Scent discrimination - what an experienced blood tracking dog can do

I have recently come across this descripton of a deer call John and I took together in 2000. It was a very educational experience how dogs can discriminate scent of individual deer.

John wrote:

On the phone it sounded like an easy track so we took one of our young wire males, Alec, who had training but no natural experience. Jolanta handled Alec and I handled Sabina as a backup in case the young dog had trouble. Alec did a pretty good job, trailed out past the hunter's point of loss and went on for another quarter mile without help.

Then came misfortune. Alec tracked right into a fresh gut pile, still warm. Alec thought the guts were better than nothing and he munched a bit. The hunters and the handlers were down hearted for sure. They had called us and we had driven a long way, and now it was all for nothing. Someone else had finished off the deer and dragged him out.

Then I thought of something. There had been some grains of corn in the track on the way to the gut pile. They had leaked out of the deer. It was funny that there was no corn in the gut pile that we were standing over. I took Sabina back on the trail about 50 yards and let her work the line; she tracked right past the gut pile, never looking at it. All concentration, she worked another 50 yards into some thick bush and there he was, the original buck, corn, guts and all.

This is what an experienced tracking dachshund can do.

Sabina with the deer she found when she tracked beyond the guts of another deer.

Coyotes, dachshunds and deer

Kevin Armstrong wrote:

"Karma will accept trailing credit for 2008 no. 7 but Effie Betts gets credit for the find! The evidence showed that this poor animal had been harassed by coyotes for hours. He covered a circle about a mile through the center before succumbing to his wounds and tormentors. 20 hours after the hit he was still warm when found."

Kevin Armstrong with Karma and Ron Betts with Effi

The SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry is a good source of info on coyotes in NY:

These days coyotes are omnipresent and firmly established in New York State. Their numbers have been estimated at between 20,000 and 30,000. The eastern coyote is considerably larger than its southwestern cousin, and the largest individuals are as big as smaller timber wolves. Adults may range from 35-45 pounds and some large males may exceed 50 or 60 pounds in body weight.

Coyotes gradually extended their range eastward after wolves became extinct in the eastern U.S. and southern portions of Canada. Coyotes first appeared in the early 1900s in western Ontario, in the 1920s in New York and progressively later across New England until their appearance in New Brunswick in 1975. Recent studies using DNA analyses clearly show that hybridization with wolves has occurred, most probably in southern Canada where populations of wolves and coyotes adjoin each other.

John wrote the below article in 2001. Since then coyotes actually have become an even more serious problem. In the Northeast if a wounded deer is left in the woods overnight, very often in the morning the only thing that can be recovered is its carcass. The picture below was taken in October 2007. The deer was shot in the evening and this is what we found next morning:

COYOTES, DACHSHUNDS AND DEER
© 2001 John Jeanneney

When large numbers of coyotes began to appear in New York State about 15 years ago, it really changed life for hunters and not for the better. The new, northeastern coyote was a bigger animal than the one found out west, and DNA studies suggest that there were some timber wolf genes in the background. Dachshunds, beagles and feists were at risk, particularly at night and even bigger dogs were ganged up upon. My days of using my blood tracking dachshunds for coon hunting soon ended, and this was one of the reasons that I purchased my black mouth cur. At the time I also had a little Jack Russell, and I took the chance of taking him out one night with the big cur dog in a place where I thought there were no coyotes. Coyotes did nail him when he ranged off about 150 yards. Little Banner gave one yelp, the coyotes gave a chattering, laughing bark and I never saw him again. All I found was some white terrier hair. It was hard to lose a game little den dog, but it would have been a disaster to lose a dachshund blood tracker with years of experience.

I am no lover of coyotes, which spoiled some of the good night-time fun that I had in the 60's and 70's. There are a lot of good ways to take revenge. Where it is legal try a .223 rifle and a fawn bleat call in June. You can also get satisfaction by depriving coyotes of undeserved venison feasts during the deer season.

In Grampa's youth a deer shot in late afternoon and not immediately found was left until morning. The coyote invaders changed all that. Nowadays you can't leave the wounded or dead deer out over night in many parts of the Northeast. Now it's a race to find the deer before the coyotes do. A good tracking dachshund, or a good tracker of another breed, will find that deer quickly in situations where the deer goes too far for an infra-red deer finder, and hours of eye tracking only take you to the end of the visible blood trail.

If a deer is shot just before evening we like to get on the line with a good dachshund within two or three hours. Ideally it would be better to wait longer in the case of a gut shot deer, but we are between a rock and a hard place. A) If we don't wait and we jump the deer while it is still too "green," then we may be in for a long ramble through the hills. B) If we wait, the trail may be shorter, but there may well be a fresh deer skeleton at the end. Scenario A has less risk and exercise is a good thing for almost everyone.

My adventures at the Wade hunting camp in Schoharie County, over two years, are a good example of how things work, or don't work, on wily coyote's new turf. In 2000 I got a phone call from the Wades during bow season. They had shot a nice buck and had tracked him a mile before losing him at dusk. I got there within another couple of hours and my dachshund had no trouble taking the line another half mile to the deer, or at least half of the deer. The hindquarters were already gone. This was the work of more than one or two coyotes.

This season (2001) I got another call from the Wades. A family friend staying with them had a similar problem. Mindful of what had happened the previous year, I dropped my own plans to bow hunt and hustled over well before dark. Seven hours earlier the buck had been hit low and too far back, and this time we wanted to beat the coyotes to their dinner. My dachshund Sabina took the line 300 yards beyond the hunter's point of loss to jump the deer still alive and strong. Well we had a ramble up hill, down hill for almost five miles. All blood sign soon ended but because of the nature of the wound there was plenty of scent. At 7:30 PM we had been close to the deer several times according to Sabina, but the buck began to walk in circles about 200 yards across. He went around twice on the same trail in a dense pine forest. In this situation when you are close behind the deer, there is a danger of losing him. Your dog is tracking through a tunnel of floating body scent. After a couple of loops the deer can break off to the side and fool the dog... at least for a while. We weren't catching up to the deer; coyotes or no we decided to break off and take up the trail the next morning.

About 12 hours later we were back on the trail. As we suspected the buck had tried to pull a fast one, breaking out of the circle on the third loop, traveling over the diameter of the circle and out across a large overgrown field. There was no blood but the line was still easy for the dog to follow. Actually it was easier because by this time there was a scent line instead of a scent cloud. At the far edge of the field the land pitched down through hardwoods for several 100 yards. The wind was flowing up the hill into our faces. First Sabina's head came up and she pulled straight down the hill; next I saw a light gray carpet of deer hair spread out under the trees and finally I saw the deer... or three quarters of the deer. The coyotes had beaten us again, but not quite as badly this time. The young hunter was delighted with the rack and the remaining venison. Antlers add a delicate flavor to venison soup.

The coyotes do not always do as well at the expense of deer hunters. Usually we find the deer first; more than once we have come upon the deer just as the coyotes were breaking in. They seem to like to first eat the "salad" in the paunch, so if your timing is just right you can still save everything of value. Deprived of "their" kill the coyotes bark and chatter back in the brush as we drag the deer out. I have noticed that dachshunds don't act scared in this situation, but you don't see them pulling to get at the coyotes either. The dachshund is not a fool.

Tonguing on the Line

© John Jeanneney, December 2005

John wrote this article three years ago, and the dogs mentioned here, Bob and Mickey, have passed since then. Sabina is gone too.

The amount of voice, or lack of it, that a tracking dog uses on the scent line is a matter of personal taste. Sometimes, as in the case of Michigan, it can even be a matter of what is legal. Prick up your ears as I explore the range and variety of loud talk that we hear coming from tracking dogs. And let’s not forget that dogs speak to us with heads and tails as well as with their voices.

Let’s begin with “Bob”, the most vocal and one of the better dogs that I’ve see work an old, cold line. Bob belongs to Randy Vick, who lives in Pavo down in South Georgia close to the Florida line. Bob is a cross of Treeing Walker and Beagle, stands about 18 inches at the shoulder, and is truly a fine-looking hound. Randy handles Bob in the thick privet undergrowth on a 30 foot tracking leash that he got from a tracking nut up North. This works fine because Bob is a steady, patient hound who works as a team with his handler.

When I stayed with Randy for a couple of days in January ’05 we went out on a call five hours after the buck had been wounded. There was very little blood to be seen, but when Randy took him to the line near the hit site Bob claimed it immediately with a booming bawl. The shot had probably broken the big bone below the shoulder blade; these deer can often go a long way. We did not catch up to this one.

Randy Vick with Bob

Far to the north in Granville, New York, on the Vermont border, Tim Nichols tracks wounded whitetails and black bears with a registered beagle called Mickey. This is a 15 inch hound that opens, Tim says, when the line is less than 20 minutes old under good scenting conditions. This means that the Mickey is silent as he starts the line at the hit site, but if the deer is still alive and begins moving out from the wound bed, then Tim has a nice hound voice to let him know what is going on and how far ahead the deer is moving.

Tim Nichols with Mickey

Mickey is the star of Deer Search Inc., a New York State organization with some members in other states. Last year he led the organization with 27 finds out of 73 calls and in this season, just past, he found 19out of 52. Mickey is half out of hare hound, large pack breeding, and as you might expect he steps right along. Tim, who runs road races and snowshoe races in the off season, steps right along with him. They are a great team, but in his early years Mickey was more hound than many people would want to handle.

From my perspective Mickey was not as “user-friendly” as a wirehaired dachshund at the beginning. But once he learned what it meant to stay on the right line, he was awesome. He found a wounded bear in a big hole covered with leaves, after a pack of Plott hounds had searched the area to come up with nothing. When an old lady lost her senile Lhasa Apso that wandered off, Tim showed Mickey the dog’s bedding and he tracked a half mile and under an overpass to find her 16 hours later.

But any great tracking dog needs a great handler, and Tim is just that.

When I think about tracking from the standpoint of a handler, I would enjoy some hound music to accompany the work. This takes me back to my time as a youthful coonhunter. But dedicated deer hunters, especially bowhunters, often view it differently. When they are hunting they want the woods to be quiet with no barking dogs to make deer spooky. Periods of deer movement, at dawn and dusk are a particularly sensitive time. Night work presents less of a problem.

The State of Michigan actually has a line in their tracking regulations that reads: A dog the barks while tracking the deer shall not be used on public lands. Vocal hounds like Bob and Mickey would have their problems in Michigan.

You can expect most tracking dogs, such as Labs, the continental pointing breeds and dachshunds to be silent when tracking. Dachshunds will whine and bark when their noses tell them that the wounded deer has moved out right ahead of them. Even if the handler didn’t hear or see the deer, this is a signal that he better check for a wound bed and evaluate what he sees in it.

A dachshund will open on fresh healthy deer lines until he learns that a healthy deer is not of interest to his handler and tracking partner. The dog has to be smart enough and responsive enough to learn this and of course some never learn.

You may prefer a hound that voices on the line, but little is lost in communication if the dog works silently. If you are working the dog on a leash, body language tells you everything you need to know. The tempo of the tail wagging, the ears, the head carriage and the arch of the back all let you know what the dog is sensing. Reading the dog becomes intuitive, and you don’t even have to think about it consciously. You just know whether the dog is searching or has the line. You know when the dog is returning to the point of loss, and when it has picked the check and has things moving once more.

Our Sabina was rather tight-mouthed but she would open when the trail was hot. The picture was taken when John and I were tracking wounded bear in the Catskills. The cover was very thick and the blood trail sparse. All of sudden Sabina opened and we knew that we jumped the bear and it was moving ahead of us. The bear went through this swamp as on the other side we found a drop of blood. We found it very useful to know that the bear was really close.