November 2019

Trust Your Dog

Trust your dog… seems simple. A very good idea for those of us that work with our dogs in various venues. And a particularly good idea when you do things like hunt and have your dogs for finding and retrieving your game.
Now you would think that people that have been hunting for several years with a particular set of dogs and are in the process of training the next generation would have that concept down. You’d think that, you’d even hope that. And you would be wrong… so, so wrong.

We have hunted with our two Standard Poodles for almost 9 years (the oldest is 9 this year). We have trained them and hunted over them and have had an awesome time. We have a 2 year old that for a variety of reasons is just starting her serious hunt training. All 3 dogs were in the truck with us when we went deer hunting. Due to my having the flu, we were doing a lot of driving and not tons of hiking. In BC, we can hunt deer with dogs on leash but David and I do not hunt that way. We have, however, used both the older dogs to blood track and we always let the dogs ‘find’ the deer or moose.
This particular afternoon we were coming to the tree line of a range we had permission to hunt. I spotted a buck (buck only season) with a couple of does and David got out and made a great shot of approximately 200m he believes. He was certain he had dropped the deer. I didn’t see it fall and could still see 3 deer milling around.
Out we go… and leave the dogs in the truck. Why? you ask. No freaking idea. David even said “Let’s take the dogs” and I said “Nah”. I’ll put that down to flu brain.
We walk up the field and a doe pops out of the trees, spots us and away she and her friends go. We go into the trees and start looking for the buck… and look… and look. No buck. No blood. Nothing. We spend a good 15-20 minutes search about 200x200 metres. Nothing. I climb up on a log (remember this part) and look around… nothing.
“I’ll go get the dogs” I say. And head back to the truck. David continues to look through the field and treeline. I get the dogs out and wrestle them through the fence (remember the on leash part in BC). As I head up the field, David is heading down.
“Clean miss. There’s nothing.”
“OK well let’s just take the dogs up to check.”
“Nah. No point. There’s nothing.”
“OK. Let’s go back to camp.” And off we go.

Next morning we are driving by the same treeline. A flock of ravens are on the ground… ok we go take a look and find our buck about 6m from the log I climbed on to look around (deer have good camo). This is roughly 250-300m from where the shot was taken so significantly farther than David originally thought. Thankfully only the birds had been at it and there was not a lot of damage. We dress it, take it straight out of the treeline and drag it back to the truck. Notice I am still not mentioning the dogs????
We let the dogs out who get rightfully excited about the deer.
David wants to pace out where we found the deer from where he shot to get the distance. Now we leash up the dogs and start walking the same trail that we had dragged the deer down. I give David Cale’s leash at the spot where we saw the doe pop out the night before and I veer off there with Autumn and Rain. I tell Autumn to ‘find the deer’. Autumn (being the good tracker that she is) puts her nose down then scents the air and immediately starts pulling me into the treeline and up the hill. She goes to a deer bed, circles around then climbs over the log that I had climbed on and takes me straight to the where the deer had fallen. Took less than 5 minutes from the first find the deer command.

So what did we learn?
Well… take the dogs out of the truck to begin with. Or when you have them out, then follow through and let them check out the area. Or take them when you head up to the giant flock of birds cuz they will STILL be able to find that downed deer faster and more efficiently than you will EVER be able to.
TRUST YOUR DOG!

And although we bring the dogs with us on our hunting trips because we love them, they are working dogs and absolutely LOVE to hunt. They forgave us for being such bad hunters/owners.

TRUST YOUR DOG!!

​