first live track

cookingfat

Well-Known Member
I got invited to be the dog man on a deer day on a big estate near me this week, I thought it would be a good opportunity to give my two 9 month old black lab’s some real trails to follow.
After two hours of walking the woods and the morning session over I followed the picking up truck to the first seat on our route, all very straight forward, three roe shot, all shot cleanly, all dead within 50 yards of the seat, dog not needed, moved on to the second seat which we new had had lots of action as we had seen and heard lots of shooting as walking through, on arrival the gentleman in the seat told me he had shot three deer which had run on and showed me where the shot sights where, went back to the landie and got one of the pups out, big mistake as I soon found out, while he was showing me the shot sights the picking up teem where busy dragging some 12+ deer to the trailer making even more trails and with all that scent and blood around the poor dog stood no chance for one so young and I think even the most experienced dog would have been very confused.
The guns and picking up teem moved off leaving me to try and work out where these wounded deer had gone, back to the landrover got out my big chocolate lab who is a mostly an air scenter cast him off into a big and very dense Christmas tree plantation, it wasn’t very long before he was onto the lost muntie, 1 down 2 to go, two minutes he had found the lost roe, only a fallow to find, spent the next 20 minutes looking with no luck.
Got a call on the radio to move off to onther seat where a roe had been hit in the rear leg and was still very mobile, the shot sight had been marked and it was the only one in that place, so my partner took one of the pups and went to look while i continued to look for the fallow.
this was much better for the young dog as there was only one trail to follow, after some 5 minutes or so the dog found the lost fallow and i moved off to join my partner getting there just in the nick of time, the pup had found the deer some 50 yards doen the trail and the yearling roe was very much alive and active and my partner not knowing what to do, very quickly put the big choc dot onto it and it was dispatched very sonn after.
lots of lessons lernt that day, but it was nice to see one of the pups work really well after all those months of training even if it was at the expense of some wreckness shooting.

Anthony
 
Well done to that dog and to your self but i my self think that is to early for that sort of work nine months is extremely young. What type of deer work are you undertaking is it driven deer on that estate.
 
hi HT, i think the powers to be like to call it "deer movement" and not driven it amounts to the same thing, as for the pups being to young i dont think so on a single trail, they have been following 100 meter trails layed be me for 3 - 4 months now and have been working with blood since they where 8 weeks old, and as said in the thread on a single line they did a fantastic job, the only thing they cant do yet is pull the deer down or hold it at bay. Regards anthony
 
clearly an estate not much concerned with the welfare of deer; I'm not sure that I'd be having much to do with a set up like that myself.
 
not a big fan of these sort of day myself, but by me being there at least i can find any wounded deer there might be and that has got to be good for deer welfare, these sort of days are always going to take place like it or not. Anthony
 
Sounds like the dogs did a good job. Sounds almost like Swedish hunting ;) .
Were all the deer apart from the leg shot deer found dead?
Try the pup on longer trails when training and make them more complicated. It will pay off and you will have a first class dog able to tackle the hardest tracking.



www.prokennel.se
 
thanks jagare for the advice,i have just started to make the trails more complicated by working them down wind and puting a lot more twists and turns in the line.
so far, so good.


thanks again Anthony
 
Well it seems not a great thing to shoot a deer in the rear leg, butttt :confused: surely you are flying double standards here gents, if it was a driven boar shoot you would have all been slobbering about the jammy sods ;)

Now far be it from me to judge anyone, as I would like a go at driven boar, my european mates shoot anything that comes past boar or deer.
I would hope if I took a shot at a running beast it would be one where I had a fair chance of hitting it, if I had a chance would give it a go can't see it as any different to other driven shooting, and certainly wouldn't mean I respected my quarry any less.
 
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