10 Tips To Train Your Dog To Track Deer

 Do you want to train your dog to track deer? In this article, we share tips to train your dog how to track deer.

1. Early Training

Begin training your puppy how to track a deer early if that is possible. If your dog is a puppy, you can start early training at seven weeks. Starting training this early will establish the groundwork for a bonafide tracking dog in the future. This early training is more psychological than anything else.

2. Play Games To Bond

You can play a variety of games with your puppy to develop that bond with him. You can start by throwing objects at a distance and letting him retrieve them and bring them back to you. Praise him for retrieving and returning it. From objects you can then use deer liver for fun drags for about 20 feet. Let him go after it and get the satisfaction of tracking and getting the liver.

3. Line Of Deer Blood

You can move on from liver drags to a dripped line of deer blood. You can reward your puppy at the end of the line of blood with something like the deer tail or hide. This reward will heighten his prey instinct and condition him to remain on the trail of a deer until it is found. This is slow but intentional conditioning.

4. Amuse & Challenge

At all stages of the training, you should make it amusing and challenging for your puppy. A deer’s tail or hide at the end of a blood trail will just be what he will want. Something to show for his time and effort tracking the blood for that distance. Something that he can sink his teeth into and have fun with.

5. Sharp Turns

Create winding and sharp turns of the bloodline to make following it more challenging for your puppy as he grows and develops his tracking ability. Real deer blood trails will meander into different routes with turns, stops, and other movements. 

You want to train your puppy to be ready for complicated and sharp turns. If you would like to learn more about how to train a dog to track deer, then click this link.

6. Age The Blood Line

As your puppy grows older and more experienced with your deer tracking training, you want to progress from fresh bloodlines to older bloodlines. Let the bloodline be older than a fresh line for about two to four hours or even more. The puppy’s nose will mature quicker than his brain and this will help him pick up the scent from older bloodlines and track them.

Bloodlines give off scent particles for days. Bloodlines age slower than a man’s track or that of a raccoon. It is possible that a puppy can easily track bloodlines that are up to 10 hours old.

7. Walking By You

As the training continues, you should be teaching your puppy to learn to walk calmly by your side on a short leash. A light tracking leash of 20 feet will do the job. The plastic clothesline is usable if the puppy is under 15 pounds. The plastic clothesline creates very little friction and it is very light. 

You can easily steer him in whichever direction you want him to go and keep him focused. For puppies that weigh more than 15 pounds, a cotton or polypropylene clothesline will work well.

8. Change The Training Area

It is easy to want to continue laying training lines in the same areas. Dogs and puppies have good memories of where they located items in the past. With their mature noses, they are informed of where earlier bloodlines are located. For puppies that are 12 weeks old and have been working lines that are more than a hundred yards long, change the location of the training area to a different field.

9. Natural Desire Channeling

Training for tracking deer should be approached as channeling the natural desire for the puppy with the right instinct. It should not be seen as obedience training. The aim is to develop his ability to solve tracking problems. Allow his natural desire and curiosity to drive him in the deer tracking training.

10. Avoid Repeated Training

Always try to make the tracking training fun and challenging. Don’t repeat the same training exercises too often. Some puppies will become bored with the same exercises. Make it spontaneous depending on his mood and the weather. A session every three days is a good schedule. As your puppy progresses with the training into more challenging lines, a 500-yard line once a week may be good.

Conclusion

Training your dog to track deer is challenging, exciting, and rewarding. In this article, we share tips to help you train your dog to track deer. If you would like to learn more about hunting deer, then click here.