Call Out

Yesterday evening got a call to find a Roebuck for a stalkers client. Not a lot of information but asked to come in the morning,so off we set at 0330,arrived at shot site at 0500. Yesterday evening after the shot, a team were asked to find the animal but couldn't. The area was a mass of gorse and heavy cover in a valley. We arrived and immediately Pascha set off on the track,with zero visible blood present. The 2 stalkers with me watched as Pascha took a completely different line and route from the team the evening before. Pascha found the animal dead within heavy cover, in gorse, over a fence,150m from the shot site. This shows the importance of a controlled search with a team that knows what the job is. That is not meant to be negative to the team at all that attempted to find the evening before,we are very thankful that they called us, as were the stalker and client. However, we are seeing this more often, teams that are not trained to the job attempting to find animals, this often makes the job of the tracking team much harder, especially when it involves dogs that are off leash and working in an uncontrolled manner. If the animal is not dead, the animal will get up and run in front of the dog. Always think about the best way to end suffering, not create it. As it happens, this animal will have been dead last night whilst the dog was looking for it. People must know what they are doing or more suffering can be created. All the best George and all at UKSHA.