Swamp Donkey Deer Recovery

04/26/2024

Helping mom with the laundry

04/21/2024

It’s been a wild couple days. We were planning on taking the summer off from having a dog and doing a bunch of scouting ourselves and even getting Charlie into hunting. We were officially dog-less for 71 hours… meet our newest member to the Swamp, Zoë!
We were planning on touring a handful of kennels over the summer and picking the breeders that stood out the most to us, and we only needed to tour one. Storm's Ahead Labradors absolutely blew us away with their professionalism and the quality of their dogs. We asked to see some of their adult dogs work as they are pointing dogs and retrieving dogs. We were not expecting to see them make a duck drag scent line and have the mama dog track it, and she did it phenomenally. Oh by the way did I mention they had puppies?! We spent time with the puppies they had and Zoë picked us out more so than we picked her out. We are going to start her on tracking and we will update further with how our training goes. Depending on how our training goes we may be asking for you hunters to call us if you get a deer on the ground!

03/16/2024

***Long Post Alert***

****Pics of the sweet boy will be in the comments****

This is a post to help find Bear the abandoned Eurasier a home.

While driving through Coopersville I noticed there was a dog running loose near some very Busy roads. This prompted me to turn around and check out the situation. When I stopped and found him again, I noticed he was very skittish and scared. Bear, as I later named him as the name just seemed right due to his big blocky head and calm demeanor, was sticking around one particular building even when I accidently spooked him the first time. Upon finding him again I was able to get him close even though I didn't have treats on me, which is a rarity in and of itself. Upon him deciding he didn't actually want to come see me he decided to turn around and run away again. Upon this happening, I decided to walk over to the Tractor Supply next door to buy some treats to lure him over so I could clip on to the harness I could see he was wearing. Bear had already beat me there unbeknownst to me and was in the middle of receiving pets from everyone near him in the store including a bunch of kids that were hugging him around his neck. Upon noticing this and telling the people there the situation I leashed Bear up and took him outside to await animal control to come to my location and pick him up. While waiting for Bear I did a little bit of work with him to see what kind of behavior he has and he is extremely friendly, he wants a lot of affection, he knows some basic obedience, I.E. sit, stay, down, come and even started to respond and know I was calling him by his name Bear, although he can definitely use some work on his wait command. However, given the circumstances of being abandoned I can understand and give him some slack about not being totally excited about waiting in one spot. I was even able to hold him in a heal for a little bit while we were walking around. Speaking of walking around, while trying to determine why he was there I decided to walk over to the neighboring fire department to see if he had been abandoned... he had been abandoned! I found a stretchy lead tied around a light post that matched a chunk of lead still attached to his harness, and any kind of ID had been removed from him. After this I returned to where I was waiting for animal control and had my dad that lives in town run over some food and water for the poor boy, he had no problem eating and was very thirsty.

I have no idea why this dog was abandoned but everything I saw from him was that he is a very sweet boy, gets along with kids. He has a willingness and desire to please and loves getting pets and affection. He knows at least basic obedience and appears reasonably healthy other than maybe having an eye infection and was peeing a lot, whether that due to being intact or having a UTI, I don't know as his coat was too long to see if he was intact.

Bear had no hiccup going with the Animal Control officer and warmed up to her very quickly. She told me Bear will be heading to Harbor Humane and will be held for a brief amount of time before he can be adopted out. I was very tempted to try to adopt Bear, but my dog Duke doesn't do good with having a second dog in the house. Bear will probably do good in any kind of loving environment where he is cared for and properly exercised and worked.

03/16/2024

People suck. I’m sitting here waiting for animal control in Coopersville because someone can’t do the responsible thing and surrender their dog the appropriate way. This big boy is a sweet lover. Hopefully when animal control shows up a nice family can adopt this little guy. I’ve started calling him Bear.

02/22/2024

Duke says “this is bu****it, where are the deer?!”. Little 5 mile walk down for the day. We’ve been increasingly taking longer exploration walks to keep this crazy hound from tearing the house up post-deer season. Don’t be worried though he’s still a spaz, but now my couch cushions can be safe tonight lol 😂. Deer season can’t come soon enough!

02/10/2024

Just so happened this past weekend we got in a little post season practice. Charlie, myself and a friend were out this past weekend scouting for coyote and deer sign on stateland when we stumbled upon a coyote run-down. (Running deer tracks and coyote tracks) we decided to follow it and see what the outcome was, after a mile we started to lose interest and went back to general scouting… Duke didn’t! He was laser focused and wouldn’t let us leave the line until 600 yards later here we are standing at the carcass. At the time of filming we decided it must have been 24-60 hours old based on the fact the meat wasn’t frozen and the temperature had been hovering around 32 degrees. Such a cool experience out in the woods post season.

12/19/2023

Dear deer hunters, myself and a couple of buddies are looking to expand our coyote hunting locations. If you have a bunch of coyotes on your property we would like to come see if we can help keep the population in check for you. Private land is preferred as we can’t hunt public land at night but public land tips would be appreciated as well. If you allow us to coyote hunt I will throw in that you will become a prioritized tracking client.

11/26/2023

The end of a dry spell of no-finds and confirmed live deer!

11/03/2023

People suck. We jumped this deer alive and came back the next morning. The absolute worst kind of human does this to a hunter!

09/16/2023

Hey everyone. I know the season has already started in some senses but we are looking to do a giveaway this year. The premise of the giveaway will be as follows.

Either on our page or your personal page, make a little write up about how we did and what happened on your track and or post a photo. You can go into as much or as little detail as you would like. Tag us in the post and share the posts to our DM. At the end of the season we will read every post made and pick at random the winning write-ups. Also come October we will do our best to respond to the posts as they happen but between work and tracking we may not be able to respond to them all, fear not as they will still be counted.

All youth hunters we track for will automatically get an entry, however tags and write-ups are still much appreciated as well!

09/12/2023

I don’t hear a fat lady singing yet but I think it’s safe to say this youth season excitement is over. It was definitely an exciting and memorable youth season. Every experience we had with hunters this youth season were great! I wish we could have put more deer on tailgates but all in all there’s not much for us to complain about. We had plenty of firsts that happened for us and it was a big learning experience. Watching Duke grow as a tracking dog and us as a team is extremely rewarding. The tracks we went on this year so far I could see just how far he’s come from being a spastic just started pup and I can confidently say he is well on his path to becoming a finished dog in a couple years. The more time we spend tracking I am able to learn his nuance and pick apart every little piece of his body language. I am excited for the full 2023 hunting season to come on in full and see all of the new and old places it might bring us to. Stay safe and congratulations to all of the successful youths out there!

09/10/2023

09/09/2023

BLOOD FACTS:

A 150 lb. whitetail has almost 8 pints, which is 4 quarts, or 1 gallon of blood. A 150 lb. has to lose more than 1/3 of that amount (2 3/4 pints) or 44 oz. to go into irreversible shock and die. For you beer drinkers that is the equivalent of 3 1/2 12 oz. beers 🍺 I can make one very long bloodtrail with 44 oz., just saying.

I've heard in many times the in the past, "there's tons of blood the deer has to be dead!" That is usually not the case in those situations.

Keep that in mind when seeing a lot of blood, it does not mean the deer is dead. A lot of blood simply means a deer is bleeding a lot! Some muscle/brisket type wounds (shown in pic) combined with a large mechanical broadhead will bleed profusely making you think that the deer is dead, in actuality nothing vital is hit to kill the deer. I will be talking more about blood in upcoming post stay tuned.

Again feel free to share this post among friends and fellow hunters.

09/08/2023

We are on youth season eave. This reminds me of being a youth not to long ago. I remember the preparation and the excitement I use to feel. I remember looking through my dads old assorted collection of shotgun slugs and picking out all of the green Re*****on 12g slugs because his shotgun liked the winchesters better. Looking for my thin early season gloves, every year in explicitly one would be missing and I’d either have to suffer mosquito bites on that hand or sweat it off while wearing a cold weather glove. Making sure I had plenty of little Debbie’s (not a sponsor… I wish!) for snacks. Talking my dad into letting me sit in his stand every year for youth season, he like to pretend to make me think he’d make me sit somewhere else but I always say in it regardless. And finally not being able to sleep the night before because I had constant dreams of any number of scenarios that ended up with a nice buck walking out in front of me. Oh what a magical time of year youth season is for young boys and girls.

The very first youth season I hunted was with a muzzleloader, which resulted in a hang fire that caused me to flinch and throw my shot wildly. The deer in question wasn’t a huge buck by any regards but it would have been my first at a basket rack 6 pointer. This was before tracking deer with dogs was in vogue and this resulted in finding one drop of blood 30 yards down the trail where the deer ran and that was it. This has resulted in two things for me, I hate muzzleloaders and will never touch one again in my life, and a strong belief that 6 point bucks are cursed. Most 6 pointers I’ve seen or shot at has resulted in some crazy turn of events that has resulted in my either not finding that buck or worse but I digress.

Youth season has a similar feel for me now as it did then. This is the first bit of tracking we get a taste of for the year. Watching calls come into the network patiently waiting for your own certainly feels like waiting for that first nice buck to walk out in front of you and give you a shot! We will be patiently waiting (that might be a lie, I will probably be waiting, sitting in my truck in the driveway running waiting for the first call to come in) and be ready to help turn a youth hunters weekend around after not knowing where the deer they shot went.

09/03/2023

With deer season fast approaching here is an exciting bits of news, at least for us trackers. The Michigan deer tracking network has the ‘find a tracker’ app published. It is in all honesty so much better than the traditional list because you can actually visualize where us trackers are potentially coming from. As hunters if you could use the app as much as possible to contact us trackers that would be greatly appreciated.

Michigan's Best Deer Trackers

08/28/2023

Here is the current list of trackers in Michigan. An exciting bit of news accompanying this list, the Michigan Deer Tracking Network is in development on an app that should be ready by youth season that will help locate trackers! This is exciting because it will come with an interactive map that shows exactly where trackers are located and can give an idea how far we will travel. More news regarding this will come in the following days.

08/09/2023

Michigan Deer Tracking Network Announcement

After a year in the making, we are excited to announce later this month MDTN find a tracker app will be available on Goggle Play and the Apple Store for download. No more scrambling to find the most updated list of MDTN trackers! Upon download, we will update the app for you as needed. This app will come at ZERO cost to you, the hunter, as it has been funded by MDTN trackers. As time goes on, we will be adding more helpful features to the app but for now it will have our interactive map that will link you to the nearest MDTN tracker along with information about them. Also it has a direct link tab that will connect you to the Michigan DNR deer check in Page. There is a FAQ section that covers most questions as well that we get from hunters, and if you can’t find your answer there, we have a “Contact Us” button to ask a question or even leave a review of your tracking experience. So keep on the lookout for the MDTN Find a Tracker app in Google Play or the Apple store later this month.

MDTN

07/19/2023

07/09/2023

Here’s a little Sunday morning, absolutely crushing a 900 yd 12hr old practice track! There were a bunch of distractions and good problem areas for Duke to work out and handled them just shy of perfect. The biggest difficulty for us was Travis, as his loving wife likes to refer to him as now, is a “useless cripple”! Lol he had an accident at work that has resulted in him being in a splint on his left hand until September. We should be back to 100% by deer season. That being said being the useless cripple gets to sit back and watch the dog more to better read Duke. The next big difficulty was it was 100% grass field which is where we struggle the most on live tracks, this season we decided that the majority of our training will occur in fields to correct this.
We tried recording this track, unfortunately the videos were corrupted 😡😡😢.

05/14/2023

He got yelled at for digging holes. Now he feels bad and is filling said holes back in. Goofy ass dog lol 😂!

05/14/2023

Duke says he’s old enough (in dog years) and he wants to start driving. We think he thinks we’re hogging the good seat and the car drives itself.

04/02/2023

03/27/2023

Obligatory puppy photo dump because the owners of this page are intoxicated 😂😂😂
Bonus videos in the comments

01/14/2023

Me and a couple buddies are getting into coyote hunting, if you have a high population out on your property we’d love to come out. Unfortunately Duke will not be in attendance lol 😂
~Travis

01/05/2023

The saga of the 50 hour old track!

This is our first practice track for the year and apparently crazy s**t happening has followed us from the regular season to the off-season! Charlie laid this track on Monday with the intention of running it around 6-8 hours old. However due to getting home late from scouting coyote hunting spots that didn’t happen. We then changed gears and planned on running Duke on this at around the 26 hour mark the following day after work.

We start running it on Tuesday after work and Duke is absolutely crushing it! He’s tracking awesome and handled his turns great too. However at roughly the halfway mark we start hearing thunder. For those of you that don’t know Duke is extremely gun-shy (go figure, a gun-shy tracking dog, I know how crazy that sounds lol 😂). I was able to push him through and encourage another 100 yards of work out of him but after 6-8 more thunder-claps he was more than done for the night and planned on coming back the next day (again!!) to pick up the legs and hide but also just see for s**ts and giggles if Duke can latch on to the scent again.

Day 3 of the saga starts with Duke starting from the beginning of the track again with the plan to skip ahead of need be. That need did end up showing up in a way I could not have anticipated at all! We get to right where Duke stopped the night before which was right on the side of a creek crossing. Duke handles the water crossing awesome and comes out on the other side. No-sooner does Duke get across the creek do I hear him open up barking and a raccoon starts squalling!!! Duke was literally inches away from the raccoon before anyone knew it was there, I believe him and the raccoon included. I was able to pull him off with a slight problem, he was no longer interested in tracking and I couldn’t take him down the line anymore because the raccoon walked away on the scent line. So at this point I decide we’re going to cut ahead in the track to the last 100 yards (which at this point was only cutting out about 50-100 yards of the track. After we start him further up the track we are about to get up to a walking trail and disaster almost struck again! I look down the trail and I see a couple walking their dog towards us, now this would not normally be a second thought for me but two things instantly popped up in my mind, this dog was a dog I recognized and it is an extremely aggressive dog that has went after Duke in the past. The other thing is we were attacked during the season by a landowners German shepherd which has made Duke distrust and be cautious around shepherds, which just so happened to be what this dog is a mix of among other things. However any concern I had was quickly dissipated as Duke handled this interaction flawlessly. He did exactly as he is trained to do, he sat down and watched them walk on by. At this point I couldn’t really tell if he was actually tracking but any doubt in my mind was quickly blown away when he lined out across the open field and took me straight to the “dead deer”!

The big take away from this is I will probably never run practice tracks in the dark again as that is an unnecessary hazard to take, and it was also reassuring to see Dukes obedience training take affect when presented with distractions on the track (except for the raccoon, his curiosity took over too much)

Edit: this was only possible for us because the scent conditions were absolutely perfect, but for us this was a huge confidence booster that Duke was even able to do this

Bonus pictures and video of puppy bath time!

12/21/2022

Here’s what you get with taking a hound dog for a walk lol 😂. A normal walking pace is around a 15 minute mile, with a hound that has to sniff everything it’s about doubled… The post season zoomies has settled in and he’s driving me nuts lol 😂. I’m praying if anybody shoots a deer please let us come track, we will not charge at this point as I’m just desperate to get him out of the house and a good excersise as I could walk this dog for 10 miles and he still wouldn’t be tired but a good 200-400 yard track will tire him out more than any walk can.