Talking 27 Hour old Blood track!!!

Time to talk about some blood tracking! One of the funnest things I have had the experience to train for would have to be the blood tracking. It is fascinating to me that you can take an upland and waterfowl dog and track big game that has been wounded. In the VGP test the blood track is 400 meters, 200 more are added for those that want to send the dog on a free track after the initial 400. This is for dead game guiding and baying. The amount of blood used is 8 oz and a little more for the extra 200-meter work if deciding to do that. It will be a squirting or dabbing method. As of now I use a drip method from a Bug Juice bottle. The track is aged for at least 14 hours for overnight testing and 2-5 hours for a day track test. I am planning for the day track so most of my tracks have been aged 3 to 7 hours so far. In my training I have been using a Bug Juice bottle to lay blood, Orange painted clothes pins to mark the trail for me, a storage bowl with dog food in it and a biscuit, placed inside a 3 gallon bucket that has an Elk Hide strapped to it. I lay the track and mark it as I walk along. Making sure to place blood on fallen timber, rocks etc along the way. I leave the bucket with the hide and the food behind and sometimes place the Bug Juice bottle in the bucket as well so I don’t carry it back to the truck and contaminate the track. Now lets get into my last experience…….The 27-Hour-Old Blood Track in Colorado! Aright! So in Colorado and doing some training with Hessian and Jaeger. Decided I wanted to do an overnight blood track to test Hessian and myself. I grab my gear all stated above and head into the woods. I mark the starting wound bed and progress along my way dripping blood and marking the way. As I am going along I realize I am getting closer to a drop-off edge so I decide to turn around and stopped laying blood until I reached my turn off and then continued on from there. So now I have like a T pattern where the one end is a dead end. I continue along the way putting I some turns and such. I reach the end,1/4 mile later and bungee the bucket to a small pine and head out of the woods.It is Noon. Track laid time to wait. It rained a bit that afternoon, not for long but hard. I wasn’t able to get to the track until 3 o clock the next day. A 27-hour-old track! Got Hess to the start, downed him, walked up and took a look at the starting wound bed, went back to Hess, slipped on the collar and lead, pointed to the blood on the ground, “BLOOD, BLOOD”, “Find the Buck”. Off we go, Hess is nose down and pulling me along the way. He is getting slower. He starts off hard but slows down after a few minutes and focuses on the track. We are moving along well. Remember my T, the dead end? Well, Hess followed the trail right up to the dead end and I let him, after all there was blood there. Got to the end and realized this was not the direction, Hess turned around, nose down and headed back out to the split off point. Found the track and continued along in the forward direction. Moving along, just pass the first wound bed, we pass a log that I had placed blood on. This log had been freshly disturbed, dug at, tore into. Hmm, I don’t remember it looking like that. Suddenly Hess just stops, lifts his head and begins looking around. Very amped, not wanting to put nose to ground at all. Wants to take me for a search. So I down him on the blood and wait about 5 minutes, getting him to settle down and focus. Back on track moving along, getting close to the end. We come out of the trees and into a small clearing and there is the end! Hess took me there in 50 minutes! We made it! Time to reward! Wait a minute…….Where is my bucket? I placed it right here. Hess is freaking out. Sniffing around, won’t stop fidgeting. Won’t lie down. Finally “PLATZ”. Hess is down. I began to look around a little and find the shredded Bug Juice bottle a few feet from the end of the track, chewed to bits. Spotted my bucket a few yards down the hill. Bungee off, hide gone, bowl and food gone, and teeth marks in the bucket! Released Hess and we are out of here! About 20 yards down the hill Hess finds the elk hide and delivered to hand. I looked around for a bit, never found the food bowl or any sign of it. Did see what looked to be cat paws. Big cat paws. No gun, I’m outta here! Headed out of the woods, back to the truck and feel better now. No wonder Hess was freaking out! We could have run right into that thing! Everyone I talked to that day swears it was a mountain lion. And that it was still around and that we probably spooked it coming up on the end of the track. I am just glad we didn’t see it, and super stoked that He found the end of the 27-Hour-old track. The longest and hardest of all so far. WHAT EXCITEMENT!!!!!!! I LOVE THIS TRAINING THING! MORE AND MORE ADDICTED WITH EVERY NEW EXPERIENCE. Good luck all. And watch your back on the blood trail.