John Jeanneney – A Visionary Leader Driven by His Passion

 

by Jolanta Jeanneney

Dachshund Club of America Newsletter, Summer 2022 

On July 5, 2021 my heart was broken when John Jeanneney, my husband of 26 years passed. He was 86. It was not unexpected; his death followed a long decline. His world was gradually shrinking due to his advanced age. I can still recall his last field trial that he attended, his last attempt of tracking wounded deer, and his last training line. I even have a picture when he held a puppy for the last time. There were so many “lasts”, and with many of them we were not aware of their finality. With some we knew. As a spouse and a solo caregiver, even though I knew what was coming, I was not prepared for the aftermath. So many emotions, so many tears and so much sadness.

John has left an amazing legacy behind, which involves establishing the standard dachshund as a true working dog in North America. Very few people know how his love for dachshunds started.

It all goes back to 1960s. In his private autobiography written for his family John said:

“As a graduate student at Columbia University I applied for a Fulbright Grant, which would subsidize a year of research abroad. Amazingly, I was accepted to do work in the archives of the France National Forestry School (Ecole Nationale Forestière) at Nancy in eastern France. At the forestry school I had all the privileges of an exchange student. The Forestry School had hunting privileges in a nearby National Forest. I enjoyed being a beater driving out deer and wild boar to the guns of my fellow students. It was on these hunts that I first saw the use of tracking dogs. The French were just beginning to use tracking dogs to find wounded big game. At the time the Germans were much more advanced in this art.  A German student friend invited me to spend a vacation break in Germany, and I learned more about this use of leashed tracking dogs. One of the breeds used was the small hunting Teckel, a European alternative to the longer, heavier, more extreme American/English Dachshund.

I had to have one of these Teckels. Mary Lou (John’s first wife) and I would be living in a 9th floor city apartment when we returned to New York New York. A twenty pound Teckel was the one hunting dog that would fit into this environment as I finished my Ph.D. dissertation.

I bought my first Teckel, Carla vom Rode in 1966, and she came back to the States with us. When I could get away on weekends to my parents' country places upstate, Carla hunted rabbits, pheasants, and raccoons at night. She was the versatile dog that the German breed standard called for. I did not track wounded deer with Carla because this was strictly forbidden in the northern United States.”

With his Ph.D. completed John started to teach history at Hofstra University on Long Island, NY. He moved to Wantagh, where he lived for five years. He wrote:

“The five years in Wantagh were not all bad. There was undeveloped State Park Land, and it was there that I took my Teckel, Carla, to run rabbits. Dachshund field trials began to be offered in New Jersey. Carla rapidly became an AKC Field Champion.

In 1982 work was started on a greatly expanded version of the original “Dachshund Field Trial Rules”. Gordon Heldebrant, President of the North California Dachshund Club, took the initiative in getting the project moving. I worked closely with Gordon from the East where the majority of dachshund field trialers were located at the time. Our more precise rules adapted from the AKC Brace Trial rules for beagles were accepted by the AKC and The Dachshund Club of America. They are essentially the official dachshund field trial rules in use in the USA today.”

John has always been an avid hunter, and he wanted to move into a more rural setting.

“It was in the 1970s, while living at Clinton Corners, that my fascination with tracking dogs for finding wounded deer burst forth. I was hunting on an estate in southern Dutchess County, New York, when I took, what I thought was a careful shot at a big doe. A twig, which I could not see at 50 yards, deflected the 12 gauge shotgun slug so it did not hit the deer where I had aimed. There was no blood trail after the beginning, and though I searched all day, I never could find the deer. Two weeks later, some hunters mentioned that they had found a big dead doe in a swale a half mile from where I had shot. This was very upsetting, even more so because I had learned about leashed tracking dogs in Germany. That doe could have been readily found with a trained tracking dog, but this was highly illegal, not only in New York State, but throughout the northern part of the USA.

I thought a lot about the incident and a year later had the opportunity to try an experiment.  A Department of Environmental Conservation employee, who had law enforcement credentials, asked me to find a gut shot deer for him. His credentials made a tracking dog legal in his case. I took Clary von Moosbach, my tracking wirehaired dachshund at that time, to the one visible spot of blood, and she started out on a short, six foot leash. After about a quarter mile I happened to notice a smear of blood on a sapling. Clary continued to track, no checks or hesitations, and in another quarter mile there lay the dead deer. Finding deer was easy, or so it seemed at the time. 

Some of the next steps toward the legalization of leashed tracking dogs were a lot more difficult than finding my first wounded deer. It began pleasantly, with another trip to France where I met Hubert Stoquert, who was a regional wildlife manager in eastern France. Stoquert gave me the same introduction to tracking wounded deer that we have given so many times since.  He worked a young wirehaired dachshund on a training bloodline, showing me how to train a dog.   Then we went back to his house, looked at dogs, saw slides and talked long into the evening. He generously shared his time and knowledge even though his wife was going into the hospital for surgery the next morning. Stoquert was in the final stages of setting up a tracking dog network in eastern France. When I got home I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do. For many  reasons the French and German blood tracking procedures couldn't be directly imitated in  the United  States, but  the general  philosophy, if  not the details, of  clean,  responsible hunting  and good  sportsmanship were the same.

The details of convincing New York's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to permit a research project are too lengthy and complex to describe here. The positive recommendations by Bill Wadsworth, patron of bowhunting, certainly played an important role in the granting of that research permit in 1976. Clary did outstanding work, and local, public acceptance of the "wild, radical idea" of leashed tracking dogs was favorable. Cautiously, the DEC added more handlers to my permit and expanded the area within New York State where the experimental use of leashed tracking dogs was permitted.  In 1978 the individuals on the tracking permit formed the promotional and educational association, Deer Search Inc., which was eventually to become a state-wide organization, divided into chapters. Deer Search’s system of tracking dog testing was similar to the German prototype.”

The Deer Search concept spread through national publications, and finally legalization of leashed tracking dogs in New York took place in 1986, largely through John's efforts. John has always considered this legalization as one of the most important accomplishments of his life.

John and I have met for the first time in the early 1990s. At the time I worked as a canola breeder and research station manager for Pioneer Hi-Bred in Edmonton, Alberta. I was married to my first husband Chris, and I was just starting as a breeder of wirehaired dachshunds. John was based in Clinton Corners, NY, but he taught history at Hofstra University on Long Island. He was married too. Of course we met because of our love for working dachshunds, and at the time we both had French imports. I imported from France FC Fausto de la Grande Futaie, he had FC Sheriff du Bellerstein aka Max. Back then people used to write letters, and we exchanged a lot of them, mainly about dachshunds and their pedigrees. I still have the letters – one of mine was eight pages long. At the time breeders associated with Deer Search had several litters of dachshunds out of imported stock that showed a genetic defect, which later was diagnosed as osteogenesis imperfecta. John appreciated my help with trying to solve the issue of this mysterious disease.

After having divorced our spouses, we were married on December 29, 1995. I quit my job and moved to Clinton Corners. And as they say… the rest is history.

John bred his first litter in 1968, and he followed the German system of naming puppies according to alphabet. He bred under “von Moosbach” kennel name, which in German means “Mossy Brook”. His last “von Moosbach” litter was an “R” litter. When we combined our breeding programs we started to use the name “von Moosbach-Zuzelek”, and our first litter bred together, the “S” litter was born in February 1994. I don’t know how many Field Champions we have bred because it was never a priority for us, especially for John. Above all he valued usefulness of deer tracking dachshunds and thought that they have to prove themselves in the field, on a real job.

In 1999 we moved to a rural Berne in Albany County. Our 34 acre farm property is ideal for breeding and training tracking/hunting wirehaired dachshunds. Once John retired in 2000 he finally could focus exclusively on his passion full time – tracking wounded deer for hunters, promoting the idea on a national scale through writing and workshops, and breeding Teckels according to the German standard for tracking/hunting purposes.

John and I co-founded the North American Teckel Club (NATC) in 2000 and the United Blood Trackers in 2005. John spent 41 years tracking wounded deer and bear for hunters. In most cases when he did not recover the deer, he was able to establish that this animal was not mortally wounded and would survive.

In the 2000s, the publication and strong sales of John's self-published books, Tracking Dogs for Finding Wounded Deer and Dead On! played a large role in the expansion of the use of tracking dogs across the United States. As of 2022 it is legal to use tracking dogs in recovery of wounded big game in 44 states. His adaptation and development of the European tradition of finding wounded game with dogs was the accomplishment John was most proud of over the course of his "long and very good life", as he described it.

Last spring, while John’s 86^th Birthday was approaching I asked our Facebook friends to send him a birthday card for the occasion. More than 100 cards came. These are some quotes from them:

“I want to thank you in so many ways… You have touched so many lives… including mine with kindness and help. You are truly a legend when it comes to tracking dogs and have helped so many hunters and others across this country to do exactly what you have done for so many years. You started something that continues to grow to this day”.

“Your passion for tracking and the breed has really rubbed off on me and I am very grateful”,

“The mark you have on all of us will be one that will never be topped”,

“Thanks for all your contributions and sacrifices to deer hunters, trackers and dog owners all over the globe”,

“Thank you for not only sharing your skills but also building a community and friendships that will last a lifetime”. 

There has been an incredible outpouring of love for him on social media following the announcement of his death. A friend said “John was a man with a passion. He lived his passion, and shared his passion, and ignited the passion in others”. And another quote: “The positive domino effect continues as more areas legislate wounded game tracking.  He has impacted countless dogs, handlers, States, Provinces, and communities.  He has directly or indirectly helped thousands of big game animals be found for hunters.  And, he has inspired the tracking organizations that lead all over North America.”

In 2017 United Blood Trackers hosted their annual event in Berne, NY. During the banquet John gave a short speech and said: “The relationship between a tracker and their dog is special, it is not one of command and obey. The dog is neither tool nor toy, you are partners giving each other advice. Each brings something to the work that the other doesn’t have and cannot do alone.” It sums up well John’s stand on partnership of a handler and his tracking dog, based on their relationship.

His outstanding contributions to the sport of hunting and conservation led to John's 1994 induction into the Sports Museum of Dutchess County and his 2012 induction into the New York State Outdoorsmen Hall of Fame.

He is sorely missed by so many.

A deer tracking dog's first week in October

By Dr. Bernd Blossey

Associate Professor
Department 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 3^rd 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 2^nd 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. 

A long track for Darren Doran and his dachshund Theo leads to successful recovery

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".

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.

Darren and Theo at the end of successful track