Waited til midnight to drop Nitro. I walked him to the woods north of the schoolhouse and cut him loose. He struck a track very similar to the one from the other night but moved it a little better this time. I'm pretty confident this was a coon track. He grubbed it out for about 45 minutes and had gone about 1/2 a mile. He was running in a pothole behind a house and had tapped a couple of trees. When he got close to me I decided to grab him. I think he would have finished this track but I didn't want to be out there all night. I also didn't like being behind that house.
I've had a lot of tracks like this with a lot of different dogs in this section. Mabel (after the age of 6) was the best at finishing the tough old ones. Nitro appears to be doing almost as well as her but at a much younger age.
It will be interesting to see how I feel about his tracking by the end of the summer.
Also, I'll have to see how he works with other dogs a little this summer. I can already tell that some dogs are going to lock down on the trees he taps. I hope he'll be smart enough to keep going & not get sucked into slick treeing.