Rack Trackers Deer Recovery

03/07/2025

Summer heat is tough on tracking dogs. They can get overheated easily while working. An occasional early morning track is the only practice Jett gets right now. The last pictures are the tracking shoes used to lay the mock track and a syringe for blood drops to make the track more realistic.

23/05/2025

22/03/2025

Finally, some good weather to practice deer tracking, general obedience, and recall. Jett picked up right where she left off from deer season. 550 yards, 2 hooves, and 1/4 oz of blood.

09/12/2024

Jett made quick work on this buck today. The hunter tracked the buck this morning and jumped him while tracking it. He wisely backed out and let him expire with what looked to be back of 1 lung, liver, and paunch hit. No exit hole. After receiving the call, Jett went to work tracking before dark and did her thing. We tracked another 528 yards after the 1st wound bed, and the hunter tracked at least 500 yards before he was jumped this morning.

05/12/2024

Lengthy post, but this track is a good representation of a non-lethal deer hit. It’s a huge disappointment to a hunter (and tracker) to not recover a target buck, especially one of this caliber. This buck was shot on Halloween and tracked the following day. Shot was an extremely steep angle and very close distance. The entrance is circled orange and exit in blue. These dogs are trained to track fatally wounded deer and not to run live deer. So, from the hit site, Jett tracked spot on across an open bean field and then into timber with blood sign for verification. The blood quickly stopped and had little to go on. The longer the track goes on a non-fatal hit, usually the interdigital gland excretes less ‘stress’ scent needed for the tracking dog to follow. Eventually, the scent becomes that of a normal, healthy deer and the dog will struggle to stay on that track and will cast back and forth searching for a scent that is no longer there. To the dog handler, this signals a live deer and a non-fatal hit. This shot was literally inches low of being a dead deer. This photo was taken on 11-17 and I was glad to see it to verify that Jett did everything she could and that we didn’t leave a trophy unclaimed in the timber. It was tracked app. 600 yards and is proof-of-life #7.

04/12/2024

#6 proof-of-life showed up this week. This buck was tracked by Jett and I on November 19. She tracked it really good for approximately 450 yards. Blood trail was good to start and then faded to a bloodless track. Once again, after the startled deer calmed down and the “stress scent” from the interdigital gland faded, so did the track. She went into search mode and it was called off assuming live buck.

01/12/2024

#5 proof-of-life picture came in today. This buck was ambushed in a narrow, brushy draw in the middle of a big, bean stubble field trailing a hot doe on 11-19-24. The shot was a hard quartering to, with a small window for vitals. Large amounts of blood to start and quickly dwindled to nothing indicating a muscle hit. Jett struggled to track across the open bean stubble field with no visible blood on a windy day, but took us to a couple drops of blood as we progressed. She eventually lost interest as the buck calmed down and stopped emitting ‘the’ scent necessary to track, indicating a live deer.

23/11/2024

What a day for tracking deer!!! We went 4 for 4 today with locating deer. The EXCEPTION is that the fourth deer was still alive and we jumped it from a wound bed at 21 hours. Jett put on a clinic tracking this Stud of a buck right at 1 mile. (It was a definite shooter). Blood ran out after around 300 yards. The rest of the track was Jett bearing down, focusing, and tracking long distances and showing us a drop of blood occasionally. It was a team effort of reading her body language and trusting her abilities; and she didn’t let us down. She definitely enjoys her job! Thank you to the hunters for trusting us to recover their deer.

18/11/2024

We’ve been super busy the last couple weeks with not much to show for it because of live deer. Our 4th proof-of-life picture came in today from a hunter on a deer we tracked around 900 yards last week and we called it off because we assumed it would live. The compound bow limb bumped something when shooting causing the arrow to hit the buck in the neck. We knew going in that the recovery chances weren’t great but didn’t want to chance leaving one. Nice to see it up and going! The next 2 pictures are from a track yesterday that Jett took 1400 yards through timber and eventually across a picked corn field. The last half of the track had no blood until she took us to a bed where you could see it bleeding from both sides. She struggled tracking after the wound bed from the buck clotting and calming down, not putting off the stress scent from the interdigital gland. She did great and I’m waiting to get pictures of this dandy buck because it should survive.

11/11/2024

3rd proof of life came in today. Tracked this buck for a Mississippi hunter Sunday morning. Not sure where it was hit, we took to the track. Jett indicated by her body language while tracking that this deer was NOT dead, but we tried our best anyhow. She tracked it in a big loop back to where it came from, but no visible blood anywhere because of all the rain. Well, today the hunter saw it again and double lunged him and got his trophy. Yesterday’s hit was only a superficial leg hit. It’s great getting these pictures back.