Viggo

This is the page where I give you a small presentation of my male Drever, Viggo. He is 3 years old now, and I've had him since he was a pup. Back then I payed 3500 NKR, about 500 $. I started training him to be a trackdog almost the day I got him. I didn't hunt with him the first autumn, and continued training on bloodtrails the next summer. I also took him to a pupshow, where he was the best of the young drevers, and came out third among all the male drevers, six months old.

That summer I also tried to get him approved as a trackdog, but it failed, mostly because I wasn't good enough, and because he was a bit more interested in the trail of three elks that had passed the bloodtrail. The judge was probably not the easiest either. I think he approved one out of 23 dogs that season...

That autumn I hunted with him. Almost every week, I took him out two or three times, and let him go somewhere in the forest. Almost every time I let him go, he would find a roe deer, stay with it for half an hour, perhaps an hour. And every time, he returned to me. Either when he lost the track, when he came too far away from me (I think that's why he quit sometimes), or even when I called him in. However, me being quite an unexperienced hunter at the time, especially when it came to hunting with a hound, I didn't manage to shoot any roe deers for him that season.

The next season was not quite different. There were plenty of roe deer, and Viggo trailed them around baying like a sawingmachine. But still I didn't shoot any. I even had roe deers at less than 10 yards that season, three times. One day I was out hunting with some friends, we were seven hunters, two with each our dog. Viggo trailed a roe deer, made it pass all of the five other hunters, without them being able to shoot it. Bad luck !

This last season was really poor. Can't blame Viggo though. There just wasn't much roe deer. I hunted a lot, both with and without him. I don't think he could find more than five or six of them this season all together. I saw two, and shot one, a buck.

The season of 1998 became a turning point in Viggo's life. I went to the army, but returned early in the season, and shot one hare and a roe deer for him. A week later, a friend of mine borrowed him - and the result is on the picture above. He even shot one the day after that... Later in the season, I managed to get back home a second time, and again we went out hunting. This time, it was a different friend of mine who shot Viggo's fourth deer that season ! Since that, he's performed excellent, and been very reliable. Last season, we shot another four for him, and could have shot even more.