuable than getting it right the first time. He’d learned to trust his own judgment, to self-correct, to value accuracy over approval.

A coonhound that’s allowed to be wrong learns how to be right.

Corrections and the Weight of Timing

Correction isn’t about anger or dominance. It’s about clarity and timing.

A dog corrected at the wrong moment doesn’t learn what not to do. He just learns to be uncertain about everything. He learns hesitation. And hesitation at night, when a dog needs to be confident and decisive, turns into serious problems down the road.

Here’s the truth: most of the time, the woods will correct your dog better and more effectively than you ever could. A track that goes cold teaches patience. A coon that gets away teaches the value of staying committed. A bad decision teaches natural consequences.

Your job is to say less, watch more, and step in only when the dog already understands the lesson that’s waiting for him.

I remember a night with Ranger—the same dog I mentioned earlier, after I’d finally learned to give him some space. He took off after what was clearly a deer. I was about to blow the whistle, about to call him back and give him hell. But something made me wait. Five minutes later, he came trotting back to me on his own, no deer, looking a little sheepish. He’d figured it out. If I’d called him off, he would have learned that I stop him from chasing deer. By letting him work it out, he learned that chasing deer is a waste of his time. Completely different lessons.

Trash, Range, and Trusting the Process

Young dogs will absolutely chase the wrong thing sometimes. They’ll range out farther than you’re comfortable with. They’ll make choices that test every bit of your patience.

One mistake doesn’t define a dog. Patterns do.

This is where timing matters so much. Break a dog too early for honest mistakes and you risk breaking his nose, his confidence, his willingness to take chances. But let him practice bad habits for too long and those habits get carved in stone. That balance doesn’t come from following somebody’s training manual word-for-word. It comes from paying attention to your specific dog.

A confused dog will keep trying to figure things out. A scared dog will shut down completely. Always, always choose the path that keeps your dog thinking and engaged.

How Often to Hunt a Young Dog

A coonhound needs rest the same way he needs work. This might be the most overlooked part of training.

Watch his attitude carefully. A dog that hunts with enthusiasm and fire is learning and building. A dog that hunts because he has to, because it’s just what happens every night whether he wants to or not, is wearing down mentally.

One really good night is worth more than three tired, going-through-the-motions nights. Let your dog stay hungry for the woods. Let him miss it a little. That fire and desire is ten times harder to rebuild than it is to protect in the first place.

I learned this with a dog named Bella. I was so excited about her early promise that I hunted her four, five nights a week. By month three, I could see it in her eyes—she was tired. Not physically tired, mentally tired. She’d started going through the motions. I backed off to one, maybe two nights a week, and within a month she was back to her old self, pulling at the leash to get to the woods.

What Finished Really Looks Like

Here’s the thing about a truly finished coonhound: he isn’t loud and flashy all the time. He isn’t perfect every single night. He doesn’t win every argument with a coon or find every track you know is out there.

A finished dog is simply one you trust completely.

You trust him to hunt with purpose when you cut him loose. You trust him to stay with his work even when it gets difficult and boring. You trust him to tell you the truth about what he finds, even when that truth isn’t what you wanted to hear or isn’t convenient for your ego.

Those dogs aren’t rushed into being. They can’t be forced or hurried. They’re walked there slowly and steadily—one quiet night at a time.

Walking Forward

Every coonhound, like every tree dog, is built on the same foundation: desire, confidence, honesty, and time. Night hunting adds its own particular weight and complexity to those lessons, but it doesn’t change the fundamentals.

The beautiful thing about coonhounds is that they want to do this work. It’s in their blood, their bones, their breeding going back generations. Your job isn’t to force it into them. Your job is to give them the time, space, and guidance to become what they already are.

Be patient. Be quiet. Pay attention. Let the dog and the woods do most of the teaching.

If you want to understand the full foundation that applies to every tree dog—whether you’re hunting squirrels during the day or coons at night—start with the basics here:

How to Train a Tree Dog

Now get out there and give your dog a chance to show you who he is.