Everybody so quick to call in a dog nowadays. Man my favorite part of hunting is tracking one. Have been successful a lot of times even on some very difficult ones but unsuccessful too a couple times. Anyone else take a lot of pride in bloodtrailing deer? Sometimes think folks are.missing out on a lot of fun learning to track and read sign.Maybe not many good teachers left?

I like tracking too....Feels really good to find one after a tough track....I'v had some doozies too....

Tracking deer has never really been an art for most people to begin with......There's a lot more to it than just being able to find a spec of blood

What I and others do now with a dog is far more of an art form when it comes to “tracking” than most anything that has gone on in the past. I can come out in most situations…. take the evidence we find along with the dog’s behavior and accurately assess exactly where you hit the deer and what happened from there. No human has ever been able to do it to the degree that we can with a good dog

The answer to the question is yes.

I trailed one for 4 hours a few weeks ago. Old army buddy is just getting into deer hunting and made a bad shot. He’s never had to trail one so trying to teach him while he was excited tested my patience. He kept trying to jump ahead on the trail without following the previous drop and was breaking his own paths through the brush which made it 10x worse. Ended up finding it eventually around 1am.

No shame in calling a dog though, i view it as another tool in the toolbox. If you can turn a 4 hour track into a 1 hour, chances of recovering your meat without the coyotes getting ahold of it are just that much better.

A lot of folks seem to get in to much of a hurry to be good trackers. Some are just to dumb and really shouldn't be hunting. IMO

I don’t know, I think there are still a lot of people who track and recover their deer without a dog. A dog is good back up for sure. When we kept deer dogs, we used them often. (Buckshot needed a lot more tracking than a rifle) But still was the last option as didn’t want to push a wounded deer with a dog if it wasn’t necessary.

Most definitely!! It got to the point at the camp where some of our guys would message me to bring Raven before they even got out the stand after the shot. That was fine when I was training her but not now. I had to explain that she was only a last resort and not a full time tracking dog. They now do their own tracking. Fortunately we haven’t needed the last 2 seasons. Blood trailing for me big fun for me.

I was in too big a hurry the other night trying to find Josephs deer. I knew i was too. I was walking trails instead of looking for blood. I was fairly certain it would be laying not far in the woods. There were factors i was unaware of. Joseph found blood and followed it. He did the better job tracking. My uncle and i followed blood once, several years ago, for about three miles, i guess. Started out pouring, then ended up a drop at a time every 50ft or so, then nothing. My uncle was a pretty good tracker and i learned alot from him that day. He was very patient and thorough. Josephs deer last week crossed a river and a big creek and bled very little after that. It had been run by yard dogs. We would never have found it without a dog. There is a need for a dog. Poor tracking skills by the average hunter is the cause of the need most of the time.

No its not. The majority of the deer we recover with dogs would have never been found by ANY hunter.

Then you have the deer thats 50-100yds in the woods, right? Are you saying you believe the average hunter youve seen has good tracking skills?

Man I have found some tough ones, one a crow gave it away the following morning. One did a 90 degree turn which is unusual and needed some sorting out. One I found just by dead reckoning. Gotta have patience. Found one the following morning liver shot that all the blood had been rained out except for that on vertical surfaces, some blades of grass and small brush. No dog needed.

Never used a dog. I can still do a good job tracking. Lot's of little things I've learned over the years.

There are very, very few deer that we recover less than 300 yards……Most people do not have great tracking skills but it wouldn’t matter for most of the ones we track. No hunter is tracking one 1,000 yards without finding blood past the 100 yard mark…..my dog can though. This conversation gets turned into something its not. There’s a lot of misconceptions being made about tracking dogs by folks looking from the outside in.

Good marksmanship and waiting on a good shot will help make better trackers. Sometimes things happen, and no matter how good a shot or patient you are a deer will run a very long ways, that's when you need a dog.

Y'all do what you want but that makes no sense to me.....If you want an experienced dog that can find one that actually needs finding then its best to get them as much experience as possible.....Who cares about the male pride aspect of it

I would say it is becoming a lost art. I am exceptionally poor at tracking a deer (being color blind in red, green, and brown makes it very difficult - I see the color, but struggle with shades). I suppose that some people have the eyes, patience, and/or a knack/skill for it - I struggle with all of the above.

My son however is by far the best I have ever witnessed and by the accounts of others who have watched him - next to a dog, if the deer can be found - he'll find it.

I still do it. I'm no expert but enjoy it. I was fortunate to have a lot of opportunities when I was in a hunting club when I was young. Learned a ton. People in the club would start calling my dad to bring me to track their deer. I had one hard one this year where it was so thick of underbrush I could not see 3 feet and had to get hunter to stand still and hold a flashlight pointed toward me so I wouldnt get turned around. Then i would move them up everytime I found blood. Had another one in open timber that I found one spec at shot site and had to do some crawling before it started pouring after 50 yards. Dogs are definitely a huge asset but shouldnt be called unless needed.

Why not?.....Dogs are a tool like any other you’re carrying…..It’s like saying that flashlights are nice but should only be used as a last resort….. How about y’all don’t pour that corn pile out or hang that camera unless you cant kill one any other way…..

I’ll never track another deer in my life that I shoot as long as I have a dog…..Why would I??.....To prove something to the rest of the world that doesn’t matter??.....Does it make sense to have 4-5 hunters tromp around the woods for 2-3 hrs looking for something a dog could find in 10 mintues??