So let’s start with the story about the deer in the picture. The deer was shot yesterday evening with a recurve bow. The hunter hit it really far back in the hindquarter and decided immediately to let it lay overnight. The tricky part to this track though was that after the deer ran off….a big group of pigs ran into the field and Robin Hood started laying ‘em down. He said that shooting that recurve they didn’t even know what was happening and he smoked three before he ran out of arrows. We were very, very fortunate that all of the pigs were on the exact opposite side of the stand from the deer and none of the pigs ran very far. Still though, they left huge piles of blood in several spots on that side of his lock on. What was cool about today’s track was that I got to see the true power of Otis’s nose in this situaton. Once he gets it completely linked up with his brain and everything that’s going on, he’s gonna be a sho nuff good little deer tracker. More on that in a minute.

We started tracking around 9:00 this morning. Since there was so much blood from the pigs we decided to loop Otis way around it and start tracking about 100 yards down the field edge where the hunter saw the buck run. The hunter was tucked inside the woodline of a large foodplot and couldn’t see exactly where the buck had entered the woods as it ran toward the other end. He just knew a general area and had found zero blood to go by. For that reason, Otis and I had to start the track out running the edge of the wood line to try and cross the path the buck had taken. Here’s where I saw the true power of Otis’s nose in action. As Otis was making some loops trying to pick up the scent trail I felt the wind shift and blow directly from the area where the pig massacre had taken place. Immediately I saw Otis put his nose up the air and start bobbing it like you see a deer doing sometimes. Here he went headed toward that area with all the hog blood... nose bobbing the whole way like he had found something and he was going to it. The hunter said “Wow, he smells all that pig blood over there and is headed right to it.” I was just as amazed but at the same time afraid that it was about to spoil our whole tracking adventure.

I beeped Otis’s collar and he came right back. I told the hunter I was going to take Otis a little deeper in the woods so we could get away from that area and see if we could pick up the scent trail there. Sure enough, we got off the field edge deeper into the woods and had made a couple sweeps across this holler we were in when Otis lit out on the trail. He lit out so intently on it that he actually ran right past the deer. It was only another 75-100 yards from where he picked up the scent and he was tracking so fast that he didn’t check up for 50 yards past the deer before he threw on the brakes and realized he had done something wrong. There was a doe running right with the buck and I think he may have just kept running that line until he realized it wasn’t the same deer that was wounded. I walked right past the dang thing myself too. Otis started circling again but of course never picked back up a scent line since we had passed the deer. I told the hunter, I said “I know he was on the scent but something happened and he lost it right here….let’s turn around and restart back where he originally picked it up”. We hadn’t made it 50 yards on our backtrail when the hunter said….”There is he is right there!….We ran right past him!” Sure enough, he was hiding behind some trees and Otis was tracking so fast that ran right past him before he knew it. Hopefully that was a good learning experience for him and he’ll learn not to get so excited in the future that he gets ahead of himself like that. He not doing too bad though for a puppy his age…..especially for just an ol’ hog dog.