Relentless Game Recovery

I love tracks like this. I met the hunter that had been on a managed hunt. Super nice guy. He said we had to go down a long draw into a bottom that would be several hundred yards. He asked me if cutting through the woods where he thought the buck might have gone would mess the dog up. "It sure won't." We got 50 yards from the parking lot and noticed Ransom stop and put his nose down. Now remember we are nowhere near the hit site. We had about 300 yards to go. Sure enough it was blood. A quick 120 yards and a road crossing later we were on the deer. It was laying next to the road we were parked on. He died 80 yards from where the trucks were sitting.

Trying something new today. I have a ton of extra hooves this year. One of the terrible things about practice tracks is thawing hooves and blood and then trying not to let them go bad before you can refreeze. We have a freeze drying business which is on hold right now so I thought I'd try this. We already freeze dry blood and keep it in the truck for tracks. I notice no difference with that. Im going to give hooves a go. The process of sublimation and rehydration are simular to a frozen deer hoof with water in the bag so I can't see how it could affect the smell. This way I can leave dry ones at the end that the ants wont mess with and rehydrate ones for the track 30 minutes prior. My whole tracking kit can stay in the vehicle. In fairness it might not work, but it's worth a shot. Worst case scenario is I have a ton of shelf stable dog chews.