Getting a good shot on a deer is only the first half of a successful hunt. The other half comes next: tracking the blood trail and getting the animal out of the woods.
When a deer runs far or the terrain is complex, tracking and recovery can be extremely difficult. Even with deer tracking practice and a good blood trail, deer can be hard to find if they run farther than expected. That's where the TRAKR app, released in September, may come in handy.
What is the TRAKR App?
As the official app of the United Blood Trackers, a national organization of blood-tracking dog owners, TRAKR connects hunters with trained blood-tracking dogs (and their owners) to help them recover hard-to-find deer. TRAKR is free to sign up for and available nationwide, barring the states where blood tracking with dogs is illegal: Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.
Why Blood Tracking?
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Blood tracking has been around for millennia. It's become increasingly popular in the United States over the past few decades, particularly in the South and Midwest. Part of its popularity comes from the fact that just about any dog with a good nose can track. While breeds like Bavarian mountain bloodhounds and beagles are well known for their tracking abilities, mixed breeds and mutts from the pound can also be trained to reliably track a blood trail, especially if they have any working breed in their mix.
How TRAKR Came to Be
Shane Simpson, a co-founder of TRAKR, has been tracking in the Midwest for seven years. He has a robust YouTube following, and posts everything from turkey hunts to whitetail hunts with his daughter, and plenty of videos of his blue-tick coonhound, Callie, recovering deer.
Simpson offers his tracking services to other hunters as well. Over the years he's experienced an increase in requests. Eventually he was missing 40 to 50 calls and texts from hunters looking for help a day. In short order, Simpson and Callie's tracking work became an unmanageable mess.
TRAKR began as the Minnesota Tracking Dogs Facebook group, which Simpson co-created after Minnesota legalized tracking in 2019 to help connect hunters to trackers with trained dogs across the state. Unfortunately, as the Facebook group became increasingly popular, long threads of comments on posts made it a cumbersome medium for finding trackers. Hunters also had to disclose their location to the entire group via post, which led to concerns over hunters' hard-earned secret hunting locations being made a little too public.
Simpson moved the tracker request platform over to a webpage, where hunters could keep their information private while seeking tracker help. In its first year, the site received over 1,000 requests for trackers. Its popularity helped Simpson convince some buddies to get onboard with the next, expensive jump: a mobile app. TRAKR was on its way.
How the TRAKR App Works
Part of the beauty of TRAKR is how easy it is to use. Hunters who are in need of a tracker simply submit a request through the app, which they can even do offline, as long as they are logged in before losing service. The request includes their location (which can only be seen by the trackers), the species shot, where the animal was shot, what its reaction was, and the weapon used. Hunters are also able to request trackers anonymously.
Their request then sends a notification to every tracker in the area who fits the hunter's needs in terms of availability and species to be tracked. Hunters can then choose the available tracker using a profile that lists each tracker's experience level, certifications, testimonials, and working rate.
"Yesterday, a hunter called to ask me if I could track a deer he'd shot," Simpson told Wide Open Spaces. "I directed him to the app. The first tracker who answered his request was far out of the hunter's budget, but with the app, he was able to wait for a tracker that only accepted tips to pick up his request."
How TRAKR Vets Trackers
The app has the added bonus of vetting trackers. Of the 1,200 or so trackers that have applied for the app, Simpson's accepted around 800. His goal is to assure hunters the tracker they're connected with is a good one.
And just because they've made it on the app doesn't mean they'll always stay there: Trackers can be blacklisted from the app for bad behavior.
This in-depth vetting process is what truly sets TRAKR apart from other apps and hunter-tracker groups. Simpson says he hopes to avoid scams where trackers charge hunters hundreds of dollars only to wander the woods with an untrained dog. According to Simpson, the national recovery average for a leashed blood-tracking dog is 40 percent, and TRAKR is trying to keep its trackers all around that average.
Why Trackers Should Sign up for TRAKR
The app is incredibly useful for trackers, too. Because everything is in-app, trackers can get every detail of the hunt and track they need. Tracking requests are displayed on a map, with color-coded pins. Red for available, green for accepted by another tracker, and grey for paused tracking requests, with the reason for the pause. Hunters can use the "pause" feature if they're working on getting landowner permission to cross private property, and the grey pin feature lets trackers in the area keep an eye on the track and reach out to the hunter to see if they have an estimated time that they'll need a tracker.
What the Future Holds for TRAKR
Simpson also hopes to use data collected by the app to help hunters better understand deer behavior in the future. Currently, TRAKR is free, but in the future users will be able to pay a subscription fee that allows them access to a national analytics page, which they can then filter down to find the data they want. Trackers will also have a personal analytics page, which gives them information on all of their own tracks. "A lot of trackers keep notes on every track, but the app will automate that," Simpson says. The data and analytics page will be available later this season.
Most of all, what has hunters and trackers excited now is the prospect of more wounded deer recovered. That means more ethical hunting all around. Simpson notes that trackers recovered 400 deer in Minnesota alone in 2022. That's a lot of venison.
To get the app, download TRAKR from your mobile app store, or head to the TRAKR website for more information. TRAKR is free to use for both trackers and hunters.
READ MORE: The 10 Best Places to Hunt Deer in America
