I took a track on Christmas Eve during the afternoon for my cousin's good friend. I called my brother in law Andre where he could get his new pup Aleah some OJT.

Hunter's Story
The shot was about 250 yards on a broadside buck standing. At the shot the buck hit the ground then jumped up and ran to the thickest stuff you can walk in. They had good blood that they tracked for 150 yards. Hunters also reported seeing some corn stuff in the blood.

What we found
The shot site was down a gravel/ grass road. We drove in our trucks followed the hunter to the shot site. When we got ready to go to the hit site, I looked down and saw, quite by accident, a drop of blood under my truck. Hunter said....Oh yea, After the deer was shot, fell down and jumped back up....it ran that way and then turned away and ran fifty yards before cutting into the woods. Tasha checked the hit site and found nothing. Tasha took us to the cutover which may be the worse briers that I have ever been in. Andre and Aleah were also working the blood trail we found here. The trail was lite drops of blood scattered along with a few small waist high smears on grass. There were two small areas about the size of saucers where the deer had stood and dripped blood. We only found blood for 60 yards when I checked the GPS.  Tasha took the track about two hundred yards but I never saw any indication other than a very deep track along this trail.  We never saw any corn or any other indication of gut shot. We started over, walked the perimeter and even tracked blindly down deer trails. They was no wind blowing but when we did get a breeze, Tasha raised her nose and sampled the air for 20 seconds or so. I made sure that we spent some time checking this area out thoroughly. After over two hours of thick thick cutover tracking, we were not able to advance the track.

Learnings for us:
- don't park in you hit site.
- do a complete interview of the hunter.....I didn't do a complete interview over the phone because I knew that I was taking this call regardless. I am still not sure if the hunter shot once or twice. This was a new bullet for his rifle that had not been sighted in prior to the hunt. I probably still don't have all the pieces of the puzzle.
- a good pair of brier pants, brier jacket and brier gloves are worth the investment.

Well, we didn't find the deer. I believe it was hit high because of the blood smears it left high on the grass and the fact that it dropped instantly but then jumped up and regained his composure. They will watch this area for buzzards. It is right by his house. I mailed him the GPS track analysis with areas of concern highlighted on it. They will let us know if they find out anything else. The hunter also shared some homemade pickled okra, homemade salsa and homemade hot pepper jelly with us. Another fun outing. Tasha and Aleah crashed all the way back home.

Diane asked me on the drive home whether I thought Olive or Asti had a better weekend.  It was an interesting question.  I think Olive's second series run yesterday was probably the most impressive run of the two days, with Asti's first series today a close second and Asti's fourth series run in third.  I'm not sure either was clearly better than the other - I think both girls are really talented, Asti more naturally and Olive more skilled.  I love running them both, although I probably favor Asti slightly from the bond we formed over our years of hunting together.  I wouldn't trade either for the world!

Diane left you a message on your cell phone, but I thought I'd give you more details about today's field trial results.

I judged Open Dogs first thing in the morning (as a substitute), so the girls all got to rest in.  The dog we put up first won Absolute - always a nice validation. :)

Bossa had a really nice first series in Open Bitches, taking a long line along a road and making the check, although overshooting a bit to the far side of the road... the dirt road made her take a while to find the check.  She was called back high.  In second series we had a really short line between trees, and she didn't really understand what to do and stood around grazing, so she dropped to second (behind eventual first and new field champion Star).  In third series she defended well taking a bending line around a tree.  She finished in second (class of 12) for her first six points!

Bossa works a lot like Asti - moving fast and making fast decisions.

Olive was drawn in fifth brace and Asti in sixth for FC.  I was late to the line and hadn't heard the additional bits of line, so I was a bit sad to see Olive break off to the left at high speed, but it turns out that was the continuation of the line out of the cover.  Olive was called back fourth.

Second series, Olive's rabbit started in a dead tree stump and we had good line on it.  She and her bracemate both started on the first part of the line fast, but Olive nailed the check and did a TON of line. Easy win.

Third series we had another tight release into cover.  I think I released too soon, before Olive really had the line.  We lost that on my lack of handling experience. Olive placed third out of 12 field champions.  A solid performance given how rusty we all are.

I was really proud of all three girls.  Bossa is still very green but got the idea fast - the few bits of trailing practice we've done clearly helped, the judges were impressed with how she worked the check.  Asti was very happy to be in the field and really looked good (and had MUCH better recalls than in the old days). And Olive looked great in my first time handling her in the field (aside from one run at DCA 2010). Her tracking background really shows - she's more methodical than Asti, who works more on instinct.

Tally ho! - John Willmore, CA

Bossa and John at the field trial in the southern California olive grove.

All the Blessings of the Christmas season to you and yours.
With Love from Patt, Nexus, Owl, Viljo, and Taya

"Whoa! Do I know you? Who ARE you?"  - Bossa

Taya in Ohio at nine weeks and already an international traveler.

I am expecting to mate Longhair standards in January or February.
The puppies will be "Born to track," FCI-standard, appr. 8-8,5 kg.
Sire: Multichampion Maxi-tax Maroon Marstax
Dam: WUTJCH Hound's American Dream (Sire: Nick von Dorndorf)
This will be the second litter of these parents. The first litter has shown their tracking quality (Tranevang's Tayatax and Tranevang's Tashatax). 
They will have FCI show quality too..
If anyone is interested in such a puppy, please take contact: 
Mail: [email protected]  
- Lise-Lotte Schulz, Denmark

Tasha recovered a nice buck for this hunter this morning. Story will follow later. - Cliff Shrader

Tasha loves to find a basket filled with socks. She will pull socks out of the basket and distribute them all over the house.  - Cliff Shrader

Red, Cliff with Tasha, and Samantha with her wonderful doe

Friday evening I received a text from one of my buddies asking if I want to make a track. One of his daughters had shot her first deer and there wasn't any trail. In fact, they had conflicting opinions on which way the deer ran after the shot. There were three deer feeding when Samantha shot and they split up after the shot. Her dad Red checked out the site and found some belly hair and a small amount of gut at the hit site. After we talked, Red and his son Matt backed out of the area where they had been searching for blood and waited for Tasha to arrive. It took about an hour and a half for us to get there.

The woods are thick piney woods with dense undergrowth. When I say dense I mean an abundance of briars and thorns that had never seen mankind before. There was a light mist in the air and the temperature was in the low 70s. Less than fifty yards from the hit site, we found blood drops. Red also found some additional gut as he trailed behind us. Tasha was tracking pretty good but she was having to work going through these woods. I was having to work even harder...a fat guy with a headlamp and backpack doesn't glide through briars and thorns easily. Along the way we would hit some blood and then it would stop. We would go 50 to 100 yards before we located blood again. The blood suggested that we had a muscle hit as it was always drops falling straight down. There never was a bed site although we found a couple of spots where the deer stood but never laid down. We never heard the deer jump during the track. Our track went for 1.37 miles and then we hit a particularly thick spot. I had to go to hands and knees at least a dozen times but here I had to go to elbows and knees. As I was clearing the briars I looked ahead and saw Tasha nose to nose with the doe, still very much alive. I yelled at Tasha and pulled back on her lead. After I got her away from the deer, the deer bounded up and away. I saw some gut hanging from a low hit as the deer ran. I was pretty exhausted and so was Tasha. We had tracked for 2 hours and 33 minutes in rough country. We decided to back out and attempt to pick up the track in the morning. As far as I was concerned, this was a successful track even though we didn't have venison.

Tasha and I arrived Saturday morning. Samantha and Red had biscuits and sausage cooked up so we ate a nice breakfast before we ventured into the woods. We went to the last blood that I had marked on the GPS and started tracking. The track was 17 hours old at this point. Tasha picked up the trail right away even though we saw no blood. After about 60 yards we found a single drop of blood at least letting me know that she was on the same deer. Tasha took us directly to the steep bank of a swift moving bayou. I knew that the deer had jumped into the bayou here but I didn't see a thing. When I got into a spot where I could look down the 15 foot embankment, I spotted the deer dead in the water and hung up on something. This was an outstanding track for Tasha and I learned several things from it. The recovery was particularly precarious. Red had to go back to his house and bring back the tractor where we could pull the deer from the bayou. With the dense undergrowth and downed trees, the tractor got stuck as Red was crossing some logs. This meant another trip back to his house to get the chainsaw. After he sawed himself out of this jam, he quickly found himself in another jam that required chain sawing a big pine tree out of the way. He finally arrived at the bayou and the recovery was made. The deer had only traveled a little over a hundred yards from where we jumped her. Tasha never voiced until Red was driving out with the deer on the tractor. She started raising Cain! The cool bayou water had chilled the deer down just like a cooler and the meat was perfect.

This was one of my favorite tracks so far. Tasha is only 6 1/2 months old and she makes this tracking stuff look easy. What a great feeling to be part of someone's first deer!  Congrats to Samantha, Red and Tasha. Thanks for letting me be part of it.

- Cliff Shrader
Sent somewhere from woods or water in South Louisiana

I took Bossa to her Fun for Fido class this week.  We had a tunnel-jump-table-jump sequence, with a straight tunnel.  The first time I tried running with Bossa, we got all tangled up.  So I had the instructor hold her while I led-out between the jump and table. Bossa came FLYING through the tunnel and over the jump, and screeched to a stop on the table.  The second time she was even faster and despite fighting to stay on the table, tumbled off the far side.  The third time she held on to the landing.

We did have trouble going over the final jump; she kept coming with me.  John says he's working on that.  But dang she's fast! Hope you're having a good week! - Diane

You can have the ribbons. I will keep the bone.  - Sybilla

Hey Patt,  still very tied up with school and life here.  I wanted to just drop you a line and let you know that Seymour is doing great. We love him very much.  Now that the semester is over, or nearly so, I will get a chance to do a little bit of hunting and he will get a chance to tag along, and hopefully get a real blood trail in. We still train, but not as much as I would like. Hope you are doing well.  - Derek Smith, VA