Kyle Warren Dogs

***This text and maps may not be used or reproduced with out the author’s permission. This text is copyrighted material.

Here is the truth about scent movement — at least in the northeastern section of the United States.

Scent movement. Scent can move hundreds of yards away from the actual track of the subject. In over 500 trails I have done with my own trailing dog, I have seen scent regularly travel over 100 yards from the track very often; over 200 yards several dozen times; and up to 300 yards a handful of times.  Most of the time my dog is between 0 and  100 yards from the actual track.

Weather has everything to do with how long scent lasts,
and where it goes.

Wind is a nightmare for trailing teams.  If you have a 3mph wind or greater and the subject walks through an open to moderately dense area, the scent could possibly travel hundreds of yards.

Rain will move scent great distances down sloped terrain, but not much on flat vegetative terrain.

Moisture / humidity in general prompts better scent conditions. Therefore, dew, shade, nighttime, rain, etc. can enhance the scent picture for the dog in most cases.

Terrain features affect scent movement.

Slopes with no prominent wind occurring during the aging time will follow some general rules:

Hot air rises. So scent drifts uphill. In flat, sunny areas during the daytime hours, it may rise inches or more above the ground (especially on urban surfaces).

Cool air sinks. So scent drifts downhill during evening hours.  Depressions, water and shaded areas in the terrain — swamps, ravines, ditches, evergreens, to name a few— will draw and collect scent. Logging trails, roadways and other features act as funnels, channeling scent in a linear fashion — great distances, at times.

Scent pools and scent cones. A scent pool is when there is an area of saturated scent that could be one to tens of acres in size depending on weather, terrain, time of day and how long the subject has been sitting out there.  I feel that this is a very under-practiced item with trailing dogs, because our subjects don’t stay at the end of our aged trails too often, if at all.  But the handler and the dog really need to know how to work a scent pool.  The subject could be: in, around or has been in that area for quite some time, and then have moved on.  The trailing team needs to be able navigate and work through these conditions.  The dog will most often air scent, which I have no problem with as long as it’s the subject’s scent the dog is smelling.
If the dog is not advancing through the scent pool, then the handler will have to attempt to find the perimeter to assist the dog in finding its way out, and determine if the subject is present or has continued on to another location.
Scent cones are very simple for dogs to figure out and the dog will often air scent in these scenarios as well.  In latter scent contamination training, once in a while I will take a distracter person and place them along the trail — but nowhere near the end. I will have it set up where the dog will likely smell the decoy. This is a great opportunity to correct the dog verbally through asking the question in your line handling.  The dog will often be very enthusiastic about being in a scent cone of a human in the woods when they have been working for a while.

Surfaces. Scent is better preserved and holds onto surfaces that have any or all of the following characteristics: porous, moist, in shade, vegetated.  Dogs will gravitate towards surfaces that offer these characteristics.

Other than what the dog communicates to us, where the strongest scent path lays is an unknown to the handler.  This is why it’s the handler’s job to know where scent has the potential to move.

Examples: many of these still need detailed reports.

March 18th, 2009: This was a training trail ran entirely blind.  It was 7.5 hours old and 1.29 miles long.  Maya and I traveled 1.81 miles in 50 minutes to find our subject. My scent article was a t-shirt.  The start of this trail had 180 students coming out of a chapel.  The environmental conditions were as follows: a large boarding school’s grounds, woodlands, logging roads, drainages, fields, a highway, old large stone walls and a pipeline that was recently widen to 300-400 feet.  The subject’s track is blue and Maya’s is red.

This trail was laid at 5:40am and ran at 1:15pm.  There was much observed on this trail— the winds were east for the first 4 hours of aging then variable at 3-7 mph during the remaining time the trail was aging.  I feel that the first leg of the trail, the dog was fairly true to the actual track because of the slope of the terrain, in this area it was heavily wooded and shaded, wind has a hard time getting into here other than night time movement downhill.  Once we started to move west and the terrain started to level out and become less densely vegetated, the scent started to disperse over a wider area.  You can see how the scent pulled into the woods from the center of the first small field.  This was a very sunny day so the scent got blown to the tree line of the field and existed well in the shade on the border of the field.  The new thing learned for me on this one was when we were on the Rte. 97 heading west and the shoulder of the road was continually getting higher and higher in relationship to the grade of the road.  When we got to the point where the shoulder of the road was above my head, Maya instantly popped a negative, casted herself back 30 feet and cut south into the woods towards the track.  This made total sense in that the scent was moving up hill, which I would expect since it was a warm sunny day and that fact that roadways often serve as scent vacuums.  160 yards was our most distant point from the track, when she headed down the hill.

Once the subject walked in up the pipeline to his location the scent sprawled southwest to the edge of the pipeline and into the tree line about 50-100 feet as she skirted around the perimeter of the pipeline.  The subject was sitting out at the end point for about 90 minutes.  Maya did a great job!  This kind of trail is one that defines what a trailing dog does.

November 1st, 2008: This was a training trail ran entirely blind.  It was 7 hours old and .88 miles long.  Maya I traveled 1.5 miles in 35 minutes to find our subject.  My scent article was a shirt.  There was a total of 12 people who contaminated this trail throughout the day and 4 fresh crosstracks just prior to running the trail.  The environmental conditions were as follows: pavement, mowed grassy trails, high grass, gravel, and a dry mud flood plane.  The subject’s track is blue and Maya’s is red.

This trail was laid at 9am and ran at 4pm.  The wind was blowing out of the west and northwest all day.  You can clearly see how that effected the scent picture on this trail.  Also the terrain overall was very flat and relatively open for scent to move though she stayed within 100 yards of the track the entire time.  She overshot the subject by 100 yards before she ran out of scent and circled back at which time we got 30 yards away and Maya air scented the very end.

There were 10-15 mph winds that were variable and about a quarter-inch of rain during the aging of this trail.  At our most distant point we were 160 yards off the actual track.  This trail was ran totally blind.

The scent moved with the wind in some places and clinged to the creek in others.  This trail was ran with a gps map known to me.

This scent movement is classic overnight scent picture.  This trail was ran before a snow storm where 3 inches of snow fell on top of the trail.  At my most distant point Maya and I were 220 yards from the actual track.  This trail was ran blind.

There was a quarter-inch of ice on the ground.  At the end she air scented into the subject.  This trail’s route was explained but not exactly known.

We started on the east side and the areas where Maya went north were on prominent logging roads.  At our most distant point from the actual track we were 200 yards.  This trail was completely blind.

This is the oldest trail to-date that I have tried running with Maya.  This trail was 100% blind.

20 mph winds and 3 inches of rain fell while this trail was aging to top it off we ran this completely blind in the dark.  We were always within 110 yards of the actual track.

This trail had 2 inches of snow on top of it.  This was difficult because I was always anticipating a turn in an urban environment.  One of my hardest trails ever and it was only .37 miles.  It started on the west end at a pharmacy parking lot.  This trail was ran completely blind.

This was an incredible trail!  Ran completely blind in this very busy, intense environment at night on Valentine’s day this year.  Maya and I were in the zone and did this is 52 minutes.  Rita, who laid the trail— had 5 members of  EVSD, including Jana (whom are all high value frequent subject’s cross the trail at multiple points only one hour prior to running it.This will always be one of my most memorable trails.  It can be done!!!

***This text and maps may not be used or reproduced with out the author’s permission. This text is copyrighted material.

This entry was posted on April 1, 2009 at 8:48 PM and is filed under Maya's Trails, Search Dog Training, Trailing Dogs . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.