He’s trained to come to a whistle and the GPS collar he wears also has a beeper on it that I can trigger from my handheld unit. He knows to come back to me when the collar beeps. I can pull him right off of running a deer like the one we came upon today…he’s responding well to that. That’s the third live one I’ve pulled him off with no issue. We went from tracking to instant bay though today. Otis was originally tracking about 100-125 yards in front of us but when he came to the creek, he waited up on us and was a little anxious to cross on his own. After we went around and got across in a better spot…Otis went back ahead of us and hadn’t even made it out to 30-40 yards or so when he let loose baying. The buck had gotten up out of a thicket right along side the creek and immediately squared off on us. We were right in behind Otis and didn’t see the buck until we were already within 10 yards or so. Nasty thick along the little creek we were on. Otis was within feet of him before he knew it. For the brief moment the buck was squared off Otis didn’t seem to be trying to grab him....but he was really close upon him though. I think it startled all parties involved. Its one of the reasons we took a minute to regroup.

We fully expected to find the deer dead. Two hunters bow hunting close together had actually watched the deer bed twice after the shot the evening before. They had left him in the second bed at dark and snuck out hoping that he would be there in the morning. They had really only called me because it was a friend of mine’s hunting club close to my house and we thought we would get Otis some work. Couldn't believe he was still alive 17 hrs later. The arrow was coated with gut slime.