Sometimes the most memorable tracks do not produce a dead deer or bear at the end. These are two examples of such tracks that were also very long. A big thank you to Chris and Pete for sharing them with us..
Chris Barr from Indiana tracks with Gerti (Gwen von Moosbach-Zuzelek), who is a 5½ year old daughter of Billy and Gilda, and the track is a direct quote from his email:
I
wanted to tell you about my most recent track with Gerti which occurred this
past Tuesday evening. The hunter shot a
small buck at 9:00 in the morning with a head on facing chest shot. He had blood and bone
fragments at the hit sight. He tracked for approximately 150 yards before
losing the blood. I arrived at the hit site at about 7:00 that evening and put
Gerti down at the hit. She took off immediately with no re-starts necessary.
She pulled me down to the point of loss very quickly. I had not seen any blood
since the first 50 yards or so but she was pulling very confidently. We
continued for several hundred yards with no blood. I called back to the hunter,
who was doing a great job of keeping up, that the rope “felt” the same as it
had since the hit site but that I was dying for some confirmation. (I have a
bad habit of not trusting Gerti sometimes). Well I finally saw some blood and I
felt very confident that I could pretty much blindly trust her from that point
forward.
It
ended up being a 3.5 mile track where we caught up to the deer twice and I even
got a shot at him the second time. He only let me get about 30 yards away. The
cliff-notes version is that we were in Yellowwood State Forrest. We had no cell
signal and we had to rob the batteries from my portable radios for my GPS as it
had gone dead. We kept pushing the deer because I just felt (and I checked with
2 experts) that it was the right thing to do. To this point, I had never had a
track where I had seen the deer and not eventually recovered it.
We finally had
to make the hard decision to abandon the track. We recorded last blood with GPS
coordinates and he was going to try to come back. I was honestly starting to
get a little freaked out when everything battery powered we had was dying. I
was concerned that if we lost our lights that we may have a long night in the
woods in front of us. Temps dipped into the 20’s, and as you can imagine, we’d
worked up quite a sweat.
This
was without a doubt Gerti’s best track of the season. I give her credit for a
“find” because she found him twice! I believe shot must have glanced down and
along the brisket and hit the shoulder. I think we could have eventually walked
him down. I hated to leave him.
We’ve
had a frustrating season. This was only our 10th track total. We are
usually in the 20’s by now. I haven’t had the local calls I’m used to and many
of the UBT calls have just been too far with me working and hunting myself.
This was our 3rd find and possibly Gerti’s best track ever. The
total distance from the truck back to the truck was 5.5 miles….and suffice it
to say there were no fields and the hills of Brown County can get steep.
When
we made it home around midnight Gerti ate supper and then disappeared under a
blanket with my daughter’s fiancĂ©. Not a bad life…for me either.
---------------
Pete Martin from Kiamesha Lake, NY, wrote recently about one of his tracking adventures with Lisa von Moosbach-Zuzelek, a 9½ year old daughter of Billy and Gela.
What an
unbelievable bear call on Saturday night of November 15. Took up track
Sunday morning @ 7:30 am, 11 hours later. Bear was shot with .270 @ 50 yards by
a 17 year old hunter. It was in Ulster County, on state land in Voor
Nuy Kill area outside Ellenville.
The hit
site showed moderate blood and hair. As we proceeded to track it was obvious that
the bear was bleeding profusely. The hunter, his dad and uncle did excellent
job tracking bear 400-500 yards, zig-zagging up and down side of steep
mountainside. We passed last marker and blood. Lisa was on this track like
nobody’s business. Straight down mountainside to small wet swampy area with good
blood all the way.
Here
comes the LONG TRACK made short. Next 4 miles up mountainsides, down steep
hills, flat open hardwoods, blowdowns, streams, mountain laurel. You had to
crawl on hands and knees. Lisa showed us every little blood spot you could
possibly imagine, It wasn't too long, maybe one mile, I realized and explained
to tracking crew we were pushing a wise old bear. We saw fresh wet blood. At
start of track blood was plentiful and dark. This bear couldn’t have been that
far ahead of us but just far enough we couldn't catch up. Lisa was totally vocal
which indicated to me she was on very fresh scent and blood.
There
were two very tough checking spots for Lisa to figure out but after 12 minutes or
so she took us off in the right direction to more blood. Amazing. Some blood
drops were 75 to 100 yards apart. I could not believe the strength and
persistence of this bear. This bear did everything you could imagine Circled, went
up and down same but different hills more than once, back tracked, bedded. Near
the end blood was getting watery and weak but Lisa was right on it. The tracking
crew and hunter could not believe it. At one point close to end of track
someone behind me said "you have a million dollar dog -never saw anything
like this before. These were experienced hunters.
Lisa never quit pulling, nose to the ground so focused and vocal. She
wanted this bear so bad and knew it wasn't that far ahead of us. Still had
small drops of blood going up yet another hill. Hunter’s father and uncle
decided we were not going to catch up to bear, and they called off track after 4½
hrs. Everybody was completely exhausted,
myself including. My only regret is that we didn't
take a long break and continue to track as I thought the bear must be at his
end. We were almost to the Roundout Reservoir.
1 comment:
Great stories guys. I've got to agree that some of our most memorable tracks ended without a recovery. One was 4hrs,& about 4miles. We jumped the deer 6 times before pushing it onto posted land we couldn't access. It was chest shot the previous day with a Muzzle Loader -- Tough animals !! Happy tracking, Bob & Thor.
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