Part two…………

So let’s back up for a minute to me just leaving the house to go on the first track. I hadn’t made it 5 miles down the road when another call comes in. The guy said he had been referred to me by the hunter I was headed to track for and they had one down as well about 20 miles away….could I come look for their deer too? I told him that I didn’t know how long the first track would take me but if it went smoothly then I’d be glad to. It turned out that these two families were friends with each other. The dad from one family was already on the phone with the grandad from the other one as soon as we found the first deer…….”They found it in ten minutes!....He’s on his way!”

This was a young kid’s deer that had been gut shot WAY back and low. It’s funny because both the dad and grandad said that they knew they were pushing the deer and doing the wrong thing….but the amount of blood and gut material just made them keep on tracking.....thinking it had to just be right there. This is very common and something everyone needs to try and restrain yourself from doing. It's almost like natural instinct to want to chase after it when you see all the blood on the ground. The deer was shot that morning early……by 10:00 they had pushed it around 1200 ish yards where the blood trail finally went cold on them. I learned later on that they had also brought in the yard dog once the blood line went cold to look some more. Not a good idea of you need to call in a tracking dog.

The reason I say all of this is not to scold the hunter or anything like that…..but just to continue using these stories as learning/teaching tools for everyone. This would have been a very simple find had the hunters just backed out and given the deer time. Instead it turned out to be a really tough track for a gut shot like this.

Since they had already tracked it so far, I told them we wouldn’t start at the hit site and we would go from last blood…..it didn’t end up actually being last blood though....it was there next to last spot of blood. Otis started tracking like normal but I don’t know if he got off on the scent of the yard dog or a searchers feet with blood on it or what happened....... but he progressed a line that ended up being very close to where the deer was finally located but he wasn’t on the right track. We got down into a swamp bottom and eventually ran into the property line. Otis wasn’t really acting like he had the track anymore anyways and was more less searching to find it rather than tracking a line. By this time we’ve been tracking for about an hour and half and made it about 400 yards or so past last blood.

So the hunter tells me that he thinks they actually had another random spot of blood about 100 yards past where we started and he didn’t think the dog ever went by it. We walk back out to find the last spot of blood he’s referring to and do a restart. This time Otis took us on a different path down into the swamp with much more confidence. We tracked for about 300-400 yards past the last blood spot they found. He took us back down into the beaver swamp where there were little fingers of water running all over the place. We crossed a couple of those fingers of water and then across a good sized hole of water just over knee deep...... where I filled my boots with water just yards ahead of Otis finding the deer. We were watching him cross the little pond when a few buzzard flew off out of the trees ahead us and I told the hunters...there he is right there. Sure enough Otis found it moments later…………….

I should have thought to ask him but there was a lot of excitement at the time and I let it just slip my mind. I know I'd be seriously thinking about switching to something different if that wasn't just a fluke. He didn't hit the deer all that bad really but there just wasn't enough trauma to put the deer down quickly and it covered a lot of ground on a death run.

Great posts and great finds yesterday! Otis showed out in spite!

I love these posts CNC, keep the stories coming. They are very interesting and good reads. I'll echo what Beadlescomb is saying the American whitetail bullets are garbage and do not expand.

Thanks man……...

Thanks!.....


I’ve been deer hunting for about 25 years now and going at it about as hardcore as anyone. I’ve learned more over the last few of years of tracking though about shot placement and the deer’s reaction to it than what I did in the previous 20+ of just hunting. We vastly underestimate a deer’s resilience and we vastly underestimate “time” when it comes to backing out and letting the deer lay. I hope that by relaying these stories that everyone can see the same things I’m seeing and grow a better appreciation for the decisions we make after the shot. It’s a win/win for both tracker and hunter if you make good decisions after the shot because it makes recovering these marginally hit deer much simpler. Once these folks see a trained dog work then you can see that their idea of “recovering deer” has just been completely changed.

A couple takeaways……..

1) Everyone go by Wal-Mart…..Tractor Supply…..your local hardware store…..or wherever you want to buy it and buy a roll of orange flagging to put in your truck. If not, then at least grab a handful of toilet paper and generously mark key checkpoints of the track in tree limbs that can be easily seen. Mark the initial hit spot……mark first blood….mark along the trail every so often…..mark the last spot of blood……mark places where it crossed creeks and ditches…etc…etc…..I see the same thing play out over and over.....folks don’t know where these key locations are at when we go back in……”We had blood somewhere in here???......."I think we stopped somewhere around this bottom, I’m not sure.” Flagging these areas so that they’re easily visible and easy to go back to will make the search much more efficient and likely to be successful.

2) White hair is just about a sure sign of a low hit. The second track had white hair at the hit site as well as pieces of gut along the trail. Deer that are hit low in the guts need to be given LOTS of time….probably 8 hrs minimum with a gun. If it’s an afternoon hunt and all you find is a big wad of white hair on the initial assessment…..just go home and come back the next morning.

3) By all means, do a search on your own. I’m not saying you should just back out on every shot and immediately call in a dpg…….BUT….if you already KNOW it’s a marginal shot then take into consideration as you do that search that you may eventually want to call a dog. Don’t keep going past a controlled search of one or two people into massive search parties and yard dogs before conceding. You take a simple situation and make it complicated.

Good stuff bub

Thanks!

Love the stories!!! Way to go Otis!

Nice work Otis!

Call just came in. The hunter reported lots of blood for 150-200 yards and then nothing. Maybe the deer just changed directions. He didn't get a really good look at the deer after the shot but he said he didn't think he saw it holding a bad leg. Leg shots can bleed a lot like that. Let's hope its something else. Headed to find out..........

No luck on this one. I believe it may have actually been a leg hit after all. There was great blood for several hundred yards and then nothing. We tracked it with no issues for 1,000 yards but we just never came up on the deer. A leg or brisket hit is about all I can figure this one may be. No signs to point to gut hit. I think it went WAY too far to be bleeding that heavily from liver or chest cavity.

November 28, 2016



I tried to run a 28 hr old track yesterday but it was just too old this time for Otis under these conditions……..

The hunter reported that he had shot a good buck with his bow. He said he saw where the arrow hit and watched the deer run off with it in him. The hit was a little back and high on a slightly “quartering to” shot. The hunter gave the buck plenty of time before tracking. There was decent enough blood that they were able to track the deer 485 yards according to my GPS. They found the arrow at 80 yards where it had fell out of the deer. One side of the Rage expandable was bent. There wasn't any beds but there was a couple of spots where the deer obviously stopped and bled spots about the size of your fist.

We started at the hit site to let Otis run the good blood areas and get accustomed to the smell. He was progressing the line but I could tell that he was having to work really hard to follow it and keep moving it forward. We were progressing 30-40 yards and then working a check….30-40 yards and working a check….and so on. After 150 yards or so I decided to go ahead and progress the line myself to the last know spot of blood so that Otis did wear himself out on a known line.

This track was in the hills and hollers of some pretty good ridges but it was some of the most open hardwoods that I’ve tracked in to date. You could see Otis just about the whole time and really watch his technique for searching. He’s learned to work out from his last known spot in a spiral pattern until he picks up on the clean line again. Its really cool to watch now. That’s what he did at the last blood to work around the search area. After about 20 minutes of working around the last blood he finally found a way he liked and started progressing the line straight down a bottom where the ridges came together.

He was having to work it 30-40 yards at a time again and it was a super slow go. Otis will run a track in a situation like this by working out and back from a known spot he is sure of in a circular pattern like previously described. A lot of the time spent tracking on tough track like this is waiting for him to move the line forward on a line he is confident of. That’s what we did for the next hour and a half until we had moved straight up the holler another 300-400 yards. At this point we were approaching 900 yards from the hit site and I could tell Otis was wearing down from the intense sniffing. I finally called it as he lost the line again and got muddled down in a check.

I’m not really sure if this deer was hit good enough to recover or what happened. With the lack of moisture to work with….the track was really just too old to work efficiently at 28 hrs. I’m as happy to see this rain coming for the sake of tracking as much as I am the food plots. I think in the long run this tough drought period we’ve just went through is gonna prove to be outstanding training for Otis though. He’s had to dig so hard in the dust that when we finally do have some moisture to work with again……I think it’ll seem a lot simpler for him in comparison. Bring on the rain!!!!

This rain is gonna help us all

We got good rain down here.....It's on like neckbone now!!! Woohooo!!

Call just came in for in the morning. The hunter stuck a good buck with his bow this afternoon after the front passed through. He said he felt like he stuck it in the pocket behind the shoulder and thinks it may have hit the shoulder on the opposite side. He was using expandable broadheads. He said the blades were gone from the head and the arrow was broken. After tracking for 250 ish yards and with the blood turning to specks…..he decided to back out and bring in a dog in the morning. It sounds like it’s a pretty dang good one.

To be continued……..

Looking forward to the rest of the story.