courtgreene
Member
In several threads I’ve talked about my dogs on here. To either introduce the topic or refresh your memories if you haven’t seen those threads, they have many roles, but their primary hunting related function is blood tracking deer. One is a black mouth cur, and the other is mostly a walker hound with a little pointer mixed in there. This is based on appearance, character traits, and dna tests. They are both shelter dogs. With the introductions out of the way, the cur has been in the family longer. Therefore, I have worked with her longer and she made her first “real” find two seasons ago. In that case I shot a deer that dropped where it stood and drug it about ten yards before getting her and having her “find” it just so she would experience some success.
Mrs. Courtgreene knows that I have to have a scent hound in my life, so she got me the walker. Her nose is incredible but she is more clever than easily trainable and curiosity got the better of her often when we started training. On top of that, her main functions in the family meant she couldn’t be with me last year when deer were on the ground to be found. Neither got to track last year at all other than training with blood from thawed meat in the yard. I kept working with them, though, and they seemed to get better in each exercise with one exception.
While each steadily improved alone, when they trained together, they distracted one another too much. The cur would lose the scent now and then if the hound walked on the trail too often, and the hound was just too interested in having fun and playing with the cur to focus.
I just returned from an incredibly productive week in the woods where I tagged out (NC tagging out is six deer). The first two dropped in their tracks, but the third did not. A sixty yard quartering away shot yielded a sixty yard run back toward me, after which the buck dropped and died ten yards from my stand. I finally had a trail to work with them in field conditions with a deer at the end, and I had not polluted the scene with my scent (sometimes you accidentally train them to track you, instead of the intended target, because you are laying the scent in training conditions).
Instead of dragging the deer or field dressing, I left my stand and headed for the house in which the family (and dogs) were staying.
Thinking we were going for a normal walk, they seemed delightedly shocked when I opened the back of an xterra and gave the simple command to “load up, girls”.
They went crazy for the 1/4 mile drive, and when I opened the lift gate they were shaking with excitement but obeyed the command to “stay” as I leashed them. Finally jumping to the ground, I worried that they would not find success because I used both of them together.
My concerns were unfounded. Going to where the shot and it’s target originally connected I told them to “find it,” and it only took them twenty five seconds to do just that. They were so excited at their success that they would not calm down enough to eat their treats (for reinforcing desired behavior) which are probably still among the leaves of those woods.
While the cur (arty) had previous success, the walker (Jolene) had not. Every time I took her for a walk from that point on, she made a mad dash for the lift gate hoping to repeat her success.
here’s a picture. I’m proud of them.
