Tracking update. Success is not always how we plan it.

The other major issue we faced this season was the number of very old tracks that we undertook.  The vast majority of our tracks were over 24 hours old when we arrived at the scene.  Certainly, all of my dogs are capable of such recoveries, and rarely do we run practice tracks that are less than 18-24 hours old.  

The difficulty is not simply in the age of the tracking line, but rather in what has happened to the scent trail during that period of time.  Getting on a track so late in the process is usually a result of the hunter having searched diligently for many hours, recruiting all friends and other available resources prior to calling us to the scene.  Additionally, in the game rich areas where we track,  dozens of deer may have passed through an area and clouded the track even further.

Despite difficult conditions, I got to see good tracking performances in each of my tracking partners, even when they didn't end in recovery.  We advanced many trails a great distance, and were able to give reasonable confirmation that many of the deer we tracked were alive.  Like most years, several of our unrecovered deer were confirmed alive on camera or by personal sightings later in the season.  One hunter even managed to kill the same buck a week after our track turned up empty.  Unfortunately, this was the first season since I started tracking that my old veteran tracker, Caliber, did not score a recovery.  This was not due in any way to his ability, but rather the fact that his tracks were limited as I concentrated most of my efforts on my younger dogs.

One morning, while hunting my own farm, I received a number of tracking calls.  The rut was on, and calls had been coming in waves each day.  On this particular day, I decided to hang up my bow and get some tracks under my belt.  I prioritized the tracks based on likelihood of recovery and distance.  I decided to take the best three, and knew that this would have me tracking late into the evening and covering roughly 300 miles by the time I was finished.  

The closest track sounded fairly promising, and was a hunter that I was acquainted with.  He had shot the deer the day prior.  The hit was a bit high, but he felt that he got a lung.  He had searched the area thoroughly the day before, and even more on the morning that he called me.  When I arrived, the track was just under 24 hours old.  Because he had already tracked this deer a few hundred yards, and we were pressed for time, we decided to start the track about 100 yards from his point of loss.  Echo quickly progressed the track  beyond the point of loss, but there was no blood to confirm our progress.  After a couple of restarts, our progress was confirmed by some new blood.  The deer had obviously done some circling in this area, and finding the way out of the maze proved difficulty.  After several attempts, we began working some circles as time was running short.  While we searched an ATV trail, Echo began showing interest in an area adjacent to the trail.  I let him go a short distance before I noticed a few specks of blood.  Nowhere during the track had we found any sign that the deer had been hit in the lungs, but the blood was quite old and dry by this time.  Echo made his way up a steep hill before working down a cedar choked.  He began working hot, and I was convinced that he was on a fresh deer trail.  After working through the area a few times, I had to call off the track due to time constraints.  I always hate to call a track when the dog still seems to be working, but after progressing over 500 yards with very little blood, I was fairly certain that we were not going to recover this deer.  

The hunter thanked us for our efforts, and promised to keep looking in the direction where we had progressed the track.  Much to my surprise, I received a text the following day with this picture, and the following caption..."I found him 30 yards past the last speck of blood we found."  I can't explain how we managed to track this deer this far, and then passed within 30 yards of him without picking him up.  

In Echo's defense, he was probably smelling the deer when he suddenly went "hot".  He is definitely not my best wind scenting dog, preferring to work ground scent almost exclusively.  If I had to pick one or the other, I would choose a ground scenter every time.

Though we didn't actually complete this track, I am sure that the hunter would have never found this deer without us having significantly progressing the track right up to the deer's final resting place.  Sadly, the meat was lost, but in our area it is likely that the coyotes had already had their way with this deer by the time we had arrived.  At the end of the day, the hunter recovered his "trophy," and punched his buck tag.

As for the other two tracks, one hunter found a closer tracker before I arrived, and called to cancel.  The other track was confirmed to be a muscle hit.  We followed the sparse blood trail for a reasonable distance, but all sign pointed towards a non-fatal hit. 

Good hunting!  Brady