How to become a highly effective tracker

[justinspicher]

I did a man tracking course while I was in the military, back in 2005. It was pretty legit. The instructor was a Rhodesian SAS cat and I learned a ton from him.

Fortunately, I have only had to track a few animals in my hunting career, but I’ve always been able to find them.

My most recent tracking job was last month when a buddy shot a bear. We tracked it 1200yds from where he was initially shot to his final resting place.

Patience and perseverance are keys to tracking.

 

[Beagle1]

Tracking at night is a whole different game than during the day. Have a good headlamp and least two sets of batteries. Have a good backup headlamp/light and spare batteries. I like Zebra lights with a handful of spare 18650 batteries Do not depend on your phone light as a backup. If you don’t have light it’s game over.

Know the weather that’s coming in. If it’s rain the often good conventional advice to break for the night and come back early the next morning won’t work. You just have to go full bore until your lights run out or the rain completely washes out the blood. For flagging in those conditions toilet paper is a bad idea use surveyor’s tape.

If you find the deer and will be dragging it out with an ATV that’s a long ways away hang one of your lights above the deer. Then set an Onyx track back to the ATV so you can follow it back to your deer.

Keep at it, keep at it, keep at it. There will be highs and lows during a difficult track. Numerous times you’ll want to give up. Just ride those emotions out then get back to tracking.

A couple nights ago I found an 11 point I tracked for three hours during a light rain. As soon as I found him it started pouring like hell. I made some mistakes during the track I shouldn’t have but I had a good light, kept at it and had a bit of luck.

 

[CMF]

Preserve any and all evidence of where the animal was or has been. Walk next to the animal's trail, not over it. Stomping over the blood and tracks you are attempting to follow will hurt you big time if you need to work backwards and I'd always rather be backtracking over the animal's prints than my boot prints, though if you're just retracing your steps your boot prints can still show you where you've already been.

Great point, I think many overlook.

I’ve see a couple people referencing “trajectory”. I obviously understand it’s the direction the elk went off, but are you guys saying generally speaking a wounded elk is going to continue roughly in the same line unless the topography makes it change course or it expires?

I think if there is lack of additional evidence to follow(blood or tracks) You follow it's last known trajectory, either the way you saw it go, or if like most you run out a blood trail with some toilet paper you can look back at your toilet paper trail and see the "trajectory" he was going. I would start by following the trajectory then expand following any game trails I came across, and as a last resort, grid search.
I don't have enough data points tracking elk to say what they'll do. I've seen one run straight down hill and another side hill mainting the same elevation. I've seen whitetails do some crazy things.
My son got his Oryx tracking it after we cut tracks crossing a road. We tracked it for a mile before jumping it. At one point, that thing had made a complete circle, not big, maybe 150-00yds. It was interesting to follow.

 

[CMF]

Don't forget about track dogs. I think they are too often overlooked, especially out west. A dog can track better than any human.
Research the state or area you'll be hunting and find the fb groups or online list of dog trackers and save them in case you need them.

 

[Eleven]

Tracking isn’t just an activity for after the shot. Someone gets good at tracking by doing it all the time, not just in a recovery scenario. If you want to be a good tracker you need to put your time in, just like with shooting.

The biggest tid bit I can share on tracking is to actually define what a track is…. A track is a disturbance to a baseline. Whether that disturbance is on the ground, on the bushes (broken branches), from a foot, from blood drops, from the wind, from a winter storm, etc. everything leaves a track, even if you can’t recognize it as such. If it’s not flat it’s track. So don’t look for tracks, look for baselines. The disturbances to those baselines will then be way more obvious. It was mentioned in an above post that taking a tracker from one area to some place completely different can be difficult if they’ve never dealt with that baseline before. Back when I was doing way more tracking, I would study different baselines and observe and play with various substrates to see how different things showed up. We used to call it collecting baselines.

Edited for clarity and spelling.

 

[Wellsdw]

I track a lot of deer annually for hunters as i have a tracking dog. Mistakes i see on almost every track are
1. They lose blood after 50-75 and dont back out for a few hours. Usually that deer gets bumped from a bed it would have died in.

2. The deers path is unpredictable so applying human logic to animals is a recipe for "nature hike". I would agree that if i didnt have a dog i would tend to look in a straight path. My experience says the trajectory is based on how how the animal was hit. Is it hurting or panicking? Thats hard to answer because most hunters only know where they wanted to hit the animal and not where they did.

3. If your buddy says to keep tracking it to push it maybe it will bleed out, or his wifes doodle has a good nose.......find a new buddy.

4. Grid searching and then calling in a dog can complicate things for the dog and handler.

Generally when i show up with my dog its often 12-16 hrs after the deer was shot. And the dog will cover the 100 yards that took the hunter hours to go on his hands and knees in a couple minutes.

United blood trackers has a website with a tracker locator. Find one that covers your area and reach out before the season and make a contact. Youll likely learn alot about the area during the conversation.

 

[Q_Sertorius]

I’ll second others who noted that learning the baseline is important to tracking when there is no blood (and can be good reassurance even when there is blood). I’m no Chingachgook, but I have successfully tracked a few deer several hundred yards without blood (often after bumping them from cover and not getting a shot, then tracking them until they presented a shot opportunity; twice after shots). Weather conditions help a lot here. A recent heavy rain can “reset the baseline” almost as well as snow.

On my farm, where I have been hunting for forty years, I just seem to be able to unconsciously memorize the baseline and quickly spot departures from it. But it’s definitely something I could not do in any terrain without a lot of familiarity.

Where I have run into trouble is where there are multiple deer. It requires a very clear track for me to distinguish one from another.

I’ve also got a good tracking puppy now and I hope I never have to use her, but if I do, I look forward to working with her to recover wounded game.

 

[Davyalabama]

Wait a bit before moving in on him --- I'm in the SE deer hunting, but I've found it good practice to give them a bit to bleed out, first. I can usually find him pretty close. That is bow hunting.

When I'm gun hunting, I shoot the high shoulder shot to anchor them --- some don't agree with this shot, that's your prerogative. It has worked for me a number of years.

 

[Rich M]

The best way to track is to make a good shot. That's where most tracking jobs begin - is with a poor shot. Learn how to shoot and you will find your dead animals. Most of the "i lost X" stories all begin with the perfect shot and a miraculously tough animal that defies biology. "I smoked him" turns into 3 days of misery grid searching the country side.

My attitude is that the only thing you can control is your shot. Every hunt has a shot opportunity and that's where you will make it or break it.

 

[velvet muley]

The best way to track is to make a good shot. That's where most tracking jobs begin - is with a poor shot. Learn how to shoot and you will find your dead animals. Most of the "i lost X" stories all begin with the perfect shot and a miraculously tough animal that defies biology. "I smoked him" turns into 3 days of misery grid searching the country side.

My attitude is that the only thing you can control is your shot. Every hunt has a shot opportunity and that's where you will make it or break it.

Agreed that the shot is clearly the most important part but even the best that practice a lot will eventually have something go wrong. Could be as simple as a bumped scope or a faulty round even though that is low percentage.

I was just looking for an informative educational discussion to possibly help with recovering more animals weather that's a greeny or a veteran that had some unfortunate luck.

Again, I do agree with you though on getting proficient with the weapon you hunt with.

 

[Beendare]

"Tracking" an animal starts from the actual shot. Know what you hit- followthrough on a bow or rifle shot is crucial. Mark the spot you shot from and the spot he was at....know his body angle. Staying concealed and shooting at unaware animals with the right BH and many times they don't feel a thing, aren't spooked at all and don't go far- in fact many die in sight.

It's shocking to me how many guys let out a big Whoop, "I GOT HIM!!!" or stomp down the trail talking running these animals further than necessary.

Many don't use their binos scanning out in front....or don't have one guy following Blood [or marking it yourself with TP] and another guy off to the side and scanning.

Does he have a distinctive hoof print? many older males do.

It's not just tracking....it's interpreting that track; is the animal lining out? In that case he is headed somewhere; water, a favored bedding area, meeting up with the herd- where did that herd go? etc

Is he weaving looking for a spot to bed? Is he actively avoiding you following him?

So many tricks....all gained through experience.

 

[Q_Sertorius]

The best way to track is to make a good shot. That's where most tracking jobs begin - is with a poor shot. Learn how to shoot and you will find your dead animals. Most of the "i lost X" stories all begin with the perfect shot and a miraculously tough animal that defies biology. "I smoked him" turns into 3 days of misery grid searching the country side.

My attitude is that the only thing you can control is your shot. Every hunt has a shot opportunity and that's where you will make it or break it.

I agree with you in principle, but that isn’t really helpful to this thread. Whatever the reason you need to track is irrelevant, this thread is about tracking tips. You are 100% correct that most rodeos can be avoided by taking a “good shot” or a “better shot.” But I have personally recovered “miraculously tough [deer] that defy biology” and verified that the shot “should have put them DRT.” A mid-high lung shot that doesn’t affect the spine is still within the vital zone, and will usually, but not always, put them DRT.

To get back on track and not wander too far off the trail…

Tracking skill can still be a valuable tool before the shot. When I am still hunting, as I usually do, I have often tracked unwounded game surprising distances before getting a shot (and not just in the snow, when it is fun and easy).

And since tracking skill is heavily based on knowing the baseline, I think one area in which a lot of hunters set themselves up for failure is in avoiding their hunting grounds until opening day or in only walking in the woods before or after it’s light out or in sitting in a stand all the time. It’s hard to know the baseline if you aren’t in the woods.

I walk through the same land as often as possible throughout the year and still hunt through the same land day-after-day from the first frost (squirrel season) through the end of the rifle season. It’s never stopped me from being successful during the rifle season and I think a large part of the reason for my success is my familiarity with the woods (in fairness, I am also not picky, I shoot any legal buck unless it is really small-bodied). I know the baseline. I know which water sources are active now, which trees have the most acorns, which trails are most traveled, etc. I can tell that a deer has crossed the creek or been eating acorns last night because I know what those spots looked like the evening before. If all my hunting was done from a blind on top of a hill in the pasture, I don’t think I would be any good at tracking (unless I got a lot of practice by taking bad shots ).