Huge bucks mark a great beginning of Kasey and Boomer's tracking season

Kasey Morgan is a United Blood Trackers member from Elderon Wisconsin and he operates under the name Bloodhound Deer Tracking Services. He has had a great beginning of this tracking season with a number of very impressive bucks.

By Kasey Morgan

The 2013 Wisconsin Archery Season was upon us and the calls for tracks came in fast and furious.  Boomer, my bloodhound, would get his first action the night of opening day on a good buck hit high and slightly back from perfect.  We took up the track and Boomer made short work of the 250 yard track.  The buck had fled the scene in a completely different direction than the hunter had remembered.  The amount of sign along the track was minimal, but a fairly steady track of blood droplets.  We were on the deer in less than a half hour and Boomer was on the board with his first “fair chase” whitetail of the year. 

The next call would come in shortly after leaving our first track.  Matt Serwa of “Real Deal Mineral” had hit a deer he knew very well.  He quickly sent me a picture of the deer from one of his trail cameras, and I was amazed at the size.  He described the chain of events that lead to the shot and the shot location.  He had stomach hit the deer.  The shot was back, but looked to be center of the deer between spine and bottom of the belly.  We were dealing with a number of variables on this track.  The first issue was the fact that it had started to rain steadily and was predicted to continue throughout the night.  Being able to locate blood throughout the track is not the most important thing, but it certainly helps confirm that we are heading in the right direction.  The second was the temperature.  The temperature was predicted to stay above the 70 degree mark which would cause a gut shot deer to spoil more quickly.  Matt and I agreed that waiting until the following morning was still the best option.  Pushing the deer that night would definitely destroy our chances of a recovery.

Early the next morning Boomer took up the track.  It was still raining very steadily, and there was no sign of blood.  We began the track and Boomer followed in a similar line as was described by the hunter as the deer’s path of exit from its feeding area.  We tracked off of a food plot down into a low swamp area.  The dog became very excited and proceeded to make a right hand turn into an area full of marsh grass.  There were several deer beds in the area, none of which we were able to find blood in.  We trusted the hound as he led us on fairly straight path through the marsh and down into a creek bottom.  We had now progressed somewhere in the neighborhood of 400 yards with no visible blood.  Boomer searched both sides of the creek bank frantically looking for the scent.  He decided on a line heading westward deeper into the swamp. 

 After another 200 yards the terrain had changed from marsh grass and creek bottoms to tag alders and a foot of water.  Boomer pressed on through the water but soon appeared to have lost the track.  He began a back track and I watched as his body language showed some confusion.  As he backtracked out of the tags he soon hit the scent of the track and again progressed westward.  I was out ahead of the hunter when Boomer turned north and locked up completely along the edge of the creek.  I circled around the creek bank and was astounded at what I was looking at.  Boomer was baying like a fog horn on top of a fair chase, two hundred plus inch, whitetail deer.  I yelled back to Matt that we had found his deer.  He excitedly made his way toward me.  We exchanged high fives and the celebration was on.  We snapped some great photos and awed over the sight of such a monarch.

 

It was not the longest track we have ever run with a successful ending.  However, the 14 hours of continuous rain and the tough tracking terrain made the near one thousand yard run, my proudest moment as a tracker.  Although Boomer does not pay attention to the Boon & Crocket Scoring System but, the record book whitetail at the end was a great bonus.

Dustin McAloon of DeerFest with a massive Wisconsin 8 point!!

Kasey Morgan's Bloodhound Deer Tracking Services

Kasey Morgan is a United Blood Trackers member from Elderon, Wisconsin. Right now he has two bloodhounds dedicated to blood tracking, but it was a different breed altogether that got him involved in tracking wounded game. Below is Kasey's story in his own words.

I got my start in tracking in the fall of 1998. I was 15 back then and my father brought home a soon to be rabbit tracking machine.  The minute the beagle pup hit the ground I was glued to his side.  Following careful instruction from my father, I molded the pup into a finely tuned tracker.  From the moment my dog circled its first rabbit I was hooked on hounds.  We went on to develop some of the top beagles in the state of Wisconsin.  Along with beagling, I was slowly becoming a hunting fanatic.  Many long nights spent tracking wounded game, only to come up empty and disappointed, encouraged me to find a solution to this ethical issue.  In the summer of 2009 I began working with a slow tracking beagle on blood tracks, and slowly the hound impressed me with his ability to finish tracks successfully. 

To say I was green in blood tracking training would be an understatement.  Laying deer blood lines was as far as I went with the hound.  I knew none of the information I know now on the art of using dogs to recover wounded game.  I laid a few 100 yard lines using an astronomical amount of blood and of course the dog followed the ridiculously overdone blood trail to the end where he rejoiced over a non fleshed deer hide.  The amount of scent that was placed along my first artificial lines must have been overwhelming to the hound.  I have to chuckle at the way I started this past time that slowly became an obsession. 

Throughout the fall of 2010 I took 13 tracks and recovered 1 deer.  I learned a lot on those 13 tracks; however, I had barely scratched the surface of the finer points of wounded game recovery.  Over the next 2 years I learned basically through trial and error and  from John Jeanneney's book. I researched through literature and by prying at any tracker that would talk to me.  I continue to learn each day and take in all information.  I am a firm believer that adapting and molding training methods is crucial to producing successful dogs.  

My example of change is my decision to change breeds to become a more efficient tracker.  After experiencing numerous setbacks with beagles and water barriers, I made the decision to switch to bloodhounds.  I purchased Boomer, my prized bloodhound, in the early spring of 2012.  He had come from law enforcement bloodlines and his tracking skills revealed themselves early.  Boomer’s skills were far superior to those of the beagles I had worked with in the past.  He was completing 400 yard tracks before 4 months of age, and I was impressed and eager to get him on some live tracks.  In Boomer’s first hunting season we took over 60 tracks and recovered just over 40% of the deer.  Boomer will turn one year of age this next month.  He is my most valued possession and an excellent worker. 

I have recently added a female to our tracking team.  Her name is Riley and she is 3 months old.  She will be slowly worked into the equation this next fall, but so far she shows incredible tracking prowess.  I have also taken on the task of training a hound for a client in western Wisconsin.  I lucked out on this dog because the pup is a natural.  The training has been a huge success.  I am excited about the upcoming tracking season and eager to see what we are capable of achieving.  You can follow Bloodhound Deer Tracking Services on Facebook  click here.

Riley and Boomer

Two Pope and Young bucks recovered in one weekend!

Well, my plans have changed. Thursday early morning I am leaving for Maryland, where our young dogs will be participating in the NATC Small Game Hunting Test (Thursday), Zuchtschau (Friday) and two AKC field trials (Saturday and Sunday). I am taking Sky, Tuesday and Mielikki, all very young dogs. I should be back on Monday afternoon. It also means that I will have to catch up with posts after I get back (this is my last trip this year). Have a great weekend everybody!

Congratulations to Dean Muthig from Wisconsin who wrote few days ago: I got a call at about 9 this morning wondering if I could take a track. This gentleman found my name via the UBT "find a tracker" feature. He stated that he had gut shot a buck yesterday at 7:30 in the morning and had lost blood. Unfortunately he started tracking the buck only an hour after shooting it and tracked for 6 hours. I knew even though it was gut shot that this one might challenge us a bit especially being a 24 plus hour old track and that the deer was most likely pushed out of his bed. Well that assumption was correct as the hunter had tracked the deer well over 40 acres before losing the trail...At the original point of loss my dog seemed unsure of the path of the deer but walked me to a drainage ditch and put her nose in the grass as she crossed the other side telling me she was thinking this is where he crossed. She went a little further and seemed to lose interest so I decided to walk her down the drainage ditch to see if the deer was in the water. We walked a couple hundred yards down the drainage ditch and ran into another ditch which ran perpendicular to the one we first walked down. We then ran that ditch another 200 yds. While walking this ditch the wind was in our favor and she was able to scent check a large area. I decided to turn back around. When we came back to the ditch we were a hundred yards or so down from where I thought she smelled him originally. As I looped back into that area she whipped her nose straight up in the air and almost sounded like a pig snorting. She took off with me in tow and within another 30 seconds we were standing on top of this beautiful 8 point buck! He truly was a brute! And what was most impressive about this buck is that the hunter took him on a high pressured area of public land!

 

Second Pope and Young buck recovered by Dean Muthig last weekend.

 

Dean Muthig, a Wisconsin teacher tracks and recovers a 9 pointer for one of his students

Dean Muthig, a United Blood Trackers member from Embarrass, WI, shared this nice story with us. Thank you Dean!

I got a call from a friend of mine about 8:30 Saturday night asking me if I wanted to run my dog on a track. This weekend was the youth hunt in Wisconsin where youths can use a firearm for the weekend. He told me that his ten-year-old son shot at a nice 9 point but it was right at shooting time and it was hard to tell if he hit the deer at all.

Usually I don't like to go on tracks like this but it was for a friend and a youth hunter so I decided to give it a go. When I arrived we drove down to the food plot where he shot at the deer. He said there were 2 other bucks with this one and that when he shot the other deer scattered but this one turned into a row of pines that opened up into a small hardwoods. I put Stella where the deer was standing with the shot and she pulled me to the edge of the pines and took a trail into them. When we got into the hardwoods she pulled me about 30 yards or so and then stopped and put her nose into the leaves. I looked down and there was a good amount of blood. When I examined the blood it looked dark red and when I picked up a leaf to smell it the leaf reeked of guts. 

I advised that we stop immediately and come back in the morning as to not push him. We arrived back at 7:00 AM the following morning and picked up where we left off the night before. The blood was sparse and there were large gaps between spots of visible blood. It wasn't long and we were at the edge of the hardwoods and into some tall prairie grass that led to a large marsh that is currently dried up. Not long into the grass we found blood again then the deer took a sharp left turn and we found the first bed with a good amount of blood in it...and then another bed about 10 steps from there with a large amount of blood, and then another, and then another. It was very apparent that this deer was hurting very badly. Within another 20 yards we were standing on top of this nice 9 pointer. This was this young man's first deer and he was super excited. He said to me, "your dog is awesome!!". I am a teacher and this young man is one of my students at school. He said, "I will definitely have a story for everyone at school on Monday!" Always nice to help out a youth hunter!!

Dean Muthig
Wisconsin

Stella, a German Wirehaired Pointer, has recovered this nice buck for a ten-year-old hunter.

Tracking wounded turkey with a dog

We got an interesting e-mail from Dean Muthig, a United Blood Trackers member from Wisconsin.

Here's a turkey we recovered with Stella my GSP/GWP mix. Turkey went 300 yards after being shot with a bow. It was shot just under the anus, and arrow came out between the breastbone and wing in the breast (must have just missed the heart and lungs). The bird buried itself under a blowdown. Our first turkey track and recovery!

Wisconsin regulations allow for tracking of turkeys in the spring even though you can't hunt turkeys with dogs. Details are included below:

 

Congratulations to Larry Gohlke, a recipient of the Wisconsin Wildlife Management Bureau Special Service Award 2012

Larry Gohlke, a very good friend of ours, is too modest to write about himself, but his friend Cheri Faust sent us this write-up by William (Bill) J. Vander Zouwen Jr., Chief, of Wildlife Ecology Section, Bureau of Wildlife Management, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. The award was presented to Larry on February 28, 2012 at the award ceremony at the Stoney Creek Inn in Rothschild.

This year’s Wildlife Bureau special service award is going to a citizen with passionate interest in deer who is at the same time a fine, gracious gentleman and a great supporter of Wisconsin’s deer management policies.  That really narrows down the list of possibilities, doesn’t it? 

He is a member of the Conservation Congress and of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation wildlife committee.  He has often been seen at DNR deer committee meetings, bringing spread sheets full of numbers and interesting observations. 

He was a very influential member of the Deer 2000 Herd Size Group, attending 40 group meetings, which resulted in herd control unit criteria, the reinstatement of earn-a-buck, an expansion of deer hunting seasons, and responsible deer population goals.  As if that wasn’t enough, he also served on the Deer 2000 Agricultural Damage Committee. 

He helps farmers in the crop damage program to meet their deer harvest quotas.  He’s arranged for donation of significant amounts of venison to food pantries. 

He’s spent countless hours using his dachshunds to help hunters find wounded deer.  He is one of the founders of United Blood Trackers and is giving seminars around the country on this subject. 

He has given up deer hunting on opening weekend to age deer for DNR.  He and his staff have entered the deer aging data from across the state for DNR’s use, freeing up wildlife manager time for other responsibilities.  He also summarized and analyzed the data for our reports. 

He has courageously supported the DNR and responsible deer management when it has not been popular to do so.  He has regularly encouraged DNR biologists to make responsible decisions in spite of the heat we get.

There is only one person in Wisconsin who could possibly fit this description, and many of you have known him for a long time.  This year’s special service award recipient is truly a friend of the wildlife program.  We are so pleased to know him, to benefit from his service, and to present him with this prestigious award.

Please offer your applause to help me thank Larry Gohlke as he comes forward to accept his Special Service Award.

________

The pictures below were taken in May 2011 at the United Blood Trackers Trackfest 2011 at Pocahontas, Arkansas, and show Larry Gohlke, a member of the UBT Board, in action.

Congratulations Larry on a well deserved award!

Cheri and Danika - a dynamite tracking team from Madison, Wisconsin

I have the feeling that this blog is going to be a very busy site this hunting/tracking season. Only today I have received four stories/reports of recoveries made by wirehaired dachshunds. Thank you and huge congratulations! BTW, the blog is not just about wirehaired dachshunds, and owners/handlers of other breeds are welcome as well. 

This recovery has been reported by Cheri Faust from Madison, WI, who is an owner/handler of a four-year-old Danika (FC Danika vom Nordlicht TD, SE). Cheri wrote:

I had a call from a hunter near West Bend, WI this morning. Bow shot deer from 9/26 @ 6:00 p.m. The hunter and his friends followed it about 500 yards last night and this morning before they ran out of trail. He said the shot was low and back - assumed it was gut shot - and that the arrow hadn't gone through. I got there about 11:00 a.m. this morning, and met the hunter, his father and a friend. We had parked in an alfalfa field and they showed me the picked corn rows where they thought the deer had walked. We walked in the corn and Danika seemed to hit the line. She tracked over their two last marked spots and went into a green soybean field about two rows in from the edge. 150 yards in that and she turned towards the brush line separating the soybean field from a standing corn field. She went four rows in to the corn but stopped when everyone else got into the corn. I asked everyone to stay put and took her back out to the soybeans to see if she would take the same turn. She went 10 yards further, but didn't seem like she was on it. Had I taken her off the track and now she thought she should be looking for something else? I picked her up and took her 20 yards further back from where she had turned and started again. This time she went about 20 feet and turned into the corn. I dropped the lead while I crossed the brush in an easier place and when I got to her in the corn to pick up the lead, she was standing at the head of this deer. Three more fans of tracking dogs!

Danika with the hunter and recovered deer. A happy ending!

Cheri and Danika at the recent field trial in Michigan

Lucy's first blood tracking season

I got a good and thorough update on Lucy (Patti v Moosbach-Zuzelek), a Theo/Keena daughter. She is eight and a half months old now. Her owner Dan Davis wrote:

Things seem to be going well with Lucy. She absolutely loves to hunt. When she sees the gear coming out she lays in front of the door waiting until its time to go. I had her out 12 times this fall on "deer calls." We had significant rain in October (20 out of 31 days) which made it tough to get out on training lines. On 7 of the calls either the hunter or I knew where the deer were. She found those 7 and two others that we didn't know where they were but only because no one had looked yet. Two others I honestly didn't think there was much chance for her to find the deer. Based on what the hunter told me I was not convinced either were mortal wounds. I took her anyway mainly for the practice, but also "just in case." She did not find either deer nor did she show us blood beyond where the hunter had found it on their own. I had the opportunity to get her out at night, some tracks took us across water (she loves being in the water), she got exposed to being around other people while tracking; I think it was a productive fall. I am convinced that I have much more to learn about this than she does.

At this point my biggest challenge appears to me to be getting her to slow down. She loves being in the woods and gets very excited. I spent some time trying to get her to slow down with limited success.

Her owner (me) ruined what would have been her best outing of the fall. I shot a mature buck with my bow at 7 a.m. It looked and sounded like a good hit to me, but I found a piece of bloody corn while I was tracking it so, fearing a gut shot, I pulled out for 5 hours. I brought Lucy along when I went back but left her in the truck for the time being. We lost blood after 300 yards, at 400 I found one spot where the deer had brushed against a corn stalk. We looked for a while then decided to give Lucy a try.

She did really well for the first 450 yards or so but then started to get easily distracted by moles, bugs etc. She eventually made a right turn and took me into another woods which happened to be the same woods we walked the edge of when we went to the truck to get her. After a short distance it looked to me like she was taking the same route we took so I thought she may be tracking us. I took her back to the last place we knew the deer had been to start over. She made a left turn.... We started over again, she went straight... We were seeing no indications where the deer might be and she was not as interested as she had been in the beginning so we decided to call it a day. We were walking through the same woods to the truck when Lucy started barking and pulling into the wind. I let her go for awhile while she was zig zagging but then she started circling which usually means she has lost the trail. It was getting late so I picked her up to carry her to the truck. About 75 yards later my brother found the deer. Making a short story long, Lucy was taking me to it both times.

Cheri Faust and Danika from Wisconsin recover two deer for local hunters

We wrote about Cheri Faust's Danika (FC Danika vom Nordlicht TD SE) recently. She is having an incredible field trial season - she has seven first places and four Absolute wins in 19 trials. But this is not all! In the last week she has recovered two deer for Wisconsin hunters.

Cheri writes: "This deer was an 8-pointer that was shot the first time at 7:30 Saturday morning (one lung, diaphragm and liver) and then a second time in the neck 6 hrs later. He was recovered at 4:00 p.m. 250 yds from where the second shot was made. The only blood we had was at the start in some marsh grass. We crossed a green alfalfa field then worked along the edge of a standing corn field. Danika made a 90 degree turn into the corn, went in 8 rows, and made another 90 degree turn to the deer.

This was a 9-pointer that was gutshot Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. and recovered 800 yrds from the hit site at noon on Thursday. We had blood for the first 50 yds and then nothing until one spurt of blood on the trail in hardwoods next to where the deer was found in.

Both hunters were very happy having their deer recovered, and I was pretty happy with my dog!"

Cabelas jacket kept Mike warm but it was a tracking dog who found his deer

The picture is taken from the Cabelas online catalog. It was sent to me by Larry Gohlke whose tracking dog Nix was instrumental in recovery of this buck. I asked Larry to write more about how it had happened.

"Mike Sr hunts a piece of land where he sees lots of deer during bow season including the week before our Wisconsin deer rifle season. He then puts his son Mike Jr in what should be the very best spot for the nine day rifle season. The result has been that almost no deer show up for the kid. Last year his luck changed a lot. Unfortunately, when this large buck showed up just before closing time another 10 deer did too. Mike thought he made a good shot on the buck but when it took off there were tails going every direction.

I was called in to find the buck which was one of eleven deer in the area before the shot. There is no telling how many other deer showed up after dark and before we started tracking. There was no blood and Mike only knew that none of the deer had run toward him. I have had to look for a number of deer with similar starts. My two year old dog Nix and I work together pretty well in these situations.

We started at one side checking the possible escape routes and followed many trails without finding any blood. At one point we actually chased some deer across a wooden foot bridge. What a racket! After many trails that didn't have any blood on them we took a trail which one of the hunters had just inspected. We found one drop of blood that the hunter had missed. After a distance we came to a blown down tree and the next blood. The deer had stopped before the tree leaving a blood trail and then walked to the other side of the tree and died in the tree branches and tall marsh grass.

I am convinced that a lot of deer could be found with dogs, the deer that the hunter would never be able to confirm were hit. Mike is a believer!


Larry Gohlke"

Larry Gohlke with Nix

Blood tracking in Wisconsin

Larry Gohlke from Neshkoro, WI, has been tracking wounded deer with his wirehaired dachshunds for many years. He is a Life Member of Deer Search and a co-founding member of United Blood Trackers. These days he is tracking with a young male out of his own breeding - FC Nix vom Nordlicht.

Larry Gohlke with Nix

In Wisconsin a tracker is not allowed to carry a weapon while tracking. Of course, some wounded deer are not dead when they are found, and they have to be finished off. We are not going to get into details how to go about it, but it is certain that sooner rather than later somebody is going to hurt.

This is Larry's latest adventure.

I tracked this buck for a hunter that only had permission to go further onto his neighbor's land if my dog was able to confirm that the blood trail had actually crossed the creek into the neighbor's hunting refuge. The buck had been shot in the morning and had walked to a town blacktopped road where it stopped and bled more than most road kills do!

The deer than walked onto the neighbor's land and down to a creek where it circled. The hunter and the landowner searched for any sign of where the buck left the circle until it was time for the landowner to go hunting. After hunting hours I was allowed to search. Nix was able to immediately continue the trail and make a large half circle back to the creek. The buck was bedded in the creek in some brush. I had the hunter hold my dog, his friend hold my light, and I walked in front of the buck so I could throw my rope around his antlers. (The brush was too thick behind the buck.) The buck got up, started walking up stream, and attempted to climb out on the opposite bank. I got the rope tangled in his antlers on the second toss. I was wearing the frog legs that you and John gave me and was standing in the stream. The buck turned and started walking RIGHT AT ME. I quickly put my body in REVERSE. Most of my body moved BUT my feet were stuck in the mud and not going anywhere. When my butt hit the water the buck stopped and I crawled out of the mud as fast as a could go.

Wouldn't it have been sweet justice if the buck had fallen on me, holding me under mud to drown? I got out and tied the buck down with a second rope before allowing the hunters to finish it off.

I can tell you that a buck's antlers apparent size increases exponentially when it is moving toward you and you are on your back. The difference is much greater than the ground shrinkage that hunters experience when the huge bucks they shoot are found to be much smaller when in their hands.

I didn't stick around for pictures. I let them drag the deer out and when home to put on some dry clothes and stop shaking! Larry

A nice 8 point buck for Jeff and Chloe

Jeff Stahl from Wautoma, WI, sent this e-mail:

I was fortunate enough on November 9, 2008 at 8:00 a.m., to shoot a very nice 8 pointer. I was quite sure I had a very good hit and the deer didn’t go far. I returned home to pick up Chloe to assist me with the track. We arrived at 11:00 a.m. to the location where I had shot the deer and found my arrow which had gone completely through the deer. The beginning of the blood trail was slim with not much blood for the first 50 yards, although Chloe was eager to follow the small amount of blood there was, I was able to track the deer only by its hoof tracks as it was running down a muddy road. The buck took a hard left and entered the woods and Chloe never missed a step. The blood trail became more evident as we got farther into the woods and approx. 100 yards into the woods was my nice 8 point. My arrow had passed through the heart and the deer was able to go 200 yards. Although this wasn’t a difficult track, it was well needed as she had three previous tracks that were very difficult and no recoveries. A great reward after three unsuccessful tracks, I could tell she was excited with her find, as she chewed half the hide off before I could get it out of the woods!

Also yesterday we got a call from Carl Kimbler who owns Elsa, Chloe's sister. The litter Elsa and Chloe come from was born on February 28, 2008 so these pups are just 8.5 month old. Last summer and early fall Carl was very concerned as Elsa had no interest in tracking artificial blood lines. It was hard to hear about her siblings' quick progress as they were already tracking old and long lines while she had no desire to follow the deer blood at all. Carl was just about ready to give up and return the pup. Our advice was to hold on to her through the hunting season and expose her to "real" deer and real blood trails. I am happy to report that this strategy made all the difference in the world. While Elsa was cautious with her first deer, she turned into a monster on her second one. She tracks well and by now has found three deer. They were not difficult trails but at her age they should not be. Her prey drive is awaken now and Carl is very pleased with the progress she is making.

Remember that every pup is different and there is no "one training formula that fits all". Puppies develop at different rates, and even when they come from the same litter they have different strengths and weaknesses. As an owner and handler you need to get to know your puppy, and then adjust your training techniques according to the pup's individual needs.

Chloe from Wisconsin recovers her first buck

Today we received this nice story from Jeff Stahl from Wisconsin. He owns "Chloe" whose registered name is Emmy von Moosbach-Zuzelek. Chloe was born on February 28, 2008 and is a daughter of Billy and Gilda. Congratulations to Jeff and Chloe!

A first for Emmy and Emmy

Last evening “Chloe” had her second chance to recover a deer. An exciting evening for two Emmys. My sister-in-law, Emmy shot her first deer with a bow and my pup Emmy “Chloe” recovered her first archery kill.

I received the call around 6:00 p.m. that my sister-in-law hit a nice buck. Emmy and her friend Randy tracked the deer for a little over 100 yards where they lost blood and felt they could use some help. After a short discussion of arrow placement, blood color and amount, angle of penetration and a good feeling the deer was mortally hit, I packed up and headed to the scene. We found a good amount of blood which Chloe was able to use as a starting point and from there things got better with time. At first Chloe ran frantically around the woods checking out every smell other than what she was suppose to be looking for. After about 10 minutes she calmed herself and started tracking slowly, checking every trail thoroughly until she was confident she had the correct trail.

Once she settled down, she followed the visible blood trail 100 yards until we came to our first check. No blood and no sign of which way the deer went. Chloe began weaving back and forth and again picked up the trail which didn’t have any visible blood for quite a ways. At one point she became very excited and starting pulling barking and wanted to move faster, I picked her up, calmed her down, placed her back on the blood trail and she immediately starting following the trail again. After about approx. 400 yard track we came over a large hill and down into an area with a small pond. I was focusing on Chloe and her actions and didn’t notice what was in the pond until I heard my sister-in-law yell, “there it is, my deer!” Her very first archery kill, 8 point 17 5/8 spread whitetail lay dead in pond.

We were all very excited for both Emmy’s but I was relieved that my pup had recovered her first deer. All the time of training, stinky deer legs around the house and anticipation of the phone ringing was well worth the wait. It was great to see the determination Chloe had to find the deer. I truly believe she wouldn’t have quit until we found the deer.

Chloe’s first track was successful to a point, she was trailing a doe which the hunter said “should only be 75 yards down the trail dead.” Began trailing small blood trail approx 100 yards and lost blood. Chloe wanted to go left, but hunter said he knew the deer went to the right. Had no luck finding blood in the direction the hunter wanted to look, began Chloe down the trail (no blood) she wanted to go down originally but had to call off the track for a family emergency. Long story short, hunter didn’t think the deer would go the way Chloe wanted because there was a river that way and “a wounded deer wouldn’t try to swim a river.” The next day they found the deer about 50 yards from where we stopped the track, deer was laying in the river. The hunter couldn’t believe the deer went that direction, still wasn’t sure it was his deer! I like John’s comment about always trust the dog, not the hunter! Best of luck to you all.

Jeff