11/08/2024
Fun Fact and Story- Maxx's very first track was on an Elk in Utah this September. My grandmother and I loaded up the dogs and drove to Utah to visit my cousin, Cody Elder, his wife Melissa and their two boys, Donnie and Brodie. Cody is a fly fishing guide on the Green River during the guiding season. Cody and I have hunted together for the last two years. Several days into our hunt, Cody hit a cow Elk. I had previously told Cody that if we hit one, we were going to have Maxx track it. I didn't care if we had to walk 5 miles to get him. The day Cody hit the Elk, I was hunting about 40 minutes up the mountain from where Cody was. It just so happened that my phone died and he couldn't get a hold of me. So Cody had to hike up the mountain to my hunting spot and ask me if I was ready to track an elk. We couldn't get down the mountain fast enough to go get Maxx! Once we returned, we put Maxx on the blood trail at the shot site. He started off slow but then followed the blood trail at a pretty quick rate, zigzagging up and down the steep mountain side through the thick dead falls and snags. After about 3 hours of tracking, we went about 2 miles and the blood was starting to be almost non-existent. Maxx's paw was cut and bleeding and Cody and I were exhausted from the track. We decided to call the track for the day and come back the following day. Maxx was not ready to give up and showed his displeasure the entire hike out!! Because of Maxx's injury, we decided to go back without him. Cody and I returned to last blood and started tracking the Elk. We would find a speck of blood about every 30 yards on the deadfalls and rocks. It took us about an hour to track the Elk approximately 100 yds from last blood. We were looking at the ground so hard for blood that we almost stepped on the Elk when we finally did find it! We celebrated and got the Elk pulled into some shade. At that point I couldn't help but feel horrible that we had stopped Maxx just a hundred yards shy of the Elk that he was leading us to. Cody called one of his buddys to help us butcher the Elk and pack it all out in one trip, with the exception of the hide. When we made it back to the campground with the meat we put Maxx on the tailgate and let him sniff our packs. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he felt betrayed because we left him behind. (A tracking dog's reward is the animal at the end of the trail and normally a high value treat) It was a tough pill to swallow but we will likely have more tracks in the future that have to end due to posted property or deer that are not mortally wounded. Congratulations to Cody on his Elk and hats off to the 10-month-old pup Maxx on his veteran level tracking job!!!
