Catahoula Bulldog vs Florida Panther

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Height: 21-24''
Weight: 80-120lbs
Country of Origin: Southern USA
Family: Gripping Dog
Type: Bulldog
The Catahoula Bulldog was developed in the southern USA by crossing Catahoulas with American Bulldogs. It's a hard lugging dog, no backdown. It's a drop dog used while curs are baying, but can also function as a running catch dog. It's used to catch boars specifically.
This breed is quite common in the southern USA, but are seldom found in other countries or states outside of the southern USA. It is mostly used for working purposes, it is not a breed encyclopedia pet.

The Florida Panther (Puma concolor coryi) is a feline found in the peninsula of Florida. It can only be found in Florida, but historically could be found throughout the southeast United States.
Males average 120lbs but large individuals can reach up to 160lbs. Females average 90lbs.
Florida Panthers are 24-28'' tall and 6-7ft long.
They predate upon deer, feral hogs and various other animals, being an opportunistic predator. The Florida Panther has no predators, however their kittens may be in danger from predators such as alligators and bobcats.

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lincoln @ajay @packhunter What do you guys think?
Also @ling oldgreengrolar curious what you guys think on gripping dog v big cat matches like this.

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I think the bulldog overpowers and mauls the feline at parity or with the slight size advantage. It becomes close at 100lbs vs 115-120lbs. Rough one. I'd go bulldog on that.

[Hardcastle]

Provided it throws "hard catch" I think it's like any other boarhound or bulldog against a Florida panther. If it's rough cur in nature it is at greater risk of losing. I think a Catahoula/bulldog should be hard catch. Logically should be similar to a BM/ridgeback.

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Dec 25, 2022 12:47:35 GMT Hardcastle said:

Provided it throws "hard catch" I think it's like any other boarhound or bulldog against a Florida panther. If it's rough cur in nature it is at greater risk of losing. I think a Catahoula/bulldog should be hard catch. Logically should be similar to a BM/ridgeback.

I do too, just was thinking others would chime in on gripping dog vs big cat. It's not a rough cur, I've noticed we cross curs with catch dogs to make catch dogs and it's odd to me. Not sure why we do it but the catch dogs it throws are pretty good. Catch Dog x Cur = Catch Dog, Catch Dog x Scenthound = Cur
There are probably dogs that throw cur instead of catch but I haven't seen it.

[Hardcastle]

It's not totally stupid, just pushes a catch dog up into running catch dog and gives nose and hunting smarts/focus. Hogs aren't that fast, the bigger and better they are as a "trophy" the slower they are. An ambull x cat can catch a big hog no problem, sighthound influence starts becoming more and more desirable when you want to catch a lot efficiently and see few get away and catch multiple out of a mob and etc etc. If you just want to go for a hunt and at the end of the day have a hog to show for it, a catahoula bulldog is fine. Great even. It may even be able to find harder-to-find further-away hogs. Having said that, from all the faux-hunting I do I know speed IS hugely awesome. I'd actually like to cross winnie with a staghound to be perfectly honest, and she'd be faster than a cat x bulldog as is, but to me not REALLY fast enough. Just the day before yesterday winnie found and chased a big grey kangaroo, flushed it out of thick long grass and hedges out onto a flat plain and they basically kept the same pace as one another for a 200-300 metre sprint before it hopped back into the thick long grass (well over winnie's head) and she lost it. She's basically not fast enough to catch grey kangaroos, even though she seems to be equally as fast as them. That's not fast enough. You need to be faster than your game to catch it.
Scenthounds are inherently a "one kill bagged by the end of the day" kind of dog, and people who are used to scenthounds and move into curs and cur x bulldogs are also fine with that. That's pretty good. Sighthounds and lurchers (including bull lurchers) are more about stacking up a heavy bag of multiple kills by the end of the day. Maybe in lean country these same lurchers/bull lurchers would get nothing, and maybe that's where scenthounds and curs come in handy. The fact they can sense OLD scent trails and follow them for miles and miles and eventually find the source. Lurchers/bull-lurchers are perhaps better suited to abundant wilderness with more game, and also of course open country where they can see game in the distance. Even though to me aussie-style pig dogs seem better than american style, we may find the aussie dogs couldn't find anything in american forests. MAYBE they're too sparsely populated and spread out too thin for aussie dogs to even recognise anything is there. When it comes to "finding", australia may be on easy mode (seems like it might be- due to the fact I have known of pure pitbulls and boxers that were "great finders").
The aussie dogs are faster, and they seem harder generally, but maybe the great finders in Australia aren't actually at the level of the great finders in the south east usa. I have a suspicion this is true, but not certain.

I think this is where arabs are better than bullygreys, but sometimes it's so easy mode in Australia that people don't even notice that arabs are better finders. Bully greys can find easy enough as well because the pigs are just everywhere. EBT x greyhound shouldn't be skilled in finding, but many are considered such in Australia and I suspect it's because it's not that hard to be a finder here. Even though it's the most prized thing, if forced to make sense out of how much emphasis US hunters have on dogs with tracking abilities, I have to assume it must be harder to find than in Australia where some people (many people) totally neglect using scenting/finding breeds. Like it's not even necessary at all and adds nothing, that's how many people act and breed here, but they may change their tune in the USA. It may be harder to find game. A cat-bulldog seems to be saying "yeah forget speed, forget efficiency in catching many... I'll make sure that eventually we find and catch one".
Not that it's necessarily a slow dog (it wouldn't be, catahoulas are quite fast indeed), but there seems to be a tendency to put speed on the back burner. Sighthounds just don't seem to get a look in until you get to west Texas or Nebraska.

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I like the look and sound of the Catahola Bulldog, seems like a really cool dog and appears to be a quality dog at this weight, reminds me of the quality and functionality of Dogo at these weights.

I don't give CB quite the same odds as Dogo vs Panther, as I assume with Dogo having a higher proportion of bulldog and terrier that it's the superior fighting dog. And based on that photo in the OP, the CB's head seems a little larger than idea for fighting.

Whatever the Dogo can achieve with the Panther, I'll assume you want to add 10 lbs to the CB for it to achieve the same.

The CB, while a hard catchdog, seems to be slightly more cur-ish than the Dogo.

Bolushi favours CB in 100 lb CB vs 115 - 120 lb Panther, although as a close one. Yeah I agree that's a close one.

I would favour 100 lb Dogo vs 120 lb Panther, but would probably prefer the CB to be 105 - 110 lbs to have advantage over 115 - 120 lb Panther. I do think the CB is one whole step down from Dogo, the CB appears to me one whole step "softer", which won't help against cats.

How would you guys compare CB to Dogo for going against Panther, and how much of a weight advantage would CB need to combat parity in CB vs Dogo?

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Bolushi to decide on voting, what weight could I assume the average male Catahola Bulldog to be?

Looks like we're going off 120 lbs for the average male Panther.

I have a feeling I might end up voting Panther here, but it's so close I need a more specific weight for the male CB.

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Dec 25, 2022 7:35:09 GMT Bolushi said:

lincoln @ajay @packhunter What do you guys think?
Also @ling oldgreengrolar curious what you guys think on gripping dog v big cat matches like this.

I’m not very knowledgable when it comes to dogs.

But what I notice is that they don’t really show fear when fighting predators and joyfully wag their tail - as happy as they could ever be, seemingly ignoring the cat’s deadly arsenal of weapons.

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Dec 25, 2022 23:23:36 GMT @ling said:

Dec 25, 2022 7:35:09 GMT Bolushi said:

lincoln @ajay @packhunter What do you guys think?
Also @ling oldgreengrolar curious what you guys think on gripping dog v big cat matches like this.

I’m not very knowledgable when it comes to dogs.

But what I notice is that they don’t really show fear when fighting predators and joyfully wag their tail - as happy as they could ever be, seemingly ignoring the cat’s deadly arsenal of weapons.

Yes, combat is very exciting and fun for them. They have too much loose skin to be affected by cat claws and don't care about injuries.

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Dec 25, 2022 22:35:06 GMT @ajay said:

Bolushi to decide on voting, what weight could I assume the average male Catahola Bulldog to be?

Looks like we're going off 120 lbs for the average male Panther.

I have a feeling I might end up voting Panther here, but it's so close I need a more specific weight for the male CB.

100lbs, could raise that to 105. I actually think they're the same as a Dogo as far as a big cat is concerned, I don't see much difference. I'd give a parity pure bulldog a very very slight advantage over a boarhound like a Dogo, but the Dogo has taken on a more bulldoggy look and feel. The Catahoula Bulldog is American Bulldog x Catahoula, so I'd say the Catahoula blood makes it even with the Dogo. It doesn't have sighthound blood and has no inclination to run over mountains. It's all tiny nitpicky BS but I view them both as equals and if you put a gun to my head and told me to bet on a CB v Dogo fight I'd honestly choose the CB.

[Hardcastle]

Yeah I think sometimes the beauty of crosses is they don't lose as much as they logically should. That's kind of why they are so popular in working dog circles. The maths, which even I subscribe to (or maybe especially me, of all people, subscribes to) where specialisation for a task beats being spread over multiple tasks, where sacrifices have to be made in order to add a skill, and if a specialised catch dog gets crossed to a running dog then surely it loses catching ability... sometimes that just doesn't seem to be true, or certainly is less true than you would think. A bulldog x greyhound for example seems to retain more running ability than it should and also more fighting ability than it should. And frankly I think it retains more fighting ability than running ability and sometimes it can be hard to determine where any fighting weakness has slipped in at all.

That said, I do think scenthound blood can be especially hazardous to a crosses fighting ability, and catahoulas are part scenthound, but sometimes that doesn't happen either. It just depends on the individual dog. Once you have that mentality of "hard catch", I think being half catahoula may be no detriment even compared to a pure ambull... in fact... crazy though it may sound it may be better even at just catching and fighting than the bulldog parent. It makes no sense but I can't deny I have seen it many times. Make no mistake, for example, that a bull arab will beat the crap out of an ebt vast majority of the time. Maybe wouldn't at parity, I guess, but in reality ebts and sbts and amstaffs and even pet apbts need to beware of roving bull arabs because they will fuck them up. Actually happens all the time.

[oldgreengrolar]

Dec 25, 2022 7:35:09 GMT Bolushi said:

lincoln @ajay @packhunter What do you guys think?
Also @ling oldgreengrolar curious what you guys think on gripping dog v big cat matches like this.

I don’t participate much in cat vs dog debates but I will give my two cents. The Florida panther seems to be the one with more weapons and has greater grappling skills. On top of that cougars kill each other with skull bites.

How thick and lose are the dogs skin compared to honey badgers and wolverines?

I acknowledge I am an amateur when it comes to dogs. One thing I am sure, man’s best friend seems to be the one that initiates fights.

[Deleted]

Hm after reading you guy's posts this is a hard one.

Yeah I can acknowledge how a sighthound x bulldog MOTN retains a much larger-than-half proportion of the combat ability of the pure bulldog.

But still, it seems that MOTN pure "bulldog" is still lb-for-lb combat superior, even if "sometimes" or "often" they retain the full combat ability of the pure bulldog. This is about MOTN, not "sometimes" or "often". The Rule.

The scenthound aspect of the CB I'm quite leery of for combat, leery of it being as "hard" catch as Dogo MOTN.

And as I think Antonio was implying in his last post (correct me if wrong), while SOMETIMES the bull x scenthound fully retains the combat ability of the pure bull, MOST of the times, it does not.

Admittedly there probably isn't HEAPS in it, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Dogo is superior on the order of 5 - 10 lbs, which I feel is a little more than neglible difference.

Anyway I'm mainly just theorizing on the CB as I'm not individually familiar with the breed. Maybe this breed breaks the MOTN rules. But without knowing if that's the case I'll be assuming it's "hard" but not "HARD" like the hardest lead-in catchdogs.

That just stands to reason given its got a good splash of scenthound, regardless whether "sometimes" or "often" scenthound blood doesn't compromise combat ability compared to its pure bull aspect.

Is it the case over 50% of the time (MOTN)? Doesn't sound like it unless the CB is an exception to the rule.

And when I look at that photo of the CB, while I like it a lot and do think it's a very perfectly, fully-functional large-weight catchdog, it does look like I'd be a bit clumsier and softer than the likes of Dogo when limits are explored.

But that's nothing against the breed, with right circumstances I'd own one in a heartbeat and call myself very fortunate. Seems like a GREAT dog.

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Dec 27, 2022 6:33:22 GMT oldgreengrolar said:

Dec 25, 2022 7:35:09 GMT Bolushi said:

lincoln @ajay @packhunter What do you guys think?
Also @ling oldgreengrolar curious what you guys think on gripping dog v big cat matches like this.

I don’t participate much in cat vs dog debates but I will give my two cents. The Florida panther seems to be the one with more weapons and has greater grappling skills. On top of that cougars kill each other with skull bites.

How thick and lose are the dogs skin compared to honey badgers and wolverines?

I acknowledge I am an amateur when it comes to dogs. One thing I am sure, man’s best friend seems to be the one that initiates fights.

Not as loose overall, but the dog has very thick and gooey neck skin and also does have a lot of loose skin. Just not as much as a honey badger. Not sure about wolverine.