Cheers for a successful recovery!
On the evening of October 1st we received a call about a deer that had been shot with a muzzle loader on a high elevation mountain range. The hunter had shot the deer nearing the end of light hours and attempted to track the deer down the hill, but ultimately lost track of the blood and called it a night. Hearing word that we started big game recovery work they made a call to us. He explained the situation, the evidence, the placement of the shot, and sent over pins to the location. It just so happened that we were planning on going up the same mountain for Amanda's deer tag to scout for the upcoming rifle season so it worked out for us to pack up Beck and Lottie and see if we could be of service. We attempted to use Becks, but he was extremely over stimulated and had a difficult time keeping his nose to the ground to work the scent. Lottie however immediately took to the scent and lead us to new blood the hunter had not located. She worked her way to a clearing in the trees where she seemed to have lost the blood trail, but began scenting the air. We worked out way down the hill to the next set up trees where she was using her nose to guide her and came up on the bucks final place of rest. We were so thrilled to see that we had a successful recovery on a deer! The hunter was able to salvage quite a bit of meat and pack it home for his family.
It was a great recovery and exciting to watch Lottie really take over the job and work her nose. Based on her body language you could see when she was on the right trail and when she had lost it needing to back track. The smile and excitement on the hunter's face said it all when you could see the hope come back into his mind when she was leading him to blood they hadn't seen.