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

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!

Hercules' training is on a right track

We got a nice e-mail from Johnny Walker, who found John's book useful:
John: After reading you book several times and about four different tracks using bottled blood and liver and a green hide over the past three weeks I finally got a chance to track a buck on the farm tonight. The buck ran about a hundred yards in real thick stuff( heath) with a very faint blood trail. I am not sure that it could have been followed by eye. I gave it about one and half hours to settle down and not sure about how hard the buck was hit. A light ran came as we waited. I went back to the barn and got the hound and loaded him in the ATV. I stopped about a tenth of a mile short of the spot where a saw a drop of blood near the location where the buck was shot. I lead the dog with the rope and collar we had been working with as described in your text. He picked up the trail at the point of impact and we took off into heavy cover. I could see no blood and slowed him down and got on my hands and knees as we went and I cannot express the joy when I saw a tiny droplet of blood on a leaf, with a boost of confidence we continued for a distance of about a hundred yards in thick tall grass and brushy trees to find the six pointer laying dead. At first the hound (Hercules) acted surprised to see an animal at the end of the track but in short order was licked the wound and worrying the carcass a little. I made over him as never before and fed him a tiny piece of liver. He was as proud as it he had found a bull elephant and I must confess so was I. Thanks for putting all the information in your book that I was able to work with Hercules on to achieve this goal.

Thank you Johnny and congratulations!

Mike and Cash are getting ready to serve hunters in Michigan

We got a nice e-mail from Chuck Collier from Michigan, who wrote:

I just wanted to let you know about my first UBT test in Michigan that I judged on my own outside of trackfest.  Mike Riepen of Waterford, Michigan, brought his two-year-old  Bloodhound "Cash" to my house. Cash was rescued from a shelter when he was one year old. Mike has worked hard with Cash. They did an exceptional job as a team. Cash nailed the checks and indicated the wound bed holding close to the line. He took a drink from a flooding as it was hot.  Mike allowed this, then immediately got him back to work.  Mike plans on submitting for Michigan certification. I predict they will be very successful.

Mike Riepen with Cash, and Chuck Collier, UBT judge

Congratulations to Mike and Cash!