# Book Review: Tracking Dogs for Finding Wounded Deer



## jeff788 (Aug 7, 2009)

I'm always on here asking questions, so I thought for once I'd share something useful. I'm in the process of training my first dog, a Drahthaar, so I've been reading a lot of books. Among the things that Drahthaars are trained and tested for is blood tracking wounded big game. With blood tracking with a dog having just recently been legalized in Utah there are probably a lot of people like myself who want to use their hunting dog to help recover wounded deer and elk but don't really know where to begin. There are many well established techniques for training dogs to hunt birds, but using dogs to track big game animals has only recently been gaining acceptance here in the US. With that motivation, I wanted to recommend to all who are interested in training their dogs for tracking wounded big game: "Tracking Dogs for Finding Wounded Deer" by John Jeanneney. 

The book is very well written and the author has been training dogs to track deer and bear for over 30 years. The book includes information on training both you and your dog to track wounded deer. Chapters 10 and 11 of the book should be required reading for all big game hunters, even if they don't intend to use dogs for blood tracking. These two chapters talk about all of the different types of wounds, with separate sections for firearms and archery. The author gives a detailed description of what to look for on a blood trail to indicate the nature of the wound, and what the best way to proceed is with each type of wound. This is fantastic reading that will help any big game hunter with both motivation for more carefully placed shots, but also with good information about how to give yourself the best chance at recovering an animal hit with a less than perfect shot. The book only really discusses whitetail deer and black bear, but I would expect much of the information to transfer to other big game animals as well. Based on my experience tracking elk shot with firearms archery tackle everything the author discusses about deer blood tracks holds true. 

A few years back I shot my first archer elk, a 5x5 bull. It was a high lung shot and the elk went an amazing distance before expiring. The initial part of the blood trail looked very promising. Heavy bleeding, chunks of what appeared to be lung, a wound bed with lots of blood ... and then there was nothing. I followed hoof tracks for another 100 yards and then lost the track. I felt sick to my stomach and it looked like this great bull was gone for good. After searching for over 5 hours I eventually found the bull only 80 yards from where I had lost the trail. I was ecstatic, but at the same time I realized how luck I was to have recovered the bull. I'm confident that with a trained tracking dog that elk would have been an easy and quick find. I'm not under the illusion, and the author of the book makes it clear, that even with the best dog many poorly hit animals will never be recovered. Having a tracking dog is no excuse for poor shot placement or unethical shots. But I hope that many more people here in Utah will take the time to train their dogs and waste less game. This book would be a very good starting point for anyone interested in doing so.


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## Huge29 (Sep 17, 2007)

Good info! Thanks for sharing!


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