# Dog tracked its first deer.....and a question



## Luke0927 (Sep 26, 2009)

My cousin shot a nice doe yesterday eveing....took the dog in my avatar out and we found her...it was a gut/liver shot and blood was thin...we were on the trail but the dog found her up to the right she made a hard right and died in the thick stuff....

I've only laid a few tracks in the yard with some blood honestly i was surprised and excited!

Now here is my question, I am using a harness and a CC but in the thick stuff i don't see how you can run the dog on a leash and have them find the deer....i end up just letting her go...dragging the CC and she found it...she would find the blood and then track but i think she found the deer by winding it....this was at night so i wasn't worried about her getting shot like i would during the day....do you track with you dog on a leash or do you let them go?


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## bobman (Sep 26, 2009)

judgement and the fact your GSPs are well trained and come when called mean a lot.

I bell the dog at night then leave the harness on and take the leash off in spots like that. 

Then whoa and put the leash back on in the areas its practical. 

You dont want the dog running off and losing you as you know they can cover ground way faster than you and you dont want the dog jumping the deer and running it out of sight.

My old male would drag them down and hold them for me

If you want to get fancy the next step is to teach them to speak then teach them to do so at the deer

I told you is was a simple thing for them to learn


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## Luke0927 (Sep 26, 2009)

Yep i put the bell on her....I thought about putting a beeper on her so i could here her.....you've taught them to bark when they found them?


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## wildlands (Sep 26, 2009)

Luke I look at it as a personel choice. I work mine on leash and go in the thick stuff with her on leash. Usually the only time I drop the lead is when she is at a check (turn, lost trail) and doing a lot of circleling looking for the trail. As soon as she picks it back up I pick the lead up and  off we go. As Bobman stated a well trained dog you can do this with. Mine has a tendence when she is focused in on something to block the world out and that includes me. She is so focused on the track that she does not see anything. I keep a shock collar on her but only for the vibrate. If she gets free or loss on track and not wanting to listen I can hit the vibrate and it is like "oh you talking to me". I have been down on all four crawling through stuff I just knew no deer could have gone through but we would find blood.  I also like the leash so that you can see the sign that the dog is following so that you can make the call to keep tracking or back oout and wait. Also with a young dog just starting tracking you have to worry about them deciding that it is more fun to track hot scent instead of an old cold trail. On lead you can correct them off there is the chance they will ignore you and stay after what ever it is. 

As far as the air scenting do not worry about that. As long as the dog worked the main part of the track with its nose down and only picked it up once it was down wind of the deer I would not worry. A dog that will do both is a very good dog.  

Ken


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## irocz2u (Sep 26, 2009)

i  use a tracking coller  on  my blood  hound  she  wont bark


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## bobman (Sep 26, 2009)

Luke0927 said:


> Yep i put the bell on her....I thought about putting a beeper on her so i could here her.....you've taught them to bark when they found them?



Yes first you teach them to speak on command at home just like a parlor trick 

then once they will speak on command  you move it to the yard making them sit and speak when they get to the end of the drag to get a chumk of hot dog

then its just repetition like all of it, basically your teaching it to bark when its found the deer,a pretty natural thing for a dog

the downside is sometimes they will bark at you when your eating something and they are begging

its a handly thing in the woods at night though

I've done it with a shepard/ lab cross and GSP's

IF you have a dog that will ignore your here command I would not let ot off leash. 

I think in Germany they teach the dog to return to you with a small piece of wood in its mouth when they find the down animal ( the wood is suspended on  a string from their collar)

I have no clue how they train that but I think its cool


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## SneekEE (Sep 26, 2009)

I have a black lab and he will track the deer as i follow. If he looses me, he will come back to me, then i follow untill he looses me again. Eventualy we end up at a dead deer.


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## bobman (Sep 26, 2009)

Labs make great tracking dogs... they are just good dogs period 

I love labs


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## daisy102998 (Nov 3, 2009)

I used a rat terrier.  They run back and forth between the blood spots and me.  It like they say look at what I found!!!  Mine do track deer just blood


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