I have read on another forum that there are laws in some European countries requiring tracking dogs be readily available before hunting. This is not a judgment but just a curious question. Is there really that much wounding of game that tracking dogs must be legislated? Tracking dogs are actually illegal here in Texas which stems from years of hunting/running deer with dogs as a sport, but in my opinion outlawing the use of tracking dogs has gone to far. I believe that a hunter should do everything possible to find a wounded deer, and I have used my old Lab who is almost completely deaf but still has an incredible nose to find a couple of deer over the years.

Can someone share some insight on these tracking dog laws?

Hi Jeff!

Here in Sweden where I live the law states that a tracking dog must be avalible within one h after a shot is taken at a moose. The shooting-skills of the average moosehunter here are not that impressive and there is a number of wounded moose that requires tracking every seson

One thing you have to keep in mind is that we have a huge amount of moose to shoot every year! We probalbly have more than 350 000 moose in Sweden and we shoot more that 100 000 moose every year. With numbers like that there have to be a sertain number of wounded moose, like it or not. The effort we have to put in to keep the moose population down meens that not all of the moose-hunters are "hardcore" hunters that spend countless houers on the range

Hope this will give you a idea of what the situation over here looks like!

I´ll be out hunting for moose tomorrow morning at daybreak!

Here in the UK only a minority use dogs.
I have a lab which is a pretty good deer dog, but I only bring it with me on evening stalks. I have been glad of him a few times, and more than once he has pointed on deer I did"nt see while stalking. I don"t think it should be compulsory to have one, but I certainly don"t think it should be illegal either. A dead deer can be surprisingly hard to see, esp if it lays down in cover or under the canopy of firs. I have a flashing collar with bells on it for working in the dark where a dog makes the difference from finding the deer or just giving up.
good shooting

In Belgium, the law imposes that all wounded game be tracked and (hopefully) retrieved (remember, drive hunting is most popular and shots are taken at running game).
We therefore use specially trained bloodhound (mostly Bavarians, Hannovers,Teckels ).

In Germany all wounded animals must be tracked, thats law (birds not).
If you have no tracking dog, for every hunting area there is a "dog station", a hunter with special dogs (schweisshunde) mostly Bavarians, Hannovers and Braken (I dont know the english word). These hunters are volunteers and it is free of costs, for they like the job. A funny rule ist, you have to take part on the tracking or you loose the trophy when the animal is found and the owner of the tracking dogs (Schweisshundführer) never would take a Hannover Schweisshund for tracking roe deer, thats under he dog's level.(The argument is roe deer blood is bad for dogs nose)

Burkhard

I have hunted with a fireind in England who raises excellent tracking dogs. She is set up with the governemnt and they call her any time there is a "road casualty" and she brings a dog and tracks the deer and humanely finishes it off. She olso uses them when guideing and when hunting on her culling trips. They extenxively manage wildlife in much of Europe and it is a FAR cry from any "buck amnagemetn plan" in the US. Her dogs track a lot of deer each year.

http://www.deerdata.co.uk/

And BTW-I grew up in LA and as you know we still run dogs 4 weeks a year over there. Well, actually deer are run at night all year long, but the dog hunting season is 4 weeks. I have tecked many, many deer with a dog. I don't know how to get hard data on it, but I would bet my left nut that bow hunters lose a MINIMUM of 25% of the deer they shoot. I have no idea how many hours of my life were spent in th edark woods trying to track a bow-shot deer for friends. A good dog is a big help here.

Tracking dogs are not illegal in Texas. It is only illegal to run deer with them, although tracking dogs may be illegal in a few East Texas counties, which is where most of the deer running occurred.

I keep a Jack Russell for blood trailing deer here in Texas, and have hunted over Deutsch Drathaars, Tekels, and Jagd Terriers in Europe. I don't think it's a question of many animals being lost. Rather, I think it is the fact that one is too many. I believe every hunting camp and outfitter should have a tracking dog. Every hunter should (especially archery hunters) probably have one, too, but given the lack of training and breeding here, that may not be such a good idea. We do most things well in America, but dog breeding and training aren't among them.

Over here, on individual hunts, you don´t need a tracking dog. But on driven hunts you need to have at least one dog. The idea is that when you are on your own, stalking, you have plenty of time to take a good kill-shot, but on driven hunts the shots are generally taken in a hurry (it`s not uncommon to have just a few seconds to spot the animal, determine it`s species-sex-age and so on, aim and take the shot). Needless to say, in these conditions percentage of unsucessful shots is substantially greater. And that`s where trackings dogs come in handy.

Once in a while even an animal with an excellent shot to the boiler room runs up to 50 or even more meters, don't ask me why, this usually happens with boar but I had it happen with roe deer (shot with the 8x75 mm RS!) as well.

Now, at night and in dense forests even 30 m can be a lot, you might find your game but after an hour of tracking. With a dog it's fast, simple and even fun. I have a 30 months jagd terrier which is not really a master trailer but usually he finds what we are looking for.

As you know, we sell our game and finding it on time also helps to save a lot of money.

There was a comment here on bow hunting. I consider it quite an exciting and demanding way to hunt. However, if it is true that most deer hit with an arrow still run a little, I do wonder how many are really recovered, especially in areas like Florida with thick palmetto or other brush.

Jeff, in Sweden everything is legislated for, the regulation to have a tracking dog standby for all big game hunting is perhaps one of the more reasonable ones.

As I do belive a lot of places in the US wont allow tracking dogs, and I know a lot of people mostly bow hunters spend a lot of time learning to track and track shot deer, needles to point out I said shot deer, not wounded.


As for the use of tracking dogs, since it´s only about wounded or dead animals I for one cant se the issue, a dog is what a 1000% better at tracking then what we are.

Like Stefan mentions above, moose hunt in Sweden has such a long standing tradition and is something that every man living in the countryside does, there are a lot of "shooters" that are not really up to par.

However a moose is huge, easy to kill and usually distances are within 50 yards, be that at a slow moving moose but still.

There are not many that are wounded and not retrived, less than one procent I would belive.

There are actualy fines for hunting teames that wound and don´t find animals.

Even though not often used, they exist.

So in all thats the story regarding Swedish conditions.

BTW all of us that has had to track a deer, regardless of specie knows just how tricky it can be, I spent 6 hours tracking a caribou in Alaska some 17 years ago, I can still remember the agony, I would like to say it wasn´t my shot, however all hunters will wound at sometime or another it´s inevetable.

/Chris

quote:

Originally posted by Jeff Sullivan:
I have read on another forum that there are laws in some European countries requiring tracking dogs be readily available before hunting. This is not a judgment but just a curious question. Is there really that much wounding of game that tracking dogs must be legislated? Tracking dogs are actually illegal here in Texas which stems from years of hunting/running deer with dogs as a sport, but in my opinion outlawing the use of tracking dogs has gone to far. I believe that a hunter should do everything possible to find a wounded deer, and I have used my old Lab who is almost completely deaf but still has an incredible nose to find a couple of deer over the years.

Can someone share some insight on these tracking dog laws?

...in our country (slovenia) we have a regulation that says that every shot fired on big game that wasnt retrieved must be checked with skilled tracking dog...so we had our work (about 120 + trackers with 20 years tracking on average of 30 times per year) put down and came to the conclusion that around 22 % of shots on big game that were proclaimed by shooter to be a miss (no sign of hit by animal or signs on ground) was not only hit but actually retrieved at the end...here are statistics from 1996 - 2004:

year NoCT NoAF %
1996 211 40 18,9
1997 297 88 29,6
1998 378 90 23,8
1999 400 89 22,2
2000 409 82 20,0
2001 441 99 22,5
2002 487 109 22,4
2003 453 106 23,4
2004 612 94 15,4

NoCT - number of trackings on pronounced missed shots
NoAF - number of actually found animals