03/02/2026
Well the 2025 tracking season has come to an end and it was a another fantastic year with us surpassing our best year with number recovered by a good margin. We also had multiple milestones hit this year. We hit our 1000th recovery with our dogs, Sway hit her 500th career recovery, and Sway had her 3rd consecutive season with 100+ recoveries with 106. All that being said here is a breakdown of our season.
Tracks Taken = 298 (2nd best season)
Animals Recovered = 166 (previous best 152)
Recovery % = 56%
Fi****ms:
56 tracks, 31 recoveries = 55%...breakdown of fi****ms
5 of those were bear..2 recovered
8 of those were youth hunters...6 recovered
33 of those were rifle....19 recovered
10 of those were muzzleloader...4 recovered
Archery:
Bow: 104 tracks with 64 recovered = 62%
Crossbow: 138 tracks with 71 recovered = 51%
Bear:
9 tracks 2 recovered 22%
of the 7 remaining we had 6 of those bear on their feet and 1 was a miss... Just not dead bear this year
Does:
26 tracks with 20 recovered = 77%
Bucks:
263 tracks with 144 recovered = 55%
Dogs:
212 tracks with 125 recovered = 59%
Sway did 177 and recovered 106 = 60% (she'd have had a pile more had we not flown the drone as much)
Drone:
86 flights 41 recovered dead = 48%
27 located alive
We jumped 28 deer alive with the dogs
We located 27 deer alive with drone
We had 36 other proof of lives (on camera, seen again, or harvested)
Adding up the jumped, located, and proof of lives along with recoveries we accounted for 86% of the deer we were called to track.
Special thanks to everyone who has helped us this year. Grandma Joan for picking up Gavin from work all fall to give us more flexibility to take tracks, my mom for helping with the boys, our great neighbors for their help as well. Brother Dan for lending a hand when we are crazy busy you’re a huge part of this! Also to the other trusted handlers who we referred tracks to this year. Our circle is very small and we referred out a record number of tracks this year(over 100 easily). To our awesome sponsors, Klein Automotive and Butch’s Archery! To my wife Kara for being my biggest supporter in this journey! Last but not least thank you to all of the hunters who continue to put their trust in us to recover their animals…we’ve worked so hard to earn that trust and we don’t take that for granted! We are already looking forward to next season but first we need to concentrate on our training season which will be getting under way soon!