Shooting Times & Country Magazine
Training in the field
A student handler learns valuable lessons tracking a wounded buck
Our phones are never quiet during the hunting season. Enquiries tumble in via the association’s central number or sometimes people phone our members directly. Some weeks ago, a call came through to Jef, one of our young students. A buddy from his hunting group was at the end of the line. He came straight to the point. He’d shot a buck that had rocketed away before quickly going to ground in a large area of thick cover. His friend wanted to know if Jef could conduct a search. Eager to use the experience as a training exercise for himself and his apprentice Bavarian hound, Norma, Jef agreed.
He didn’t know then that his friend planned to search for the animal in the meantime. However, when the hunter approached the area where the buck was lying, the animal broke cover, bolted through a hedge and disappeared out of sight.
Clues
Jef learned of this latest twist after he had arrived on site and was readying himself for the search. Sometimes hunters conceal or distort events when briefing a tracker, leaving them relying on experience alone to locate the deer, but that didn’t happen here. Before leading Jef to the place where he’d shot the buck, his friend told the whole story. Small splashes of blood at the site showed that the bullet had hit home. Within moments, Norma had picked up the deer’s trail. There were no immediate visual clues that the deer had travelled that way,
but when Jef reached the point where the buck had first fallen, he saw more blood. It was obvious that the animal had suffered more than a glancing blow, because it had dropped really quite quickly. Norma was keen to continue and soon picked up the trail beyond the hedge where the hunter had lost sight of his quarry.
The handler now had to put all his faith in his young hound.
Nose to the ground, Norma led her owner onwards. Jef knew the deer was wounded, but he didn’t see any more signs as he advanced. He decided to push on regardless, crossing a wide patch of thick, sodden cover and several drainage ditches in Norma’s wake, but there was no sign of the buck.
Discussion
Jef decided it was time for a reset and took Norma back to where the deer had first stopped. Unfortunately, his hound’s second attempt to locate the buck’s trail also failed. Beginning to feel out of his depth, the trainee tracker reached out to our Whatsapp group to see whether the collective had any valuable suggestions. The group responded enthusiastically, if somewhat impotently. Their discussion of why the animal might not lose much blood was interesting, but it didn’t help
Jef, who still needed to find it.
It was here that I entered the story. As soon as Jef telephoned to ask for my help, I gathered my dog Jazz and jumped in the car. I arrived 45 minutes later. Jef recounted what had happened so far as I ran through my preparations. He seemed frustrated that his attempts had come to nought. “What did I do wrong?” he asked as we headed back to the spot where the deer had been shot.
“Nothing,” I replied. For me, this was a teaching opportunity, a chance to show Jef how I would try to tackle the problem if I were in his place.
I decided to let Jazz work off the leash, as I’m confident he won’t stray too far ahead. In the first instance, my dog took off in the same direction Jef’s had and soon we were tramping through the area of wet undergrowth, but when we came to the ditches, I stopped. There were no signs that the buck had crossed the small channels.
We returned to the beginning, and I let Jazz off his leash again. This time, when he reached where the deer had lain down, he took a new direction, running straight along the hedge line with his nose down.
Signal
Jazz was working around 50m ahead of us when Jef noticed a splatter of blood on a grass stem — did this mean
“The dog’s search was becoming more urgent now. We were getting close”
that Norma was on the right track?
Not entirely, it seemed. Jazz suddenly backtracked, then, 15m in front of us, he made a right-angle turn, then stood still — a clear signal that he’d found something. It was another spot of blood where the deer had lain down.
Jazz was doing well. As soon as the search command was given, he was off again. The gap between us opened up once more: 10m, 20m, 50m. Then he froze again, pointing out a third lying-down site. The fact that the deer needed to take such frequent rests was a good sign for us.
Once we had investigated, Jazz moved off again, this time with his head held high, which could only mean he had caught the buck’s scent in the air. The dog’s search was becoming more urgent now. We were getting close.
I told Jef to get ready. We needed to have a gun in hand in case the buck decided to try to flee once more, or to deal the coup de grâce if he was lying in the open.
As a trainee handler, Jef hadn’t experienced this type of situation before, so I quickly briefed him on safety issues, as I wanted to make sure he didn’t shoot Jazz or me and that his bullet would be angled on a downwards trajectory to avoid it travelling a long way and hitting an unseen target. We also discussed where he should place himself when the dog approached the deer. Slowly but cautiously, we followed Jazz until we came to a large, dense patch of brambles where the dog stopped still and with a high nose. There was fresh blood leading into the impenetrable mass of thorns; the buck had to be inside.
Adrenaline
We put our earlier plan into effect:
Jef circled around to the other side of the thicket to gain a clear firing position. Once he was ready, I let Jazz enter the briar patch. A few seconds later, we heard the deer screeching. Jazz had hold of him, but he wasn’t strong enough to keep him in place. As anticipated, the buck burst out of the brambles, allowing Jef to take him with a safe, perfectly aimed shot. Mission accomplished.
We studied the buck afterwards and saw that Jef’s friend had hit it high in the leg. Looking at the wound, we were surprised that we hadn’t found any splinters of bone on the trail. But the buck was located now, and that was what counted. Jef blew out a long breath as the adrenaline that had flooded his system began to ebb. Jef’s friend had been watching from a distance but now approached to take possession of his prize.
Jef learned a great deal that day, including the fact that there’s no better teacher than experience. That is why we encourage trainees to join us in the field whenever possible so that they can extend their learning beyond mere theory and learn to cope with situations that don’t follow textbook rules.