Keeping your tracking dog in shape!

by John Jeanneney

Now that tracking season is over, there’s a real risk that your dog will get soft and fat. You can’t keep him in shape by working  training line a week, and his excess energy may make him a difficult companion in the house. Exercise is needed for both dogs and people, and this is especially important as we get into middle age.  At 78 I like to think that older dogs and handlers are the most experienced and skillful, but we do have to pay attention to muscle tone and tummy tuck-up.

We all have worked hard to teach our tracking dogs that hot deer lines are a No! No! We are not ready to turn are dogs loose in the off season and run the risk that they will bump deer and forget what they have been taught. Depending on your own age and condition you can jog a few miles with them or “road” them from your ATV. Better yet train your dog to roam about off lead as you search together for sheds or trim out your deer stands for the upcoming season.

Taking a walk in the woods with your tracking dogs is not as simple as it should be. Labs and curdogs will usually stay fairly close. Hounds, including dachshunds, have a greater tendency to range out too far. Your dog must handle, stay in contact and explore the area within a 100 yards or so. If there is a problem with recall, the best solution is a remote (electronic) collar used gently and intelligently. If the dog drifts out and doesn’t respond to your voice, give him a buzz with the vibrator on the collar and follow up with a low level electric “nick”. The dog must have a clear idea of what “Come!” means before you begin this collar training. You have to work upward from the lowest electric nick levels until you find what is just powerful enough to get the attention of your dog. The sensitivity of individual dogs to electrical “stimulation” varies. Once your dog learns to associate the buzz of the vibrator and the mild electric shock, you will be able to communicate by vibrator alone. This means that you can let the dog work out around you without calling him and spooking any wildlife you might be interested in.

Long walks with your tracking dog in interesting terrain are something that will keep you both in shape for fall. Think how steep those hills are going to be if you let that belly fat build up. A word of caution for small dog folks:  Avoid dusk, after dark and early dawn outings. These are the hours when coyotes are on the move. I know of three cases where coyotes killed small dogs at night. One was my own Jack Russell, who was a great underground dog if not much of a tracker.

Some handlers are reluctant to let their dogs do anything but track wounded big game. What if the dog bumps a deer and forgets everything he has been taught? Actually mature dogs are more discriminating than we sometimes realize. For a smart, versatile pointing dog like a Drahthaar there is no contradiction between hunting birds  and tracking wounded deer. Dogs are very aware of cues. When the tracking collar and leash go on at the hit site, this is their signal to focus on the scent line of wounded big game.

Dachshunds and beagles can be used for both tracking and rabbit hunting. We consistently do this with our dachshunds. In both activities they use their running muscles and their noses. On rabbits they learn to work checks and backtracks; this enhances their blood tracking skills. For dachshunds competitive AKC field trials on cottontails are another activity to keep a tracking dog sharp and in shape.

Susanne Hamilton's Buster (FC Clown vom Talsdeich) 

is an outstanding blood tracker and winner of two 

Dachshund Club of America National field trials.

When you are dealing with versatile dogs, from dachshunds to Drahthaars, you do have to determine your priorities. If tracking wounded big game is going to be the most important activity, it is best to introduce the puppy to this sort of scent work first. As the young dog understands that tracking wounded big game is the most important thing in the world, he will learn to ignore rabbits or birds when tracking on the long leash. A Drahthaar may end up not being as high headed and wide ranging as a pheasant specialist, but he will perform both jobs well.

The more you work with your dog in different  hunting activities, the more the dog/handler cooperation will carry over from one activity to another. This brings to mind the career of Clary, my second wirehaired dachshund, and my most versatile dog of all time.

With Clary, I could not begin with training for tracking wounded deer. In 1971  this has not been legalized yet in any of the northern states. We started by hunting rabbits, squirrels and raccoons.  Clary was a puppy sensation until her first birthday. Then she crashed into six months of adolescence incompetence until her brain began to function well once more. At 18 months she rediscovered her old self confirming all my early hopes. Clary would run rabbits in daylight and ignore them at night when coons were our game. During the day she quickly sensed whether I was hunting pheasants or rabbits, and she would quarter closely or range farther out as the situation required. This early introduction to small game work is not what I would recommend today for every dog, but in Clary’s particular case it was not a problem.

When a DNR official with law enforcement credentials legally requested that I track a wounded deer, Clary took a bloodless  four hour line a quarter of a mile to the deer. Clary was then four years old and had never chased a healthy deer or tracked a wounded one. Yet Clary immediately sensed what I wanted her to do and acted as if she had been “blood tracking” all her life. Her earlier experiences of cooperation in hunting with me carried over to this new task.

In the case of most breeds a tracking dog does not have to be a specialist for just one thing. If you work with your dog year round, he will understand you and cooperate better during the tracking season. And he will stay in shape.

Clary von Moosbach with her dam Carla vom Rode. By the way, Carla was the first dachshund imported by John from Germany; she was born in February 1965.

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

Harold Barry's blood tracking hounds

Harold Barry is a United Blood Trackers member from Florida. Thank you Harold for sharing your tracking experiences with us.

 

I'm a 33 year old wildlife officer who works for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission. I have been blessed to have the job I'm in. I have spent every possible moment of my life in the woods. About 5 years ago, several deer were lost in my lease due to bad shots, and even when a dog was brought in, they were never successful. I began to get disgusted with it and decided to train my one year old beagle. I have a great relationship with our local deer processor and took him a 5 gallon bucket and said fill it up, lol. I began laying tracks for Marley and before I knew it, I had my very own tracking dog. Marley seemed to have been born for the sole purpose of tracking wounded deer.

 

In her first year she found 15 deer. As you well know, once the word spreads, it spreads rapidly. I would sometimes track 2-3 deer an evening. I have came to enjoy tracking for others as much as I love harvesting deer myself! I am now training a black and tan bloodhound puppy. He's only 13 weeks and will already run a 300 yard track I lay. He seems to be learning quickly and loving it! He is pictured in a few of the pics I sent. My agency has been very receptive to my tracking and as long as I'm not on an active call, they allow me to track for hunters. It's a way of giving something positive back to the general public; it shows that we care and don't necessarily just write tickets.

 

 

The 1st pic is from a mobility impaired hunt on one of our local management areas. This particular management area only allows a limited number of mobility impaired hunters the opportunity to hunt. The hunter shot the deer with a .223 and the only shot evidence was a small amount of hair. I put my 4 year old beagle, "Marley", on the hair and about 200 yards later recovered this doe. There was no visible blood at any point during the track.

The 2nd pic is from one of my co-workers son's first deer. This deer was shot with a .243 and there was no evidence of a sure hit at the shot site. From my co-worker's description of the deer's reaction to the shot, I was confident it was hit. I put Marley on this track and found a small amount of blood about 120 yards in. The blood was very little through the track, but found every 50 yards or so. After about 500 yards, we found the deer still alive but bedded down. We put the deer down with a .38 revolver carried in with us.

The 3rd pic is from from one of my lease members. The deer was shot with a .270 and there was evidence of a gut shot at the shot site. I put Marley on this track and amazingly, the gut shot deer had only run about 150 yards before bedding and dying.

The 4th picture is also from my lease. This track turned out to be very interesting. The deer was shot with a .30-.06 and there was ample blood to start with, but it stopped about 100 yards in. The blood then appeared every 40 yards or so, but when it was there, it was a large amount. Marley took us for about 3/4 of a mile to another food plot on my lease. As we tracked through the food plot, I observed small drops of blood and then discovered a pool of blood with drag sign leaving it headed to the other side of the food plot. Another one of my lease members had shot the deer and tried sneaking it out after seeing it was already shot. I had spoken with this lease member just before our track, and he apparently had the deer in his truck then and was sneaking it out. After discovering the drag marks, I immediately called and confronted the member. He confessed to taking the deer and returned it to our camp. He was subsequently terminated from the lease and the deer was given to the original shooter.

The 5th picture is from my shift partner at work. He called one evening just after dark and I could hear the excitement and anguish in his voice. He sounded like a 12 year old child trying to tell his version of the events from his evening hunt. He explained that he had shot the biggest deer of his life and could not find any blood. When I asked how big, he just replied "BIG!". I loaded Marley and headed his way. The area where he shot the deer was grassy, so finding foot sign was impossible and there was no blood at the shot site. I began cutting the area with Marley and after a few seconds, she hit on something and seemed very confident. After approximately 70 yards the blood looked as if you were slinging it with a paint brush. We discovered the deer about 200 yards in. I saw the deer first and told my shift partner to look just ahead of us. All you could see was the left main beam sticking up out of a very thick patch of briars. He hollered like a kid and hugged me before he could even realize it!

Today we said good bye to our beagle Rip

This was a very sad day for both of us as we had to say good bye to our beagle Rip. This morning he was not able to move. His rear was paralyzed, and he seemed to have some neurological damage affecting his whole right side. John took him to our vet in Cobleskill, and he agreed that the only thing to do was to put him down.

Rip (Stone Apple Rip) was born on June 2, 1999. He was bred by Brian Tallman, and he was out of FC John's Buck VII and Cedar Ridge Diamond Ring. We will write more about him soon. A very smart, affectionate dog, a gentle soul, he will be missed a lot by us and our dachshunds.

Good bye Rip, sleep tight.

This is one of my favorite picture of Rip - it was taken on the New Year's Eve 2010.

Rip's last picture - April 4, 2011.

Rip and Paika are having a taste of ice and snow - April 4, 2011.

Good luck to Jim and his beagle Charlie

I have come across a heart-warming website at http://upstatetracker.com/, and would like to wish the best of luck to Jim and his beagle Charlie from Greenville, South Carolina. The motto of the website is The Enjoyment of Paying Back by Helping Others.

Jim, the most successful blood tracking dog in Deer Search's history was Tim Nichols' beagle Mickey, who found 160 wounded deer. Some beagles are excellent trackers. We are looking forward to reading about your blood tracking adventures and Charlie's progress.

Jim and Charlie from http://upstatetracker.com/

Just Beagles! The New Scotland Beagle Club SPO Trial

John and I are members of the New Scotland Beagle Club in Feura Bush, NY, and we have spent the last three days at the Small Pack Option Beagle Trial organized by our club. Below are some snapshots taken during the trial. I love beagles! True, we have only one beagle, Rip, who is now over eleven years old, but I have the utmost respect for the breed.

It was a pleasure to meet and talk to Sarah Harrington who together with her husband Ralph has been running Better Beagling magazine for over a year now. This superb publication is a great resource for the beagle field trialing and hunting community.

   

 

 

 

Related posts:

http://borntotracknews.blogspot.com/2008/10/blood-tracking-with-beagles.html/

http://borntotracknews.blogspot.com/2009/08/field-trial-beagles.html

The power of canine nose - running rabbits after the 18" snow fall

In the last 18 hours we got probably 18-20 inches of snow. It is a heavy and wet snow, and our fence in some areas is now much lower to the ground.

The snow is too deep for dachshunds!

In the morning dogs got fed and let out, but after a while we realized that our beagle Rip was missing. Rip is almost 11 years old but he still has a lot of hunt in him. He is  a large male, 15", but who would expect that in the weather like this he would go on a hunting expedition.
It was not difficult to follow his tracks in such a deep snow. He jumped over the fence, and the tracks led out to the brushy area by our driveway, where he can usually find rabbits easily. And then I heard him. I had my camera with me and started to tape. This is what the first video clip shows. I did not embed the videos on purpose as the second clip is quite loud.

As it turned out Rip was running rabbits in our enclosure. He must have jumped there over the lowered fence. I had to remove the snow around the gate to be able to follow him to the fenced in field. I was quite amazed that he managed to  open on the scent of rabbits moving under the snow. He was voicing a lot and covered quite a bit of ground! Finally he slowed down as he must have run out of energy, and this is when I managed to get to him. The second clip shows that. To see the videos click here.

I know that Rip does not lie and does not open when he does not have the scent. He must have a really powerful nose to be able to smell rabbits in these conditions!

Our new Thanksgiving tradition - pictures of our dogs

We are thankful as it has been a good year for us and everybody here is doing well (humans and canines). We have not lost any dogs to illness or old age, and added Mischa and Paika to our pack. We were sad to let Emma go to a new home but she is doing great there. I am starting a new tradition this Thanksgiving by posting current pictures (most of them taken today) of all our dogs (11 dachshunds and one beagle). I’ll continue to do it on future Thanksgiving days. I skipped all the titles - it is just pictures and registered names. We start with our oldest- Alfi.

Alfi von der Hardt-Hardt-Höhe, born November 5, 1997

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Asko von der Drachenburg, born June 20, 1999

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Elli von Moosbach-Zuzelek, born June 13, 2001

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Gilda v Moosbach-Zuzelek, born March 27, 2002

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Billy von Moosbach-Zuzelek, born February 4, 2004

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Keena v Moosbach-Zuzelek, born April 7, 2005

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Darin von Moosbach Zuzelek "Bernie", born October 15, 2005

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Mischa z Kmetónyho dvora, born May 20, 2006

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Joeri vom Nonnenschlag, born February 18, 2008

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Tom vom Linteler-Forst, born March 26, 2008

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Paika v Moosbach-Zuzelek, born March 30, 2009

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Stone Apple Rip, born June 2, 1999

Field trial beagles

There are several different types of beagle field trials, and several very different types of beagles bred to run in a style appropriate for that type of trial. Of course these beagles also hunt.

At one extreme are the brace trial beagles, bred and trained to track cottontails slowly and precisely in a brace of two. A hound that “reaches” more than a foot or two on a check gets picked up at a brace trial.

At the other extreme are the large pack hounds that drive northern hares at great speed. The “large pack” can number up to 40 hounds. To win a large pack trial speed and endurance are more important than staying close to the line and picking checks with precision.

Some might say that the “small pack option” trials are designed for the beagle that is a happy medium. The trial judges are looking for both speed (with control) and clean check work. The size of the “small pack” is usually about seven and the hounds are supposed to work well together.

If you plan to use a beagle for tracking wounded deer, a hound out of an outstanding small pack background is your best bet.

The following video clip shows a winners pack of 13’’ bitches, which ran today at our New Scotland Beagle Club Small Pack Option field trial. At the end of the video you will see the working style and check work that would also be very appropriate for tracking a wounded deer.

Mickey's last deer

Tim Nichols' beagle Mickey was one of the great tracking dogs of the North East. He died a year ago on March 24 at the age of 12 ½. Mickey found more deer in his career than any other dog in Deer Search. This was in part due to the fact that Tim his handler had drive and stamina to match his hound’s. For eight successive years the pair took more calls and found more deer than any other tracking team in Deer Search. They were licensed to track on both sides of the New York/Vermont border, rough country with plenty of mountains and beaver swamps.

Their grand total of deer finds was 160. In addition Mickey found three bears and even found two lost dogs. He would track whatever Tim requested.

Here is Tim’s account of Mickey’s last deer call in November of 2007. As you can see from the photo taken at the end, Mickey had nothing left but heart and the desire to do his job. This story says a lot about both Mickey and Tim.

The End is Near

It was Thanksgiving day of Vermont’s 2007 deer season and very wet outside. It had been a mixture of rain and snow and just a raw day. At around noontime the phone rang, and to my surprise it was a hunter from near my home calling for help to locate a buck that his girlfriend had hit. Both of them had shot at it but he knew that his shots were off the mark as the buck was hitting high gear going across the field. However, the deer had buckled when the girlfriend took the first shot.

So I loaded the old beagle Mickey into his crate, not knowing that his time was dwindling away faster than his old body made me realize. We headed up the road about two miles to search for this wounded buck. When I got there, the boyfriend came out of the house to inform me of what had happened. After filling out the tracking report we headed out his back door and up a very steep ridge to get to the last blood he had found. After a 15 minute walk we finally arrived at the scene. I snapped the lead into Mickey's harness and we were off, now at a much slower pace then in his younger years. But we still had a steady pace and within 15 minutes Mickey started to bark which meant we were 20 to 30 minutes behind the deer.

As we were moving from ridge to ridge we hear a shot ring out up ahead of us. I stopped to listen, but there were no follow up shots. So we continued to track and within a few minutes we approached a very shaken hunter just standing in the woods looking puzzled. As I got to him I asked him if had shot. His reply was "I think so!". I thought for a second and asked him again and this time he confessed that he had buck fever and missed. He then asked if he could join us. I told him, “Sure, come along and watch. It’s going to be a long day.”

So we proceeded along and within 10 minutes a shot rang out, then another, and another. We stopped and waited for a few minutes and then went on tracking. When we hear another shot, I didn't want to continue, but we did. As we tracked through some pines I looked ahead to see a party of about five hunters all looking at the ground. As I approached I could see a buck laying there with a few holes in him. As I got to the hunters, I recognized my next door neighbor standing over the buck smiling. He yelled that, “It took a few shots but we got him.” I then said to him ," Who is going to claim this prize?" He replied " The guy who called you to track for him drew first blood, so its his deer.".

After a few minutes of discussion about what had taken place, all the hunters left, and I was left with a deer, a dog, my back pack and very little idea where I was. So I gutted the deer and started to drag it in the direction I came from.

Thank God, one of the hunters had called my wife to go get the girl who had originally shot the deer and meet up with me to help get it out of the woods. Everything finished up well, the girl was happy, and I made it home in time for Thanksgiving dinner.

Mickey and his last deer

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.

Blood tracking with beagles

Today we received this e-mail from Dustin Hoover in Maryland.

Dear John and Jolanta,

I am interested in starting a deer tracking club in Md .I live in Pasadena, which is about central Md . I have been training a beagle pup for about 10 weeks now and he is only 18 weeks old. He has found 4 of 5 deer in the past 3 weeks of our bow season. They have been trails that decent hunters could have followed and found, but we have left it up to him and he has done great.

I talked to Jolanta the night I was going to go look at the dogs and she gave me great advise. He is from an award winning breed of rabbit Beagles but at this time doesn't know what a rabbit is. He is our house pet and has just amazed me and others at his skills during training exercises and on live trails. I have only read a little about training a dog like this. I have heard that many people in my area have been trying to train dogs to track. I figure this would be a fun thing to start a club and get these folks together for the common cause.

Please enjoy the photo of Gunner and his first find.

Thank you, Dustin Hoover

Thank you Dustin, and congratulations on such a promising puppy. There are quite a few people tracking in Maryland and I would suggest that you contact Andy Bensing 610-413-7094. Andy is in Germany now and we’ll back in the next few days. Even though Andy lives in PA, he tracks in MD and he knows other trackers there. I would also suggest that you join http://www.unitedbloodtrackers.org/ yourself. No need to re-invent a wheel; information and support are available for people who want to get involved.


This e-mailmade me realize that it would be a good time to post John's article on blood tracking with beagles. Here it is.

Blood Tracking with Beagles

© 2007 John Jeanneney

I get many questions concerning beagles as tracking dogs. Usually they come from people who have not been very much involved with beagles. But they do know that there are a lot of good beagles around; they sense that this talent could be used for tracking wounded deer and bear. And they are right. My own personal preference, in my part of the country, may be for properly bred wirehaired dachshunds, but I’ve admired beagles for a long time. I personally own a very good “gun dog” beagle. I’m currently in a beagle club, and I have been a member of a beagle club for most of the past twenty years.

One of the things that surprises me about my fellow beagle club members is that most of them can’t even think about a beagle as anything else but a rabbit hound. If they can’t sell all their pups to rabbit hunters and field trialers, they let them go as simple suburban pets. So much talent going to waste at a time when there is a crying need for tracking dogs!

The biggest plus of a good beagle is nose. You can get more nose in a thirty pound beagle package than in any other comparably sized dog. Nose is very important in a tracking dog, although it’s not the only thing. What is done with the information the nose brings in is even more important. Still, superior nose is very nice to have when you are working a 24 hour line, with no visible blood, on a dry, windy day.

The whole subject of beagles is far more complex than a lot of people realize. You can’t talk about all beagles as if they are clones of the same basic dog. Of course there are “good” ones and “bad” ones. But going beyond this, there are different types of beagles with very different, genetically based, working styles. At one end of the spectrum you have the brace trial beagle, which tracks a rabbit at a slow, walking pace, tonguing on every footprint and boring a hole in the ground with his nose when he comes to a difficult check or a point where there is no scent. At the other extreme there are the hare hounds, sometimes called large pack beagles, which run like a hurricane with terrific drive to overtake their prey. The hare hounds do better on a strong-scented northern hare than on a cottontail.

In the middle, between brace and hare hounds are the “gundog” beagles, which are judged in a small pack format at field trials. Ideally they are supposed to drive the rabbit at a moderate pace while maintaining good line control.

Many good beagles are never field trialed at all, but it is worth discussing field trial hounds to make the point that beagles have enormous variability. You can’t just say “I want to buy a good beagle, as you might say “I want to buy a five pound container of oatmeal.”

What you need for tracking wounded game is a beagle between the extremes of brace and large pack working styles. The hound must have enough initiative to reach a bit if it runs out of scent line. On the other hand you don’t want a hyped-up speed demon that might fit into the large pack scene, but lacks patience and responsiveness to the handler.

What you are looking for is a calm, steady beagle, the type that rides around with the boss in the cab of the pick-up, a dog that can adjust to circumstances, walk out a tough line when he has to, but drift it at a good pace when the going is easy. The hound has to love his tracking work and at the same time stay calm and focused.

Ronny Smith, down in Washington, Georgia had a beagle that could be taken as a model. When hunters in the area couldn’t find a deer, they would just go over to Ronny’s. If Ronny wasn’t home, the tracking leash was always hanging by the kennel. The local custom, which seems pretty laid back to us uptight Northern types, was to take the beagle out yourself is Ronny wasn’t around. The old beagle would ride out in the hunter’s pick-up, do the job, and then get driven back to his kennel. He loved his work so much that he would do it for anyone. Such beagles are not easy to find these days.

Once you realize that you can’t select a beagle on the basis of its AKC brand name, there are still some problems. Even great beagles are not the fastest learners when it comes to staying on the right scent line. And in wounded deer tracking, the essence of the art is being able to stay on the right scent line, overlain as it may be by a crisscrossing of hot lines and with no visible blood. You have to keep in mind that the beagle was developed as a pack hound, relating more to his pack mates than to his handler. At first he is not as likely to be all that concerned about what his handler’s desires; a beagle’s first priority is to run game with no special concern about whether it is wounded.

Tim Nichols, of Granville, New York has for seven straight years found more deer than any other handler in Deer Search. His fifteen inch beagle, Mickey, is quite a hound, and it’s unfortunate that he is nearing the end of his brilliant career. Tim admits that he had trouble with Mickey at first, because he would often go with a good scent line, even if it wasn’t the right deer. Mickey wasn’t a boy wonder, but once he got his lesson straight he was formidable. With beagle tracking hounds you have to be patient, but it can be worth the wait.

Tim Nichols with Mickey in 1998, when Mickey was a young hound.

Dana McLain in Arenzville, Illinois is a deer guide and outfitter, who got a started tracking beagle from Tim. Shiloh found a lot of wounded deer for Dana’s clients before getting run over in a tragic accident right on the farm. That beagle not only learned to stay on the right line; he was also smart enough to tune out rabbit scent when he was wearing his tracking collar and lead. Otherwise in the off season, Shiloh usually had a good rabbit run every day on Dana’s farm. It was a good way to keep him in shape.

Of course not all tracking puppies measure up to expectations, and with the scent hounds there may be more wastage than with Labs or curdogs for example. There are exceptions to this of course, but this seems to be a consensus among houndsmen, especially when they are talking about someone else’s breeding. One of the good things about a small hound like a beagle is that you don’t have to put him down if he doesn’t make the grade. It is nice to know that if your pup does not work out, there will be plenty of beagle pet lovers to take him. They will be much less critical than you are. Just hope that the new owner won’t breed him to a pug and start selling high-priced “puggles”.

Beagles are bred to tongue on the trail, and unlike a dachshund, a Lab or a curdog they will open while tracking a wounded deer. Tim Nichols tells me that Mickey opens if the scent line is less than a half hour old under good scenting conditions. In Georgia I saw Randy Vick’s beagle/treeing Walker hound Bob tongue continuously on a line that was six hours old. Tim and Randy both work their hounds on a 30 foot tracking leash.

Tim and Randy have no problems with their talkative hounds, but every individual has to decide what is best for him. Personally, I have tracked through suburban woods at midnight when I was happy to have a tighter mouthed dog. The Michigan regulations state that “A dog that barks while tracking the deer shall not be used on public lands.”

If you are planning to buy a beagle for tracking work, it pays to do some research. The sire and dam may not be tracking dogs, but you can learn something about the prospects of the pup by observing the working style of the parents on a rabbit or hare. You don’t want something wild and crazy; on the other hand you don’t want a hound that can only track from footprint to footprint. He will be more useful if he can put footprint and body scent together.

Some beagles are not especially responsive to their handlers, and I don’t think that this is all a matter of genetics. When beagles spend most of their lives in isolated kennels, this doesn’t help them to relate well with humans. The most important time for developing dog/human relations in a puppy is between seven and twelve weeks. If your beagle pup has spent those weeks in a kennel with little human contact, it will be difficult to repair the damage later on.

Effective tracking requires closer handler/dog communication than other types of hunting. Don’t overlook this point as you acquire and develop your future tracking partner.

A Dachshund is NOT a Beagle

This article was written by John several years ago and was published in Full Cry. It is long but worth reading!

The dachshund is not a beagle, but the fact that some people are breeding brown and white spotted dachshunds will confuse the issue for sure. I am counting on the natural smarts of my fellow houndsmen to see the light and know the truth. A dachshund is not a beagle. Believe it or not past confusions have created problems which hurt dachshunds, of course, much more than they hurt beagles. Even when it was recognized that they were entirely different dogs to the eye, it was easy to miss the point that the brain wiring was quite different as well. This brain wiring, the way the neurons of the brain develop and are linked together, is in good part a matter of breed genetics. This is as much a part of breed characteristics as the superficial things which show judges look at.

The dachshund originated in Germany as a forester’s dog; dogs were selected who worked well, one on one, with their masters. Dachshunds don’t pack well, compared to beagles because they were never developed to be a pack hound. However, hunting dachshunds as a group may well be the most biddable of the scent hounds. If for your special purposes you are looking for a small hound that handles like a good cur, the dachshund may be the hound for you.

The purposes for which the dachshund was developed are very different from those of a beagle. In part the dachshund was a dog to be used for underground work on foxes and badgers. “Dachshund” actually means badger dog in German, but these dogs were used much more on fox. In Germany and in the rest of Europe foxes were always much more plentiful and a much bigger nuisance than badgers. Also a good dog can usually drive a fox from the den to the gun. A badger is an even tougher on the defense. He goes very deep and will seldom bolt. A dog small enough to get down to a badger is not is strong enough to kill him. Usually the hunting party assisting the dog has to dig down to the quarry. This is old fashioned hard work that is not very popular these days.

The dachshund in Germany was also seen as an above ground dog that handled well and could be used to flush game, especially the small European roe deer, out of heavy cover of young growth forest. As a jump dog the dachshund was expected to give tongue on a fresh scent line and warn the hunters posted around the gridiron pattern of forest roads that game was on the way.

It was also discovered that the dachshund, bred to be the biddable hound and attuned to the needs of his handler, was very useful for finding wounded big game which left little or no blood trail. The good ones could learn to work the right deer even if it meant picking out the body and foot print scent of the individual deer. The dachshund was bred to be versatile dog, although individuals tended to excel in one or two categories, and less often in all three.

Really small dachshunds, from nine pounds down to less than seven were developed later from the standard sized dogs. There were some out crosses to other very small breeds but mainly it was accomplished by breeding down from smaller and smaller dachshunds that had the necessary type and abilities. It was not an easy task. The smallest ones were called Kaninchenteckels, rabbit dachshunds, could actually go down a rabbit hole. The European rabbit which is entirely different from our cottontail was very prolific to the point of being a nuisance even though it was good to eat. It did not run well for a dog preferring to dive immediately into holes that it dug for itself. If you wanted to kill rabbits one of the best ways was to use a Kaninchenteckel that could follow the rabbit underground and push him out.

The small dachshunds could do all the work of the standard dachshund, although they lacked the body mass and the power to cope with cold conditions and really rough terrain for long periods of time. Their small size empowered them for certain tasks and presented certain limitations for others. For some hunters it was very desirable to have a dog small enough to ride in a hunting coat capable of flushing the small roe deer from cover, or tracking a wounded one for a few hundred meters. They enjoyed working with the world’s smallest hunting dog.

None of this dachshund work in Germany has much to do with the tasks that a beagle is asked to do in the United States and Canada. When dachshunds were brought to America most of them became show dogs or family pets. Even for those who wanted to keep the dachshund as a hunting dog, their underground purposes were soon forgotten. Teddy Moritz, who writes the first part of this column, is the person who had the most to do with reinventing the dachshund for underground work in America.

Teddy Moritz's longaired minis are well suited for den work and falconry. Photo by Teddy Moritz.

As for the standard dachshund the first disastrous move was the attempt to make him over as a beagle. For example the AKC developed field trials which are modeled after the AKC beagle brace trial rules. I personally bear part of the blame for this.

Taking a dachshund to an AKC field trial really designed for beagles is a little like taking a springer spaniel to a retriever trial. The spaniel, bred as a flushing dog, can retrieve, but not as well as a Lab. In a brace trial on rabbits the better dachshunds can do it, but not on the same level as the real rabbit specialists. The dachshund is a versatile hound, but rabbit work under brace trial rules is not the best act in his repertoire. When we get calls from beaglers asking about dachshund puppies, we ask a lot of questions about what they are looking for. A good many callers are really looking for a beagle that will please them more than what they have at the moment. If the man doesn’t realize that he would be getting into a completely different kind of dog, he is going to be disappointed. There are things that a good working dachshund can do as well or better than a field bred beagle; he had better be interested in one of these or there is no real point in getting a dachshund.

Personally I think that the most important work in this country for the standard sized dachshund (about 20 pounds) is tracking wounded big game. They are easy to handle, they learn fast and most of them can come to understand that the only deer to be tracked is a wounded one. That same tracking dachshund can bring rabbits around to the gun, handle in close to flush pheasants. He can tree coons. But don’t expect he will compete with a breed specialist in all these specialties. The standard dachshund is for the hunter who puts a high priority on finding wounded big game and in addition needs a useful dog for the other tasks. And of course it must be added that a working dachshund has to have decent leg length and ground clearance if he is going to have the necessary agility and stamina. You are not always going to find this in dachshunds bred to please American show judges.

Our tracking dog Billy is a good example of the dachshund with good ground clearance and proper proportions.

If you want to add underground work to the job description of the versatile standard dachshund, then you have to think in terms of a smaller dog. How small depends on the underground work that you have in mind. The standard dachshund of 20 pounds can be a useful dog in Germany on fox because the foxes over there are heavier and cobbier in their bone structure. North American red foxes run a lot smaller and can get into much tighter spots than their European counterparts which are of the same species. As a rule our gray foxes live in rock dens that are ledgy and even tougher and tighter to work than those of the reds. Ground hogs, the housing contractors for so much other wildlife, make dens that are too small for the standard dachshund to work consistently.

Over the years I have taken foxes with small standard dachshunds. I had a small standard dachshund bitch which bayed two foxes from a den and found a wounded deer, all in four hours. But this is the exception that proves the rule. Don’t count on it happening for you. Gerte, the 18 pound German bitch shown in the picture was lucky. She was really too big to get up to most foxes in Northeastern dens.

Gerte with two foxes and a deer - all taken in one day.

If you are a falconer, or if you want to get rabbits out of their dens in order to give your bigger hounds a run, then you should consider the really small miniature dachshunds which the Germans call Kaninchenteckels. These run from eight pounds down to six and a half. They would not be your first choice for heavy-duty blood tracking, but they can certainly do it in a pinch.
I hope that nothing I have said here will be taken as anti-beagle. I own a good gun dog beagle and I have been active in beagle clubs for many years. Beagles are great hound breed; and there is certainly some overlap in dachshund and beagle work. For example I know of several beagles with established reputations for tracking wounded deer. The individual characteristics of the dog are usually more important than its breed. This is certainly the case when it comes to dachshunds and beagles. Select the breed and the individual most likely to fit your personal needs.