Elg means elk.
Elk doesn’t mean the large species of Cervus we have in North America that we have unfortunately given that name.
Elk means moose.
Hund does not mean hound.
Hund means dog.
This is the Grå breed of Norwegian elkhound. I don’t think I have to tell you what that means. There is also a Sort (“black”) breed of Norwegian elkhound, but they are uncommon in this country.
So really, this breed’s name is actually “the gray Norwegian moose dog.”
And as you can see from this video, moose hunting with a dog can be a little bit hazardous.
A friend of mine had this dog.
She was a true city dog.
She was 13 years, when she saw her first moose ever,
through the livingroom window. And she immediatly knew, what she has been bred for.
A good dog has to inherit the courage (drive) and the good bark.
My grandfather, who was big time hunter and outdoorsman, had several of these dogs through his life. They were his favorite hunting dogs. He had the black breed, but then he had a few grays.
He has no dogs now, but I think he’d like to steal mine!
I guess it’s hard to stay “clean”!
Elkhounds are quite unique amongst all other dog breeds in that they do not have a typical doggy smell – even when their coat gets wet! This is in part due to the large amount of shedding. Some elkhouds shed more than others depending on their inherited genetic adaptation and differing lineages. Sometimes the shedding is so extreme that it clumps out like lambs wool. When it is this extreme, we call “blowing their coat.”
The Black Norwegian Elkhound is quite rare in the states – more common in Scandanavia. Pretty much the same type of breed though
My grandpa was an elkhound connoisseur. When he returned from the Korean War, he decided that he didn’t want to work for the auto plant in Cleveland. The pay didn’t matter. He went back home to West Virginia, where he found his old feist named Jiggs was still working squirrels in his late teens. When Jiggs died at around the age of 20. My grandpa went looking for another varmint dog. He’d kept a pack of foxhounds (which my great grandparents cared for while he was away!), but foxhounds are good only for chasing foxes.
He’d heard about this breed of dog that had natural treeing instincts that could be used on a wide variety of game, so he purchased a young black Elkhound bitch. And he never looked back. Of course, in those days, black elkhounds were being imported from Norway and Sweden with the grays.
He preferred the black dogs, but because the black dogs were rare in this part of the world,people bred them to grays. No one registered these dogs with the AKC.
He said the black ones had a lot more hunting instinct than the gray one (which he called the “woolly ones,” because they are bit longer in coat).
He got a job with an oil company. He tended some oil and natural gas wells that were in a remote area of West Virginia. Because he was the only person would take that job– you had to walk about 8 miles a day to get to some of these locations– he had bargaining power over the company. He was big in the union, and the union allowed the men to keep hunting dogs, guns, and fox traps while they did their work. He was always seen with an elkhound or an elkhound cross that he was trying out. One of his favorite dog was a cross between an elkhound and a “toy collie” (not a Sheltie). This dog inherited some really primitive genes, for didn’t have the strong bark of an elkound or a “toy collie.” He was like a coyote with a white ring around his neck (and there were no coyotes in West Virginia when he was around). As a varmint dog, he was very effective. He would stake out groundhog holes, lying back about 20 feet. Then, he’d let the groundhog come out and graze. He wouldn’t move. He’d let the groundhog come out far enough from its den that he could overtake it should it start to run from. When the groundhog had reached that distance, he pounced.
It is illegal for dogs to chase deer here, so the dogs were not used to hunt them. At the time, black bears did not have a dog-hunting season, and if anyone did, the people would have used Plotts and Plott curs.
You really know elkhounds. They are a little bit of wolf and a little bit of dog. I’ve never met a stupid one. The last one my grandpa had was a cross of black and gray, and he was an amazing dog. He had not an obedient bone in his body, but he had lots of woods sense. He taught my golden retriever how to hunt furred game– which would be a major fault for a golden retriever in a trial in this country.
Amazing dogs. Every time I see one I think of my grandpa.
An elkhound is not a “city dog,” and anyone who harbors an elkhound in the city is really doing it a great injustice. This is a breed that needs room to run and the occasional freedom to pursue the outdoor wilderness that it was bred for – hunting bear, moose, and wolf.
“She was 13 years, when she saw her first moose ever,
through the livingroom window. And she immediatly knew, what she has been bred for.”
And she did then what?
As little as I know the breed, scent of game however is essential to trigger barking.
Any old dog can bark behind a window when there is something unusual outside.
The ones I knew would bay deer, squirrels, and grouse.
However, they could never be used on deer during the season, because it is illegal.
These dogs were imports from Norway and Sweden, and they were of the two different breeds. They weren’t registered with a kennel club; they were bred for their ability to hunt.
The one I knew as a small boy was half black-half gray, and he was like a wolf that barked all the time. He never learned obedience, unlike most of the other dogs of his breed. But he grew up in the forest and knew all about the wild animals.
The Scandinavian elkhounds are to keep the elks at bay and not to get distracted by any other scent.
My neighbour has a pup, a mixture of a Norwegian Elk Hound x Karelian Bear dog. The pup is supposed to follow his great elk orientated forbears. His very first prey (by accident, mind you ) was a pheasant… Shall follow his future career with great interest.
Actually, it is illegal to use dogs to hunt deer where I live. We have no elk/moose/ Alces alces here.
So the dogs were used on squirrels, rabbits, and grouse.
My grandfather’s favorite dog was a cross between a gray elkhound and a “dwarf collie” (non-show version of the sheltie). He was very easy to train and had very good wood sense.
Very few Americans use these dogs to work, but where I live they are considered excellent hunting dogs (even though you can’t use them on deer.)
It would be interesting if some of those Karelian bear dogs ever were brought here. They are used to haze bears that both people in the national parks these days:
This is in Canada, but they were first used in the US national parks.
So Finland has produced a dog breed that is going to help preserve the grizzly.
They are not like retrievers, but because I grew up around these dogs and they remind me of my grandfather, they always will have a special place in my heart.
Preserving the bear is no problem as bears obey no frontiers, they move freely from east to west and back…
The problem with brown or grizzly bears (Ursus arctos) in North America is that they don’t have enough habitat that is connected. In the continental US, the grizzly range is nothing more than isolated islands surrounded by ranch land. That’s why the species is considered threatened in the continental US.
http://www.bearinfo.org/gbusa.htm
It is the same species as the European brown bear and the Russian bear, and a few subspecies in Alaska get huge, like the Kodiak: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Land/2970/bartphoto.jpg
That bear is Bart the Bear. He was in a bunch of movies.
Woah! “Preserving the bear is no problem as…” Yeah, but ever since we landed at Plymouth Rock and “moved West young man” we’ve been invading their territory ever since, hunting them down to extinction in most parts of the U.S., delineated only a few areas where they are protected in national parks and forests (Yellowstone, Glacier, and parts of Montana, Idaho, Washington), blocked off their migration routes by building residential area everywhere possible, and the rest with fences and freeways. Same goes for cougars. You might want to look into the “Yellowstone to Yukon (Y2Y) Conservation Initiative.” Doubt it’ll ever work though. Bears won’t cross freeways without getting runover, and they’re reluctant to use the underpasses – no passports.
What a speedy, bouncy elkhound. My (mostly) elkhound bounds around like that chasing the fat, smug, geese at a nearby office park. Mostly to no avail, although he did snatch a pigeon out of the air once, to my and the vet’s dismay, given how germ and parasite ridden they are. A friend of my parents had an elkhound (and was the impetus for the one I had as a kid and, therefore, indirectly, I guess, the current fuzz ball) who was a city dog and walked, good as gold, around the neighborhood with her owner off leash. Except for one memorable occasion on which she spotted something large and long legged that appeared to be stealing a human and sprang into action…and bayed a police horse.
My experience with them and from my grandfather’s stories about them is that some are very easy to train and others are very naughty and stubborn. His last dog (half black and half gray) had these characteristics, but he was very good natured and knew how to hunt.
When I’m talking about the black breed, this is what I mean: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_LYxGQn08RU4/SM1uklY6cbI/AAAAAAAABYw/z0o4mi21Tqo/s400/Norwegian+ELKHOUND+BLACK+Norsk+Elghund+Sort.bmp
Their coats are shorter, and they are more like a laika than an elkhound.
My grandfather preferred this breed to the gray one.
The Norwegian Elkhound is commonly known as the “Dog of the Vikings.” They are a proud and noble breed that is easily offended. They are easy to train as long as they understand their master and what he/she is trying to do. Likewise, they are easily offended when they do not comprehend their master’s motive. When betrayed for some unknown reason to them, they may sulk for days or more before they gradually regain their confidence and trust in their master. It goes without saying that they are not the type of a breed that you should teach tricks and games to. The close bond that you establish with an elkhound is a lifetime bond – never to be broken.
It’s interesting to watch this video and see similarities in some herding behaviors. Individual dogs of Catahoula breed and some other breeds use the “lure the stock” method of bringing in feral cattle and others to be collected. In some of the other “moose hunting by dog” videos you can see the dog bite on the hocks as well — a technique used in almost all cattle herding. It would not take a big leap to go from what the Elkhound does to using a dog to help bring and “contain” the original forerunners to domestic cattle or sheep.
Vr, Peggy Richter.
My grandfather’s dogs would try to herd the horses.
I wonder if this might show some relationship with the Norwegian buhund, which is a similar looking dog used for herding work:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Buhund
Likely. The original Pomeranian, Keeshound and possibly the Samoyed are somewhat related. Through the original Pomeranian come a lot of the other European herding dogs. The common dogs would be way back, but it’s interesting to see different variations and applications of similar behaviors / genetic traits.
Vr, Peggy Richter.
There are two distinct strains of spitz type dog in Northern Eurasia. One set is a herding dog– the Keeshond/Wolfspitz, German spitz (and the “American Eskimo dog” and the Pomeranian), the Lapponian spitz, the Finnish Lapphund, the Swedish Lapphund, the Icelandic sheepdog, the buhund, and the Samoyed. (I’m leaving out some). These dogs herded reindeer/caribou in the north and more pedestrian stock in the south, especially in the German-speaking world.
The other type is the Elkhound/Laika type, which is far more widespread. This is a hunting spitz. In this group, I include all three breeds of Elkhound, the Finnish spitz, and the Karelian bear dog, as well as the Russian laika dogs. I also include the various breeds of hunting spitz from Japan, Korea, and China and Mongolia. The original Chow fits within this group, as does the Akita. I include the Siberian husky, with the caveat that the particular strain of East Siberian Laika from which it descends was a hauling dog, not a hunting dog.
Here’s a hunting Chow from China: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_u8lpcWcCkWs/Stmw7JN7nYI/AAAAAAAABco/hHTWBd6mFuY/s200/V.RealChow.JPG
These dogs are multipurpose hunters. These dogs will go after big and small game, but their relationship to the herding spitz breeds is not fully split. In Europe, in particular, there were cross-breeding between types. It is not an accident that the buhund looks a lot like the three breeds of Elkhound.
Now, the spitz types from the North American Arctic are very different. They were used for hunting in a more limited fashion, but their main purpose was to haul heavy loads. That’s why the Qimmiq, the Malamute, and the Greenland dog are all built rather differently from the dogs of Eurasia.
Does anyone know of a trainer or Norwegian Elkhound breeder who trains the dogs to hunt? I live in Idaho and we have season where we can use dogs to hunt big game (bear, elk, moose, depending on populations) I am disabled and own an Elkhound who seems to have strong hunting instincts.