Short track and recovery for Thor: Important deer anatomy lesson

By Bob Yax

On Nov. 8^th, Thor and I took a track in Geneseo.  The hunter, Josh, hit the buck about 4 pm the previous day.  While interviewing Josh about the hit, not long after he shot it, he said that the buck was broadside when he hit it and the arrow passed thru near the center of the deer.  Surprisingly, the buck bedded within 20 yards of the hit, then got up shortly after and bedded 2 more times in the next 50 yards before getting up and walking off.   

Josh waited awhile and then inspected the hit site and arrow along with a few yards of the early trail.  He saw a reasonable blood trail and then backed out and called Deer Search.  The quick, frequent bedding, signaled a liver hit, but then Josh described the arrow as having heavy intestinal matter on it.  With a broadside shot it’s hard to hit both liver and intestine.   I told Josh that the options were to go after it late that evening, like 11 pm (assuming it was liver), or to wait to later in the morning assuming it was intestine only.  It was a tough decision.  A liver-hit deer could be dead in less than an hour (typically 7 hrs covers 95% of liver hits), but an intestine-hit deer can go for over 24 hrs.  We had to worry that it might spoil if it died early or we might jump it if we go too early.  We decided that we’d wait till late morning to start the track.  

We started at about 11 am, 19 hrs after the hit.  I inspected Josh’s arrow and confirmed it was covered with intestinal matter and a little blood.  We started the track and quickly got through the first 100 yards where blood sign was still visible along the way.  Soon we came out to a standing cornfield, where Thor spent about 10 minutes circling around in about 20 rows of corn.  I was happy to find 1 spec of blood on a corn stalk, while he was circling.  Finally, Thor came out of the corn and headed off pretty hard across a clover field for about 125 yards, until he entered the woods that surrounded a 1 acre pond.  Soon, he was walking through the shallow water at the corner of the pond.  He came out of the pond and climbed up a short bank.  There I found a single drop of blood.  Thor then took a path through the brush along the edge of the pond, and again ended up along the water’s edge.  He was really interested in the water. 

I scanned the pond hoping to see a floating deer. Finally, he walked off the bank and started swimming into the pond.    I let him go out a few yards, and then pulled him back to shore.  He jumped up the bank and then I spotted a bloody leaf on the shore.   I let the leash go and told Josh to grab it as I climbed through the heavy brush.  He grabbed the leash but had a hard time holding Thor back as he dug in and pulled hard into the brush.   A few seconds later the reason was obvious.  The dead buck was lying about 40 yards from the pond. So far the track wasn’t that interesting, but the deer and the hit changed that.  Looking at the 8 pointer, it was obvious that the deer had passed just a short time before we arrived.  There was no rigor, and the internal organs were freshly warm.   The other observation was that the lower half of the deer was soaking wet and his legs were brown with pond muck.  It had obviously been laying in the pond.  The autopsy revealed the biggest surprise, the 3 blade broad head clearly passed thru the liver, before exiting out the intestines.  This buck, with a solid liver hit, likely lived for 17 or 18 hours!   Not sure if laying in the pond had any influence, but most liver hit deer are dead at 6 or 7 hours.  I did have one buck years ago, that we jumped after 20 hrs with a liver hit.  The general rules usually apply, but not always!  Photo of hunter and buck, below. 

"Track or treat" night: Winnie and Jared's first track in pursuit of a wounded deer

Some tracks are more memorable than others but most likely every handler remembers their very first track. This week we received email from Jared Brueggeman, who got a female pup from our only 2016 litter. Winnie (Yola von Moosbach-Zuzelek) was born on July 3, 2016 so she is just turning 4 months old tomorrow.

My neighbor shot this doe on his land at approximately 5:45 pm Halloween evening. He said he heard the arrow hit but was unable to locate it or any blood at the shot site.  A few hours later Winnie, myself, the hunter and two friends took to the field. We started tracking at 9:15 pm.  It was difficult to locate the first blood as there was none at the hit site that we could see. We tracked for quite a distance.  Some heavy blood fading to some light blood and back to heavy.  After several hundred yards and it was apparent that the deer was still alive as we were finding fresh blood that was not dried like at the beginning of the trail.  We never found a single bed.  We pushed the deer to make her bleed and we ended up through the large block of timber where the deer crossed the road.  We located a few drops on the road and Winnie was anxious to push on. Shortly after crossing the road Winnie came upon her first real deer.  The deer was dead and Winnie realized what she has been training  to do. She went right over and started licking the blood and eventually she latched right on and was biting the deer with all she had. She showed no possessiveness as last night I think Winnie realized that we are working as a team.  All of the other people and the lights in the woods were a distraction at times as this was only her second time in the woods at night, once on an artificial line and then this actual call. I would reassure her with a calm tone that she needs “find the deer” and she was back to tracking. We recovered the deer at 11:28 pm. The deer was shot quartering away hitting the gut, liver and a single lung. There was an entrance and exit wound, however, the arrow was still in the deer. She had not been dead long as there were still bubbles coming out of the exit hole near the lungs. The track totaled just about a mile in distance. The Halloween deer that Winnie found will be one I will never forget. Winnie did get on Halloween a little treat of her own, a few slices of fresh deer heart.

On the track there were a few times where I needed to reset Winnie on the last blood found and then she was back on track. She persevered and did great. I was very proud of her as you know she is not even 4 months old yet! I am on cloud nine right now and I have the itch to get back out there and let the sniff hound go find another!  Thanks for being a part of all of this. 

Sincerely, your friend and now fellow tracker,

Jared Brueggeman

Another deer recovered by Mossy Brooke (Viola von Moosbach-Zuzelek) from Georgia

Mossy's recovery #29 for the season took place on Sunday night, the last day of hunting. As it turned out it was not her last track of the season but we will have another post about that. A big thank you to Judy Catrett, Mossy's owner and handler from Georgia, who reported:  

The hunter had shot a doe quartering to him and had found blood and hair, 3 foot diameter area, at the site of the shot. The most hair I had ever seen at a shot site. Mossy tracked the blood trail easily into the woods and through a swamp for 200 yards with visible blood being seen by me as we tracked. She then tracked for another 600 yards, total of 800 yards, with me seeing no blood the last 600 yds. Craig was with us on this track, having stayed at the truck, so I called for him to pick us up and let Mossy start over. She again tracked 200 yards, but at this point went in a different direction than our initial track and within 100 yards, I began seeing blood again. She tracked for 300 more yards into a clear cut with thick briars.  

She jumped the deer which I could not see, but could hear. We then tracked very fast thru the briars which were chest high, with me seeing blood the entire time. I had shortened her leash to 6 feet so that she would be in no danger of again coming up on the deer without me seeing it and being hurt by the deer. Within 100 yards, the deer had bedded again and was unable to jump up and run. I was able to dispatch the deer with my pistol.  

This deer had sustained an open wound to the left side of its abdomen and had run 600 yards per GPS from the shot site with its stomach and intestines hanging out. I really had empathy for the suffering this deer had already endured and was so glad that Mossy had found it so that its misery could be shortened. Evidently, no major arteries had been hit and the deer could have lived for a while longer had we not found it. The deer had made several turns, so I am not sure how far she actually was able to run with this massive injury, probably 700-800 yards as GPS showed 600 yds straight line. Deer are very tough animals, being able to exert this type of energy with this injury.  

There were 5 other deer in the field when this deer was shot, and I assume that Mossy, in her haste to find the wounded deer, took the track of one of the other deer initially after 200 yards. I knew after 800 yards and no blood that we were probably on the wrong track, so we tried again and she straightened herself out. She is still very young in her tracking career, and things of this type are to be expected. She continues to excel in her tracking abilities.  

The picture is not pretty with all of the blood involved and Craig burst out laughing when he saw me in the picture. He said I honestly looked like I had been dragged through a swamp. Mossy was the only one who endured this track without any change of her looks. She is always rewarded with the tongue once she finds the deer. She swallowed this tongue whole, but is doing fine this morning. Could not believe that she just gulped it down as she normally chews them. She also supplied heart for supper for herself, Pache, Tiny Tink, and Buddy. Her sibs love having her around so that they can all feast on heart when she comes home from tracking--something they have come to expect when we get home from a track.

Start tracking wounded deer at the hit site

By John Jeanneney

After a stretch of calls where we could not catch up to the deer, our luck has changed. Tommy and I have had three challenging finds in a row. Our find this morning confirms an important principle. Start at the hit site.

The 10 point buck was gut shot, and Dan, the hunter, had done an amazing job of tracking it a good quarter mile on very sparse blood. Finally he ran out any blood and backed off.  Dan didn't want Tommy and me to come and track at night in that god-awful swamp of bush and briars, so we scheduled the search for the following day. When we started, the scent line was 26 hours old.

Now the easy and attractive option would have been to avoid a quarter mile of brush and brambles by beginning at the point of loss. We could have driven right to it. But my 40 years of experience told me to begin at the hit site.  Then Tommy would gain a clear recognition of the buck's individual scent, while we had a few drops of blood to confirm that we were on the right line.

It took us about 40 minutes to work over the line tracked by Dan. It had taken Dan several hours. It was slow going in the thick stuff. When we finally came to the well-marked point of loss, there seemed to be no scent left. Tommy worked for 15 minutes through the deadfalls before he became positive on a scent line. He never would have been able to recognize and pick up this line, after that long check, if he hadn't memorized the scent over that first quarter mile.

We moved on wondering whether Tommy really had it. Then Dan found a drop of blood, and a few moments later Tommy found the buck, dead. Trust your dog! And start at the hit site.

John and his dachshund Tommy recover a nice bow-shot buck in East Berne, NY

Yesterday we had a good day in the woods. A friend of ours from East Berne, Jim Hens, shot a very nice buck a day before around 5 PM, a little too far back. Jim and his father followed some blood but when it started to be sparse, they backed out and called John. 

We started to track next day at 9:30 AM. Tommy, now 6.5 years old, is in his prime and a total pro. It was such a pleasure to watch him work. At one point when he was working on  a difficult check and we did not see any blood for a while I started to have some doubts. Well, five seconds later we saw a drop of blood. The total track was 600 yards and it took 30 minutes. There was no pulling, and a lot of tracking was done on a relaxed lead. The hunter got a lot of kisses from Tommy at the end of tracking. He was very happy as he would not have been able to find the buck without Tommy. John was very happy too.

For our area of New York State this is a very nice buck.

Jim Hens with his back recovered by Tommy.

Taking a good picture of Tommy was not easy as he insisted on kissing the hunter.

Two more deer recovered by Bob and Thor, and a lesson learned on intestinal hit

By Bob Yax

I learned a big lesson on these last two recoveries.  The 1^st  on Nov 2^nd  (my birthday and the 4^th year in a row that we’ve recovered one on that day!) was a suspected liver hit pass thru.  The hunter waited two hours and then jumped the deer out of its 1^st bed after about 200 yards of good blood.  He went a little further thru the woods until he came out to crop fields that extended about as far as the eye could see.  At that point, he turned around and called Deer Search.  We came in the next morning,  18 hrs after the hit.   

It had rained hard overnight,  so there was very little visible blood sign up to the 1st bed and none visible after the bed.  Thor covered the first 200 yards, thru the hardwood  to the first bed,  with no problem.    When we came out of the woods and I saw the huge crop fields ahead, I was concerned.  Besides the standing corn field to the right, the only heavy cover was about a half mile in front of us – big woods off to the left and a thick brushy gully a half mile ahead on the right. In between all of these were  large clover  fields (about 10 inches high) and large standing soybean fields (about two feet high).  

Thor continued strong out of the woods and into the clover field.  He jogged the full 600 yard length of the clover field, with only a short circle into the nearby soybean field.  At the end of the clover field was a paved road which he quickly crossed.  On the other side of the road was another standing soybean field with the thick brushy gully  off to our right.  As this was the only nearby thick stuff,  I was hopeful that Thor would take us in that direction where we would find our buck dead in its 2^nd bed.  After entering this 2^nd soybean field,  Thor proceeded about another 150 yards down the middle of it before finally  heading down towards the brushy gully. Here we go I thought! but instead of going into the thick brush, Thor took a farm road into and out of the gully.  On the other side he continued down the farm road another 100 yards as it passed between brush on one side and a standing corn field on the other.  He, and hopefully the deer,  seemed to be taking the easiest path possible,  but he still seemed very determined on the trail.  Once we got past the end of the cornfield, another huge standing soybean field lay ahead of us for another 400 yards!   A wood lot was at the far end of it.  

Thor again headed into the soybeans and at one point took an exactly straight path down the same row of soybeans for about 150 yards.  During this part I really had my doubts.  Since we were now about a mile from the last bed,  I’m sure the hunter behind me also had his doubts.  We continued down the soybean field towards the woods for about another 150 yards when Thor turned and headed uphill toward the standing corn lot.  While crossing the rows of soy beans I looked towards the woods and saw an unusual bump between the rows about 50 yards ahead.  I stopped and pointed it out to the hunter. “What’s that” I said,  a few seconds later we figured out it was his nice 9 pt.    Thor continued up to the edge of the corn lot and then back down to the buck.  From the torn up dirt and downed soybeans, it was obvious that’s exactly the way the buck had gone.  (See Gorham photo attached – you can see the woods that I think the buck was trying to get to at the far end).  Upon examination, we found that the 2 blade Rage had clearly passed thru the liver.   Thor was dead on this buck  the entire way, no matter how unusual the buck's path had seemed.  I thought, “I really should trust Thor more than I do”.

   

A complicated track that ended in a recovery of this liver-shot buck

 Well, this new found trust came to burn me the very next morning!  We took a call in Scottsville for what sounded like a pure intestine hit.  After hitting the buck and watching it slowly walk out of sight,  the traditional archery hunter had quietly backed out without following the buck at all.    We started on the trail,  Monday morning,  25 hrs after the hit.  After the hit,  the buck had walked down a mowed 4 wheeler trail for about 50 yards until the hunter lost sight of it.  We started at the hit site and found no arrow and no blood.  As Thor tracked down the 4 wheeler trail,  I searched for any sign of blood, but didn’t find any. 

At the curve in the trail where the hunter had lost sight of the deer, Thor veered left  down a trail into thick brush.  For the next half hour, as Thor eagerly tracked through thick brush and a standing corn field, I kept saying to myself “trust the dog”.  After the previous day, it was obvious that he knows what he’s doing, but after he started yipping (which he only does when he’s close behind a live moving deer) I decide to pull him off the trail and head back to the hit site.  On the way back, he put his nose high in the air and headed off into another area of thick brush; 20 minutes later when he started yipping, I again pulled him off and headed back to the hit site.  

Back at the hit site, we  again started down the initial 50 yards of the 4 wheeler trail.  This time when we got to the curve in the trail, I made sure he took his time checking all the directions the deer might have gone.  I was happy when he chose to go in a new direction into the thick brush.  After only about 30 yards in the brush,  he showed me a bed.  I thought I saw a little blood on a leaf, and was thrilled when I dabbed the leaf with a wet paper towel and came up with blood.  A few yards later we found another bed and after another quick  50 yards  we found the dead buck – about 125 yards from the hunters tree stand. 

How could it be that Thor was so wrong on this one ?   Then it hit me.  This was the 3^rd pure intestine hit that Thor has recovered in the past few years.  On the other two, the hunters also immediately backed out, there was no blood trail,  and Thor did exactly the same thing.  He initially went way off on the wrong  trails  before I brought him back to the deer’s last known location.  There,  after a short area search we found the deer within 200 yards of the hit site.

My revelation was – without any blood trail to get started on, Thor didn’t know which deer scent to follow.  Not sure why it took me so long to figure this out.  I discussed this with Gary Neal and he confirmed the same thing.  He said that his past three dogs have needed at least 40 or 50 yards of a known blood trail before they get hooked on the correct /wounded deer.

In the future,  with pure intestine hits and no blood,  I’ll assume that Thor won’t lock onto the deer and we will  instead focus on doing an air scenting area search around the deer’s last known location.

 

This buck left no blood and it proved to be a challenge for Thor

Tough track for John and Tommy ends in a successful recovery

by John Jeanneney

While my beloved monitor (that's Jolanta) was napping on the couch, I had a chance to sneak out on a deer call. With Tracking Dog Tommy on the seat beside me, we hit the road driving south. It sounded like a stomach shot, back in the "rear ribs", but you never know.

When we got to the hit site, thirty miles away, it was mid-afternoon, 23 hours after the deer had been shot. The woods were dry. At the Kleenex marking the first blood, which I couldn't see, Tommy's tail  said "Yes!" and he started off, slowly and carefully

Tommy saved the day. There was almost no blood, but he worked patiently, through one difficult check after another, for 500 yards. We had an audience of the  hunter and three others wondering why we saw only two tiny drops of blood over 500 yards. Could you trust a dog that much?

Then Tommy showed us  the buck lying in the thick stuff. He hadn't been dead long; the venison was still good and this time the  coyotes had missed their banquet. Tommy got his reward of deer heart, and Old John felt 20 years younger.

An Old Man Begins to Accept Reality

by John Jeanneney

Sunday was a busy day for Old Man John. In the morning Tommy and I went out on a call to track a buck that had been liver shot the day before. There was good evidence on the pass-through arrow, but almost no blood on the ground. After the first bed I saw no blood at all. Twice Tommy followed the same track out for 200 yards paralleling a high tension electric line . The buck crossed the line at some point, but we could never find the track. Very frustrating! And this sort of thing has happened to me before.  My theory is that the magnetic field generated by the high tension power line ionizes the scent particles, so that the dog can't scent them. We worked 4 hours through thick brush and clinging vines, and then gave up. I hate to quit.

At four I met Jolanta at the Beagle Club Pork Roast and got a few leftovers before heading back home to feed Tommy, and get the lights for the next call that was nearby. This time Old John was accompanied by Jolanta. On this call she expanded her role from companion to tracker-in-chief!

We started out on blood near the hit site, but there was very little of it considering that we were dealing with a wound by a two inch expandable that had passed though the guts and then one lung. Tommy got off on another line, and since I was moving pretty slowly on a steep hill Jolanta took over handling Tommy. After 200 yards we decided this couldn't be the right deer, and went back to known blood that we had marked.

This time Tommy got off on the right line that we could confirm by a few specks of blood. Within a 100 yards Jolanta  yelled, "Here he is!"  Jolanta handled beautifully, and I was very proud of her. I have to admit that I was a little ashamed of myself and my tired, cramping legs. I haven't prepared myself psychologically to be an Old Man.

It was very rewarding to see Jolanta glowing with happiness as she experienced the find. In the future we shall go on together. Very often I will be the one marking the line and carrying water for Tommy and Jolanta. 

                                     

Two different deer tracking strategies produced different results

Thank you to Ken Parker, a UBT member from Georgia, for the report on two tracks he did with Mirko and Baby, his Bavarians.

Tuesday morning around 10 AM I got a call from a hunter stating that he had shot a big buck around 8:30 with his crossbow but backed out when he realized he had gut shot the deer. I advised him that we needed to wait 6-8 hrs after the shot before we took up the track. I was going to try to get off around 2:30 to head his way.
Well around lunch I got a second call of a deer down that could not be found. The hunter could not find any more blood after a few hundred yards and he had spent the morning walking the woods looking for his deer. We talked some and I told him that I should be able to get to him between 9 and 10 that night.  He said that he had someone coming in a few hours and they were going to be looking some more.

I was not able to get off until 3:30 so that would put me getting to the first track around 5. We were able to get in and get started quickly. Mirko, my male BGS, was the one who was up for this track. He quickly worked the line out to the hunter's stopping point and out into an old grown up field. The wind was swirling some and he kept putting his head up like he was winding the deer. He finally picked a line and off we went down into a swamp. There was so much deer sign it was hard to to tell if he was on the right deer or not.

I decided to pull him off the track and restart him to see if he brought us back to the same spot. In the meantime I also got a call from the second hunter stating that they had found a wound bed and were going to bring in a bloodhound. If they did, would it be an issue for my dogs if I was till needed? I said no problem, go for it.

Returning to the hit site I restarted Mirko and he took us right down to the same opening and started working with his head up again. Off we went down the same trail again for about 50 yards, then we turn left, OK, new spot, lets go. Mirko took me across the old field and over near the road and power line. Here he turned up toward an industrial building. At this point I was just letting him drag the lead around as I did not want to crawl into the thicket he was in. That is when the world came alive.

A big deer came barreling by me and I knew right away we had the hunter's deer up and moving. It was now 6:30 and it had been 10 hrs since the shot. We decided to give the deer some time and went to move the trucks around to where we were now. Boy I did not know it was going to take us so long to get started again. As I was getting ready to go back in the woods I realized I did not have my GPS tracker for the dogs. I must have dropped it when we were getting back in the trucks. So off we went back to the other side but no gps. Now I was mad as that was a lot of money, then it hit me. The controller beeps when the dog trees so we could check if we heard it.

I started to think when the last time was when we had it. So we went back to the spot where the deer about ran me over and started our search. Sure enough, we heard the beep so it was close but where? We spent the next 30-45 minutes walking in a 20 yard circle hearing the beep but not finding the unit. Finally, we all agreed that we were within 10 ft but still could not find it  because of very tall briars. Then Derek looked down and low and behold we had been standing on it in the trail.

Back to work - did the deer go to the swamp or cross the road. Mirko was so ready that when I hooked him back up and told him to "find it" that he about pulled my arm out of the socket going after the fresh track that was now a little over 1 1/2 hrs old. Well this is the lucky hunter as we came up on the deer in about 150 yards as it was taking its last breath. When it got up and ran that was the last bit of energy it had.

So back to what we all knew would be the unlucky hunter. I gave him a call and told him that I could be there at 9 PM if they had not found the deer. They did not find it and wanted us to come. I got there at 9 and we got down to the hit sight. As it turned out the hunter had waited only 20 minutes before he started to look for his deer. That is when we heard a large pack of coyotes off in the direction I was told the deer had gone. I wanted to start at the beginning of the track since they had spent the better part of the day looking near the point of loss and later another dog had been on the track.

This time it was Baby's turn to track. She is getting old and is easy to follow so I just let her drag the lead instead of holding onto it. We quickly worked the line out to the point of loss and then out to were the hunter's friend had found a wound bed. Baby was slow and steady and not only showed us the wound bed but the other two wound beds also. So we kept going and the deer turned and went under a fence. I was told that the bloodhound did that too but he turned and went back down the fence the way we came. Baby ignored this and went straight across the open area into the next wood lot. Here things got a little weird and we lost the track. I decided to work her around the field to see if we cut the track or could wind the deer in the field.

We worked all the way around the field and came back to the track at the wound beds. But this time I spotted the fourth wound bed. There were 4 in 50 yards. This deer was hit hard to keep getting up and moving like that. So again under the fence and into the woods but this time we took an immediate right just inside the woods. It was now getting close to 11 and the hunter's was about to drop from being so tired and worn out from looking all day. I was also getting tired. But that is when we noticed, more blood. So here we were with new sign to guide us. Baby continued finding a few more spots and then took me out across this wood lot into another field across it and into the next section of woods that holds two house and the road. Well this was where the track ended for us. The deer crossed the road and went where we could not go at that time.

 

The difference in recovering and not was pretty straight forward.

•  The first hunter recognized he gut shot and backed out following my instructions not to go back in there as he might push the deer. Second hunter only waited 20 minutes and searched all day walking and disturbing the woods.
• If the deer runs out of sight wait at least 2 hrs. If you even think there is a chance of gut or liver wait 6 hours or more if you can. I know weather plays a big factor in how long you can wait.
• If you go more than a few hundred yards and have not found the deer, back out and wait a while.
• If you do jump the deer wait another 4 hrs.
• None of this will guarantee a recovery but it will increase your odds. It will also be less likely that you have to call in a tracking dog. But if you do and have done everything right, then hopefully your deer will be found within a few hundred yards instead of a mile or more because you were in to big a rush and pushed the deer.

Here is Derek Snyder and his boy with Derek's perfect 10. This was a very tall and heavy racked 10. Not a lot of spread on him but a very symmetrical rack.

Adventures of Kevin and Quenotte, a tracking team from the suburbs of Northern Virginia

Kevin Wilson hunts  and tracks for BackyardBowPro which is a suburban hunter certifying organization (non-profit) in Northern Virginia. His tracking partner is Quenotte, a daughter of Joeri and Keena. He wrote a nice post about his tracking experience with Quenotte, who is just over three years old. Thank you Kevin!

17 September 2013:
Quenotte and I tracked two wounded deer this week in support of the Fairfax County Park Authority (FCPA) suburban bow hunts.

The first deer was gut shot around noon and the trail had been lost amidst a series of islands and creek channels.  I started her at the shot sight and she re-traced the trail to the first water crossing.  On the other side, the hunters had marked the blood trail and she regained it quickly.  We were now on a smallish island where the hunters had lost the trail and then grid-searched causing a lot of human foot traffic.

In the middle of the island, Q's body language indicated that she was unsure and it was impossible to see blood on the trampled brush.  We re-started once at the beginning of the small island unsuccessfully.

The island was not large and the deer was definitely not on it so we moved off the island and investigated the likely crossings leaving the island.  On the first crossing site, Q made a circle then picked up the trail again and we advanced rapidly across a larger, un-trampled island with good visual blood sign accompanied by positive body language from her.  At the end of the island, she went down over a steep bank and moved along a small mud flat.  At first, I wasn't even sure how I was going to get down to her.  However, she was positive and even tried to enter the water.  After finding my way down to her, I discovered fresh tracks and deep purple blood flecks at the water's edge indicating that the deer had crossed the creek on an oblique angle.  The water was too deep to cross on foot so we circled around to the opposite bank by climbing across a downed tree.  Finally, I put her down and she moved along below the opposite bank and then tried to turn up the bank.  It was so steep that I carried her over the edge but we were rewarded with the doe lying at the very top of the bank.  The hunters were elated and impressed.  This is one of our best successes ever.

20 September 2013:
The next call was two days later and involved another gut shot doe.  The hunter had hit the doe during the previous evening and lost the trail after about 150 yds.  His lab (named Moose) was on-scene and Moose had advanced the trail some before our arrival.

Moose weighed about 80 lbs and had a lot of energy.  The hunter asked if Moose's presence would be a distraction for Quenotte and said I yes (definitely).  Moose went back in the truck.  We started the trail at a spot where the doe had crossed a road and then moved through about 100 yards of easy tracking with some blood.  The doe then entered an elongated thicket running next to a split rail fence line bordering the neighborhood.  Moose had lost the trail amidst this thicket and the hunter thought maybe the deer had turned to go under the fence and enter the adjoining neighborhood.  Note: I have never seen a suburban deer seek the neighborhood environment when wounded.  Quenotte went past the point of loss and worked through two turns inside the thicket.  Blood was present and I caught a whiff of decaying flesh so I was beginning to think maybe the deer had died in this thicket somewhere.  The trail straightened and we continued parallel to the fence along a major deer runway.

As the thicket tapered, we went past a final blood spot and then Q took the trail across an open area and entered into a denser thicket.  She was pulling hard and I was on my hands and knees trying to keep up with her (and keep the leash untangled).  We crawled through about 50 yds of ungodly mess and I could see no blood.  In retrospect, I suppose the scent trail had widened and maybe the blood was off to one side.  In the midst of the thicket, Quenotte broke into a slightly more open area and I could hear a man saying "Hello Little Fellow".  I emerged from a rabbit run brush tunnel to find Quenotte greeting a hunter who had participated in the search earlier.  He was a marking a trail through the center of the thicket (for some unknown reason).  I asked if he had seen the dead deer and he said 'no'.  Mistakenly, I assumed that Q had followed the hunter or blood scent from his boots.

There was no blood sign visible and I (mistakenly again) assumed that we had lost the trail.  I picked her up and we returned to the last blood in the previous thicket.  We started 4 more times from this spot, going in differing directions and investigating along the fence line without finding additional blood.  We back-tracked into the original thicket and tried three more starts to see if we could identify a diverging trail. At this point, we were both exhausted and I told the hunter that we were done.  He asked if he could bring Moose back out and I said 'yes' but I would hold Quenotte while Moose worked.  The hunter returned with Moose and Moose bounded through the thickets while Q and I prepared to leave.

Just as we were leaving, Moose discovered the dead deer just 50 feet beyond where Quenotte had met the hunter in the thicket.  If we had persisted with the original line, then we would have found it easily.

Certainly, the hunters would not have come close to finding the deer if we had not advanced the trail as far as we did; however, I was disappointed in myself for pulling her off the original line.  I still have much to learn about when to trust Quenotte and when to re-start her.

Reported recovery rates in these suburban park hunts exceed 90% by ratio of reported shots taken to deer recovered (archery only).  Historically, this is a very high, archery recovery rate and finding two extra deer can make a big difference at the 90% margin.  This is the 5th year of the park hunts and my participation has shifted from hunting to tracking...although I still hunt private, suburban properties.

A while back, Jolanta asked for stories of unsuccessful tracks...

February 2012:
Quenotte and I could probably write a book of lessons learned the hard way.  This is a story with an unexpected outcome from last winter.  Q and I were called out to track a doe hit in the shoulder by a very reliable crossbow hunter on a private property.  The deer had been with a group of four deer and the hunter claimed to have hit the deer in the crease 'right behind the shoulder'.  The shot site was on the bottom of a long hill and the hunter claimed that the deer had gone downhill and crossed a road into a nearby stream valley park. Reportedly, the other (un-injured) deer in the group had gone uphill.

The shot site was amidst a pile of old trash (washing machine, sewer pipe etc) and it was a difficult place to begin the trail normally and safely.  I put Q down near the hit site and she immediately turned uphill.  She went about 50 yards with no blood and I presumed that she was following an un-injured deer.  The hunter said that it was the wrong direction but she was so sure that I let her go.  We went another 200 yards uphill in the direction of massive honeysuckle thicket bordering the client's yard.  She entered the thicket with increasing certainty and I followed discovering blood in the thicket.  Although it was winter, the honeysuckle vines were dense and intertwined with various trees.  I had to relinquish the leash several times to take a different route.  On the third evolution, I returned to the leash just in time to see the tag end disappear into the thicket (to my horror).

Despite my best efforts, I was unable to catch up with the leash or the dog.  It was impossible to even tell what direction Quenotte might have gone and I was afraid that the deer would emerge from the far side of the thicket and head towards the street.  I crashed through the thicket and into the neighboring yard but the dog wasn't there and the blood trail did not emerge from the thicket.  I could not hear Quenotte in the thicket but I suspected that she was still in there so I re-entered.  To compound my troubles, the neighboring property is owned by a rabid anti-hunter so I was unable to use my larger light (he wears a blaze orange vest while gardening if we are hunting neighboring lots).

There were a lot of terrible thoughts going through my mind and I just wanted my dog back at this point.  Almost immediately, she sounded off about 20 yards into the thicket so I headed towards the sound.  To my surprise, I emerged into a small open spot with the deer lying at my feet showing only a nasty but obviously non-lethal shoulder wound.  Quenotte was on the opposite side of the deer raising hell and the deer just looked confused (but not for long).  I didn't know whether to be thrilled that I had not lost my dog or concerned that the deer was going to go ballistic after being cornered.

The deer settled the issue by regaining its feet and rocketing out of the thicket in a manner that convinced me that it would survive.  Gratefully, I picked up Quenotte and we called it a night.
The evening was a success because we located the deer cooperatively but a painful lesson learned for me on leash management.

This was not a routine track for Andy Bensing and his dachshund Eibe

By Andy Bensing

Cold, late season hunting draws very few hunters in MD and NJ where I do my tracking so a January 16th call in the snow was a pleasant surprise.  Maybe because it had been 3 weeks since my last track, but I got great pleasure from this call, and there were quite a few interesting aspects to it.  The doe was gut shot with a 20 gauge slug from 180 yards the night before.  The amazing report from the hunter started like this,
" I started tracking the deer 45 minutes after I shot and to my amazement I found her just inside the woods 50 yards from where I saw her leave the field and she was just STANDING there wobbling in some thick stuff.   I stood there 15 feet away for a few minutes in amazement that she did not run off and expecting her to fall over and die.  When she didn't, I made my way up to her through the thicket and decided to try and push her over.  I actually touched her and when I did she just kind of wobbled away into the dark.  I went home, waited 2 hours and went back with my wife to hopefully find her dead a short distance away.  We tracked a fairly easy blood trail about 100 yards past where she had been standing but the blood ended and that was it."

Here is a photo the hunter took with his cell phone while he stood there before he touched the standing deer.

When  got the call that night I decided to wait until morning before tracking.  I expected a pretty easy find of the gut shot doe. The hunter reported he got an excellent look at the location of the hit when he walked up to the standing deer. I doubted she would travel very far if she did not even want to run off when the hunter approached.  Well, for some reason when I started my dog, Eibe, she had a very difficult time picking up the line through the 4 inches of heavy wet snow that had come down during the night.  I knew there was good blood under the snow as reported by the hunter but Eibe just could not lock in at first.  I actually restarted her 3 times at the hit site in the first 45 minutes.  She could not even make her way all the way down the path the hunter had tracked visible blood the night before.  On the 3rd restart, I had the hunter dig down under the snow and find some visible blood. 

Eibe had tracked in the snow maybe a dozen times in the past and I never had to do that before but I gave it a try and it worked.  Getting a good nosefull of that blood seemed to set things in motion, and we started to make some progress.  We got to the hunter's point of loss with a little steering help from me and then Eibe picked her way along independently in a logical direction.  She would lock in and zip along for 50 yards or so, then the scent would seem to dry up, and she would search a few minutes, pick it up again and zip right along for another 50 yards or so.  Four or five places along the way I was able to see a comforting blood smear on a branch or a dot or two of frozen blood coming up from the disturbed snow off Eibe's footprints. 

After Eibe finally was able to lock in on the trail it took her 45 minutes to find the deer dead about 500 yards past where it had been touched by the hunter the night before. The deer took one last jump across a creek and died on the other side.  With the snow partially covering the deer, I thought at first she was just a rock but when Eibe dove into the frigid water, grabbed her tail and yanking, the snow fell off and there was no doubt.

When I got to the deer I could see the bullet sticking out her side, and it looked like it smacked into her, mushroomed but never entered her.  What the ??????  Further investigation revealed that I was looking at the exit side of the shot.  The 20 gauge Remington slug had mushroomed nicely and tumbled around in the deer as it passed through the guts on a 45 degree angle from back to front. It had just enough energy left to punch the tail end of the bullet through the deer's skin but the lip from the mushroom hung up in the skin and prevented the bullet from exiting.  I have seen arrows clog an exit hole but never a bullet doing the same.  Not amazing but pretty interesting to see.