Tracking techniques for Rocky Mountains

[Jason Snyder]

I have a blood tracking dog by my side when I shoot.

 

[Stalker69]

Using TP as a marking device in place of orange flagging would be - at best - an improvisational tactic. If the best reason you can come up with to use TP is that it's more bio-degradable than flagging if left out in the wild I'll say this; Don't leave either one out there, ehh? But TP? Here is why I would never use it unless it were an emergency. And not that type of emergency.

Snow; Maybe in a new fresh perfect snow you can easily track and not need any kind of flagging. What about when the snow is patchy and a few days old or fresh but already mostly melted out by 11am? Now you're looking for pieces of white TP amongst lingering snow on the ground and on branches etc.? Why not just use camo flagging at that point?

Wind; it's a lot easier to tie flagging to a branch and not worry about it blowing away because it's not paper thin. Hope you at least use 2 ply.

Rain; TP in the rain? Just no. What if it rains all night and eventually all the TP you used as flagging is you know, how wet TP looks?

I’ve seen flagging dangling in trees for several years, not my cup of tee, should be ticketed for littering if you ask me. Maybe write your name and address on them . I’ve never had an issue with paper. If your worried about patches of snow, rain wind, why not just use sticks, make an x or something if your going to loose the track. Gps works great also. All I’ve ever carried is toilet paper, never had an issue. The places we hunt in Texas won’t even allow flagging, because of idiots that don’t remove it. It’s pretty rare we ever find the need to use toilet for makers either.

 

[Lionhound1975]

I agree with those that already mentioned that improving your tracking skills will not only lessen the likelihood of losing a wounded animal, but also being able to read sign better to locate an animal makes you a much better hunter. Too many hunters in the U.S. are more comfortable knowing how to program a trail cam than they are at reading sign on the ground where they want to put the cam.

I have followed a number of blood trails where it was much easier to just track the animal that it was to look for a blood drop every 10 feet. Looking for blood stain on fall leaf litter on the ground can be tough but if you are familiar with the running and walking gaits of the animal you just shot, it is easier to see the disturbances in the leaves than the blood. If you do find blood, it just acts as a confirmation that the animal you are tracking is the animal you shot.

Some environments are extremely tough to track on such as scree fields and you might have to just rely on blood drops rather than tracks and sign but the vast majority of environments such as fields, forests, rocky scrub, desert, etc. you will see more ground sign than blood if you know what to look for.

Also, we can get too focused on looking for some type of ground sign right in front of us but if we look up we will often see a clear trail. This is especially true in grass (where the light can create a shine on the trampled grass) or in fall leaves where you will see a pattern of disturbances that are consistent with the gait of the animal. If you looked right on top it would just look like overturned leaves but when you see it at a distance, the pattern of the stride and gait indicates what made it. It is like tracking an animal or person that walked in the snow and then it snowed again over their tracks. The trackers are filled in so you can't see track details such as toes, pads, hooves, or claws, but the pattern and sequence of depressions in the snow are such that you can still get an idea of what species of animal it was since different animals leave a very different trail.

 

[Fireflyfishing]

Using TP as a marking device in place of orange flagging would be - at best - an improvisational tactic. If the best reason you can come up with to use TP is that it's more bio-degradable than flagging if left out in the wild I'll say this; Don't leave either one out there, ehh? But TP? Here is why I would never use it unless it were an emergency. And not that type of emergency.

Well said.

I’ve seen flagging dangling in trees for several years, not my cup of tee, should be ticketed for littering if you ask me. Maybe write your name and address on them . I’ve never had an issue with paper. If your worried about patches of snow, rain wind, why not just use sticks, make an x or something if your going to loose the track. Gps works great also. All I’ve ever carried is toilet paper, never had an issue. The places we hunt in Texas won’t even allow flagging, because of idiots that don’t remove it. It’s pretty rare we ever find the need to use toilet for makers either.

It seems like you make the assumption anyone using flagging doesn’t remove it. None of the people I hunt with leave it in the woods.

 

[Stalker69]

I do kinda make that assumption, i am sure some do remove them. But there’s enough that don’t, to make it a problem. And not only is it used for tracking, but also to mark trails and roads so they don’t get lost driving or hiking the trails. And so their buddy’s when the come up can follow them. And it’s also common enough, people have to have different colored flagging, I’ve seen as many as four different colored “ ribbons” tied to the same trees at places. And again, it’s a pain in the ass removing other peoples litter, trash. I’ve never met any one that will admit it’s theirs, even following it to camps, where it miraculously ends.

 

[Fireflyfishing]

I do kinda make that assumption, i am sure some do remove them. But there’s enough that don’t, to make it a problem. And not only is it used for tracking, but also to mark trails and roads so they don’t get lost driving or hiking the trails. And so their buddy’s when the come up can follow them. And it’s also common enough, people have to have different colored flagging, I’ve seen as many as four different colored “ ribbons” tied to the same trees at places. And again, it’s a pain in the ass removing other peoples litter, trash. I’ve never met any one that will admit it’s theirs, even following it to camps, where it miraculously ends.

Land managers (i.e. foresters, firefighters, etc.) use it on a constant basis…and leave it hanging…for a reason. As do engineers, loggers, surveyors, and others that work in the woods on a regular basis. It’s not all hunters that leave it hanging.

 

[grfox92]

I'm red color blind. I can see the color red, but it doesn't stand out from its surroundings like it does for someone woth normal eyes. So if I'm scanning the forest floor right in front of my feet it could take me quite some time to see the shiny red blood that's right in front of my eyes.

My first 20 years of hunting I was exclusively a bowhunter. I shoot pretty good and yhe majority of deer I watched fall from the tree stand. The ones I had to blood trail just took me longer than they should have.

I've been rifle hunting for 3 years now and it's proven to be difficult to find the exact spot something was standing, especially a few hundred yards away in open country.

I think there is some good advice here.

Sent from my SM-G990U2 using Tapatalk

 

[MJB]

I got a Jagd for this reason.
Over the years of using dogs deer seem to do a loop away from roads/trails.
Elk all bets are off I tend to look for ravens they never lie in the flats. Otherwise in the dark Forrest let your sent help you find them, and listen for the crash.
Pigs tend to go down hill or into thick cover so do bears.
Turkeys are the worse they bury themselves into the thickest bush you can find and they won't move even when you're standing on them. I get the dog or use a stick where you have to hit them before they will run.

 

[Sadie]

I shoot a 6.5 CM so I not only don’t have to track it blows the critter all the way to my vehicle so I don’t have to drag it out either.

But the problem is the meat is always overcooked.

 

[Stalker69]

Land managers (i.e. foresters, firefighters, etc.) use it on a constant basis…and leave it hanging…for a reason. As do engineers, loggers, surveyors, and others that work in the woods on a regular basis. It’s not all hunters that leave it hanging.

The areas I hunt are either private or wilderness areas. The whole year while scouting there is no flagging to be seen, unless it’s old and we hadn’t seen it to remove it before. All of a sudden hunting seasons start and it just magically appears. By third rifle season, we have have removed a bunch of it. Some we follow to tree stands in wilderness areas, call the game wardens and they come and remove the stands. They have a 14 or 16 foot trailer about stuffed with tree stands they have removed. Once they led us to a meth lab. Just saying, if you use it why not put your name, phone number and address on it ? At least they could be returned to yea, you could reuse them, save money, not have to fill new ones out all the time. Logging here, they use orange paint, surveyors use wood slats with paint and info on them, I have never seen firefighters mark any thing. Could of course be different in other places. It just pisses me off seeing trash, litter left behind. And who ever left it should held accountable.

 

[BigNate]

A couple things I'll add. Really big machines have more power but burn more fuel. Get heated grips if you hunt in the winter. When you don't have a winch you'll need it, and have a snatch block or two for redirecting. I think a 350 - 400 ish is decent size and smaller in the bed of the pickup.

As for brand, I don't know. I got a good deal on a Polaris from a guy at work. It's too big for most of what I do hunting, but helpful plowing snow before I bought a tractor. I have had to rebuild the front diff lock but plowing snow is hard on stuff. Parts are easy to find.

 

[rocksteady]

Marking the exact hit spot is so important. I never thought about using flagging to follow a blood trail; that's brilliant. Tracking wounded animals is tough work, but following your process seems to pay off.

 

[Pony Soldier]

Snow isn't as easy as you think. If you shoot high and oblique, it seems to take a while for the chest to fill up with blood and start to blow it out. The difficulty comes when they run back through an area where a herd of elk have tracked the heck out of the area. Especially in milling tracks. You have to create reference points to work from to unravel the issue.

Its easier with two where one can stand at a point and the other can plot a path. Often once a path is defined they tend to be consistant in most cases. Otherwise you must keep creating reference points to work from in case you lose the tracks. This is also true where you have dense ground cover and the target is doing the 40 fours down the hill.

In all of the elk I have killed, I have only had to sort 2 or 3 of these to sort out. The issue is largely to have patience and work the path out.

 

[2-Stix]

My uncle walks into the forest with a rifle, binos on a string like a purse, 50' of rope, and a pocket full of shells. He added a 16oz bottle of water in his back pocket about 20 years ago, he runs light and fast...hes a savage, old school in jeans and flannels...anyway on a hunt he shot an elk and came back to came with no sleaves on his flannel because he cut strips off so he could find his way back to the animal. He out hunts everyone, every trip...the guys a machine in the woods. He spent 45 years cutting timber.