It was good to hear from Kevin Armstrong from Deer Search. Kevin and his friend Ron Betts track with two wirehaired dachshunds, sisters Karma (born in 2005) and Effie (born in 2008), who are out of Billy/Gilda breeding. In Kevin words:
I was out of town for the first week of archery season so I never got out tracking till last Sunday. Ron Betts called me to ask if I wanted to join him on the 18 hour old track of a paunch shot doe. 100 yards into the trail
Karma wanted to go one way but Effie wanted to go the other way. We let them have their nose. About the time I pulled Karma out to restart my cell phone was vibrating. Effie had found the deer. Unfortunately the coyotes had found it first. That did not matter to the girls they celebrated a recovery anyway.
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| Ron Betts with Effie (left) and Kevin Armstrong with Karma. The doe that Effie recovered had been already found by coyotes. |
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| Kevin with Karma |
hunter only had about 75 yards of sparse blood marked. The dry conditions made tracking very difficult for the dogs but we eventually got Karma on the right trail. After several hundred yards of very thick cover we found two beds. One of the beds had dry blood in it. Karma went from cold trailing to hot trailing. With daylight fast fading the chase was on. We went through several hundred more yards of thick cover. As we approached the tangled banks of Arrowhead Creek I had a feeling that the deer was trying to give us the slip. As I gained the bank I spotted the buck, alive, 20 yards ahead of me lying in the creek with his head up. I hollered to the hunter to "GET UP HERE, QUICK!" He held the dog while I shot the buck with my .44 mag. The buck leapt from the creek and went up the opposite bank. I knew I had put a good hit in him with the pistol so I had the hunter hold the dog while I crossed the creek, went up the opposite bank, found the buck and finished him off. It doesn't get much more exciting than that!
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