Pennsylvania Game News - July 2019 - 26

During open deer, bear and elk seasons,
leashed tracking dogs can be used in attempt
to recover deer, bear or elk that have been
wounded or killed through lawful hunting.
Trackers must be properly licensed for
the animal being tracked, and must abide
by hunting hours and any fluorescent orange
requirements that exist in a particular
season.
While trackers might accept donations
or charge for their services when tracking
on private land, they cannot charge for
their services on game lands. And, as with
anything, landowner permission is needed
for them to go onto private land.

When I'd put down a track on a friend's
property, for instance, I might pop in and
shoot the breeze for half an hour, then put
the dog to work. It seemed a reasonable
wait. Then hunting season started and,
suddenly, we were working tracks that
were eight, 10 or 12 hours old.
As our training progresses this year,
we more often will be working hours-old
tracks, hopefully often enough for me to
determine how old a track can be without
Willow's ability to follow it dropping off.

26

Brooke Holmes

While tracking, Willow wears a harness she doesn't wear at any other time.
It's clipped to a 30-foot leash that isn't
replaced with a shorter one until the job
is done. The dog seems to associate the
specialized gear with the task at hand, and
adjusts her attitude accordingly.
To get started, she needs little more
motivation than a simple finger point

toward the track and my command to
"find it." Other than that, I pretty much
leave her do her own thing, unless she
obviously is off the track, in which case
I reset her.
While blood-tracking dogs, as the
name suggests, do follow blood trails, they
often perform just as well on a track with
sparse or no blood. Their olfaction detects
the deer's path, specifically by picking
up the pheromones it emits. The fact
wounded deer emit distinct pheromones
helps keep dogs from getting mixed up
when they cross other deer tracks.
When I put my dog on a track, I'll
instruct the hunter and any others who
might be tagging along, to allow the dog
and me to take the lead, and to stay about
100 yards behind us.
I want the dog to recover the deer; to
see it lying there; to understand this is what
we're after and it's our reason for being
there. With people walking alongside a
track-following dog, themselves scanning
the understory for a white belly or antler,
the dog might be short-changed of the
experience.
That said, bloodhounds like mine typically have superior noses when compared
to other tracking dogs. And because of
their heightened sense of smell, they often
will take shortcuts from the track directly
to the target.
I've noticed Willow often will work
farther off the track when the wind favors
doing so, but otherwise she'll stick very
close to it.
On the last Friday of the archery deer
season, I got a call from a friend of mine
who'd experienced an unfortunate deflection that sent his crossbow bolt into a
buck's midsection. He hadn't tried to track
it, and we left the deer overnight and put
Willow on the track at about 10 a.m.
The dog worked on a line into a ravine,
Pennsylvania Game News - July 2019

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