Trust your dog? part 3

Joe Walters from Indiana wrote yesterday:

"Hunter thought he had hit too far back. After checking his arrow and hair, we determined he had made a good hit. Starting at the hit site Doc took it out of the woods and north along the edge of a bean field for a long ways and then back into the woods with blood starting to get sparse. He then opened and started north again opening a lot as we went to the north end of woods with no blood. I pulled him off and we went back to blood trail and farther west about 200 yds to dead buck. He had gotten on a live deer. A 3/4 mile track had turned into a 1 1/2 mile jaunt. I hope he doesn't start doing this as it was a wild goose chase."

This is a good example of what might happen when you track wounded deer. There will be tracks of live deer in the area, and a dog will be tempted to leave an old blood line, especially when it is a difficult line. It takes experience, maturity, focus and self-control on dog's part not to give in to the temptation. As John stated before: "Even dogs have their limitations; even a dog can make a mistake, and this is especially true for young dogs. Don’t blindly trust your dog for 100s of yards; keep looking for that speck of blood to confirm your trust. And read your dog."

Great week for Joe and Doc, a blood tracking team from Indiana

Joe Walters and his two and a half years old tracking dog Doc (Magnum von Moosbach-Zuzelek) had a good week and recovered two deer. The picture below shows the buck recovered on November 3. What a great shot! Thanks Joe for sending it to us.

"Yesterday morning Doc located his third find on a buck after making a loss and me having to take him back to last blood. Track without loss would have been about 1/4 mile. I have to slow him down. He works entirely too fast."

The other buck was recovered on October 29 and this is what Joe wrote:

"I got a call at 7pm from the same two guys that I tracked for before. A Rage broadhead pass through on lungs and the deer went 200 yds. Doc tracked it out of weed field across cut beans into a woods and found it. I'll send you some pics later. I couldn't believe the deer could go that far with such a big hole through it's chest. The entrance was small but the exit hole was two inches. More blood the last five yds that on the entire track. In fact I only saw blood once before we got real close. I was looking down at rope on ground to see which way Doc went and told hunter that deer was headed back out to bean field when I spotted deer with Doc latched onto it. Good boy."

As you can see from the pictures Doc wears Garmin Astro and Ruffwear harness when is tracking.

Joe asked how to slow Doc down as his tracking speed is excessive. First, a dog has to be trained to "slow" down away from any tracking situation. Just like you would not start to teach your dog to sit when he is busy tracking you would not start training him to slow down in such a situation. The command "slow" or "easy" has to be first introduced when you heel your dog on a regular leash, and then set-by-step progressively implemented into more complicated situations.