Thanks 3FF......

Two years ago we tracked a deer for a young boy who had shot the deer in the afternoon with a 243. The deer had fallen down but as they were walking to it got up and took off. Fred and I looked for it the next morning and on the first pass found no blood and I was about to chalk it off to the high back shot.
I took Fred back to the starting point and after he followed the exact path he had first taken I let go of the lead. Several minutes later I caught up with Fred baying the deer. It took off but we finally caught up with it and shot it. It turned out that the shot was dead in the shoulder of a broadside deer but did not penetrate the vitals. I have not been a 243 fan since but if using one I would recommend shooting behind the shoulder.

My wife has shot a few with a .243 and if you hit them in the right spot it can be devastating. It looks to me like the bullet may be fragmenting though so that can have it’s pros and cons. For a grown man, I can’t see why anyone would carry an undersized gun to the woods. It matters first and foremost where you hit it….but I’d like to have that forgiveness offered by the larger caliber.

The deer shot by my little cousin was with a 30-06. He’s 15 years old now and shoots it pretty well for someone that age. The shot he made on the back slapped buck was around 200 yards down a powerline. There was a good amount of really dark hair at the hit site and the blood looked like meat wound type blood. That near black hair was what really confirmed the back slap in my mind.

No story this morning, just some rambling dog talk for the other trackers. I know every tracker will have different opinions but I just wanted throw out mine for the other new guys reading. More often times than not….when I go out on a track, there’s a group of hunters waiting to go “watch the dog”. I let them go when I first started but I’ve quit doing that and started only letting one person go with me on each track. It’s going much smoother so far. You’re gonna see some sad faces but no one will care when you find the deer……and that’s the more important part to everyone rather than watching a dog show.

Not only is it distracting to a young dog but I found that when a group of folks went with me then I had to not only focus on Otis and the track…..but I was also trying to manage people at the same time….. “Hey man….y’all stay together in case Otis works back to us…….Hey man, y’all keep your voices down just a little bit in case the deer is alive.……..Hey man, where did the other guy go??” .......and on and on and on……

It may sound good to say were gonna let the little kids go watch too but when your plowing through a briar patch 500 yards deep into a young cutover, looking for a possible live buck, and the dog is taking the track on……it’s just really not a good place for a little kid to be….especially when they’re not dressed to go through such nastiness. As a matter of fact, I just went by Tractor Supply and bought some more leather gloves and such for the hunter that goes with me and Otis. I think everyone has a different perception of how things will unfold as compared to how they actually do. Nearly every track ends up in the nastiest. ugliest briar patch on the property. I’ve had folks go in a t-shirt with no gloves that say at the truck “Eh, I’ll be good man.”……......only to get nut deep into it and say........ “Wheeew!..Got dayum it’s thick in here ain’t it!”......


Go in prepared for battle.



Anyways….yeah, JMO but I think you’re better off to leave the group back at camp waiting to help drag.

Your spot on brother

I didn’t want to keep completely hi-jacking Honey lou lou’s thread more than I already did with dog talk so I thought I’d put my response to Geno down here. It’s a good topic to talk about with everyone anyways. It was in reference to how long after the shot a decent dog should be able to track a deer.

I’m still fairly new to tracking but I’ve met a lot of the other trackers around Alabama/Georgia and I’ve been to several tracking conventions where I’ve got to meet trackers from around the nation. From listening and talking to these folks, it seems like the vast majority of trackers out there are working tracks of 6-24 hrs old routinely.....with a large percentage of those being in the 6-12 hr range. Tracks of 30+ hrs are a very, very small percentage of finds. You’ve got trackers who have stories about finding one 40 hrs old or 62 hours old, etc….but those are like the white whales of tracking stories….not the norm and certainly not what they want to run on a “routine” track.

A lot of it does depend on the individual dog but the right track under the right conditions matters a lot too…..a good gut shot might be able to be winded days later and the dog not even have to “blood track it” in order to find it. The age that ground scent will be able to be followed though, will depend a lot on the moisture in the soil and humidity in the air even if it’s a top notch dog.

I just don’t want folks to get the wrong impression and think that they can wait a day and then call in a tracker and expect them to be able to find the deer in routine fashion. It may happen or it may not but you’re starting to throw bombs and hailmarys at that point instead of running what would have been a routine play had they gotten in there within a reasonable time frame. If someone needs a tracker they ideally need to try to get the dog in there 6-24 hrs after the shot to give someone’s dog a high percentage chance at it. The sooner the better assuming you’ve given the deer due time to die.

So are you saying to give a minimum of 6 hours to die? Or are you saying 6 hours is about as quick as: 1) I can determine I need a dog, 2) Find your number, 3) You load up and get to me, and 4) begin tracking?

Both of your reasons really, but mainly to give the deer some time before we send a dog in behind it. If someone calls me and needs a deer tracked, then you can just about be assured that it’s not hit in the heart or lungs…..if it was…..then they would likely find it easily and not need a dog. Sure, they’ll be a few exceptions to the rule but playing the percentages….. if I went out to track every deer within 2-3 hrs then I’m assuring myself of dealing with a LOT of live deer. Waiting 5-6 hrs at a minimum gives the deer time to die or at least weaken some from the marginal hit. One exception to the rule would be if you just blew the leg off and someone was gonna try to bay that deer up. That tracker would just assume get on a leg hit immediately. Me personally, I prefer to play it conservatively and give any track time.

This is actually something I have a hard time getting some calls to understand. In their heads, the hunters want to think that I can just come out right then and get their deer for them. I just can’t come out there though and get a dead deer for someone when it’s still alive no matter how big of a hurry they’re in.

A sweet spot to send a dog in would be anywhere from 5-12 hrs after the shot. A fresher track will allow the dog to be able to follow it easier because they not only blood track it….but they also track the deer itself similar to the same way someone’s deer hounds would on a dog drive. That scent and the ability of the dog to track “the deer” itself dissipates quicker than the scent coming off the blood. The rate at which these scents age depends on the conditions (moisture/humidity). The older it gets the harder the dog has to dig it out.

What I would recommend to everyone is to give your deer some time after the shot and then do an “assessment” of the situation. Don’t just take off in behind it thinking it’s gonna be just right there. Use the information gathered at the hit site and the first 50-75 yards……combined with how you saw the deer react, etc…..to come to a general conclusion on where the deer is hit. It’s like being a detective. Use that assessment to decide how to precede from there. Is it a leg hit?......Is it a back slap?.....Is it a gut shot?......Is it a smoked arse?

If you know you just gut shot a biggun and it’s the best deer you’ve ever seen, etc……don’t be afraid to back out and call in the guy with the remote control deer finding machine. Most guys don’t charge much more to track your deer than the gas money that you’ll spend this weekend on the way back and forth to your clubs. If you take the right steps after the shot then it’s pretty routine to come out and recover a deer with a dog if you hit it good enough. It’s all the stuff the hunters do to fugg it up before we get there that makes it challenging.

Exhibit “A”

http://www.aldeer.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1917035#Post1917035


What?....Too soon?

Call just came in for tomorrow morning…….another youth hunter. Dad said he believed it was hit low and back. Deer “bucked” up in the middle and took off running. A little bit of hair at the hit site and decent blood. It’s only been about 2 hrs as I type this since the shot so I have to assume they tracked it pretty quickly. They jumped the buck up at 200-300 ish yards and backed out.

I don’t wanna count my chickens before they hatch but I feel like we have a good chance of finding this one. The deer is gonna go another few hundred yards and bed up again where it’ll die overnight. That’s the plan anyways. It sounds like it was hit in the area of the liver/gut and was just tracked a little too quickly. We’ll find out in the morning………….

Sounds like a good one for Shelby

I’m not gonna throw her on a true lost one just yet. I’m gonna get her on a few more training runs on smoked arse deer first and then maybe try to work her on a few toward the end of the season. Otis’s first year at this same age (7-10 months) we only went on maybe 4 or 5 true lost deer that season. We went on around 15-18 smoked runs though. The training process takes several years and this first one is really just an introduction……..ingraining in them that this is what they do. Technique is learned in the second year….and the third they start putting it all together and honing their skills. That’s what I’ve seen so far anyways. They say (other trackers) that year 4 and 5 is when they really start getting into their prime years.

I have some family coming down this way to hunt next week and I should get a few runs for Shelby on some deer they shoot. If we find this deer tomorrow and it isn’t too deep….I’ll rerun Shelby on the track.

I guess I jinxed us on this one by calling the find ahead of time. The shot must have been really, really low….. somewhere from say under the legs on back to the gut area but maybe only catching an inch or two of deer. It’s possible that it was just a hard grazing shot. We tracked the deer for about a mile. We found one bed with blood at around 300 yards and another bed with blood around 950-1000 yards at the #5 tee box……and then the track seemed to go hot. Yep, I said #5 tee box. This was a first for me for sure. I couldn’t help but laugh a little as Otis emerged out of the thicket, tracking down the side of a fairway and eventually right across a putting green…..and yes we had permission to do it. Which golf course you ask? I’ll let that part just stay a mystery.

Either 1) the deer was out ahead of us moving or 2) it laid in that second bed for most of the night and the track was really fresh past that point. Otis started tracking pretty fast past the last bed though and we took it another 700-750 yards before running out of room. This is one that may live or may die over time. If I had to guess, I'd say it's still alive right now.

Just want to thank CNC for helping me locate a tracking dog for my daughters’ buck this weekend! Also, thanks for all the advice you’ve given here on the site, on letting a deer lay and not moving right in on it, and for hunters not to do much of their own looking IF they think a dog will be needed for recovery.

Thanks 3G’s….Glad it all worked out. That’s an awesome buck! You definitely did the right thing by backing out and giving the deer some time.

Went 2 fer 2 today....I'm wore out. About to partake in a couple ice cold adult beverages and then call it a day. I'll post stories and pics in the morning.

Congratulations. Looking forward to the stories.

Thanks!.....

Yesterday’s story part one…………

Call comes in around 8:00 am….actually a text. The hunter wants to know if I will come out and look for a buck he shot the evening before around 3:30. He said it was a really nice 8 pt that he didn't even really think he had hit at first. He said the deer didn’t really show any typical reaction to being shot other than bolting. No blood at the hit site and no blood for the first 50 yards or so. The first spot of blood came where the deer made a hard turn into the bushes. The hunters tracked very spotty blood for about 100 yards and then lost it.

After texting back and forth for a while about the situation I tell him that I’m on my way. I get my tracking stuff on, the dogs loaded up, the house locked up, and I’m literally putting the truck in drive to leave when I get another text from him saying “Don’t come……another hunter just saw my buck and he’s not hurt.” So, I get back out and go on about my business.

A couple hours go by and then the hunter sends me another text of one of the blood spots they found. In the pic I can see this big glob of blood about the size of a nickel that looked similar to big blood clot. It reminded me of the little chunks of blown up stuff that’s usually down in the chest cavity when you’re field dressing one. He said they had found several of those in the first hundred yards. I told him that didn’t really look like just a grazing shot and asked him if he was for sure the other deer was his. After talking more to the other hunter he calls me back and decides it wasn’t his deer and he wants to come on. So I load everything up again and actually leave this time.

There wasn’t much to tell about the track. We arrived around noon and Otis went 470 yards right to it without even really working any checks on this one. The tiny wound holes had just clogged up and it wasn't leaving anything for them to track. We only saw a couple specks right before we found the deer. I forgot to ask the guy what he was shooting in all the excitement but there was barely any entry or exit hole. The exit hole was about as big around as your finger. He had hit the deer low behind the front leg and it came out low in the brisket in front of the off side leg. The exit hole is actually covered up by the deer's nose in the pic....there wasn't much to it. It was amazing the deer went as far as it did. A really nice deer though and a really happy hunter.

Part two still to come.......

Sounds like those damn hornady american whitetails