Monday, June 14, 2010

Training A Blood Trail Dog; just do it!

If you buy a dog or puppy from me I am available for consultation for the life of the dog. You are not on your own.

Training a bloodtrail dog is easy, but the real challenge is training the hunter who thinks it is hard to find a lost deer, and assumes the same applies for a dog. It may be hard for us, but for a dog, it is a simple walk in the park. Problem is we don't know what the dog is doing most of the time and we want him to do what we think he needs to do and won't let him work it out on his own.

We see the world, but for a dog, they smell the world and if you allow them to be free in that respect, you will be amazed as I often am.


Here are some threads I copied and pasted in here and my review of their post.

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What kind of dog you got?...hounds and labs are the best for deer tracking imo. It just takes time & effort but its not hard to do.
1st you got to have some sort of blood to lay out a trail..check with slaughter house for that.
you lay out easy & obvious trails and work dog with a leash...go from easy, hot trails to working into faint colder trails as he gains experience...you help keep him in line in the beginning but make it fun and exciting for him...always reward him and brag on him when he finishes each trail.
during hunting season you will switch to deer blood...hopefully you have some buddies that will also let you help them track their deer..just to give the dog plenty of experience.
once this dog gets to tracking deer, he'll know thats his job...


My review: the most important thing here is repetition and a relationship with the dog. As the writer pointed out, any kind of blood, then repetition, and make it fun and rewarding. and very important come deer season, go onto every kill site you can even if the deer is already found.

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Can't disagree with JB, but what I have learned to do is to lay a trail of beef fat (by dragging a piece of fat cut from a steak) across a lawn with a bend in the trail and then hide the dog's supper bowl out of sight at the end of the trail. Take the dog to the start of the trail and let him smell what you dragged for the trail on your hand as you move your hand to the start of the trail and say 'find it' or something else of your choice. Make sure that the dog is trailing downwind and after about three nights my labs were trained to put their nose down and trail whenever I just said 'find it' They would trail a wounded pheasant, duck, my daughter or son or whatever had a scent at the spot where I started them. I would just substitute the blood for my fat and give it a try for your plan.

My review: simple, easy, just do it, get a dog and train it!

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Daschunds are great dogs for trailing deer from what I know...I snooped around a bit and found this info...some of you Daschund lovers might enjoy this...imo, any dog that keeps his nose to the ground can be a good tracker... labs stand out a lot in my mind because I had a best friend that had one that would find a deer or just about die trying to! He was an incredible tracker. I have been around hounds most of my younger life and I have seen dogs that would swim a river and stay on a deer trail, but that lab was one in a million!! Anyways heres some more info about the subject of training and the Daschund breed...I think this is a cool thread and very cool subject. Can be a bit controversial but I think it to be a good thing to be able to recover an animal that you might not have gotten without the dogs help...or getting to the animal quicker so the meat dosen't spoil or coyotes get to it...lot of pluses...main thing you try not to do is foul up the woods for someone else...or have a dog running to loose out there...

My review: Most people think dogs are as stupid as humans are. Took me years to learn my dogs are smarter than me.

http://www.deersearch.org/dog%20training.htm

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