Mortally wounded bucks can behave in strange ways, but the giant Illinois whitetail had even John Engelken shaking his head. After leaving a huge tract of timber, the buck walked to a farmhouse and crossed the yard, leaving a drop of blood not far from its picture window. When Engelken finally put his hands on the buck’s antlers, he was close enough to the house that he could look into a side window.
Engelken, among the country’s masters at recovering deer with trained dogs, has learned to accept such bizarre blood trails as a matter of course. “I think it’s kind of built-in to what I do,” he laughed. “Typically I only get called in on the hard trails; the ones where a hunter or outfitter can’t find the deer, sometimes after a thorough search. All I know is I’ve come to expect the unexpected. Not much that deer do surprises me anymore.”
Engelken, a native of upstate New York, moves to Illinois each fall and spends the entire hunting season trailing deer for hunters, using his highly trained bloodhounds. “There are days in the early season when we’re not on a track, but once the rut comes, I can get pretty darn busy. Sometimes I’ll hit a stretch where I may not sleep for three days; I’m just going from one track to the next. It can get pretty exhausting, but this is what I live for. All that I do, even in the off-season, revolves around helping hunters find their deer with my dogs.”
GEAR ESSENTIALS FOR TRACKING & TRAILING WHITETAILS
Engelken is that busy because he’s that good. His “Tracker’s Shack” is located on Illinois outfitter Doug Benefield’s property. In addition to tracking deer for the clients at the Illinois Connection, Engelken is also on the speed dial of several Midwestern outfitters, as well as many noted hunters and television personalities. “Obviously, everyone wants to find a buck that they’ve wounded, but for outfitters, tracking dogs are a perfect tool,” Engelken said. “When the rut arrives, their clients may shoot several deer in one day, and, of course, not all of them are perfect shots. I can come in and, if the deer is dead, find it quickly and efficiently. And if I can’t, the deer probably isn’t recoverable, and I can determine that pretty quickly, too. Instead of tromping all over a farm for several days, looking for a buck that probably isn’t dead and might never be, we are in and out and they can get back to business.”
The Tracker’s Job
While the popularity of tracking dogs has grown recently, there are still many hunters who don’t understand the concept. If, for example, you imagine a pack of hounds running down an injured deer, you’re barking up the wrong tree. “My dogs are trained to follow a blood trail, and nothing more,” Engelken said. “They are always on a lead, and they never engage or pursue the deer.”
Despite their proven game-finding ability, tracking dogs remain illegal in several states and are frowned upon by some hunters. “I guess I don’t understand these attitudes and laws,” Engelken said. “Hunting is like any endeavor; despite our best efforts and intentions, things can go wrong. Even arrows and bullets that seem perfectly placed don’t immediately kill deer. We can’t hide from that, and we owe it to the game we hunt to make every effort to retrieve it.” And, to these sentiments I’d add that dogs are a universally accepted, if not integral, tool for retrieving upland game and waterfowl, so why not deer?
Engelken uses bloodhounds exclusively. “There are other breeds that can follow blood trails and find game,” he said. “But the bloodhound is the only dog that has been bred for that sole purpose for centuries. I typically own five dogs at any given time, and consider three of them ready to hunt. Every pup is a kind of a gamble; you start with a dog that you think has the right potential, a stable disposition, an inherent desire, and is bold enough to do the work.”
Engelken saves blood from deer throughout the year, and then uses it during off-season training that’s done every day. “I start my puppies very young, working trails I create,” he said. “I set up a training experience that teaches a dog to do something very specific; an ability that I know the dog will need when it’s in the field. For that reason, I don’t simply run a young dog with an experienced one on a hunt, like you can do with other breeds. I want the dog to learn things on his own and be able to process information, not just follow another dog.”
Bloodhounds possess the right balance of natural scent-tracking ability with an intelligence that he’s come to respect. “They’ve taught me so much about working a track,” he said. “I’ve learned, for example, that a mortally hit deer simply gives off more scent than one with a less-severe wound. When I put them on a trail and they just power off, I know there’s a dead deer not very far away. But their ability to work a difficult trail is pretty amazing; they’ve taught me that the scent of blood can be on the ground, even when no blood is visible. And their ability to work out the trail of a deer that’s pulling some pretty crazy stuff always amazes me. With experienced dogs, you can almost see them thinking their way through things. That’s something that only comes with experience.”
Engelken’s bloodhounds seem most happy when they’re working. A lot. “They sure know the drill,” he laughed. “When they’re loaded in my truck and we’re following the truck of a hunter down a country road in the morning, they’re barking and yelping and ready to go. And it’s interesting; they can do any number of short tracks to easy deer in a day. But one or two difficult ones just take the wind out of their sails, even if the tracks aren’t that long. I think that goes back to the intelligence thing; they’re using their brains and abilities a lot more on a tough trail, and it just takes more out of them.”
Deer Follies
The veteran of many dozens of tracking jobs each fall (multiplied by three decades of full-time experience), Engelken has seen most everything when it comes to injured-deer behavior. “I’ve pretty much decided that, while it’s nice to have theories about what a buck is going to do when he’s wounded, there seems to be exceptions for every rule,” he laughed.
“Sure, most of the time a buck will head for thick cover, but what if he’s far from his home range during the rut? He’s just as likely to line out across open country, trying to get back to familiar territory. And yes, a hard-hit buck will likely head downhill and avoid hard walking, but I’ve seen plenty of bucks go up steep, nasty hills, or plow through stuff that just seemed to be the hardest going around. I guess if there are two tendencies that stick out to me they’re these; wounded bucks often seek water if they can get it, and they frequently circle back in the direction they were coming from at the shot. Other than that, I’ve come to believe that bucks, especially large, older animals, can do so many different things that it seems there are no rules.”
Engelken’s experience has taught him to respect the survival abilities and outright toughness of a mature buck. “Even seemingly deadly shots often don’t bring down a big buck quickly, and sometimes not at all,” he said. “I just dealt with one this fall where the father had shot a buck through both lungs with his bow, and miraculously, the buck was still walking — and caught on trail cam — weeks later. Finally his son shot the buck with a muzzleloader. When they field dressed it, the top of each lung was black and infected, but obviously the animal was able to survive for a long time on a hit that most would think would be immediately fatal.”
As noted, Engelken’s work typically doesn’t start until other, easier options have already been exhausted by the hunter. In short, he’s coming in to bat cleanup, and part of that is interpreting what has already occurred by listening to the hunter. “I get a range of stories, with varying degrees of accuracy,” he said. “And I know how hard it is to be objective and see accurately in the heat of the moment. I was on one track where the hunter said he had hit the buck through the chest and the arrow had broken the leg on the opposite side. We took up a fairly solid blood trail, jumped the buck several times, and eventually the hunter was able to finish the buck with an arrow. The initial wound was located about 4 inches above the front hoof.”
But even when the evidence of the hit seems legitimate, things can go awry. “A few years back, I was called in after a buck had supposedly been hit right behind the shoulder. The hunt had been videotaped, and everyone seeing the tape felt that the buck had been shot somewhere around the heart and expected a short tracking job. They gave the buck a few hours, then hit the trail. They jumped the buck from its first bed, tracked for awhile, then decided to wait until morning. I came in the next day with the dogs and, after a difficult tracking job that covered close to 5 miles, we finally recovered the buck. There was a perfect bullet hole … through the liver. So sometimes even a camera can lie, I guess.”
Engelken says the effectiveness of hits to the liver are the most highly varied. “I’ve seen bucks tip over after only a short run, and then, of course, you get ones that can seem to go forever. Lung hits are more consistent, but I’ve learned that low lung shots are much more deadly than those higher up. All bets are off on deer hit through only one lung. It kind of goes against the grain, but any time I hear a hunter tell me the buck was quartering away at the shot, my usual reaction is, ‘Uh-oh.’ Angles can be pretty small on a quartering-away deer, and what many hunters think is the perfect deal is actually pretty unforgiving. The same goes true for deer right below a treestand; the chances for a one-lung hit just soar.”
Conclusion
Most of us will see only a fraction of the blood trails John Engelken has, and will, experience in a typical season. His advice for those of us without dogs? “The No. 1 mistake I see most hunters make is taking up the blood trail too soon,” he said. “It can take even a mortally hit buck time to bleed out and expire. If you jump him from that first bed, a buck can just turn into a survival machine. You can’t underestimate their toughness.
“Another common mistake is overestimating how hard a buck is bleeding. Mature white-tailed bucks need to lose about 2½ quarts of blood to die. That’s a lot of blood; over a half-gallon. So what can look like a lot of blood on the ground is often really not that much. Obviously, a buck can be bleeding like crazy internally, and almost nothing is hitting the ground. But it’s easy for guys to look at what they think is a heavy blood trail, get excited and plow ahead in their excitement to find the deer.
“It’s also a great idea to take the time to mark the trail you’re following with toilet paper. Then, if things get difficult, you can take an easy look back at how the buck has behaved — his tendencies for using terrain, circling, etc. — and use those observations to keep looking for the next blood. TP is an easy, biodegradable way to unravel a blood trail.”
Finally, if you ever hit that buck of a lifetime and need Engelken’s services, he urges you to disturb the blood trail as little as possible. “If there’s any chance you’ll introduce a dog, stay off the blood. You’ll start tracking it all over the woods and basically introduce a secondary trail that will confuse the dogs and prolong the process.”
But knowing the vast experience and unmatched determination of John Engelken and his hounds, I’m betting a little human scent wouldn’t keep them from their goal of helping worried hunters finally lay hands on their trophy whitetail.
— Scott Bestul is a long-time D&DH contributor from Minnesota.
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South Carolina | Destination Whitetail
