Leashed Blood Tracking Dogs in Pennsylvania – Update

By Andy Bensing

The Senate Game and Fisheries Committee met on Wednesday 12/4/2013 and HB451, the leashed blood tracking dog Bill, was on the agenda.  I was pretty excited when I heard the week before that the Chairman had decided to put the bill on the agenda.  I and other Deer Recovery of PA members have been working for over 13 years to gain legalization in PA.  We have gotten 3 bills out of the House of Representatives during that time and into the Senate Game and Fisheries committee.  Our current bill under consideration in the committee, HB451, was unanimously passed by the House last May.  Well my excitement turned into another letdown when once again the bill was tabled for purposes of further discussion/clarification.  The committee members’ general consensus was that they needed more clarification as to how the dogs would be used and how the program would operate in the field.

This is quite frustrating to myself and other hard working members of DRP.  We have been working for years to educate the legislature.  We send them packets of information, offer unfettered access to us to answer questions and meet with them or their assistants to explain what we do and answer questions.  Just this past August and September one of our members personally met with 10 of the 11 committee members or their assistants in one on one meetings at the capital to explain what we do, why we do it and how it is done in other states.

With all this effort on our part our tracking dog bill has been brought up in the Senate Game and Fisheries 3 times in the last 18 months and always has ended up with the same result.  Tabled because they need more information.

The meeting did have one bright note in that the consensus was that the committee was not completely against the bill, they did table it instead of voting it down, but they wanted more specifics written into it as to how it would actually be run by the Game Commission once enacted.  Several members of the committee spoke with us after the meeting and asked us to assist with that.  Also, the Chairman did commit to holding an informational public hearing early next year to try and work out some of these issues.

So all in all the meeting did not live up to my early expectations but we did inch forward a little bit.  One thing about blood trackers that’s for sure, we don’t give up easily.

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.