23/09/10 Hunt Cover

My friend Steve who keepers Hunt Cover, called me the other to say that he now has his pheasant poults in the release pen, and has noticed some fox activity close by, so could I take the rifle with me on my next visit in case I should spot the offender. Now I wasn't planning to do another track so soon, but as Steve had been kind enough to give me permission to use the wood so I decided to do a short track, as a confidence booster for both of us.
The track was to start at the far side of the wood, come inside, head down hill, then swing round and head back uphill towards the pheasant pen.
We had quite a long walk to our impact point, but we weren't in a rush and Heidi seemed to really enjoy the walk, so when we got to the start she was pretty relaxed which is always a good thing. I put her tracking collar on, followed by 'track on', and as usual she was away with no problem.

We continued into the wood, turning down hill slightly and she still had her nose to the floor, going at quite a strong pace, but not going to fast, although it gave me a problem as I was trying to pick up my markers as we were going along.

Next up came a left hand turn, at which point Heidi turned right, and my heart sunk thinking she was off on a wild goose chase, but she suddenly just stopped, turned around, and came back to the turn point, nose down, and was away in the right direction again.

Things continued to go well uphill until we came to another slight left handed turn, and Heidi just wanted to go straight on into thicker woodland? As I knew this was not the track that I had set, I let her go the full length of the leash, which she did almost pulling me along. I know the wind can do strange things with the scent, but could not figure out in this instance why it would have changed in this area, and also the trail was just a few hours old, so I pulled her up hard on the leash whilst verbally correcting her. This done we got back to the track line, and with the command 'track on' she got back to the job in hand.

This took us right up the side of Steve's pheasant pen. It was Heidi's first introduction with such an amount of game birds, and her reaction was to just stop and look for a few moments, intrigued by what looked like a mass of small chickens, followed by an urge to move towards them to investigate further. I gave the command 'NO', with a slight tug on the leash, which was enough for her to put her nose back to the ground, and carry on to the find (Muntjac head), without showing any more interest in the birds.

At the find she got her normal reward, followed by having a good chew on the head. I spent about 15 minutes or more with her here, and even managed to get her to speak a couple of times when holding the Munty head above her.

Age of track: 10hrs
Length of Track: Approx 3000m.
Type of track: Shoe and blood.
Amount of blood: 250ml.
Wind direction: From behind.
Wind strength: 25-31 mph
Temp: 18ºC
Weather: Warm, bright and windy.
Time: 05.30pm
Age of Dog: 6 3/4 months

Conclusion:
This was meant to be an easy practice, practice track using non diluted blood, and the age of track not being to much, but Heidi blatantly went past what I considered to be easy turns. It was only a few days since our last outing, and maybe she got a bit bored/complacent. I thinks I will leave it a couple of weeks now to give her a rest, and hopefully by then get some Fallow involved.