Working with Dogs for Tracking Deer with Niels Søndergaard

The BASC Deer Department ran two very successful “Working with dogs for tracking deer” seminars at Stonor Park in Oxfordshire in March. Twenty six members attended the two day courses which were led by Niels Søndergaard.

Niels Søndergaard has 15 years experience of handling hunting dogs, is a judge at Danish trials, has worked for the police dog training and has been trained in the German organisation ‘Verein Hirschmann’. He also runs training courses in Denmark, Ireland, England, Sweden and Norway and is the author of the definitive book ‘Working with Dogs for Deer’.

The two day long training courses offered a mixture of lectures and indoor instruction, combined with outdoor practical training for both handlers and dogs. Many subjects were covered during the course, including the origins of tracking dogs, breed selection and choosing a puppy, the process of training a tracking dog and methods of training.

Recognising signs of outshot is important, and one of the main practical tasks involved learning to recognise the different signs depending on where the animal was hit. Different techniques for laying training trails were demonstrated and those with a dog had the opportunity to try tracking on a simulated trail.

The practical field sessions were extremely popular as this enabled the participants to test their equipment and gain invaluable experience with their dogs under practical conditions with an expert mentor on hand to give advice. The ability of the dogs surprised many of their owners, who went away, knowing a lot more about training, handling and reading their dogs.

We hope to run further seminars in the near future and if you wish to register your interest or require further information then please contact Andrea Green at BASC on 01244 573 047or email