Blood tracking reports from Maine

A good friend of ours, Susanne Hamilton from Maine, called yesterday that her five-month-old Meggie did great on a real blood line. The puzzle was that when Susanne got a call from a hunter she took her experienced blood tracking dachshund Buster to look for the deer. It was not a difficult track, about three hours old, but Buster struggled. Those who have been tracking for a while know that from time to time something happens that just leaves you scratching your head. Sometimes we can just speculate while looking for a plausible explanation. Buster is a very experienced and accomplished dog, and he has tracked lines up to 30 hours old. But on this one he had a hard time focusing and was overshooting checks. The experience like this can be embarassing, especially in front of the hunter who can see the blood and knows whether the dog is on it or not.

In the end Buster found the doe, and Susanne decided to run Meggie, Buster's daughter, on the same line just to give her some experience. As it turned out, Meggie did the line perfectly and did not follow Buster's tracks at all. She was tracking at a medium speed, put her nose to the ground and was pointing blood on leaves.This was a good ending to the call that left Susanne with some questions.

I don't know whether this applies to this specific situation, but sometimes when the line is fresh and there is a lot of blood, a dog can have a difficult time with following the scent line. It happened to many trackers, and the whole experience can be very humbling. It seems that freshness and abundance of scent creates a cloud of scent, and in the case like this the solution is to come back several hours later.

Susanne with Meggie. Meggie is out of FC Quilla von Velbert and FC Clown vom Talsdeich "Buster", and she was bred by Willette Brown

Dixie, an older sister of Meggie, from the 2009 breeding has been doing some amazing work this year. Willette shared with me e-mail that she had received from Dixie's owner Phil.

"Hi Willette, Hi Susanne. Dixie had an outstanding run last night that didn't finish until today. I received a call on a wounded deer that I was told could not have gone more than 100 yards. Definitely dead !!!!!. Dixie and I went just to help drag the deer out. One hour thirty minutes and 1.25 miles later we crossed a road and came to posted land and a housing development.In that time Dixie never lost the track and only stopped once to get a drink. We did not know who owned the land so we decided to try in the morning

This morning we circled the posted land in hopes of finding where the deer came out. We left the track with only faint sporadic pin drops of blood last night and could not find any this morning. There were fresh tracks everywhere. Dixie opened on a trail so I decided to let her do whatever she wanted even though there was no blood. We went about a half of a mile with her opening all of the way. She swung hard left and jumped into a pond. I said sorry Dixie I am not going out there, and looked, there was the deer floating out in the middle. The young man that shot it swam out to retrieve his prize. I sat on the bank and hugged my dog.A pretty Good day I think.

Phil"

Dixie with the deer she recovered. She is a Buster and Quilla daughter.