By Dr. Bernd Blossey
Associate ProfessorDepartment of Natural Resources
Cornell University, Ithaca, NY
The making of a team
I have been
bow hunting in New York (and occasionally elsewhere) for over 20 years. Over this time, I have gone from taking a few
deer to dozens each year. This is
explained, in part, by the fact that I have been involved with implementing and
executing suburban deer management programs using archery equipment in the
Ithaca, NY area. These often involve
Deer Depredation Permits (colloquially called nuisance permits) that allow
shooting outside of regular hunting seasons, over bait, and at night with the
help of artificial lights. The goal is
to reduce deer populations that are threatening crops or forest regeneration,
and other species. My season currently
stretches over 6 months, typically from late September to the end of
March. Having a slight red-green
blindness (I can see individual colors just fine, but when red and green dots
are interspersed, I am unable to pick up the red), following blood trails is
not an easy task for me since blood drops do not “light up” as they do for
others. Consequently, I have honed my
skills over the years due to patience, slow approaches, reading signs like hoof
prints, and asking for help from others (my wife Vicki and other landowners
included). This has helped greatly but I
also had my fair share of grid searches and long hours after dark, or the next
morning to locate deer. And not always
have they been successful, particularly not in tall goldenrods or cattail
swamps, or dense thickets of honeysuckle, privet, buckthorn and multiflora rose
that are common in suburban areas.
Sometimes it was the vultures that needed to tell me where I walked by a
dead deer at 5 or 10 yards, or I found only bones the next morning as bears,
coyotes, bobcats and foxes have helped themselves to a welcome late dinner.
Over the years I called in and
observed several dachshunds do their tracking searches and I had become more
and more interested in developing this approach for myself, and in helping
other hunters. It seemed the right thing
to do, but there was a lot of homework that needed to be done, including
convincing my wife that a dog in the house and in the family would be a good
idea. It took several years of reading
and background work, and some planning for the right time to train a puppy
before this last year finally saw it all come together. I had settled on obtaining a Deutsch
Drahthaar (a Schwarzschimmel) because I had fallen in love with the breed after
seeing a six-month old “trainee” at the Rhode Island airport. I wanted a medium sized dog, and a versatile
hunting dog, although I rarely, if ever, venture out for upland or waterfowl
hunting. But I am an ecologist and
conservationist in my professional life and I wanted to maintain a potential
option for the dog to be trained as a conservation dog in finding rare
critters, scat or even plants.
Having grown up in Germany I pursued options to obtain a puppy both in
the US and in Germany, where I worked with a breed warden. And this connection paid off when a breeder
had a litter of 10 puppies born on New Years Eve, eight of which were
Schwarzschimmel, with a good blood tracking pedigree and other physical
features my wife and I were favoring. We
picked up Sylvie (the name is an inspirational combination of the date, known
as Sylvester in Germany and over much of Europe in honor of an early pope, and
the Latin Sylva for forest where the dog will spend a major portion of her
time) in late February, spent a week with relatives to help socialize her, and
then returned in early March with her in the cabin to New York. And I have been training her ever since
through late spring, summer, and fall on artificial lines, always looking
forward to the start of the season. It
did not always go as desired, she failed miserably on her first overnight
track, and the hot and dry summer of 2016 made tracking conditions difficult. But she always was eager to work and dog and
handler are trying to learn each other’s approaches. Most of the time I try to slow her down as
speed appears to be the enemy number one when she overshoots and then loses the
track. But she has learned to circle back
and around to pick up where she lost the trail.
Over this time she has grown from an adorable little puppy to nearly her
full size as a 10 month old teenager.
The first call
One of the
recommendations is to have practice runs for dog apprentices, i.e having the
dog find a dead deer, even if a dog is not necessary. Just for good practice on the real thing. But the first call that came in on October 3rd
was the real thing. A hunter had shot a
deer in a suburban area surrounded by houses, lawns and roads. There was a reasonable blood trail that the
hunter was able to follow for maybe 200 yards to two large blotches of blood
and then nothing. After not being able
to find any more blood that evening the hunter backed out. I took the tracking opportunity after the
report of a high hit but out of a treestand with a downward trajectory, and
good lung blood on the arrow. We started
the track in the early afternoon, some 15 hours after the hit. Sylvie took right to the track, and she was
much slower and more deliberate than on the artificial tracks, something I
immediately noticed. My artificial lines
may have been too easy, even though I thought I was making it more and more difficult. The area of brush and woods was crisscrossed
by deer trails but Sylvie followed the trail down the path the hunter had
marked to the spot with the abundant blood and then further towards the edge of
the woods ending on a lawn. She lost the
track twice during this time, but only briefly and circled right back without
me needing to correct her. But at the
edge of the lawn she was unsure and then appeared to follow other interesting
scents. I walked her back around in the
thicket and we started over, all the while discussing with the hunter what
could have happened. The second path was
almost identical to the first, without her getting lost, and we ended up at the
same spot.
We decided to follow the edge of
the woods, look into some hedgerows, go across two of the roads that separated
the piece of woods where the hit occurred from a larger forested area and allow
Sylvie to see if she could pick up the scent trail once again. She picked up all kinds of interesting
scents, apparently, but we never found another sign of the deer or any
blood. We returned to the pocket of
woods, made another circle through it in hope the deer may not have left the
woods if mortally wounded but ended up tired and without the deer. After further discussing the hit once more,
it was my opinion that the hunter likely hit too high to get a double lung, and
that the big blotches of blood were not from the deer bleeding out of both
sides but probably standing in the same spot, bleeding out of his nose with his
head lowered until the hunter following the track pushed him out. I thought this deer may still be alive, since
these are amazing and resilient animals.
The hunter had a trail camera in the woods and 4 days later the buck he
shot walked by the camera with the entry wound clearly visible. The entry wound is too high to have hit lung
on the deer’s left side and on the right side the broadhead probably hit one of
the small back lung lobes, not sufficient for a mortal hit. This made me feel much better about the tracking
job Sylvie did. Who knows if an
experienced dog would have been able to follow the track across the hard
surfaces, and it would have ended at a live deer.
Three in a row
The next
weekend came quickly and with it another practice opportunity, this time in a
suburban community shooting over bait.
As for the previous weekend, the agreement was that if one of us would
shoot a deer, we would allow Sylvie to find it for good practice. Little did we know that she would get both an
easy practice and then two real searches.
I was able to shoot a fawn coming to bait and it ran 40 yards and
collapsed (see yellow arrow in picture below showing bait and the dead deer
next to the tree in the background).
After waiting for dark and the potential for another shot, I put Sylvie
on the track. I was not able to locate
the arrow in the dense grass after the pass through, so I was not entirely sure
of the exact hit location. Sylvie was
clearly confused by all the hot deer scent coming and going to bait and she was
eager to investigate it. I allowed
Sylvie to find the arrow and once she had it she picked up the trail and we
were at the dead fawn in no time. It was
interesting to see her investigate the deer with caution – this was, after all,
the first real deer she found. She walked around it investigating the wound and
the leg glands and the muzzle. It looked as if she was not quite sure what to
make of it. At home, the end of a line
was usually some old piece of deer hide, so this was different. But she eagerly consumed the deer treats that
I had brought for her.
So far so good – good practice!
Let’s call it a night I thought. But not
so fast. One of my fellow hunters had
shot two deer, neither one of which he was able to locate. So we went to the next
property, just about a mile away. The
hunter had located one of the arrows but not the second. I determined that there was clear sign of gut
on the arrow and the description of the deer behavior after the hit (jumped up
and then slowly walking off) suggested a potential hit of the liver as
well. It was about 2.5 hours after the hunter
shot this deer, so I decided to track the second animal first to give the gut
shot animal more time. The location was
in a small cattail swamp, surrounded by old fields, gardens and lawns. Sylvie
picked up a trail, but the hunter indicated to me that the deer took a
different path, so I called her off after 10 yards. I should have known better,
but I am an apprentice, as is my dog, in learning the skills of collaborating
with each other. So off we went on a
wild ride through brush, thickets, trash and myriad deer trails criss-crossing
the area. I could tell after a while
that Sylvie was not on the track but I allowed her to search for about 20
minutes before calling it off and returning to the site of the hit.
I then decided to track the gut shot deer. After allowing Sylvie to sniff the arrow she
slowly followed this deer track through the cattails, over a lawn, back into a
hedgerow, out onto a lawn and then towards two houses. This time I trusted the dog, although I was
surprised about the travel directions.
Knowing that it was only about 3 hours after the gut shut, I constantly
checked into the distance to see if I could locate a deer, potentially still
alive. There was no possibility for me
to return to the location the next morning so this was the best option. Sure
enough after about 200 yards of tracking I saw the eyes of the deer about 60 yards
away right next to the house looking at us.
It had bedded down next to a compost pile. We immediately backed out, praised Sylvie and
left the area. There was no possibility
for a follow-up shot given the deer’s location.
I advised the hunter to pick up the deer in the morning as it would
likely be in the same spot, or only slightly away. This he did and the deer had not moved and it
died right there. Without Sylvie, we
would have never ventured toward the two houses and into a wide open area.
Then it was back to the first track.
This time I said I trust the dog and Sylvie went onto the same path that
she took the first time. We did not make
it beyond 50 yards after coming out of the cattail swamp. There the button buck had collapsed. A happy hunter and a happy handler – probably
a happy dog as well as there was half a deer heart as reward. An easy practice session was anticipated, and
that she got with the first deer I shot and then 2 real ones, all in the same
night.
Sometimes it is not
the distance that counts
A few days
later I took out one of my students to observe a hunt. I went to one of my favorite places that has
been incredibly productive over the years, but it is also the place where the
brush “eats” the dead deer. I had lost
numerous deer that I thought were perfect hits in the brushy wetlands and I
have spent countless hours with the landowner in the dark, or during the day
trying our luck on grid searches. Often
we were successful, but occasionally we were not. A big motivation to obtain and train
Sylvie. This evening turned out to be
just like so many others but with a much better final outcome. So we got into the tree overlooking bait for
the first outing of the season at this location with Sylvie patiently awaiting
her time in the car. A button buck
approached the bait soon thereafter and a 25 yard shot killed him after a short
40 yard dash. We heard him fall. An hour
later two fawns approached the bait from the same direction and this time my shot
hit a doe fawn that made it 30 yards and she fell close to the button buck.
We continued to wait for another hour in anticipation of deer movement
right at dusk or shortly thereafter.
Soon enough, a very cautious doe approached the bait and circled around
right after dark. With a half moon, I
could easily spot her. My shot found its
mark, we heard ribs breaking, then a very short mad dash, brush breaking twice
indicating a collapsing deer and then silence.
This sounded all perfect. After
waiting 20 minutes we climbed out of the tree and located the first two
arrows. I got Sylvie and put her on the
first deer. She was so excited to be out
of the car and with all the scent around (we had seen a grey fox, a raccoon and
plenty squirrels) that she ventured off track immediately. After I calmed her down and she found the
track, she took a very short time to walk up to the button buck, not paying any
attention to the second deer that was just 5 yards away from the track she
followed. Good practice success and time
for another photo opportunity with a proud handler and his dog.
I decided to forgo tracking the 2nd deer since it was laying
just right there and the track would have been 25 yards. It did not seem worthwhile and there was one
more deer to track – an easy practice track I thought given what we had heard.
Little did I know what this turned out to be.
We found the arrow and blood on the grass and goldenrod and Sylvie took
up the track. She got into very thick
honeysuckles and walked around some brush trying to get through the thickest
parts but was unable to do so. We tried
to see what she was trying to get to but other than some trash we could not see
anything in the dark. So I called her out of it (I should have walked her
around more, but that is with hindsight) and allowed her to follow whatever she
thought was right. I tried putting her
onto the same trail 3 times and she always followed the same path for about 20
yards and then veered off to the left.
I was getting confused and worried about what went down with the
deer. All indications were that it was a
good hit, maybe a slight bit low, but the crashing indicated that there was a
dead deer very close to where it got shot. But we could not locate the deer after
almost 2 hours of searching and allowing Sylvie to explore close to the hit
locations and way beyond. I finally
called it a night, rather disappointed and questioning myself and the shot
location, my interpretation of the sounds of and after the hit, and Sylvie’s
ability to track this deer. But I had
two deer to process and occasionally such things happen. I thought with the help of a dog this would
be kept to a minimum, but I also recognized that even with a good and
experienced dog, not all deer are found.
The next morning, while taking Sylvie on our usual morning walk, I could
not get this deer and the scenario out of my head. I felt I owed it the deer
and myself to go back and check one more time during daylight. I also decided
to allow Sylvie another crack at it after a good night’s sleep, and some early
exercise. So off we went. When I put her onto the track, she did the
same as every time the night before: 20 yards through tall grass and goldenrod,
then veering to the left and then clearly getting lost in other scents. I decided to just break through the dense
brush, following deer trails, following the sounds of a group of crows calling
from their perch 100 yards away, basically doing nearly a grid search with my
dog. Nothing materialized, other than
stumbling through the brush and getting scratched by multiflora rose. I made the decision to allow her one last
time to follow the trail after having burned off some of the energy over the
past hour, and then I would put her into the car and try a real grid search one
last time before giving up.
And this time, for reasons I am not able to explain, it went quite
different. We came onto the track she
had followed and for some reason she picked up the scent. She slowed to nearly a crawl and instead of
veering off to the left after getting out of the tall grass, she stayed
straight and crawled under a honeysuckle bush overgrown itself by vines. I could barely see her, but she was
investigating something, which turned out to be the dead doe. I have
illustrated the path the deer and Sylvie took with the yellow arrows in the 3
pictures below. The total length of path the deer ran with a perfect heart shot
was 30 yards, if that far. The deer had
crashed into the brush and lodged itself on its belly so no white was visible.
Even as I was standing a few feet away from the deer, I could not see it. I saw something white, that the sun lit up,
which turned out to be white on a hind leg. I only investigated this further
because Sylvie was under the bush, quiet, not pulling any longer, clearly
having found something. I had to get
onto my belly and crawl into the brush to finally convince myself that she had
in fact located the dead doe. I took a
few extra pictures to show how difficult and camouflaged the entire situation
was for a hunter without a dog.
Above: Travel
direction of heart shot deer from hit locations. Total length of travel is 30 yards. Pictures
are taking consecutively closer to collapsed deer under honeysuckle bush
Above: Deer located under honeysuckle bush, barely visible, if at all. Yellow arrow indicates sunlight hitting hind leg.
Above: Collapsed
doe under honeysuckle bush. Yellow arrow points to head. Picture taken lying on
the ground to visualize the deer.
With the
help of Sylvie, and with being persistent, I was able to locate this dead
deer. After a perfect shot, after a mad
dash of only 30 yards, this deer eluded 2 people and a dog for many hours. It
is not always the distance that the deer are able to travel or the lack of
blood. I would have never been able to
see the deer – in a few days we would have smelled it. We stood a few feet away from it and walked
by it many times. But this time the
brush did not “eat” the deer; it went to the venison donation program feeding
the hungry as did the two fawns from the night before. It is satisfying to end this search on such a
high note. It confirms to me the value
of having a tracking dog – even if she still gets confused by all the scents at
a baited location, or in suburbia.
To be
continued.
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