Tracking wounded deer across river yields some surprises

By Darren Doran

2015/11/05

I had a track today for a hunter that I tracked for last year. Last year we tracked his deer to a river that we didn’t have permission to cross. It took the hunter 4 days to get permission, and he found his deer 75 yards on the other side with his head cut off.

This year permission to cross had been secured just in case. Anyway the hunter shot the deer at 45 yards with a crossbow, and only had a split second to observe the deer through the foliage before it was gone. He thought the shot was good. He got down and didn’t find his bolt or any blood at the hit site. He didn’t search any further and called me.

I started Theo where the hunter thought the deer had been hit and Theo took a line. We went down into the bottom and started hooking around and heading behind the hunter. I hadn’t seen any blood and we had gone far enough. I told the hunter I wanted to re start and went back to the hit site.

Theo restarted and took a different line and the hunter thought that this was the way the deer had run. After some distance I marked a drop of blood and knew that: 1) the hunter actually hit the deer and 2) we were on a right line. Theo tracked into the bottom and to a bed. I had found about a shot glass of blood to this point and the bed was blood free.

We continued on and I knew the deer was heading for the river. Sure enough we tracked in ankle deep water and muck to the river’s edge. I sent Theo up and down both banks as far as we could go in the mud to make sure the deer didn’t turn but it was evident it swam across. This river is not real wide but too deep and muddy to get across. I flagged the spot and marked the GPS, and we went back to the trucks to drive around. The hunter called the landowner and told him we were coming on his side.

Once on the opposite side of the river where the deer crossed, I noticed a gas pipe line across the river. The weeds and brush along that bank were mowed about 30 feet wide where the pipe went under the river. I restarted Theo and he was checking all around. He was sniffing the grass and all the weeds along the edge on our side.

When Theo can’t find the scent he is looking for he will circle and go back to a spot he knows he had it. Today was no different. He jumped into the river and swam back to the side we had just left. Here’s where a 50 ft. lead comes in handy. I was able to wade out some with the water below my boots and give him enough lead to do his thing. He checked around on the bank by my flag and satisfied the deer crossed he swam back.

The river in this spot made an S bend and Theo then swam out to the belly of the S. He was standing in the water at the bank sniffing the weeds and grasses at the edge. Here’s where it started to get a little messy. I didn’t have enough lead to let him get up the bank and this was the way he wanted to go. I had to wade out to my knees to give him enough lead to get up the bank. Theo’s really pulling now and I’m stuck I can’t go any further forward. I told the hunter that we need a boat.

The hunter called the landowner and just so happened he had a jon boat. It took about 20 minutes to get the boat and the whole time Theo wants to go. In my training with Theo I’ve trained an EASY command. What this means is that I’m coming but you have to give me time. I use it a lot when I’m crawling and snipping my way through briars or navigating dead falls. I told him EASY and he just stood slightly pulling on the lead. We got into the boat and paddled across and Theo took of down a run on the ox bow of the river. We were tracking along on a run in about ankle deep water. I hadn’t seen any blood and suddenly he turned right into some thick swamp grass and brush. Next think I know all hell is breaking loose. I thought for sure the deer was getting up and I yelled to the hunter there he goes. Only thing it wasn’t a deer it was a giant gobbler that flushed out. I’m not used to seeing turkeys in a swamp like that and that was the last thing I expected to see.

I corrected Theo and continued to search the rest of the ox bow for the deer or sign while the hunter paddled down the river looking. Theo wanted to go back down the run he was on before he got side tracked by the turkey, but the water was getting too deep and muddy to get through. I do believe the deer went that way but I also believe the deer was still alive.

The hunter didn’t track or attempt to pursue the buck the night before and I believe him. We should have found the deer in the first bed or another one very close if he was mortally wounded.

I called the track, got in the boat and we went back to the pipe line. I searched the rest of the river bank and brush back to the bridge at the road just in case we missed something.

And so it goes I told the hunter if he finds the deer or sees him alive to give me a call.

Tracking mature bucks: Daren and Theo's amazing two intercrossed deer tracks

By Daren Doran

On Sunday I (Jolanta) had a chance to see Daren and Theo
when they dropped by at field trial grounds for a short visit.

On Saturday I got a call from a hunter who had hit a mature buck and needed help. His shot was slightly quartering to and he believed he hit one lung and hopefully the liver on the way out. While tracking, his deer entered another property and when he called for permission to track there he found out that the owners of that property were looking for a deer as well. That buck had been quartering away, and when the hunter shot, the deer took a step and the arrow hit it in the ham and entered forward never exiting. Both of these deer were shot Saturday morning.

Here’s where it starts to get interesting. The hunters believed that the blood trail of the two deer crossed. Hunter 1’s POL (Point of Loss) was about 50 yards from the blood trail of hunter 2. Hunter 2 had advanced their trail about 500 yards from that point to the beginning of a wide green briar choked hedge row between 2 large rye fields.

The call was about an hour and a half away, and I figured both calls had a good chance of recovery if what the hunter had told me was correct. It also gave me a chance to work Theo in a situation that I had never experienced before. If the blood trails did cross, how would he handle it? Could Theo figure it out and find the deer?

I got there about 2:30 and both groups of hunters were together. I started Theo at hunter 1’s hit site, which was on the edge of a green field. The deer had crossed the field and entered the woods about 80 yards away and this is where the hunter found his first blood. I let Theo smell the arrow and told him to “search” and “find the blood”. Theo worked a circle around the hit site that took a line towards the woods. Theo showed me blood and took the line through the woods across a road and into hunter 2’s property. He tracked to the POL and from there on it was all Theo. Hunter 2 said that he was tracking towards his line and at one point hunter 2 said Theo was on his blood line. At this point I couldn’t confirm the fact that the two deer didn’t take the same trail. We had not seen any more blood after hunter 1’s POL so I allowed Theo to continue. After a while it was apparent that Theo had left deer 1 and was now tracking deer 2. We came to the green briar hedge row at hunter 2’s POL and here it got hard for Theo. These guys and stomped all over looking for this deer, and I’m sure there was scent tracked all over in this area.

These hunters had no experience with a tracking dog and at the POL they continued to “help” by looking for more blood. I had asked them to stay with me or behind me, but pretty soon I was by myself. The logical place this deer went was into the briars in the hedge row.  I worked Theo in this area and at one point he tracked into the rye field on one side. I could see foot prints in the rye and it looked like Theo was tracking the hunters. I restarted him at the POL and he went into the briars. He was tracking but I couldn’t find any blood. I saw a deer cross the rye field about 300 yards away; I couldn’t see a rack and I didn’t really know where the deer came from. I assumed we had put out a doe while searching the hedge row. 

I re-started Theo a couple of times and he always took the same line through the briars and at one point he went hot and wanted to track into the rye field the way I had seen the deer go. I didn’t believe him and I pulled him off. I just didn’t think a hurt deer would cross a 500 yard open field. I had hunter 1 back with me by now.  I restarted Theo again and he tracked the same way and this time I saw some blood, then a bed and then a drop of blood at the edge of the rye field. I told hunter 1 about the deer I had seen and that we were going to follow the dog. Theo tracked across the rye field to a little wooded island and showed me a drop of blood. We went through the island, across another field and into the woods. Theo was showing me blood every so often and we had tracked to the edge of a small weedy standing corn field. All of a sudden Theo went hot. We were tracking along the corn and then turned into a swampy area of reeds and brush. I could see smears of blood on the reeds and visibility was limited. The next thing I know Theo is coming back at me and I see the buck get up. I sent hunter 1 around the brush to hopefully cut the deer off if he came out. Theo’s barking now, I’m holding him back and we’re right on the deer. Theo held up and then I saw the buck down in the high weeds. I called hunter 1 up and he finished the deer. We got on the phone and called hunter 2 and let him know where we were and that we had his deer.

We had deer 2 but needed to try to get deer 1. I told hunter 1 we were going back to our original start to restart Theo and see what we could do. The property owner was coming with us and after what they just witnessed there was no more second guessing me or the dog.

I started Theo and he took us right to hunter 1’s POL. I was watching the GPS to see what was going to happen. Theo was tracking the exact same line and went right over our first line and started tracking a different way. After messing up and pulling him off at the rye field, I was going wherever he took me. After a while I saw a drop of blood. I checked the GPS and we were on a new line. Theo had deer 1. We tracked to a large bed and Theo went hot. I didn’t see any blood but I knew Theo was right and went with him. After some time I started to mark blood. Theo was tracking hard at the end of the leash and we went right over deer 2’s line about 50 yards from the POL and into the second large rye field. Theo tracked across the field, across a road and into another woods. I was marking blood and I knew he was right. We went through the woods and tracked to a lake. Theo went into the water and was standing on a log looking across. I knew the deer went across. One thing I’ve learned about tracking mature bucks is once they know you’re after them they become very difficult to recover. They will use every bit of energy and smarts to put something between them and you that they think will stop you, roads, rivers, houses, horse corrals, lakes anything to stop you.

Theo went into the water
and was standing on a log looking across.

I marked the spot on the GPS and the hunters said we could go to the road and cross the lake at a bridge. We had enough daylight to try and it was about ¾ of a mile to get to the other side so off we went. When I got to about where I thought the deer crossed I started a controlled search with Theo and told him to “search and find the blood”. He knew what we were doing and immediately started searching the lake bank. Pretty soon he took a line away from the lake. I didn’t see any blood but at this point I wasn’t second guessing him. In about 100 yards he tracked to a large bed exactly like the one we found earlier and went hot. I told the hunter that we would go for a while and hopefully mark blood. We were losing daylight and I hadn’t seen any more blood and I told the hunter that we were done. I knew Theo was right, but this deer wasn’t dead and we weren’t going to catch it. They agreed and we headed back. We put on some miles today and I had some great dog work. Thankfully Theo over looked my handling mistakes at the rye field and we got the one deer. These hunters had never seen a tracking dog work before and both agreed that they would never found the deer we got or advanced the second one the way we did without a dog.

Darren Doran with Theo and Hunter 2's buck.

Tommy gets injured on Saturday while following a one-lung shot deer

Saturday was not a good day. John and Tommy went on a call to help a local hunter recover a lung-shot deer.  At one point John had to drop the tracking leash in heavy brush. He thought that he could recall Tommy, as he had done many times, but this time Tommy was hot on the deer. He was located two hours later tangled in goldenrod 400 meters farther on.

Tommy had already tracked two miles, but he was ready to go, and now three of us tracked another 1/2 mile through a big swamp. We finally quit when the deer swam across a big pond and water became to deep to follow. Actually Jolanta got stuck in the swamp up to her butt. We had smears of blood to verify the line right  until the end. But that's just the beginning.


This is the last leg of Saturday's track with Tommy. Tommy was found hung up in the brush around 4 pm where the yellow marker is, and we restarted him by the red marker. We found the first blood smear on the branch around 1/3 rd into this track leg. Now the swamp is not as big as it is pictured on this google map. Once we entered the swamp we started to see fresh blood smears on swamp grass. We terminated the track where the purple marker is. When we got back to the car people in the house by Rte 157A said that they had seen a deer running by from the swamp direction. This graphic was created by My Tracks, an app for Android phones.

On Monday we noticed a bulge on Tommy's right flank. It looked like a big hematoma, but we took him to our vets since he also had bad eye irritations. We wanted to be sure he did not have a scratched cornea. The eyes were not damaged, but the inner abdominal muscles had been torn and intestines were bulging out as in an umbilical hernia. Thee was no internal damage beyond this and no damage on the surface of his hide. We don't know exactly what happened, but probably he had an altercation with the buck during the time  that he was out of John's control. He was tough enough to keep tracking,  and we were unaware of his injury.

Another problem. We have a bitch that was brought in from southern Pennsylvania to be bred to Tommy. She is not quite ready yet, and we don't want to ask Tommy to breed her right after his surgery. So we must wait until Thursday, after the breedings, to have the damage to his abdominal wall repaired. Tommy does not seem to be in any pain, and he is eating well. But we are watching that hernia! He won't be able to track for 2-3 weeks following his surgery.

Kasey Morgan's Bloodhound Deer Tracking Services

Kasey Morgan is a United Blood Trackers member from Elderon, Wisconsin. Right now he has two bloodhounds dedicated to blood tracking, but it was a different breed altogether that got him involved in tracking wounded game. Below is Kasey's story in his own words.

I got my start in tracking in the fall of 1998. I was 15 back then and my father brought home a soon to be rabbit tracking machine.  The minute the beagle pup hit the ground I was glued to his side.  Following careful instruction from my father, I molded the pup into a finely tuned tracker.  From the moment my dog circled its first rabbit I was hooked on hounds.  We went on to develop some of the top beagles in the state of Wisconsin.  Along with beagling, I was slowly becoming a hunting fanatic.  Many long nights spent tracking wounded game, only to come up empty and disappointed, encouraged me to find a solution to this ethical issue.  In the summer of 2009 I began working with a slow tracking beagle on blood tracks, and slowly the hound impressed me with his ability to finish tracks successfully. 

To say I was green in blood tracking training would be an understatement.  Laying deer blood lines was as far as I went with the hound.  I knew none of the information I know now on the art of using dogs to recover wounded game.  I laid a few 100 yard lines using an astronomical amount of blood and of course the dog followed the ridiculously overdone blood trail to the end where he rejoiced over a non fleshed deer hide.  The amount of scent that was placed along my first artificial lines must have been overwhelming to the hound.  I have to chuckle at the way I started this past time that slowly became an obsession. 

Throughout the fall of 2010 I took 13 tracks and recovered 1 deer.  I learned a lot on those 13 tracks; however, I had barely scratched the surface of the finer points of wounded game recovery.  Over the next 2 years I learned basically through trial and error and  from John Jeanneney's book. I researched through literature and by prying at any tracker that would talk to me.  I continue to learn each day and take in all information.  I am a firm believer that adapting and molding training methods is crucial to producing successful dogs.  

My example of change is my decision to change breeds to become a more efficient tracker.  After experiencing numerous setbacks with beagles and water barriers, I made the decision to switch to bloodhounds.  I purchased Boomer, my prized bloodhound, in the early spring of 2012.  He had come from law enforcement bloodlines and his tracking skills revealed themselves early.  Boomer’s skills were far superior to those of the beagles I had worked with in the past.  He was completing 400 yard tracks before 4 months of age, and I was impressed and eager to get him on some live tracks.  In Boomer’s first hunting season we took over 60 tracks and recovered just over 40% of the deer.  Boomer will turn one year of age this next month.  He is my most valued possession and an excellent worker. 

I have recently added a female to our tracking team.  Her name is Riley and she is 3 months old.  She will be slowly worked into the equation this next fall, but so far she shows incredible tracking prowess.  I have also taken on the task of training a hound for a client in western Wisconsin.  I lucked out on this dog because the pup is a natural.  The training has been a huge success.  I am excited about the upcoming tracking season and eager to see what we are capable of achieving.  You can follow Bloodhound Deer Tracking Services on Facebook  click here.

Riley and Boomer

Tracking wounded hog with a young dachshund Spike

Ed and Barbie Wills of  Kearsarge Mountain Teckels  (New Hampshire) shared with us a letter that they have received from Mike. Mike is an owner of one-year-old Spike that came out of Ed and Barb's breeding. Thank you for sharing the letter with us, and congratulations on such a talented dog!

Hi Ed and Barb,

Just thought I'd say hi and let you know how Spike is doing after his first year.

Spike took to tracking deer quite well. The very first live deer track last fall was a success, it was an easy track. The deer was hit good and left a good blood trail, exactly what I hoped for for his first track. It was dark but that didn’t bother Spike as he took me straight to the downed deer, about 75 yds. Since then I’ve been on several other tracks as well as fiends called to find their wounded deer. Two tracks that impressed me the most were when the deer  left very little blood and traveled long distances.

The first tough track was a deer hit in a swampy area. At first Spike was more interested in playing instead of tracking until I scolded him. He then  put his nose down, circled the area in the direction the deer had traveled, about 100 yds from the initial hit, and started pulling. I still wasn’t sure if he was on the track or not, until I saw a tiny spot of blood. We went a couple hundred more yards and found the downed deer. The second difficult track was a deer that I knew wasn’t hit that good because of the angle of the arrow. It suggested to me that it was a flesh wound.

We picked up the track right away, the blood trail was decent for a while but slowly disappeared after a couple hundred yards. The hardwood forest started to change to a swamp. Spike picked his way through the first small swamp, every 100 yards or so there would be a small spot of blood, which confirmed that we were still on track. Well we kept going for quite a distance when we came to another swamp, very wet. We entered. At first the water wasn’t that deep until I looked up ahead and saw it was all water too deep and too thick to move through. When I  turned to head out Spike pulled the leash out of my hand and started heading away from me. I couldn’t get him, the last I saw of him he was swimming away and disappeared from view. The swamp was in a basin surrounded by hardwoods. I circled around to try to intercept him on the other side. As I made it to the other side I was looking down on the swamp, I could hear him splashing through the water, when he emerged I ran down to grab him. He still had his nose to the ground, when I got to him; I couldn’t believe my eyes, I looked down and saw another spot of blood. Spike had tracked this deer through about two hundred yards of knee deep water,  the deer kept going along checking its scrapes so we  finally ended the search. We had a GPS, and as the crow flies we traveled about one and a half miles, through three swamps. At the time Spike was only nine months old.

 

We just came back from Texas from a hog hunt. We were there for 21 days, and Spike had a great time. At first he didn’t show any interest in hogs. There were other hunters that had wounded hogs and when I took Spike out  he didn’t track at all. Even when some one would come back to camp with a dead hog Spike wouldn’t show any interest.

I finally hit a hog, and before I went and got Spike I had tried to find the hog on my own. Hogs don’t bleed very much because of the fat layer they have; it closes the wound up right away and very little blood is visible. The brush and grass make it difficult as well, so I looked around for about an hour with no success. Got Spike and a few other hunters, we spread out and started to search. When I brought Spike to the area the hog was hit, he put his nose down, looked at me for a brief minute and started tracking. I was very excited 75 yds later I saw blood, now I was really exited. One hundred yards later, wouldn’t ya know dead hog! Spike jumped on the hog’s back and started to rip fur. That was great.

We  had a few more hog tracks by other hunters and Spike did awesome; it just took him a while to figure out the difference between deer and hog.

Spike is a good companion, he has a very good disposition he loves people, dogs, even cats. He’s been a great inspiration, his tracking abilities are incredible, far more than I could have imagined. Wat’s he going to be like when he gets more experienced and mature!

Ed and Barb if you need any referrals let me know, I’d be happy to do so.   Great logo not quantity but QUALITY.

Thanks lots

Mike

Mike with Spike and his hog