Thanks…….Let’s just hope this one is dead. Marginal bow shots can take a long time to expire....especially if it's really low in the gut/liver area. If he's not dead he ought to be really weak. It’ll be roughly 22 hrs after the shot. Me and bwhunter had a gut shot (bow) jump up and square off on me, him, and Otis last year after 17 hrs. I was amazed at how alive he was.

Another call just came in for tomorrow morning. Not a whole lot of details on this one. The deer was crossing a lane and the hunter put a broadside shot on it. The deer hunched and took off. Spotty blood for 40 yards and then nothing. They also said that there was one really good spot of blood at the end that appeared as though he was bleeding out both sides.

I figure that last good spot is where the stopped after the initial bolt out of the lane. He likely stood there for a moment and then bounced off. I suspect that this may be a hit a little too far back or both low and back. No bone or anything reported.

To be continued........

Make sure Otis gets to bed early tonight. He's got a big day tomorrow.

I’ll send y’all an update at lunch time. I got lucky on these two and they’re only about 6-7 miles apart. You don't get that too often. I really hope they’re both short and sweet because with it being Saturday during the rut, there’s likely to be a lot of lead slung around tomorrow.

Thanks CNC- I referred the call on the second call. Guide asked who could help, and I immediately thought of you. Hunter is with our Lion's Club charity deer hunt group. Hope you can find him.

I appreciate the referral. I was supposed to meet them this morning but they canceled on me when I called to head their way. Not sure what happened.

The first deer was still alive. We tracked it around 450 yards past where they jumped it the day before and found it bedded up in a creek. It jumped up on us and went 200 yards to the property line. He was hurt and I suspect he will eventually die. The shot was 48 yards with a bow just at daybreak. Not sure where it was hit. I suspect either really low or possibly just under the spine. I'm typing on my phone so I gotta keep the story short for now.

Finally made it back home. I spent the day riding around talking to hunters and handing out some more cards. That track this morning just verified a pattern that I’m seeing play out over and over. Many of these marginally wounded deer are headed down into a wet bottom. A lot of people say that they want to get in water to cool themselves because they feel hot. That very well may be the case but these deer are also headed to “mud”. They’re trying to treat the wound by packing it with mud.

When we got off into the creek bottom today I knew that’s where we would eventually find the deer. We ran parallel about 10-20 yards off the little branch for several hundred yards before Otis all of a sudden hung a left at a cane thicket and took a 90 degree turn down to the creek. He started circling the cane thicket and easing around it checking it out when the buck came up out of the canes and took off on us. I believe he was actually in the creek branch itself. Something else I’ve noticed is that these wounded deer will stay held tight until you kick them up like a rabbit.

Anyways, it must have been a slow morning for deer movement. I had a few calls from folks just calling me to talk to me in case they ever needed a dog but no calls for lost deer from the morning hunt. I was really surprised with it being Saturday. Maybe we’ll get one on the afternoon hunt.

Call just came in for tomorrow morning. This track is for a young kid sitting with dad this afternoon. The shot was broadside with a 7mm-08 at around 80 yards. The deer rared up some off its front legs and then took off favoring one leg. Zero blood and no deer to be found. I will find out for sure but I think he may have been shooting ballistic tips. He mentioned “tipped” bullets.

I think this one has been hit right in the meat of the shoulder. I’m hoping that if this is indeed a ballistic tip that it didn’t explode on the shoulder and never penetrate the body cavity. We’ll find out in the morning. To be continued…………

I ended up going on three tracks today and I learned a valuable lesson in the process………Not taking the time to eat and drink enough fluids will catch up with you no matter how “tuff” you may be. I liked to have over done it today fellas. I feel pretty sure that I was on my way to a heat stroke. I’m just now really feeling like I’m over it after drinking ½ gallon of water on the way home and cooling off. It was the first time all year that I was the one who had to sit down for a minute.

Anyways, I’m headed for the shower. I’ll post pics and stories in just a bit.

You worry about taking care of the dogs and forget about yourself. Too dang hot to be running around these woods. But hey, I'm looking forward to the stories

Yep that’s about the extent of it. I gave them water all day but just didn’t give myself hardly any. I won’t do it again though because I definitely have a breaking point where will power no longer matters.

I’ve been doing some test runs here lately with Otis on allowing more people to go with us on the track in certain situations. He seems to have matured enough now that the extra people aren’t a distraction for him like they used to be as a puppy.

Today’s first track was one of those situations. The shooter was probably around 12 or 13 maybe so I wanted him to go for sure. We also had dad and little brother along but it didn’t seem to effect things at all with Otis’s performance. It probably didn’t help us in the fact that we were dealing with a live deer but it’s all good. Those young boys had a lot of fun. I heard the older brother, the shooter, say “This is the coolest thing ever!”

So anyways, Otis took us around 300 yards down into a bottom to a large pond of standing water….not a man-made pond, just a flooded area of a ¼ acre of so. We found spots of blood here and there as well as a chip of bone. This turned out to be a shot that zipped right under the belly and hit the offside leg I'm pretty sure. Either the deer got up just ahead of us or it had gotten up earlier in the morning and moved from the pond because the scent line definitely went hotter right there.

Otis took it from there about 500-600 yards up the bottom to the big creek. This was a pretty decent size creek too for what we are often tracking around. It looked to be over your head in a lot of places. It also had some steep banks on it except for just a few deer trails here and there that were still pretty steep themselves. Otis got up to the creek, crossed it…..and then started indicating hard that the deer was in the creek. He started going down stream right along the bank...... the whole time trying to get down in the creek if he could. I got him back on my side and he continued to do the same thing…..moving down the creek and constantly trying to somehow get down in it like the deer was just right there.

We followed it for several hundred more yards expecting to find him holed up in the creek around every bend but never came up on him nor found where it looked like he tried to get out. I tend to think the deer got up before we ever got there and moved earlier that morning. I think maybe he got down in the creek and couldn’t get out because his leg was blown up. I think he may have sank possibly if he was mortally wounded or he was just so far ahead of us that we never caught up. I figured we would surely run up on him bedded in the mud of the creek somewhere but just never did. We eventually just decided to call it after around 1300-1400 yards total.

That’s the first track…….More to come.

I know I was seriously thinking about drinking Otis's water the other day. A couple of miles through swamp bottom and clear cuts in this heat will sure get to you.

Story #2

We were riding out from the first track when the phone rang. The hunter was about 15-20 miles away and said he had shot one that morning that was quartering to him at about 75 yards. The deer was right on the edge of a food plot and bolted right back into the thicket so he didn’t really see much reaction but really felt like he had hit it. There was no hair or no blood though.

Otis started working the hit site and the direction the deer had ran. After about 30-40 yards in he really looked to be on a good line. At about 100 I found the first small spot of blood but it turned out to be the only place I saw any. I imagine it was where the deer stopped for a moment before taking off again. We ended up tracking straight to this one around 250 yards out into a young pine thicket. I didn’t get a pic of the wound on this one but the entry hole was on the other side about mid ways back on a "quartering to" angle….no exit hole…….gut shot.

That’s me holstering my pistol after the find. I’ve gotten to where I just go ahead and expect to him to still be alive so I pulled my .45 and just watched him for a moment. Otis circles them as well before going in.

Y'all had a busy weekend. I know it's tough keeping up with Otis when it's almost 80 degrees. You should sure enough be getting some calls in about 10 days when the weather cools off again.

Man if it was cold right now it would really be rockin. I'm glad I went ahead and got a second dog when I did because I'll really need her to be ready to go next year. I may have to just tell folks I can't come out over the next few days if Otis starts acting tired on me and looks like he needs a day off. I just had another call come in for tomorrow morning. Otis is laying over here snoring.

Story #3

So by this time its getting close to noon and another calls comes in before I ever left from track #2. These guys had shot one earlier that morning crossing the top of a ridge in a HUGE clear cut….. going from one draw to the next. We’re talking a clearcut in the 100’s of acres. They had found decent blood here and there for a couple hundred yards and even found one really good spot but couldn’t progress the line any further. The problem was that this clear cut was fingers of draws leading down to one main bottom and they were all slap FULL of treetops everywhere that the logging crew had left. It had also had a summer’s worth of weed growth grown up in it that was over your head in many places. It was a struggle just to walk through this stuff most of the time.

We probably tracked it for 500-600 yards or better and found more blood but the sun was beating down on us HARD out in that open clear cut. There wasn’t any relief at all in terms of shade. After a little while of tracking Otis had slowed way down and had his tongue hung out panting enough that I could tell he was getting pretty hot. He wasn’t tracking like normal anymore and I was having a hard time reading his body language to feel 100% confident that we were still on it the line. By this time we’ve crossed over another little ridge into the next draw. We decided to ease off into the main creek bottom, take a break, and circle back.

Otis got down in the creek and laid down on his belly to cool off. We stayed there for a while until he completely quit panting. I told the hunter that I wanted to check the main creek bottom (SMZ) we were in really well and see if the deer was there since that’s the way it was originally headed and that being such a common place to find them.

We worked back up the bottom for several hundred yards until we passed over the original draw the deer was coming down but Otis didn’t hit on anything. We decided to go back up the creek and check there and then see if we could take anything away from where we left off to take the break. By the time we finished checking the bottom Otis’s sniffer was about spent. We decided to check the next draw over from where we had left off earlier and then call it.

Checking that last draw was when the heat got to me. My heart was beating fast and I got really light headed. My legs felt like they were just shutting down on me. I had to stop multiple times on the walk back to the truck and I typically never have to stop period. I just didn’t feel right at all.

I don’t what kind of hit we were dealing with on the last one. I suspect it was a really low gut hit like the ones we see go for a long, long ways. It was putting out decent blood here and there too like those hits will do. The hunter said it just hopped a little and trotted off. He could see it trot off for a decent ways too and even got a second shot off but missed. This was a track we would have been much better off to not have worked during the heat like we had. It just took its toll on all of us before we could find it.

This is one of only a couple tracks all year where I was really disappointed in me and Otis for not at least finding the deer still alive somewhere, if not dead…….where I felt like we could have tracked the deer much better if the conditions wouldn’t have gotten the best of us. This deer was likely WAY out there somewhere but that usually doesn't stop us. Today it did.

A call came in for tomorrow morning while I was typing my stories . Dad took daughter out hunting this evening and she shot a doe for her first deer. It was quartering away and they feel like it was a pretty good hit. They found decent blood and tracked it for 150 yards before it petered out though. They searched for another hour before backing out and calling it. Hopefully we’re gonna recover a little girl’s first deer in the morning.

To be continued………..

The picture tells the story on this one.

I’ve gotten ahead of myself a little with my advertising. Demand is outrunning supply. Otis just can’t keep up with it right now. He got up this morning and was whimpering a little here and there. I felt around on him and checked him out real good but didn’t find any cuts or issues. When I rubbed his hind legs though he whimpered. He’s sore.

I went ahead and met the hunter this morning at daylight and Otis found the deer just fine but you could tell he wasn’t completely himself. I’ve given him some baby aspirin and just let him rest for today. I had a couple more calls come in this morning but I just couldn’t take them. I’m really glad now that I went ahead and got a second dog because I’ll need Shelby Lou to be ready to go next year. I just stopped by the deer processor a few days ago and stocked up on legs and liver for the off season. I'm gonna really amp up her training routine when deer season is over.