Welcome
These pages generally concern the work with the Bavarian Mountain Hound(BMH) and with the Training of Track Dogs.
Who am I?
I have an education as a Forest and Landscape engineer and work for the National Eviromental Research Institute, in the department for wildlife ecology and biodiversity.
I got my first BMH in 1992, number two in 1997 and bought my third in Germany in the summer of 2002.
There is no special club under FCI for BMH in Denmark,
and therefore I'm a member of the German club for this race:
Klüb für Bayerische Gebirgsschweisshunde v. 1912
Why this homepage?
By the propagation of the Internet there were more and more homepages about
hunting, but none about the important work, after the shot in case of wounding a deer.
Therefore in 1999, I decided to create my own homepage with the Danish hunters and dog
owners as target group. The homepage should concern the general work of training a Track dog, and how the individual hunter should behave in a situation where he/she accidentally wound a deer.
But of course the pages should also be about the race of dogs with which I'm lucky to work with:
the Bavarian Mountain Hound.
Not to promote the race, but to inform about the fact that it is a breed, which one should purchase only, if one has the possibility of using the dog for which he was bred: the work of tracking down wounded deer.
The work with Track Dogs in Denmark:
In Denmark there is a Track Dog's register which is administered by the Ministry of Environment. The reason for this is the fact that one must often enter private areas during the tracking of a wounded deer. In Denmark it is not allowed to execute a search on the property of others, without permission of the estate owner. Otherwise it is trespassing. Having to contact a lot of estate owners during a search is not practical and often not possible, and therefore a central Track Dog's register was established in 1982.
The owners of dogs who have taken the necessary tests can apply for admission in
the register, but far from all is accepted. Before admission is granted, the qualifications of the separate equipage is evaluated, with regard to the hunting/tracking experience of the dog handler as well as the sharpness of the dog and its ability to hunt up game if necessary.
If the dog handler is accepted in the register, he gets the right to execute searches for wounded deer on all areas (except military areas) without having to ask the estate owners for permission first. But the Police must be notified before a search is started.
Nowadays there are about 165(2007) registered handlers with track hounds in Denmark with altogether
about 220 dogs. The registered handlers annually execute altogether some 12000 searches. These searches is on deer wounded during hunting, as well as deer wounded in traffic.
I was in 1994 accepted in the register, and been there since then.
Which dogs are used in Denmark?
In Denmark first of all the German Wirehairy pointer(Drathaar) and the Labrador Retriever is used, but since the end of the 1980's the Bavarian Mountain Hound and the Hannoveranian Hound were "discovered" in Denmark, and particularly the BMH has since found progress here in Denmark.
Today there are about 25 BMH in the Track Dog's register.