Do you need blood for tracking ????

Hales Smut

Well-Known Member
First of all I want to say that I have no experience at all in tracking dogs but I do have a broad intrest in all " gundog " breeds and their work .

A good few years ago I had a friend ( who suddenly died when he was far to young ) who trained a few Hannover tracking dogs and he was one of the ABUCS tracking dog handlers . ABUCS is an organisation who organises the tracking of wounded game ( deer/boar ) in Belgium.
If you have a wounded annimal , you call the central number and they sent the closest or the most adapted dog handler which is available . All this happens free of charge on voluntary basis. I enclose their web site for readers wich are able to read french. http://users.skynet.be/abucs/

When I asked this man information for another friend who started training a Teckel , he told me that he almost never used blood to train his dogs.
He started from the point that when you have blood at the " anschuss " ( the point of impact) , you only have 2 options.
- there is a lot of blood from a shot through hart or lungs and in this case tha animal is very close
-or you have a muscle wound and than the annimal is very hard to find , if not impossible .

A shot through the stomach or the intestinies is always mortal , gives almost no blood on the track and the beast can go very far .

He told me that he used a small piece of tripe on a pointed stick and with this he touched the ground in the way you do with blood . More frequently and in a straight short line at the start and less frequently and with hooks as the dog got more experienced. He also used scent shoes at the same time . Storing an using tripe is far easier than do the same with blood.

I haven't tried this myself , but my friend was very experienced and he was the regular tracking dog handler on one of the most famous driven big game shoots in Belgium .

When reading German shooting magazines , one thing is generally accepted . They don't use the same dog for all kinds of game .
- Dogs for red deer and boar
- other dogs for roe deer
I am sure there will be exceptions of dogs working strongly on all kinds of game , but exceptions are not the rule .
 
do you need blood for tracking

Hi, interesting post good read and makes sense , i often use ofal to lay a track i leave a little bit of liver lung or what ever i have at the start and always leave a bit at the end , ATB ye old stalker
 
The old school way of dog training is not to use the same dog for tracking roe, but it is not practical and I don't know anyone who has more than one tracking dog these days. The problem is that a roe deer smells really nice and dogs often preffer to track roe deer instead anything else. This might cause problems, especially if you start using your young dog for a roe. It's always better to start with a red or wild boar and then with roe.
I used scent shoes and placed a skin or boar/deer feet at the end. I also used blood to train my foxterrier for wild boar and deer tracking. I know it's not the best breed for this purpose, but... :rolleyes:

Greg
 
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