Thanks Cuz and foldemup!

Hopefully we'll get the stories going again later today. Somebody is gonna have to be pretty mad at 'em to be out there this morning as cold as it is....but with it being Saturday, I'm sure there's still plenty of hunters in the woods.

Otis is 2 ½ years old now and while he’s doing well on these tracks…..he’s still learning and improving. I don’t think what many folks realize when they get into tracking….and certainly something I myself didn’t realize in the beginning….is that it takes years and lots of tracks to create a finished tracking dog.

One of the places I still see Otis continuing to improve is with search areas and checks. The things I don’t understand about the scent lines and these check areas is why we may go for 100-300 yards like he’s following a gut wagon…..and then all of sudden we hit a point where he loses it and has to work the area over for 5-15+ minutes before picking it up again. Many times, the deer has just continued on the way it was going. It’s like there’s suddenly a big gap in the line. Otis is getting to where he casts really big circles around the check area now when he loses it versus what he used to do. He’ll circle for a minute or two and then come back to his point of loss….sniff it, maybe back track it again….and then continue his looping search.

Another way that I see Otis continuing to change is by him trying to communicate with me now. On this last track, we were working a check and after a few minutes I could tell by Otis’s body language that he had picked it back up and was about to continue on. I saw Otis pick up the line and start his little trot, trot, trot to take it on when all of sudden he just slammed on the brakes and looked back at me like to tell me he had it, let’s go. As soon as I took a step toward him, he put his nose back down and went on with it.

Call just came in from the morning hunt. The deer was broadside at 60 yards but slowly walking. This was around 7:45. The buck jumped up and kicked after the shot and ran off. It stopped out in the distance for a moment and the hunter said it looked wobbly but started going again and disappeared into the ever familiar “thicket”. They’ve found zero blood but feels very, very confident the deer is hit. I’m assuming that its likely a gut shot or low gut shot of some sort. I told the hunter I wanted to give him a couple more hours before we track it so we’re meeting at lunch to go after him.

To be continued…………..

Good luck CNC

Good luck!

The hunter must have zipped this one right under the deer’s belly and just barely caught it in the guts or something. We talked a little more about it…. and he said the deer jumped straight up in the air, which is pretty common for that type hit. We tracked it and got it up at around 300 yards. We caught up to him one time at around 700 yards but he took off again before we could get any kind of shot on him. He still looked pretty lively but slower than normal. At around 900 yards he crossed the back road and went into some chest high pines on another piece of property. We backed out on him there in hopes that the hunter can get in touch with those landowners tonight and we can go back in tomorrow at lunch. If he’s mortally wounded he should stop and bed in that stand of young pines. Maybe they’ll call me back tonight with permission to continue pursuing him.

Good track, Otis. Sounds like y'all did all you could today. Hoping you get another call this evening and are able to find him.

Thanks.....That’s one where we would have been much better off had it been an afternoon shot and the deer had all night to expire. We gave him over 4 hrs but he really needed 8-12 probably after seeing how lively he was.

Call just came in for tomorrow morning. The buck was crossing a greenfield at 50 yards broadside. The hunter put his crosshairs on the point of the shoulder and pulled the trigger. The deer dropped down in the front end and nearly hit the ground before it took off. They can’t find any blood but feel really good about the deer being hit.

My first thought was a leg hit when he said the deer’s front end dropped but they haven’t found bone or blood so I don’t think that’s it. My best guess is hopefully it went in the point of the shoulder and just didn’t exit on the other side. I’ve found deer for this club before and they say it’s biggun and they don’t want to take any chances on losing it if it’s hit. They’re backing out and waiting on me to track it in the morning.

To be continued……….

I believe the meat will be just fine over night. My butt frozen the my treestand this evening.

Yeah, no joke. They'll probably have to thaw it out before they can skin it.

If the yotes don't get it the meat will be fine, maybe froze. I have seen deer drop the front end and bulldoze when heart shot. Bet he won't be to far when you find him.

I agree. If he did hit it where he was aiming, then it shouldn’t be far. It’s probably a 200+ lb buck that just toted the shot out a little farther than what they’re looking. It went into some young pines so it could just be right there and them not seeing it.

Tuned in for tomorrow.

'Nother question...are you seeing most of these deer heading into the thickest stuff on the place? Or are they just breakneck, high speed as far as they can go in one direction? Or do they do the old banana loop that I heard so much of growing up?

Quick take on your call that came in tonight...My son shot one in a greenfield that did the same thing you are describing above. Deer went down pretty hard on the front end and then left the field, tail down and in a "death run." We looked hard for him and never found him even though I was sure he was dead. Fast forward a month and he came back to the same field to get a bite to eat. This time didn't end so lucky for the buck. Ended up being my sons first deer and upon examining the first shot from a month prior, he basically hit the deer on the very bottom line of G7 on your chart. Hope this one is hit a little better than that one was, but just wanted to give you my experience. Good luck in the morning!

Many folks are already hunting right around some form of thickness and that’s where the deer came from and where they ran back into. It seems like one way or the other we end up in the thickest stuff on the property before it’s over. Right along the edges of creeks also seems to be a common place for them to bed up. We track many off into creek bottoms. If we track a deer far enough though, they typically all begin to loop back around. I think most of them have a core bedding area that they want to get back to where they feel safe and that’s where they’re looping back to. Most don’t run a straight line for very far.

I’m hoping that tomorrow’s track turns out to be a good one. You just never know. Often times the hunter’s perception of what happened and the reality of what happened are different. Many folks don’t think that there’s any way the deer is still alive yet about 1 out of 2 are……

1 fer 2 today. Stories and pics to come.

Alright, let’s start with the first track…..the call from last night. One correction from the call….the deer was actually standing at 150 yards and NOT 50 yards. The hunter was shooting a 300 Win Short Mag with ballistic tip bullets. He said that he had always used regular ol’ Corelokts in the past and one of the other members talked him into trying some ballistic tips. This was the first deer he had shot with them.

This hunter said that he had always aimed at the point of the shoulder in the past because it would break ‘em down and they wouldn’t go anywhere. I’m pretty sure what happened on this deer is that the bullet exploded when it hit this buck’s front shoulder. They said it was a full grown man so I figure the bullet just fragmented into the meat and never penetrated the body cavity. We tracked right to the deer at around 350 yards but once he got up, we couldn’t get him to woe up. We kept tracking him for 1000 more yards but never got him to stop. I really don’t think it was a fatal hit in the front of the body cavity or he would have been a lot weaker after laying up all night.

One really cool thing about this track was that the hunter was retired from working in the prison system after 30 something years. He was in charge of the man tracking hounds and he shared some cool arse stories with me about chasing bad guys with the dogs. He told me one cool story about chasing a cop killer through the swamps in Florida. I also learned the things that really give the man tracking hounds fits and it really translated well to understanding places where Otis might struggle or have to track slower. I really enjoyed the conversation we had.

So we finally called it off and decided to head back to the truck when right on time, another call came in. The hunter said that he had shot a good buck the evening before and not been able to find it. They said they found bone and tracked pretty good blood for a 200 yards before hearing the deer get up and take off in front of them. They backed out and decided to come back in this morning to recover it. They got to talking about it more and decided to go ahead and call in a dog for the search since it was likely a leg hit.

This was a pretty simple run for 200 ish yards right to the deer. The deer was actually shot in the back leg and I suppose bled out during the night or something. The yotes and buzzards had already found it and damn near eat the whole thing. Since it didn’t take long to find the deer….I also suited Shelby up and re-tracked it with her. She did really well knowing what we were there to do and with her motivation to find it. She still has a long ways to go though with controlling her excitement. Just part of being 8 months old.

Congrats on the find. Love reading this thread.

Wow, the yotes made quick work of that one. As always congrats and keep the stories coming!

I find myself checking this first thing when I log on every day. been a real plus to me for this year's deer season( mine personally has been slow with limited opportunities to even go).
what sticks out to me is the number of deer that are shot and would probably not have been unrecovered. I won't give up on one now until I have called in a tracker. I am even making sure when I do get to go, I have gas and tip money for the tracker if needed!
keep it up CNC.