Playing the waiting game

A quiet morning team as multiple soon hots up for the animals require tracking

- RUDI VAN KETS

The end of the hunting season is often a busy time for our tracking teams. In many places, there are still plenty of driven hunts going on, most of which have been organised to comply with mandatory shot figures — the aim being to cull any cervids not accounted for before the season for that species closes. Occasionally, the government grants an exception and the mopping-up process can continue, but that doesn’t reduce our workload.

This year was no different. Our association’s tracking teams were standing by right across Belgium, with a few even stationed in Germany and France. I was on call for the weekend with my dog Jazz in a 2,000-hectare terrain close to the French border. It was a real deer-hunting spot, with a good concentration of wild boar too. Some of my colleagues were nearby, in the area we use for our tests. In fact, there were several teams in the vicinity, some just a few kilometres apart. This could prove helpful if we had to deal with an injured animal that could still cover some distance, as it would allow us to switch dogs more readily before things became too arduous.

Better still, because of the relatively short distance between teams, we could tune our radios to the same channel, enabling us to communicate smoothly and inform each other about developments.

Not that there was much happening in my neck of the woods. Most of the area’s hunts started at 9am, and it wasn’t long before the first shots were audible in the distance. But in my location, it was utterly silent. Not a single dog showed up on a track and the beaters found no fresh marks. It was as though all the local wildlife had vanished or decided to gatecrash another driven hunt. The only certainty was that no one was home.