James and Aspen, a blood tracking team from Montague, Texas

When Carl Eisenhard, DVM, from Springville, NY bred his wirehaired dachshund Blue Hill Alice to our Billy, one of the puppies Blue Hill Aspen went to a blood tracking home in Texas. James Willard from Montague, just a short distance north of Dallas, has been tracking with Aspen for the last two years.

Recently we received two pictures of the deer Aspen recovered.



In James' words: The doe was bow shot, the arrow hit the opposite shoulder so there was not an exit hole, despite the large hole in the top of her back there was almost no blood. The track was about 3.5 hours old. I had to let Aspen find a starting point herself and then she went straight to it. The doe had traveled about 100 yards.

The buck was shot by a 10 year old boy on youth weekend. His dad called and told me the story. I thought we should wait a while so we started tracking about 3:30 that evening. The buck had been rifle shot that morning about 7:30 am. The dad was 100% sure the buck had gone to the South across a large opening. Aspen found the buck in the worst brier patch I have ever been in. The buck had gone a short ways to the South and circled back to the North. The track was just a couple hundred yards long but this buck would have definitely not have been found with out Aspen

James can be reached at jwill.bowhunter@yahoo.com