History
Of the seven breeds of United Kennel Club (UKC) registered coonhounds, the Plott Hound does not trace its ancestry to the foxhound. And, of those seven breeds, we can be most certain of the Plott’s heritage and the men most responsible for its development.
The ancestors of today’s Plott Hounds were used for boar hunting in Germany many years ago. Originally from Germany, Johannes Plott emigrated to the United States in 1750. He brought a few wild boar hounds with him. These dogs had been bred for generations for their stamina and gameness. Plott and his family settled in the mountains of western North Carolina. Though there is no evidence that Johannes ever came to western North Carolina, his son Henry settled there around 1800 and was responsible for the Plott hound legend of an incredible big game dog. The Plott Balsams are a mountain range that carries the family name to this day.
Plott supposedly kept his strain entirely pure, making no outcrosses. In 1780, the Plott pack passed into the hands of Henry Plott.
Shortly after, a hunter living in Rabun Gap, Georgia who had been breeding his own outstanding strain of “leopard spotted dogs” heard of the fame of the Plott Hounds and came to North Carolina to see for himself. He was so impressed that he borrowed one of Montraville Plott’s top stud dogs for a year to breed to his own bitches. This single cross is the only known instance of new blood being introduced into the Plott Hound since they first came to this country. Eventually Mont decided not to continue this breeding practice and gave all the leopard dogs away, returning to his original breeding practices.
Other crosses possibly took place around the year 1900. G.P. Ferguson, a neighbor of the Plott family in North Carolina in those days, was a major influence on the Plott breed. He made a careful study of the Blevins hounds and the Cable hounds of that era. To what extent he used these bloodlines in his Plott breeding program is not known.
The Plott Hound was first registered with the United Kennel Club in the 1946. Plotts were recognized by the American Kennel Club in 2006.
Read more about this topic: Plott Hound
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He wrote in prison, not a History of the World, like Raleigh, but an American book which I think will live longer than that. I do not know of such words, uttered under such circumstances, and so copiously withal, in Roman or English or any history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)