Hoffman Deer Recovery & Training Kennel LLC

07/09/2025

Here is a look at Dixie the GSP. She’s been here about 5 weeks now. She has tremendous drive and is starting to come along nicely. Normally I post dogs running tracks 2+ months into training when they are about ready to get picked up and those videos I post are very nice clean runs not really drifting off the actual track much at all. I never really post mid training or early on training vids of fresh dogs with no experience that come in to show how much progress is made throughout. So that’s kind of what I’m doing here with her. From day 1 distractions have been something I knew I was going to have to spend quite a bit of time on with Dixie. Every 10 steps into the track a chipmunk, bird, or something would make a noise maybe 70-80 yards away or she would catch wind of a rabbit that ran out in front of us a few moments prior and I’d completely lose her focus and sometimes we would have to sit 20-30 min or more before being able to continue the track or maybe not even being able to get her back focused on the track at all that day. We ended up getting in a couple very nice clean almost perfect runs in a row last week. And if we aren’t struggling a little we probably aren’t learning much on the track so with her confidence pretty high after the last couple tracks on the walk back from a track with a different client dog a couple days prior I found a nice distraction with a dead bird that was tore apart which also happened to be in an area I train where I knew there would be deer, rabbit, turkey and squirrel sign all over the track. An area I usally train in towards the last month they are here. And I ran the track right over the top of the dead bird to test how she would do. I know a couple weeks ago this would have been the end of our track or a sit and refocus moment for quite some time . But after all the work we are starting to see distractions be much less of an issue for her. Still plenty of work to do as there always is to make the tracks come fall look easy. But super proud of the progress this pup is making and she will be locked and loaded come fall to put some Kansas bucks on some tailgates. The bird was probably 300 yards into the track but I started the video there and she checks out this dead bird for a little bit gets her excitment level up a little after but then continues the track on through to finish it.

This is Dixie 5 weeks into training. The track was set up to work heavily on distraction work as she has been running pretty smoothly but distractions have b...

06/29/2025

Getting those practice flights in with the thermal drone inbetween working the dogs.

06/24/2025

Here is one of the summer session client dogs. This is Lemy the Basset Hound on a 14 hour old track with several hours of rain on top of it. She’s a real fun dog to track with and is coming along very nicely. She self corrects nicely and is a fairly easy read. I believe this dog could tailgate a lot of deer if given the opportunities to do so.

06/04/2025

You might recognize this little pup from previous training videos or pictures I’ve posted. Shes one of the Illinois dogs I’ve had the privilege of training and she passed the UBT-2 test the other day. Jaxie was a fun little dog to work with who has a ton of fire. Congrats Steve and Jaxie excited to see you guys tailgate some more deer this season! Keep up the good work!

04/01/2025

Here’s is Red who is a Bavarian Mountain Hound. He is a fun little dog to track with! He will be tracking about an hour southwest of us here this fall.

03/31/2025

Here is Ryder who will be doing her tracking in Iowa this year. She’s been coming along very nicely I’m excited to see her behind some Iowa bucks this fall!

03/30/2025

More training videos this is Luna she is a 7 year old silver lab. She will be doing some tracking in Michigan and potentially a little Illinois. She has more giddy up then any of the young dogs here and is turning into a fine tracker.

03/28/2025

Training season has been underway for awhile now. The spring session dogs have had about half of their training so far in snow and the other half without. They are all running 12+ hour old tracks at the moment. We can’t seem to keep the snow away for long but the weathered hasn’tt been bad at all. I have a couple Labs in at the moment and a Bavarian Mountain Hound. This dog in particular is Dusty who is a Plott/Black and tan coonhound mix. She was here before the spring session client dogs came in. She was a rehoming project I took in. She just had too much energy for the previous owners and not a job to keep her busy where she could burn that energy so I figured she could make a nice tracking dog. I worked with her for quite some time and she turned into being a really nice tracking dog and she was rehomed before my spring session dogs even came in. She has settled in very nicely in her new home and I have a feeling we will be seeing her behind quite a few deer this coming fall. The last couple days I took go pro videos of the current client dogs that are in for training and I’ll be sharing those in the near future.

01/31/2025

Proof of life’s still rolling in. Always appreciate hunters getting back to me. This buck was caught on camera yesterday we tracked this buck back in mid November. The hunter had 8 inches of pe*******on Freyja locked on and tracked this deer through the hunters property into the neighbors where she eventually lost interest several hundred yards in. This is where we figured this deer was hit but always nice to get confirmation. You can see the hole healed over on top of the shoulder.

01/26/2025

This track was a cold one. -8 degree temps when we showed up with wind chill almost reaching -30. The hunter watched the deer lay down after the shot went back later that night thought she was dead and it got up and ran away. Leaving really no blood after the bed. There was two beds right next to each other creating a little scent pool to work through and then the deer doubled back creating a nice set of challenges for Freyja but things we regularly practice in the offseason so it was fun to watch Freyja piece this one together.

01/24/2025

Here is one of the client dogs I had the pleasure of starting and working with 2 years ago and a little tune up session before season this last year. These guys put in the time and work and have become a great tracking team in the south central area here in Wisconsin. If you’re in that area and need a tracking team this is your team! Check them out on fb at Bowe and Boones deer tracking as well to see some more deer recoveries! I have a link below if you wanted to check out the article but you have to be subscribed to outdoor news to see the full article. So grabbed a few screenshots of the article.

https://www.outdoornews.com/2025/01/21/hound-dog-helps-wisconsin-hunter-find-two-fatally-shot-deer/?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR1iEJWKHxnRO8Qnl1SjabE99asL3PnQpQkhU16U0rWML7-kUAsDkVB1xPo_aem_wVG8PtsX-Dn0UUTakVAvkw

01/18/2025

Here was a track I took with Freyja Christmas Eve. The shot was known to be back and the blood trail was getting thin so the hunting party backed out and we let Freyja do her thing. We came in at 21 hours and jumped this deer you can see it get up in front of us in the video and we came back 4 hours later to find her expired. In this video both times we came back on this deer once we get within 80 yards or so Freyja wants to head straight to the deer as she catches the wind of it. She does this once in awhile so here’s a good look at that. Normally I will allow her to cut the track and go straight to the deer because it saves time when we have a full day of tracks booked but we only had 2 tracks scheduled that day so I forced her at the end of the track to stay on track and not cut the track at all. You can hear me call her out on it right away both times she does it. If it was a younger dog with not much experience under their belt I wouldn’t let them cut the track like that. Then you might start to develop some bad habits of getting a dog to cut a track on any deer dead or alive while on the track or get a dog to rely more on air scenting. Cutting the track you might also miss important details of where that deer may be hit if it is an unknown hit or if it bedded up. But Freyja has zero interest in non wounded deer and I have full trust in her that she’s not going to take me for a walk. When she wants to cut a track I know that deer is going to be right there shortly.