Hello Mr. Briggs,
Thanks for taking the time to write. Your question is "what is the best way to break a dog from running deer?"
Well, I will put it to you this way......If I knew a perfect way, I would be a rich man selling the formula....hahaha This is a big problem with alot of dogs, especially hounds. My personal worse nightmare is when they bay up cattle. But believe me when I tell you------I know the feeling. My dogs arent perfect, especially if not hunted on a regular basis. But I dont have alot of problem with deer, but they do occasionally if not hunted. This is what I have done. We have a large "ranchette" subdivision near me that has hundreds of deer on it. Its not hard to go out on a cool afternoon or early morning and see over a hundred deer. What I do is this, I take the dog I want to work and put a shock collar on him early in the day before I go over there. This way he wont know the shock is from the collar. I also dont take it off for several hours after the correction work out. I simply go over there, and find where the deer cross the road and I can see them. I turn the dog out and he runs down the road. If he wants to run the deer, he will smell the track and take off after them. when he gets close the deer will take off, and the race is on.... as soon as i know HE CAN SEE what the SMELL is hes running, I shut him down. Ive had dogs Ive turned for a flip and they get up and take after them again. I repeat the process. After two or three of these corrections, Usually the dog is running back to the truck when he runs across that smell. This is not a one day process, it usually will take several sessions, the main thing is to run the dog in the woods with the collar, when you KNOW FOR SURE, hes running a deer, shut him down. You will find that when you take him to the woods to hunt, he might not hunt like he usually does for the first few times, but just keep with him, to where he gets his confidence back and realizes hes not going to hurt IF HE JUST WONT RUN THAT SMELL.
Good luck and hope this helps,
Jim