A Deer-Tracking Breakthrough
By Mark Melotik
Several years ago I arrowed a brute of an Illinois buck that continues to haunt me today. The haunting aspect stems from the fact that I never recovered that deer, but the experience went a long way toward forming my current thoughts on hiring professional trackers. In short, I’m a huge fan.
If things look bleak on your next trail, I recommend doing all you can to bring in a four-legged pro. Beyond that, an even smarter play is prepping for a tracking dog’s potential use well before fall seasons even begin. If that sounds a bit crazy, some recent developments have made this easier than ever. The new, free TRAKR app went live last September, with a goal of pairing frustrated hunters with the nearest tracking dogs and their handlers.
“Our number-one goal is to connect hunters and trackers and recover their animals,” said Shane Simpson, one of the app’s developers and a professional tracker himself. “I hate seeing an animal go to waste. I know what it’s like to lose a deer — it stinks.”
The app currently has more than 15,000 downloads and works with a fairly astounding 1,220 confirmed, vetted trackers across several states — and Simpson says there are “a bunch more” waiting to be confirmed this summer.
If you’ve got a tracking job, simply download the app, open it and hit the Request a Tracker button. You’ll be asked a series of questions regarding your location and date/time your deer was shot, and then you’ll be shown a few trackers in your immediate area. At that point, you can review their profiles and choose which one to contact based on their price, recovery rate or other listed credentials.
Simpson says the average cost of a tracking job is $100 to $200, but can run to $400 or so, and that several states operate almost completely on a tip-only basis. That includes many of the trackers in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
Simpson says the advertised cost of trackers in the network tends to increase the further south you travel from the upper Midwest. However, the Minnesota-based tracker is a big believer in the tip-based structure. “In most cases, the hunters compensate us well,” he said. Further, he’s personally been known to match the tracking job cost to the hunter.
“Whether it’s a college kid hunting in his spare time, or teenagers, I don’t want to discourage them from me tracking their deer,” Simpson said, explaining that he’s tracked does for just $20 in gas money. He further explained that once the hunter uses the app to find a tracker, further negotiations and timing details, from that point on, are strictly between the hunter and chosen tracker.
So how does the TRAKR app remain free? Simpson explained that it is currently selling monthly ($3.99) and yearly ($19.99) subscriptions to the interesting analytics results the app continues to accumulate from its users.
For example, subscribers will be able to search for a wide variety of data. This could include, say, all the deer hit nationwide in September, their average recovery rate, all the deer with single-lung hits, deer shot with specific brands of equipment and much more.
“By subscribing to the analytics, you can prove, one way or another, how effective mechanical broadheads are, or how effective fixed blades are,” Simpson said. “And we’re already seeing some neat little things, that there are some pros and cons of each. [Our current data] is showing fixed blades have a higher pass-through rate and higher recovery rate than mechanicals, but on the flip side, mechanicals have a much higher recovery than fixed blades on non-pass-through shots.”
What are some eye-opening lessons Simpson has learned while following up numerous blood trails?
“If I could track just does only, the recovery percentages would go way up,” Simpson said. “Bucks in rut can seem like they’re almost unkillable. And I’m guessing it’s nature’s way of them dealing with fighting other bucks, including getting gored. I’ve tracked double-lung-hit bucks, and they didn’t die. Bucks shot during the rut probably don’t die as quickly as bucks shot in September.”
As for my aforementioned Illinois hunt, I experienced the scary power of a mature, rut-crazed buck. From my 20-foot stand at the edge of a narrow food plot, I’d watched as a giant 8-pointer cruised through looking for the hot doe it was just minutes behind. As the buck turned to leave, a few bleats brought it back to just 20 yards.
At the shot, my mechanical-tipped arrow appeared to be well-placed but steeply angled. It was not a pass-through, and likely a single-lung hit at worst. Initially, my confidence was sky-high.
Long story short, we called in a tracker and watched in amazement as the bloodhound and his veteran handler followed the trail slowly but steadily north to a road that acted as the property line. The peak of the rut meant several out-of-state hunters were likely hanging in those neighboring woods. That fact, coupled with less-than-stellar landowner relations, meant we faced a very unfortunate reality: Our tracking job was over. I was gutted.
I took some solace in the fact that if the buck had made it to the road, it may well have survived. But I knew one thing unequivocally: Had I not hired a tracker, we would never have known exactly where, or how far, that buck had traveled after the shot.
Photo caption:
Tracker John is shown here with his well-trained bloodhound, called to service during the author’s fateful Illinois bowhunt.