Blood Tracking

Of all the dog training tasks that I make and effort to teach my versatile hunting Deutsch Kurzhaar, blood tracking is the one that I find the most fun and rewarding. The thrill of pursuing a successful completion is  probably just a carry over from my childhood days of hide and seek and searching for imagined pirates treasure. The thrill of finding the hidden treasure - at Black Beards X on the map – hasn’t dissipated after all of these years. Even when things don’t go perfectly the rainbow is always as fun to follow as finding the pot of gold.

Ethical hunters around the world pride themselves in the preservation of game; especially the preservation of game that they’ve wounded. Only a jug head would leave edible wounded game in the field without making every effort to locate it.

Hunting ethics played a big part in my selection of a versatile hunting dog. I wanted a dog that would and could retrieve and/or locate furred or feathered wounded game on command.
 Taking the time to train a dog to follow the blood spore of wounded game is not only fun but the practical thing for an ethical hunter to do.
To put it simply, “I don’t shoot what I don’t eat” and “I don’t leave edible game in the field without making every effort to find it”.

Most of what I know about blood tracking I’ve learned from two people: Forrest Moore owner of vom Moorehaus kennel of Cataula, Georgia and Jorg Tabel of Germany. I’ve not reached the level of knowledge that each of them have regarding blood tracking, but I’m a quick study and have picked up a few things by watching, listening and applying what I’ve learned from each of them about the art of training a dog to blood track.

The most important thing is to start early. Dogs learn quickly to associate smell with food. A good trainer takes advantage of that fact by creating a conditioned response to following scent. Puppies can be started by guiding them along short trails of food scent prepared by dripping soup or dragging small bits of food then leaving the food at the end of the trail as the reward for success. As the pup gets older a transition to beef blood can be made along with incremental increases in the age and length of the prepared track. There is much more to it but not enough room here to explain. Suffice it to say that in our German versatile hunting and performance based breeding system the outcome is a dog that will follow a track that is two days old for 1000 yards.
The Vereinigter CanAm Deutsch Kurzhaar Klub (VCDKK) is a breed club for the versatile hunting Deutsch Kurzhaar (DK). For more information about the DK and our testing system check out our new website at: www.canamdk.org

Gary W. Fleming is an avid hunter and versatile hunting dog trainer with 30 years of Florida hunting experience. He is a member of the Southeast Chapters of the Vereinigter CanAm Deutsch Kurzhaar Klub (VCDKK) and the Verein Deutsch Drathaar Group North America (VDD-GNA); both are versatile hunting dog breed clubs. He has a B.S. in Biology and is the president of a Tallahassee based environmental consulting firm. If you wish to contact him with questions regarding this article he can be reached by e-mail at: vectortfl@comcast.net.