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.

Two confusing but successful blood tracks for Razen and Claudia

By Ray Holohan

Hi Jolanta,
I am sending you another photo of a hunter holding  Razen Kane over a nice buck that Claudia and her just recovered. The picture is a little gory and I apologize for that, but this is the best one we have. This story has a little twist to it and I thought I would see if anyone else has had a similar experience.

Claudia took the call from a hunter who had shot a buck while sitting on the ground behind a Ghost blind; this is a fold out blind that has a mirror exterior. He thought he had made a good shot with his slug gun. After a short time he went to look for blood. He found some after a short distance and proceeded to follow the trail. He finally lost the trail and couldn't come up with anymore blood or the deer. His buddy told him to give us a call and see if we could help him.

Claudia arrived at the place around 1:30 pm and took Razen to the first spot where he had found blood, somewhere close to the hit site. Razen took right off on the trail  but in a short distance wanted to break trail and head in another direction. The hunter told Claudia that the blood went the other direction so she made Razen follow the obvious trail, which she did. She ended up taking it further then the hunter had done but soon came to a dead end, so Claudia restarted Razen at first blood again.

Again Razen wanted to change direction but Claudia kept her on the trail the hunter had found, this time she took it farther and ended up finding a couple of wound beds with small amounts of blood. The trail seem to get better and better with more blood and Razen was getting pretty worked up about it. Razen took the trail to a major highway and wanted to cross it on to another property. Claudia told the hunter that he would have to get permission before she would do that. Well the hunter went to a nearby house and got the permission to keep tracking, so she let Razen keep going.

She took them to and through a small thicket then proceeded to enter a chisel plowed field. The blood was still there along with stomach  substance; the hunter was really getting excited and amazed at the job she was doing. Razen took the track another half mile across the field to a creek, where they jumped a big doe that had taken a hit in the rear. The hunter said that's not the deer, he had shot, his was a buck. At that moment the hunter's excitement turned to gloom, even though Claudia was feeling good about Razen tracking all that distance and finding a deer.

Claudia trying to ease the hunter's disappointment told him that she would take the dog back and restart her again at the beginning. After a long walk back Claudia let Razen do some snooping. She took a shortcut she came on a blood trail and in a short distance led to the buck he had shot. Claudia said the guy went nuts, hugging her about 5 or 6 times and carrying on like a little kid. Claudia was feeling pretty good too as she knew this ended  9 "no find dry spell" tracks for Razen. Not only did she find the buck but made a successful track on the doe too.

Do you think that the blood they started on was the buck's or the doe's? Will a dog switch blood trails? I'm thinking the blood trail of the doe was the blood she started on, but she wanted to go in that other direction at the start and Claudia took her the way that the hunter wanted to go. I know "believe your dog,"  Anyway this ended a long dry spell for her, she is a good tracker and never gives up but after a combination of  property line issues, bad scenting conditions, and non-lethal shots we were beginning to wonder.

Thanks, Ray and Claudia

This smart puppy has stayed on a right track

Ray Holohan, a United Blood Trackers member from Illinois, shared with us his recent experience. Here it is in his own words:

I thought I would drop you a line to share this peculiar training track I experienced this last weekend.

Saturday about 3:00 pm I decided to lay a short training track in my home timber for my new pup Ruffle "Ruff", early the next morning .  The track was 15 hrs. old and about  1/8 of a mile. We started down the trail, all was well, she was doing a good job when I looked up ahead and spotted what looked like a dead deer right on the blood trail. As I got closer it became quite clear that's what it was.

I thought to my self how should I handle this. I decided to let her find it and congratulate her with all the praise I usually do. To my surprise she walked up to the deer sniffed it. then sniffed her way around it and continued down the blood trail and found the hide and reward at the end.

At first I took this reaction as a negative but the more I thought about it, I think she knew that it wasn't the thing she was looking for, thus ignoring it and moved on. What do you think about this? After finding the hide I went and got my camera phone, took her back and let her back trail to the deer.

She seemed a little frighten, of the deer this time so I took a stick and got some of its blood from a damaged antler and let her lick and smell it, and she became quite comfortable with it. I wanted to make this a positive experience. The deer at first looked like a limb had fallen on it, it was wedged underneath it, but after a closer look I think it may had been struck by a car, probably on the highway about a 1/2 mile away and got that far before it died. I got a recovery tag from the DNR and was able to recover the blood and hoofs. Has anything like this ever happened to you or John?

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Well, I thought that Ray handled the whole situations really well. Obviously he has a very smart and talented puppy, which was staying on a right track and knew that the deer did not "belong" there. She was intimidated by the deer, but that's completely normal for a young pup. 

Something similar happened quite a few years ago when John and I tracked a deer with two dogs, Alec and Sabina. John wrote about it in his book Tracking Dogs for Finding Wounded Deer.

"Staying  on the right  line, no matter what, is usually the most difficult skill that a tracking dog must learn. My old Sabina demonstrated how reliable an experienced dog can become:

My wife and I  tracked a buck together. On the phone it sounded like an easy one so we took one of our young wire males, Alec, who had  training but no natural experience. My wife handled  Alec and I handled Sabina behind as a backup in case the young dog had trouble. Alec did a pretty good job, trailed out past the hunter's point of loss and went on for another quarter mile without help.

Then came misfortune. Young Alec tracked right into a fresh gut pile, still warm. Alec thought the guts were better than nothing and he munched a bit. The hunters and the handlers were down-hearted for sure. They had called us and we had driven a long way; now it was all for nothing. Someone else had finished off their deer and dragged him out.

Then I  thought of something. There had been some grains of corn in the track on the way to the gut pile. They had leaked out of the deer. It was funny that there was no corn in the gut pile that we were standing  over. I took Sabina back on the trail about 50 yards and let her work the line; she tracked right past the gut pile, never looking at it. All concentration, she worked another 50 yards into some thick bush and there he was, the original buck, corn, guts and all."