The Dachshunds of Deer Search

A select New York brigade of Wirehaired Dachshunds
helps search for wounded deer

By Mary Allen
DogWorld, November 1995

      The November air is tight with chill as two Wirehaired Dachshunds on 30 foot leads move through the woods of upstate New York, tracking a trail of deer blood. Noses to the ground, tails high and merry, the dogs zigzag among trees and then scamper down the sides of a heavily wooded gully. They slide easily beneath underbrush that their orange-clad handlers struggle to penetrate.
      "Blood here!" At the bottom of the gully, one of the handlers points to a dead leaf spotted rust-red at a tree base where the Dachshunds have stopped to sniff excitedly before moving on with new intensity. These are the Dachshunds of Deer Search.
      Heidi and Annie are two of 22 Wirehaired Dachshunds in New York state certified to aid the hunter who is unable to find an animal wounded with an arrow or gun. Following a tradition that began centuries ago in the forests of Europe, they use the skills of the hunting dog to locate an injured animal that might otherwise lie in the cold, suffering for days.
      On this tracking event, Annie and Heidi track a doe shot that morning. Although seriously wounded, it disappeared into the trees. When the hunter could not find it after searching two hours, he called the Deer Search hotline, which operates seven days a week, 24 hours a day during hunting season. Upon arrival, the Deer Search handlers ask the hunter to take them to the place where the deer was shot. Within minutes Annie and Heidi are on its trail.
      The Dachshunds are tireless trackers. Bred for generations to go to ground after badger and fox, they combine the remarkable nose of the trailing dog with the courage and fire of the underground fighter. "'Quit'" is not in their vocabulary," says one of the handlers.
      Deer Search members answer calls without knowing what adventures await. Cliffs, steep mountainsides, lakes or streams 6-feet deep are encountered. Handler Roger Humeston once found himself mud-covered in the middle of a swamp while his Dachshund swam from bog to bog, tracking the deer's scent over water for half an hour before finding it on an island in the middle of the swamp.
      Another time his dog disappeared into a "blowdown," which is an area thick with fallen trees. Soon his dog's 30-foot lead went slack. Crawling in behind the dog on hands and knees, Humeston found her deep inside with the deer, which had gone there to die. A wounded deer, looking for the security of cover, often hides in dense brush. This is no problem for the lowset Dachshund, but it can be tough for the handler, especially at night.
      There are frightening moments. The deer can suddenly appear in the night, looming before the tracker. "A wounded 10-point buck staring at you-that gets your adrenaline pumping," reports one handler. "It can attack the dog. It can attack you." One Wirehair named Ingrid was pinned to the ground by antlers twice.
      Licensed Deer Searcher handlers in New York are permitted to carry handguns for quick response to such emergencies. They also use lights for night tracking. The hunter is always a member of the tracking party, and local conservation authorities and police agencies are notified before Deer Search goes out on a call.
      The whole Deer Search concept traces back to the '60s when John Jeanneney of Clinton Corners, N.Y., now a professor of history at Hofstra University, was a Fulbright Scholar at the French National Forestry School. There he first learned of dogs tracking wounded deer through the forests of Europe. Impressed with the tradition, he brought Carla vom Rode, a German bred Wirehair, with him when he returned to New York.
      But the United States has a different hunting tradition. In Germany, where hunting was the privilege of the nobility, guides, beaters and dog handlers participate in the hunt and call for a tracking dog if the deer does not fall almost immediately. The American hunter has a frontier tradition that dictates one provides for himself or herself. Encouraged to be a rugged individual, the American hunter does not want help from others, human or canine. In fact, in many parts of the United States, a dog chasing deer, wounded or not, through the woods receives "frontier justice." Because of these differences and because New York conservation law prohibited dogs trailing deer, Jeanneney put the idea of using Schweisshunds, in the German fashion, aside at first.
      An unfortunate experience while hunting in Pawling, N.Y., in 1972, however, caused him to reconsider. When he wounded a doe, he could not find her after searching all day. One week later, she was found dead in a swale only 400 yards away, and he realized that tracking dogs would have made a difference.
      "It would have been a snap for one of our good dogs today to have found her," he says. Jeanneney then returned to France, where a wildlife manager showed him how to work a Wirehair on a training bloodline and demonstrated French and German blood-tracking procedures. Finally in 1977, under a permit granted by New York's Department of Environmental Conservation, Jeanneney-joined by Don Hickman and Hans Klein, a German dog handler put Clary von Moosbach, Carla's daughter, to work at an arboretum in Millbrook, N.Y., where she began finding wounded deer.
      As word of Clary's success was heard, calls from hunters began to come in. By 1984 Wirehaired Dachshunds were recovering wounded deer in many parts of southeastern New York. Meanwhile in Albany, the state capital, legislation was being drafted to protect and formalize the rapidly growing activity.
      In 1986, New York's Gov. Mario Cuomo signed a bill authorizing the Leashed Tracking Dog Program. Three years later the New York Department of Environmental Conservation issued the first tracking dog license. Today 85 trackers are licensed. A second Deer Search chapter is operating in Buffalo and groundwork for the program is being laid in Vermont and Wisconsin.

The Mighty Wirehair

      Although other breeds can be used, the Wirehair remains the backbone of the program. Bred to blood-track for generations, the Wirehair offers many advantages in American forests. It moves easily through undergrowth, it is nonthreatening to the landowner when a handler needs to ask permission to cross property, and it stays close to the line when tracking, which allows the handler to interpret deer signs. Heedless of briar and bramble, its hard, wire coat repels burdocks and sticktights, and protects it against near-freezing water temperature.
      Hunters are usually surprised at the size of the dog. "Deer Search people often go out with their Dachshund under their arm or wrapped in a coat," handler Teresa Robinson explains. "The hunter thinks this big dog is coming to find his deer. Then the Deer Search people open their coat and put down this little dog. `That's going to find my deer?' the hunter says." Later, out on the trail, unable to match the Dachshund's tireless pace, the typical hunter will revise this opinion, Robinson notes.
      The wirecoated Dachshund that first appeared hunting in Germany's l9th century forests was a working dog without written pedigree. Probably a cross between the Smooth Dachshund and the rough-coated German Pinscher with a bit of Dandie Dinmont added for hardness (a topknot still surfaces now and then), it was taller and lighter than the Smooth and Longcoated Dachshunds, which had already gained wide acceptance in Western Europe as intelligent pets and showdogs.
      Although many of Germany's Dachshunds survived the two world wars, the separation of East and West Germany after World War II caused devastation among the Wirehairs. Breeders fled East Germany, which was long famous for its hunting grounds, and kept only a few outstanding specimens. Under the watchful eye of the Deutscher Teckelklub, the strong hunting and tracking ability of these few surviving Wirehairs was preserved, and it is their descendants that hunt Germany's forests today.
      Tending to be longer of leg, with less depth of brisket than their American cousins, Wirehairs of German ancestry have the agility, drive and ground clearance essential for Deer Search's work in the woods, Jeanneney explains. "A tough deer call is taxing," he says. "If a busy tracking dog is too low in the chest, it will be covered with bruises, sores and scabs before the season is half over."
      Because they are naturally potent hunters, Deer Search Dachshunds often become American Kennel Club field champions. Carla vom Rode, the first Wirehair Jeanneney brought to the United States, became the Dachshund Club of America's l7th Field Trial Champion of Record. Her offspring, too, often became field champions as well as certified Deer Search dogs.
      Although Deer Search was created to reduce suffering and crippling loss of wounded deer, it is dedication and love for the tracking dogs that binds members together. Although not all Deer Searchers are hunters, al1 consider themselves "dog people."
      Close to the hearts of all was Addie (Field Ch. Adelaide Von Spurlaut), a phenomenal Wirehair owned by Deer Search co-founder and past president Hickman. Small and captivating with a dignity all her own, Addie became a legend in her own time. She dominated American Dachshund Club field trial competition, going Best in Trial 22 times. An indomitable tracker, she recovered 150 deer, twice finding four in a single day. She also tracked bear.
      Working the woods in the years before a vaccine was developed, Addie suffered and survived several bouts of an occupational hazard, Lyme disease. Once during a field trial in Mabbetsville, N.Y., Addie disappeared into the woods and was missing for three days, sending waves of concern through the organization. More than 50 distraught Deer Searchers showed up from as far as 100 miles away to search for the little dog. After three days of intense searching turned up no sign of Addie and hope was fading, New York conservation officer Deiter Kramer, following a hunch, went to the point from which she had vanished and called her name. Addie ran up to him out of the woods.
      At 14, Addie began to lose vision and hearing (Hickman called his aging partner "Grandma" by then), but she still climbed down from the family couch a few times during hunting season and went out to help younger dogs when the going got tough. Like Clary, Heidi and other great Deer Search Dachshunds, Addie had the ability to "lock in" on a deer-she could discriminate its trail from that of other deer when the blood trail died out. Over the years, it became clear that Addie's uncanny ability to find wounded deer involved more than just following her nose, but Hickman was mystified when he attempted to figure out everything Addie used when she tracked. "She tries to tell me but I'm too dumb to learn," he would say.
      Addie taught Hickman to have faith in his dog. "If she got into trouble on the trail and I gave her a little time, she would usually figure it out," he said. "Trust your dog," he advised.

A Great Loss

      Hickman was only 55 last spring when cancer suddenly cut short his tracking career. During his final days he asked that 16-year-old Addie, now totally blind and deaf, be laid to rest with him. At his wake, throngs of mourners walked past the small casket containing Addie's ashes that lay by his side. They were buried together May 3, 1995. Hickman dedicated his life to Deer Search and believed that handler and dog working together form an "inspired partnership."
      "Don and Addie were a tireless team," Jeanneney wrote in tribute. "They set an example to handlers. More than any other Master Handler, Don got apprentices out in the woods so they could see what a great dog could do."
      Jeanneney believes that this partnership between tracker and dog offers a gateway back into the natural world, back into man's earliest and most fundamental relationship with an animal.
      "Part of our motivation comes from a respect for the deer and a concern for the future of the sport," he says. "The rest is something that a dog person understands best. At night, tracking by eye across a windswept sandblow, feeling the tug as the dog takes over and leads once more in the sheltered woods, you and your canine partner hunt together in a search that is older than civilization. "This is adventure in a world where little adventure remains."

Reprinted from DogWorld, November 1995, page 32-33, with permission from the author.