00:00:02 Speaker 1: Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast, your home for deer hunting news, stories and strategies, and now your host, Mark Kenyon. Welcome to the Wired to Hunt podcast. I'm your host, Mark Kenyan, and this is episode number today. In the show, we're joined by professional dog trainer Jeremy Moore to talk about dogs and how they can help you find sheds and wounded deer. Enjoy all right, welcome to another edition of the Wired to Hunt podcast, and today Dan, myself and our guests are talking dogs. Yes, dogs, but not just any dogs. These are dogs that can help deer hunters. And our guest today, Jeremy Moore, is an expert on this topic because he is a dog trainer and founder of dog Bone, which is a company that creates products to help you train your own dog to find shed antlers or track wounded game. And hoping that today Jeremy can share with us some tips for training our own dogs, whether it is to find sheds or wounded game, and that also give us some tips for utilizing game tracking dogs that maybe aren't our own. So that all said, though, before we get into the nitty gritty today, Dan, what's going on over there in Iowa. It's still cold, um, still snow on the ground, so I haven't been shed hunting too much. UM My wife is still super pregnant and good and she's thirty She's thirty weeks along now. So right in the middle of Turkey season is when our boys gonna be born. Other than that, um, you know, preparing for the western hunts in to buy all the gear I need. We just had a good conversation before we started recording about that and UM. Other than that, you know, just just live in life. Hey, that doesn't sound too bad. I got, I got something for you. I got I got a question for you. All right, So you made a pope comment online. I think it was Facebook something about, um, if you review the podcast, I don't know if it was a podcast or the or the Wired to Hunt blog, that you were going to send out a hat to uh, like a hat with a new Wired to Hunt logo on it. Yeah. Yeah, that was at the end of last week's podcast we announced that. Yep. So my question to you is, first off, I thought we were friends, and I thought that maybe your co host would maybe get a sneak preview of the hat before everybody else would. But you haven't, can you No, can you explain yourself? You know, I gotta keep it under reps. We gotta keep it secret. I here right though. There's a bunch of new things coming out that I don't think you have seen totally yet. But I want to keep the drama. I want you to. I want you to have that same exciting experience as the rest of our listeners and uh readers and whatnot. But you don't need to wait much longer. Not much longer, Dan, Okay, I mean all I'm asking for his hat. Mark. You'll you'll get a hat, You'll get ahead, okay, yeah, yeah, but the first hat goes to a podcast listener, not a podcast host. Okay, yeah, I see how that should work. Hopefully like it. Hopefully. I've I've seen the logo. I've seen the logo and that's pretty that's pretty bad ass. But the I haven't seen the hat yet. So I'm a hat guy. I love hats. Yeah, yeah, the hats. The hats are cool. They're different, the logos different, the whole new sites different. We're taking things, you know, taking it to the next level. Make sure you sure that we represent the next generation since we are you know, deer hunting for the next generation. That's been our our kind of mission since the beginning of weird Hunt back five six years ago, so we want our new look to reflect that. So, um knock on wood. If everything goes well this Friday, the new website will be launched. But yeah, but you know how things go, there's a potential that, you know, we might be delayed, but it'll be coming soon. So if you're listening, make sure you check out wird hunt dot com soon to see the new look, the new logo, the new hats. We're gonna have shirts available to um so some very cool stuff, so we'll have more more details on that soon once everything launches. But Dan, don't worry. You will get a hat and his shirts very shirt too. Yeah, I'm gonna get you a shirt. Oh buddy, that's awesome. And and then but the one pre wreck is that you have to take a picture with me with our matching hats and matching shirts, and you need to have your arm around me. I'm all about that. It's all about the selfie, a super weird selfie. That's what I'm looking for. Should we have our T shirt tucked into our jeans with no belt. I like where you're going with this. Okay, creepy, creepy selfie. Yeah, yeah, this is really going to help our brand. It's gonna be great for the brand, exactly. These are the biggest nerds in the in the hunting industry. Yeah, I think we've at least I've got that locked down. You're you're a little cooler than me, But I've definitely got the nerd thing locked down, I think. But come on, you used to be an Abercrombie and Fitch model. Why did you? Okay, you see you're cooler than don't don't bring that up. I literally got someone post a comment again on Facebook just yesterday about the about the Abercrombie common It's a it's not it's not fading away. It's not fading away. But yeah, at least you're at least you're getting recognized with Abercrombie and Fitch when I would more than likely be like the figurehead of a truck stop the worst part of any state. Yeah, that does seem to kind of fit your style. Come into Dan Johnson stop mayget slap jacks on the road. Yeah, I don't know if I go there, I don't know if oh, jeez. Yeah, lots of you know, great start to the show. Yeah, exactly. Hey, it's always good to laugh. Yeah, I agree, that is fun and you know, speaking of laughing, UM, I don't I don't know if I've shared this yet, Dan, but we have gotten so much positive feedback on episode number forty three two forty two. I think it was in which you and me just told our favorite hunting stories, and I think people, you know, so many people said they just really enjoyed hearing those stories and laughing along with us about the you know, goofy things we did growing up. Um. I thought that was pretty cool. So if you if you're listening and you haven't heard episode forty two, which is our favorite hunting stories, make sure you go back and listen to that. You go to uh wired hunt dot com slash episode forty two to listen. And I think it was a good reminder Dan for us that you know, we'd like to share you know, great hunting tips and tactics, but sometimes it's it's just nice to you know, get back to what's really at the core of it, which is having a good time. You know, we'll have to do another one of those, uh coming up because that when it comes to stories, I know me and you have a lot and we just scratched the tip of the iceberg on on funny stories. Oh yeah, absolutely, there's plenty more where those come from. So, like you said, we'll have to dive into that one sometime in the future. Lots of speaking that, there's lots of cool things coming down the line. We've got some great podcast coming up here related to shed hunting since we're getting a shed hunting season, and then after that we're gonna have some experts, gonna talk about habitat management and food plots and different ideas that we can tackle in the spring um and then man, a whole slew of different exciting things this summer. So I'm really excited about what's to come on the podcast this year. Yere, we're working hard to make sure that this is going to be even better than our first year on the podcast. So I think Dan, you and me, we're gonna be busy. Yeah, the sophomore album is always the hardest, That's true. I don't want to be a one hit wonder, No, we don't want to, No, absolutely not. So today Dan, we're we're talking about dogs. You don't have a dog that do Uh? I beg to different mark I actually have. I have a seven year old Maltese. Well it got married into the family. But my wife has a Maltese. And um, I'm gonna ask our guests today if I could possibly train an old dog to do new tricks. It's a good question. It's very if a Maltese. If a Maltese has the shed hunting genetic, isn't the Maltese like the little tiny lap dog with long hair? That's correct. I don't forget. Annoying too, is the annoying dog? So are you and your Maltese? Is she here? She typically like on the front seat of your pick up when you're driving around town with a big buck in the back? Uh no? Um? Oh, how do I explain my dog? My dog is high maintenance. It's a diva. Um. It's bark is always worse than its bite. So far, so far, your dog seems to perfectly reflect you. Yeah, a diva, Yeah exactly, Yeah, except my dog wants Like if my dog was a person, it would be it would buy It would buy its clothing based on brand, brand name, you know, it wouldn't care about Oh I wear Gucci or I wear product or that that's that's my dog? Would it wear? You know, I think Abercrombie and Fitch would be a step down for my dog. You're probably right, no offense mark of she's seven years she's seven years old time seven so forty nine year old. So probably into some ant Taylor or something like that. And Taylor, Well, that just proves how much we know about fashion. You think a Taylor is high end. That's like in every shopping mall in America. I think my mom wears a Taylor. I don't know what I'm talking about. I don't either. Let's let's just start talking. Let's get this guy on the phone. Yeah, we should talk about something we know a little bit about, which is which is dear? So Yeah, Jeremy is a cool guy. I've actually talked to him a decent bit over the past maybe three or four years, because I got a dog to train to to help me try to find some sheds, and so Jeremy was pretty helpful in me figuring that whole process out. But I want to have him share all those great insights with with you and with everybody else. And he's also You've got some great insights to developing a tracking dog, a blood tracking or game tracking dog. So that's something pretty cool that I'm really interested in too. So yeah, I needed one of those this year, Yeah, you and me both I need. I hired two where I got two and didn't help this time. But I well, yeah, I've got all sorts of stories on that too. I've actually had, you know, not this past year, but two thousand thirteen, I had my buck six years found with the help of a tracking dog. This year, um my dad's buck was found with the help of a tracking dog. And yeah, so I've had two so far, so that's pretty cool. I'm definitely convinced of it. So I guess let's let's just get the expert on the line, because you and me we're gonna go around circles here if we don't do that talk about fashion for one, Yeah, let's no more. And Taylor, let's get let's get let's get Jeremy on the line. All right here with this on the show is Jeremy Moore. Welcome to show. Jeremy, Hey, thanks for having us guys. Yeah, we're Me and Dan were just talking about the fact that, um, somehow, just before you got in the line, we got kind of distracted and started talking about women's fashion, and that wasn't a good topic for us. So we're excited. Boy that made you think of me the boy thing. We thought that you would you would give us a good reason to stop talking about that. So sure, so we have to check down that. Yeah, please do. We're we're looking forward to picking your brain about everything related to deer dogs. You know, dogs that can help us find antlers, dogs that can help us find um wounded game, find our dear um. But before we dive into the million questions that me and Dan have you, for the listeners that maybe aren't familiar with you or your company, can you give us a brief introduction to to who you are, your background, and then to what your company, dog Bones, is all about. Sure? Sure, yeah, you know obviously we we've got this company and it's called dog Bone and and it's the brand is built around the idea of tools, UM that have been been kind of created out of a little bit of a demand as far as stuff that will help us, um ultimately train our dogs to be Like you said, we're kind of dubbing the idea of a deer dog. It really started out with um. He started out with the shed dog aspect of things. And and just to give you an idea of personal background, my background is not not anything formal with dogs. It's it's actually I've got a degree in construction management and that's what I went to college for and kind of grew up my whole life in this construction world. But I always had what started me in on. It was I had a Golden retriever when I was really young, and my family always had golden retrievers, and I fell in love with the idea of training them, and it was it was bird hunting. It was. It started out training them as peasant dogs, and um really not knowing what in the world we were doing at all. I'm not saying I know what I'm doing now yet either, but uh, I really didn't know what I was doing back then, and so but I really enjoyed working with the dogs. And so I got through, you know, through growing up and and finally went off to college. And when I was over in college, and I went to school on the west side of the states here in Wisconsin. I'm from Wisconsin and went to school over a little school called u W Steut and most of the like half the school is from Minnesota, and that was where I met a ton of friends of mine that were guys from Minnesota, and they really had I mean, I'm telling you they were duck hunters. And maybe these guys were duck hunters and goose hunters and they knew their bird hunting. And I really at that point was introduced to it kind of more formally, and I loved it. I loved doing it. But what I really loved about it was the dog work. And and so I kind of that's really where I got kind of, i'm gonna say a little more serious when it comes to the dog training stuff. So I ended up I bought my first lab when I was in college. I you know, brought this dog up and we joined a pheasant club there and we we did a bunch of bird hunting with these dogs. And I really that's where I really dove into the idea of how to train them. And and I'm a big believer and I don't think is we're regardless of what you're training a dog for. I don't think there's one specific way to do it. I think there's a combination of things that have to be taken into consideration, and some of it is the idea of what the dog is as far as what traits does it have, what does it have natural tendencies to do. The other thing is personality wise with the trainers, because you know, we all there's no two of us that are the exact same and we all have a little bit different style. So for me, I I listened to and I watched and read and did it. Got as much information as I could from as many trainers as I could, and then what I did was I tried to figure out how to how did it work best with me and the dogs and the style of dogs and training. So that was kind of what got me hooked in the dog training part of things, and that's where I kind of got serious about it. What happened was is I focused my efforts on these birds, and if you know anything about Wisconsin and the western part of the state up and down in the Super River, a pretty good deer over there. So I, uh, you know, I was right just outside of Buffalo County, and I didn't do much deer hunting when I was there, and after I got out of college, I kind of regretted that and I thought, boy, I spent some time in the backyard is some of the best white tail country, in my opinion, in the world and not. And I'll regret it because I really enjoyed the bird hunting that we did, but I kind of kicked myself at that point, but I gotta I wanted to get back to focusing on the deer. So um here I had these dogs, and I had some real nice dogs, and I thought, what in the world am I gonna do with these dogs? If I IF I decided to kind of hang it up as far as the bird hunting goes. If if and you know it, when it comes to the fall, if you're gonna do something and you're gonna do it right and you're gonna do it well, it takes a lot of time. And I didn't have time to do both the bird hunting and the deer hunting in the fall, so we that's what I made that decision. And what came of it was I had heard about these guys that we're using these dogs to shed hunt and having success with it. And the thing was is a lot of people I'm not gonna say a lot, but there was several guys out there that we're doing it and and doing well with it. And the problem was I tried to figure out how to do it and there was nothing there to tell you, nothing to help get, no way to um, you know, you couldn't you couldn't get stuff that would help you do it. Where if I wanted to turn the peasant dogs, boy, you go to any retail still and walk them down the dog aisle. There's DVDs, there's sense, there's all these training tools that help you do it. So I started thinking, like, how can I use these dogs to shed hunt with? And so what I ended up doing was I went back to that background of my gun dogs, my bird dog, and I really saw it the style, my style of training is going to be very very similar. I'm just gonna use I gotta use some different stuff. And that's where this whole dogbone shed line of products came. And it came because we ran into issues and then these were kind of the problems solving tools that we that I that I decided, I think there's easier ways to do this. So that's kind of how we got into where we are with that shed wunning stuff. That's awesome, and uh, can you tell us we'll dive into more details on all this, but at a high level, can you tell us what those products are now that you've developed to solve those problems you encounter when you began training shed hunting dogs and then eventually game tracking dogs. Yeah. Absolutely. The biggest thing was here's here's the story. And it's like, it's just it's really funny because like I think about it, and I've been really blessed and really lucky to have gotten to be to do some of the stuff we've been able to do and get where we are right now. And it's definitely a work in prodress and it's it's it's new to us. But the thing is is, I think a lot of stuff comes about, whether it be products, stuff or um, you know anything, It comes about because people have problem woms and they have issues and how how do we fix it and what makes things easier in life? And this was exactly how dog Bone and how the shed training product line came was I was training these big, little bend dogs for a long time, and I had a bag full training tools and it made it a lot easier. And we had a kind of a process and I you know, followed similar steps with multiple dogs and got good results. So again nothing out there to show us and walk us down the road of training a shed dog. But when you think of what a shed dog does, the similarities between a shed dog and say a peasant dog are pretty pretty striking. I mean, you've got a dog that uses his nose in his eyes, quarters and casts works out in front of you, makes retrieves based on site or scent, and so the same exact process of what my little peasant dog does. So when I when I went back, when I when I started this out, I took that took an older dog mine and she was about six years old, you know she was actually she was eight years old, and I took her and cross trainers started picking up these sheds for me. And the way I did it was I used a hard antler. We went through a process where she was very hesitant to begin with, because you gotta remember, sporting dogs have a tendency to have soft madels, and so all of a sudden, I'm introducing a dog that's been picking up birds for seven years, undamaged and delivering the hand, and and we've taught her to and brought out her natural instinct to not have a hard mouth we want a soft mouth dog. So I gather her with the idea of what I can get this, this thing will get me a retrieve because it really these retrievers don't retrieve birds where they like burdens. They don't retrieve shed because they're like sheds. They retrieve stuff because they like to retrieve. And so what we can do is we can teach them, you know, certain things will get them retrieves and that's the big reward. So we did that and it was it was a tough I had some issues with it, with the feel of that auntler in your mouth, but we got through it and I actually took her into the field that year and had a lot of success. Now this was a special dog to This was a dog that one of the best dogs I've I've trained in in the last twenty years and she was just real nice dogs. So she transitioned Tolow. So what I did was we found more sheds that first year with that old dog. And I had found ever prior to and I had shed on it for years before doing this with the dogs. But maybe it was luck, I don't know what it was, but we found more sheds that year with that dog. Than I hadn't, you know before, So it was really easy for me to to be convinced the idea, this is this is something we gotta do. So I got excited about it. I went and bought a pup, and I bought this pup with the intentions of this is a dogument trained as a shed dog from the start. So I did it. I brought her home. Um went through the same process that I would with any other dogs. We had to get through I ob and so we had to get through some some fundamental foundation type stuff and we got to the point where she had she had gotten done teething, so she's about five or six months old, but she was still relatively small, and she's still relatively clumsy, and she's got that, you know, she's full of puppy. And I pitched a hard antler for her and she ran up to it with a lot of excitement, which is exactly what I want with my retrievers. And she ran up to this thing and she poked herself with it, and she hadn't seen an antler before. This was the first time she's picking up these hard antlers, and she jabbed herself and she hated it. I mean, she literally she rolled over and she yipped, and she came running right back to me, and I said, you know, I thought, what in the world, So here she had jabbed herself. Well her, that was her first introduction to an antler. She didn't like it, and so I thought, so I didn't realize what I had done there. But it actually took me a really long time. I mean we're talking months of building up her confidence again around one of these antlers. She just she really thought this thing bitter. She didn't want anything to do with it. So if you've ever heard of a gun shy dog, you know, dogs aren't born gunshy, but they can be conditioned to be gunshi And we don't do it intentionally, but if you introduce dogs to something in a negative way for the first time or relatively early in the training process and it's negative, boy, they'll they'll shy ala from it. That's how we get dogs to not do certain things. We introduce it and it's got it's associated with the negative. Well I had done that with this antler, and so that's what. And I was a little dog that I had named Finn, and she was just phenomenal. She ended up being just a great dog. But Finn is the reason dog Bone came about with the products, and so I decided at that point, I said, there's got to be a better way to do this. And I really went back to my thought process of how do I train these bird dogs and old dogs. We don't start bird dogs out independent with the rooster. I just don't. You're gonna have way too many problems. It's just not gonna work. So we take steps to get them to birds. I take steps to get my shed dogs to sheds. So we came out with a training dummy that's soft, it's relatively soft, it's flexible. It won't I don't have the risk of a dog having that negative introduction to the shape of an antler and to the seal of an antler. So that I and it was it was a prototype, man like I literally I researched it out. And this is the cool part about it was, you know, here's this whole construction worker and all I'm all of a sudden trying to develop products and making phone calls and working with a completely different world. And I really wasn't quite used to it. So it was the exciting part from a business development part. But it was cool because once we had that dummy had a chance to use it, and I got a chance immediately to see how how it was. Actually the dogs took to it, and it's it made my process a whole lot easier. So some that we developed some you know scents, and we you know, started thinking about, Okay, I got this training, I mean, now how do I make it smell like an antler? So it came up with a way to create and simulate the smell of an antler. So we did that, and then you know that the next thing was I had to say, well, you've got products, but you need to teach you to be able to tell people how to do this and why they should be doing certain steps. And so I wrote a book on it and we put it. We ended up developing over over kind of a period of time of a year from start to finish. We basically put developed the line initial line of dog Bone, and then got into the idea of I got to test this thing out. So we went to some consumer shows and we set up a booth and we just showed it to people. And it's so funny because you know, I remember it like yesterday and going to this show and nervous and never done like this before, and brought a couple of dogs with and we set up at this show and the reaction was it was kind of motivating because I would say the vast majority of people are walked by us. I had no idea what we had there. I mean, they looked at it and they go, what you're you're doing? What you're you're shed hunting. A lot of people didn't go what shed hunting on this period. This wasn't that long ago. I mean this was we're talking we're talking five or six years ago, and people were like, you're gonna do what? You're gonna go look for sheds? And so it was funny because at that point there was a the folks. Once we had a chance to talk to him and explain it to him, they go, that's awesome, that's really cool. I do you think I can do that with my Then all of a sudden we get into these you know, nuts and bold the conversation of applying it to a dog. But so it was real eye opening to us, to me at that point because I said, first off, I do think there's an interest, and I think there's an opportunity here to help people be able to do this. The second thing that was real eye opening was we've got a big hill decline because it's about awareness. Now we have to we have to kind of create the awareness not and and do some educating on our part prior to being able to try to turn this thing into a business. So that was that was got us into that first kind of really year of actually trying to take some product to market. That's a heck of a story, quite a quite a journey. It sounds like you've been on the past five or six years here. Yeah, to get to this point totally, totally, and and that's the that's the cool part about it that that's what's that's what's fun is the idea of it was something that was really really well. I was real passionate Aboullet and thought, gosh, I just think it's a good idea and it's working for me. And that was something that was really important from day one with Dogbone was if we're gonna do stuff, we're gonna bring products. We have to bring products that makes sense, and we have to bring products out network we we are. Our philosophy is we just don't want to put stuff on shelves. We want to put stuff on shelves that is the best and works and and is you know, going to be a solution for a consumer sort of consumers issues or problems. So so all that being said, you know, we I want to hear more about specifically how you're recommending folks can can start training a shed dog. And then we haven't even started touching into the game tracking piece. But before that, before we do all that, I think that there's probably a lot of listeners and I'm wondering this too. UM, I've got a couple of questions at a high level. Number One, if I have a dog, can I train that dog to do both of these things? Hunt sheds and track blood, track deer, wounded deer? Is that possible? Absolutely? We do it. We do it with I trained a limit. I trained dogs every year for clients. UM. I trained my own personal dogs and clients dogs. And right now and we've seen this shift over the last three years. I would say nine out of ten dogs and I'm gonna train these days are doing both. And that's at a minimum because because tracking and shed hunting are two different skill sets. But there's there's a lot of similarities there as well. And so when I say that is, what I mean is we're gonna track with the same dog that we're gonna hunt with. But a lot of these dogs that I'm training, and a lot of the dogs that are out there are also going to be bird dogs and gun dogs. You're gonna use them in the fall, the bird hunt with, you're gonna use them. We're in a duck blind, you're gonna use them. Flush and flush of pheasants. I've got one right now that we're shed hunting with tracking. We're doing upland and waterfall. Had some really nice little duck shoots over her this last fall. She's about a year and a half old right now. So this follows her first fall in the woods. We shot some wood ducks over here. We shot some dog over her. We picked we picked sheds of their last spring already. We tracked with her this fall. That same dog I'm using as a we Actually there's a school here locally that we take her in and we worked with kids that have autivism and cognitive disabilities. And we're also starting in on a project on a project right now working that same dog, kind of a flagship dog here and we're going to use her to kind of set up a system or some type of a program where we're gonna work with her as a service dog for PTSD soldiers. So we are talking a lot of stuff with the same dog. And part of the reason is I want to show the versatility. I want to show that you do not have to say I can't do more than just one thing. That my dog. They are so capable of doing more than one thing, and they can do a lot of stuff. So if somebody had already had a pheasant or a duck dog, is there a way that they can be trained on a basically an old dog new tricks type of thing. Can can some five year old dog be trained how to shed hunt and track? Dear? Absolutely, And I call it cross training them because if you have, especially if your dog is already trained as a gun dog or bird dog, or you're doing some type of hunting with it, skill sets are the skills are there because they're already using their nose, they're already retrieving and and so when when we start talking about the nuts and bolts of our training process, that training dummy that we that we sell right now, and it's it's part of our kit, and we also offered individually that training dummy is for what I talked about earlier about introducing these young dogs in save positive fun way for a dog. It's also built with the design in mind of my older dogs I train. If you train bird dogs, you use canvas bumpers, you use these training dummies, you use a lot of tools for training your gun dogs and your bird dogs. This material that we use in our training dummy, that the hampler shape is very very similar to that material that's used in most of the common training dummies for the gun dogs and the bird dogs. So the nice, the cool thing is is it's designed to cross train your older dog in respects that it's just a new shape of a familiar feel and for field is really important to these dogs. Remember I talked about my first old dog. It was the biggest struggle I had with her was getting here to have these hard things in your mouth and be okay with it. Well, that's that's where this training dummy comes in with the older dogs. So if you've got a gun dog and you've got a dog that's older, absolutely I'm going to tell you, even if it's not formally trained to the gun dog, your bird dog, you still can do it. Because if you can get a dog to retrieve, this is the one thing that I think is easy to convince. I think one thing, one problem that's out there is the misconception that, gosh, this is a specialties. This is such intricate. You don't have to be this special you know, magic dog trainer to be able to train and find these amplers. No. I like to simplify things and say, can you get a dog you will pick a tennis ball for you? Can you throw a tennis ball? Hey, we dog chase and bring it back. Because I can go to the park and I can watch everything from two and three year old little kids who can barely throw up to grandmas and grandpas of all spectrums of different types of people, and they I'll go to a dog park and watch and play retreat with tennis balls. And it didn't take a special dog trainer to do that. A lot of it was natural and the dog we brought it out of them, or they brought it out of them. If you can do that, you can train your dog to find the damtlers. You can train your dog to find the deer because we'll use that. We'll use a similar approach to how you got that dogs achieving that tennis ball for you. We're gonna make it a game. We're gonna make it fun, and it's not super formal, so you can do it, and and it's not nearly it's nowhere near as hard as most people, I think think it is. I think that's a I think that's got to be pretty encouraging for a lot of people listening to because I think to your point, Jeremy, it does seem like something, especially like you know, from my perspective before I got started with my own dog, it definitely seemed like an intimidating thing. And I don't I'm not a dog trainer at all, and I was like, man, this is it's gonna be pretty slim pick chances of this actually working out. But it's not, you know, not that I have an amazing shed dog yet. But it's something that I was able to learn from some of the things that you've taught elsewhere to put together the basics um before we before we dive into the shed hunting peace, I've got one more general question for you. If I'm a guy that doesn't have a dog yet. But you've got me intrigued. I'm interested in, you know, getting and training a deer dog to do these two things. Is there a breed or a number of breeds that are like my best option? Or could I you know, can I just take you know, in Dan's case, he's got a Maltese? Can he take that dog? And no? Good question? And we get that. I hear that a lot, and we see it a lot out there. Um And I think part of it stems from you know, if you if you ever watch our stuff and you see you know, whether it be social media or DVDs or we're I'm using I'm almost always working with these little English labs, these little British labs we bot. I get them from a channel. There's a wild Rose Channels. They've got an Oxford, Mississippi. I've bought dogs from them for thirteen years, just a little over thirteen years. And I've found a dog that fits really well with my training style and the stuff we're gonna do with it. And and so the people, I think a lot of people assume I gotta get one of those, and I gotta get a dog just like that. If this is what I want to do with them. And the answer is really really simple. You need a dog that fits your style of training and fits what you're gonna do with it, just like just like me. And that so that I've found it is not and I can't say any clear it is not breed specific. I know guys who do this with Shepherd's beagles, spaniels, pointing dogs. Um, I've had I've seen pitbulls and had people bring them to some of our shows. I've we did. Uh. We use social media as a tournament as a training resource, and so we try to put some training tips on the and share pictures and and and we we get we try to get it interactive as we can with people that have an interest in doing this. And one of the questions that we won't pose it every once in a while because I'm always curious and it always it kind of it allows when I asked this question, I get the answer, I know the response I'm going to get. I'm not asking it for myself. I'm asking it more to show everyone else that you don't have to have the dogs. We have to do this. So we asked, you know what kind of breeds are you using with our dog bone products and haven't sit best with. And the last time we did it, we had over fifty different breeds message back. So I've heard it. I've heard just about all of them. I mean, obviously people will catch me surprise once in a while with the breed. But um, you know the other thing that I think is really cool and we do. We've done training workshops in the past, and one thing I think is awesome and they have that. I've seen it multiple times now where folks bring their dog to our training workshop. Well, I've seen it where we always get into that, we get into the nuts and bolts the dogs as the day goes on, and I've had multiple dogs come to our workshop that we're rescue dogs. They really don't know exactly what freed they are. I mean, they've got they've got naturally some natural retrieving them there. You know, there's some type of retriever in them. You can tell kind of by the look of them a little bit, but they don't know exactly what breed there. And they were literally were rescued from their shelf local shelter. And the coolest that it's just awesome because I've seen some of those dogs excel and they do really really well. So it is not some to them that you know, our dogs, the dogs I trained and the dogs they trained for my clients, UM are are very very what I'm going to say, from a genetic standpoint, very solid there there. You know. It's it's it's something that from a health standpoint, and I think that's really important part of it, and the performance standpoint, what what traits have been bred into them? Those are things that I've found with these wild Rose dogs and that's just just the preference, um But as far as what you're looking for, I think you're looking for a dog that has good natural game finding ability, a good nose, and all dogs have good noses, some have better than others. I think it helps to have a dog with some type of natural retrieve. It's it's one less thing you have to train the dog. I've never trained one of these little retrievers to retrieve. They do it naturally. We just have to bring it out of them, and we have to teach a little bit of a formal delivery to them. So we get dogs that run straight out of straight back and all that. That's just forming habits. But the actually retrieved part of it is a lot of times genetic um. I think health is a really important thing to look at when you start thinking about do I want to go get one of these dogs or am I going to go get a pup to do this with? Because the reality is that when you get a dog, you're getting a family member. You're gonna have a dog that's gonna be with you for a while, and so health is important not only from a from your wallet standpoint, because boyd, that's can get expensive, trust me, but also from the standpoint of you you're gonna, like you said, it's your family member. You're gonna have this little pup with you for a long time, and I don't want to go through anymore than I need to if I can help it or avoid it. It's it's tough emotionally if you've got pups that come in with issues as far as from a genetic health standpoint, where you know you hear about the dogs that have bad hips, you hear about dogs that have certain diseases, a lot of them are are are traced back genetically, and uh, it gets to be hard. It gets hard to have to deal with a dog and lose the dog. It's hard enough losing the dog to old age. It's a real hard losing one, you know, when you know they're not old enough to that point, and it's a lot like losing a kid, you know. It's just if they are a part of the family. Yeah. Yeah, I can't imagine with with our own dogs. I'm not looking forward to, not looking forward to whenever that does happen. That's yeah, that's gonna be tough. So let's say we've got a dog. Now, well, let's say it's puppy and we want to turn that dog. Let's start first turn with a shed dog. How do we start? What's the training as much as you can share in a couple of minutes, you know, how does how do we start with that training process? Three? Three steps? Okay, here's here's what we'll give you the old cliptional version. Here's here's what I think. And this is where I emphasize the idea of don't complicate this. This is not something that needs to be I've had so many people uh through seminars and um, but we do a lot of them. We go around and we talk about the training process, and we jam it into an hour and we cover a whole lot of stuff. In an hour. But when we do that, what really satisfying to me is I hear a lot people will come up after and go, I love that summer. It was really good. And they go, I'm really happy you say that. You know, obviously it makes you feel good to hear that, But I'll ask him would you like about it? You know, what did you What did you feel like was the most important part. And so the thing that that that kind of helps to steer me to try to make it better the next time. And the answer that we get a lot of times is, and I hear it over and over and over again, is what I like about it is the way it's kind of a simple approach you're taking. You're not they Their thought coming into it was I'm waiting, I'm gonna be overwhelmed. I'm gonna be overwhelmed by the steps and the process, and you've got to do all this different stuff to get these dogs to to the end point. And he's and and what I hear a lot is I like your approach because it's relatively simple, and we we we try to do that on purpose. So when we break it down, I break it down into three main parts and there's lots of little little parts in between, but there's a couple of things that are important to understand. Dogs learn by incremental training. So all we're gonna do when we start training these dogs is we're gonna start imprinting things and then we're gonna build off of that. You can't go with a dog. You can't go from A to Z. You cannot speed train dogs. And I I dig in my heels when it comes back because I hear a lot of folks say, you know, home along, should this be taking? How many weeks do I work on this? At? What months do I do this? There is no set there's no answer to that. You can't. I don't believe that you can send a dog away for a three month program and have a comeback at at this point in training. But if you send it for six months, it comes back at this train That's I don't buy into that, because no two dogs developed the same way, and our training process they kind of set the pace of the trainee. So and there's certain things that dogs will be able to do at certain ages and they can't do it prior, whether it be physical or mental, they just can't do it. So what we try to do is okay. Three major steps of a shed dog. The first thing is the shape of the ampler. We have to have that dog understand that that shape is going to get them a reward, to get them a treat and get them the treats for my dogs are rewards or retreats. That's the ultimately rewards. So shape this first, we're gonna add sent to it. Second, we gotta get this dog. It's gonna use his eyes when we're gonna start out with the eyes and it's gonna be visual. It's gonna be very easy. It's gonna be we're gonna build off of that success. Then we're gonna start adding some scent to it and start making it smell like you said. And you know, the big thing is is that we see as folks getting the rush and they go, I'll fill it for a couple of days and the dog will bring it back to me and then I'll hide it in a forty at your field and see if you can find it. You just said your dog up to sail, don't do it. Don't do it. So gets but you're gonna eventually be able to hide that for you can feel the dog will find it, but we'll take these little baby steps in between. So shape first, sent second, and eventually we're gonna get to the field a hard antler. So when you look at it from that, when you look at when you explain it to some of that when they go, that makes sense, You know that makes sense, And I think, I don't think that's so intimidating. But now what I guys say is now that process might take months, might take a year, might take weeks, Totally depends on your dog. Totally depends on where they are as far as they age. And the first and foremost thing when it comes to train and shed dog is this, it's it's the same whether it's a shed dog, a tracking dog, a drug dog, bomb dog, police dog, upland dog, a gun dog. It doesn't matter any working dog. That the good ones all have a couple of things in common, and that is they all have a strong basic foundation will be because we have to have that. And here's why I say that I have to have it. If you watch our we we've done some DVDs and we've got our book that we sell them all that there's gonna be a bunch of drills in there that we're going to show you how to do that, are going to get you to that four acre field of a hidden shed. But in order to do those drills, there's certain things that you have to have your dog able to do. Hell, sit, stay in here, or recall those four things and that's not that hard to do, and we break that down and we kind of show you how to do that. We're actually, you know, we're filming a DVD exclusively on those four steps. It's going to be the most solid foundation DVD out there. We're gonna film it this spring because what I found is folks are getting our DVD, but they're going on, I love the DVD, but my dog is not quite there. So what we want to do is let's get them there. So we're gonna we're gonna build that in this spring for him. But we do cover a lot of that basic obedient stuff um in our booklet, and we cover some of the early stuff in both the other DVDs. But if you can get your dog to have that solid foundation, you can get your dogs to do anything, and they're way more enjoyable because when you have that obedience, then take them anywhere you can have them in the house, you can have them to the kids soccer games. You can do all this stuff year round with them. And then when it comes to the shed hunting part that shape the scent and the field, you can do all the drills. So it sounds boring, but the real the reality is if you want to get started, have that good foundation. And so if you've got an older dog, people ask all the times is tougher to do with an old dog or a pup. I don't think it's harder one way or the other. I think you have advantages of doing it one way or the other. So you've got a puppy, you don't have any bad habits you relatively you you've got kind of a blank's light there to work with. What you can do is start out right away putting in good habits. The bad part about the puppies are you have to do that foundation that heal sits staying here. You gotta do all that stuff before you get into a lot of the real fun stuff what people think is the fun stuff. So it takes a little bit more. It's takelally a while to do it with those young pups. The nice part about the old dog is they most of the time, they have that foundation. So if there's a listener here that's got a dog at home, and they go, my dog knows how to heal, sit, staying, come when I call it, You get right to the fun stuff. So that one, You're gonna like that one a lot more because it's now you get into the good stuff, you get into the shape, you get into the scent, eat into the steel. So there's upside and downside to both young pups and older dogs. But across the board it's it's regardless of the age of the dog that gotta I believe they have to have that good foundation in order to a success. So here's what I'm imagining, all right, I'm imagining I have a shed dog and I go out to the timber and I am and I'm basically letting my dog do the work. How likely is it that you clean up? You clean house? Obviously you have to have the sheds on your property to find sheds. But are these are these dogs if you don't say it's an average to a good dog, are they going out and finding every shed on on the property or are they are they missing some because the sense worn off of the antler over time, or give us kind of like a realistic scenario of what's happening when you go out with one of these dogs. I I think, personally, I don't think that. I think it's a misconception that because we've got a good shed dog, we can sit in the truck and drink coffee and just let the dogs fill the back of the truck up. I think a lot of people think that's how it works, and you know, I will be the first person to say it doesn't. I think, are you going to find more sheds if you're train your dog shed hunt? I think you will. And into what degree is it a four to one ratio or a three to one? I don't know. You touched on a really important point there when you said you've got to have the sheds in order to find them, whether it's you or the dogs. So the best shed dog in the world won't find shed if they're hunt in your shed. There it's it's proven. I trust me, I've tried it. It won't work. So what happens is, yeah, you know what I'm saying, like a lot of a lot of time where we don't find chance. But the thing is is when you take that pop out, or gonna take that dog out, you're gonna go. I have found this is my this is my personal feelings. I have found that I definitely find more antlers with the dogs than opposed. And the reason is, I think for a couple of reasons. The first thing is if you've shed hunting before, and I really believe shed hunting, there's a reason why some shed hunters always find sheds. I mean that year in and year, there are guys out there that pick a lot of harms them and I think it's because there's an art. There's somewhat of an art to shed hunting. When you go to look for shed, you don't look for a shed. You look for a tip of a time or the curve of the main beam, or the pedicle, the bumps on a pop. It's just small, tiny, minute details that you're scanning the woods for. It's a lot like morale mushroom mounting. Like before, I'm moral mushroom. I just studied mushroom mounting in the last couple of years, and I love it because it's kind of like shed outing to me. But so when I go through the woods, all of a sudden, the last couple of years I started finding these mushrooms I looked. I walked through the woods for thirty years and never found a morel mushroom. You're telling me I never walked past on. I guarantee you I did. But I didn't know what I was looking for. I didn't realize that you look for certain things and patterns in nature that all of a sudden, and all of a sudden, when you see one, they just start appearing. I mean, they're all right there, but they just It's the same thing with sheds, and so it's funny because I've noticed it myself for sure, and I've talked to us a lot of really good shed hunters, and they all kind of have the same thing to say. When you start going out in the woods and you start finding them, you're going to find more because you're training your eyes, and your eyes are starting to you totally shift your mindset when you're in the woods or your shed hunting, and when if you can do that and you can focus and concentrate that way, you will find more than the next day. I think it's true with dogs. So when I go out with the dogs, I and I think a lot of them has to do with confidence. Like, I can't tell you how many times I've gone shed on you where I left the truck, and you know, it's kind of short window. We've only got so many weeks to a good shed on you. So I leave the truck and I walk off and I'm in a spot that there should be some some sheds there, And I walk out and I say to myself, what in the world am I doing a waste of my time? I'm not going to find one here, if you know how likely it is that I will find one. If that's the way I think, And that's how I'm kind of my feeling is going into I'm not going to find one. But if I walk out at night and I see the same farm and I go, there are sheds in there, and I'm going to find them. I just I'm gonna have to. There's got to be some here. And as I'm watching and looking, my focus is there and I'm tuned into it. I'm kind of in that zone, and all of a sudden, boom, I found them. Well, I am so likely to find another one after I found the first one because I am that much more focused on it. My mind is nowhere else but looking for sheds. So when I that's that's without the dog. Now when I go with a dog, here's what happens. I feel so confident that we are going to find sheds that I believe that each kind of self prophesies the success as well as the failure. And when I go out and I have a dog and I go, we're not missing any sheds. We if they are here, we're going to find them. I think my focus is that much sharper. I feel that much more confident that we're going to find them. And I think we have a tendency to do better from percentage standpoint if that's the mindset have when we take the field. So that's one thing. Another thing I think is important is it's a lot like I always say, the guy that shoots the most ducks usually has a good duck dog. Just just seems like if you think you're groups of friends, guys who shoot the most birds usually got a pretty good dog. Well, is it because they've got a dog if they shoot more birds? No, I has nothing to do with that. I think it has to do with the guy who's got a good duck dogs usually gets invited to some of the best spots. To duck hunt, because if you've got a good dog, you are a welcome partner in this hunt. If you've got to get shed dog, you'll be surprised. I mean, people come out of the woodwork. You can shed down to my land, you know? Would you come with me and walk mine? And all of a sudden you're in some spots that if you didn't have that shed dog, you're not welcome. You're not necessarily the one is getting invited. It's the dog that's getting invited. You just get to go along with. And I see that more often than not. And when you put yourself in a better spot, you're going to find more sheds. The other thing is I shed hunt. If I wish, I really should. I wish I would have kept tabs on the amount of hours I spent in the field shed outing prior to the dogs, because I spent I feel like I spent an eternity in the woods looking for antlers and not finding many, ifs any at all. Well, as soon as I got the dog, and I got the idea of I'm gonna train this dog to do it, and you had some success of it, I will guarantee you I spend a lot more hours in the field shed on it than I used to, because it's not only for me anyone ounce for my dog, and I have a lot more fun with it, and it's a good exercise. Or it's all these different reasons to get me into the field more often. And I think it's without a doubt. You do anything more often, you're gonna find more success, You're gonna get better at it. So for those reasons, you go into the woods with your dog, are you going to clean that woods up? Gets a combination. It falls back on you and your dog, how good are you and how many sheds are actually there? But I would say I will put my money on a guy with a shed with a dog over a guy that's generating by himself and maybe not necessarily focused into it all day long. You guys, dogs you can find more mean the dogs cover a lot of ground and use their os to use your eyes. That's all a little obvious stuff. But all these other things that I was talking about, I think those are things that a lot of people want to think about. Yeah, I can see it's kind of a compounding effect that the dog is going to find a lot of sheds, but also you know, like you said, just by having that out there, it might you know, help you personally to find more yourself. So that's a pretty interesting, pretty interesting So so I want to kind of summarize what I think I picked up there from you overall, and then I've got a little more advanced question. So so at a at the core, to get started training a shed dog, right, you talked to what you need to have that base of obedience, and then you need to introduce them to a safe, you know, antler experience, So get them excited, maybe using a dummy or something that's not going to be a negative experience. Get them excited about that. Then start introducing the scent. Now they can start associating that with the scent of an antler. And then eventually, you know, start hiding the sheds maybe in the yard or the house, and as they picker that up and start retreating it, then eventually you can expand and maybe then after you know, seeing success in that way for a while, then maybe start going out into a grassy field or the woods or whatever it might be. Um, now let's say we've done incremental trip. So let's say we've we've we've gotten to the point where I can go out into and I'm gonna say, this is exactly the situation, you know, to a degree that I'm in with my dog. You know, I've gotten to the point with Boone that you know, I'm I'm at the point where I'm planting real sheds out in the middle of the woods or a forty acre field, and we'll go out there and nine times at ten he's finding that shed. But but my question then is when I take him out, you know, into a non planted area where I haven't you know, I haven't walked and I haven't put sheds um you know, here in Michigan there are a whole lot of sheds defined in a lot of spots at least I have access to. So I start wondering two things. Number One, is my dog finding these sheds that I plant because he's tracking my own scent. Is he's starting to associate my personal scent with the antler and that's what he's finding. And then when we're out in the woods where my own scent isn't there, is he not then finding those antlers because of that? And number two, you know I worry about the focus is you know, how do you improve the focus of your dog. So my question is, once we have the basics, once they can find planted sheds, how do I make sure that my dog has all the tools necessary to take that into the field, maintain that focus and find antlers in a wild environment. Is there anything in advance we can do? Yeah, So I'll tackle it two parts. I'll tackle the first part with the questioning of the scent. Is he tracking you? Is he's smelling your scent? Here's here's the thing, and it really this is the same kind of This is what I really had to dig into myself when it came to tracking training tracking dogs, because I'll tell you right now, I learned more about training the track. I learned the most about training tracking dogs from a cop that trained canine unit dogs in New York City. Had nothing that he has nothing to do with formally deer hunting or deer tracking. Doesn't track for deer at all with his dogs. But he uses shepherd dogs and he trains them to track criminals. And he'll train them to track criminals to the streets in New York based off of dead skin cells. I mean, unbelievable scenting in terro in incredibly difficult scenting conditions, and he has success with his dogs. And and so I met this guy at a deer show. I'm not at the a t a show actually a couple of years ago, and I learned so much from him about how dogs process sent and so that helps me with my training for tracking. So when I after realizing that boy, it really opened up my eyes to scenting in general. So when we start talking about training dogs to find shed ammers, when we start training dogs to find birds there or anything based on a scent element, here's what we gotta understand. Dogs don't smell like we smell. Dogs. Noses don't work. Really, our noses work dogs smelling layers and dogs have the ability to separate scent. And so what we do is I walk in said here's here's an example. I walk into the kitchen and Steph is making pea soup here at my house. So when I walk in, I smell pie soup. And when I bring my dog into the same room, the dog smells. First of all, their scent of smell is just super is so acute, unbelievable. I mean, it's like hundreds and hundreds of thousands at times. What we can smell, so everything is intense. Well, when that dog walks into that kitchen, it doesn't smell pie soup. It smells peas, it smells carrots, it's smells salt, it smells pepper, it smells celery, it smells every single ingredient in that soup, and it can separate those scents. So when you start thinking about how our dogs smell, you know, when we train, I've got a training bag, and I've got a bunch of stuff in the training bag. And the thing about center is everything smells when you walk across the grass. Not only do we leave scent off of our boots or shoes, Not only are there skin cells coming off of us, Not only does whatever we touched prior to that get deposited into that area. When you bend over grass, you break the grass, Well, that creates a different scent than non broken grass. When there's ground that's disturbed, freshly disturbed ground smells different than non These are all sentlues for dogs, but they gotta remember they process this stuff constantly all day long, so they're they're sorting through scents always like we're starting to visually just through life. I mean, the thing about it. Like, here's another scenario, a drug dog or a bomb dog. When a drug dog, I've seen this done where they'll take a bag of dope, they put it, they'll lap it up in plastic, they'll tape it. I mean, they take this thing tight air type. Then they'll take it and they put it in the vehicle's gas tank and they'll float it in that gas tank. And then what they do is they just drive that car past a drug dog and the drug dog alerts. How in the world does that dog, how is it able to go through all of that stuff and still be able to pick out the center of that dope and be able to alert to it. Well, the answer is simple. That dog smells everything in layers and sorts them all out. And so when it comes to you training with your dog in the field, if you put antlers out there, first off, I think it's important to be using shed antlers. Don't use cut offs because here's here's the thing about Now we're going to get into the science and what smells on the shed. So bone smells, bone has sent to it, and you'll see it, especially with young dogs. Young dogs will pick up bones and they'll bring them back to you don't discourage that, Praise them for it, tell them how good they are. Took that bone up and throw it when they're not watching, and walk away from it. But the thing is is, if you train your dog to finantler's antler is a bone and when your dogs snow bones, bones have the same set as your antler. So the antlers. So the bulls got sent to it, and it always will. It will never lose it. It will never lose that. It's always gonna have sense. But when you've got antlers that are fresh dropped or this year's drops, they have other elements that are going to be pretty strong that when calcification takes place in the antler separates from the deer's head. There's blood there. I mean, we've seen it in the snow where shed lee and there's blood all over with deer breeds. For a little bit. What else is there? There's hair. Look at the base of a shed, a fresh shed this year, you're going to see a bunch of stuff in that base, in that pedicle. That's all that sent for a dog. So when you start if a guy iff is guys are gals. They are using cut off, cut off antlers, you've got the shape, you've got the center, the bone, but you cut off what I'm gonna say is the majority of a fresh sheds scent. So don't don't use cut offs, use real sheds. Use fresh sheds if you can't. The other thing is is we don't want to be cutting it because when you have you ever cut an antler, I mean you've cut cut antlers off before? What does it smell like? It reeks like burnt hair. I mean, it's just it's awful. Well, if I can smell that, remember how strong my dogs know this is. You know I can smell that. My dog will smell it too. And so what you're doing is not only are you eliminating the real scent, but you're creating a scent that's not natural to a shed antler. So when we're training our dogs, we're trying to introduce all these scent clues. And these scent clues are part of the puzzle that equals the reward. So when we chain is our scent gonna get on it? And I don't try. I don't intentionally try to put my scent on it, but I don't waste my time trying to eliminate it because here's here's the reality you will not be able to You're not going to if if as soon as you eliminate the scent and then you put it back in your training bag and touch it again, you just put scent on it. So the center your sense always gonna be there, but the antler center is always gonna be there as well. And if we enhance the antler scent with our training sense, that means there's all sorts of layers there for our dogs to be able to pick up on the repetition of that is going to teach that dog that all of these sense lead me to this. When you start peeling some of those layers off, when you get into the in the field where it isn't antlers that have never been touched before, the scent that is still on that antler as long as you trained it that way. That scent was there when you were training as well. So we just peeled a couple of layers and sent off. But there's still familiar scents from your training that are there. So you know, I've had I've heard guys say we'll just wear rubber gloves. You know that will eliminate your sense. First of all, it won't eliminate yourself, but it might minimize your scent. But the thing about rubber gloves or what a rubber gloves smell like, Yeah, I can smell that if I guarantee you your dog can smell it. So you're masking one cent in putting a different cent on it. The idea about the fear of the dogs working off of us, to me, I don't buy it. If you do enough repetition in your training and slowly peel the layers back to get the dogs to understand that there might be a thousand cents involved with that antler when you're training, but when it's out in the while, there might be down to a couple of hundred cents. As long as those couple hundred cents are there when you're training, you're gonna be fine. The dog will make that transition. It's no different than bird dogs. When when guys trained bird dogs, they don't wear rubber gloves on the canvas bumpers. They don't, you limit, they don't wash their canvas bumpers, they don't wash their pheasants. You know they're they're birds. I don't know. I think the problem with that idea was because guys just weren't really thinking about how dogs process and how they truly are using their nose to pick up clues. When you explain like that, it does make a lot of sense. And uh, that's good to know. I think from there, spend more. Trust me, you'll spend way more time trying to keep sent off than you will train them, and that you don't get anywhere that way. So um but yeah, so that that that that is the answer sent Hich. What was the second question? You do you want to? It was just, you know, is there any way to improve a dog's focus or is that just inherent genetic? Dogs are just going to be you know that when they go out there in the field, they have a mission and they're on it, and some dogs will just you know, be into it for a half hour an hour and then they'll kind of fade off. Is there any way to improve that? Yeah? Great question. And and so here's here's how I would approach that. And I think that part of it is more maturity than anything. The younger dogs will have shorter focuses, shorter attention spans, and as a trainer, I think it's important to set them up for success. So you've got to understand you've got to be able to kind of gauge your dogs level of focus and kind of train accordingly and hunt accordingly. So don't don't take the young dogs out for the first time on a four hour walk looking for shed, because you're you're just not gonna getting the focus the whole time. What you want to do is start out with a real short box and and as successful as can be. And here's how I like to keep their focusing and we see it. It's kind of like you know, it goes up and down as as the hunt goes on. But the best way that I found is when we get out, I'm gonna take a little shed an't right with me and just put it in my pocket. And you know, we've been training and we've had these dogs picking these up and they understand and you get out in a fifty minute lessons a lot for most dogs. So when we train, we training relatively short incomus. But when I get out in the field, I'm gonna put a little shed in the back pocket and as we get working. Mind if this comes back to reading your dog, If you read and your dog that the dog is losing focus, and kind of tuning itself back out. That's the time where you want to use this little shed to your advantage. So I'll pitch that shed and I'll just circle the pop down wind and I'll let the dog get down wind of it, and all of a sudden, I'll give it to the hunt command. We say find it, so I'll find it, find it, find it, find it. And when it hears me, when my dog hears me say find it, something's gonna be found. And they know that because we've trained that into them. So they start using that nose and they start getting that excitement, and you read their body language, and the tail gets going, to ears get going, and all of a sudden they get down wind they find that little antler for you, and they bring it back and you love them up and tell them how good they are. Now watch the focus for the next twenty minutes. There all of a sudden, there, hey, there is going to be another one of these. There's another. This is what we're here for. It's kind of that reminder. So use it as often or as as a few times as needed. But you kind I gotta gage that on on how you read your dog. And so that is That is the best way I have found to keep these dogs focused. First off, short lessons and short hunts, especially early on, and then as things get going and we get into these keep them excited about it. The other thing is the other thing is is and that I laugh because it's it's so true. Some guy told me that I wish I could come up with it, but it wasn't my idea, but that I'll use it all the time. What I don't know what it is. But when we're shed out of team and we see a shed aniler, what is our first reaction? Like my my reaction is I sprint to that aniler, Like I run to it because I don't know why, but I'm so excited. I gotta get to it. I gotta pick it up. The reality is that shed is not going anywhere. It's not like it's going to run off on you. So I have to really focus and say, don't run and pick this thing up instead. That is the perfect that's the best train tool. That's the best planted or you're gonna find because nobody else planning it but that deer. So now use it as use it to your advantage, get your do the exact same thing, get the dog downward of it, you saw it, set the dog up for success, and watches your dog's confidence bills after you find a couple like that, I don't care if I see it first or not, as long as my dog tunes in and picks it up. Now we're rocking and roll and and you'll see that obviously that just clicks. It makes sense for the dog. Yeah, that's that's an awesome thing to see too. So I'll tell you one thing first off. Right now, you've got me really pumped up, like I wish if I if I didn't want to talk to you, which I do, but if I didn't, I want to grab my dog and go outside right now and start working with him because I'm really read and excited. But but we are running up on time here, and I want to make sure we touched on training dogs to track game and also how to you know how to best use someone else was a tracking dog, So I want to first. I want to first cover that guy, because if someone's listening today and they don't own a dog yet, and maybe they don't necessarily want to buy one yet, but they do want to know a little bit about you know, how to utilize someone who does have a game tracking dog. Can you give us a few tips or pointers for you know, what you should keep in mind if you shoot a deer and maybe based on the hit or anything, do you think, hey, maybe I want to call someone to help me out here. What would you tell that guy? What does that guy need to know about game tracking dogs? So the first the first thing is is I think it's and I'm so I'm really gratefull you're doing this because I think one of the problems out there right now is is the lack of awareness when it comes to these game recovery dogs. And the reality is and you guys are Michigan, I'm Wisconsin, UM, both legal tracking states. UM. And so the first thing is is a lot of folks don't realize that you can do it. Here's I'm going to say that. I'm going to say that when it comes to a tracking dog or game recovery dog, I don't believe there is a better tool, more effective tool to finding a deer that is mortally wounded. I will put a dog up against any tracker any day in the week, and I will put I'll bet what I can whatever I got on on that dog, and so I think it's just such a from a hunters standpoint, from us as hunters and our kind of responsibility when it comes to if we're gonna shoot an animal, we really owe it to that animal to do everything in our power to find it. And so the dog is I think the most effective tool. Now, putting that aside, what do you do and how do you go about it if you don't have a dog. And I will say this, there are some really good trackers in Michigan. There's a group right I do I do. I learned a lot from them and we talked to him and from Michigan Deer Tracking Homes and they are phenomenal. They've got phenomenal records, they've got awesome history as far as clients success. And there's several groups in Michigan that that do it. There's several people in Wisconsin that do it, and so and I and that's true throughout the US and really through the midwal West and in the Northeast, and it's it's it's growing and that's what we're trying to do is growth the awareness of it. But there's a group called the United Blood Trackers and they're nonprofit and they've got a website that if you hit a deer and you are going to have and it's marginal and you don't you either tried tracking it and have lost blood or you don't want to push it because you know it's a marginal hit. There's a website that you can go to and it's it's the United Bood Trackers and they have a link there that you click on its find a Tracker and it will it will give you a list of trackers that are members of their group then are potentially in your area. So, first of all, that's a good way of finding a tracker. The other way is, you know, obviously it's a small community, and it's a community that word of mouth travels quickly as far as the hunters go, so by tracking finding one. Finding a tracker is usually called your sports shop or your tax and they'll use a be able to point in that direction. Now, when it comes to that, the dudes and don't and there are some and I'm not a tracking service. I don't have the capability to do it in the fall, I'm too busy. I just don't have the time. Um, but I know guys that do. So I get a lot of calls. Can you contract this, dear? You know, because they find us on the website, on our website where they find us through face, Facebook or different ways, and they get tracked, they gets led to us. Well. I point people, depending on where they are and whether they fell outpointing the directions and give them numbers and help out in any way I can. Um But I think the thing is is if you've got a dear the kid and you're questionable, it's marginal. The biggest thing, and it's it's sometimes probably the most difficult part is back oft. Don't push that gear. And it's for multiple reasons. Now this is this is my opinion. And you'll talk with some trackers that are under the opinion and not necessarily dog trackers, which is people following year. There are some people they just keep pushing the deer because you when a deer land is now, I's trying to stop the bleeding, and so if you keep the wound open, it will eventually bleed up. I'm against that, and the reason is because I've seen dear do incredible things when they're mortally wounded, mortally wounded or non mortally wounded. I've seen dear do incredible things with adrenaline fueling them. And when we track them and push them and bump them at adrenaline and that that deer is desire for survival is unrivaled. So I don't want to push them. And the other reason is is time with myself and with other people. You're limited with maybe the acreas that you can go. So if you hit a deer and you push it off the property, you might your chance the deer might die, and your chances of recovering it might significantly drop because it's you can't go in there, or you don't have permission or something. For somewhat ever reason it is. So I'm gonna say the biggest thing is back out and try to get a hold of a tracker as quickly as possible. You've got a couple of things working against you. Time and potentially weather. So people, you know, people always get fearful of rain, and the reality of the rain as long as it's not a golly washer. Rain is not bad for our track. Rain brings the scent out for our dogs, so especially a light rain. So don't I don't get to worry about when I say the weather, I mean if you're gonna get a huge dolly washer. If you're gonna have a dry, bony day and it's real windy, that's tough on on scenting conditions for our dogs. So the biggest thing is I want to get it, get a hold of a guy as quick as possible so that they can see if it's a scheduling thing and it will work for them. But the other thing is we don't want to go in and we don't want to contaminate that trail because it will significantly decrease your likely know to finding it if you go in and disturb everything. It just makes us so much harder on our dogs. So you know, a good tracking dog is a good problem solver. They're like if they are people, they make real good cops. Like they'd go in there and they would look at this scene and they'd find all these little clues and that would help them follow that trail. It's all scent clues and so, uh, you know, obviously for us sometimes there's visual clues to these deer. Well, for our dogs, the scent is always going to be there, So don't disturb it, don't don't try not to contaminate the line. And then get out of there as a quick as possible, So you don't push it, don't. It's a lot nicer to attract a dearer quarter mile than three miles, you know, so uh, don't push them and get a hold of a tractor as quick as possible. So what is the what is the dog actually um actually smelling? Because um, myself and Mark both lost deer last year and I called up a couple of trackers and I wasn't able to get one in my area, and um, I guess a decent amount of time. But is it I I've been told it's actually the blood. I've been told there's a gland in their foot that will extract a scent when it's wounded. Could you clarify that? Sure? Sure? So, So when it's what is the dog actually smelling? Is? I believe it's a whole bunch of stuff when it comes to a track, when it comes to following a wounded deer. So there are there are multiple scent crews that are really easy to distinguished, really easy to call out from from a deer. From a science standpoint, so blood smells, bloods got scent. But the reality is and and a lot of people think oh, you know dogs just tracking on blood. Here's the thing. If they're blood, you don't need a dog because if they're blood, someone will be able to follow it. It's when you lose blood that you don't that you need the dog to come in. So blood is a scent. Part of a scent clue. But the same about blood is when blood rolls, When blood rolls off of an animal, it rolls across the hide. Well, when it rolls across the hide, scent is created by bacteria. And so when when the blood rolls off, blood's got sent to it, no doubt about it. It's got an iron smell like to us it would be like an irony smell based on what it's made up in the science of it. But when it rolls across hide, it picks up bacteria from that hide that creates scent. So there's there's scent clues. Hair itself smells, they're scent in there. There's bacteria on hair that has sent to it. That's part of the clues. Um. When you talk about that gland between the hoofs, it's an interdigital gland. Each deer has one. Every deer's got one. And the thing about the interdigital land is it's a lot like a person's fingerprints. So we all have our own unique fingerprint. No two people at the same one. No deer has the same scent. They all smell their own unique way. And it's and it's crazy to think this, but my your your dog, my dog. Tractors. Dogs noses are so sensitive they can they can separate the individual deer. Since so when a dog was on a track. The reason I say that is when a dog was on a track, a lot of the times it's twelve twenty four hours later, without a doubt, there are other deer that will cross that track and and they create We do it, we train for it, and we create these distractions intentionally. But what we're doing is we're teaching our dogs that they're going to have to sift through these distractions and they're gonna have to focus on that that older track, that it was created by that specific deer. That specific deer has its own scent. It comes out of that individual plan. So that's that's part of it. A wounded animal puts off a scent than a non wounded animal does not, does not put off and it comes from adrenaline. I mentioned adrenaline earlier, how adrenaline can be the worst enemy because it can push a deer so far, and it can give them so much strength, and it just it's unbelievable, what you know, how it is when you get pumped up and boy that a generally can really make you do things that you didn't think you could do. Well. The same is true with the deer. Thinking about adrenaline, is it smells, It's not. We can't smell, but our dogs can't. So when there's adrenaline lane on the ground, that's a scent clue that this is the right trail. When when a deer runs through the woods, it kicks up the ground, sometimes we can visually track it that way well, when I mentioned it earlier, When that ground is freshly disturbed, its descent, their scent associated with it. When branches get broken and twigs get snapped, their scent that's created that is not there if it weren't broken. Those are all scent clues that are part of this track for our dog, and so in our training we try to expose them to as much of that as possible. Um, But there's so many there's only so many ways, there's only so many things we can do to do that in training. So once we get to that point and we get these dogs following these cold tracks and these these simulated trails, well, I really believe the best way to get a dog to understand this the end game and this whole tracking thing is by putting them on tracks. I have to put them on, dear, track on actual tracking jobs, so that they can take all the pieces and put them together, and each track or trailing job is gonna be a little bit different, all gonna have a little bit different sense, and so experience is, in my opinion, the only true way to finish out of dogs. I won't let young dogs go on marginal hits. I won't do it because my fear is that we're not going to have success if we don't find that dear. My dog looks at me and goes, wait a minute, you told me there was something here. Because every time we do this drill, we find something at the end, I get the reward you praised me all this. You told me it was gonna be here, and if we don't find it, my dog's gonna look at me and go I don't know if he's when he tells me I don't know if it's gonna if it's true or not. I don't want my dog called bs. So what I'll do is with a young dog, I'm going to take and that when I say a young dog, I mean the first season or two of tracks. I'm going to start out with the ones that the guy comes in and he goes, I saw that your tip over us a double lunging it on seventy and fell over. Perfect. Now I'm gonna take that young dog and it's gonna be easy. But the thing is is it's going to be successful. And I'm a big believer. And when it comes to training dogs, I think you have to have success in your lessons because you can kill a dog spirit if you set them up to fail. And one thing that's really important as a trainer, and this goes to whether you're a professional trainer or you are the most novice trainer law, I think a lot of success goes back to it's a partnership. It's you and the dog. You're a team. No different with that shed, honey. When we're talking about the confidence levels grow with both, it's very true with the tracking dogs. So I think it is a very very important element that's oftentimes overlooked. I think people say, we'll just train me a dog, can give it to me and it will track for me. It won't work most times. It won't work because they're not computers. We can't just program and hand them off. We have to read the dog and understand what the dog is, how the dog is working, when the dog gets off track, and how can we help them get back on the track. We're definitely a team when it comes to a tracking dog and the tracker um and I think that's really important. So that'll makes that will makes a lot of sense, and it's got me now thinking about the idea of how it might be able to do the same thing with my own dog too. So before run out of time, here, can you give us like a five minute or less cliff nose version of how to get started training a dog? To do this? Because we've talked about what to do if you don't have a dog, and we've talked about how dogs do it. But now let's say I do have a dog, real quick, how do I get started training this? Because it sounds pretty complicated, maybe even more complicated than training a shed dog. It sounds like it it isn't Mark. I'm telling you right now, it's easier. Here's why it is so natural to our dogs to track it. Tracking dogs dogs in general track no matter what. It's just we don't realize it half the time. So it's relatively simple and and there are a lot of different approaches to taking the we we did similar to our shed training products. We we developed some products that we use in the instruction behind it. We did the same thing with the game recovery. So again I stressed the simplicity in it. It's an approach that we've had a ton of success within a lot of others of that success with it's It's what we do is I try to simulate as much of those sense that we just talked about, and I try to simulate them in that process. But just like when we trained our dogs and I expressed the idea of incremental training, introducing little bitty steps on top of each other, we're going to take the same approach with the tracking dog. So I like to start them out young if I can, and I'll start them out with simply a liver drag. It's a it's b uth in, an actual liver and this takes a little bit of thinking, because you don't want to save a liver from the season prior. If you can't get a deer liver, you can use a beef liver. I think it will work. I prefer a venison liver. But what we do is we simply do these little drags, these little straight drags, and and we've got these little puppies, and it's really just a game of predator prey. It's natural tapping into that predator prey with these dogs. It's a game of I'm gonna chase this thing down and they catch it, and when I get to the end of it, there's gonna be something good for me. And so I simply start laying I started, I have one person of all out of the pupp and I'll drag the line. Now, let the pup go, and a little PUPPI just chases it down and catches it, and they think they caught it. And so the thing is is they're running this line and they're I know, because of the way a dog smells, he's bringing that sent in and he's starting to understand that this is what it smells like when I run to the end of this thing and catch this thing. Well, to do that a couple of times, and then all of a sudden, have the pup inside the house and lay the drag in the same spot and put the pup down and watch it. The pup does puff, just put his nose to the ground, and all of a sudden, off he goes, and he does the exact same thing that he did the last couple of times, and he finds this little liver at the end. And the reason why his liver is because it's a scent that is associated with a wounded animal. But it's also a very sweet smell, and for whatever reason, these dogs love it. I mean they really really like it. So when they get to the end of it, I'll let him look on it a little bit. I want to eat it or anything, but I'll let him look on it a little bit. Then I put it back in the zip bog bag and into the freezer it goes. So I'll do that a couple of times. Then we just slowly start adding some distance to it. We start adding a few turns in um, you know, nine d degree turns. Watched the little pups, they've runs right through the ninety because they just don't understand that there's a turn coming up, they outrun their nose, but then all of a sudden, they're that natural dog tracking and the dog comes out and all of a sudden starts circling back in and they get back into the area and off go. And we can we can set this up by using the wind to our advantage. And this is all the thinking about it prior to doing it. Make it so that the dogs kind of quartering into the wind and all of a sudden it finished its straight down wind, you know, right into it. Because it's going to help the dog along. And so I emphasize the idea of what training the dog. We're not testing them. We're just trying to add small layers to that. So we go through that process. Then we start adding in some hair, we start using some hides, we start I make a cent myself so that you don't I've got a freezer and my graduate Now that I warned people to look into it because there's a lot of stuff in there that you will want to be it's it's that's people always said, what's the hardest part about training these tracking dogs? I truly believe the hardest part about training the tracking dog is getting the stuff you needed to do it at certain times of the year. I'm not big on road kills in August. I mean, it's just not something I like doing. So what I do is I've got freezers full of the stuff. I process it myself, we naturally preserve it. We do a bunch of stuff to simulate the best we can, a lot of the variety of sense. It's not just blood. It's a bunch of other stuff that's mixed into it, and we make it into a scent, and then we preserve it so it's got some shelf life and it's got an opportunity where you can take it in your house, set it on the table, and your wife, your mom, and your girlfriend to look at it and go, no big deal, and they'll walk it past it. Now, if that was a vial of blood, you're out of there. Man, it's not gonna work. So I think the hardest part is getting the stuff you need, and that's what we've tried to do with putting together this kit. And then we also have you know, the various parts of pieces that you can get because there's certain things you're gonna run out. If you're gonna need more scent you're gonna need a second piece of hide to be to act as a reward, and so you're gonna want one that you're gonna lay a cent trail with. You're gonna want one at the end. So we offer all that stuff so that you can get it, and then you know, we explain more in depth on on the process um in the booklet and then in the DVD. But it's it's funny because once what you just said, so many people think that sounds are really complicated. Well, once they watch and they actually start doing it with their dogs and they see our little videos on Facebook and they see how we're doing it, I think that they're really surprised at the idea of this isn't nearly as as hard as I thought it was going to be. And that's our hopes, that's that's our our thought is if we can give you the tools and the information, you're gonna have to put a little time into it. You know, you're gonna have to put invest the time with the dog, but it won't take that much. I promise you that. And if you're able to do that, I would be willing to bet your chances of recovering dear are greater than if you did. And that's that's the whole goal. And that goes back to the beginning when we talked about what's our responsibility as a hunter, what are we really what are we really doing? And I just really firmly believe that if we we wounded animal, we really owe it to them to making every effort possible to find them. Yeah, so true. I've actually found out recently that I've got a little bit of red green color blindness to degree, so I've realized why sometimes it's hard to see blood, and and that's developed a need for me that I really do think I need to start training my dog or utilizing of tracking dog more to help me with that process, because I think that is a is even more critical for the of men out there that have that type of color blindness. So it's another reason why I'm thinking that it's something I really need to look into. So you've got me very intrigued and um really interested in adding to my dog's training regimen um. But all that said, we are we've taken a lot of your time. Jeremy and Dan actually had to drop off the line, but he and I both really really appreciate you joining us here for for this conversation. This has been great. I thank you for having us and I thank you for doing this stuff because, like I said earlier, this type of awareness, I think is what's really important, uh, you know, because it's something that it's first of all, it's fun. The second of all, there's a lot of upside to it. So for for I appreciate you you're willing to listen to the JAB but for as long as I did. But I had a great time, and you guys made it easy. So yeah, absolutely. Now, if anyone out there who's listening wants to learn more about you or pick up your you know, your different products for shed hunting and game tracking, where can they go best? The best place is probably our website, which is dog bone hunter dot com. Um. There there they can see all of our stuff and get links to different retailers and different places that carry it. And it's also a nice it's an easy way to link to some of our social media stuff and our social media stuff. We treat it, I try to treat it more as a training resource than anything. And in the nice part about it is it's free and it's pretty interactive, so it's it's one of those things that we can post a training tip or training video, we can get some back and forth with different people that are maybe doing the same thing and having a little bit of an issue with this or that, and we can kind of get conversation going that way. So, UM, dog Bone Hunter dot com would be probably the best place to get started. Perfect. We'll make sure to link to that in the show notes for this episode, and um I'll be sure to be heading there too and probably picking up a few more resources to help myself out. So Jeremy, thank you, thank you so much. We really appreciate the time. Thank you. I appreciate it, all right, have a good one. Al right. Well, that is going to do it for us today on the podcast, And what an awesome interview. Whether you have a dog or not, I hope you learned something new today. They can help you in the future, and I know I certainly did. And I'm pretty pumped to get my dog Boone out there in the woods to start looking for shed soon. That said, the close things out, as we discussed at the beginning of the show, we do have a giveaway winner to announce and to be able to give away all you had to do was leave a review on iTunes between the time last episode came out and now, and many of you did, so thank you for that. And the winner, as we mentioned, will be getting a brand new our brand new, redesigned Wired Hunt Halt and they'll be the first person to get one of those, so that's kind of cool. And that winner is iTunes user name Brandon bow Hunter. Congratulations Brandon bow Hunter. And here's Brandon had to say in his review. This podcast is what I look forward to every Wednesday. You guys have absolutely outdone any other hunting related podcast out there. The amount of information that you guys pack into a one hour show is awesome. As a CNC Michianus, I'm not able to read it work, but I am awed to have headphones in and as a deer bum, your show feeds my needs all year long. Thank you Mark and Dan for the great shows. Keep up the great work. Good work, I should say, and thank you Brandon. We really appreciate that and love to hear from a fellow dear bum that's enjoying the show and just so glad that we can help you make it through the long day at work too. And when you hear this, make sure to hop on the wire hunt on Facebook page and send us a message with your dress and we'll get that hat in the mail asap. And I also wanted to give a shout out to iTunes user j Wuck who headlined his review simply by saying Dan has a very respectable beard. I kind of get a kick out of that. I can't deny it, but that's pretty funny. Although let's be honest, it's really my beard that's in need of a self esteem boost. So come on, guys, help me out on that. Uh. Continuing on. For show notes and links from today's show, please visit wird Hunt dot com slash episode And of course we also want to thank all our partners who have helped keep this podcast on the air so big. Thank you too, Sick of Gear, Trophy, Ridge Bear Archery, Redneck Blinds, Carbon Express Arrows, Hunt Soft, Lacrosse, Boots, Big and J, Long Range Attractings, and the White Tail Institute of North America. And finally, thank you so much for joining us today. If you have a dog, I hope you've been inspired to transfer him or her into a dear dog. And if not, you know, maybe this episode will get you infected with a little bit of puppy fever. Either way, tune back and next week for another great show, and as always, stayed wired to Hunt.

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