In Gus We Trust - NH Big Game Tracking and Recovery

In Gus We Trust - NH Big Game Tracking and Recovery Gus is a purebred German Shepherd who has been trained to track since he was 12 weeks old. Brendan is a licensed hunting and fishing guide in NH.

We both love tracking & finding wounded bear, deer and moose. When in doubt, back out, and give us a shout!

Gus's first find of 2026 wasn't a deer or a bear, but rather another German Shepherd. I get a few calls every year from ...
06/21/2026

Gus's first find of 2026 wasn't a deer or a bear, but rather another German Shepherd.

I get a few calls every year from people asking if Gus can track their lost pet, but I usually advise against it. Not because I doubt Gus's ability to do so, but because if a lost dog is uninjured and still mobile, following it around with a 100lb beast-on-a-leash is only likely to terrify it and push it further from home.

This dog however had taken off with about 50' of rope attached to its harness, so I figured it would be stuck with the rope wrapped around a tree somewhere. It was, though somehow it had made it half a mile into the woods before the rope got tangled. Gus took us right to it as fast as we could walk behind him.

By the time we found it, the poor girl had been stuck to that tree for almost 8 hours. Thanks to Gus, one very worried owner was reunited with her beautiful GSD and will hopefully be able to get some sleep tonight.

Gus and his brother Mance spent the day today hanging out with their Gramma--I think it's safe to say she wore them out!...
06/02/2026

Gus and his brother Mance spent the day today hanging out with their Gramma--I think it's safe to say she wore them out!

Even though we spend countless hours in the truck together during hunting/tracking season, Gus sleeps in a moving vehicle about as well as I do... which is to say very rarely and reluctantly. I think he feels like someone other than the person behind the wheel should also be paying attention.

Today my normally vigilant copilot and his oversized sniffer were both getting some much needed rest for most of the ride home.

Mystery solved! This deer we tracked early in muzzleloader season is alive and doing well, despite missing a few chunks ...
01/09/2026

Mystery solved! This deer we tracked early in muzzleloader season is alive and doing well, despite missing a few chunks of bone.

Every tracking season there are one or two tracks that are head-scratchers. This was one. Chunks of bone (second pic) at or near the site of impact are usually an indication of a leg wound. That’s what I thought going into this one, and the other trackers who I showed the pics of bone to seemed to agree.

Sometimes deer can make a full recovery from a leg wound, and go on to lead happy and healthy lives. Other times it can lead to their demise. It all depends on the severity of the wound, where and which legs are injured, and whether the projectile did any other damage along the way.

The only way to tell how badly the deer is wounded is to catch up to it and get eyes on it. This can be easier said than done—three legged deer can still get around pretty well.

We tracked this deer for over a mile before eventually putting eyes on it. All four legs seemed to working fine and we called the track. What didn’t make sense at the time was how the deer could have lost so much bone matter without even walking with a limp.

Fast forward to yesterday, and the hunter texted me a pic of this deer in the exact spot where he had taken the shot a couple months ago.

As you can see from the first pic, the impact was just a little high. The bullet would have nicked the scapula—enough to send some bone flying but not enough for the deer to lose the use of that leg.

The hunter and I are both glad the deer survived and that we made the right call by backing off!

How it started - four years ago. Gus has gotten a little bigger, but that expression has not changed.
12/30/2025

How it started - four years ago. Gus has gotten a little bigger, but that expression has not changed.

12/15/2025

The 2025 tracking season is officially over, and Gus had a good year! He recovered 22 animals, filling the freezers for 22 hunters and their families.

We also found about double that number of animals--either putting eyes on it or hearing it run off with wounds it would recover from.

Along the way we had a lot of adventures, saw some weird stuff, met a lot of good people, and made some new friends. I made the slideshow below to highlight our recoveries and travels this season.

Some of the interesting stories don't have pictures--like the two times we tracked for/with a Game Warden because violators reported themselves. Both of those violators missed.

Gus and I would like to thank every hunter who trusted us to track your animal. We'd also like to thank all the other trackers who were there to talk through challenges, give advice, and share tracks, especially Frank Chase and Phil Plummer -- thanks for everything guys!

We're looking forward to next season. Until then Gus will be playing lots of Frisbee and I'll be working to ensure we are even better when the 2026 season rolls around.

How do you keep a working dog happy when he's not working? Frisbee. Lots and lots of Frisbee.The tracking season has slo...
12/08/2025

How do you keep a working dog happy when he's not working? Frisbee. Lots and lots of Frisbee.

The tracking season has slowed down but Gus's energy levels have not. He'd love to be out tracking, but he will settle for chasing and catching a Frisbee instead.

We are available for tracking through the last few days of archery season if anyone needs us. My throwing arm could use a break!

It’s great when the hunters do everything right. It makes it easier for everyone involved: us handlers, the hunters, and...
12/01/2025

It’s great when the hunters do everything right. It makes it easier for everyone involved: us handlers, the hunters, and—most importantly—the dogs who work their hearts out on every track.

This young man did everything right, and it made for an easy recovery… and an easy drag for the hunter. He was confident he hit the buck well but the blood trail was very light so he backed out and made some phone calls. One call was to a buddy who we had found a deer for earlier in the season. That buddy reached out to me and sent me some pictures of the blood. Liver blood.

Wounds to the liver are almost always a death sentence, but it can take some time. In that time, a deer can go a long way if pushed. The worst thing you can do is to start following blood too soon (even with a dog) and bump the deer. Then you just turned a short walk into a long one.

That is the advice I gave to the hunter on the phone, and we agreed to meet later in the afternoon. With a snowstorm coming in between, any blood on the ground would have been invisible to a human tracker—but snow doesn’t bother Gus’s nose in the least. He took the track confidently and we recovered the deer in under 200 yards.

While this recovery was easy, it could have been a lot worse. If the hunter had bumped the deer by tracking it too soon, and/or called in a bunch of buddies to grid search the snow… well, let’s just say that’s why we walk miles on most tracks.

Thank you Devin for doing everything right, and for trusting Gus to find your deer! And congrats on the beautiful buck!

"I found that deer, why can't I eat it now?"Don't worry, he got a good taste of it when we got back home!
11/30/2025

"I found that deer, why can't I eat it now?"

Don't worry, he got a good taste of it when we got back home!

A shocking discovery! Not really, but if anyone in the Claremont/Newport area is wondering what happened to your electri...
11/30/2025

A shocking discovery!

Not really, but if anyone in the Claremont/Newport area is wondering what happened to your electric fence, I may have the answer: there is about 100' of it tangled up in this buck's antlers.

The electric fence didn't slow this buck down, but the hunter's 30-30 sure did. This was some steep, mountain goat territory and after Gus took the wrong line once, we suspected that maybe coyotes had got to the deer before we did (we had also found a large clump of deer hair on the walk in). Coyotes will carry the scent of whatever they had been feasting on as they scatter, and sometimes this can be tempting even for an experienced tracking dog.

Fortunately that was not the case. After a quick restart, Gus took us right to the deceased deer. It was nice to find one that didn't try to put its antlers in us!

Congrats, Jesse, and thanks for trusting Gus to find your deer!

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