The Slough Hound

Bloodhound, sloughhound slough dog, Slough, swamp,

You often smell it before you see it: A pungent, stale “swampy” smell not unlike the hint of sulfur that comes from rotten eggs.

In topography, such a smell is often found in a treeless wetland environment where water is stagnant or slow-moving. Such body of water is not a ‘swamp’ because swamps are typically treed, and can be so woody as to have a canopy. Swamps can develop in rivers or coasts in low-lying areas along, and depending upon their location, can have flowing water, though how much and how fast can vary.

Some people may call such an area a swamp, but they wrong. It’s probably a ‘slough’ – what some folks might call ‘backwater,’ and there are differences between them. Sloughs are usually found from cut-off rivers, they have far fewer trees than a swamp, and the water found is deeper than a swamp, and it’s slow moving, if not stagnant. A slough usually form when the bend of a river or stream gets cut off from a main river channel and creates an oxbow lake – a body of water that, when seen from, say, a drone, is U-shaped.

Horizontal Cypress Trees at Slough Preserve in Fort Myers. Florida by ©Chmuller/Dreamstime

Sloughs are important to an ecosystem because in them is a tremendous diversity of aquatic plants, fish, and invertebrates – some rare and endangered. The United States has several sloughs, and they include the Shark River Slough and Taylor Slough in the Everglades, the Elkhorn Slough near Monterey, California, and sloughs in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Ecologists, botanists, and microbiologists love sloughs, but do you know who doesn’t like them?

Criminals. Bad guys. Lawbreakers.

When incarcerated in the area of sloughs, people on the run find it near impossible to navigate quickly and quietly. Sloughs are home to venomous snakes and biting insects. The ground is muddy and unstable, and though a slough is often treeless, there is still other kinds of dense growth that can trip up someone on the move. Sure, dense vegetation can provide cover, but it also limits a fugitive’s ability to spot approaching law enforcement. And if they have dogs???

Woe to the felon trying to escape capture when dogs are involved. The wet environment of sloughs do a dandy job of preserving scent trails making short work for a tracking dog, and history proves it.

In 1939, Ray Olson, wanted for having killed two Hayward Deputy Sheriffs, evaded capture for for two weeks, and despite Olson’s attempts to elude them by burning cabins and traveling on water, Bloodhounds consistently regained his scent. Olson was ultimately felled by the bullets from a veteran woodsman’s deer rifle.

Between 2013 and 2019, miscreants in parts of California were found by Bloodhounds, K-9 Hannah, K-9 Bocephus, and K9 Hannya, in sloughs and swamps, and we mention their breed as a segue to understanding why, back in the day, Bloodhounds were not only called, “sleuthhounds” (for obvious reasons), but also sloughhounds or sloughdogs.

Frank Jackon’s Dictionary of Canine Terms published in 1995 makes mention of this, and before him, the 18th century Oxford English Dictionary mentions Bloodhounds being called “slough dogs” or “sloughhounds. The first known use of the term “slough-dog,” however, appeared in 1774 in the writing of Thomas Pennant, a naturalist, traveller, and writer. Bloodhounds were used to pursue Moss-troopers (17th-century brigands or deserting soldiers) through sloughs, bogs, and mosses along the border between Scotland and northern England.

Linguists might quibble with why this word (slough) was used, and suggest that the word might be related to “slot hound,” with “slot” meaning “to track.” Be that as it may, we know that Sir Walter Scott used the term “slough hound” in his work “Lord of the Isles” (though perhaps not why).

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