PLOTT HOUND
Official U.K.C. Breed Standard
This standard was framed for the purpose of furnishing suggestions for breeding to the breeders in their aims toward improving the breed, to higher ideals in their breeding, and to try and establish a nationwide breed of this particular hound strain of bloodlines to look alike and to have a universal conformation.
| HISTORY |
Of the six breeds of U.K.C. registered Coonhounds, only the Plott Hound doesn't trace its ancestry to the foxhound; and of the 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 were used for boar hunting in Germany many years ago. Jonathon Plott left his native Germany and came to this country 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. In those days there were no wild boar in this country. Jonathon Plott used his dogs for hunting bears.
Plott supposedly kept his strain entirely pure, making no outcrosses. In 1780, the Plott pack passed into the hands of Henry Plott.
Shortly after that time, a hunter living in Georgia who had been breeding his own outstanding strain of "leopard spotted bear 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 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.
Other crosses probably took place around the year 1900. G.P. Ferguson, who was a neighbor of the Plott family in North Carolina in those days, was a major influence on the Plott breed.