By Tabitha Evans Moore
Editor & Publisher

LINCOLN COUNTY, Tenn. — Moore County’s bloodhound Hoss was in the middle of a training seminar in Lynchburg when a real search came calling. On September 22, Hoss and his handler, Metro Moore County EMS’s Zach Means, joined a team of Middle Tennessee bloodhounds that tracked two teens who had run away from home in Lincoln County. The dogs followed the trail for more than two miles through briars, woods, and a dry creek bed before deputies found the pair in a field about an hour later.

According to an account from Scent Evidence K9, the company that runs the training program, handlers from Metro Moore County EMS, Franklin County EMA and Rescue, and Bedford County Emergency Management Agency had just started the seminar when Lincoln County EMA Director Doug Campbell got the call. Campbell was visiting the training. The teams drove about 30 minutes to the scene.

While Campbell interviewed the family, handlers from Moore and Franklin counties collected scent from the teens’ shoes using a special scent-collection vacuum. Means and Hoss went first, starting from where the teens were last seen heading into the woods. They trailed for more than half a mile through heavy briars and brush to a rural field before stopping because of the 90-degree heat.

Franklin County EMA’s Casey Jackson and bloodhound Ellie Mae picked up where Hoss left off. They followed the trail through the woods and down a dry creek bed for a long stretch, stopped for a quick water break, then continued along a wood line to a rural road, where the heat again forced a stop. Lincoln County Sheriff’s deputies had gone ahead of the dogs and spotted the teens, who crossed the road where Ellie Mae stopped and ran into a field. Deputies located them there a short time later.

The training that brought the teams to Lynchburg is paid for through the Kevin and Avonte Program: Reducing Injury and Death of Missing Individuals with Dementia and Developmental Disabilities. Metro Moore County EMS received the federal grant in 2023. The program is designed to help communities find people with dementia, autism, or other conditions who may wander away from home and be unable to find their way back.

Locally, the grant is worth more than $100,000. It has paid for handling equipment, kennels, and scent kits, along with ongoing training for the county’s K9 team. Moore County now has two bloodhounds, Hoss and Dottie. The Lynchburg Veterinary Hospital donates their vet care and local donations provide food.

Hoss joined Metro Moore County EMS in May 2022. Local farmer Robert Darden sponsored him in memory of his son, Daniel, with help from a donation from the Jack Daniel Distillery. Since then, Moore County has trained regularly with bloodhound teams from Franklin and Bedford counties, and the teams routinely help one another with searches across county lines.

Scent kits help bloodhounds pick up a missing person’s trail quickly. Families caring for a loved one with dementia, autism, or another condition that may cause them to wander can contact Metro Moore County EMS at 931-759-7861 to learn more about the kits.

To learn more about how Hoss came to Moore County, read our 2022 coverage. For a look at how the K9 team trains locally, see our September 2025 story about how they use a plethora of scent in and around the Lynchburg Square to train.

“There are hundreds of smells down around the square because of all the tourists,” EMA Director Jason Deal told us at the time. “It really helps Hoss get better at singling out just one scent.”•

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