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The topic of animals holding their scent has been talked about a couple time on this site I was reading in the bobcat forum and riverbottom brought up an interesting subject his question was how does a hound know that they are going the right direction when starting a track? so I guess that is the question.

sourdough

This was an old thread and one of my favorites, interesting stuff. There are 3 feasible theories IMO. 1 is simply a hound runs a track from cold to hot. 2 is that there is more scent in the toe area of a track than there is in the heel area therefore determining track direction. 3 is body "scurf", which is skin particles, cells, dandruff, etc, that is jarred loose with each step an animal takes and because of forward momentum, falls in front of the tracks therefore indicating track direction.

Hell thats a easy question. Lots of hounds know the answer to that one. Everyone else can only speculate. it's probably a combination of things if the track getting hotter is the only answer how do hounds trail through dry,wet,windy conditions that thin the scent which is proven by their trouble with it. if its from body scent in the track only what happens on those trails with a hard tail wind. of course it could very easily be the toe jam theory . I think it's interesting but we don't have the means to test it and those that do are to educated to be interested.

For the most part I don't think they can tell one end from the other. Dogs will take the track in the direction your traveling. If im riding down or up a canyon and I hit a lion track, they will take the track the direction im riding every time. If the track crosses the canyon, its 50/50 chance whether they will take the right end of it. My dogs are kinda stupid tho

Its seems to me the fresher the track the more likely they will take it the right way

Big Mike- I believe we must have dogs out of the same gene pool when it comes to reading sign directionally. Stupid I mean, maybe just ignorant. Perhaps I should spend more time with them in a classroom and a black board!LOL

I have no idea how they figure it out. Our jump dog will always run a yote track the right way. Not matter what way he hits it he'll figure it out. Some times he'll run it backwards for 50-100 yards then turn around. But he always figures it out. Our other dogs seem to run them the right way, but I think it's because the jump dogs gets them going the right way.