Tracking update. Fits and starts. Layla's first recovery.

Keeping up with the blog, and managing everyday life is certainly a challenge!  This tracking season has been no different.  This year was filled with work and family obligations as well as bad timing on tracking calls.  It seems that every time I would start back to a long work week, the calls would rush in, while my weeks off were often quite.  While I received a record number of calls this season, I took less this year than any of my previous tracking seasons.  All calls that I could not take were referred out to other competent trackers, and a fair number of those led to successful recoveries I am happy to say.  

My over zealousness to get the dogs on tracks led to less scrutiny on which calls I responded to.  This always results in taking more "low probability" calls than I normally would, and a higher than average number of tracks that don't end up in a recovery.  This was especially difficult this season as I was working hard to get my new dog, Layla, on some good developmental tracks.

All was not in vain, however.  We did have a few nice successes, and Layla was able to recover her first real deer.  I was the hunter, and though the deer was hit reasonably well, only one lung was penetrated, and the blood trail was minimal.  I gave the deer a few hours before retrieving Layla, and taking up the track.

This doe had been one of 6 deer to pass by the stand on the morning of the hunt.  In fact, 3 deer passed by the stand after I had arrowed the doe.  I was interested to see how Layla would work through all the fresh deer scent.  

She was started at the hit sight, where no discernible blood or sign was present aside from my bloody arrow.  She progressed the track the first 30 yards before the first blood was apparent on the trail.  After 50 yards, the blood had disappeared again, so I blindly followed her in the direction that she wished to travel.  I knew that we were moving in the general direction that the deer had fled through the woods, but after 100 yards and no deer I became concerned that we were not on the right track.  As it turns out, she had followed a fresher deer trail up to a couple of does that were making their way through the thick cover.

 It took a couple of restarts before I was able to get her back on line.  The difficulty was that I wasn't sure where the line was myself.   When she made a hard right turn in a different direction than she had previously tracked, I felt like we might be on the right path.  Sure enough, after traveling 150 yards from the hit site we came upon the doe.  There was very little blood during the entire track, so I was pleased overall with my young dog's performance.  Like every young dog I have worked, teaching them to overlook distractions and stay on the right line is both the most important part and the hardest part of developing an excellent tracking dog.  This seasons successes and failures taught me what I need to work on during the off season this year.

Here is my little gal with her first recovery.  I likely would have found this deer on my own, but not without some diligent searching.

I will add some more of this year's adventures in "soon to come" upcoming blogs.

Good hunting! Brady