As some of you regulars may recall, I had to put down my beloved "Mojo" last winter, mid-season due to an auto-immune blood disease that he was not able to whip. More or less left my season flat.

I "rescued" a daughter of Mojo's (his only sired litter) as the result of a far more devastating tragedy. The owner, a young Auburn coed, was killed by a drunk driver about three years ago. Her mother asked me to take Ellie back and give her a good home.

I started her blood trailing training about 3 months ago. I used deer blood diluted with water. Laid a track about every other day for a couple of weeks, increasing the difficulty each time and using raw deer meat "treats" as a reward for following and completing the track.

About a month ago I thought I had lost her for good after she was bitten in the face by a 4 1/2' timber rattler. Fortunately only 1 fang injected and thanks to a great vet and anti-venom, she recovered quickly.

I am not so slick on the IT stuff but did manage to get a You Tube set up of her blood trailing her first deer. This was also the first deer Ellie had ever seen. It was only about 250 yards total length. Later in the week she found 3 more. Two were easy tracking .... about like this one. However, one was a track of what we guessed to be over 3/4 mile. Included a doubling back, a creek crossing, tracking across pine straw, down dusty woods roads, and pushing though lots of heavy under brush ... it was a big doe that had been hit low and forward, just missing the heart. Frankly we were all amazed at how Ellie Mae never once checked up and the fact that this was only her 3 rd. tracking ever. I'm 99% sure that she has the "gift".

You can look for the video on You Tube if you'd like to see her at work. Search under "Ellie Mae Tracking". To say the least I am proud of her. I apologize for not being more adept at this stuff.

Pretty cool man. I have a walker coon hound that still needs alot of work with coons and sometimes runs deer. I dont have much time to train him and have kind of gotten out of coon hunting because nobody i know really hunts anymore. I may try to train him a little on deer tracking. I would like to be able to help people find their lost deer.


Hope yours turns out well. I would like to see the video but cant find it just by searching the name, what is your username on youtube and ill find and post the video for you.

I had a guy who I work with come help me track a deer last year. He bought his from a breeder in New York. (cant remember the name right now). We didn't find the deer in my track but it was pretty impressive watching it work. I didn't know that the his dog picks up on an individual deers sent from it's hooves and not just the blood. We didn't track my deer until the following day so i was concerned all the other deer in the area would throw the track off. He told me to just take him to the place I first saw the deer and that it where he started. It tracked all the way to the place that I shot and then through the woods.

Can somebody post a link to the video. I searched as he said and got a bunch of results but none of his track.

flyinlowe and ChasinTail--- gave incorrect info. Search under "Ellie Mae Tracking". I think that this is the link. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wE23seKjnrg


It starts with Ellie sniffing the blood scent off the arrow. Then she is following a blood trail , which is impossible to see on the video. She is not tracking the deer's scent. That is not what you want! Only want the tracker to scent the blood. Otherwise could easily follow another deer off into who knows where.

I think that the folks up in NY are the John Jeanneney (Sp) family, who are known across the US as experts in both the breeding and the training of wire hair Dachshunds for blood trailing. I just bought a pup sired by a male from one of their litters. The dame was from long line of German Dachshunds bred for their ability to track. Named him "Boudin" ... a type Cajun sausage. He is about 10 weeks old now.