Why not using dogs on blood trail?

[Emilio]

Bill,

Agree with you, Wirehaired Dashounds are excellent trailing dogs, Bavieras are also excellent, and in some cases I have seen German Pointers and other very good dogs doing this work. However the dog by ltself does not warranteed the final success..... and YES, I am again agree with you, we have to do whatever it takes to find a wounded animal, to recover the meat or to finish his agony.... that is also our responsability as hunters. Of course, this does not mean that if you avoid using a dog to find the wounded animal you are a non responsible hunter, please I am not telling you this.

Regards and nice hunt for all.

[Kip]

Just checked Louisiana regs. you can use a leashed dog to recover wounded  game and carry gun or bow during hunting hours.If you use a dog at nite no firearm or bow can be carried after hunting hours.Kip

[Iowa Stickbow]

I have a deutsch drahthaar that I have done some blood trailing training with,however in Iowa you can not use a dog to help recover deer.I would like to see this changed but the wheels turn slow here and I doubt it will happen anytime soon.

[Bonebuster]

Legal in Michigan without permit.
Dog(s) must be leashed at all times.
Must not possess a weapon while using dogs to trail wounded deer.

[Abel]

Back before we hunted "game" for sport, back when a buck was a deer and not also another word for currency, we used dogs. That is why they became man's best companion. When lives were on the line, the hunters brought in the dogs. And something tells me that dogs, like people, were a helluva lot tougher then than they are now. A wolf would've thought twice before trying to steal meat from a hunter's dog. When hunting is for feeding hungry mouths at home, the semantics about how and why go right down the tube. That being said, most people will agree that hunting regulations are a good thing. Hunting deer with a dog is pretty common place here in the south, so its not a far stretch to envision a hunter using a dog to trail wounded game. I don't see what the big deal is. That's what game wardens get paid for, right? If a state has a law that allows dogs to recover deer but not hunt deer, just write tickets to folks who are hunting instead of recoving. It wouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out who was doing which.

[L82HUNT]

In Missouri to use a dog to track game.
1. Make a very good effort to recover game by yourself.

2.  Call local game warden to tell him you plan on useing a dog, and get permission.

3. Dog must be leashed.

[Bowmania]

Being from WI I just follow the rules the DNR put down.  My yellow Lab (he's white) Bridger will be looking at his 3rd season.  To date he has found 8 deer and 2 bear.  At least two this year were 24 plus hours after the shot and would not have been found without him.  

He's put a new aspect to my deer hunting.  I can't tell you what it feels like to have the shooter hugging him after he found their deer.  

Bowmania

[Jedimaster]

There is a flip side to the dog coin.  I have seen and experienced dogs messing up a blood trail.  Every track that goes on top of the game's track obscures part of the puzzle.  When blood is found by the drop instead of by drops it is essential to preserve that blood trail.  Just playing devil's advocate, not really suggesting that dogs can't help but I try to work out every detail I can before employing a dog.  

Where I live/hunt most people own or have access to "blood trailers" which are nothing more than mediocre scent hounds that scatter about searching for any fresh sign including other non-wounded game.  When you have a real shore-nuff blood dog though, it's a whole other story.  You don't see many of the real thing around here.

[eidsvolling]

The advancement of wounded game trailing dogs in the U.S. owes a lot to the efforts of John Jeanneney from New York.  His website was mentioned earlier in this thread:   born-to-track.com .  His book,    Tracking Dogs for Finding Wounded Deer  is one of the finest pieces of writing on tracking wounded game and on dog training generally.  He has been instrumental in efforts to enact  legislation on this subject in several states, beginning with New York more than thirty years ago.  And he's a helluva nice guy.

[Elmer Keith]

Thank you for your answers.

In some parts of Germany it is not only legal but almost impossible to push the game out of its cover to place a clean shot.

Stalking is very seldom in Germany because of our very small hunting areas. There are to much people, to many towns and roads in this small country. Hunting is normally done from the stand.
These are not removable tree stands but stands fixed to the ground.

There are many areas in Germany where only a driven hunt on big game makes it possible to get a chance for a clean kill. The game, especially European wild boar as well as roe deer, fallow deer and red deer is "pushed" out of its cover. But this should done very calm with short-legged dogs so that the game will not pass the hunters with high speed.

It is intented to just get the game on their legs and move form one cover to another so that it can be identified as shootable or not.

When hunting wild boars we normally do not shoot the biggest one but start with the smallest and youngest. To kill the adult femals may cause that the leading female boar is killed which is responsible to start and even control the mating time within the small group/herd of pics.
It is the old grandma who avoids an explosion by overpopulating the area with young pics.

In some areas we have real problems with overpopulation of wild boar. They are destroying the fields and meadows which is very expensive to the hunter who has (I do not now the exact word for "hiring" or "renting" land") rented the right to hunt in a certain area.

Interesting for me is also your rising affinity to European hunting dogs like our Drahthaar and the Dachshund.

Even our Weimaraner seems to be very popular to some hunters in the U.S.

[carparcher]

Love the pics of the dogs getting the arrow!  That's great.  Don't know if it's legal or not here in Oklahoma, but I know they do it in Texas.  My buddy is a guide on the Santa Cruz ranch (which is part of the King).  He has dogs specifically for trailing wounded deer and they find 'em about every time.  I have used my little mut to blood trail a wounded coyote that a friend shot.  He wasn't trained to do it, but natuarally went right to the animal and found spots of blood that we couldn't even see w/out getting on our hands and knees.