A big thank you to Darren Doran who wrote this report a week ago. Following Monday he had a rotator cuff surgery. The surgery went well and Darren is recovering home. Darren's tracking partner is Theo (FC Theo von Moosbach-Zuzelek).
A hunter called about a deer he hit on Friday morning, October 21, about
7:30 am. At the hit the deer walked off about 60 yards and lay down. The hunter
thought that the deer was going to die right there. After about 20 minutes the
deer got up and slowly walked away. The hunter stayed in the stand for a while, then climbed down and snuck out. He came back around noon to check the arrow and
look for the deer. During this time it had rained heavily and was threatening
the rest of the day.
When the hunter checked his arrow he smelled gut on it and saw
white hairs on the ground. Despite the rain, there was a substantial amount of blood in the bed. He began to
track the deer and eventually lost the blood alongside the creek. The hunter
looked me up on the UBNJ web site and called me. It turns out that the hunter
was a new resident to the town I work for and was hunting right out of his back
yard.
At this point I would
like to say that this swamp buck was a mature deer over 3 ½ years old. I have
seen this behavior in this age class of a buck many times. At the hit the deer
doesn’t run or panic. They don’t elevate their blood pressure by running, and by
bedding quickly they slow their blood loss. With the onset of the rut, this
type of buck with this type of hit can be very hard to kill and recover.
I made arrangements to meet the hunter after work and I was at his
house by 4 p.m., 8½ hours after the shot. We went to the hit site and I
got Theo ready. The arrow had a slight gut smell and the white hair was there
just as the hunter had said. I started Theo and he took the track and ended up in the wound bed. I could see good blood indicating it was a liver hit. Theo tracked to
the creek to where the hunter had quit and began searching. He kept going up
and down the bank and then just jumped in and swam to the other side. The creek
was about 15 feet wide and I just kept feeding out my lead. Theo got to the
other side and after a quick check started up a little draw away from the bank.
It looked like we were going to get wet. The creek
was mid-thigh deep and a little chilly but had a pretty good bottom. We got
across quickly and tracked along the top of the creek to an ox bow. Theo
started down towards the creek again and stopped on a log that was in the
water. He was stretching out and sniffing but hadn’t committed to taking the
plunge. The creek was deep here but not wide and if we went in we were going to
have to swim.
Theo came back up to the top and began searching the bank.
All of a sudden he took a line right over our track in. The deer had back
tracked. He bedded high on the creek bend with the deep water at his back
looking over his back trail where he crossed the creek the first time. It’s
quite possible that the deer saw or heard the hunter from this vantage point
looking for him earlier in the day.
Theo then tracked out of the flood plain and up to higher
ground. I hadn’t seen any blood since the bed at the creek and we were heading
right for a housing development in the neighboring municipality. Theo was
tracking right behind the backyards of the houses and I was praying that the
deer stayed in the woods. All of a sudden Theo’s tempo picked up and the hunter said
he saw a deer get up and go to the right. Theo was really excited and tracking
left towards the road. I just held back on the lead and let him settle a bit. It was obvious that there was more than one deer
here and they left in different directions. Theo took a line that was straighter, and the hunter said that the deer went right. I asked him to stand by and wait. When I saw a small drop of fresh blood 30 yards later I knew he had the
right deer. I went about another 30 yards, found another spot of blood and called
up the hunter. Theo was tracking towards a mowed retention basin behind the
houses and he was pulling hard. I planned to track up
to the edge and look across and check for the deer. The basin was about 125 yards wide and there was no dead deer in it. I pulled Theo back and it was time to
discuss our strategy with the hunter.
I was afraid to push the deer because
of the houses. I’ve lost big deer to the developments before and did not want
it to happen now. I laid out our options. We could continue and
risk losing him in the development, we could come back around midnight and re-start, or we could take our chances with the rain and start in the morning. I reassured hunter that Theo could track after a rain and it wouldn’t be a problem, but I
didn’t realize how much we were going to get.
We decided to resume tracking in the morning. It had poured
over night and was raining hard in the morning. I sent a text to the hunter to make sure
that were still on and he said yes. I was a little apprehensive about tracking
to the deer but felt confident that if it stayed in the woods we could find
him. I picked up the hunter and we started at the first creek crossing. I swear
when Theo saw the hunter he knew we were going to finish what
we started.
I brought Hip Boots for the crossing and just made it. Theo swam
across and was dragging he short lead following the exact same track to where we
stopped yesterday. I hooked up Theo about 50 yards from the edge of the basin
and started. He ran down yesterday’s line and into the basin and began
searching his way across.
At the other side he began checking runs. I was really
hoping to find the deer just inside the edge but it didn’t happen. We had the
wind in our face,a and I was sweeping Theo in a
search mode from the houses to our side of the creek in an effort to pick up
the trail of the deer or air scent a body. Theo was working nicely through the thick green briars and
brush and we went about another 500 yards sweeping through the bottom without
any luck. Now the plan was to work the creek back and have
Theo check the runs leading up to a crossing. We had gotten about 150 yards from the retention basin when Theo started sniffing the briars while standing
up on his hind legs. When he does this it usually means he’s confirming the
scent of our deer or has caught a piece of familiar scent. Theo started to take
this run towards the creek and worked down to the bank and was looking across
the water. I happened to look downstream and there was the deer floating in the
middle of the creek stuck against a fallen tree. As soon as I saw him I shouted
out my favorite saying “I gottem”. The hunter came running over and because of
the briars and the creek bank he couldn’t see him. He said “where, where “. I
said "he’s in the creek, you got him".
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| Theo got him! |
By now Theo had seen him and was swimming over to him. He
climbed up on the deer and began to pull out his hair. I waded out and dragged the
deer back to the bank. The deer died about 100 yards behind the hunter's stand
and looked like it was headed back to where it had come from. We had a heck of
a celebration, and I was genuinely happy for this hunter. He was a good guy and
I’m glad we could find his deer. The deer was hit low in the liver and because
of the way it acted after the hit, it lived a long time.
This kind of track makes believers out of hunters and
legends out of tracking dogs. This may be my last track this season and if so
it was a great one. Theo is still learning and getting better every time we
track. We have developed into a team that knows what to do to get the job done.
I love working this dog and finding deer with him.
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| Darren and Theo at the end of successful track |
