The Southern Outdoorsman episode 315 with Tom Brownley. He’s done tons of work with odors and training dogs for dope work etc. At the 90 minute mark he explains why blood for training tracking dogs serves no real purpose. It’s the epinephrine from the wounded animal that they key on.

He explains how odors move and persist in the environment.

.......but, but......the interdigital gland!!!

So I listened to the whole podcast and that guy definitely sounded like an expert on a lot of things scent related as well as working with dope dogs. He lost me though when he got the part where he was commenting on “blood trackers” that you’re referring to. I may be wrong but it didn’t sound like he really had any personal experience with it himself and was forming his opinions based off of assumptions from his other work. He was being a little condescending with it too.

Maybe I don’t fully understand it but the thing that doesn’t make any sense to me about him saying that its all about the epinephrine is that when an animal has an adrenaline rush and epinephrine is released…..its being released into the blood stream correct?…..So how else is the dog gonna pick up on the epinephrine if it isnt from the blood being what carries it?

I honestly have no idea and zero experience to refute what he says. Just thought it was an interesting podcast. He has had experience with tracking canines and mentions using a Dacshund to track game at a ranch with exotics.

I really liked listening to the Southern Outdoorsman until they started deep throating the AWFFover how they handled CWD. hearing Chuck Sykes and his entourage of idiot cronies talk on their podcast made my blood boil.

They're in that new breed camp of younger hunters that have this weird drive to implement new regs/rules that they think will help conservation but don't seem to understand that they paving the way to make hunting more difficult and expensive.

Yeah it was definitely interesting to listen to……That little section of it and the comments he made just didn’t make any sense to me though. It would be interesting to know what he meant by some of that. I really think he may have been over simplifying it a little bit.

There are a few like that but I scroll through looking for interesting topics. I still Listen to Land and Legacy even though they tend to get condescending with their attitude at times. Either way, it's better than politics on talk radio.

I’ve trained a lot of deer dogs and a few squirrel dogs. I don’t know what smell they key on, but they’re not running/tracking wounded animals.

From my personal experience with it I’ve come to the conclusion that the dog is using multiple scents to track a wounded deer. He may be using any or all of them at any given point in time as a means of progressing the line forward…. I would challenge the guy in the podcast to take a few hundred blind calls from the public before forming any hard conclusions about blood tracking deer and what is and isnt occurring. There’s far more variables thrown at you in these scenarios versus some of the more simplified versions of it. I will say though that the epinephrine theory he presented may very well be what a dog is using to determine how lethal the hit may be. Me personally, I believe that they can distinguish between blood that's coming from internal organs versus blood that may be coming from a flesh wound

Not to hijack the thread but the Southern Outdoorsman podcast was helpful at first but I have lost interest as with other deer hunting related podcast. I’ve heard “thermal hub” so much I’m sick of hearing it.