What we thought was a slam dunk turned out to be not quite that. Harper made a good shot but deer turned slightly and the shot and hit one lung, liver, gut exit. Ike worked the track perfectly! Congrats Harper!! #73
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This little Mountain Feist has been here 7 weeks. He’s gone from seriously not knowing his name and being afraid of every new environment(due to lack of exposure) to running a 23 hr old line today in a very high distraction area. Just love when they are putting things together. Notice his head snap when he hits the fire lane and reacquires the line…
I’ve been wanting to do this for a bit but today is the first day we decided to give it a try. We used the dynamic track feature on our drone and followed along on a practice track with Ike. The entire vid was about twice this long but we edited it to keep people’s attention lol. 16 hrs old 550 yds with minimal blood. Temp was 80 deg and rising in some very sandy ground.
This is client dog Bandit a 9 month old Blue Lacy who’s doing a fantastic job here. This is a 16 hr old track if I remember correctly with very little blood in a very high density deer and rabbit area. Bandit is very driven and likes to track too fast so we employ a half hitch(our go to to slow a dog down) part way into this track and he responds very well and slows down and is much more accurate and finishes the track beautifully.
Client dog Toivo a Hanoverian Scenthound doing some nice work in a high distraction area. Loads of deer, turkey, rabbits, coyote, mice, etc. This is a mostly hoof only track and he did a great job of navigating and self correcting in the high traffic areas(where I also put the turns).
Please excuse both the leash handling and the video quality. I’ve been having some gopro issues so I’m using my phone and videoing in one hand and handling the leash with the other. This is client dog Rip a Black Mouth Cur who’s been here 5 1/2 weeks and this is a 16 hr old hoof only line and he is pretty close to flawless. I’ll be posting a few more videos in the coming days.
This is a short clip from yesterday’s bear track on what we believe was a non lethal shot. One of the things I will say about tracking bear is that scent wise they’re much easier for a dog but the terrain that they live in and go through is miserable. This clip is a prime example of what tracking bear with a leashed dog is like. You’ll notice I give Sway the “wait” command several times so that I can get over or under things and not lose her ahead of me. Many times also I’m having someone from the tracking party hold onto the leash so I can get through things to her.
Ike is getting the hang of this tracking thing. 150
Yds long 6 hrs old..track laid with BuckBrade shoes and small amount of blood. I love his desire to stay engaged in the line. He reminds me a lot of Sway when she was the same age. If that’s any indication I think he’ll turn out 😃
Client dog Fern on a 19 hr old track in absolutely terrible scenting conditions. Even though it was aged 20 hrs other factors made this track much older than that. We haven’t had rain in 3 weeks(rain contrary to what most think actually helps scenting conditions), no overhead canopy to protect scent and sand ground with little vegetation. If a dog can track in this they’re going to look like a superstar when conditions and terrain are favorable to holding scent. Just so happens Fern looked really good in these conditions also.
Client dog Winnie on a 20 hr old woods track. Slow and steady wins the race!
It’s nice when client dogs turn it on at the right time. Here Ol Moose a giant 9 month old Bloodhound is doing very nice work on a UbT2 type line.
We often get asked how we approach dogs overshooting 90’s on lines while training. Our answer often is “it depends”. It really does depend on a lot of things as to how we handle it.
Things like wind direction(is the wind blowing scent past the turn?). In these instances we give the dog a little more leeway before helping or making a correction.
Are there people or other deer or critters walking down the line and carrying scent past the turn? Again giving the dog more opportunity to make a correction.
Is the area a high area of distraction?
Is those type situations I’ll give the dog 15-20 yds because there’s a good chance the scent has carried beyond the turn. In other situations where I don’t feel those factors come into play I’ll plant my feet and help or swing the dog back towards the scent.
My ultimate goal is for the dog to learn to circle back and work towards where they last had scent rather than pushing out past. Now there’s instances where we want the dog to do that but that is a different scenario altogether.
In general we see bird dogs tend to want to search out away from where they last had scent and hounds tend to circle back towards where they had it. Now there are definitely exceptions to that but that’s the trend we see with the dogs we have in for training.
In this video you’ll see this dog pops her head when she realizes she’s out of the scent. She moves ahead a little and then starts circling back. As long as she’s working to reacquire the line I’m not going to say anything to her or help her. Many handlers babble to their dogs and it’s really unnecessary if they’re already working and you’re constantly telling them to hunt it up or find it. If they give up or look up to me for help then I will give some encouragement otherwise I shut my mouth and observe what’s going on. I prefer to drop the leash if the dog is doing a lot of circling rather than walking all over in circles myself
