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Friday, December 5, 2008

Blood tracking with (almost) no blood

Tim Eastman and his tracking dachshund Dillon Woodland Warrior

Even though tracking wounded game with dogs is called blood tracking, often there are long gaps without blood in a scent trail left by wounded deer or there is no blood at all.

Dana Sparks and Time Eastman from Michigan recovered this great buck when there was almost no blood to track. Dana tracks with his puppy Mika and Tim uses Dillon, an experienced three-year-old tracking dachshund out of Kathy Vincent breeding.

Dana wrote:
The deer was shot the night before, there wasn't much of a blood trail at all for that deer (no exit hole). The only blood we found was what Mika turned me onto (a hilltop away from last blood speck). It was about a 10-15 foot droplet trail with one good quarter size blotch still moist that caught my eye when I seen Mika changed her tune and plant her face down hard with a light bulb flickering inside her. We had no trail before that as the deer ran though a swamp, and I had no real starting point for her grasp onto to begin with.

I had to leave Mika behind the second trip out, after Tim arrived because we only had one 4 wheeler, and it was back quite a ways with me driving. I took Tim to where I hadn't thoroughly combed, and where I expected to find him if he were to be found, and within 10 minutes, there he was. We didn't find any blood between Mika's blood find and the deer.

Her blood find was actually the key to that recovery (about 80 yards from deer recovery area). I didn't take any pics of her because I didn't think I should, but she was great in what she did find because it told me the direction I needed to search in.

Dana Sparks with the recovered deer

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