BORN-TO-TRACK BLOG: Tracking a crossbow shot moose in Quebec: Alain Ridel and Théo

I can't believe that we are still catching up with reports from the 2012/2013 tracking season. We just discovered this October e-mail from Alain Ridel, a UBT member from Quebec. Alain's tracking dog is a wirehaired dachshund Théo who was imported from France. We bred Keena to Théo four years ago and he was a sire of our "P" litter that produced Paika. The report is about tracking a moose that was shot with a crossbow.

Hello John,
I hope that your tracking season went very well. Up here things have been rather calm since up to now. I have had only 14 opportunities to track, and one of these was for myself as described below. This search took place on the land of the big maple syrup evaporator at Lac de l’Est. You were there with me. You should be able to recognize the people in the photo.

I shot this moose with my crossbow, and the arrow was equipped with an expandable head. He was shot in the lungs at 23 meters and the arrow passed all the way through. Both lungs were penetrated. The moose ran 234 meters before falling dead. Between the hit site and the place where we found the moose, we saw only two small wipes of blood on branches. However, you can judge the importance of the wound from the photos.

Théo had no difficulty in finding the bull moose despite the presence of two cows that were accompanying him when I shot. This moose, which weighed 834 pounds. field dressed, died a long way from everything, and we had to cut a path with a chain saw for almost a kilometer before we got to a decent wood road.

If you can write a short article on your blog about this hunt and the successful, but not very difficult search for the moose, it will demonstrate that a crossbow kills as efficiently as a conventional bow! It also shows that the same wound on a 230 pound whitetail or a 1000 pound moose produces quite different results in each case because the two species of game react differently.