Mullins Dog Training- Specializing in Blood Tracking Dogs for Wounded Game

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Mullins Dog Training- Specializing in Blood Tracking Dogs for Wounded Game We train dogs of all breeds and ages for the ethical recovery of wounded game.

15/07/2025

Join us as we talk tracking and hunting with Dale Techel from Michigan Deer Hunters

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14/07/2025

From “I love it”…to “I LOVE IT!”, watch this bluetick dial in and light up a mock line like it’s the real deal. That nose doesn’t lie. When the scent hits just right, there’s no stopping ‘em.Training doesn’t have to be boring, this is passion, power, and pure tracking drive.

14/07/2025

🤔 Scent Elimination: Does It Really Work…or Just Make You Feel Better?

Let’s talk facts, not feelings.

Every year, hunters spray themselves down like a decontamination scene from a hazmat movie,hoping a bottle of “scent elimination” will erase the nose of a mature buck. And some trainers do it hoping it will work for ther dog.

Here’s the truth:

You cannot eliminate scent. Not even if you bathe in baking soda and pray to the wind gods.

Your body constantly emits scent- through skin cells, breath, sweat, and oils. Even after you leave an area, microscopic particles of your scent remain behind and continue to disperse. And guess what? It’s also what savvy bucks key in on when your wind swirls wrong.

Most “scent elimination” products don’t eliminate anything. They mask or bind with volatile scent molecules (the ones that evaporate). But the non-volatile scent molecules, the ones that stick to vegetation and soil, don’t care about your spray.

Deer and dogs don’t just smell scent. They decode it.
They read layers: human, animal, earth disturbance, wounded game pheromones- and they know what doesn’t belong.

So if your plan is to fool a tracking dog, or outsmart a 5½-year-old buck’s nose with a $12 spray bottle…you might want to pack a lunch, you’ll be there a while.

Train smarter. Hunt wiser. Respect the nose.

— Mullins Dog Training

12/07/2025

🩸 You Found Blood. Now What?
🦌 Why most hunters lose deer, and how to change that.

Let’s get one thing straight- most dead deer aren’t lost because they ran too far. They’re lost because of what the hunter does next.

Panic. Rushing in. Grid searching.

These are the mistakes that bury the trail before a dog ever gets a chance to find it.

If you’re serious about recovering your own game, or at least giving the dog its best shot later, start here:

1. Slow Down

The worst thing you can do after a marginal shot is charge in. Wait. If there’s any doubt about the hit, wait two hours or more. Gut shots may require 8–12 hours or more. Rushing ruins recovery odds more than any other factor.

2. Mark the Hit Site

If you didn’t flag exactly where the deer was standing when you pulled the trigger, you’re already starting blind. Backtrack and find that location before you move forward.

3. Read the Blood

Lung blood is pink and frothy. Muscle hits gush bright red, but doesn’t always lack bubbles. Gut blood often includes food particles or digestive content. Liver hits are darker (maroon), may be watery, and slower to drip. Every blood type tells a story. If you misread it, you’re likely to push the deer when it’s not ready to be recovered.

4. Stay Out of the Grid

Randomly walking circles around a blood drop only confuses things. You’re spreading your scent all over the trail, as well as broken vegetation and disturbed earth, and possibly cutting the actual line. If you’re planning to call a dog, this adds difficulty. If you’re going to try it yourself, stick to a straight, slow follow. Don’t turn the woods into a crime scene.

5. Watch How the Deer Reacts

Was it hunched? Kicked? Did it bolt or trot? Did it tail flag? Did it pause to look back? That first ten seconds post impact gives you more info than you may realize.

Now for the hard truth:

Even if you do everything right, you don’t have a dog’s nose. You can’t smell the interdigital scent left behind with every step. You can’t detect the odors leaking from a wounded animal. You can’t follow the scent layer through wind shifts, thermals, and time decay.

But a trained dog can.

The best trackers in the world still lose deer when the animal doesn’t bleed. That’s where scent takes over.

So by all means, learn to track. Sharpen your eyes. Hone your patience. But if you hit one and you’re not sure, don’t guess! Don’t push! Call someone whose dog was built for this.

Mullins Dog Training- Building dogs that recover what others can’t.

10/07/2025

A question we often receive is, can you use hooves from deer that die instantly? Here is the truth:

Some folks hesitate to use hooves from deer that died instantly, thinking that because the animal didn’t have time to suffer or run, it didn’t release the right “scent” cues for tracking. But that’s a misunderstanding of how scent works.

Even a deer that drops on the spot still leaves behind a scent-rich hoof. That hoof carries a pheromonal profile, built over time, not just in the final seconds of life. Those interdigital glands don’t suddenly “turn on” when a deer is hit. They’re active all the time, constantly laying down a chemical footprint through every step the animal takes.

While it’s true that a wounded, fleeing animal releases additional pheromones, what we call “declining health markers”, those are additive, not the baseline. They enhance the scent trail, but they aren’t the only thing a dog keys on. The hoof alone still holds the core scent signature.

Although we recommend using hooves from injured deer that “ran” a ways, you can absolutely use hooves from a deer that died instantly for training. The dog learns to recognize the base scent profile.

Bottom line- don’t toss good hooves just because the deer didn’t run. It’s all valuable scent. Train smart, and train consistently.

09/07/2025

🔥 Top Things a Hunter Can Do to Improve Recovery Odds

1. Know your shot placement:

Don’t guess. Replay it in your head, or better yet- video it. Where did the arrow or bullet hit? What angle? Quartering away, broadside, or frontal? That one detail sets the tone for everything else- wait time, search method, and whether or not to call a dog.

2. Don’t grid search:

This is one of the worst things you can do. Walking all over the area contaminates the trail with human scent, tramples vegetation, and buries the wounded animal’s natural scent under layers of noise. If you have to look, mark sign and back out. Don’t overwork the area.

3. Observe the deer’s body language:

Hunch up? Tail tucked? Walk off slowly or sprint away? These reactions can tell you more than you may realize. Learn to read the language of a hit deer.

4. Wait. Then wait more:

Trackers don’t lose deer because they waited too long. They lose them because hunters went too soon. Unless it drops within sight, back out and wait. Give it a few hours minimum on questionable hits, longer on suspected gut, liver, or single-lung hits. A dead deer goes nowhere!

5. Mark everything:

First blood, last blood, bed, direction of travel, jump points- flag or pin them all. Use OnX or HuntStand. A good tracker will ask for all of it. The more you remember and mark, the better your odds of getting the animal back.

6. Take good photos and notes:

Photograph blood sign, gut matter, arrow contents, or anything you find. These clues can determine whether the deer is dead 100 yards away, or needs 12 hours and a dog to recover.

7. Don’t touch the arrow or bolt:
Leave it where it lies until you can inspect it or show it to a tracker. The scent on that arrow might tell the whole story, and you don’t want to ruin that. Do not wipe it clean or wash it. (Yes, people does that)

8. Don’t trust the amount of blood:

More blood doesn’t always mean a better hit. Lung blood can be minimal. Liver and gut hits can clot fast. No blood doesn’t mean no trail. Trust the behavior, not just the ground.

9. Be honest when calling a tracker:

Tell the full story- shot angle, hit location (or best guess), time waited, anything you touched, and where you walked. A good tracker can work through a lot, but they can’t undo contamination or false information.

10. Know when to call for help:

The biggest mistake hunters make is waiting until the trail is blown before calling a dog. If there’s any doubt (bad shot, long wait, light blood) call early. A good dog increases your odds dramatically if given a clean start.

🎯 Bottom Line:

Recovery starts before the shot is even taken, and the minutes after impact matter more than most hunters realize. Be patient, observant, and disciplined. The deer deserves it. And your odds of recovery go up tenfold.

08/07/2025

Join us as we deep dive into what success looks like

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08/07/2025

If you hunt long enough, it’s going to happen- a shot that felt good, a trail that fades, and a deer that vanishes into the brush. When it does, the worst time to start searching for a tracking dog is right then.

By the time most hunters call, they’ve already made a few critical mistakes. What could’ve been a clean easy recovery has become more long and drawn out. Often times, pushing the game a long ways. This not only makes for a longer recovery, it also spreads the scent of the wounded animal further for higher risk of predators intersecting the path.

The hunters we can help the quickest are the ones who reached out before the season even started. We’ve already talked, and they know the process. They call with the right info, they stay calm, and they get on the list faster. No scrambling, no confusion, just a clean shot at a better outcome.

It’s not just about making contact early, it’s about doing your homework. Look into the trackers in your area. See who’s actually working dogs in the off-season, not just posting hero photos in November. Time spent training matters. Certifications aren’t everything, but they do show a commitment to the craft. A certificate, a ribbon, or a test score doesn’t make one tracker better than another, but it does show that someone is putting in the work to develop a dog capable of recovering wounded game, and that’s more than half the battle. Be cautious of trackers who spend more time tearing others down than building their dogs, especially those who mock off-season training. Putting in the work year-round isn’t something to criticize. It’s something to respect.

This isn’t about booking a service. It’s about being a responsible hunter. It’s about preparing for the “what if” and respecting the animal enough to have a plan.

We’ve recovered plenty that others gave up on. But we’ll always have more success with hunters who built the bridge before they needed to cross it.

Make the call, “shake the hand”, and get to know your tracker. Because when the blood runs thin and the trail goes cold, it’s too late to start from scratch.

Mullins Dog Training
Where the trail ends, we begin.

07/07/2025

What Really Happens When You Grid Search a Wounded Game Trail

When hunters grid search before calling a dog, they often think they’re helping. But what they’re actually doing, scientifically speaking, is scrambling the chemical scent field the dog relies on to recover that deer. Let me explain…

🔬 Dogs don’t follow a scent like a laser beam from hoof to hoof. They track a total scent picture, a cocktail of odors, glandular secretions, broken vegetation, disturbed earth, pheromones, and even adrenaline metabolites. The dog’s brain sorts through this layered scent map to locate and follow the wounded animal.

👣 But when you grid search, here’s what you leave behind:

• Human scent from sweat, skin cells, and oil
• Boot scent, deodorant, bug spray, etc.
• Freshly crushed leaves and disturbed soil chemistry
• New scent trails that often cross, overlay, or even parallel the real line

This contaminates the area, masking the more valuable scent signatures like glandular pheromones or low-volatility components. Instead of a clean trail, the dog is walking into a fog of noise, trying to pick out a whisper in a crowd of shouters.

🧠 Dogs don’t track every step:

They problem-solve. They sample scent layers, evaluate the freshness, and make educated decisions. But when the scene has been grid searched, it forces the dog to work harder through false trails and unnatural occurrences.

💡 Here’s where honesty matters:

If you tell the tracker exactly where you walked, how far, which direction, and what you inspected, it gives the handler a critical advantage. With that information, they can help guide the dog through the contaminated zone, recognize the dog’s shifts in behavior, and re-acquire a clean line once it’s found again. It’s not a shortcut, it’s strategy.

🕓 And if it’s already been searched?

Waiting is a great strategy, if you have the time. Remember, a dead deer goes nowhere. Let the ground settle. Let the crushed plant odors fade. Let the human scent layers weaken. Sometimes just a few extra hours can mean the difference between confusion and recovery.

You’re not walking a trail. You’re walking over a chemical crime scene. Be honest, be helpful, and let the dog do what no human or drone ever could.

06/07/2025

Here’s what most hunters don’t realize, your deer is giving off a chemical trail the moment it’s hit… and it has nothing to do with blood.

Every time that hoof touches the ground, it’s releasing pheromones from the hair follicle area around the interdigital glands, part of a built-in chemical communication system.

📌 These are not odors.
They’re non-volatile, terrain-locked molecules. You can’t see them. You can’t smell them. But to a dog with a trained vomeronasal organ (Jacobson’s organ), they’re screaming “I’m wounded, I’m stressed, I’m dying.”

And here’s where it gets even crazier:

🔬 These pheromones change in real time as the deer’s condition improves or worsens. That’s right, your dog isn’t just trailing scent. It’s reading the health status of the animal as it goes.

🧠 And while humans use just 5 million scent receptors, many working dogs have between 150-300 million, wired to a brain region 40 times larger than ours for processing scent.

But scent receptors alone aren’t the whole story.

The real power comes from how dogs analyze pheromone patterns with a completely separate olfactory system. That’s why they can pick up a cold track 24+ hours later, after a storm, across water, or through thick brush.

Thermal drones?
Cool toys, but they can’t touch this, and I own one.

🔥 A drone can show you heat.
A dog can show you intent, direction, stress, time of passage, and death chemistry.

🛸 And unlike drones, dogs don’t get confused by heat sinks, beds, or thermals bouncing off stumps and brush piles.

💡 When in doubt, call a dog.
No blood? Doesn’t matter.
No sign? Irrelevant.
If that deer walked away on its feet, a trained dog may still paint you a trail you never knew existed.

This isn’t myth.
This is science, and it works.

12/02/2025

Come along as MattBurger takes us through his tracking season journey. He’ll share his accomplishments, key lessons, and valuable tips. And, as always, we’ll have an interactive Q&A session.

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