They Call It Blood Tracking

by John Jeanneney for Full Cry

They call it “blood tracking”, but the name is certainly misleading. Hunters, especially men of my age, sometimes say “If there’s blood to track, what do we need a dog for? Dogs and deer hunting don’t mix. EVER”. 

For many years I’ve been tracking wounded deer after hunters gave up on them because there was no more blood. I even do my advanced training with tracking shoes, deer feet attached that lay a scent line produced by the interdigital glands between the cloves of the hoofs. This works, but my deer hunting experience this fall reinforced my faith in the capability of a dog to follow a designated deer, even an unwounded one, just as a police bloodhound can follow an individual “alleged perpetrator”.

I was hunting on a food plot in my own woods when a doe came in. Following her was a buck, a big six of the sort that never has a chance to get much better in my part of New York. I had caught him on my trail cameras and he was distinctive; there was nothing else around like him. I waited and finally I got the “perfect” shot down into the oat plot  50 yards below me. The cross hairs were just where I wanted them, and at the shot the buck took a big leap into the brush and disappeared.

I went down quickly to the hit site. No blood, no hair. I knew this does happen sometimes. I knew my gun and I was confident/super optimistic as even experienced hunters can be when it is their own deer and a good one. What I did not see, until several days later, was the top of the log behind which I had been sitting as I shot.

 My scope had shown a clear shot, but the rifled slug barrel, an inch and a half lower, had been in line with the top of the log as you can see. The shot had been deflected, and I had never hit the buck at all. All this I did not know until I went back to this stand several days later.

It was getting dark and I didn’t have much time to look for sign in the briars and logging slash. I had seen nothing, but I knew that my tracking dog would make short work of the problem after supper. And we would get there before the coyotes.

After supper I took Joeri down to the woods. My plan was to work the woods roads around the five acre block the deer should be in. I wanted to make sure that there wasn’t a blood trail leading out of it and down into the valley. Normally I begin at the hit site, but I had already checked this thoroughly, and I didn’t want to work through the thick stuff again if I didn’t have to.

On the circuit around the block Joeri indicated, at one point, that a deer had crossed  the woods road, but there was no visible blood; Joeri was willing to leave this line, so I just marked that point with tape and continued around to the hit site.

I put on the long, stiff tracking leash, said “Find him!”, and Joeri began to work down through the briars and logging slash. He had a definite scent line, but I never saw a trace of blood. Oh well! Once you get started, you don’t quit. If a hunter had called me from 30 miles away to say that he had shot at a nice buck, but had no evidence of a hit, I would have gently turned down the call. But with my own deer on my own land it was different. More about this later.

Joeri came out of the slash, crossed the wood road exactly where he had previously indicated  scent and I had marked the scent line. Still no blood, but the scent line was only two hours old and Joeri had no problems. He is a slow, careful worker, which is just what a 76-year-old guy needs.

We worked down into the valley and  on to property where I had permission to track. Now it was not so thick and with my coonhunter’s headlight I could see 50 yards ahead. We had gone about a half mile on the steep timbered hill and there he was! He got up and he flagged as he took off. I could distinctly see the high rack. I’m not too sure about why he was lying down and let me get so close, but there was no blood in the bed where he had been. And he had raised his white tail as he took off. Not good! But we continued for another 3/4 mile over hay fields and across a creek. Sometimes I could see his tracks in the frosty grass. I’m sure we crossed the scent lines of other deer, but it made no difference to Joeri. He was on his designated deer.

We crossed a state road, and I had no permission for the property on the other side. I marked the crossing and the next morning we were back with the necessary permission. We tracked another half mile, which was much more difficult. There was still no blood or bloody beds. When we came to another creek, wide and deep this time, I gave up. I still had my doubts, but Joeri and I had done all we could.

When I later returned to my stand and saw the log in the photo, I felt better. I knew that I had not killed that buck for the coyotes.

As I said earlier I would have turned down this call if someone else had called me from a distance with the information that I gathered at the start of my track. The problem is you can never know for sure as you screen calls. Earlier in the bow season a bowhunter called me on my cell while I was having lunch at Subway. All he had was a couple of drops of blood, and he had searched in vain all morning. Since he was very close by, I said, “All right, I’ll check it out for you.” It didn’t sound good.

Joeri took the line. No blood for 300 yards. I told the hunter and his buddy, “It doesn’t look like we’ve got anything here. Everyone agreed but Joeri. When he saw we were ready to turn around he yelped and pulled. “All right” I said, “I’ll give it another 100 yards.” Fifty yards farther on, there lay the deer.

In most European countries, where tracking dogs and handlers are much more numerous than here, it is the custom, and often the law, that all shots, which are not clearly a miss, have to be checked out with a tracking dog. These are called “control searches”. One study of control searches for roe deer shot in Denmark showed that 25% of the control searches there led to finding the deer.

We are a generation away from anything like this over here. Tracking dogs and handlers are still spread so thinly that we usually have to screen our deer calls and only take the ones most likely to produce a dead or mortally wounded animal. We like to learn that there is a good amount of blood at the start. But once we are at the hit site, a good dog knows that there is a lot more to blood tracking than blood.

Effective Handler

by John Jeanneney May 2011

The Handler and his Dog

“I was just a dope on a rope, There’s nothing to it.” I heard this from a new handler, who had just found his first deer. Fortunately that deer was easy to find. Most of the time the “rope” in a deer tracking adventure joins together two working partners, contributing to the task at hand.

On the handler’s end the most important factor is his human capability to “read” his dog’s body language. The tracking dog lets his handler know whether he has the right scent line or whether he is still searching for it. Has he been lured off the right scent line by the distraction of hot deer scent or a cloud of fresh turkey scent? Much of this is learned earlier through observing the dog’s reactions as he works marked training lines.

An experienced handler notices, without even thinking about it, whether the dog’s nose is high or working down low in the grass or leaves. Is the tail rhythm rapid or slow? Are the back muscles tense with concentration or relaxed? It’s not all that simple because every dog is different. You have to know the dog. Under the same conditions one dog will casually “drift” the line, mostly down wind. His head will be up and there will be little intensity in his body language. He almost looks like he was going for a stroll. Another dog will be neater, closer to the line, working with apparent focus and enthusiasm.

The handler has to know his dog, and this comes from living with him, training him and working with him under all kinds of conditions. Many would-be deer finders want to buy a “trained dog”, ready to go, just like a new ATV. The relationship of a tracking dog and his handler is different, very different from that of a man and his machine…or the relationship a man has with a dog that is supposed to work like a machine: “command and obey”. An experienced trainer who has prepared dogs for retriever trials often has real difficulty in adjusting to tracking situations where only the dog knows where to go.

The effective handler develops a relationship in which his dog trusts him and wishes to please him. In most cases this won’t happen simply by taking a dog out of his kennel for periodic training sessions. You and your dog learn to read and trust one another over long, relaxed time spent together. This is the occasion for the dog to learn when he must obey “Come!” and when he is free to investigate the world with his nose.

The need for trust works both ways… and this is the hardest part. Sometimes the handler has to trust his dog, even though he is pretty sure that the dog is wrong. The handler has to be flexible enough to realize that the dog’s nose and intelligence for interpreting scent is far better than his own. Willingness to trust your dog over your own judgment does not come easily. Every experienced tracker I know has had the experience of believing that he knew better than his dog. A young dog can be wrong, but the odds are strong that the mistake is on the handler’s side.

Young dogs, carried away by enthusiasm, do make mistakes. A good tactic for the handler is to first ask, “Is that right?” The responsive dog will recognize the questioning tone of voice, stop, reflect and often correct himself. The preparation for this responsiveness comes in training when you ask, “Is that right?” after the dog overshoots a turn on the training line and seems ready to keep on going. For this to work you have to sometimes ask the question even when the dog is right.

Often the handler is mislead by the hunter. The hunter saw his deer go one way. The tracking dog says “no”, but until he shows handler and hunter a drop of blood, it’s hard to say the dog was right and the human was wrong. It’s amazing how often it happens that the hunter saw another deer and drew all the wrong conclusions.

It seems that we have been carried away by all the TV talk about the dog owner asserting himself as the “alpha wolf” the leader of the pack. Wolf researchers have discovered that even in the natural pack the leadership and decision making is not inflexible and always made by the same wolf. Dogs have no difficulty understanding that their special expertise, in scenting matters, doesn’t qualify them to do what they please in other matters out in the woods. I find that my dogs recognize that I am much better than they are when it comes to determining the direction of an old, cold line. They don’t know how I interpret blood splatters and footprint direction, but they accept my judgment on this matter.

The effective handler has to be observant. The tracking dog shows the way of the wounded animal, but the handler must be able to recognize and interpret any evidence that is visible along the way. This begins at the hit site with a careful search for blood, hair, tissue and bone fragments. What do these clues tell us about the nature of the wound? Is this wound likely to be fatal? The placement of blood smears on the scent line and the color of blood tell the handler more about the prospects. Once into the track for a distance, dogs themselves show that they have their own ways of figuring out if a deer is gettable. The final decision of whether to quit the track is often a collective one.

A sudden change in the behavior of the dog is often the best indication that he is close to the game, dead or alive. If the deer has taken off a thorough search should be made for the woundbed or the place the animal was standing. The handler should be able to interpret the blood or other materials found at this spot.

The Handler and the Hunter

Finding wounded game is more than an adventure for you and your dog. Working with the hunter is an essential part of being a good handler. Usually your first contact is by phone, and you can be dealing with a very upset individual. You have to decide whether there is a decent chance that you can find or catch up with his animal.

The information he gives you first won’t necessarily be the most useful in making your decision to take the call. He’ll tell you the animal went down, but he won’t tell you whether it went down instantaneously (high back shot?) or went down after taking the first jump (broken leg). The handler has to ask the right questions, In the case of a deer, “Exactly what was the color of the hair? Light grey with a darker tip or pure white?” Lots of times you won’t get such vital information unless you ask for it.

Once in the woods give the hunter something to do so that he will be useful. If the situation permits him to carry a firearm, direct him to move so that he has good visibility ahead, and so that you, the handler, will not be in the line of fire. Judge whether he can be trusted to have a round in the chamber, just in the magazine, or whether he should carry the arm unloaded. If a firearm is not to be used, put him to work spotting and announcing blood to be marked with biodegradable tape when this is useful. Keep him off his cell phone! His full attention is important.

Give the hunter a job so that he will feel useful and part of the search. The hunter does not want to feel waited upon like an incompetent fool. Your best chance of educating him for the future is to help him understand what went wrong, and what the consequence were for the animal.

Clary von Moosbach teaching John Jeanneney how to be a handler (1976).

Dining Out in the Woods. Canine/Hunter Cooperation.

By John Jeanneney, Full Cry, February 2011

No, this article is not about what you think. The canines I’m writing about are coyotes, not dogs, and the humans are the unwilling cooperators. The coyotes have been the winners in this game because we humans haven’t been as quick as coyotes to learn that changing circumstances require changing tactics. As hunters we should be cooperating with our tracking dogs instead of cooperating with and feeding the coyotes.

 

Sixty-one years ago, when beginning to deer hunt, I learned from the old timers that the best way to deal with a deer that you had shot and couldn’t find was to wait until the next morning to track him down. This would give the deer time to “stiffen up” so he wouldn’t run away easily if he were still alive. Rigor mortis (stiffness after death) got confused in this theory with the very different physical condition of a live deer.

 

What amazes me is that many of today’s hunters are so loyal to tradition that they go on repeating that same old myth. They say, “I hit a big buck yesterday afternoon just before dark, so I left him till morning. Now I can’t find him. No blood after 100 yards. I need your dog.” A few hours later we’re standing midst a grey ring of pulled deer hair, gazing at what’s left of a deer carcass. “How could the coyotes eat so much in one night? Oh, well! At least I have the horns.”

 

When I started tracking wounded deer in New York State 35 years ago, coyotes were a rarity. They began to be a problem for hunters only in the late 80s. Wildlife biologists tell us that the coyote migration into my own New York State and New England came in over the Great Lakes from the upper Midwest. This trek probably took place over several generations, and DNA analysis shows that considerable cross breeding with Canadian grey wolves took place. The result was a strain of northeastern coyotes somewhat larger than their western ancestors, but highly adaptable to their new habitat. The newcomers relied less on rabbits and mice than their forbears while deer played a larger role in their diet; fawns were easy pickings in the spring, while young or weakened adult deer could be taken in deep snow time.

 

But from the coyote’s point of view, or nose, the real feast time comes during deer season. For the immigrant coyotes it has been wonderful to discover that hunters leave more than gut piles. The hunters kindly leave whole deer in the woods overnight, and don’t try to interfere with coyote festivities until the next day.

 

The new generations of “super coyotes” do more than stumble occasionally into a wounded or dead deer lying in the woods. Now, when they cross the scent line of a wounded deer they know how to follow it with all the skill of a good tracking dog. Today I find that more than half of the deer left over night are damaged or devoured by morning. This depends on the area, and the incidence of damage is highest in semi-suburban areas where there has been no trapping or predator hunting.

 

My tracking friends in the Midwest report that even their “pure blood” coyotes are doing more damage than usual. We need some serious statistical studies on the activities of coyotes during deer season to make more hunters, especially bowhunters, realize that we have to improve our tactics for finding wounded deer that need to be tracked.

 

When tracking at night we hear the coyotes singing close around us. Perhaps, as they see our lights and figure out what we are searching for. Frequently when we track in the morning we find tufts of deer hair that have been yanked out by harassing coyotes. They do not always succeed in pulling down their prey.

 

We have tracked up to a lost deer at night, just as coyotes were breaking in. They retreated, but they were not happy. As the deer was dragged out of the woods, they followed just out of sight yapping their discontent.

 

This season we had two experiences with daytime coyote competition. One buck, a ten pointer, had been bowshot at 8 AM. He had left a blood trail that the hunters were able to follow for about 200 yards. Then they area searched but could not find the deer. We were called in at about 2 PM and were able to find the deer in about 30 minutes from the hit site. The deer had gone only about 200 yards farther beyond the point of loss, but it had changed direction and gone down a steep drop off. Already the coyotes had been at work, starting on the rear end. Fortunately 95% of the deer was still intact. The arrow had passed through a lobe of the liver and the stomach.

 

The daytime doe was found lying in a brook, and the coyotes had started on a front shoulder rather than the loins and hind quarters. I’m sure that they will be smarter next time.

 

Daytime venison damage from coyotes is still unusual, and in daylight the time-honored tactic of waiting through the morning and afternoon on shots behind the diaphragm is still valid. Deer can usually be tracked in late afternoon and into the night even if coyotes are numerous. A good eye-tracker can accomplish amazing things, and he does not have to rely solely upon blood traces. The big problem is that blood tracking takes time, and the coyotes do not wait, especially after dark. No longer can we rely on the old tradition of “tracking him up tomorrow morning.” It is even very risky to track slowly by flashlight for “as long as it takes”, which may mean until 2 AM. If a deer can’t be found during daylight or very early in the evening, the hunter may find that he has cooperated with the coyotes despite his best intentions.

 

Fortunately the use of tracking dogs is the new development in much of the country that may save us from an unwilling role in coyote-human cooperation. Tracking wounded deer has always been legal in certain parts of the South and in most of Texas, but now the practice is expanding. In much of the North the use of leashed tracking dogs has already been legalized or is in process.

 

It is being recognized that the tracking dog’s nose, like that of the coyote, works incomparably faster than the human tracker’s eye. Guided by a good dog a hunter has a much better chance of getting to his game before the coyotes. Hunters are amazed to see my dog begin from the hit site and in ten minutes follow a trail for a distance that has taken them hours of eye-tracking. And the dog continues with equal ease beyond their point of loss.

 

In the bowhunting tradition up North, eye-tracking has been considered to be an essential part of hunting. Turning this task over to a specialist with a dog when the blood sign dwindles away has seemed for some to diminish the whole experience of hunting. But now our frequent experience of tracking up to a grey ring of deer hair and bones picked clean is leading quite a few deer hunting traditionalists to reconsider their old ideas. Sometimes to preserve the best of our heritage, we have to change with the times. 

In Ohio Dave Bell and Rex Marshall were called in too late to save the venison.



In New York  Pete Martin and Lisa found this buck after the coyotes had done their work.

 Related posts:

• Tommy's ten-pointer was already damaged by coyotes
• Coyotes, dogs, rabbit hunting and blood tracking
• Coyotes, dachshunds and deer

Why We Track

by John Jeanneney for Full Cry March 2010

At some point all of us dog folks have to step back and consider what we have done with our lives…and what we are going to do with the rest of life that lies ahead. This is not always easy. Whatever you have been doing, beyond earning a living, seems like an empty time-waster to someone else who doesn’t understand it. Well, you do what you have to do, and you don’t live just to please someone else. But sometimes it firms up your own determination and gives you some comfort if you can explain your passion to yourself and recognize it in others. I began stewing about all this at New Year’s Resolution Time, and now in March the stew is starting to thicken into something that tastes pretty good. As regular readers of this column know by now, my own strange passion is working with a good dog to track and find wounded deer and bear.

      One of the things that has helped me understand myself better comes from communicating with other trackers, The United Blood Trackers organization has on its website (http://www.unitedbloodtrackers.org/) a forum where member trackers swap stories, give advice and share their thoughts. Through this forum I learned that I was not alone in my extreme fascination with tracking. As a matter of fact I learned that some of my friends there were even more extreme! I would like to quote some of their confessions to being an addict, so passionate for tracking wounded whitetails that it becomes even more important than hunting them from a deer stand.
      The majority of serious tracking dog handlers were serious hunters to begin with. They were avid deer hunters; many of the best also had a strong background of coon hunting at night. It is difficult for a “normal” hunter to imagine that a tracker, who was once a dedicated deer hunter, could actually become so carried away that he prefers tracking to waiting in the woods on a deer stand.
     Money doesn’t seem to be a big motivator for most of the trackers I know. They may take gas money, but they don’t see tracking as an important way to increase family income.


A good example of this psychological transformation was expressed on the United Blood Trackers discussion forum. Greg Accardo, who lives in Louisiana, wrote:
      The other day I tracked a six pointer for a hunter who wanted to pay me for finding the deer. I told him "no need to" because what I do is a volunteer service, and I enjoy working with my dogs. Then he asked me something that was shocking, only because of my response, or, lack of response. He asked "do you hunt", meaning he wanted to invite me to come and hunt on his place with him for my service. And I had to think for a minute, Do I hunt? The question really put me on the spot because it forced me to think back to the last time I hunted.
     Four years ago I looked into buying a blood tracking dog for the same reasons most people do. I was tired of losing deer that were hard to track. Before that time nobody hunted more than I did. And when I wasn't hunting, I was preparing for hunting season. Then I bought a dog from Andy Bensing, trained it, and now I have a good and loyal tracking dog, But when someone asks me "Do you hunt", I have look at my self after four years and say "not much at all". This experience with blood tracking has changed me. I can honestly say, this dog thing has changed my life. Instead of sitting in a bow stand for hours, I sit at home waiting for the phone to ring. Instead of spending the off-season working with hunting gear, I work with my dog. Do I miss the hunting? I don't think so because my passion has shifted. Is that a good thing or bad thing? I guess it depends on the individual. This I do know, after all the deer I've killed in my life time, maybe close to 200, nothing tops the feeling of excitement I get working with my dog and finding that deer and watching her act like she's conquered the world. The final question is, Will I ever hunt again with as much drive and passion as before, I don't know. All I do know is I've found my new passion, and I'm not ready to trade it for something else.

Greg Accardo on right after a worthwhile day with his tracking dogs.

 Joe Walters in Indiana responded, I couldn't have said it any better. I agree totally. I gave up deer hunting to also sit by the phone after finding my hunt site was a dead zone for my cell phone. I track in seven different counties. All I ask for is gas money. Never over twenty dollars. I've also had many hunters ask why I don't charge for my services. I then ask them if they get paid to hunt. I get more enjoyment from a find by my dachshund Doc than any big or small game that I've ever shot. Sunday I refused gas money from a young lad that arrowed his first deer. You have the same feelings I have and I believe it extends through all the members of UBT. 

Dick Blythe and Joe Walters' Doc

Jeff Murphy of Michigan wrote, I thought that I was the only one that felt this way. I have only been tracking for a couple years but (I find) myself sitting in the woods hoping that someone else will get a shot at a deer and call me. It is addicting and amazing how much a dog bonds with you when you start tracking as a team.


What are the explanations for this shifting of priorities from hunting to tracking? First let’s recognize that tracking is psychologically, if not legally, hunting in another form. Our hardwired passion to hunt has not been lost; it has been transformed.
      We can speculate that part of this is the fascination of bonding with our tracking dog, another social species that extends our own capabilities and understandings as we track lost game. Dog and man search together and become more than the simple sum of two individuals. For me personally, this is a very big factor.
      Part of our new fascination may be in response to a declining interest in, killing game animals for ourselves. In the first decades of a hunting life we have something to prove. “The bigger the trophy buck, the better the man”. Later in life the killing and claiming part of hunting becomes less important to us. But in its new form, as a passion for tracking, the desire to hunt remains very much a part of us.
      We continue to seek the human camaraderie of the hunt, and we learn that there is no better way to make a new friend than to help him find his game and share his joy.
      Finally we know that tracking and finding wounded big game animals is the right thing to do. We know that we reduce animal suffering and prevent the waste of a valuable natural resource. This final, politically correct reason for tracking is probably the one that we mention first to outsiders. Fortunately this reason is reinforced in our own minds by the powerful and primitive motivations we have to go out on a cold, rainy night to find someone else’s deer.

Some misconceptions about blood tracking

John Jeanneney © January 2010 for Full Cry

We are stuck with the term “blood tracking.” It has been used for a long time, but these words do create a lot of confusion. More than one hunter has asked, “What good is a blood tracking dog? If there’s blood to track, I can track my own deer. You’re a lazy hunter for sure, if you need a dog to do the work for you!” Well, these guys do have a point. And up North it’s a point of pride to find your own deer all by yourself.

Of course the real value of the experienced “blood tracking dog” is that he can go on tracking when the visible blood on the ground runs out. The dog actually works on a lot of things in addition to the blood that the hunter can see. In some situations the dog detects the faint scent of ground disturbance. More important are the microscopic scent particles that come down from the wound and the dead skin particles that drift down from animals and humans, whether they are wounded or not. Then there is the scent given off by the various glands of the deer.

To our feeble human noses the strongest scent glands of a deer are the tarsal glands located inside the rear hocks. During the rut bucks deliberately urinate on their own tarsal glands, and the combination of gland secretion and urine is so strong that even a human can follow it in the air if it is fresh and the scenting conditions are good.

I suspect my dogs pity me for my own weak nose, but over the years and 930 calls they have patiently taught me a little bit about how deer scent works for tracking purposes. Sabina taught me that tarsal gland scent, strong as it is, can be a confusing factor. Yes, it tells you where a buck went, but it might be any buck. Tarsal gland scent is so overwhelmingly strong, that sometimes it blocks out some of the more useful, more individual scents like the scent from the interdigital glands at the top of the foot between the cloves of the hoof.

A few times I saw old Sabina correct herself and go back after tracking over a hundred yards on the wrong line. This would always happen when we had a buck moving right out ahead of us at the peak of the rut.

The interdigital glands seem to be really important. When I’m training dogs on lines made with tracking shoes with deer hoofs attached, they can distinguish one set of hoofs from another. I have made a scent line with one set of hoofs, and then changed the hoofs and laid cross tracks. When we tracked to the junction of the two scent lines, the dog would hesitate a moment, but then continue on the original line.

Sometimes a hunter will say, “I didn’t call you because it rained and the blood was all washed out.” Well, a blood tracking dog isn’t tracking by eye. As any coon hunter knows, a gentle rain on a scent line actually improves it. When it rains hard for a long time, things get tougher, but for a good, experienced dog, following the line can still be possible.

I can remember when Max, who was an experienced, but not an exceptional dog, took a line over a cedar knob in a driving rain with the water running in sheets through the poverty grass. There was water almost everywhere, but he could pick up enough scent to follow down a long hill, across a road to where the buck was lying, still alive, on the edge of swamp. The line was only four hours old.

And then there was Clary, who was both experienced and exceptional. With two inches of water in the rain gauge we went out to track a deer that had been gut-shot the day before. The hunters had tracked the deer about three hundred yards before running out of blood sign. They marked the point of loss, went home and then it began to rain. Clary began at the hit site the next morning, tracked to the point of loss although no blood was to be seen anymore and continued on without any problem. Two hundred yards more and there was the deer, still alive.

It’s pleasant to reminisce about old experiences of tracking without blood, but to be honest I have to dredge up an experience in which a very good dog, the same Clary, couldn’t track with visible blood. It was a sultry, grey day, and a storm was brewing. We were tracking a big doe that had been gut shot. There wasn’t a lot of blood, but just enough so that I could follow the big, brown drops by eye. Clary couldn’t smell a thing; she was useless, and we didn’t find the deer. I’ve had the experience a number of times since. With a storm front coming in and the barometer falling, the dog’s sense of smell was powerless.

I wish I could be a dog for a week and learn more about these things. I’d be glad to eat dry kibble and sleep in a crate. I’m tired of being an idiot in these matters that my dogs know so well. They have taught me quite a bit, but not nearly enough.

Sally Marchmont (left) of Vermont writes of “a beautiful, 200-pound, 8-pointer we found for a lady who had shot him in the pouring rain. The rain had washed all the blood away so I had no choice but to trust Petey completely. He made short work of it, so it was a lesson well learned for me.”

Scott Semrau with a buck his “Buddy” found after a hard rain in Ohio.

Big Game Hunting with Dogs in Frontier Maryland and Pennsylvania

John Jeanneney © 1997, Full Cry

Speculation and debate about cur dogs and hounds of the American frontier has been going on for a long time. Sometimes new pieces of the complicated puzzle show up and add to our understanding of the big picture. Two autobiographies by hunters of the early 1800s describe dogs and how they were used on deer, elk and bear in the frontiers of western Maryland and north-central Pennsylvania. This style of hunting had little in common with modern bear hunting with hounds or with the hunting of deer with hounds as it continues in the south.

The man who tells us most is Meshach Browning (1781-1859) who was born on a small, poor farm in Frederick County, Maryland in the year that the American Revolution ended. Browning's father died shortly after his son's birth and by the time he was ten Meshach's mother took the boy over the mountains to western Maryland. Meshach stayed and hunted in this area for the rest of his life. Deer and bear were plentiful and mountain lions were still present.

Young Meshach spent several years on pioneer farms belonging to his uncle. Here he "hunted coons and wildcats and sold the fur which was in brisk demand." For this he used his dog Gunner, a jack of all trades dog who also hunted rabbits. Before he was 16 (B.25) he was on his own. By this time he also began to hunt deer accompanied by Gunner.

Browning hunted deer and bear with the dog in close, not ranging out. The dog was kept at a loose "heel", or if not so well-trained, was restrained by some sort of a cord. The hunter "still hunted" moving slowly through the timber looking for deer and watching his dog who would wind scent the deer and indicate its presence through body language but without barking. The dog acted as nose and ears for the hunter and could also follow the game after the shot. This hunting method is still used today in Scandinavia by moose hunters who use Norwegian Elkhounds and related breeds.

In reading Browning's narrative it is obvious that these needs to follow wounded deer were frequent. The flintlock rifles that were generally used on big game threw a .45 caliber ball. The quality of the powder available was also not the best. By modern standards the energy delivered would be considered marginal, and these flintlock hunters had difficulties if placement of the ball was not ideal. Under the circumstances putting a dog on the hot line of the wounded deer was a time-saver and often a game saver as well.

Meshach became best known as a bear hunter and at the end of his hunting career he estimated that he had killed 300 to 400 bears. It was an old bear hunter, Mr. John Caldwell of Wheeling, who introduced him to the use of dogs in bear hunting. Meshach obtained his first great bear dog, Watch, out of John Caldwell's stock. Watch was what Meshach wanted, a large, powerful dog up to the task of pulling down wounded deer and baying bears that would not tree.

Bears were more numerous and much less wary in those days than they are today. Sometimes Meshach hunted bears with his dog on their feeding grounds as he did deer. He would use a dog to locate denned bears, to roust them out, bay them and follow after the shot. He would also cold track bears on snow by sight, and after jumping them turn his dogs loose on the hot line.

Browning described his preferences for deer and bear dogs in some detail. From the start he wanted big dogs that were strong and fast like Watch. At the end of his career Meshach seemed to have a pretty clear idea of how to breed what would be useful to him. He worked with variations of the bulldog/greyhound cross. "Take a half-blooded pup," he advised, "a cross between the bulldog and the greyhound...." He did not stick to a rigid formula and "bulldog" and greyhound were generic terms for kinds of dogs less extreme in type than the breeds of today.

Clearly Meshach liked jaw power in his bloodlines. "I had lost my old hunting dog and had with me the slut from which I raised my good dogs...."When (the buck) found her so close, he turned to fight her off. Being partly of the bulldog breed, she seized him by the nose, and held on until she mashed his nose up to his eyes, and crushed both eyes entirely shut." Browning liked to work with variations of the bulldog greyhound cross, but he did not stick to a strict formula. "I have had some very fine dogs which were a cross between the bulldog, the greyhound, and the fox hound; but the only objection to them is that they are so noisy that you can never steal on the game, but keep it always on the look-out."

Meshach's preferred dog was fairly tight-mouthed and apparently more a windscenter than a specialist for old, cold ground scent.

"The extraordinary success which I had in bear-hunting requires some explanation which I will endeavor to give. I always kept two good dogs; one of which walked before me and the other behind. The one in front would wind the bear, and lead me up to him on that side on which he could not smell me, and I would come on him unexpectedly. If, by chance, he found us coming on him and ran, the dogs would overtake him before he would be out of sight. The moment I would see one run, I would send the dogs after him; and as I could run almost as fast as any bear could, when the fight began I was close up and a shot was certain death."

Sometimes we have to take a small grain of salt with Meshach's statements and realize that he was describing his ideal of dog work rather than what took place most of the time.

None of the adventures which he recounts in his book required much cold nose work by modern big game hound standards. Cold trailing ability would not have been very important in this style of hunting.

There is no basis for assuming that Meshach's dogs were ancestors of any modern cur breed although clearly they resembled curs much more than hounds. We have no sure way of knowing what they looked like. Engravings and etchings provided by Browning's editor Edward Stabler show dogs which have the outline of a rather rangy southern black mouth cur of the Ladner or Nolan strains. The plates from Meshach Browning's book do not prove how the dogs actually looked. Edward Stabler, the artist/editor who produced them, knew Meshach personally after his hunting days were over, but we can't be sure whether his illustrations in the book depict specific dogs or just showed generic big game dogs of the 1850's. An engraving identified as a "bear dog" looks like a modern pitbull.

What we do know is that Meshach's dogs acted like curs and were useful in the ways that a cur-dog is useful. They were used by Browning to wind game. They worked very close to him until a deer was encountered. There are hounds that will do this, but it is more typical of cur work. Browning's dogs also formed close associations with individuals and were more protective than is characteristic of hounds."I asked Mary if she would stay in the house by herself while I went out to shoot a deer for she had been a long time wishing for some fresh venison; and I told her that her brother wanted to go with me. She said yes, if I would leave Watch (her favorite dog), which would not suffer man or beast to touch her in a rough way; for, if I was playing with her, and she called Watch, he would jump at me, and would bite too, if I persisted."

We will never know if these dogs ever became part of the great gene pool from which modern curs derive. Meshach does describe what canine traits he found useful for his frontier hunting. These traits could be bred for when needed by combining certain types of dogs, as has been done with the deliberate greyhound collie crosses that produce "lurchers" for taking hares and rabbits in England.

Browning also took great pains to train his dogs to handle well:

"Take a half-blooded pup, a cross between the bull dog and the grey hound, FEED HIM WELL - FOR A STARVED PUPS WILL SURELY BE A THIEF, - and when he is able to follow you to the field, make him lie down at your feet and do not allow him to rise until he is told. When he gets a rod or two from you, either make him return, or wait till you come up with him, and then make him lie down again. In all cases where he does his duty caress him and he will soon learn to love his master; after which he will not be afraid and run away to avoid correction. Whip but lightly, until you have so trained the dog that you can depend on his obedience to your command to stop, or to return at your order. When you have taught him this, you may venture a little more severity, according to the offense; and when he is taken into the woods he must be first taught to trail his game; for if a deer is wounded he should trail it carefully, going but a step or two before his master, until the game is killed. When the master can see the deer which he has killed, he should let the pup go toward the carcass, and then call him back; then, advancing a little nearer, he should let him go to the deer a second time, and call him back again; then let the master accompany him to the deer and flatter him as much as possible. By this means, when he is sufficiently instructed, and is sent to catch a wounded deer, he will kill it, return to his master and guide him to the spot where it is lying. And he must never leave his master more than two or three steps, lest a deer bound off, and he run after it and be spoiled.

When in the woods, and your dog seems to desire to run after deer, pretend you see some, and take the gun in your hand as you would if you were creeping toward a deer; when if the dog misbehaves, you can chastise him. By treating a dog this way every time he becomes unruly, he may be entirely cured of his faults."

While Meshach Browning was thinning the deer and bear population in western Maryland another hunter Philip Tome (1782-1855) was hunting with his dogs along the same Appalachian ridges some 250 miles to the Northeast along the Pennsylvania-New York Boundary. By his own account, Tome's parents were of "German extraction." He was born a year after Meshach Browning near what is today Harrisburg and his family later migrated north up the west branch of the Susquehannah. Tome's methods of hunting big game with dogs were a little different from Browning's, but the techniques overlapped in some respects. In northern Pennsylvania Tome hunted deer and bear, but his specialty was elk which very uncommon down in Browning's country.

Tome credits John Mills, an old hunter who lived near his father for giving him his best instruction, although later Tome certainly expanded upon the art of his master. Before moving to Canada Mills sold his farm to Tome's father and then made another deal with the son. Meshach reported that he offered "to sell me his dog, and to teach me all he knew about hunting for fifteen dollars which I accepted. I had already hunted for several years, but his instructions were of greater value than all my previous experience."

Tome seemed to want a "houndier" dog than Browning:

"The best kind of dog for hunting deer is a large variety, half bloodhound, a quarter cur and the other quarter greyhound. I have had two dogs of this kind, for one of which I paid ten dollars and the other six. They were of more practical value than four small dogs would have been. When they were one in a chase on a deer they would not lose one in ten. So famous did they become for their prowess, that if any of the neighbors saw them running, they would exclaim, "there are Tome's dogs; the deer cannot be far off." The deer could never baffle them by any of their usual stratagems, and they often ran them down before they reached the water. Those wishing to hunt successfully should always procure at any cost, the largest and best dogs to be found."

The bloodhound genes in these cross-bred dogs should have produced strong aptitudes for working ground scent. When we compare Tome's hunting stories to those of Browning, we see that Tome places much less emphasis on wind scenting, and his runs on deer tend to be longer. Tome did not work his dogs in close as much as Meshach, but he definitely expected them to be obedient and handle well. "We owned three well-trained dogs. If we put them on a track they would not leave it for any other; they would come when called, and never go until we gave the word." They were hounds but they were very well-trained.

A posed, not very clear photograph of Tome which is in the collection of the Warren County Historical Society shows him with a rifle and dog. This dog seems to have more the features of a cur than a hound, but he may not have been typical of Tome's elk and deer dogs.

According to Tome:

"The most favorable time for hunting elk is in the month of August, when they herd together and the bucks are very fat. I have sometimes seen as many as sixty in one herd. At this season they utter a peculiar hollow roar, which can be heard at a great distance, and are constantly fighting with each other. The hunter approached them cautiously with dogs, and when near enough he let the dogs loose, and the elk, instead of running, would face the dogs. The hunter now crept nearer, and shot them, keeping himself concealed. They would gather around their fallen companions, making a great noise."

In the winter, snow cover made it practical to scout for elk tracks. He would follow these tracks for many miles before jumping the elk and releasing the dogs. In heavy snow the dogs had a good chance of running down and baying the elk.

It was Philip's father, Jacob Tome, who had created a sensation in January of 1800 by using dogs and ropes to capture a large bull elk and bring it out of the woods alive. In his own career Philip repeated the feat a number of times.

Tome hunted deer with dogs in a number of different ways. Especially in the fall when the deer were fat he cast his dogs like hounds; hunters were posted along the steams to ambush the deer as they picked their way along through the water and rocks in an effort to lose the dogs.

Tome also jacked deer at night from a canoe or at natural or man-made salt licks. Close to salt licks he would build a "scaffold" (this sounds like the German Hochsitz); when the deer came he would lower a burning torch to give himself shooting light. "I generally had a companion and a dog, and one of us remained at a distance with the dog, while the other watched from the scaffold. In the morning, if any were wounded, we set the dog on the track, if we could not track it by blood without difficulty."

Both Meshach Browning and Philip Tome hunted primarily for the market. Meshach estimated that he killed, in total, 1800 to 2000 deer. Philip Tome, as well as his brother, about whom we get little detail, took a lot of game. "My brother killed from twenty-five to thirty-five elk and twenty to twenty-five bears each year. I did not kill as many.... During one season, my brother killed of bears, elk and deer nearly two hundred.. The greatest number that I killed, in any one season, of the same kind of animals was about one hundred and thirty." Bear meat was the most valuable of all. "If we saw a bear track when we were in pursuit of elk, we would always leave the elk and follow the bear."

The methods of Browning and Tome would be illegal today in most of the country; there is also a real question of whether their methods would be as effective. Black bears were certainly much less wary in the early 1800's. Elk, in the habit of standing up to wolves, did not fare well when responding in the same way to dogs and hunters with rifles. There may well be some over-simplification or exaggeration in some of the accounts, but we do know that wild animals responded very differently before they came to know of humans with firearms.

Black bears then also tended to be more aggressive than the ones which survive in the East today; they were a real threat to livestock, especially free-ranging hogs. Browning saw the bear as a respected adversary, but he fought them no holds barred. Describing a rough bear fight, he wrote:

"When I saw him laid out at my feet, and thought how manfully he had fought in his own defence, and also how unfairly he had been taken, without the least notice at the onset, it destroyed all pleasure of the fight. But then it occurred to me that, if he had escaped at this time, he would perhaps have killed a dozen hogs for some of my friends; and that if he had received the least notice of the attack, he could not have been taken by all the dogs in the neighborhood."

Both Browning and Tome hunted deer as if they were harvesting apples for the market. They picked everything in sight, always confident that there would be more for the following year. They were hard men living in hard times, but they did not hunt for the love of killing. Tome wrote:

"I never want only killed an animal, when I could gain nothing by its destruction. From October to May their skins are good, and at this season I always killed all I could. With a true hunter it is not the destruction of life which affords the pleasures of the chase; it is the excitement attendant upon the very uncertainty of it which induces men even to leave luxurious homes and expose themselves to the hardships and perils of the wilderness."

For these two frontier hunters dogs were as much a part of big game hunting as their flintlock rifles. Dogs and men had much in common. They were equally driven and equally tough. They lived up to one another.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Browning, Meshach, Forty-Four Years of the Life of a Hunter Being Reminiscences of Meshach Browning, a Maryland Hunter, Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1859. Reprint. Oakland, MD: Appalachian Background Inc., 1982.

Tome, Philip, Pioneer Life or, Thirty Years a Hunter, Harrisburg, PA: Aurand Press, 1854. Reprint. Salem, NH: Ayer Company Publishers, 1989.

Command and Obey?

by John Jeanneney, Full Cry June 2009

It’s still a mystery to me that hunters are so often mistaken about where their deer went after the shot. They can show you only a little hair and blood, but they know that their deer went “right out along the ridge to the left.” All too often they actually saw another deer and were confused. I talk with many other trackers, and they all report that this happens often.

So what do you do when you and your dog go in to the hit site and begin tracking? You don’t want to insult your hunter, so you start the dog on the line supposedly taken by the deer. Then with his body language your dog says “No!” Your dog wants to go the other way and he knows his business much better than any of the humans present His nose knows. Your relationship with him is such that he will take the initiative and override your commands in such a case. This is what you want in a tracking dog.

Of course this sort of independent initiative is not the relationship that you would want with a Lab trained for retriever trials. In field trial world it’s “command” and “obey”. Follow the handler’s signals exactly. Take a straight line to the bird. If the retriever deviates from the straight course given by arm signals and whistle, a nick on the e-collar will straighten things out. Command and obey. Well, this is far, far away from the psychology of tracking dog work.

Even in early training the puppy should be encouraged to solve his own problems. If he wanders off the blood line or overshoots a right angle turn, don’t correct him right away. Wait and see if he will correct himself. If he doesn’t, twitch the plastic clothes line of the puppy leash and ask him, “Is that right?” The words themselves don’t matter. It’s the questioning tone of your voice which will encourage him to pay attention. Dogs are very sensitive to tone of voice. Only as a last resort, pick him up or lead him back to the line.

Of course a dog must learn basic obedience, to come when called for example. But at the same time he learns that in his own specialty, scent work, he knows best. Here his role is to lead, like a guide dog for the blind. We humans are very nearly “blind” when it comes to scent. Some handlers, themselves, can have difficulty realizing that the dog is the one most likely to be right. They unconsciously pull the dog off the correct line, and after a few of these blunders some dogs will get disgusted and quit.

Now, even in the blood tracking world there are authorities who would strongly disagree with what I am writing. They are comfortable in the command and obey school. They evaluate a dog by tracking tests. To train for one of these tests, where there is always a drop of blood at each stride, it may be effective to work the dog under tight discipline. Here the task for the dog is to find the next drop of blood, and then go one meter to the next. But real trails of wounded game are not like that, there are gaps with no scent, dead spots, back tracks. This is another world, and those who are concerned first with test scores don’t worry much about the natural stuff.

Some blood tracking tests are better than others. In Swedish blood tracking tests, gaps are intentionally placed in the blood line to evaluate the dog’s ability to take the initiative and reach ahead. There are also natural tests, run on game wounded in the course of actual hunting. Tests can be very useful, but it’s too bad when they encourage dogs to be trained as command/obey automatons.

A few years back in this column I wrote a story about “Max, the Dog Who Learned to be Brave.” Early on, Max had difficulty taking the initiative. When he arrived from France as a very young puppy, he was allowed to get lost in the woods almost immediately. I searched all night, but it was 24 hours before he showed up on our doorstep as we ate a sad breakfast. I heard a whimper, opened the back door and in tottered little Max. Immediately he rolled over on his back and peed high in the air. As a result of the whole nightmare of being alone under a farm dump, he lost all confidence in himself. Growing up he wouldn’t stray from my side. When stumped by a problem on a blood line, he would come back to me, put his paws on my knee and ask with his eyes, “Now what should I do?” He wasn’t much of a tracking dog, but he was the best I had at the time.

I remember the night that Max made his breakthrough and began to gain his self-confidence. That night he solved some tough checks by reaching out to regain the line. He found his deer in a vast overgrown field, and he was immensely proud of himself. He became a focused, persistent dog who would work a check for half an hour if necessary, ranging out carefully and then returning to his point of loss until he finally reestablished the line. He was always a “soft” dog, not what I prefer, but he learned to take the initiative, which is so important in natural tracking.

When the handler has no clue where the deer went, he has to trust his dog. I did learn to count on Max when the going was tough. Trust your dog! And work to develop his initiative that’s the basis for this trust.

Of course you can’t blindly trust every young dog at the beginning, but if you learn to read him, you will know when to believe him. With experience he will become more and more reliable, and you will grow together into a special pack of two, each with his own talents. The dog and handler, working together, will begin to accomplish things that neither partner would ever accomplish on his own.

Max' last deer

Dogs and their Memory for Location

by John Jeanneney
from Full Cry 2003

A dog’s brain is different than ours, and in some ways the dog’s brain is a good deal better. Of course, it effectively processes the complexities oft the world of scent on a level that we cannot comprehend. Less frequently recognized by humans is the dog’s ability to remember where things are located. I’m not writing about “incredible journeys” across a continent and other Disney-type fiction. I’m thinking rather about how dogs, especially dachshunds keep track of things in their everyday world.

When you are tracking a wounded deer in a big thicket, you gain a lot of respect for what a good dachshund can do. The dog is on a long tracking leash so the handler is aware of exactly what the dog is doing. When a dog is having trouble in a big thicket or cutover, he seems to know exactly where he is at all times. He can get out a hundred yards from the last scent found, and then return unerringly to this point of loss by a different route. Everything looks pretty much the same to the handler, but the dog knows. Here is an example.

I had a call from a bowhunter in a nearby township, who needed help in finding his deer. It was hit right down through the chest, he said, and he had the complete arrow. I did not know that the arrow had actually entered about six inches behind the head, had passed over the spinal column in the neck to come out along the deer’s jaw on the other side.

Shortly after being hit, the eight pointer had gone into a 10 acre dry swamp with lots of high hummocks of swamp grass hanging out and over to conceal a dead deer. There was plenty of blood, and Sabina, my tracking dachshund, went round and round through the swamp, following the scent line where it had looped back and forth. Apparently, the deer had been moving around as the hunters pushed back and forth through the grass looking for it. Tracking this maze of blood trails had us all confused. The only creature there who had any idea of what was going on was Sabina. Finally, she tracked out on the same trail that the buck had originally taken into the swamp. The hunter pointed this out to me. Then Sabina veered off in another direction and tracked about 200 yards up into the open hardwoods. There lay the dead deer.

The hunter and his friends had all been sure that the buck was still in the swamp, but Sabina said “no”. She had plenty of blood scent to work with but she sensed that it just led her around in circles. After she had checked everything in the swamp, she followed the only blood scent trail out of the swamp onto higher ground where the deer lay. Sabina knew what was going on and where things were. It was Sabina’s brain, more than her nose, which found the dead deer.

Dogs and other canines have a remarkable sense of spatial relationships. They can keep track of where things are, return hundred of yards at night to a point of loss, or sort out a confusing maze of tracks. In this particular respect, I think the dog’s ability to grasp the situation is better than our own.

The deer in the swamp story could be luck or “anecdotal evidence” as the scientists call it. Scientists are not too impressed by isolated stories of this kind. But something happened before I retired that I never forgot; even a tough-minded animal psychologist would have taken notes.

Where I used to work we had a big suite of offices and a pretty laid back atmosphere. I was allowed to bring a dachshund to work if she behaved herself and stayed in my personal office. This was convenient because after work I could take her out to undeveloped land on Long Island and run rabbits. In this way I kept my dogs in shape for the tracking season, and also prepared them to do well in field trials.

One year I frequently took Eda to the office. She was a wirehaired dachshund who belonged to my young son. She was a smart girl, often times too smart, but that’s another story.

When Eda came through the main door of the office suite she always trotted down the corridor and into my private office. There is nothing surprising about all this. Later, after I stopped taking Eda to the office she suddenly went blind. The vets could never figure out what the trouble was, but Eda got around amazingly well. We figured that her nose led her where she wanted to go.

Several years after her last visit to the office, I took Eda down there again. She had now been blind for several years. Eda came in through the main door of the office suite, and I unhooked her leash to see what she would do. With no hesitation she rounded the corner and trotted down the corridor to my old office. She did not go to my new office, which opened off another corridor.

What amazed me was that I had moved out of that old office two years before. There couldn’t have been any of my scent left in my former office, which was now occupied by a woman. Eda just knew, out of a sense of distance and space, where she had been going to my private office room long before. Scent had nothing to do with it. It was pure spatial memory.

There has been research done on how various mammals can learn to run a maze, but this experience is a little different. I think Eda’s memory operated on a higher level in this kind of a situation. I doubt that a blindfolded human being could have done as well after several years.
If a tracking dachshund has to pick a tough line from point to point, the value of this ability is pretty clear. When hunters track a wounded deer they use toilet paper or surveyors’ tape to keep track of where they have been and where they are going. A good dog doesn’t need toilet paper to find his way back to the last trace of scent.

I came across a book that tested this kind of ability in red foxes in England. David Macdonald is a wildlife biologist at Oxford University who studied how foxes live and hunt in Oxfordshire. The title of his book is Running with the Fox. He found in foxes the same uncanny sense of location that we find in dogs. Macdonald conducted some experiments, which involved working semi-tame foxes, which he had raised from before their eyes were open. He worked them in the fields on a long, light check cord, and because they were completely familiar with him they hunted mice pretty much as if they were off lead. When their bellies were full of the mice that they had caught, they would keep right on hunting. Then they would dig individual little holes, hide the extra mice in them and scratch the ground cover back into place.

Then what happened was almost as amazing as Eda’s tricks and Macdonald documented them better. Even in a 35-acre stubble field the vixen Niff would go back almost every time to where she had cached the mouse up to two weeks earlier. Again, as in Eda’s case, nose had little to do with her sense of where things were. She could not do much of a job finding mice hidden by other foxes or mice hidden by Macdonald. This would have required her to use her nose. The vixen could find a few (every fox trapper knows that), but she clearly preferred to rely on her memory
This ability to memorize location, which we humans don’t have to the same degree, may be genetically programmed into the brains of all smart canines. Don’t underestimate your dog. In blood tracking, don’t think that you can train your dog by working him over the same blood line every week.


We don't have too many pictures of Eda, but this one shows her at a field trial being handled by Paul Jeanneney, John's son. The picture must have been taken around 30 years ago.

Big Dog, Little Dog

By John Jeanneney
Full Cry March 2005

Personal decisions about the best size for a tracking dog are in good part a matter of personal taste. Many of us grow up, I think, as either big dog or little dog folks. Much of this is a product of what we became accustomed to at an early, impressionable age. A handler, who grew up with 80 pound blueticks, would most likely feel ridiculous if he set out to find a wounded deer with a 20 pound dachshund at the end of his tracking leash. He would feel the same way, if he took a .410 duck hunting.

Your personal taste in hunting dogs will be subjective, but this doesn’t mean that you should try to shrug it off as unimportant. One of the fundamentals of tracking is that you must trust your dog and be in tune with him. For a new tracking dog handler this is easier said than done, but it really does help if the size of the dog fits in with your own unconscious feelings of what a serious dog should look like.

Charlette Curtis, a member of Deer Search, has recovered many deer with her mini longhaired dachshund.

Looking beyond these matters of personal taste, there is much that can be said about the concrete and practical advantages of different sized tracking dogs. Maybe you shared my good fortune of living a mixed-up childhood; I hunted woodchucks and squirrels with terriers or feists, and coons with Redbones and farm collie types. A background like this puts you in a position to make more objective decisions about the best-sized breed of tracking dog for you own needs.

The wounded game tracking regulations in your own state will be a major factor in the decisions that you make about appropriate size. In the “new” tracking states of the northeast and mid-west, the laws and regulations legalizing the use of dogs to find wounded big game specify that the dog must be kept on a tracking leash at all times. In the states with “older” tracking traditions, dogs are generally allowed to work off lead.

If you are required to keep your tracking dog on a leash at all times, there is no special advantage in having a big dog. You don’t need 80 pounds of muscle and bone helping you over barbed wires fences and through multiflora rose faster than you want to go. You can’t travel in the woods at more than a fast walk or a jog, and for this a 20 pound dachshund or Jagdterrier has all the strength, desire and stamina necessary to follow that wounded deer for four miles or more. A leg-hit deer, with the leg broken and swinging, will often go that far before you walk it down and bleed it out. (Better this than letting deep snow and the coyotes do the job later.)

In leashed tracking dog states, there is one situation that can tip the balance in favor or the larger, longer legged dog. In extensive swamps and freezing, or near freezing temperatures, a Lab-sized dog, with its greater body mass and longer legs, will hold up better. The little dog may be able to swim and take scent off the swamp vegetation as you wade behind, but it’s a tough proposition if you have to go more than a hundred yards or so. I spent thirty years in a nearby county that has lots of swamps and beaver ponds. In these situations I would wade the water and work the wind with my southern black mouth cur. Such conditions would have been very tough for my 20 pound wirehaired dachshunds.

When we get into the South and Texas, regulations usually permit use of a tracking dog off lead. (These state-by-state regulations are too complex and variable to summarize in this article.) In these states the vastly superior bay power and pull down power of a big, Lab-sized dog can really make a difference. Typically a buck with a smashed shoulder will be bayed by a big dog within 200 or 300 yards from where he is jumped. The northern tracker will have to follow a deer hit in the same way for a least a mile to catch up to the deer. And for the northerner this job of walking him down will be done more easily with a smaller dog.

There are many sides of the big dog, small dog discussion; snakes are a big factor too. For a southern hunter the word “snakes” refers to the poisonous ones, which are the only ones that he has to worry about. Such snakes are bad news for a little dog, which is likely to die if struck in the neck or shoulder. A bite on the leg is more likely for a big dog; this will put him out of commission for a while, but it won’t be life threatening unless a coral snake was involved. Down South snakes are not a big threat in the winter months, but bow seasons for deer usually start in warm weather when snakes are active.

We came across this rattler snake in the woods at the NATC blood tracking workshop in Reading, PA.

In the North we have very few poisonous snakes. For example in my state of New York, the timber rattler is officially considered an endangered species, and you will pay a big fine if you brag to the conservation officer about how you killed one. Up North little dogs are pretty safe from big, bad snakes.

Transportation considerations must also be considered when decisions are made about the appropriately sized dog for a given situation. If you can drive to your hunting area in your pick-up, then any size is good. However, if access to the hunting sites is restricted to ATVs, which can negotiate rough, narrow trails, then the smaller tracking dogs have their special merits.

Our wirehaired dachshund Billy loves ATVs. Here John and Billy are being transported to a hit site on one of the deer calls in 2006.

I have found that our wirehaired dachshunds love to travel for miles on the ATV gas tank in front of me. No matter how rough the ride they seem totally at ease and are ready to start tracking once at their destination. Most of the time I keep one hand on the dog’s collar, and it is a good idea to have a small, rough-textured mat beneath the dog to assure a good surface for his claws to hang on to.

There is a good chance that leashed tracking dogs are going to be legalized in some of the Rocky Mountain states where a lot a Federal Land is used by outfitters for elk hunting. Sometimes there is no access for motor vehicles into these areas. How could you get a tracking dog back into that big country if you needed one?

I’ve discovered that our laid-back wirehaired dachshunds are about as comfortable on a horse as on a four-wheeler. I did some experimenting with my son’s horses, and these self-assured German dachshunds were very much at ease in that new situation. It didn’t seem to matter to them whether they were riding a horse or a four wheeler. The next step will be to get a packsaddle, with panniers or a pack, to see if a harnessed dog will ride alone on top for a few miles. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work.

Getting a large dog to trot along with a pack train headed into elk country would require the right temperament and quite a bit of training. Probably a Lab would be better suited than a hound. Labs would better resist the temptation to take off after game on the ride into the hunting area than would the typical hound.

Among the tracking dogs being used in the United States, I would view the dachshunds, beagles and Jagdterriers as the most promising of the small dogs at the present time. All have their stronger and weaker points.

In the mid-range category I would place the Bavarian Mountain hounds, the Blue Lacy dogs and the smaller Labs.

In the heavy weight division I would include the large Labs, Catahoulas, black mouth curs and other cattle dogs, the German versatile pointing breeds like Drahthaars, and finally coonhound breeds of the “pleasure”, rather than the “competition” type. Good prospects are to be found in other breeds not named here.

Catahoula Indy belongs to John and Elly Hoinowski.

If you want to get into tracking dogs, you have plenty of choices. There is no “best” for everyone. Select what suits your needs and what you are comfortable with.

What is your success (recovery) rate?

by John Jeanneney

Full Cry, December 2008

What’s your success rate? This question is so simple… and so complicated. I hear it a lot, and I know that the people who ask expect to hear a high figure like 90%. Some tracking dog/handler teams, in some parts of the country, may get close to this figure, but usually the percentage will be far lower. Let me explain.

If I really wanted to impress the Guinness Record Book folks, I would move to a part of Texas west of the Piney Woods, to a county where it is legal to use up to two dogs, off lead, to track, locate and possibly bay up the wounded deer. I would want a big dog, like those used by Roy Hindes in South Texas, who can stop and bay a deer, even if it has a potential for many miles of travel. Some of these bayed, wounded deer might otherwise survive, but the management objective is to satisfy the hunter and keep alive only the healthiest deer.

By contrast in the North most state regulations require that the tracking dog be worked on a long leash at all times. The majority of northern deer hunters clearly want it this way. And because of small properties, numerous highways, and big, dog-hungry coyotes, I personally wouldn’t want to do it any other way.

Getting back to Texas, most of it is dry country with tough tracking conditions. To avoid messing up the dogs, and to avoid pushing the wounded deer too far, hunters are discouraged from trying to eye-track on their own. “Easy deer” that might be found by the hunter, according to the “do it yourself tradition” of the North, end up being found by the dog in the Texas. This makes for better success ratios. This difference is a factor in many of the Gulf states as well.

It’s pointless to argue that the Texas dogs, for example, are better than the northern dogs because the Texas numbers are better. Traditions and conditions are very different around our country. To each his own.

Both North and South, recovery percentages can be manipulated to improve recovery rates. Every handler has to turn down a few deer calls because it’s extremely unlikely that the deer is seriously injured. For example I had a hunter call me because “his” buck snorted after the shot. Another showed me the white tail that he had shot off.

The magic of the dog only goes so far! Personally, I turn down the high back hit cases in which the deer went down instantly, and then, while the hunter was congratulating himself, took off. “He couldn’t have gone far. I hit him hard!”

But in between the low percentage calls and the dead certain calls there’s a broad range of requests that you just can’t be sure about. The wind was blowing so hard that the hunter couldn’t find any hair, white or brown, at the hit site. It could be purely a muscle shot, non-fatal, or a stomach shot certain to kill the deer. The handler, himself, might be able to evaluate the hit in the first 200 yards, but he has to make his decision to take the call on what the hunter tells him over the phone.

If the tracker plays it safe and takes only the sure kill cases, he will have an impressive success ratio. But he will find fewer deer overall than the tracker who takes most calls that come in. Somehow, I think that this problem is easier to handle in states where the handler gets paid, no matter what the outcome. In New York State the bankers get paid pretty well, no matter what happens, but tracking dog handlers are forbidden by state regulations from charging a fee. In New York we track for love… and don’t misinterpret me. In a good season we find a third of the deer we track. But we are proud of this because we are also accomplishing other things.

We did not recover a deer on this call, but we were quite certain at the end of the call that it was not mortally wounded.

Another Way of Evaluating a Tracking Sortie

If an experienced handler tracks a deer a half mile, he usually has a pretty good idea of how it is hit and how likely it is to survive. He has inspected the hit site much more carefully than most hunters, and he may have found bone fragments of even broken teeth. Interpreting hair at the site is a fine art which he has mastered. As he starts out on the line his dog shows him sign that the hunter may have missed: smears on weeds and brush that indicate how high the wound is on the deer; only one blood drop in twenty may show the watery consistency and dark color of a stomach shot, but the close working tracking dog points it all out. The team tracks far beyond the hunter’s point of loss or where he quit. If the dog finds a cold bed with only a few drops of blood, this strongly suggests that the deer is going to make it. If the deer jumps fences 12 hours after being hit, this is also a sign that the deer is in pretty good shape.

It rarely does happen that a deer shot far back in the large bowel is both mortally wounded and unobtainable. The handler can follow it with his leashed tracking dog, but it will not die for days. A jaw-shot deer is in a similar situation. Then he will wish he were in Texas or one of the Gulf states where the dog could be released.

In any case the tracking dog that follows the line perfectly, but fails to find the unfindable deer, is not a failure. This dog did his job, yet the handler can’t claim a find. His recovery rate/success rate actually goes down a few percentage points. Still the experienced handler, with his professional attitude, believes that his dog was a success.

How does the hunter feel about it? After 890 deer calls, I find that the hunter feels much better for knowing what happened, even if he did not tag that deer. Of course he wanted the trophy and venison, but knowing that the deer did not die a lingering death and then feed the coyotes is the next best thing.

For the large landowner managing his property for quality deer, it is also important to know what happened. What was the real deer harvest on his acreage as opposed to the guesstimates of his hunters? What actually happened to the quality bucks? Will they be available for future seasons as breeders and trophies?

I was never very good at numbers. I can add and subtract all right, but I would prefer to avoid the higher math of calculating success rate percentages. The important thing is tracking and finding as many deer as you can!

John and Billy recovered this buck in 2007.

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.