John and his dachshund Tommy recover a nice bow-shot buck in East Berne, NY

Yesterday we had a good day in the woods. A friend of ours from East Berne, Jim Hens, shot a very nice buck a day before around 5 PM, a little too far back. Jim and his father followed some blood but when it started to be sparse, they backed out and called John. 

We started to track next day at 9:30 AM. Tommy, now 6.5 years old, is in his prime and a total pro. It was such a pleasure to watch him work. At one point when he was working on  a difficult check and we did not see any blood for a while I started to have some doubts. Well, five seconds later we saw a drop of blood. The total track was 600 yards and it took 30 minutes. There was no pulling, and a lot of tracking was done on a relaxed lead. The hunter got a lot of kisses from Tommy at the end of tracking. He was very happy as he would not have been able to find the buck without Tommy. John was very happy too.

For our area of New York State this is a very nice buck.

Jim Hens with his back recovered by Tommy.

Taking a good picture of Tommy was not easy as he insisted on kissing the hunter.