tracking dogs?? Seems like a great idea to recover deer and why would there be any objections?
Seems like the training would be a heck of a lot easier than training a bird dog.
How could it even be against the law to take your leashed dog for a walk in the deer woods?

Maybe they are worried about people cheating. Using the dogs to find deer that have not yet been shot.

In NY the DEC offers this as a method of finding deer. If you canot locate your deer, they use Daschunds (I think) to help find them.

Bingo. It's a method of control ( and I don't mean that negatively ) ....If you're using a dog to track a deer, how could you verify, if approached by law enforcement, that you are not using it to run deer to another hunter?

I would be completely in favor of it, if there were a way of controlling it so it weren't being used as a form of hunting.

You could control it by stating (in reg) that the handler must be licensed and the dog MUST be on a lead of (____) ft.

Make the fines stiff enough so that the licensee would be reputeable....and that "should" solve any fears many have.

Sad thing is, no mater what laws or fines, there are still people breaking the law. Look at poaching for example.

I like that idea. I would look into getting a licence for myself and the dogs,(2), I'm training.

I can't see a single tracking dog being much good as a "tool" to hunt deer. Unless of course you can get them topoint them @ 30 yards or less. I thinkthe states that do allow it require the dog be leashed. Just does not seem to be many drawbacks.

Well, you would have to have a regulation about the # of dogs allowed then. There would surely be some clown out there with a pack of 6 hounds claiming to be bloodtracking when he was in fact hunting.

Agreed, and I am all for it....As far as the poaching comment....Poachers are gonna poach, REGARDLESS of the regs.....One's really got nothing to do with the other.....generally speaking. Guys kill deer out of season and by any means, and they will continue to do so....and they use dogs to do it sometimes.