Just a few more days!!!

Bow season, and with it, tracking season, is less than a week away.  Traditionally, the season starts slowly and sporadically, and picks up the closer we get to November.  I am hopeful that we will get a few early season tracks to put the dogs to work on.

I had the opportunity to work with one of my friend's talented wirehair dachshunds about a week ago.  It was a lot of fun working his dogs, including 2 young pups who will have their rookie season this year.  All of the dogs performed well.  I also laid a 20 hour old trail for Layla.  The line was only about 400 yards long because of time constraints, but she performed well on the line, as expected.  

Boone continues to run about 3 tracks per week.  We are running tracks aged anywhere from 4-12 hours depending upon my availability to run the line.  He typically requires a little coaxing to remain excited and focused on older lines, but he always makes his way through them.  I anticipate that the more experience he gains, the more his drive will grow on these older lines.  This is a very common progression with young dogs.

His drive on most lines remains very high.  He is extremely motivated on the majority of tracks, and is single minded.  Not much distracts him from the task at hand.  He also is becoming more and more accurate on tracks of increasing difficulty.  All of our tracks now include scent shoes with varying amounts of blood trickled along the track.  Each track gets at least a couple of sections using just the scent shoes and no blood.  This helps Boone associate both scents with the track, but not depend upon both to be present.  Initially, he had a little trouble staying focused with the hoof scent, but he now tracks through the hoof only areas with ease.  As we progress, less and less blood will be used, simulating the tough tracks that we usually get during season.

Here is a line that we ran today.  The conditions were not ideal, temps in the mid 80's and dry.  Thankfully wind was light.  The line was laid entirely in a wooded area with a lot of rock and dry leaves.  Honeysuckle, gooseberry, and multiflora rose added some difficulty in maneuvering.  The track was about 4.5 hours old, roughly 150 yards long.  Very little blood was sprinkled on the ground, and it was more spaced out than we have been doing.  

As you will notice in the video, Boone is very focused and driven on this track.  He really doesn't require any direction from me.  He misses a couple of checks by a few feet, but almost immediately corrects, and recovers the track. This is one of my favorite traits of his tracking.  He is learning that coming back to the line is more efficient than random searching.  I will be very pleased if this trait continues!

On this track, there were two areas of major distraction.  The first was an area where a carcass had decomposed.  The beetles and bugs were still finishing off the left overs.  The second distraction was a well used armadillo hole.  I purposely ran the trail within a foot of both.  Watch his response...or lack of it.  He never looks up off the line.

This was a very nice run, and I couldn't be prouder.  Clearly, Boone still needs more experience before he is ready to run some of the very difficult tracks that we usually receive each season.  However, I anticipate some finds with this guy in the next couple of months.  I have little doubt, he will be tugging on real deer hide that he recovered before he turns 6 months old.  We can't wait to serve our area hunters this season!

It's go time folks!!!!

Good hunting! Brady