CNC Tracking

So a few folks have been asking me about how much I’m going to charge for tracking services. We had a discussion a while back discussing what everyone thought was fair and after taking that into consideration along with some economics…….this is what I’ve finally decided on.

For now since Otis is still young I’m not going to charge a price for simply coming out. However, if we make contact with the deer then there will be a $100 finder’s fee……and if we put the deer on the tailgate the fee with be $150. Just to be upfront about it, eventually there is going to be a charge assessed for “showing up”. I just don’t feel comfortable charging folks for that right now though until Otis gets some more experience under his belt and I have full confidence in him.

Also, for allowing me to use the forum to reach such a mass of hunters…….the finder’s fee on the first deer found for an aldeer member with be given back to the forum. I sure hope we can get on one opening weekend of bowseason for one of you guys. Me and Otis are both chomping at the bit ready to go.

Good business right there. Hope I don't need your services this year,but if I do,I'll definitely be in touch with you!!

What is your service area going to be?

x2

I'm going to mainly track within a 50 mile radius of Macon Co but I will still travel furtber once I know Otis is ready for any situation we come across. I'm thinking I'll just have a mileage fee for anything over 50 miles.....maybe somethimg like a $1 per mile out to 100 miles.

I'll bring this thread back up again when it gets a little closer to the start of the season to remind everyone and get the info from the mods of where to send the money. C'mon bow season!!!!

One thing you may want to consider is contacting some of your local schools that do the fundraiser hunts. I know the one I help with here in Luverne, there are wounded deer daily, and all within a reasonable distance of one another. We are always scrambling to find a tracking dog around so if you could be "on call" that would probably ensure you some work.

That's a good idea....Thanks! It seems like there may be a hunt like that in Bullock Co as well. I may be wrong though.

Do any of you guys know somewhere in Montgomery or Auburn that can attach an engraved info tag onto my GPS tracking collar? I would like to have my contact info on Otis's collar just in case something ever went wrong. Right now I have the info on a normal collar that was given to me at a tracking convention in GA. I would like to have it on his GPS collar as well though. You never know what might happen one day....

I was an instructor at that convention/seminar in Ga. & I will vouch for Otis & his handlers work. With a little practical experience he will be top notch. I would say offer him a little tip for "just coming out" because I believe Otis will "account" for your deer if nothing else. As for myself, I still can travel the two hours to the Dothan area to track, mostly after Ga. season ends on January 10th, 2016. 229-225-9901

Gundogsupply.com for a couple of dollars sell engraved plates that you can attach with hammer with supplied rivets.

Thanks!....I appreciate you saying that. How's your mountain cur pup coming along? He's a t.v. star now isn't he?

I will check them out.....Thanks!

Got two of them on the way. They were only $1.25 each. Thanks again!

Just read Ron Jolly's article on CNC and Otis in American Frontiersman magazine. Good stuff.

If your GPS transmitter can be attached to any collar, Orvis sells a heavy duty nylon collar engraved with the dog's name and your phone number.

I've got it taken care of now. Thanks though. Otis and I are ready for Oct 15. Two more weeks!

Opening day is upon us fellas......Wooo! Hoooo!!!

Something to getchie all keyed up!

Classics!

When I first moved to south Alabama I lived just outside of Loachapoka...which is actually just right outside of Auburn. Back then I use to get out and ride the dirt roads all the time and I'd occasionally stop and talk to folks about hunting land.

One day I'm driving down this dirt road not too far from the house and I see this guy out in his yard piddling around. I pulled in a started hee-hawing with him about hunting and this and that. We walked into his cabin and he started showing me all these deer he had killed over the years...some really nice ones....one giant 8 pt. Anyways, after about 15-20 minutes he asks me "You ever seen Outdoors with TK and Mike?" I say "Yeah man I love those vidoes."......He replies "Well, this is where the first video was filmed."

He could tell I was giving him that look of getting ready to call bullchit when he says "Remember the brown truck? There it still sits. There's the oak tree where we filmed the grunt call scene. That little field down there is where we filmed the black powder hunt....and so on and so on. I was like "Holy chit, it really is where TK and Mike was filmed!"

I thought that was the coolest thing. I had been watching those videos since I was a kid and just to randomly pull up in that driveway and see all that stuff from the original video was neat. The guy that lived there was actually in the video as well. He was the one showing them how to rattle with the big arse set of rattling horns. He still had those just laying in a pile of antlers on his back porch. I think his name was Hal if I remember correctly.

haha That is awesome! I would have never believed someone either without seeing the proof. We use to watch those videos in our Agriculture class in high school, I think I've seen about everyone of them. It's hard to find good clean comedy like that now. By the way, what is your cell number, just in case I need some help this year?

(334-421-1811).....My name is Harold. If I'm out on another track I'll have my phone put up so leave me a message or send me a text and I'll call you back. This is me and my Slovensky Kopov....Otis. Got a "Sadie" coming in the spring.

I thought this was a cool pic of Otis. Not too many folks are familiar with this breed.....Slovensky Kopov. I'd never even heard of it before getting into tracking. He's a got a funny stature but its actually very suited to his task. His little arse is fast and athletic for a small dog.

Face of a rottweiler, body of a wiener dog. He's pretty and I'm ready to see some pictures of him with a few deer!

Beautiful Dog just looked the breed up.

The Slovenský kopov (translated into English as Slovakian Hound) is a medium-sized breed of hunting dog of the scenthound type. The breed originated in Slovakia, in Central Europe, and is bred for boar hunting. The name Black Forest Hound seems to have been created in North America for marketing purposes, since the breed has no connection with the Black Forest.

Hog Dog!!!

He looks like a cross between a Dachshund and a Beagle.
One of these days I'm going to get a Wired-haired Dachshund excellent for tracking.

Me and you both. I'm waiting on point for the first call to come in. I figure with this front coming in their ought to be some blood hitting the ground Sat and Sun. I was thinking about driving to the hunting club and trying it myself. That would guarantee that someone would call.

Thanks!....Yep his breed was originally used as a hog dog in Eastern Europe. They're not really that well known in the US because the Slovs were apparently very, very picky about exporting any. I think they wanted to have complete control over manipulating the breed to be what they wanted it to be. Over there they are strictly working dogs. From the videos I've seen they still do it old school style where folks are blowing horns and chit before they head out on a hunt. Something like what you would think of with a fancy fox hunt.

Folks have started using them in more recent times for trackers. They use them up in Canada to track bear and moose. He's a super smart dog and acts exactly like what you read when you see the descriptions of them on the net. Here's one more pic of Otis. You can really see the Ol' hound dog in him when you look at him straight in the face. He's fifty pounds on the dot which is about the breed standard. I'd like get a couple pounds off of him for tracking. Both of Otis's parents were imported from Slovakia.

Check out this group of Kopovs killing this hog.

Kopov Video

I think you should do this before every track job...just to let the people know you are a little crazy and take this very seriously.

Beautiful pup by the way! Excited to hear about the first track job of the year and following Otis through the season.

Ha! Yeah that would be awesome!......I need some kind of big arse rams horn or something. I'd probably have the folks I was tracking for so nervous that they wouldn't go out into the woods in the dark with me.

See, all that waiver of liability mumbo-jumbo could have been avoided all along. It'd be just you and Otis out there doing work.

I won’t even say anything about it beforehand. I’ll just wait until right before we get ready to track then pull the sheep horn out on ’em…….scream like a banshee.....and then cut Otis loose. The look on their faces would be classic!

First call of the season just came in! Headed out........

Shoot yeah! Good luck! Will be waiting for updates.

...in for pics

Swwwwwing and a miss. Didn’t find it. I don’t think the hunter put a killin shot on the deer. There was a little blood on the arrow but it didn’t really look like “good” blood. Absolutely zero blood on the ground anywhere. They had already been looking for a good while before I got there. Otis got on a trail and was showing confidence like he had something but it just never panned out. We made loops for a couple hours trying to pick up a trail but nothing. Luckily for me though this particular group of hunters were a bunch of coon arses straight up out of Nawlins. They brought along a bunch of skrimp fresh out the gulf too and invited me to stay for supper. Damn that was good……

With the south zone finally getting ready to kick off this weekend I thought I would throw something out there for anyone who is interested. This only being Otis’s second tracking year, I still need to get him on some easy finds as well as the true lost ones. He’s ready to start working those harder tracks this year but I really need to put him on 2 or 3 easy ones here up front. If anyone around me is interested, I will make you a deal. If you shoot a deer over the next week or two that you know you’ve smoked or seen crash 100 yards away…..if you’ll allow me to bring Otis out and put him on that track then I’ll come back later on and track your next true lost deer for free with no finder's fee. This is for anyone within say 50 miles of Macon Co…..I need 3 good tracks of 100-200 yards or so where you know the deer is there dead at the end. Thanks fellas. Good luck this weekend.

I think once Otis gets the hang of blood tracking….I’m going to work with him on doubling as a skwerl dog. He’s naturally wanted to do it since I’ve had him. It’s irritating the chit out him this morning that I won’t shoot whatever is up in that tree. He comes to me and then goes back over to the tree and points at it. We did have a chipmunk issue before he and I took a couple out. He thinks were suppose to get them all now. I just need to get some more dead deer in front of him and it’s over. He’s a hunter.

Y’all bear with me cause this is still a new venture for me but I’ve been giving some more thought toward my “fee” for coming out and tracking. I think this is what I’m ultimately going to go with

$50 to come out
$100 if deer is located
$150 if deer is put on tailgate

For right now I’m going to just wave the $50 fee for coming out until I feel more comfortable with Otis’s experience and maturity. I’ll just play that by ear as we go on more tracks. Right now I'm very pleased with how he’s doing. To clarify the difference in put on the tailgate versus located…..on about half of the calls that trackers are called on, the deer is found but its not fatally wounded and never recovered. These deer would be considered located but not put on the tailgate.

Most of you probably already saw this pic but I wanted to add it to my thread since it was Otis’s first find of the season.

Well, Otis ended up getting to help a kid find his first deer this morning after the young man hitting the deer really far back yesterday evening. It doesn’t get much better than this.

CNC and Otis to the rescue!

Here’s the story to go with the pics. There wasn’t a whole lot to it really. We might have tracked it 300 yards or so. The deer was shot in the hind quarter up into the back of the guts. It was putting off some blood that they could very slowly track but the buck was zig zagging all over the place and making it so hard for them to follow that they pulled off of it last night. After going back this morning I think the grandad was just getting really anxious and wanted to call in a tracking dog to be sure they found it for his grandson. It was actually an awesome track to get Otis on because he had to dig a little for this one but not so much to make him give up or get frustrated. The buck had gone part of the way across an open grass field and it made Otis have to put his nose down in the grass and really hunt being a 17-18 hr old track in that setting. I worked him most of the way on lead on this one because we were pretty close to a road. I cut him loose toward the end but we were nearly to the deer when I did. The little man is only 7 years old and this was the first deer he had ever shot at.

Congrats Harold!

Thanks!.....I think it's really just about to get started. A lot of folks will be in the woods this coming weekend.

Love reading about Otis. Love that pic of him sitting down and looking up the tree too.

Thanks AC......This is more fun than hunting to me. I'm ready to get on another one.

congrats, nothing like watching a good tracking dog work out a track.

Good job guys!

Thanks Troy….Gatorbait……I think Otis knows what’s going on now. I left the tailgate down on my truck yesterday when we got home after I had unloaded things. This morning when I took Otis out, he played around for a minute then ran over to the truck, jumped up in the back and got in his kennel that he rides in to tracks. I walked over and he just sat in there looking at me with the door to the kennel wide open like “C’mon! Shut the door and let’s go!”

Otis made the hometown newspaper! Special thanks to the editor.

Link

great write up

Nice article

Ya'll need to get a trackers list to all the processors and taxidermist, need to have the contact information out there.

Thanks fellas.....I thought the author did a really nice job as well.

Timbercruiser.....I've got cards at the local processors here close to me. I still need to get some to the guy down in Hurtsboro though. I don't think I'm even going to hunt this weekend. Hopefully I'll get some tracking calls this and have another story to tell......but in the mean time I may just go around to the local hunting clubs Saturday, introducing myself and handing out cards about the time folks come out of the woods.

Well…..Otis and I had a good run going there for a minute but we had a track bring us back down to earth tonight. The call came in about 7:15. The hunter reported that they had shot a pretty decent buck with a .308 and they could only find a little bit of blood where the buck had exited the field. They said that had only gone a short ways out into the woods without finding anymore blood before they decided to call in a dog. Otis and I loaded up and headed to meet them.

I arrived and as I got my snake boots on and my tracking gear loaded up in their Ranger, we discussed the shot a little more and their attempts to find the deer. It turns out that they had actually searched for the deer for the last couple hours with 5 people and a yard dog before calling in tracker. This was Otis’s first night run on true lost deer. We had run training lines at night in the past but not yet on a real track. It being dark didn’t seem to bother him at all but all the searching before we got there really threw him for a loop on this one. I started him out on lead to give him a minute to get his excitement under control and eventually cut him loose.

He started out pulling strong and tracking with confidence where the deer had exited the field. He led us off the hill about 75 yards into a little bottom but it became apparent after a few minutes that he was following the trails of the searchers. We would run a trail out 50 yards or so with confidence and then he would lose the scent. At that point Otis would turn around….back track…and pick up on another line. We repeated down 5-6 trails and then I decided just to cut him off lead and let him run. He made several more attempts circling out from me but he was just tracking in circles and he never could work through where the searchers had been. He eventually starting losing his motivation and after about 45 minutes to an hour of searching I decided to call it off. Just now making it back home and thought I’d write the story while it was fresh on my brain.

I really hate that we weren’t able to work our way through that one because Otis was hunting hard. That’s just part of training a young dog though. Learning the work through an area where hunters have been grid searching is going to take a little time. We had found three in a row before that one. It was still a good experience for both of us. On to the next track!

Another call came in this afternoon about an hour after dark. The hunter stated that one of their hunting club member’s little boy shot his first deer this afternoon just before dark with a .243….. It was a basket rack buck and being his first deer they think he just aimed for dead center of the body. The deer took off out of the field and only ran a short distance before they saw it go down. They went to get the truck to load the deer up and when they came back the buck was gone. They started searching for it and couldn’t locate any blood to track by. Not too far into the search they jumped him up and watched the buck disappear into some thick stuff. They decided after this to go back to camp and give the deer some time. This is when they called me and after talking it over we’ve decided to give the deer overnight and meet up in the morning. The hunter on the phone said that he is almost sure that it’s a straight up gut shot. It sounds to me like the deer is hurt pretty good and wanting to bed up so I don’t figure it’ll go far if we don’t push him. As long as we give it some time I think we’ll find it dead in the morning within 200-300 hundred yards.

To be continued……………….

Good luck! Hope you find him

Thanks! I sure don't want to count my chickens before they hatch working a young dog.... but I feel like we'll be able to find this one.

Update?

Hoping for good news!

And now……the rest of the story.

I’ll cut right to the ending and save the suspense. After tracking it for about 600+ yards we determined that the deer wasn’t hit quite like they thought it was and was probably still alive. I misunderstood the story a little last night. The deer had only went a few yards after the shot and dropped. They had actually walked over to the deer and shined a light on it thinking it was down for the count. They went back to get the truck and when they came back it was gone. They thought they heard it down in the bushes but wasn’t for sure. They didn’t jump it up and see it a second time like I had originally thought.

We put Otis on the track and it was slow at first . He was picking up on scent but the line was old from last night with likely very little wounded scent. We tracked it about 150-200 yards off into a creek bottom where I think the buck must have bedded up there for part of the night. The reason I think that is because once we got into the creek bottom Otis picked up on good scent and started running a direct line with great confidence. He took us down the creek bottom a little ways, then back up out of it and across a freshly burned clear cut. The hunter stated that where he was headed was where the buck had originally come from and where they had been getting picks of him....so it makes sense that he would head that direction. We made it about 400 yards across the clear cut and started back into the woods again when we decided to call it off. We were only a couple hundred yards at that point from a major roadway with heavy traffic and the line was headed straight at it. After putting Otis in his kennel we all spread out and grid searched the area just to give it one more shot…..but no luck.

We all talked it over and think that maybe it was actually a grazing spine shot instead of gut shot. I don’t think and unpressured gut shot would have made it as far as we tracked this deer. Gut shot deer also don’t tend to go down right away and lay motionless on the ground like this one did. That tends to be a shocked spine. Overall I was very pleased with how Otis worked the line. It took him a minute to get going but once he picked up on good scent then he was on it like stink on chit.

I probably need to get Otis on a simple 100-150 yard run to a deer for this next outing if any of you guys close by knock something down. I'm pleased with how he's progressing along. I just want to be sure to keep him motivated and not let these unsuccessful runs discourage him.

I need to do the same with Gunner

I downloaded this morning’s track onto the Garmin Basestation program on my computer to watch Otis’s track playback. It’s pretty cool to be able to watch a replay of everything we both did. It’s really easy to see when Otis lost the scent and when he was right on it or when he was initially casting out in circles. In the woods he was working 50-100 yards out in front of me a lot of times so I couldn’t see him. On the computer though, you can see him over run the scent….loop back around, pick it up and move on. Pretty neat dog collar. Measuring on a straight line and not counting all of his loops and such…..we actually tracked that deer around 850 yards…..or just shy of a half mile.

What kind of dog do you have?

Choc lab. His last 2 tracks were next to nothing blood.

I had a “bad” track on Sunday that I never wrote a story about. There wasn’t much too it really. Pretty sure it was just a clean miss. You guys I’ve tracked for don’t take that description offensively. Some tracks just have very low probabilities of finding the deer from the get go and the trackers I’ve talked to often refer to them as bad tracks.

It was a little after 9:00 am on Sunday morning. I had just left the house to go riding around handing out more cards to hunters when I got the call. It was a small group of older gentlemen that I had just met the day before. One of them told me that he had shot a doe on his walk back to camp and wanted to know if I wanted to put Otis on her for practice. I was only 3 or 4 miles down the road from them at the time and I said heck yeah I’ll be there in 5 minutes.

When I got there he tells me that he thinks he hit her but isn’t really for sure. He said the deer jumped and took off out of the road and that was all he saw. It was a really thick understory, so straight down the road was all you could see. After doing a little searching, we couldn’t locate any sign of a hit where the deer was standing or where it had exited in the brush. As were searching the hunter and I talk a little more. It turns out he had just had a stroke not too long ago and he was a little shaky from it. We’re talking about someone not far from being 80 probably. The shot was also a free handed shot from around 75 yards. This may have ended up a “bad” track but I still enjoyed meeting these old men and hanging out with them for awhile. They were just enjoyable to talk to. One of the other older gentlemen asks the shooter while were searching for blood….”Elmer, you think it could have been standing on down the road down here?”……Elmer replies…..”Hell naw, I know it wasn’t down there….I can’t see that far.”

I decided to turn Otis loose anyways and see if he picked up on anything. They hadn’t done any searching, so if it was hit he had a fresh, clean line to follow. I let him search and circle for about 10-15 minutes before just calling it off. He never acted like he hit on anything. We all agreed that it was probably just a miss and I rode on.

I took matters into my own hands this evening and got Otis on one of those easy tracks I was looking for. Ready to go after the hard tracks again now.......

I got an update today on this track from earlier in the week. The deer was finally found due to buzzards. We had tracked it a half mile before pulling off of the track as it approached a major roadway with heavy traffic. The hunters called me today and told me that we were right on it….we just stopped about 100-150 yards short. That ones on me and not the dog. He was tracking that deer like a champ but after tracking for over 800 yards we all thought that the deer wasn’t hit as good as they had expected and called it off as we were getting close enough to the road to see traffic in the distance. It's nice to know that we were right on it though and Otis was doing what he was supposed to.

I didn’t want to keep hi-jacking the LFTT thread too bad with my tracking stories so I’ll post this here. It’s bothering me to not have put this one on the tailgate today. Almost like letting a deer of my own get away. It may be best that we didn’t get into another bay situation with that deer though. That kind of situation is going to take some getting used to….it’s unnerving. It all just happens so quick and so close when you’re in the thick stuff like we were in. Below is crude sketch of what the buck did to us and why we had a hard time getting Otis back on the track. The top of the pic is the ridge we came off of into the creek bottom. The green is a food plot and the tan line a hunting club road….blue the creek….and the red line the bucks trail.

When we originally crossed the creek following the buck we had to loop around about 50-75 yards up creek (left of pic) at a better crossing spot. Otis followed with us and then got back on the track after we crossed. What we didn’t know at the time was that the buck was just lying in the bushes on the other side of the creek from where we originally came up to it. Otis bayed him right on the side of the creek for a moment but then the buck bounded back across the creek and went right back the way he came from. It was so thick that you couldn’t see really what happened other than a giant buck all of sudden emerged from a thicket like a flying unicorn. Me and the hunter both thought that he went on down the creek. I never gave Otis time to run the deer after he broke bay. I just beeped him to me and we regrouped. Both me and the hunter were really surprised that the buck was still alive.

I sure will be glad when Otis and I both get past this training period. This learning curve thing sucks.

My humble opinion......'whistle break' Otis so that you can immediately call him off a track at any point. Then, when faced with this situation, let him run the deer to presure him to bay. The deer was obviously not wounded badly enough to expire in a timely matter and needed to be put down.

You can call him off if you make the determination that he cannot stop the deer.

He’s trained to come to a whistle and the GPS collar he wears also has a beeper on it that I can trigger from my handheld unit. He knows to come back to me when the collar beeps. I can pull him right off of running a deer like the one we came upon today…he’s responding well to that. That’s the third live one I’ve pulled him off with no issue. We went from tracking to instant bay though today. Otis was originally tracking about 100-125 yards in front of us but when he came to the creek, he waited up on us and was a little anxious to cross on his own. After we went around and got across in a better spot…Otis went back ahead of us and hadn’t even made it out to 30-40 yards or so when he let loose baying. The buck had gotten up out of a thicket right along side the creek and immediately squared off on us. We were right in behind Otis and didn’t see the buck until we were already within 10 yards or so. Nasty thick along the little creek we were on. Otis was within feet of him before he knew it. For the brief moment the buck was squared off Otis didn’t seem to be trying to grab him....but he was really close upon him though. I think it startled all parties involved. Its one of the reasons we took a minute to regroup.

We fully expected to find the deer dead. Two hunters bow hunting close together had actually watched the deer bed twice after the shot the evening before. They had left him in the second bed at dark and snuck out hoping that he would be there in the morning. They had really only called me because it was a friend of mine’s hunting club close to my house and we thought we would get Otis some work. Couldn't believe he was still alive 17 hrs later. The arrow was coated with gut slime.

Just to add a little more detail to the story. The buck actually wasn't in the bed where they had left him the evening before. He had gotten up again during the night and made it 300-400 yards to the creek where he bedded up a again.

I really enjoy reading these stories

Thanks!.....Hopefully I’ll have one with a happy ending soon. Me and Otis both are getting better and better with every track though. I feel a lot more comfortable now knowing how to approach a track and how Otis should work, etc…..He’s still young at 19 months and does a lot of stuff typical for young tracking dogs but it won’t be too much longer before these learning tracks are behind us. The rest of this season will be spent getting him as much experience as I can. He’ll be a much more mature dog next year and that’ll be when things really start to get good.

I went out on yesterday’s track for free still and to get Otis the experience. However, after tracking down the deer and finding him still alive….the hunter paid me for the effort anyways. This was one where I didn’t argue with them about it too much. I took the money to town today and upgraded my equipment with a boot dryer. It seems to be working pretty good. We’ve went from completely saturated to about dry now in a couple hours time. Just about ready to go again.

Today’s call actually came in last night about 9:30…..It just so happened to come in during the 5 minutes when I walked outside to take the garbage to the road and I went to bed not even knowing it. I texted the guy back around 6:30 this morning and he told me to come on that they had one down. This was actually a landowner I had tracked for earlier in the season. The earlier track was a nice 3 year old 10 pt that we found on the youth hunt for the landowner’s little boy. This track was for another young hunter’s first buck as well but it was the son of the landowner’s friend. The track took place right on the banks of one of Alabama’s major rivers. Just for the sake of keeping location private….I won’t say which one.

We had talked about this over the phone but when I got there the hunter went over with me again the story of what happened the evening before. A young ten-year-old boy had shot his first buck just before dark and they suspected that he either hit it really low or hit it really far forward in the brisket. They estimated that they had tracked the deer around 800 yards the night before in a big semi circle… having jumped the deer at least once and more than likely twice. They had good blood for a distance and then it would peter out….pick it up again, peter out….one of those kinds of tracks. They also reported finding small chunks of guts or some type matter on the briars as they tracked. After having tracked the deer a long ways and believing they had jumped him a second time….they called off the search late last night and decided to bring in a dog.

Since they had tracked so far already……we started Otis a couple hundred yards from where they had called off the search. Otis took off searching with good enthusiasm and doing a decent job working through the search area. This is still where he struggles though being so young. To him, he smells scent lines meandering in all different directions where the searchers have been searching back and forth across the real line. It seems so simple to us to look and see blood but he’s not using his eyes at all….its a nose driven search. Depending on the given day or track he may go anywhere from 5-20 minutes through this maze of scent line before he runs back to my feet and gives me the “I don’t know” signal. This is exactly what happened today. Before we could work through the search zone….he came back to me confused as what to do.

To help Otis work through this, I asked the hunters to show me exactly where they called off the search last night and didn’t go any farther. After watching them search themselves for 5-10 minutes for where they broke the branch marking the spot…… I asked them just to give me a general idea. I was going to arc out around the area to see if Otis could locate the clean line. (Take some toilet paper with you fellas. Drop it any and everywhere you think is an important location we might need to relocate later on.) So Otis and I started to arc out around the search zone about 100 yards past where they had given up. Not far into the arc Otis hit the scent line and went with it. Once he made it out to around 60-70 yards I started slowly easing in behind him. He worked this line at a nice moderate pace. He tracked on a pretty direct line but I never had to get over a normal walk to keep up. The farthest he made it ahead of me was around 130 yards.

After we had gone around 400-500 yards I noticed on the GPS that Otis had stopped in front of me and was on something. As I approached though and I emerged out of the thicket we were in, I could see that we had actually ran right smack dab into the river. As I was walking, I also noticed under my feet that there was a good amount of fresh blood on the trail Otis had run. When I got to Otis he was at the edge of the water on a little slough of the river. He was going in and out of the water but hesitant to go any farther. The blood verified what had happened, leading right down to the water’s edge.

It was looking a little bleak at this point. All signs pointed to the deer going into the river one way or the other. He could have either swam 50 yards across the head end of the drainage we were on to another point of woods on our side of the river…or he headed out to sea in which case the search was likely over. We worked back around the back end of the slough and came around to the banks on the other side. Sure enough, the deer had swam the slough and came up the bank on the point of the other side. Otis picked back up on the trail and we were off again. The deer ran right down the bank of the river never getting more than 10 yards or so off of it. Otis had just worked out ahead of me to about 100 yards again when I saw on the GPS that he had stopped on something. I was hopeful but hesitant because at this point the deer has made it a mile and a half from the original shot and it looked like he was probably river bound. I was also preparing to deal with a live deer at any moment.

As I topped the hill I could see down into the next holler where Otis had stopped. There was a good sized oak tree with a broad crown that had fallen right at the water’s edge. Otis was cautiously pacing around it. I think him and I are both a little gun shy after that last one jumped up on us at close range. By the time I made it to him, Otis had already committed to going into the tree top and was chewing on the deer when I got there. Lot of fist bumping and high fiving broke loose. Several happy hunters.

The deer had been shot really low in the guts. Just below where the brown hair meets the white hair…..so were talking really low. The young boy had caught just enough of it though that it ripped a hole in its belly and the guts basically started falling out. There was a balloon sized ball of guts hanging down from the deer. He was dead when we found him but he hadn’t been dead very long. He was still very warm on the inside and you could see at least two different beds in the tree top where he had moved around.

All in all, this was a great track for everyone. It was an awesome track for Otis to have to work through but still end up finding the prize at the end. I hate it when he puts forth a lot of effort and does well but we don’t end up recovering a deer. It’s part of it and not so bad when you’ve got and old dog that understands tomorrow is another day, Training a young dog though, I really hope to be able to spur on his drive with each and every track. The only downside to this track was that I left my camera in the truck and relied on the landowner to text me the pictures he took with his phone. I haven’t gotten them yet and I think he may have forgotten. I’ll have to call him back in the morning and see if I can’t get us one to go along with the story. The buck was a little 1-2 year old 6 pt. One of the most awesome things about this tracking gig is that the deer was just as exciting to find as if it had been a booner.

Well……let’s hang the boots up on the boot dryer and get ready to go again!

Congrats! Sounds like you and Otis are coming along.

Way to go Otis and Co! Sounds like a great find!

That's awesome. You might have to invest in a pair of hip boots

Nice job Otis!

Great read thanks for posting... Sounds like Otis is coming along really really well... That's got to be a great feeling to help kids find their first deer, Otis and CNC...this Bud's for you... Congrats

That's great! It sounds like you've done a fine job with Otis and him with you!

Good job guy. Keep up the good tracking

Thanks fellas!....

I think Otis is coming along really well for a dog his age. I feel like today’s track was one of his best learning experiences yet. He learns quickly and I can tell it from track to track. I watched him approach that tree top today and you could tell that he knew better than just to run in on the deer now cause it may not be dead.

You da man Otis!

A young dog needs all the work he an get. The part about not screwing up the scent trail should be a thing for all to remember.

Awesome story, congrats to all involved

Congrats on another successful recovery!

Thanks!....Hopefully with the south zone opening back up, it won't be long before we get to go again. Dang weather is horrible though.

I got us a pic to go along with the story. The deer was found hiding in the tree top you see in the background. You can’t tell it but the water’s edge is only a foot or two out of the pic to the left. I snapped Otis on his leash and the little man asked me if he could walk Otis out of the woods. I told him heck yeah. You could tell the whole experience was almost larger than life to him at the moment. Him and his dad both were still smiling from ear to ear when I left. The landowner made the comment while we were taking pics….”That little boy will remember this for the rest of his life.”…. He right too. That’s pretty cool to be a part of.

Great thing you're doing for those kids, CNC!

That is pretty cool ...that lil fellow will tell that story the rest of his life .

Pretty work Otis!

Good work! I like reading these stories.

That's awesome for all parties involved.

JR

Great job!!

I really appreciate all the comments. I’m glad everyone is enjoying the stories. I hope they not only entertain everyone but I also hope that they’re able to serve as learning experiences for everyone to draw from. So often times after the shot the stories end with 50 yards of sign to track and then nothing more after that then wondering what happened. These stories will hopefully shed a little more light on how deer react to different shots and what we can do to be more successful in recovering them. Below is a closer look at where this deer was shot. A couple of things could have been done differently that would have made this deer easier to recover.

The main one would have been if the deer had not been pushed so far within an hour or two of the shot. If you start tracking a deer within an hour of the shot and you’ve followed it more than 200 yards without finding it……real consideration should start being given to backing out and waiting. Its likely a marginal hit and the deer will need to be given some time. We were really lucky yesterday that the deer wasn’t off in the river. There was really no need to have tracked the deer 800 yards the night before continuing to push the deer. After a few hundred yards of tracking, you know the deer isn’t hit in the major vitals and will need time.

The other thing that will help you find the deer if you decide to bring in a dog, is to try and leave a reasonably clean scent line for the dog to follow. Don’t take 3 or 4 or your buddies out there with you to blood trail the deer and stomp all through the woods. Track it alone or with one other person and be deliberate about where all you walk. If the blood trail peters out, mark it and be conservative about how you proceed ahead. Just keep in mind that the more loops you make and the farther ahead you go “blindly”….then the more the dog will have to work through to locate the real line. If 3 or 4 folks have grid searched for 200-300 yards ahead of last blood then it I will nearly leave me with no other choice than trying to make a big arc around the search area and hope we run across the clean scent line. On the other hand, if it were only one person tracking and they had just backed out after losing blood….then the dog would probably never miss a beat as it passed where you stopped. Just some things to keep in mind if you yank the shot on that big one and you really want to find him.

Good info. Keep up the great work CNC

It always seems to help explain any concept if you can include a visual aid. I used Paint to make a crude sketch to reinforce what we were just talking about. This is the most difficult part of a track for any dog, especially the young ones. Even an old experienced dog is likely to have to check many of those false lines before figuring out where the real one exits the search area. It confuses a young dog and the more complicated it is….the more likely they are to give in to mental fatigue. An old dog knows that if they keep looking eventually they’ll work through it and their mature brains can work for an hour or more though this mess if need be. Its hard to predict how long a young dog might go….it varies with the given day and track.

Without this one obstacle, tracking with a dog would be pretty simple and straight forward. The more complicated the search area is muddled up though then the harder it is on any dog and tracker. An old experienced dog may be able to work through it eventually but it may mean spending an hour just trying to pick it out. Maybe they eventually do, maybe they don’t. It takes a really good dog will the experience of dealing with this situation over and over to pull it off. It’s going to be hard for that dog up the road that only goes on a few tracks a year to figure it out. It’s also going to be hard on any young dog until they get enough experience.

Just take this info and put in the back of your head. The rut is just around the corner and they’ll be a lot of marginal shots made on a lot of coveted bucks. We, the dog trackers, can find these deer for you in many instances. Below is one of the biggest obstacles that you put in our path though. If it wasn’t for this obstacle, many tracks would just be a straight run to the deer. If you make a bad shot on a buck and you really want to find the thing….then call us first, not last.

The X is the hit site and LB stands for “last blood”. The dashed lines are the false line made from searchers tracking back and forth across the real scent line.

Really interesting to follow the track. Cool sketch. Like the football analysts use on tv. Appreciate you sharing information with us. Neat stuff

Thanks!.....I think posting up this info will be mutually beneficial for all of us. I think folks will get a better idea of how deer are actually tracked with a dog, what is possible, and what can be done to improve the odds of finding their deer. In turn, it will make my job of finding these deer for you a lot simpler when you already know a little about dog tracking ahead of time. Something that I would really like folks to think about is that if you shoot that coveted buck you spent so much time hunting and really want to find him……be very conservative with how you approach your initial search for the deer. You can ask my buddy bwhunter who saw Otis run right to the gut shot buck at his club. Without the scent trail being muddled up, it becomes nothing more than following the dog. When the scent trail become muddled up really bad then it becomes a puzzle that we have to solve. Weigh your options. If you just shot that buck of a lifetime…..is it worth paying someone $100 bucks or so to bring a dog out to help improve your odds of recovering him? Look, I know that everyone is going to want to do an initial search but just keep it in the back of your mind….If all you did was shoot the deer and walk back to camp, a good dog will likely be able to track right to that deer 90% of the time, be it dead or still alive. It’s the actions of the hunter after the shot the decreases that percentage.

I seem to learn a little something new on every track and this last one was no different. Had I approached trying to loop out ahead of the search area in a little different fashion….I might have saved Otis and I a lot of wasted time searching in the wrong area. I assumed the deer continued on in a straight line down the creek instead of approaching it from the standpoint that the deer could have very well went in any direction….even backwards. That was a mistake on my part. The next time we run into this scenario where the scent line gets muddled down in the search area…..I’m going to back up a little ways off of last blood and begin to make my circle nearly on a backtrack. Had I done this the other day we might have picked back up on the scent line right off the bat.

We’re gonna get this tracking thing figured out eventually.

Good luck. Quite a few years ago, I shot a big buck. We found where he crossed the paved road. My buddy and I started following blood. We ended up on two separate blood trails, his going about a quarter of a mile in a semi-circle back in the direction of the road. My trail went practically in a straight line to the Northwest and petered out after about a half mile. Very confusing to this day.

If Otis ever gets scared or nervous while we’re here at home, he’ll run and hide behind my recliner. I guess that’s just where he feels safe and secure. I don’t think deer are much different. They have a core area that they can go to where they feel safe and secure just like Otis does. This is not just going off of my experience but what I’ve been told by other trackers as well….but many of these tracks end up leading in a circular pattern if you track the deer far enough. The deer often times may exit the hit area in one direction only to get out there a few hundred yards and begin to loop back to where they originally came from. They’re heading back to that safe spot to get behind the recliner. It’s pretty common also for there to be an abrupt change of direction….even backtracking along the deer’s original trail. I bet this is where many blood trails are lost. Its seems like as human trackers we are always trying to proceed in a straight line in front of us.

On my next tracks I need to work on making a cleaner more deliberate loop out around the search area to find the clean scent line. I’ve been way to sporadic with how I went about it….looping out to areas where I assumed the deer to go rather than just using the GPS to start at last blood and draw a clean circle on the screen. I’ve been doing a pattern that looked more like a turkey fan out ahead of last blood. I think this simpler pattern will also make it easier to click in Otis’s head and him realize how he can work this puzzle on his own. I think the sporadic search pattern I’ve been doing may just be confusing him a little. This is his biggest hurdle to get over right now. He runs the search area maze a little bit and then becomes uncertain what to do. Let's try this a little differently on the next run and see what happens.

have you worked Otis on really FUBARed practice tracks at home...where you can help him work em out to a good ending???

I see now that I did it on way too small of a scale and it just didn’t pose enough of a challenge for him. These real search areas are much larger sized circles and Otis just hasn’t figured out yet that he needs to work further out from it to work through it. He runs the maze inside the search area and then comes back to me. I guess I’ve never really paid it much attention since I wasn’t dog tracking before but I see how easy it would be for someone to track scent all over the place. When we blood trail deer on our own…..where do 99% of the people walk?......Right in behind the deer on the same exact path it took, stepping in blood and scent the entire way. They say as a dog gets older that it also learns to distinguish individual deer scents too like ones that come from between the toes. A that point it’s not just relying strictly on blood scent alone and using other scents as well to stay on the deer's trail. Eventually, hopefully this will help Otis be able to follow the deer on the correct path straight through the false lines.

training in real life situations is critical for success in the field.

I ran into this when working my K-9 Mal Taz. Night hunter ran from me one night, then bailed out of a moving vehicle. Quite comical seeing him bounce off the blacktop like he did. Then the alcohol numbed idiot decided to run into the woods. I had stopped right behind his running self, and sent Taz to apprehend(bite and hold) the idiot. She had sight on him and blasted into the windshield of the truck..once..twice..three times before I could grab her and throw her out the door.

I had assumed she KNEW how to get out of the truck..wrongly it turns out. She got the guy and all worked out (for the good guys) but I realized I had failed in my training.

We started the next day sending her on a bite FROM the truck. First time in training she hit the windshield again. LOL She got the hang of it next time and all was good to go.

try to think of EVERY dang situation ya'll might get into and train for it.

In hindsight, this scenario should have probably been a major focal point of training after I was done introducing the basics. Running a scent line is actually pretty simple and straight forward but the search area puzzle is a major challenge. I may try to see if I can recreate a better training situation for Otis to work through sometimes this week before we go on our next track.

I had to watch my Mal when tracking a person going into the wind, she would raise her head and air scent them...cutting corners isn't good in people tracking. So I'd set her tracks out going downwind so there was no air scent to follow...she HAD to keep that nose down. German Shepherd dogs don't "air scent" as bad as Mals do and usually make better trackers.

I turned a track down last night. I’m going to have to learn to be a little more diplomatic about it. I think it might have pissed them off a little. The optimism of the hunter seems to outweigh the reality of the situation sometimes though. This track was a good ways off and was going to take me over 2 hrs to get there or I might have tried it anyways since we’re still training. It just didn’t sound like a very high probability of recovery and had hints of what experienced trackers have described to me as “bad tracks”. The one positive sounding part of the story was that they were finding decent blood. The bad part about it though was when I asked how far they had tracked the deer….the guys answer was “Aw man whew! We’ve gone a good half mile or so at least. He’s made it up and down two big steep ravines and then crossed the road back up a big ditch bank. The spot where we lost blood was going back off into the next big ravine down by the water.”

I’m afraid they blew a leg off or either clipped the brisket low and the terrain didn’t sound like an area where I wanted to unsuccessfully chase a deer for a mile or two. They had tracked it a long ways and never reported having jumped the deer or came across a bed. If the deer hasn’t tried to bed up and you’ve gone over 800 yards, then I’d have to question how bad its really hurt. Leg hits are bad injuries but not immediate killing hits. The deer might eventually die but it won’t likely be due to the immediate injury. They reported finding drops of blood for a little ways then a small puddle…..drops of blood for a little ways and then another small puddle, etc..etc. The little puddles of blood are where the deer stops for a moment. The areas where there are only drops of blood are where the deer is on the move. I pictured the deer moving forward 50 yards then stopping….moving ahead another 50 yards then stopping.

After listening to the story I just had a gut feeling that this one wouldn’t turn out well so I chose not to make the long drive. When I get to the stage where I feel Otis is fully trained and I start charging a fee for “showing up”…..I may not be quite as picky about it. I’ll still be upfront with the person about what I think happened but if they want me to come anyways then I’ll likely give it a try. I can tell folks don’t like to be told…. “I think I’ll pass on this one.”

In my experience deer that are hit badly in the leg or shoulder will not attempt steep climbs. Or they will, but circle back down when they decide that it hurts too bad to be climbing.

Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe it was low and just barely caught skin in the armpit area behind the shoulder or possibly brisket in front of the legs. Not really sure. It just threw up a red flag when they reported tracking it for that kind of distance and never coming across a bed or jumping the deer. It didn’t sound like a deer that was about to die anytime soon and I was likely going to get into a bay situation even if we could locate it. This track was in an area of the state known for extreme terrain so after them talking about multiple “ravines” headed toward major water……I made the call to let this one go.

Call came into tonight and is scheduled for first thing in the morning. A good buck came out right at last light. The shot was pushing the 200 yards mark. Hunter is reporting finding good blood but also found bone so there’s a real possibility for a leg hit. Blood has been followed out to 150 yards. The hunter wasn’t feeling very optimistic though so the decision was made to back out and bring in the dog in the morning. Here we go again!

To be continued………….

Keep those stories up CNC. They are really fun to read. It makes me miss having deer dogs around like when I grew up. I know yours is trained strictly for tracking purposes, but we had one old walker that seemed to always be able to find a poorly shot deer. So it reminds me of those good old days!
There was also a game warden that posted a bunch of stories about his dog Taz that I really enjoyed reading. Good stuff!

Can't wait to hear the story. Good luck in the mirning

Good luck cnc, I enjoy reading about how Otis is coming along. Would you come up to Shelby county for a track if the opportunity presented itself? If so I'm going to save your number in my phone.

Thanks fellas! ……Finding bone doesn’t sound real promising but they backed out without a big search so we’ll see what happens. We may not end up recovering it but this one isn’t too far away so we’ll give it a try. Maybe they caught some good meat on the entry side and blew out some bone from the off side leg.

Southwood…..I’m going to be real flexible about going to tracks for the rest of this season. If it’s on a day where I can, I’d be glad to track one for you up there.

Makes me want to gut shoot one just so I can meet you and see the dog work

You're welcome to join me when I do.

Finding bone and blood only at the scene of shot and and maybe 50 yards or so of drops...bad shot/no penetration. Finding bone and good blood for 150 yards....optimistic.

Good luck! Enjoy reading about these tracking stories. Find myself checking every chance I get to see the updates.

Got Ol' Red warming up outside. Lots of frost on the windshield this morning. Suppose to meet the hunter at 8:00.

Well, it was what we thought it was. I just measured here on my computer and we tracked the deer for an even ½ mile…..which is roughly 800-900 yards. The deer was bleeding pretty heavy for the first few hundred yards. We made it to where the deer had bedded up last night though and I think it must have laid there and clotted up. Not much sign of blood past that point. Otis did outstanding on this track. He took it and ran with it, never really checking up until we had made it out to around 800 yards where he ran into a deep holler with steep creek banks. That’s where we caught up to him and ended up calling it off.

The best part about the track was that Otis had to work through an area inside a thicket where I'm pretty sure the deer milled around for a while. Otis had run a pretty clean line up until that point but he stopped out in front of us and started circling. He circled and circled around in this little patch of brush for 5-10 minutes before finally picking up on the direction that the deer had exited on off we went again. I’m proud of him for not coming back to me and for working through that himself. I watched him on the GPS…..he circled the area and kept getting a little larger and larger with his circles until he found the clean line. I’m happy to see him do that on his own. I wish I had a picture of a big buck to show y’all but coming up empty handed was kind of to be expected on this one. Usually finding bone is not a great sign.

How many tracks have you been on this year, so far?

I think that was track #16. Roughly I think we've found 7 dead....jumped up 3 still alive......tracked 3 for long distances like this morning before calling it off.....and had 3 tracks where Otis struggled and couldn't do much with it. That may not be exactly right but its pretty close. I'm really hesitant to even keep up with "stats". It seems like men can turn anything into a competition and that's not what I want to do at all. I've been through that stage with deer hunting and I found it to be much more enjoyable once I let that go and just went hunting for the enjoyment of it. I'd like to do the same with tracking.

Had a buddy call me yesterday with a lost buck.He and his brother had looked but lost blood.I was at the mall looking for a gift for my wife.Told him I would change and get my 7 mo old Blue Heeler and drive to him..Pup has been around one dead 8 point while I was cleaning it..Never been on a track before.After arriving the pup found the next blood and kept me on blood until we found the deer in the creek 400 yds from where we started..Never would have found this deer without my dog.Not bad for a pup on his first track.He seemed to know exactly what I wanted from him and should get better with practice..I was very proud of his effort.

Not trying to hijack your thread..Just sharing a good day!

It's all good!

That's awesome for your pup. Save some liver/blood out of your next deer and start working him on some training lines. Looking back on it, I would have made my training lines a lot more complicated than I did with Otis. Real deer tracts do some funny things. I've had other trackers tell me about how a wounded deer would get in a little thicket and mill around in circles and this morning I watched that very thing unfold.

I hope to just use him for myself and friends..Dog is in the truck or by my side most of the time.It was easy to tell when he was on track and easy to tell when he had lost it.That said he would put his nose in the air or circle and zig zag until he found the track again.When he was on it he was going straight and on a mission..Like I said he kept me on blood when blood was hard to find.

I got 2 mason jars of blood and 4 legs from this Am. My 7 month lab uses her nose real well. I've hid some chew ez bones dipped in blood and drug on a string already this am and she's nailed every one of them. His them well too

Bucks have been on their feet between Decatur and Courtland the last couple of days.

Yes they have. Another group I hunt with in court land saw over 20 different bucks yesterday.

I know exactly what you’re talking about when you describe the dog either being on the scent or searching for it. Otis is the same way. The more you work your dog on these tracks then the more you learn to read them and almost be able to communicate with each other. I’m beginning to be able to read the situation by watching Otis’s body language or how he’s working a track. The GPS collar really helps a lot too. I can watch him even when I can’t see him. He hunts much better too when I give him some space. A good training line to try and run with your pups would be to run a straight line into a thicket……then cut some figure 8’s inside the thicket and exit the area at a 90 degree angle from the original line. Another one would be to run a line out a little ways….stop in your tracks and backtrack the line 20-30 yards and exit at a 90 to the original line. I think these lines will simulate real situations. Getting them to think through these puzzles is your biggest challenge.

Deer have been on their feet all over with this cold air moving in. We must have both been off down in some hollers this morning and not getting good cell service cause as soon as I came out of the woods I got a message from the other tracker in my area to work some of his overflow. By the time I got done with this morning’s track and talked to him though….. he was already headed to it. Lots of folks are slinging lead at 'em this weekend. I wouldn't be surprised to get another call this evening.

That was a stud of a buck 257….Congrats!

Thanks man

Something else I’d recommend is running your pups across some terrain obstacles. Take and find the steepest damn creek crossing you can find where deer are crossing and run part of your training line across it. Leave the treat on the other side of the obstacle......run it across a creek...a steep bank...across a dirt road…..anywhere that poses an obstacle for them to work around or through. Real deer tracks are not going to be across your food plot and into the nice open hardwoods where everything plays out nice and pretty. Its going to run through the nastiest, thickest stuff on the property….up ditch banks and down ravines. These are the areas where your dog is going to hang up. It won’t be on the nice clean scent line that you run in your back yard. Practice the hard stuff.

You can tell it's Christmas time around here. Y'all gonna be sharing planting techniques next.

I've enjoyed following Otis' first season in this thread. Each track is like a new chapter and I can't wait to see what happens.

And yes, 257, a fine buck kill this morning!

The fact that I am using a Blue Heeler pup will tell you I didn't get him to track deer.Just thought we would give him a try and had nothing to lose.Turns out he has a pretty good nose and is very smart and trains easy for is age.Also very stubborn with no quit in him.If I do much of this I will need a tracking collar.I lost him in thick privet a couple of times when he was really on it and had to call him back to me and start again.We went through fairly open woods,to crossing powerlines into a thick piece of woods,came out of them and crossed a logging road into some thick woods down to a beaver dam swamp where we found the buck in the swamp..

if yer going to run em off leash then put a LOT of orange on them....a simple collar won't do....

Already thought about that..So far he work pretty close.Just lost him when it got really thick..Gonna find some orange and a bell..haha

They make battery powered collars that light up. Makes it much easier to see them in the dark when orange isn't much good.

problem is some of these damn beagle shooters would shoot his trespassing azz if he got off the right land...or if some dufus on THAT club didn't know about the tracking going on and was a certified beagle shooter.

I used an reflective orange tracking harness on my Mal...lots of orange to see.

Thanks 3FF……I’m really pleased with how Otis is progressing. Next year is really going to get fun I believe. After this season we should have most of the “training” behind us.

Here’s the vest I run on Otis for orange. I bought it when I was still trying to track on lead. One of the guys at the tracking convention recommended trying a harness instead of hooking up to his collar. I bought this one from Petco and then sewed the orange onto it myself. Even though I’m tracking off lead now I still use the vest for safety purposes. It shows up really well when he’s moving through the woods, especially when he's coming straight at you. If someone ever shoots him wearing this vest and with an antennae sticking up in the air off his neck……I may go off the deep end on somebody.

looks dang good CNC. Someone shoots that dog call me and I'll stomp his azz for ya.

I've spent a lot of time reading up on tracking dogs across the country . You would be amazed at the number that have been shot by idiots who prolly shoot any dog they see running thru the woods.

Thanks Troy.

Lets pray it never comes down to that. That’s one of my bigger concerns though. A lot of trackers that I’ve talked to have a bad story about the day they ran across an idiot in the woods. One of the well known trackers from north Alabama said they caught up to the dog one time and found a hunter in the process of taking the tracking collar off the dog. It sounded like azz whippins were involved in that story too.

I thought I would show this for the other trackers out there. It’s one of the handiest pieces of equipment that I’ve used so far. It’s actually a vest that foresters use for cruising timber but it works perfect for a tracking vest. It has built in eyelets to attach my lanyards for my whistle and GPS unit. My cell phone fits perfect in one of the upper pockets and the other upper pocket I use to hold a small first aid packet. Mostly just a few small things for minor cuts or in case I get blisters on my heels…..along with some medication for Otis if he were to get snake bit. The lower pockets work well to hold water, gloves, toilet paper, etc…..Whatever you might want to take with you. I always stick some water in mine along with a little bowl for Otis to drink from. The inside of the vest also has two large pockets on either side that work great for holding my leash after I turn Otis loose. The other side holds half a roll of toilet paper just in case. The best part is that I can keep everything together in this one vest and have it ready to just put on when it’s time to track, without having to gather up all the individual pieces each time. Its also conveniently hunter orange in color.

This one came for Forestry Suppliers Inc.

Took care of my glove situation yesterday. I went with deer skin leather. Its soft enough so it still gives me plenty of dexterity to work my GPS unit. No more picking thorns out of my hands now. I also attached a stylus on to my lanyard so I don’t have to try and work the touchscreen with fat glove fingers. Now I just gotta figure out what I want to do about my hat situation. A regular baseball cap gets pulled off my head too often when we go through some real thick areas. You dang nearly need a football helmet!

When I was a kid I grew up across the road from my aunt and uncles chicken farm. I use to help pick up eggs all the time because the faster my older cousin got done with his chores, the faster he and I could take off and go fishing or riding horses or whatever other mischief we were getting into at the time. Back then the chicken houses weren’t as automated as they are now and you had to actually walk down through the houses gathering the eggs out of each nest….sometimes having to get them out from under a really pissed off old hen. After a while you had to learn how to just ignore them pecking your hands and do what you were there to do.

There were thousands of chickens in those houses and for the most part they were all just clucking around going about their business. It never failed though every time…..out of all those thousands of chickens, there was always a few roosters that seemed to not want to do anything other than run around with their neck feathers ruffled up causing a scene No sooner than you turned your back on them, one of them would run up and flog you on the back of the leg. If they weren’t doing that then they were squared off with each other cock fighting.

There’s several folks on here that remind me of those stray roosters that just wanted to run around looking for a cock fight all the time. It’s one of the things that really brings this forum down and keeps it from being a place where folks can freely share ideas and opinions. This Idahomike thread is a good example. Folks have asked that everyone let it go and move on…..and while Mike and I have actually already contacted one another outside of the forum, shared stories and pics, and have zero beef with one another as far as I’m concerned…..there’s still guys on here with no real clue about what’s going on that just want to cock fight with someone. I have no doubt that some of you guys will keep on for the rest of the season trying to make it out to be something it ain’t every time someone makes a post. That’s what’s really sad. I’m glad to see the ban hammer being swung more freely here lately cause this place could use a change in attitude. It's a lot easier to pick up eggs when there ain’t those few stray roosters that are just running around looking to flog someone.

That being said……I know some of you got to be layin ‘em down this morning. Maybe its just cause its been so crappy to this point but the weather feels awesome outside today. Hunting season is finally here. Woo! Hoooo!!!!

You called people drama queens in the other thread after it was pointed out that your post rubbed people the wrong way. Why not just be humble and admitting that post was a mistake and stop stoking the fire. I'm sure the "roosters" will be taking any minute to dust it up, but you started it.....again.

CNC,

I know a little about roosters and I know a little about ducks too.

When ducks get water on them it just rolls right on off. They don't absorb it. It's the way God designed them.

Just a bit of unsolicited advice to you from me. When those roosters come around, you need to be like the duck. Don't pay it any attention and just let it roll on off.

Otherwise, you are just making yourself look no better than them and it doesn't do a thing to help your fledgling tracking business. It only hurts you.

I'm sure you are a great guy and I know you have a great dog in the making. Keep your focus on that and not on Aldeer pissing matches.

Don't start them yourself and don't contribute to any that anyone else starts.

Remember, mimic the duck's physical attribute.

Glad to see that you contacted Mike and things are okay there.

This is a big State. Room for both of you here.

Keep the stories coming.

Over 3 hrs of tracking ends as the deer crossed the highway onto other land. That really sucks. More details later. Headed to next track.

Looking forward to reading your next tale...

Are you able to see on your GPS when Otis is getting close to a road and are you able to remotely or whistle stop him to keep him from getting hit? I was thinking about that when reading Matt's post about 3.2 mile track crossing the highway, haven't posted on there yet to ask this same question.

There wasn’t really anything about today’s track that was all that exciting to be writing into the pages of legends. No big bucks jumping out of thickets, no smiles from first time hunters, and not even a deer to reward us all at the end of the searching. To me and Otis though, this might have been one of our best tracks of the year from the standpoint of us learning one another.

What I’m figuring out is that these deer will very often run a little ways then get in a thicket and circle around and around in very erratic patterns before moving onto another area. On a number of the tracks we’ve been on I’ve noticed that Otis would hit a line hot and heavy….make it out to 100-125 yards from me and then progress the track on for several hundred yards. It was baffling me though as to why sometimes it would seem like he would run into a brick wall and just lose a track that only moments before he was tearing up. He would go from running a good straight line for 300-400 yards to just throwing on the breaks and all of sudden acting like he couldn’t figure out which way it went. I'm pretty sure that he is running into the equivalent of scent line figure 8’s. This is also what I've heard from several experienced trackers reporting the same thing. Sometimes it may take 5 minutes to get going again and sometimes it may take 20 minutes. Sometimes Otis is eager to figure it out on his own and sometimes he comes back to my feet with that look of shame like dogs give.

Up until today I’ve felt frustrated when Otis would hang up in some of these areas and I would try to pressure him into to hunting up the clean line leaving that area. We found ourselves in that same situation today after pushing the line out to 1/2 mile or so. After having worked through a couple spots and tracked on, we had been on a good clean run for 400 yards or better as fast as I could keep up with him when Otis threw on the brakes…..ran around in several circles and then got confused. After 10-15 minutes of trying to coax him through it, I decided to just take a break for a while, give Otis some water, and regroup. I gave him praise while we sat there and tried to get his mind right again letting him know that I wasn't upset with him. This time when we restarted I didn’t even try to ask Otis to “find it”. I just got up and started searching on the ground myself like I was looking for blood. I completely let him do his own thing and didn’t put any pressure on him. After a few minutes he began to go off on his own a little ways and start hunting. A few minutes later he picked up a good whiff of scent in his nose and just like that he was off again on the scent line.

Something else he did today that made me very happy to see progressing in him is that when we were running those clean stretches of scent line, I never had to tone him to get him to wait up on me. Toning is beeping the collar to command him the "come back". At one point he got out to about 175 yards from me and I decided to keep letting him dig instead of distracting him. All of sudden he stopped in his tracks turned around and ran back to me. When he closed the gap to about 30-40 yards and could see me, I told him to “hunt it up” and he turned right back around and started digging again without missing a beat. That’s what I want him to do and it was cool to see happen.

I haven’t even downloaded the data out of my GPS yet and looked at any of it but I figure we went ¾ of a mile today with the dog probably going twice that far. The deer ended up going to the highway and we called it off instead of going any farther. I’m pretty sure we had the deer up and running in front of us there toward the end because I saw several spots that looked like big running buck tracks making deep impressions and spread really far apart. The ones that tear up the ground more than usual. There was moderate blood here and there but nothing major. Still not sure where this deer may have been hit.

A lot of tracking is the team work between the tracker and his dog. Reading your dog and understanding how to talk to one another without the dog ever saying a word. I think Otis and I are going to end up being pretty good teammates before this is all over.

BTW……The second call I was headed to got called off. I think the hunter got a little impatient and went ahead and tried to find the deer with a pet dog. It sounded really iffy and after Otis having already tracked a long ways, we just called it a day. We rode around and talked to hunters for the rest of the afternoon, handing out 40 or so business cards.

Yes. I'm looking at a topo map on my GPS screen along with all the roads. The first thing I do at every track is zoom out and locate any major or minor roads. Otis wears a Garmin Alpha unit which is equipped to shock as well as beep. I can beep him and command him to come back to me. If he won't listen the I have 18 levels of zap to convince him. He doesn't even question it though. I've pulled him off of live deer with only the beep.

I was curious, I figured you could...just made me nervous thinking about a your dog being way out front and getting hit by a car.

That’s actually a really big concern for trackers who run “off lead” and why many folks won’t do it. I’ve heard stories of several dogs being run over just this year. The Garmin Alpha Unit is a pretty new setup I believe. I think it’s only been out a few years and it seems to just be catching on amongst the tracking community. Up until it came out I think the only way to call your dog back was with a whistle or voice command. The bad thing about that though is that a dog, especially a young one, still has the choice to obey or not. When the dogs get their prey drive triggered or they get really into the tracking…..it becomes a lot harder to get them to listen to you. I saw that with Otis when he would get after squirrels here at the house and why I was very nervous to track off lead. With that Alpha Unit though, you can control the dog out to long distances and the ones I’ve seen worked on it don’t even question it for a second. It’s about like having push button brakes on your dog.

Having common dog sense is worth a whole lot, alot of people have never hunted dogs or used them, but want one for training... Common dog sense, got to have it a little bit atleast.... People have been using GPS trackers for years.

Yeah, a lot of the trackers have been using basic GPS too…. but the problem wasn’t knowing where the dog was located, it was making it stop before it ran in the road. That's what ha changed with the Alpha. The ability to do both in one unit. People have different distances they feel comfortable letting their dogs track out in front but even someone being conservative about it can still be several hundred yards from the dog when tracking. When the dog tracks up on that deer that’s still alive and it jumps up in front of them…..then I just don’t think people have been able to get their dogs to stop. They are either too far to here the command or just don't listen. Otis just wasn't going to listen without the threat of the shock collar. His prey drive flips and he zones out and gets tunnel vision. That beep snaps him out of it though. A high percentage of these tracks are near some type of paved road and I’d say its probably the biggest danger that I see so far.

Harold,

I'm saving up right now to purchase that Garmin Alpha for my Original Mountain Cur "squirrel dog in the making".

Talk about pricey.

Gonna purchase it at Gun Dog Supply.

Is that where you purchased?

Cuz I got a heck a deal on my Alpha off eBay. It's a factory referb with a 2 yr warranty. I paid a little over $300 for it. All you need is a tt15 collar and you would be set for a $700.

I used separate shockers on my Astro 320. But how many people you know that have had thier tracking dog ran over?? Serious question.

Yep, I ordered mine from gun dog supply. I don’t know if they still have the same deal going but they did throw in a nice little bag for free to keep all the different pieces in. It’s amazing how handy that little bag has been. I agree it’s expensive. If it just won’t tear up on me and last for more than one or two tracking seasons without issues then I’ll be ok with that though. We'll just chalk it up to the cost of playing the game. I sure feel a lot better with it. Peace of mind kinda thing.

Two

Here we go again. Headed out. Get in the woods if you can boys....it's on!

I’ve heard that these kind of tracks existed but up until today I was beginning to believe that it was all just a myth. Otis and I finally got on one this morning that was a pretty straight forward track. It was very rewarding after a stretch of really tough ones. The hunter was hunting on a long straight away in the road running through a young pine plantation. We took the pic after we got the buck back to the edge of the road so it doesn’t do justice for how thick the understory was in this little stand of pines. It was nasty thick in places.

The hunter said that the deer had stepped into the roadway walking at an angle toward him. It appeared to be just walking across the lane so he had to either take a shot quartering to him or let him walk off. The shot hit a little farther back than you would have wanted it to and didn’t leave any exit hole. This was a 30-06 with 150 grain core-lokt. It must have hit the back leg I suppose. The only blood to be found was right at the hit site. The deer traveled somewhere in the neighborhood of 250-300 yards I’d say but there was nothing to trail it by…..or if there was it was sparse enough that we never ran across it. After not being able to blood trail the buck, the hunter decided to call in a dog. I don’t blame him either. It would have been like finding a needle in a haystack with all the briars and brushy thickets.

I turned Otis loose and he went right to tracking this morning with no issues. He had really just checked out from me and got to tracking good when I saw him stop on the GPS. A few seconds went by and the GPS alerted that he was on point. It’s not uncommon if he stops to lick the ground or really check out a scent for the GPS to alert “on point” so I didn’t get too excited about it at first. I just stopped to give Otis time to do whatever he was doing and track on. About a minute or more had went by though and Otis was still in the same spot with the GPS alerting me again “on point”. I decided at that point that I better ease in and see what he was doing. I saw Otis before I saw the deer and I knew right away by the look on his face and how fast his tail was wagging that he had it. Sure enough, it was right there by him in the brush.

Every track we go on it seems like Otis progresses a little more in some form or fashion. Today was no different. Usually when we are getting suited up and ready to track, Otis is so excited to be out tracking that I have to wrestle him to get his collar and harness on. He wants to lay on me….jump around….start tracking….etc, etc….I assumed today was about to be no different as I was getting my boots on and he was whining in his kennel..amped up to get going. To my surprise though, when I opened the kennel he walked to the back of the tailgate and stood there just as still as could be with his head up. With no struggle at all I suited him up and then he was ready to go. Hopefully he’ll continue to do that….we’ll see. He still gets pretty excited when we find one though. He was thoroughly enjoying himself to say the least.

congrats to both of ya'll....

Congrats CNC

Good job....does he ever bark when he on track or when he goes on point?

Hey cnc you know anyone that tracks around the eutaw/green county area. Got a buddy on here that shot one this morning just started tracking but there's a good hit of water where he is hunting

Great job..Glad to see the bucks found and not wasted..

Coosa valley hunting supply on facebook will save you a bunch of money. I shoukd kick my butt for not having a garmin yet but I haven't found a need for it

Good job!

Great work!

Thanks fellas....I appreciate it.

He only barks if it's a live deer situation. If its dead he just sits there and chews on it.

Art Powers is over that way but he I don't think he's tracking too much right now. You could try and see though.

334=431=0884

Have you tried to call Idahomike? Not sure where he's at but I'd try to call him too. Besides that I don't know of many other options over that way.

Good job Otis!

Have you ever considered hooking a GoPro up to him so you can view his tracking job later?

Good track CNC! You and your team needed a confidence boost! I need one time to time while I'm in the woods hunting!

Thanks!

Oh yeah!....I want one bad but I'm gonna hold out until next year.

I was driving through Hurtsboro, AL yesterday and as I passed by the deer processor I noticed they had several bucks laying at the door about to be hung up. I pulled up to check ‘em out and while I was there I asked the guy if while they were busy if he could save me some livers and legs to train my new puppy that’s coming in the spring. He said that wouldn’t be a problem. On my way to this morning’s track I got a phone call saying that he had some ready for me. This is what he had me when I got there. It's somewhere around 50 legs and 15 livers. They weren’t even going to charge me anything but I still gave them some money anyways for helping me out. It was a heck of a lot easier than me trying to collect them throughout the season here and there.

If you think your wife frowns when you put a deer head in the freezer……you should see how they look when you fill it full of legs and livers.

I get the legs from a couple different processors and freeze them. I give them to my two dogs in the summer, we call it giving them popcicles.

Yep I got a freezer full of legs now for my pup. Wife thinks it's fun training the pup too.

Harold,

Congrats to you and Otis on that last track.

He looks happier in that PIC than the hunter does!

Great story to read and thanks for sharing.

Looking forward to the next one.

Good deal CNC. I have a Lab that trails and know how rewarding it is to help someone find a deer. In the past one of her rewards has been a leg to chew on. If she gets one now, I cut the hooves off. They did not a agree with her. She was either throwing them up or they came out undigested. I even saw coyote scat yesterday with undigested hooves.

Well, we we're actually trying to do a posed pic of everyone but Otis was having no part of it. He was just wanting to play and enjoy the find. I ended up just shooting action shots and I thought the one with him rolling around was about the best one.

Y'all throw one up for Otis this morning. Just got called out to track one for some of the big dawgs in the area and it would really be a good time for him to do well. Gut shot with a bow yesterday evening. Story to come later today.

Good luck and congrats on the latest find!

Had one awesome day today. I’ll have to write a story about it tomorrow though. Right now I’m just gonna sit here and drink a beer. To be continued………….

I'm loving this thread... Good stuff

Thanks! Glad y'all like the stories. I enjoy writing them. I promise I have some more to tell, I just haven’t been able to sit down and put them on paper yet. Here is a pic for now. Should be able to write some stories later this afternoon. This deer was shot with a recurve bow.

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.

So back up a day and to the original deer that I was called out to track at Enon. The deer was a stud of a buck….a good bit bigger than the one in the pic. It was the first track that I’ve been on where the hunt was being filmed. This was awesome for being able to assess where the hunter had hit the deer. What was not so awesome is that where they hit him, they might have been lucky if they just cut his pecker off. It definitely wasn’t the “gut shot” I was hoping to find.

The hunter was bow hunting from a ground blind when the biggest buck he had ever shot at walked in broadside. I didn’t step it off but I recall looking back at the blind from the hit site and thinking to myself that it was a pretty decent distance. In the video you could see that the arrow was falling and on a downward projectory when it hit the deer. It hit the buck here…………



I wasn’t very optimistic about this one from the get go but we were going to give our best effort anyways. There was enough blood for them to trail about 75 yards but then it petered out. They brought in a pet dog to try and progress the line farther the night before but they said it didn’t do anything but run around for a while. They had hunters out in the area the next morning so we didn’t get to start tracking until nearly 11:00 am. The deer was shot just after 3:00 pm the prior afternoon so we’re talking about a 20 hr old line. To make matters even more challenging, the wind that day was blowing 10-15 mph with gusts around 20. I remember thinking to myself….”Dear Lord, please at least let Otis attempt to track this one.”

He really surprised me that morning with his effort under those type conditions. He usually works a scent line pretty fast but that morning he started the line with his nose glued to the ground and progressed the line very slowly right through their search area. I had the hunters wait at the hit site until we progressed the line to give Otis some space. I knew a general direction the deer had ran but not the exact trail. As I slowly followed Otis up the hill he took us right by every piece of toilet paper the searchers had left on the ground and as we passed the last one he continued taking the line on out past the search area. This turtle like pace continued on for over an hour as we slowly progressed the line another 400-500 yards in a circle. After the buck had made a complete loop and was passing back over the original scent line again we called it off. Having to really dig minimal old scent out like that is very demanding on a young dog and I’m really surprised Otis lasted as long as he did. They become mentally fatigued and I could tell Otis was to that point. I didn’t think this deer was very likely to be found anyways with such a marginal bow hit and neither did the guide.

Just to give it’s due before Otis completely ran out of piss and vinegar, we pulled off of trying to track the scent line and just started looping out in the area the deer was headed hoping maybe if he was bedded close that we could wind him or jump him up. I used my GPS to grid search the area for another hour for 400-500 yards in a couple directions with Otis but didn’t come up with anything. All in all it was a great day for us though. For Otis to dig like he did, for as long as he did, on that type of scent line was very rewarding to see. Otis and I also got to meet some great people and begin what I hope to be a long term friendship with the folks there at Enon.

Congrats man should be a lot of business with deep pockets at Enon

That actually wasn’t the end of the story I figured I’d just break it up so it wasn’t so long winded. We actually tracked one more that afternoon after the filmed “gut shot” deer. It was a high backstrap shot that everyone knew was likely unrecoverable but they wanted me to check it out anyways. The hunter said he knew he had put a really bad shot on the deer right in no man’s land. All the sign pointed toward that being the case as well. The blood was very, very sparse and petered out within 40 yards.

I turned Otis loose not knowing how well he was going to work after having already tracked the other deer. He didn’t have quite as much spunk in him as normal but he still lit out on the track with good enthusiasm. It took us about 30 minutes but eventually we tracked up on the buck bedded down on a little drainage only a few hundred yards from the shot. I heard Otis cut loose in front of me “Yep! Yep! Yep!”…Just then the buck bolted out of the bushes and bounded over the hill top in front of me. I watched him running through the sedge for a couple hundred yards and it was obvious that he wasn’t hurt that bad. I toned Otis ….pulled him off the track and ended it there since we had verified what had happened. Those type shots are rarely recovered.

It was getting on into the afternoon by the time I finished up the second track and after shooting the breeze with the manager for a minute or two I headed back home. On the short ride home I started noticing deer everywhere out feeding early in the evening. Deer in this field….deer in that field…etc. I thought to myself….”Dammit! I need to go get in my stand!” By the time I could get home and run out the back door to head to my stand there were already 3 young bucks feeding in the back end of my field. They saw me and bounded off. I got to one of my ground blinds and it wasn’t 20 minutes later they came back along with eventually 11 other deer….one which I started to pull the trigger on. He looked older but had half his rack broke off and the side that was left was mostly just a big main beam. He must be a brawler.

It’s heating up here. Something is going to take a dirt nap soon.

Enjoying the stories and watching Otis come along. Good stuff!

Sounds like Enon needs to have some type of accuracy test before they turn these guys loose in the woods.

Thanks! I’ll say this about that place. If you’ve gotten older and you’re the type that gets in a hunting club to only hunt a few times a year…..I would highly recommend using that money one year to take a trip to Enon. Its as close as I’ve ever seen to hunting in Cades Cove. I wouldn’t hesitate to say that Enon may have more deer. A much better managed understory than Cades Cove.

[/quote]Thanks! I’ll say this about that place. If you’ve gotten older and you’re the type that gets in a hunting club to only hunt a few times a year…..I would highly recommend using that money one year to take a trip to Enon. Its as close as I’ve ever seen to hunting in Cades Cove. I wouldn’t hesitate to say that Enon may have more deer. A much better managed understory than Cades Cove. [/quote]

When I hit the powerball, you can come track all you want. Enon will be my first purchase.

Dr. B

You just let me know. I’ll manage the timber, the wildlife, the food plots, the hunters, the tracking……I even cook a pretty mean home cooked meal from time to time. Hell, if you’ll keep me stocked with supplies, I may never even leave the place. Just call me Hermy.

Call just came in. About to head out. Track on!

folks come there and to sedgefield (if it's still in bidness) with too much money and no outdoor skillzzzz. seen it first hand and it's pitiful.

*not all folks but some* (so i don't pizz off any wealthy folks that don't know any better )

Found it! Story to come.

ive often wondered when I look at Gobblers pictures if he is the biologist that advises them.

Here's a pic. I'll write a little story about it tomorrow morning.

Awesome! Congrats Otis and CNC!

Heck yeah! Way to go Otis! Another at Enon? Habitat looks like it.

Thanks everyone!....Yes, it was another one from Enon.

Good job CNC- enjoyed the story

I love that Otis is a working dog that is good with people! He looks happy to be getting pet in all the recovery pics! I think he loves to love as much as he loves to track.

Thanks Hayman....Stickers



One of the guides out there was saying the exact same thing. I couldn’t ask for a friendlier dog than Otis. He has a great personality and doesn’t show the least bit of aggression toward anyone when we find a deer…..he’s just happy. He loves the socialization with the hunters too.

This was a pretty easy track compared to other ones we’ve been on. It doesn’t make for a dramatic story but I’d take ‘em like this all day long if we could get ‘em. I think the hunter just got overly excited cause he was still pretty amped up when I got there. He sent the guide a message that he had stuck a “big 9 pt”. He knew he had stuck it high and back with no pass through..... and he wanted to go ahead and call in the dog man, as he described me to the guide. If you look in the pic you can tell where he hit it there in the back. He actually stuck the deer in the middle of the day and kept sitting in his stand to try and get a doe. By the time we gave his buck some time and I got there to track…..he had already stuck one of the biggest does I’ve ever seen. That was the only really hard part about this track. I had to get Otis to try and track the blood trail from the buck while at the same time there was a second blood trail, and a deer, laying not 50 yards away.

I didn’t think we were going to be able to pull it off at first cause Otis could definitely wind the doe laying over in the bushes. I still had him on a leash and he was pulling hard over in that direction wanting to go to it. We had some initial blood on the buck and knew a direction it had run in so I just kept pulling Otis away from the doe and tried to focus his attention on the other scent line. Finally, we got far enough away that he stopped paying the doe any attention and he stuck his nose down on the ground to get a good whiff of blood scent in it. When he did, his focus changed to the buck’s scent line and I cut him loose. It was one of the prettiest lines he’s run all year. It was only a few hundred yards but he made a bee line right to it crossing right over an interior road with no problem. Those have been minor distractions for him on some tracks. The whole ordeal lasted a grand total of about 10 minutes if that. It wasn’t quite the “Big 9” that the hunter thought it was when he walked up on it but I’ll say this….he was still a very happy hunter and seemed to be enjoying every minute of it. That’s the most important part. This is some fun stuff. Enjoy it while you can.

Good job

CNC thanks for the stories. About how much rain do you think it takes to clean the woods of deer or human scent in an area?

I don’t have much personal experience tracking after rain yet other than running some training lines back during the summer after a little shower had fell on them. I’ve heard stories though, of trackers still finding deer after more than an inch of rain fell on the scent line. The blood apparently keeps leaving scent behind even after what you can see has washed away. The other finer scent particles like the ones we would leave behind as humans or maybe one a squirrel would leave from playing in the leaves….those scents are washed away……leaving nothing but the clean blood scent running through the woods. I’m sure a lot of it is going to depend on what type of wound you’re dealing with too.

Tell TR that Danny said if he was a real dog man he would have him a good blood trailing dog! J/K

It is a nice place!

I can understand why they don’t have a tracking dog. It takes a lot of patience and investment in time to get a dog where they’ll follow an old cold track that’s 24 hrs old across all kinds of other fresh scent. It’s really an awesome place for Otis to track because it requires him to ignore a lot of other deer scent and only focus on the wounded one. If he can ignore all the other deer scent at that place then he can surely do it on any other property we may go to.

Btw.....Have any of y'all heard anything about a big deer being run over near B'ham?

http://www.aldeer.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1602076&page=1

I`ll tell why they don`t have a train tracking dog....the customers that come there to hunt pays for a tracker to come in. And some of the hunters don`t want to fool with tracking the deer they shot (they got deep pockets) Ya`ll should of seen the private jet parks at the Hurtsboro airport..I looked it up online it cost around 20 million.

Back to the tracking dog at Enon if they had a trained dog it would cost em alot to feed it 9 months out of the year not to mention Vet. bills. T R is no fool...he is a money man...if customers want to find their deer they just call us for Peanuts to track it. Ever wonder what it cost to hunt at Enon for 3 days. Now they got deer to shoot. I think it is bow hunting only...most of the deer shot is just wounded its tuff tracking wounded bow shot deer....ain`t that CNC

There's a lot of dang deer scent for the dog to have to work through out there, that's for sure. After we tracked the one in the last pic, the guide told me that another hunter had shot a doe if I just wanted to run the track. He had smoked it and heard it fall about 100 yards away but while I was there I thought I would let Otis get in as much work as possible. It was just after dark and I literally had to shoo deer away from us so it didn't distract Otis. It's crazy.

lucy and I track a lot pf deer in high fence areas,I like high fence, places super safe for the dog,we dont have to worry about her getting hit by a car,the consentration of deer doesnt matter,I train my dogs to track only wounded deer.weve even tracked deer in high fence areas that have elk

My dog Fred and I looked for an arrow shot buck in a Bullock County high fence a month ago with no luck. Was glad to find out yesterday that the buck is alive and well. Fred and his daughter Minnie both stuck to the same trail even though we jumped numerous deer during the process. Can only assume it was the right trail.

I like tracking in high fences because I can turn Annie loose and not worry about her getting run over or shot by other hunters. You must have a dog that won't trail unhurt deer. The only drawback is that the fenced deer seems to know that if he keeps circling and crossing his own track he will eventually lose us. They sure don't circle as much on the outside. We once recovered a buck with a broken front leg that was trying to get INTO a high fenced area.

Just found that 24 hr old gut shot. I'm going to let the hunter tell the story. May be tomorrow though.

H., the hunter with the 56 hour old track went back out yesterday after he called me and recovered his deer at 225 yards after the other guys dog could not trail it. He left me hanging until this afternoon. Dang, I know we could have nailed that one. It would have been our second oldest recovery as we have a 70 hour 1200 yards that had been rained out and a 40 hour 600 yards in the rain and water. Both on lead and tracked not winded.

ok,now I know who trackncur is,lol!!!

TR has plenty of dogs.
And, cost is not stopping him from getting another one! If he sees one he likes; he will buy it...and pay somebody to hunt it if need be. LOL

He and I like to pick at each other about dogs.
I was just wanting to send him a little msg to rib him.

It's pretty impressive what they can do. I feel a lot more comfortable now about working an older scent after this morning. I don't think we're ready for a 70 hour old one yet....that's pretty dang old there.

I'll be sure to pass your message along to him.....as well as with the message that I'm just a few minutes up the road any time they ever need me.

I had Otis try to track a non-wounded deer yesterday but he hasn’t been too bad about it so far. Not to spoil the story but when I pulled up the hunter told me he had some bad news. Another buck had just crossed over the lane he was on and went right down the same trail as the deer he had shot the day before. The deer he shot went down the trail and took a left. The recent unwounded deer went down the same trail and took a right. Otis has hit a new phase now in his progression. Earlier this season he was still kind of timid on some tracks….like he was a little nervous to venture out on his own. Now, we've been on enough tracks that he knows exactly what we’re going to do and he comes out of the gate amped up ready to find a deer.

When I cut him loose on the track yesterday, he started tracking the wounded deer but when he came to the fork, he never checked up and he went to the right behind the fresh scent instead to the left on the day old track. I could tell he was working the track WAY too fast for a track that old but I let him go for a little ways just to be sure. After about 300 yards he slowed up and I pulled him off. We restarted back at the hit site and I gave him the “eaassssy” command several times. The second time he kept his nose on the ground and methodically worked the track slowly right to the buck we were searching for. It actually worked out great since he saw that the one track led to a prize while the other led to nothing. Just part of the training process I suppose. Even though he let his excitement lead him astray, I’m still really happy to see his motivation and drive really amp up. He’s starting to get that “don’t give up” attitude now.

Congrats, H., great training opportunity. I've been an Otis fan since I first saw him work. In a couple of years he will be bulletproof.

Thanks!.....I’m excited about next year already. I really want to go ahead and start training a second dog in the spring but AJ thinks I should give it one more season. I’m a little torn between what to do. In one way I completely agree with him that it would be much easier to spend one more season focusing solely on Otis and getting him fine tuned. On the other hand, I know it’ll take the same amount of time to get my second dog fully trained and I’m afraid if I wait that long then I won’t have a second dog ready when I need it. If I wait another year to start a second dog then you’re looking at a min of 3 more tracking seasons before I would have a second dog ready to go. The way I’m currently growing and getting my name out there….I’m afraid I’ll be running Otis in the dirt by that time if he is all I have to use. One bad cut or sore foot and I’m shut down with the phone still ringing. Right now, I still think I may go ahead with getting a dog next May. Otis’s puppy year was nothing more really than a bunch of runs to already located deer. I think I can spend the summer months training the pup and then just let it re-run some of Otis’s real tracks during hunting season. What do you think?

One more question while I’m asking advice…….I was thinking about getting a female dog this round instead of another male just to change things up. Do you think Otis would get along/work better with one over the other….male versus female?

My two cents, don't be in a hurry to take on another pup. Concentrate on getting one finished. Then if your new pup let's you down on the real thing you will have a dog that can take over and show you what is really going on. Probably be a good idea to go with a female when you do. Then I can have one of the pups.lol

Females in my experience learn a little quicker and are more even tempered

A female it is then. I guess I’m going to have give getting another dog this year so more consideration. The fact that two of the “old timers” agree that I should put it off another year carries some weight. Even though I want to do it one way….I may defer my decision to y’alls experience on this one.

Back to the last track......I’m not going to be able to show any pics of the 24 hr old gut shot find. I don’t post those pics without first asking the hunter’s permission. The hunter was an aldeer lurker who has never made a post. I took some pics with my good camera and while we were discussing how he found me on the forum, the hunter mentioned telling the story with his first post if the club president was ok with it. I told him not to feel obligated to and that I completely respected everyone’s right to remain anonymous if they choose.

Any who……At the first of the season I made a promise to donate my finder’s fee back to the forum when I found one for an Aldeer member. Since this hunter found me through Aldeer I’m counting this one as that find. Promise made….promise kept. $100 donated back to the house. Thanks Aldeer for running a great forum and allowing me to be a part of it.

It’s pouring rain here so I'll tell the story about yesterday’s track. Tracking deer is teaching me new things about their behavior that I never knew before. One thing I’ve come to learn is that deer have an instinctive behavior they turn to when they feel like they are being chased/tracked by a predator. In order to try and lose the predator that’s tracking them….they travel a little ways and then they run around in circles in a small area crossing back over their own scent line again and again. It makes it difficult for the pursuing predator to continue to follow the scent line through all the erratic changes in directions and multiple lines run across one another. This just reinforces the importance of giving a deer PLENTY of time after the shot before tracking it. Most of the time the deer doesn’t even know what has happened until the hunter starts pursuing it. This "pursuit" of the deer can flip that instinct in him and completely change the nature of the track.

This is what happened on yesterday’s track. The hunter shot the buck with a bow at a quartering away angle with it’s head down. He thinks he just yanked the shot because the point of impact ended up being in the back of the neck right behind the skull. He said the buck left with the arrow sticking out the back of his head. They had tracked it for several hundred yards and then ran out of blood. For the first 100-125 yards there was little to no blood at all. However, at around 150 yards there was a really large spot of blood the size of a hula hoop or a couch cushion…..big spot with lots of blood. After that really large spot it went back to being spotty and finally trickled out.

Here is what I believe happened. The buck bolted out of the hit area but once it got 150 yards away it stopped and just stood there. This is where the large spot of blood was located. It probably stood there for a very long time and only moved when the hunter eventually got down and started tracking. The buck may have even bolted and left when the hunter was coming down out of his tree and the hunter never knew it. At that point the buck knew he was being pursued and went into his instinctive flight strategy to lose the predator. This is why the blood became really spotty again.....the buck was on the move or even running. When we got there to track the buck 6 hours later….we tracked it beautifully right through the search area and several hundred yards on past it. However, once we tracked a few hundred yards farther the deer starting that circling crap.

Otis has successfully worked through several of these areas on other tracks but this one through him for a loop for some reason and looking back on it I wish I would have handled it a little differently. He was trying to work his way through it with enthusiasm for a little while but after giving it several attempts he came to me and “said” that he couldn’t figure it out. Here’s what I should have done differently. We had already walked a long ways in to where the hunter was setup along with tracking a ½ mile and working through a search area. When Otis hung up on that area I think I should have sat down and taken a break. I gave him some water but we immediately went back to trying to work around the loopty loops. I should have given Otis a little mental break and then let him tackle the puzzle again with a fresher mind.

As it was, an old buck ended up giving a young dog and a rookie handler the slip. We grid searched the area for another 2 hours but never came across the buck. I almost want to believe he doubled back on us when he exited his scent loops. Lesson learned though. We’ll try a different approach on the next go round. I honestly don’t know that we would have ever found this deer no matter what we did. The hunter hadn’t hit any vitals nor had he cut the deer’s jugular. At best I think the deer may eventually die from a fractured skull or it could possibly live. The important thing I think we should all take away from it though is learning that deer react differently if they know they are being pursued. Had the hunter not pursued the deer after the shot he may have eventually laid down right where he was standing and bleeding the puddle. At worst case I think he would have just walked to another area a short distance away and bedded up where we could have tracked up on him much easier.

If you know it’s a bad hit fellas…..slip out of the area very quietly and give it several hours before proceeding. Don’t trigger that flight instinct in the deer and I think we’ll all find more of them....even on ones you track alone where a dog is not needed.

I am the hunter that CNC was referring to in regards to a "gut shot" 24 hour buck recovery. Anyway....my shot on this buck was a little too far back and the bullet tore thru the bucks stomach. It was a 200 yard shot and when I went to the location of where the buck was at (powerline) when I shot....there was no blood to be found. However...there was a significant amount of stomach contents spilled on the ground....I followed this for about 20 yards (edge of power line)and decided that my best bet would be to call a tracker.

Texted CNC and he stated that we should give the buck some time...so we arranged to meet up the next morning to try to find him.

While waiting on CNC to arrive....I went to the same powerline to look for buzzards and to just pass some time as I was a bit nervous about finding the buck. As I am looking down the powerline...I see a small 8 point cross in almost the exact spot where I shot the other buck. This worried me as I wasn't sure if Otis would track the recently crossed buck or the one that was gut shot.

Anyway....CNC arrived and I told him the details of all that had gone on....CNC was confidant that he could get Otis working the correct track. Otis suited up in his tracking collar and started his work. Things looked promising early but I could tell that CNC was thinking that possibly Otis had taken the more recent track rather than the one we wanted.

We went back to the location where we began and CNC restarted Otis on the track. This time Otis went left rather than right and not very long after that.... we started to find blood and other indications that OTIS was dead on with the correct track. After just a few minutes.....CNC looked at me and stated that OTIS was no longer moving. We went to her location and found OTIS standing over the buck with his tail wagging like crazy. OTIS had worked the track beautifully and we were able to recover this animal after 24 hours. Thankfully....temps were below freezing that night and the coyotes had not found the buck.

Congrats and job well done to OTIS and CNC for this recovery. Very grateful to have been able to recover this buck. Thank you CNC!!!

Thanks Bluwater!....It was nice meeting you. Let me know if I can ever help you out again.

Here's a pic of Bluwater's buck now.

Great job Otis and CNC.
Congrats on the buck!

X2

Great job!! Amazes me as to what those dogs can do!! Congrats!

Otis wants a hamburger steak..........

nice job!

Congrats, Hunter and H., that's a case where hunter, handler and dog have to work as a team and make the right calls.

Thanks fellas!


Here's this morning's find. Another low gut shot. If you look by Otis's back right foot you can kinda see the shot placement.

congrats again to you and Otis, good job.

seems like folks would learn to shoot BEFORE going out and shooting at live deer....

Thanks Troy. I appreciate it.

I think the problem is trying to shoot with all the adrenaline that hits them. Making decisions becomes a lot harder when someone becomes instantly “tweeked out” after seeing the buck. It carries over into the bad decisions that are often made after the shot as well. Folks are so amped up that they don’t use the same rational judgment that they normally would. I’ve had to sit there in a tree and fight it myself before….”Don’t get down!.....Just go look……Don’t get down!......Just go look.”……inner turmoil. Luckily the folks from the track this morning just backed out last night and didn’t push the deer.

Troy....
If you are referring to me in regards to learning how to shoot.... Please know that I am a veteran of the United States Military who has deployed 3 times to the middle east... I think I know how to shoot. In this case..... I shot at a moving animal that I could not get to stop..... not an excuse.....just my mistake which i freely own up to...I have taken plenty of animals with bow and gun without ever gut shooting any of them. All of them recovered successfully.

Just taking a guess here...but I doubt we're going to see very many "right behind the shoulder" shot pics in a thread about tracking deer with a dog.

Anyone that's hunted much at all has made a less than desirable shot at some point or another.

I agree. Chit happens and it happens to all of us. Quit harassing my customers Troy.

Bluewater, I most certainly was not talking about anyone in particular, not you. Just an observation that a LOT of folks make bad shots/hits on deer. It's been my experience over the last 50 years that a lot of folks couldn't hit the proverbial barn wall from INSIDE the barn. Only shooting they ever do is off a bench at 100 yards on paper. Never sitting or offhand shooting practice.

anyone, including myself, can, and has made bad hits on deer. It happens. Glad we have folks like CNC and others that make themselves available to those that need em, or just think they need em.

After leaving the track in the last picture, I distributed my 750th business card of the season yesterday. I stuck it underneath the windshield wiper of a hunter’s truck who was hunting on the same dirt road as the folks I had tracked for that morning. It just so happened that the hunter had actually shot a deer that morning that he couldn’t find, so when he got back to his truck and found my card, he called me up. I hadn’t been back home 30 minutes when he called. After talking to the hunter it sounded very likely that it was a low gut shot and that he was pushing the deer. I’m going to skip the story about Otis on this one because I want to get up on my soapbox again. Long story short though, we tracked the buck later that afternoon without missing a beat. But because it had been pushed….it went over onto the neighbor’s land and I had to call Otis off a track he was working great. It was sad for both of us but even worse for the hunter to have to walk away from. Neither of us wanted to but didn’t have any other choice since he didn’t know the neighbors. We both just stood there for a few moments looking over the property line like Tom Hanks watching Wilson float away.

Here’s what I want to get up on my soapbox about again. This is not meant toward the hunter in this story or any one hunter in particular…..it’s a general observation that I see playing out over and over again. After the shot, the majority of hunters are giving it anywhere between 5 minutes to 30 minutes before getting down to begin looking for the deer no matter the situation. If the deer runs off after the shot….unless you see the deer nose plowing as he goes out of sight, don’t assume that you’ve smoked him. Many of these deer will run a very short distance and just stop after being marginally hit. As hard as it may be to do….if the deer runs out of your site after the shot without you being 100% sure it went down….I’d give it a minimum of 30 minutes before moving. If it’s a really good buck that you truly don’t want to lose, then it sure won’t hurt to sit 45 minutes to an hour.

After giving the deer plenty of time to either bed down or move on slowly out of the area……get out of your stand and quietly slip to the hit site. Use the hit site and the first 20-40 yards of the track to make an initial assessment of your hit. Use the sign you find to decide whether to proceed further or back out to give the deer more time. On the track yesterday the initial assessment showed a very large amount of white hair with no blood to be found at the hit site nor on the trail the deer left out on. The initial assessment should have been a red flag to the hunter that the shot was likely a low gut shot. This means immediately backing out and giving the deer another 5-6 hrs minimum. The hunter proceeded to start tracking the deer farther though and caused a deer that would have likely been bedded up dead within 300 yards….to die on the neighbor’s land. This situation is very common and not just isolated events.

If the initial assessment looks bad, then back out fellas. If you track the deer for over 150-200 yards and haven’t found it….also back out. What I hear and see commonly happening though is that folks get down and just start tracking regardless of what the sign says or how far the track leads them. If you smoked the deer then he won’t go far. If you didn’t smoke him though then he ain’t gonna likely die in 30 minutes or maybe not even in 3 or 4 hrs. Don’t just keep going and going behind the track thinking that he’s just going to be dead somewhere up in front of you. These critters are tough and can tote a marginal shot off into the sunset if you keep after them. If you don’t push them though, they will very likely bed up close by. Take time to calm yourself down after the shot and make wise decisions on how you proceed. Good luck out there!

Good advice

Very good info CNC

Got called out on a bow shot buck yesterday. The shooter described it as a sho nuff good un. The hit was a little low and back but the hunter felt like he had made a killing hit. The buck walked off panting from the mouth and stopping every 10 yards or so. The hunter waited 30 minutes and backed out to give the buck time. It was shot at 8:30 and we gave it until around 2:30 before we started tracking it. The hunter felt like it would surely be bedded up dead not far away.

Tracking conditions were tough yesterday afternoon with the humidity being very low and the wind whipping around. Otis could definitely smell the track but each time he would get his nose down on it, he would get overly excited and get too fast to track under those conditions. He would run the line 20-30 yards then over shoot the track and have to loop back around to pick it up again. This happened about 4-5 times in the beginning of the track before he finally figured out that he was going to have to slow down to follow this one. After he calmed down a little he put his nose to the ground and tracked it right up. Unfortunately at around 200 yards, the track went hot. I figure the deer got up out ahead of us cause I never saw it. I did see a big change in Otis’s behavior though when he ran across where the deer had been bedded up. I gave him the green light to go after it and we ran it for about ½ mile before pulling off of it after no attempts to bay. We marked the spot where we pulled off and decided to give the deer overnight before continuing. We also went back to where the line went hot just to double check Otis. After circling the area for about 30-45 minutes we didn’t find any sign that pointed toward Otis being wrong. He didn’t attempt to take anything else off in another direction and when I put him back on the original line he went with it again.

I’m really not sure how bad this deer is hurt. We’re going to go back in later this morning and see if he bedded down and died overnight. Hopefully we’ll have a happy ending to the story. Suppose to be a 140-150 inch buck.

Good luck to you and Otis this morning!

Best of luck

Thanks guys......Update:

Deer was still alive again. We even brought in AJ’s dogs just to verify that Otis wasn’t telling us any lies yesterday but his couldn't bay it up either. I really think this deer will eventually die but it may take a while. I think the hit wasn't nearly as good as the hunter had thought. When we initially tracked the deer the sign was really, really weak. Only very spotty blood for a short distance and it was very dark looking. I think it’s really low hit in the paunch but if it tore a hole in it’s stomach in any kind of way then I would think it’s only a matter of time before it dies. The deer was heading back toward what they felt like was his core area so there’s still some possibility he may be recovered. The hunter was pretty sick over this one.

Call Mike.

You can’t really tell it in the pic but I watched this deer being put on the scales and it was dang near 180 lbs. Three on one side and a spike on the other. I ain’t one to sling the “C” word around too much but I’d have to call this one a cull too. I noticed when he was hung up that his pecker didn’t really look normal and it kind of looked like he only had one nut to drop. There was at least part of second nut there but it was like it was still up in his belly. Something wasn’t normal for sure. Gotta feel like that is possibly related to his rack size.

Me's think you need to stop pecker checking.

Congrats on recovering the kid's deer.

Normally that type of problem causes a cactus buck doesn't it (stays in velvet)

X2, let's hear the story!

Thanks!.....There’s not a whole lot to this story. The young kid in the picture is my second cousin. His dad called me this morning and told me that they had shot a cull buck running a doe and he knew my little cousin had hit him too far back. The buck ran off into one of the thicker areas of the property and after only finding some spotty blood he just asked me to bring Otis in to make sure they didn’t lose this one. We arrived about 2 hrs after the shot so the track was fresh and undisturbed. The buck went about 200-250 yards through the young pines leaving a really spotty blood trail. You can barely see the hit in the pic….but it was high and back and didn’t leave much sign. Otis made quick work of it and led us right to it. Tracks like that one are pretty easy runs for him now. I even made it back home in time for an afternoon hunt.

Not sure. It may have had nothing to do with it but something for sure wasn't normal. The deer also seemed to be a brawler even though he didn't have much of a rack. He had all kinds of skint up places on his head and neck.

Good practice for Otis. That will make up for some of those crazy hard tracks.

Like one that's been shot straight down into the back with a bow and left zero blood? I'm not real optimistic about this one but we're about to give it our best shot this morning when the frost burns off.

Thanks for your help this morning Harold and Otis. We didn't find the buck, (might still be alive), but these guys were a lot of help and very friendly and professional. We were set to meet at 8:30 and I got there 15 minutes early and he was waiting on me.

I highly recommend them if anyone ever needs their services

Found this one earlier this morning. It was shot by a young 12 year old boy yesterday afternoon sitting with his dad. Unfortunately, he had to go to school today and couldn’t be there for the recovery. He’ll have a surprise waiting on him this afternoon though.

Very pleased with how Otis worked this track. The track was 19 hrs old and wemt through a swamp bottom with lots of bare dirt and standing water. I knew it was going to take patience for Otis to work it but I was unsure if he could control his excitement well enough to work a line like this. He worked this line though with maturity like I haven’t seen out of him. The track was 600 yards total and he worked it very slow and meticulously the whole way. The only bump in the road was right at the end of the track. About 100 yards before we found the deer….another one jumped up in front of Otis. I could tell by his reaction that either we had gotten the deer up that we were tracking or we had jumped another deer. We stopped Otis and did a restart at last blood. A hundred yards later he had his prize. You can see the entry hole on this side of the deer. The exit hole was just under the hind leg.

I’ll tell you the best part about today’s track but I’ll have to preface it with another story……

A few weeks or so ago, AJ and I were on a track that had a really messed up search area to work through. His older dog started working through all the different scent trails…. slowly picking her way through it. While she was doing all that, AJ sat down on a stump eating something that appeared to be sunflower seeds and started in telling me and the hunter a semi dirty joke. He didn’t have to even worry about the dog….she was busy working and didn’t give a damn what we were doing. So we’re all there shooting the chit and listening to AJ’s dirty joke while in the background the old dog is just working the hell out of this search area. I thought to myself at the time….”I can’t wait to be able to just sit down and tell a dirty joke while Otis does his thing.” After we got to the punch line and everyone had a good laugh…the old dog took the track off and AJ said “Let’s go fellas!”

Well cut to today……..The deer we were tracking had actually been jumped last night at about 100 yards out. After he ran another 150 yards or so, he got in a little thicket and stopped. I’m pretty sure he wandered around in circles in this area because when Otis tracked up to that little thicket he started circling around and around and around. I knew it was going to take him a minute so I just pulled a stump and started shooting the breeze with the hunters while Otis worked. He walked over to me a time or two and checked in but I just told him he was doing a great job and to keep it up……and he went right back to picking through the circles of scent. After about 10 minutes he finally figured out where the deer had went and he took the line on. It was nice to just sit there on that stump though and watch my dog work without having to do anything else. I may need to stock up on my dirty jokes.

Gonna be a happy kid..

Great job and story CNC!

Congrats, H.& O. There is an article/picture in the Sept. 2011 GON mag. about J.J. & Rosie recovering a 10 year old girls first deer after midnight and getting her out of class the next day for pictures.

Thanks folks.....


TNC, I really enjoyed getting to meet JJ last year. I hope after the national convention is over, you all consider having another event next year like the one I attended. JJ is one of those guys I could sit around and talk "shop" with all day. He reminded me a lot of BSK.

Good stuff. Really like the story about sitting on the stump and letting Otis do his thing. I bet you didn't even think that was an option 2 months ago. Being able to do that just adds to the nostalgia of the hunters being there and being able to watch a good dog track.

Thanks 3FF……Otis is still really young for a tracking dog but I’m very pleased with how far he’s progressed this season. We’ve been tracking a lot here lately and all the experience he’s getting has been great for his training. Distractions are still an issue sometimes. He works much better if only one or two people goes with me and things are quiet. He also works much better if I don’t rush him or pressure him. I can’t wait until next season. That’s when I think the fun will really begin. I think as he matures he’ll work most tracks slowly like he did this last one. It makes it very enjoyable to watch when he works like that.

Btw……Got an update last night on the bow shot stuck in the back. The deer was seen again yesterday and is still alive. It’ll be very interesting to see where that arrow hit if someone is able to eventually kill him.

With a couple of exceptions, I have learned more about practical tracking and training tracking dogs from J.J. than anyone I can think of. He has a unique way of explaining every aspect. I'm still trying to figure out who BSK is.

He used to post on here and the QDMA forum. Really smart guy with a way of explaining things in an understandable way just like JJ. They both seem to like analyzing data and taking topics to a little deeper level than the average person would. He also manages property similar to what JJ does.

trackncur.......Are you taking any calls in Alabama this year?

Around Dothan if I am where I can travel that far. I took a couple of tracks last week in Fla. southeast of Dothan.

10-4....I need someone else to network with to my south. Last weekend the calls all came in a big flurry and it was more than what could be gotten to. It’s a long way for me to drive to try and get anything south of say Troy or Eufaula. I thought maybe you might want to get in on some of those tracks but looking at the map you’re still a long ways off. Have you talked to Tony in Dothan? He seemed to be doing well at the first of the season but I haven’t heard anything from him lately.

I referred a few tracks to him earlier this year, some in Ga. but I haven't heard from him lately. His dog is doing a good job. I may be able to go to the area south of Abbeville,Ala. or Ft. Gaines, Ga. but will have to charge $100 an hour, one way travel time. You never know when we may be in the area, tho.

10-4.....I think I'll give Tony a call and see how Luke is doing.

The link below is to the national Trackfest that’s being held in GA this year. If any of you guys are interested in getting started tracking then this is a great first step. They'll be trackers from all over the country there. If you’re thinking about getting a puppy then you’ll get to see all kinds of tracking dogs to help you choose. I attended an event similar to this one last year and really enjoyed it. Trackncur was one of the speakers at that event.

http://www.unitedbloodtrackers.org/2016trackfest-premium.pdf

trackncur……Did you just mail your money to the address at the bottom? I assume that’s it but its not really clear.

H., I think you make the check out to UBT and mail it to Linda Hamilton. They only have time/room to certify 25 dogs and I think they are already full. Linda can tell you for sure.

Talked to Tony and Linda from UBT. Tony is doing well and said he would be at Trackfest. The address is not the one on the flyer. It’s a Wisconsin address. Call Linda to let her know that you’re coming and she’ll give you the address if anyone is interested. The twenty dog slots are full but they’re considering taking more dogs. I told her it didn’t matter to me if I got to run the training lines and she said it was ok to bring Otis just to hang out if I wanted to bring him. ….So Otis and I will see you there.

Another low gut shot. You can see the shot in the pic. Otis actually winded this deer and found it. We started out working the trail like normal but Otis was struggling to work his way through the search area. His motivation was there and he was working the hell out of it….but after 20-25 minutes I decided to see if I could help him out by circling the area. We were making a second pass about 100 yards out past the search area when I saw Otis’s head start bobbing in the wind and he took off across the creek we were coming up. As I crossed the creek and looked into the cane thicket on the other I side, I saw what had gotten his nose’s attention.

Good stuff on a nice buck! How old was the track? Looks like ol' Otis already smells another one.

Good stuff...............congrats to all

Thanks fellas!


3FF.....The track was around 14 hrs old...basically overnight.

Another great job by Mr. Otis!

Good job!!!

Thanks!

Here’s a good episode of Mossy Oaks Gamekeepers on training tracking dogs. The tracking part is broken up into segments and played a little bit at a time as the show progresses.... so you’ll either have to watch the segments on the other topics or use the slider on the play bar to skip through them. It won't let me link you straight to the video but its episodes 3 & 4. Its a two parter. Look on the bottom right of the screen for your links.


http://www.mossyoak.com/our-obsession/video-on-demand/gamekeepers

Yea,JJ and Rosie are the best,he is my tracking partner,I cover tracks for him and he covers for me,we are also friends socially,our women are friends also.. JJ just got a new DD pup,by the sounds of things he is going to be good,I enjoy going to DD certifing events with him,I end up being a bunny brusher,
He is a wealth of knowledge.when it comes to training dogs,he has some kind of special gift with dogs.

Got our first double this morning. Both deer had to be bayed and dispatched. It made for a pretty exciting Saturday morning. Both tracks were 700-800 yards.

Good job Otis! I've tried keeping up with this thread, but sometimes due to work or kids I might have missed a post. I don't remember you ever posting up a successful "bayed up" story. Was this his first 2? Looks like he's really turning it on now!

Thanks!

Yep…..First two successful bays back to back. We’ve had a few other live deer this year but none we could bay up. This first one of the day had been hit low in the gut as well as being hit low in the back leg. He didn’t have much chance to get away. I saw him jump up in front of Otis and when he did….Otis ran around in front of the deer and cut him off. The deer stopped to turn back around and Otis circled back with it....about like a cuttin horse or something. The deer just locked down and froze. I called Otis back off the deer and the hunter missed from 40-50 yards. The deer bounced off but you could tell it was pretty hurt. I had Otis leashed so I told them lets just ease over the hill where the deer ran and see if its just standing there. Sure enough, it had just went over the rise in some open hardwoods and laid down. The hunter finished it off.

The second one was a low gut shot. It was 4-5 hrs after the shot but the deer was still alive. We tracked it out to around 800 yards when I heard Otis cut loose. The deer was bedded up in a tree top. I’m not sure what happened but from the sounds of Otis’s barking, he got in there too close on bay before we got to him. I think the deer tried to charge him a little cause his yelp went from aggressive to sounding more like something tried to get him. I wasn’t but 60-70 yards away by this time but I immediately toned him to try and get him back off the deer. He was coming back to me as I approached the small thicket where he had the deer bayed. I told the hunter to keep his eyes peeled and lets ease on up. The deer broke before we seen it and went over a little rise again similar to the first deer. You could tell this deer was pretty hurt as well. We slowly stalked for about a hundred yards behind where we saw the deer run. I kept Otis really close this time but watched him so he could guide us to the deer. I spotted it laying down again in those thinned pines you see in the pic about 60 yards ahead of us and the hunter was able to get propped and finish him off.

Here's one more pic from the first deer showing where one of the hunter's initial shots had landed.....Juuuuust a bit outside.

Good work!

Very nice!!!

Honest question...what did you think when the first hunter missed the 2nd shot at 40 yards?

Hell, I can’t say much cause I was pretty excited too at the time. Otis has a pretty intense bark when he’s after a live deer that sounds like an ol’ high pitched beagle…except it’s more of a “Chop!.. Chop!.. Chop!..” He's usually working within 100-150 yards of me at most, so it gets exciting quick when he cuts loose barking.

Coming up now on the final weekend of the season, I just wanted to tell everyone thank you. I appreciate all of the support from the Aldeer family and I appreciate you guys allowing me to be a part of it. Otis and I have had a very successful rookie season and a lot of that is due to Aldeer. Over the last few weeks when I answered my phone, I was just as likely to be called CNC as I was Harold. Thank y’all again and good luck out there in these final days of the season. The wather is looking good from here to the end.

He probably realized he was working for a lifetime customer

Ha!

Well, there’s a only a couple days left now. This will likely end up being our last track of the season. It’s been an awesome year….better than I could have hoped….and this is not a bad way to end it. Thanks again to everyone who gave Otis an opportunity to recover your deer this year.



CNC Tracking out.

I was able to watch CNC and Otis track a wounded buck for a young girl last week. After following a near bloodless trail (2 drops at the start) for several hundred yards thru shin deep water and head high briars, we saw the buck which will likely survive, cross into land where we couldn't get permission to pursue. CNC went the extra mile for the young lady and did not accept a dime of payment from her Dad. He did give her a big racked skull that we found during the track.

CNC and Otis are the real deal. I enjoyd spending time with them this weekend. They and Mr. Randy and Annie tried to find my daughter's first deer but unfortunately the 243 didn't leave the inside of the buck. With only a few drops(4), show-nuff thick briars(in the top 5 thickest for Otis), and standing water. There wasn't a recovery but ONE HECK OF A TIME watching the puppies work for my baby girl.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND CNC AND OTIS!!

Thanks Nock!…..I appreciate you saying that and I enjoyed meeting y’all.

I enjoyed it Randy. I'll see you at Trackfest in a few weeks.

enjoyed reading your track stories and the pics of the pup with his finds. Keeping you in mind if we ever need a dog. Have a safe off season

Thanks!

Great thread and enjoyed reading the tales of Otis this season. Already anticipating next year!

Thanks 3FF……


I’m going to start doing some tracking across the state line in Jawja next year. Season kicks off in September. Only 7 months to opening day!

I just hope there is better communication between the trackers so they can refer another dog in the area if they are not available.

AJ and I talk several times a week ….and we usually tracked together every couple weeks this season. I can’t tell you how many times he has told me that the most important thing for us is to first and foremost take care of the hunters in our area. Not only because it’s the right thing to do but also because it’s the smart thing to do long term. Unless the beer and chicken livers do me in, I’ll be here 5 years from now and 10 years from now. The guy I tracked for 5 miles down the road this year will likely be the same guy 5 miles down the road next year and the year after. My goal right now is to establish long term relationships with the hunters who are around me here in southeast Alabama and provide them with a quality service that they can rely on to be there to help them. I hope to just track within an hour of my house and focus on taking care of the needs of those hunters.

PS………Found one more.

Good job CNC and Otis!

Otis might just make a tracking dog yet. great job this season.

Thanks again fellas!..........

When you use this site to promote a service for pay on this site do you have to pay a fee to Aldeer.com for commercial use?

Yes

So reckon what CNC is paying?

when I have tracked with CNC he wouldn't accept any pay from the hunter. Can't say that for anyone else. Myself included.

I agree 100% loprofile........(page 10)

Good deal CNC. Good luck tracking.

H., At Christmas my family received a box of delicious oranges from the parents of a young hunter that my dog had helped recover his first deer. A few days ago we received a very nice thank you card from an 11 year old that we recovered a deer for this year. That kid really impressed me. He knew more about deer habits and how to successfully track a wounded deer with a dog than lots of the adult hunters that I track for. It is small things like this when people show their appreciation, that means more than anything to me.