Thanks Hayman....Stickers



One of the guides out there was saying the exact same thing. I couldn’t ask for a friendlier dog than Otis. He has a great personality and doesn’t show the least bit of aggression toward anyone when we find a deer…..he’s just happy. He loves the socialization with the hunters too.

This was a pretty easy track compared to other ones we’ve been on. It doesn’t make for a dramatic story but I’d take ‘em like this all day long if we could get ‘em. I think the hunter just got overly excited cause he was still pretty amped up when I got there. He sent the guide a message that he had stuck a “big 9 pt”. He knew he had stuck it high and back with no pass through..... and he wanted to go ahead and call in the dog man, as he described me to the guide. If you look in the pic you can tell where he hit it there in the back. He actually stuck the deer in the middle of the day and kept sitting in his stand to try and get a doe. By the time we gave his buck some time and I got there to track…..he had already stuck one of the biggest does I’ve ever seen. That was the only really hard part about this track. I had to get Otis to try and track the blood trail from the buck while at the same time there was a second blood trail, and a deer, laying not 50 yards away.

I didn’t think we were going to be able to pull it off at first cause Otis could definitely wind the doe laying over in the bushes. I still had him on a leash and he was pulling hard over in that direction wanting to go to it. We had some initial blood on the buck and knew a direction it had run in so I just kept pulling Otis away from the doe and tried to focus his attention on the other scent line. Finally, we got far enough away that he stopped paying the doe any attention and he stuck his nose down on the ground to get a good whiff of blood scent in it. When he did, his focus changed to the buck’s scent line and I cut him loose. It was one of the prettiest lines he’s run all year. It was only a few hundred yards but he made a bee line right to it crossing right over an interior road with no problem. Those have been minor distractions for him on some tracks. The whole ordeal lasted a grand total of about 10 minutes if that. It wasn’t quite the “Big 9” that the hunter thought it was when he walked up on it but I’ll say this….he was still a very happy hunter and seemed to be enjoying every minute of it. That’s the most important part. This is some fun stuff. Enjoy it while you can.

Good job

CNC thanks for the stories. About how much rain do you think it takes to clean the woods of deer or human scent in an area?

I don’t have much personal experience tracking after rain yet other than running some training lines back during the summer after a little shower had fell on them. I’ve heard stories though, of trackers still finding deer after more than an inch of rain fell on the scent line. The blood apparently keeps leaving scent behind even after what you can see has washed away. The other finer scent particles like the ones we would leave behind as humans or maybe one a squirrel would leave from playing in the leaves….those scents are washed away……leaving nothing but the clean blood scent running through the woods. I’m sure a lot of it is going to depend on what type of wound you’re dealing with too.

Tell TR that Danny said if he was a real dog man he would have him a good blood trailing dog! J/K

It is a nice place!

I can understand why they don’t have a tracking dog. It takes a lot of patience and investment in time to get a dog where they’ll follow an old cold track that’s 24 hrs old across all kinds of other fresh scent. It’s really an awesome place for Otis to track because it requires him to ignore a lot of other deer scent and only focus on the wounded one. If he can ignore all the other deer scent at that place then he can surely do it on any other property we may go to.

Btw.....Have any of y'all heard anything about a big deer being run over near B'ham?

http://www.aldeer.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1602076&page=1

I`ll tell why they don`t have a train tracking dog....the customers that come there to hunt pays for a tracker to come in. And some of the hunters don`t want to fool with tracking the deer they shot (they got deep pockets) Ya`ll should of seen the private jet parks at the Hurtsboro airport..I looked it up online it cost around 20 million.

Back to the tracking dog at Enon if they had a trained dog it would cost em alot to feed it 9 months out of the year not to mention Vet. bills. T R is no fool...he is a money man...if customers want to find their deer they just call us for Peanuts to track it. Ever wonder what it cost to hunt at Enon for 3 days. Now they got deer to shoot. I think it is bow hunting only...most of the deer shot is just wounded its tuff tracking wounded bow shot deer....ain`t that CNC

There's a lot of dang deer scent for the dog to have to work through out there, that's for sure. After we tracked the one in the last pic, the guide told me that another hunter had shot a doe if I just wanted to run the track. He had smoked it and heard it fall about 100 yards away but while I was there I thought I would let Otis get in as much work as possible. It was just after dark and I literally had to shoo deer away from us so it didn't distract Otis. It's crazy.

lucy and I track a lot pf deer in high fence areas,I like high fence, places super safe for the dog,we dont have to worry about her getting hit by a car,the consentration of deer doesnt matter,I train my dogs to track only wounded deer.weve even tracked deer in high fence areas that have elk

My dog Fred and I looked for an arrow shot buck in a Bullock County high fence a month ago with no luck. Was glad to find out yesterday that the buck is alive and well. Fred and his daughter Minnie both stuck to the same trail even though we jumped numerous deer during the process. Can only assume it was the right trail.

I like tracking in high fences because I can turn Annie loose and not worry about her getting run over or shot by other hunters. You must have a dog that won't trail unhurt deer. The only drawback is that the fenced deer seems to know that if he keeps circling and crossing his own track he will eventually lose us. They sure don't circle as much on the outside. We once recovered a buck with a broken front leg that was trying to get INTO a high fenced area.

Just found that 24 hr old gut shot. I'm going to let the hunter tell the story. May be tomorrow though.

H., the hunter with the 56 hour old track went back out yesterday after he called me and recovered his deer at 225 yards after the other guys dog could not trail it. He left me hanging until this afternoon. Dang, I know we could have nailed that one. It would have been our second oldest recovery as we have a 70 hour 1200 yards that had been rained out and a 40 hour 600 yards in the rain and water. Both on lead and tracked not winded.

ok,now I know who trackncur is,lol!!!

TR has plenty of dogs.
And, cost is not stopping him from getting another one! If he sees one he likes; he will buy it...and pay somebody to hunt it if need be. LOL

He and I like to pick at each other about dogs.
I was just wanting to send him a little msg to rib him.

It's pretty impressive what they can do. I feel a lot more comfortable now about working an older scent after this morning. I don't think we're ready for a 70 hour old one yet....that's pretty dang old there.

I'll be sure to pass your message along to him.....as well as with the message that I'm just a few minutes up the road any time they ever need me.

I had Otis try to track a non-wounded deer yesterday but he hasn’t been too bad about it so far. Not to spoil the story but when I pulled up the hunter told me he had some bad news. Another buck had just crossed over the lane he was on and went right down the same trail as the deer he had shot the day before. The deer he shot went down the trail and took a left. The recent unwounded deer went down the same trail and took a right. Otis has hit a new phase now in his progression. Earlier this season he was still kind of timid on some tracks….like he was a little nervous to venture out on his own. Now, we've been on enough tracks that he knows exactly what we’re going to do and he comes out of the gate amped up ready to find a deer.

When I cut him loose on the track yesterday, he started tracking the wounded deer but when he came to the fork, he never checked up and he went to the right behind the fresh scent instead to the left on the day old track. I could tell he was working the track WAY too fast for a track that old but I let him go for a little ways just to be sure. After about 300 yards he slowed up and I pulled him off. We restarted back at the hit site and I gave him the “eaassssy” command several times. The second time he kept his nose on the ground and methodically worked the track slowly right to the buck we were searching for. It actually worked out great since he saw that the one track led to a prize while the other led to nothing. Just part of the training process I suppose. Even though he let his excitement lead him astray, I’m still really happy to see his motivation and drive really amp up. He’s starting to get that “don’t give up” attitude now.

Congrats, H., great training opportunity. I've been an Otis fan since I first saw him work. In a couple of years he will be bulletproof.