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!