Pennsylvania Game News - February 2020 - 20

TRACKING TIPS
The business card tracker Susan Edwards
gave the author offers several other tips hunters might use tracking dogs:
Mark the hit site and any visible blood
with a flagging trail to point of loss; Avoid
stepping in blood as you track and flag at eye
level; Get permission to track from neighboring property owners; Limit the number
of trackers to two; Remove arrows found
from the field and do not clean them; Wait
12 hours before tracking gut-shot deer, and
eight hours before tracking liver-shot deer; If
you lose the blood trail or jump a deer, back
out using markers; Do not perform a grid
search for the deer; it decreases the chances
of recovery by a dog; and call as soon as possible after the shot.

woods either. I knew I didn't want to try
to track the buck anymore that night, and
I thought it might be a good idea to try
something that, for me, was all together
new - find someone with a tracking dog
to help locate the deer.
A Google search took me to the United
Blood Trackers website. From there, I was
able to find some trackers who live close
to me, and I called Susan Edwards of BTB
Game Recovery.
Susan had several questions for me:
Where was the deer hit? How long ago?
What sign did I find? Was the deer on
private land I have landowner permission

to track it? It was pretty much like an
interview, all to help her determine if the
deer might be recoverable.
We made plans to track the buck the
next afternoon. It rained pretty heavily
that night and into the next morning. But
when Susan arrived with beagles Roczie
and Ruby, it didn't take long to pick up the
track. Susan put Ruby to work first, using
the bolt I'd recovered to introduce the dog
to the deer's scent. The beagle found the
hit site, and away we went.
We tracked the deer across the field,
and Susan changed dogs, mostly to let
them both get some field time. She started
Roczie the same way and, from the edge
of the woods, the dog took Susan zigzagging down through the brush - and
right to my deer.
It was 350 yards from where I had hit
it, and it took the dogs only a half-hour to
find it. For me, it was a great relief, and
something that made me rethink how I'd
tracked deer in the past.
Susan went over a few of the things
I did that made the dogs' jobs tougher.
When Ruby started on the track, she
initially followed my trail, because I'd
walked over and through the deer's blood
trail and had picked up its scent. But at
least I backed off before pressing any
farther.

Cover Painting by randy Zigo
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Pennsylvania Game News - February 2020

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