You'll get lots of different answers on this one. Here's what I wear and carry. an orange cap that doesn't snag and that I , can use for a dog water bowl.a little spray tube with hydrogen peroxide in it. flag tape.pen and paper in case I get a call while tracking in one shirt pocket. a GPS handheld tied to my shirt in the other shirt pocket. glove on my left hand. secure phone holster. secure pistol with nite sites at least a 357. Toilet paper.licenses. folding knife. snake boots. 24 ft. stiff tracking lead. 3 small flashlights . 2 extra bullets, batteries and an extra bulb for my big flashlight. water. A 1" wide strap for emergency dog leash or dragging deer. Sometimes a real short lite rifle with low power scope if the dog might be turned loose to bay. what did I forget? as much orange as possible.

Thank yall advice taken

How did Shelby Lou do tonight?

She did good. I’ll write a paragraph or two and post it with a pic in the morning…..watching Bama play right now.

I was making a joke when I said "Viscous dogs?" Because VISCOUS means thick, like a viscous liquid. VICIOUS is what you are referring to. Sorry, science nerd here lol.

Spellun don't count on Aldeer.....

So I was able to get Shelby on her first real track last night. I had a group of does moving through just about dark and I picked out the only one I had a shot on at about 35 yards as it passed through a little shooting lane. Well, my little doe ended up being a little spike with ½ inch nubbins. No big deal though. It’s gonna be some tender eatin to go along with a pan of homemade biscuits and a pan of gravy. It'll probably end up being 1 of 2 deer that I kill all year. I might try to pop one more doe with my new pistol before buck hunting though.....we'll see how many show up.

As far as the track goes……….I hit the deer in the edge of the front shoulders a little low. The arrow actually deflected off the leg bone itself as it went through and hit bone directly on the opposite side. You're looking at a portion of the exit hole in the pic. My Muzzy is all bent up and the arrow is broke in half but I did get a semi-pass through until it hit leg bone on the opposite side and the deer was dead within about 10 seconds. It made it about 75 yards leaving a blood trail that a blind man could follow.

Shelby was extremely excited to track until we got to the hit site and entered the woods with the flashlight on. I don’t track much at night and haven’t been practicing it with her so she boogered up on me for a minute. I just sat down with her until she got calmed and realized that everything was ok and then we proceeded on. She slowly picked her way right to it. Before the track was done, she seemed to not care too much anymore about the dark and the shadows……she was concentrating on the blood and the track. Once we found the deer…..she certainly didn’t give a dam anymore. I need to definitely run a few more training tracks with her at night just so she’ll be familiar with it in case I do eventually track more at night.

Anyways, here it is……Shelby’s first deer!

Ole Shelby! Good deal man. You forgot to put blood on her face.. first deer man !

Thanks!

Trust me....she got plenty of blood on her face on her own once I hung it up and cleaned it.

Fresh deer carcass……it’s what’s fer breakfast. I constantly give my dogs deer parts as rewards or treats. Last year I had the local processor save me 50 legs and 15 livers that I put in the freezer for the off season. I’ve got what’s left of this carcass in the freezer right now. When its frozen, I’ll hang it up for the dogs and let ‘em go at it again. I may refreeze it and do that again every few days until they pick it clean.

Shelby gets into it pretty hardcore. She acts dang near blood thirsty….ripping and jerking. Both of them love deer meat though like it’s Starbucks. The only downside I’ve found is that I have to watch Otis when he finds a deer or he’ll have the arse eaten out of it before you turn around. That’s probably not considered good etiquette.

It’s JMO but I think it makes them “want” the deer more if I give it to them as their treats and rewards. I see folks with puppies at the tracking conventions that seem to have issues with their dog not naturally wanting to follow a scent line. Make them really want what’s at the end before you try to make them work the line to find it.

They have found a gene in labs that causes them to incessantly want to eat, hence why they will eat every drop of food available even if they aren't hungry.

I had a Cocker Spaniel when I was younger that you could leave out a constant supply of food for and she would only eat a certain amount. She was never over weight either. I’ve seen other dogs though that are like what you’re saying and would eat themselves to death nearly. It’s just me guessing but I think it’s something to do with the amount of “wolf” still in them. I figure the wolf had to gorge themselves when they made a kill….eating large amounts that would last them for days. I assume that’s the way many dogs are still genetically ingrained to do. I’ve got a buddy whose bulldog looks like it could explode it’s so overweight. They just give it a never ending bowl of food and it’s literally eating itself to death.

Otis looks pretty thick in that picture

The Georgia rut must be kicking off. I somehow got my name listed for Macon Co, Georgia and I swear I’ve gotten more calls from there than I have from Macon Co, Alabama. They’ve started up again this year. I can always tell when it’s a GA hunter because I don’t recognize a damn place they’re talking about. A hunter just called looking for someone in Perry, GA and said every tracker over that way was backed up. Gotta love the rut!

I've got a buddy looking for a dog in Athens,ga right now lol.

Hey Harold when my buddy was on the track he was following what he is calling blood but it's almost black. What could a black liquid coming from a wounded deer be?

Might have hit the gall bladder where bile is stored……its right beside the liver so he may have been getting a mix of blood and bile.

liver blood is kinda dark too, aint it?

Yeah. Dried up blood will look way dark as well.

Yep….I thought about that too. Once blood dries it almost looks black. If it was fresh blood though then I’d probably guess that some kind of fluid from the gut, intestines, gall bladder, etc…..was coming out. I actually tracked a gut shot one last year that we didn’t hardly find any blood on but we could tell we were on the right track because we were finding pellets of corn here and there falling out of the deer.

I just went back and read the rest of the thread from page 2.

Nothing says "MY DEER" like sitting on it's head. Go Shelby girl!