Vonnie is starting to gain her handler's trust thanks to a good tracking job

This message from Mike Martien came on Christmas Day. Mike lives in Monroe, LA, and his puppy Vonnie came from our only 2014 litter of Tommy x Tuesday. In his message Mike refers to Waldo, who was bred by Laurel Whistance-Smith and was sired by our Asko. Thank you Mike!

Hope this message finds all well, and both of you enjoying Christmas.  Wanted to send you a quick note on Vonnie.  Things have been really slow for us.  Had 2 calls for tracking, and both of them came while I was out of town with my work.  However, we had the second live track for Vonnie this evening.

A good friend of mine, Mark Hoffman, was hunting with his daughter Gabby this evening, and knew I needed to give Vonnie more experience.  Gabby shot an 8 point, and when Mark found blood, and where the deer left the food plot, he did exactly what I wish all hunters would do, he marked the blood, and left to come get me and Vonnie.  Mark felt like the buck wasn't hit great, and wanted to wait a little while before taking Vonnie in, which was a good call on Mark's part.   

When I put Vonnie down on the blood she immediately started following it through the brush and down a steep hill.  I told Mark I wasn't sure she was still on it, while going down hill, but when we made it to the bottom, we found more blood.  She turned and dropped off into a small creek bed with steep, bluff sides and went 20-30 yards, when we hit a log jam in the creek and Vonnie started try to weave her way through it. I followed, but felt confident she wasn't on it.  Lucky for me though, after going through the pile of limbs that looked completely undisturbed, Vonnie stopped to sniff a leaf that had blood on it.  The bluff banks on this creek were now 10-12 feet tall, and nearly impossible for me to climb, but Vonnie made a 90 degree turn and tried going up it.  After two attempts, Vonnie came back down and went just a little further down the creek, where another drain came into it and started her way up.  While we were doing this, Clay Weeks and Mark shined their lights up the hill from where Vonnie had tried going up the bluff, saw the deer stand up, and finished it off.  Therefore, Vonnie has now earned my trust and I will follow her regardless of "what I think the deer did"...  The track wasn't very long, but thanks to Mark and Gabby Hoffman, they provided an opportunity for me to gain confidence, and Vonnie to prove her ability. 

 

I'm attaching a photo of Gabby Hoffman with her buck and Vonnie.  Please feel free to post the above paragraph and photo on your various sites.  It'll certainly help us get more tracking jobs, and make a little girl happy.  Vonnie is much more methodical in her tracking than Waldo was during his first three years.  She works the line slow and close, and hasn't blown a single turn on any of her 2 tracks she's been on.  Everyone has commented on how well she minds, and how well she reacts to being around numerous people.  I know it's still early to be making a call like this, but from what I've seen thus far, there's no doubt in my mind that she will probably be a better tracker than Waldo, and that's a strong statement, giving Waldo's accomplishments.  I honestly had hoped she'd just be as good as Waldo, but I believe she just might show me that it's actually possible to be better than him.  Many thanks to both of you for providing me with such an outstanding dog! 

Mike Martien's contact info is list on the UBT Find-A-Tracker site at  http://www.unitedbloodtrackers.org/tracker-profile/?user=222

Not all wounded deer can be recovered, even if you use a tracking dog

Time to get back to the topic of tracking dogs because we really fell behind with our blogging and emails. I apologize to all our contributors and those who are still waiting for our replies.

We received this letter from Judy Catrett on December 10. As you recall Judy lives in Georgia where it is legal to track with a dog off-leash. Mossy (aka Viola von Moosbach-Zuzelek) is an eight-month-old daughter of Tommy and Tuesday. Thank you Judy!

Just a note to let you know how Mossy is progressing.  We have now started doing a fair amount of tracking for hunters other than those that are guests of the plantation which Craig manages.  I had read John's books, Dead On!  and Tracking Dogs for Wounded Deer prior to tracking season, but have found myself using them as a reference after several tracks recently.  I am always wondering what we (Mossy and I) did not do when we were unable to retrieve a wounded deer--so I dig into the books hoping to obtain a little more knowledge along with rethinking what we did and could have done differently on each track. 

Mossy Brooke continues to be an excellent tracker and her name has become well known around our little town and county as well as into some neighboring counties.  Since I last emailed you, we have been on several tracks that we were unable to find the deer.  One deer had a broken front leg--the hunter shot the deer straight on into the brisket area. Leg bone, a fragment of the bullet, and muscle tissue were found at the site of the shot.  Mossy and I arrived approx. 5 hours after the deer had been shot and after 2 inches of rain.  She immediately picked up the trail and actually jumped the deer within 100 yards of the last blood the hunter had found (this had been washed away by the time we arrived).  She was tracking off leash as she was in an area that was safe for her to do this and the briars were so thick and tall that it was almost impossible for me to keep her on leash.  I was 40 yards behind her when she bayed the deer. The deer immediately ran and she bayed it twice more during her trailing, for only a few seconds each time.   The deer had stopped bleeding and crossed 2 creeks during this tracking.  We trailed this deer for 1 1/2 miles and it was showing no signs of slowing down, so I stopped Mossy as I felt that this was another wound that would not slow the deer enough for us to retrieve it.

We had a similar experience with a buck that I think was shot above the spine and stunned for a few minutes.  This was the second buck that we have tracked this year with this type of injury.  Mossy tracked it on leash for over 1 mile. This track was 11 hours old when we arrived.  On arrival, she immediately picked up on the blood trail which dwindled to no blood within 150 yards.  She continued to pull strong on the leash throughout the entire track.  I finally had to stop her around midnight as this seemed to be a nonfatal injury with no bleeding being noted along the trail past the first 150 yards and I had to work the next day.

We then tracked a deer that was gut shot 24 hours previous to our arrival.  This deer was probably shot in the stomach as acorns and corn were noted at the shot site.  I certainly thought that this buck would be found.  There had been 2 to 3 inches of rain during the 24 hours that had passed since the shot.  She trailed the buck for approx. 1 to 1 1/4 miles total, off leash. She bayed the buck in a very thick pine thicket with terrible briars for a few seconds, but when the buck heard me coming it ran.  Mossy trailed it to a large pond which neither she nor I could cross.  The hunter's (age 12) father owned this land and decided that there was no easy way to get to where the buck may have gone if he was able to cross the water and that he would watch for a floating deer or buzzards in the next few days.  This is one track that I am still puzzled over.  I certainly thought that the deer would be in the edge of the water and that the wound would be significant enough that Mossy and I could catch up with the deer.  I am still mulling this over in my head trying to decide what should have been done differently.

Craig took Mossy on a track in which the deer was tracked for 1 1/2 miles.  She was on leash on this track and Craig did not have a gun as the hunter was carrying a rifle and going with them.  After 3/4 mile, Mossy walked into a briar thicket and actually put her nose on the deer's hip.  The deer was still alive --shot through the flank areas (gut shot)--and it stood up when Mossy touched it.  The hunter had been unable to keep up with Craig and Mossy in the briars and when Craig had to yell for him to come with the gun, the deer ran another 3/4 of a mile at which time Craig had to stop tracking due to property lines.  Craig has not tracked as much as I have and did not realize the importance of being self sufficient and having his own gun.  A lesson well learned he said after being dragged through 1 1/2 miles of briars by Mossy.

I am realizing that wounded bucks will let Mossy Brooke get fairly close to them and they will have a stand off with her if they still have enough life left in them to possibly survive. This I think occurs because of her small size and bucks detecting her as not being threatening.  If I try to approach a buck with a wound that may not be fatal, it immediately bolts as soon as it detects a larger creature approaching.  It is almost impossible for me to get to the buck without making noise due to the thick vegetation and briars.  I would appreciate any feedback on how to handle these situations.  I think that this is one reason a lot of trackers in the south use larger dogs who actually catch the deer and keep them at bay until the person with a gun can get there.  Don't worry, I would never trade my Mossy Brooke for a larger dog.

Mossy Brooke is an awesome little dog with a love for tracking that cannot be described.  I consider myself very lucky to have her--for tracking and more so as a companion.   She is almost 8 months old and has now found a total of 26 deer (December 10).  

Hope you and John have a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,

Judy

Mossy modeling her camo jacket with Erin prior to going hunting. Mossy stays in the car very quietly with her camo jacket when I take the kids hunting. I am also sending a picture of the buck that Erin killed on our hunt a couple of hours after this picture was taken. Mossy was not in the picture because Erin dropped the deer in its tracks. Mossy still had fun acting like she found it. All of the kids love Mossy as she does them. I take most of these kids turkey hunting in the spring also, so, if Mossy finds a deer for anyone, when they ask what they owe for her services, I request the favor of being able to bring one kid to their property for a turkey hunt next spring.  I am now having to keep a list of the places Mossy has earned us the opportunity to turkey hunt.  When I sit back and look at all Mossy has done here in Georgia--in addition to tracking wounded deer--I am overwhelmed. Introducing kids to hunting, the outdoors, and WHDs is awesome.

Memorable tracks do not have to end with recovered deer or bear

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 10^th 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 3^rd 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 fiancé. 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.

Tommy works out a back track and recovers a great 10 pointer

by John Jeanneney

The hunter's phone call on this ten pointer was not too promising. He reported it as an 8 pointer that stopped bleeding pretty quickly from a pass-through. I couldn't be sure, one way or the other, that it was a "gettable" deer. So I took it. The line was 22 hours old.

The buck had back-tracked after it had stopped bleeding, but Tommy figured it out and took us a 100 yards though  thick stuff to the deer. When I saw that pale white antler sticking up, I thought it was a shed. But no, there was a big buck attached!

John Jeanneney and Tommy recover this really nice bow-shot buck in Slingerlands, NY

A nice 9 pointer recovered by John Jeanneney and his tracking dachshund Tommy

Yesterday John and Tommy found this nice 9 pointer in Rensselaerville, NY.  The line was only about 7 hours old, but there was no blood to verify. The hunter started John and Tommy in the wrong direction and it took them a while to pick up the right scent line.
 

A leg-shot deer gets away and a hunter harvests another buck...by mistake

 By Judy Catrett (a Georgia owner of  a seven-month-old "Mossy Brooke" aka Viola von Moosbach-Zuzelek)

This little girl, Mossy is addicted to tracking wounded deer.  We received a call yesterday from a hunter who had wounded a deer 5 hours earlier that morning.  There was blood at the spot that the deer was shot and an occasional drop for approx. 100 yards.  Mossy tracked from the initial blood and then continued on strongly after the point of no blood.  She was tracking off leash on this occasion.  

She was 100 yards in front of us when she started yipping. I told the hunter, Rod, that we had to hurry to her as she had just  jumped the deer.  When we got to the yipping, there were two bucks trotting slowly with Mossy behind them. Rod was about 10 yards to my right and both deer stopped. The deer in the lead and the larger of the two had a broken front leg. I knew that this would be our only chance to have a shot at the wounded deer and Mossy was not close enough to be in danger, so I told Rod to shoot the one on the left. He shot and immediately said I got it. I responded, no you didn't, the wounded deer just ran off.  

From Rod's view 10 yds from me, he never saw but one deer and did not understand what I saying about two deer.  He did kill the 8 point in the picture, and was quite proud of it, but was upset about having wounded the other deer. We loaded the deer he killed and got it out of the area. I explained to Rod that it would be very unlikely that the wounded deer was anywhere near and that it would more than likely live with the wound I saw.  

I again asked Mossy to find another dead deer. There was no blood, but I knew the direction the buck had run.  It took Mossy 10 minutes to straighten the track out, but she then started strong on a track. She trailed for 600 yards at which time I called her back.  I explained again to Rod that this wound would not be lethal and the deer could travel miles on 3 legs. Craig had a hunter at the plantation wound a deer last year in the same fashion. The deer was killed out of the same stand 3 weeks later. The front leg was completely severed except for being attached by hide on one side. Basically, the deer was carrying a necrotic leg which was a burden to him, but he was alive and working scrapes.

So the deer in the picture was not the wounded deer, but for some reason was with the wounded deer. Mossy took us to the wounded deer, so I consider her as having done her job.  It was me who did not control the situation at that point as I should have.  I have learned from this experience that in the woods 2 feet can change a persons view and that should we run into this situation again, the hunter should be very close to me.

Off leash tracking is definitely different from tracking on leash. Had Mossy been on leash I do not think that we would have ever seen the wounded deer.  I think that the deer would have detected humans and would have immediately left when we got close to where it was bedded.  Because of Mossy's small size, she does not intimidate the bucks and most wounded bucks do not run from her. They stand their ground and look at her. She is a distraction to the buck and the hunter is usually presented with a shot.  I had the same experience with Bear due to his small size also. Mossy is intelligent enough to know that the buck could hurt her and always keeps her distance when baying, which I am very thankful for.  Bear would get a little closer to the deer than I  have observed with Mossy.  Don't know if this is a male/female --testosterone--issue or just the difference in the two pups. 

I will continue to learn from every tracking experience that Mossy and I have.  I counted  this as #23 as Mossy took us to the wounded deer even though the hunter shot the wrong deer.  I have never tracked a wounded buck that had a healthy buck with him.

Hope you don't freeze the next few days.  We are getting weather that is very cold to us, but probably considered warm by you.

Thanks Again,

Judy

Advanced blood tracking training is paying off for this outstanding tracking team

by Darren Doran

I took a call from an experienced hunter who had made a good hit on a buck last evening, but bumped him out of his bed and across a road. The hunter had followed good blood to a dead fall and green briar thicket and found multiple beds there very close together. After he had put the buck up he left the area. This is usually a good sign and I figured we would find the deer dead right on the other side of the road and I told the hunter that. Being somewhat superstitious I certainly jinxed myself with that statement. 

We met at 7:30 next morning and went to the hit site. There had been turkeys everywhere and they were right in front of us. Theo got a whiff of them, and I corrected him hard right away. This was our first exposure to them this year and I needed him to know I wanted nothing to do with them. We started tracking and the blood was just as the hunter said. We tracked through to the road, which was so busy that I carried Theo across. I set him down on the other side, which was an old dilapidated house. Theo went around back and across the front yard and into the woods. After some searching he showed me some blood and we were off tracking. I kept looking ahead expecting to see the buck at any minute but it didn’t happen and I hadn’t seen any blood in a while. We were tracking to a thicket and I thought this is where he is. Theo checked all the runs into it but didn’t take a line. He went back into the woods then across a rail road track into a brushy field next to an occupied house. We didn’t have any weapons because the road we crossed was the dividing line of two hunting zones. The hunter didn’t have a permit to hunt on this side of the road. I really didn’t think this dear was alive anyway so it didn’t matter to me. The way Theo was working I actually thought the deer would be in this field.

Theo searched every inch of this area and went to the backyard of the house and started pulling across the mowed yard. I told the hunter that we couldn’t cross without permission, but I would pick up Theo and walk down the tracks and set him down in a controlled search on the other side of the yard. Theo worked the brush along the yard and in about 10 yards took a hard right into the woods. We hadn’t seen blood in a long while but he was tracking like he does when he’s got it so I went with him.

All of a sudden the hunter called out that he found blood. He had found a pin drop on a yellow maple leaf. I don’t know if he was good or just lucky but it didn’t matter -- we had the deer. Just when I was feeling good I looked up and the woods looked like someone had gone through it with a leaf blower. The turkeys had torn this part of the woods apart, there was no leaf left untouched. This worried me more than Theo and he tracked through it like it wasn't there. 

We were soon heading back into thick swampy brush and green briars. I thought any time now the leash will stop and he’ll be on the deer, but it didn’t happen. He did track to a bed with blood in it and I knew we had to be close. I was working through the briars and all of a sudden the leash stopped. Finally I thought we got him. I worked around a corner in the briars and Theo’s standing on the bank of a river. There was blood at the bank and Theo jumped in. He went right under and I knew it was deep. He popped up and swam back to the bank. There was no way across. We would have to go back out of the woods to the train tracks and cross the trestle to get on the other side. 

I marked the spot on the GPS and hung a ribbon but before I left I told Theo to “search”. I wanted to make sure the deer crossed and didn’t back track away from the deep water. Theo went up and down the briar choked bank and didn’t find anything he liked. He came back to the crossing so we made our way out of the wood and to the trestle. I carried Theo across and we started to navigate to the spot where the deer had crossed. 

The rail road had cut all the trees at the bottom of the tracks and killed all the vegetation on the slopes. It was nasty but we found a spot we could get down to the river and we slid down the bank of the tracks. We got to about where the crossing was and I started Theo. He went down a run away from the river and in twenty yards the leash stopped. I wasn’t even paying attention and I walked right up to Theo and the deer. 

When I called out “I got em” I don’t think the hunter believed me. This track was almost 2 miles including the searching and the river crossing. I believe the deer actually traveled 9^ths of a mile before dying. When we gutted this deer it was hit through 1 lung, through the center of the liver, and the 2 inch rage had cut the back lobe of the second lung. The deer was dead for a while. I firmly believe the rut plays an important part on their ability to stay alive when they should be dead.

Those of you who know me from this blog know I’m big on training. Some of the things I train for I used today. Theo is 2 ½ now and try as I might I can’t duplicate on a training line the experience he’s getting this season. The only way to finish a dog is to get him in the field and work him. This is his second tracking season and we’ve taken 39 calls so far. We’re getting to the point that we’re becoming a true team. He knows what is going on when we cross roads. He understands when we have a live deer why we stop and wait. He understands how to restart a line after he’s been picked up and set down. He knows how to do a controlled search. He knows how to stay with the right deer and search till he finds the right deer. He knows how to accept my help when he needs it, and I know what is going through his mind while he’s working. This season is going to truly develop and cement Theo’s foundation as a tracking dog and "us" as a team. 

Recovery #27 of the 39 tracks.

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.

Five deer recovered in one day by Mossy Brooke, an off-lead tracking puppy in Georgia

by Judy Catrett (owner of Mossy Brooke, registered as Viola von Moosbach-Zuzelek)

Jolanta,

Well Mossy had to endure a few days without being able to track--it was difficult for all of us, but we made it through the week.  Mossy had a very busy day yesterday--finding 5 total deer in 1 day.  She was exhausted last night for a couple of hours, but then was ready to go again. She is already following me around the house whining for her collar to be put on this morning.  She continues to amaze both me and the hunters--her love for tracking is astronomical.  I began to doubt Mossy last night when as we were running through the woods, she stopped, stood on her hind legs with her front feet on a fallen branch about 2 feet off the ground, sniffing the branch.  I told her we were not squirrel hunting and about that time I saw blood on the branch. Of course I offered my apologies to Mossy and we were off running again.  Shortly we found the buck. 

Mossy is one little awesome tracker.  I have watched her ability to track progress with each track she works. She is a very intelligent and loving pup as you will see in one of the pictures I send.

Mossy's total deer finds is now up to 19.  I consider myself so fortunate to have Mossy.  I have told the hunters that once she finds a deer from a 24 hour old track that has been rained in, she can join the elite trackers in her family---Tommy, Theo, Thor---just to name a few. 

Tell John that I have to agree that the WHD's noses are a bit better than the JRT's.  Bear was a great tracker, but had to work a little harder at picking up the scent than Mossy seems to.

Thanks again for Mossy.

Mossy enjoying her deer with one of the hunters.

Mossy thanking the hunter for killing the deer. 

Mossy with her 2nd buck for the day.  This is the deer that she was up on her hind legs smelling the branch. 

Mossy with the hunter who killed the 2nd buck of the day. I try to let each hunter hold Mossy so that she gets acquainted with a wide variety of people. She loves it. 

Practical application of "search" command in tracking wounded deer

By Darren Doran (and FC Theo von Moosbach-Zuzelek)

I finally got a chance to hunt last night for myself. I passed a small buck and when I got out of the woods there was a message from a hunter needing help to recover a deer. He had shot the buck from a ground blind at 2:10 and watched him cross an 100 yard rye field and lay down on the edge of it and a hedge row. He could see blood low on the deer’s side with his binoculars. The deer was there for about 40 minutes then got up and walked with difficulty into the hedge row.

The hunter snuck out of the blind and looped around the deer by going up the neighbor’s driveway. He tried to get another arrow into the deer but it didn’t make through the brush. The deer got up and was gone. The hunter searched until dark and found a couple drops of blood on a tractor road between the hedge row and the standing corn.

The weather forecast for today originally called for a drenching 2 inches of rain. I checked the forecast and it had been scaled back to steady rain starting in the night and ending in the afternoon. I elected to take the track in the morning to give the deer plenty of time to die.

I arrived at 7:30 and it was raining steady but not that bad and there was no wind. When I start Theo I always start at the hit site even if the is no blood there. If the hunter has an arrow, I will let Theo smell it, if not, I tell him to “search”. The reason for this is that I want Theo to end up at the hunter’s first blood sign. If he does, that I’m pretty sure he knows what deer we want before he even smells blood.

In this case there was no arrow. Theo searched around the bait piles in an ever winding circle and suddenly he tracked across the rye field right to the bed. There was still visible blood despite the rain and you could see it on both sides of where the deer had laid. Theo tracked down the hedge row through it and onto the tractor road where the hunter had found the last blood. Theo tracked down the road then turned into the corn. This seemed logical to me and I went with him. After a while he tracked out of the corn and to a large green field and into it. At this point I was starting to have my doubts. He then cut the corner and headed to another brushy hedge row and I thought, well this is better, he might be right. We got in there and it was apparent he didn’t have it. 

This problem of dropping the right line and taking the fresher line I believe has started because during the last 5 recoveries we have done, we have put out our deer and went hot. It’s almost as if now he expects it to happen. What I’ll do in this case if I think he’s wrong is I just stop on the line. I don’t say a word to him and I let him pull against the leash. This may take a half a minute but I just stand there. If he’s not right or not sure he’ll pick up his head and most times he comes back down the leash. I then tell him in a stern voice “get back on the line find the blood”. If he went too far from the know line and this command is not reasonable, I pick him up and restart. That’s what I did in this case and we went back to the first bed.

Theo tracked right to the last blood and it was obvious that this deer had spent a lot of time in this area. Theo smelled what could have been beds from this deer. He then began to systematically search every deer run in the hedge row along the corn field. We got to the end to where the corn ended and the green field began and he began searching the runs to the left of the corn in the hedge row but between the green field. He went about 100 yards and wanted to go back to the last blood and we did. This time he was searching the corn side of the hedge row. He would go in, search, come back out, go down and go back in, search and come back out. 

This went on for a while then all of a sudden he didn’t come out and the leash was still going out. We were on a different line from the first trip through the corn and I went with him. I told the hunter to look down the rows as we went through them in case the deer was laying there. I couldn’t see Theo but I could see the tops of the trees and I knew we would be out of the corn soon. I did see some white hair on the track but it could have come from any deer. I never saw any blood on the line except for the first bed. Theo tracked out of the corn and into a hedge row next to a horse corral. I stayed put at the edge of the corn and I could tell he was searching. He came out of the hedge row and down along the corral and stopped. This is where a 50 foot lead comes in handy. I asked him to “search here’’ and he came back to me and went back into the corn and in 20 yards he had the deer. I don’t know if the deer came out of the corn and back in or he just missed it, but neither the hunter nor I saw it laying in the row as we passed.

This track took almost 2 hours. I love watching this dog trying to figure out a track. He knew where he last smelled the deer and he knew the line had to be there. The way he systematically picks apart the terrain is just a pleasure to watch. The way he buries his nose in the ground under leaves or raises up to smell high weeds or brush are his natural working style. I’ve never taught him anything like this. You can almost see the thought process on his face when he’s searching and he never gives up.

Theo’s reputation in Jersey is growing. I haven’t placed an ad anywhere in the state this year and my phone doesn’t stop ringing. I have successfully tracked for the research professor in charge of our tracking permit as well as the Division of Fish and Wildlife on a game violation case. Leashed tracking dogs are starting to turn heads in the right places. I’m starting to get a good feeling about the probability of legalization in the state, but only time will tell.