Originally Posted by Alamosa
Originally Posted by Pete E
Originally Posted by Alamosa
.. would never expect them to trail a single animal from the tracks of an entire herd.


A trained and experienced blood trailing dog will do just that..

The Germans (and other Europeans) test their blood trailing dogs as we have bird dog trials. A good dog would be expected to follow a two or three day old trail several miles..They actually test them in the live situation so to sppeak, not just on artificial trails.

The practicalities of things like crossing boundaries and local politics/legalities are of course another matter..


Quote context was edited to omit that I was referencing my own dogs. Really!?

Plenty of tracking hounds will do as described. North American Hunting Retriever Assn. trains and tests on those skills as well beyond Started level.

Sure it would be handy to have a highly specialized dog standing by each season on the rare chance of a bad hit. Guess we just never had that European expertise to guide us in hunting elk.



Sorry, my mistake, as I missed the original context...

The "German style" of blood trailing is fairly new to the UK, and to be frank, it seems to encompass a lot of elitism and snobbery as to what is considered a good deer dog..

A few years back, I had a Border Terrier I used from time to time on deer.

He was more a pet than a working dog, but he would still follow a trail a few hundred yards into cover, and really that is all I needed..

I doubt he would have passed even the puppy tests the Germans use, but he still managed to be very useful and found several deer that I would probably have other wise lost, so I do get where you are coming from....


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