CNC, I’ve never had to call a dog but really glad the resource exists.

Bayed and killed this deer 4hrs after it was shot yesterday. He only ran 200 yards or so before my dogs held him. I shot him in the neck with my 223 and put him out of misery. No way this deer would have lived.

Here's one we had to bay and finish......I have no issue showing the reality of any deer that we've ever had to "bay and finish".....I would rather the reality been seen versus a straw man scenario created by others......or maybe straw deer.

Check this one out…….This is where the deer was shot the evening before……..



This is what we found the next morning……This is just the reality of what happens to these deer if we don’t recover them before the coyotes find them. Any that live the rest of their life out as happy little three legged deer are extreme anomalies from the norm.




Here’s another one that had to be bayed and finished. For someone to make any kind of “ethical” judgement against what we’re doing is some kind of left wing type, emotional knee jerk reaction to something seen on the internet instead of any kind of decision making based on reality and rationality

I grew up dog hunting for deer and had hounds until I quit dog hunting in mid 80's. We always had at least one dog that would trail wounded deer. It was a blast looking for them. We found lots of dead deer that wouldn't have been found without a trail dog, lots of deer that had to be finished off that would surely have died and not been recovered without a dog and we killed deer that would have survived that the dogs wore down and bayed because they had some injury or the dogs pushed the non mortally wounded deer back over standers. We had almost no coyotes back then in my area. It wasn't unheard of to kill a healthy 3 legged deer that probably was three legged due to a gunshot with the remainder of the leg completely healed. I can think of half dozen or so off top of my head. Those deer probably get drug down by coyotes now.

I don't have a "dog in the fight" either way. Only experience I have personally had with a tracking dog was for a young boy who shot a buck on our lease year before last. Guessing it was a leg or low brisket hit. Dog bayed the dear up two separate times, GPs collars said they covered almost a mile total. They never eneded up reocereving ther deer. I remeber thinking to myself, this seems off to me, at what point are they hunting at night with the use of dogs?

The problem I do have, is when the ethics things starts to get thrown around like above. CNC made tha argument in the first page that it is infact more ethical to have the dog recover a deer that is mortaly wounded then just above said no one should be allowed to make any sort of ethical judgment.
I think you should just call it for what it is for the most part, antler recovery. How many calls do you get and tracks do you go on for does each year? Being that more does than bucks are killed each year would only lead to the fact that more are lost and wounded, but doubt you or any other trackers spend any amount of time going on doe recovery missions

I have been know to violate #15.

A little gas does a yellow jacket nest a world of good.

Could be wrong but I that those regs has only to do with game animals

That’s pretty cool

I used to deal with IR imagery for a living.

If it’s an open field or something, it’s gonna be easy to find a deer. But you’ll really struggle to look through any kind of canopy. Rocky soil and puddles will also affect your ability to search. At the end of the day, the thermal camera is a Tool, but I wouldn’t think it’d ever replace a dog. If anything, I think a handheld thermal would be more useful than the drone.

In my opinion I would say that it’s only really an issue if there are deer being killed that weren’t already mortally wounded from the original shot…..Its just not the case though as you pointed out….. The dog is only a tool being used to salvage already mortally wounded deer and not something used as an aid for killing additional ones…..

Actually what I as referencing as an actual video of a dog taking out a buck it had bayed and wore down instead of shooting the deer they let the dog kill it. At first it was a fight and the dog could’ve been killed. The dog won. Some people love controversy and this was one of those times.

I have no issue and actually support using tracking dogs to humanely dispatch crippled deer

I dont have much of an opinion on the subject, but there is probably a reason only 3 or 4 states allow tracking off a leash. Heck, I'd love to do a dog hunt. But, I could see how the lines could be blurred real quick.

I shot some Christmas pics for a company party in TN that trained and used drones for military. They had a few on display iand said most were not on display. Talked of some of there capabilities but couldn’t mention much of that either. That was 10 plus years ago.

Buddy had a drone from the adjoining property fly over a couple of their greenfields Saturday afternoon at prime time. Ran deer off at 3 fields. Very pissed. What can he do?

better yet now that spotted fawns are legal, how many of those are tracked down and recovered?

He said he would report what happened, possible shooting of the drone, but, to my knowledge, never did.

May have been said just as bait to keep watching the videos.


God Bless,
David B.

I would think a video recording the event and a call to the game warden.
Seems like it could be construed as hunter harassment, if the GW is willing to work with him.


God Bless,
David B.

Not much. Legally, the drone pilot has to maintain visual line of sight of it at all times, so if he’s flying multiple green fields, he’s not and that’s a big no-no.

I’d go find the guy flying it and have a heart-heart. Not gonna get much from a LEO unless the guys being dangerous with it.
Shooting it is unfortunately a big no-no now as well.