First Track for us Both
By Andy Bensing
It was with great anxiety that I anticipated the start of
the tracking season this year. My 9 year
old veteran dog, Eibe, had continued to partially lose her sense of smell
since last year and I knew she would only be able to handle a very limited number of calls this year; perhaps even fewer than last year. On top of that my two 16-month-old young
dogs, Hazel and Hunter, who I have been training for the last 14 months were
struggling to come out of a very difficult adolescent period after demonstrating
unbelievably great work, basically perfect, up to about 7 months of age. Hazel had been coming along especially well
the last month of training but I still had my reservations as to how much I
should put her in the field this year.
When I train a dog I always look at the long
term results, and I don’t like to put a dog into the field to soon on an unknown
natural line until I can fully trust the dog.
On an unknown natural line, a young dog can learn a lot of very bad
habits if you are not careful. The most
damaging bad habit being that the dog
can learn that it is enjoyable to track any deer, not just the wounded deer
that they started on. Hazel’s last three training lines before the start of our season showed me enough progress that I
planned to definitely put her in the field this year but I planned to be very
careful in track selection. My strategy
was to screen calls carefully for her and only take tracks likely not to be too
long and the ones that have a dead deer at the end.
The last thing I really wanted was for her to jump and chase a wounded
one still alive. She was already gamey
enough. She certainly did not need that
type of stimulation. I also planned to
curtail any track we might be on if I did not have some confirming sign or
circumstance where I could be absolutely sure we were still on the correct
deer. Without confirmation, I planned to
quit any track where I had not have confirmation of some sort for more than 200
yards.
Well luck was certainly with us for our first call of the
season this year. When the phone finally
rang last night I got a call that sounded close to perfect. An hour after the hit the hunter had started
tracking and tracked 200 yards to a puddle where the deer stood with drips of
blood. My
interview of the hunter revealed a likely liver hit so the deer had a very good
chance of not being very far from the puddle and almost for sure dead. The hunter got to the puddle 2 hours after
the hit and judging from the described light blood trail
coming to the spot where the deer stood, the deer had stood there a long time
to create the puddle. The hunter on my
advice decided not to continue tracking and give the deer more time to
die. I arranged to meet the hunter at
first light and put my rookie dog Hazel on the deer.
At the hit site in the morning, Hazel’s natural instincts
really kicked in. There was only a small
speck of blood at the hit site, which she basically ignored and clearly locked right
in on the hoof/body scent of the wounded animal. She easily tracked the 200 yards to the
hunter’s point of loss in 5 minutes. Her adolescent lackadaisical attitude that she still showed in some of her recent
training was nowhere to be seen. It was
all business. At the point of loss at
the puddle where the hunter and 2 helpers had done some walking back and
forth she had some trouble. In her training she had never encountered
that type of thing before. She seemed to
interpret it like it was a star, which we had trained for and after maybe a 5 minute long check in the area of the
puddle she found her way out. For a
moment during the check I thought she
was going to lose concentration and drift off onto junk, something I still saw
but less and less in training. But with
a very light call of her name by me standing near the point of loss, she
refocused and found her way out. She got
back on the line, pointed out a spot of blood to me maybe 30 yards past the
point of loss, and found the deer maybe 20 yards past that. It was a perfect situation: Right after
correcting herself back onto the line a big reward; the dead deer for her to
tear into.
This certainly was not a difficult track. Even my Eibe with her debilitated nose could
have found this deer only 12 hours after the shot. Heck, the hunter would have
found without the dog, but it was a perfect track to further develop my
dog. And as you can see from the photo, the
deer sure made for a great photo for my dog’s first find of what I hope is a
long career.
Hazel's first recovery
