Darren's trip to Illinois and Karl's first real tracking experiences

The pictures show Karl, a young wirehaired dachshund owned by Darren Doran. This is the first tracking season for Karl who was bred by Laurel Whistance-Smith. He was born February 18, 2009, and he is out of FC Pagan von Lowenherz and our Billy. Darren wrote:

"I'm back home now and Karl really liked his trip to Illinois. We stayed in a house in Hannibal, MO and crossed the Mississippi every day to go to the farm to hunt.

He's really a good dog. The first track was a doe Bobby shot. He knew he killed the deer and it was only about 50yd long. Karl was on the deer in less than a minute. The next was a doe I shot. Again I knew the deer was dead. The track was about 4 hr old. The deer ran through a blow down and directly into the wind. Karl came out of the blow down and immediately air scented the deer and went right to it.

The third was the deer in the picture this doe was shot by Jim and went about 100 yd. The track was 4 hrs old. These tracks were really very easy for Karl and I ran him on these so he would start to realize what his job is and how he fits in to this. As far as that goes I think he's getting it.

The track of the buck that Jim shot I mentioned in the email was different. We went to the hit site and the deer had left the bed; Jim saw him lay down in the night before. The deer had crossed the north line on to private property and we had to get permission to enter. Our contact in IL went to the outfitters camp, but no one was there to give permission. While we were waiting Bob and Jim walked east along the north line and saw the deer dead in a weed patch about 50 yds from his first bed. We really couldn't finish the track with Karl. He became confused as to why we stopped on the track and were just hanging around. The fact that it was raining wasn't helping either. I do believe he had air scented the dead deer when we first started. He left the blood line and charged toward the dead deer and was doing everything he could to get though the fence and go in that direction. We got the deer back on our side and let Karl chew on him as a reward. "