20 hour old trail in Gardiner, NY
20 hour old trail, .72 miles in Gardiner, NY. Subject = blue and Maya = red
This trail was 20 hours old, .72 miles long with no registerable wind until the last 5 hours of aging and then it was predominantly a south wind up to 5 mph. I had one person contaminate the start about 20 minutes prior to running the trail. This person went 100 yards up the trail then veered to the road and back to the vehicle. It was cleared when Maya and smelling that person and she immediately came off of it all on her own. My scent article was a shoe sole that was two weeks old. I never used an article that old before…. we also had a poor idea of where the PLS actually was so I’m not sure if the dog had to adjust to the dramatic age difference of the article to the trail or if we had a hard time getting started because we were a good distance from the actual starting area. Rita was my spotter on this one and the subject had not saved her track at the start of her track so where she entered the road was an unknown all around. I just kept casting Maya until she committed. Every place she was right on the actual track was an area that is shaded 100% of the time and all other areas were open woods. The wind seemed to drag the scent uphill despite the overnight aging with no wind…. one would assume downhill drag. As we progressed throught the trail the road eventually sucked the scent down. We traveled 2 miles and completed the trail in 60 minutes.
