This question is just one of curiosity at this point. It may become more relevant if legislation ever gets passed to permit blood tracking dogs in PA, but at this point, I'm just curious from a training/dog handling standpoint.
The thread about the stalled legislation on blood tracking dogs in PA got me to wondering about the training involved for this activity. Lots of info out there, and like anything on the web, one has to be adept at filtering the bad info out and reading the good info. I get that.
Reading some comments and articles, there seem to be two schools of thought, and I'm curious what folks here think.
One line of thought holds that training a dog for tracking deer and also for bird/upland hunting is a mistake. The fear is that while the dog is bird hunting, it will come across deer scent (entirely plausible) and it will follow that scent, as it's been trained to do so. Then the hunter has to "break" the dog of chasing after uninjured deer they come across while bird hunting.
The other line of thought is that the dog was not trained to follow just any scent it finds, but rather to follow a specific scent it's been exposed to and directed to follow.
Being a modestly capable dog trainer, I can see where either line of thought could be plausible.
What do you folks think?
At this point, it's just hypothetical. I do, however, have an adult lab with a strong nose, and a lab pup who is soon to start upland training. Should tracking dogs be legalized at some point, however, I'd be interested in either of them, or both, being trained to track deer. Between the folks I hunt with and people I know in the area, it seems there's at least one tough track a season, and having a dog on hand to help when that occurs would be awesome.
That said, I don't need to be in a hurry since there's nothing imminent on the legislative front. I'm really just curious about this potential issue, as reading on the topic got me wondering about it.
And no, I'm not planning to take my dog out to find deer unless/until it's legal to do so.
The thread about the stalled legislation on blood tracking dogs in PA got me to wondering about the training involved for this activity. Lots of info out there, and like anything on the web, one has to be adept at filtering the bad info out and reading the good info. I get that.
Reading some comments and articles, there seem to be two schools of thought, and I'm curious what folks here think.
One line of thought holds that training a dog for tracking deer and also for bird/upland hunting is a mistake. The fear is that while the dog is bird hunting, it will come across deer scent (entirely plausible) and it will follow that scent, as it's been trained to do so. Then the hunter has to "break" the dog of chasing after uninjured deer they come across while bird hunting.
The other line of thought is that the dog was not trained to follow just any scent it finds, but rather to follow a specific scent it's been exposed to and directed to follow.
Being a modestly capable dog trainer, I can see where either line of thought could be plausible.
What do you folks think?
At this point, it's just hypothetical. I do, however, have an adult lab with a strong nose, and a lab pup who is soon to start upland training. Should tracking dogs be legalized at some point, however, I'd be interested in either of them, or both, being trained to track deer. Between the folks I hunt with and people I know in the area, it seems there's at least one tough track a season, and having a dog on hand to help when that occurs would be awesome.
That said, I don't need to be in a hurry since there's nothing imminent on the legislative front. I'm really just curious about this potential issue, as reading on the topic got me wondering about it.
And no, I'm not planning to take my dog out to find deer unless/until it's legal to do so.