How does a dog know what direction to go with a track?

A dogs nose if taken apart and each peice laid in on square foot of floor space would cover a full size garage.

Dogs that back track were in some cases started wrong. When you make a drag for example you drop your drag and walk off.............when you take the dog to the trail, where do most start the dog from....the place they started the drag from. This is backwards from how the trail would be. To make a proper drag you start your drag from where you want to end up, this way the strongest smell is at the end where the animal would be.

When we turn hogs loose for young dogs, lets say from a trap a hog has been in for a couple days, where is the strongest smell.......at the trap and at the start of the trail because the hog has been there for a long time again a backwards trail.

You trun a hog loose for young dogs and dump water on it.........they trail it a ways and come back....you complain they dont know what they are doing.......you set them up for that, where is the strongest smell......

I use the term "you" which means "me" in reallity.........since I have done all these things and complained about the dogs, when its really my fault.

I have watched hogs run off from in the road and turn dogs loose and they know hogs were there but keep coming back to where they arent....this is because the strongest smell is where they were all bunched up standing.
As someone mentioned.........experiance is a huge key but there are a few things we can do to help them, the main one is think about what we are doing when starting dogs, never set your dog for failure, this is usually done unknowing. The KEY is to think ahead about the outcome.

Thought process is something no one talks about in the dog world, we dont cause we dont understand it. All i know is............not all dogs think alike.......could it be IQ.......who knows.......there are for sure some dogs smarter than others. I have watched my top dog study and work on a trail for an hour like a doctor pouring over a medical book trying to figure out that unknow killer cancer, with other dogs standing watching him.

Ill end my ramble now......