I guess it just depends on exactly where it’s hit. There’s a good many of them that survive and show back up on camera. This is one we tracked last year that was back-whacked twice. When the buck started to get up and run off after the first shot, the hunter fired off a second shot and back-whacked him again. He said the deer was damn near dragging himself out of the field. We tracked him for about 800 yards before we hit the property line and called it off.

About two weeks later the hunter called me back and said “You won’t believe this but my cousin just killed that same buck feeding in the same food plot". The pic below was what the buck's back looked like when they recovered him. The track from this morning was probably hit about where that front wound is at……You can see how something of that nature would put off some blood if it were flopping and stumbling around just after the shot. It’s a pretty damn nasty wound. They typically stop bleeding much after they get their feet under them.

Great job!!!

Thanks fellas!....I must have been more tired than I realized after yesterday. I slept later this morning than I have in a looooong time.

I bet you get a bunch of call the next couple days. Good weather and everybody off for the next four days should equal some wounded deer to track!

Awesome job CNC!! Enjoy reading these stories..

I think so too. I hope we have some stories to tell before the weekend is over.




Thanks man!

I would have thought that 8 point shot in the ham would have bled out thru the femoral vein a long way before he made it 1,000 yards. I've seen them with a single buckshot in the ham pile up withing 50 yards.

Yeah, I suppose they just missed it or something. I was thinking the same thing when I saw that wound. He bled a good bit in the beginning and then it became sparse as the track went on. We would find blood in the beds and blood where he crossed the big ravines but that was about it.

Call just came in from the morning hunt…..The hunter had a big buck come out into the lane he was hunting and start walking straight at him. Sounded like he was pretty close to the hunter. The hunter placed the cross hairs on his chest and shot. So far all they’ve found is several big wads of hair. I’m afraid they’ve just given the deer a hair cut on this one but it’s tough to say for sure. Those straight on shots really tend to be all or nothing in most instances. If you drill one dead in the chest then you’ve usually messed him up pretty bad. We’re gonna give it a couple of hours and go check it out though. Hopefully he’s just piled up in the bushes close by.

To be continued………

The ones I shot straight on in the chest have always been DRT.

That's exactly what I was thinking too. It turned out to just be grazed. There was just a little patch of white hair on the ground and that was it. We took the track several hundred yards and then grid searched the area just to double check but I feel pretty confident he barely hit it. Like you say....a shot dead on in the chest isn't gonna go far....

We did get a second call this morning and I was able to recover a little boy's first deer. I'll get some pics up of it in just a bit. I've also got two more calls lined up for tomorrow. One guy shot a big buck dead in the arse with a 243 walking away from him and has tracked it a good ways and jumped it. He shot it this morning so it'll be a 24 hr old track when we get there tomorrow. The other one is for a little girl's first deer shot this afternoon. The dad said they can't find blood but the deer staggered around after the shot and it's off side leg was dangling as it ran off. I'm hoping it's not a leg shot. The gun was a 300 blackout.

The little boy actually didn’t make that bad of a shot….it was just a little too far back and they didn’t realize the deer was standing at a slight angle to them…..so it ended up being a liver/gut hit angling back to the hind end. We tracked it for about 250 yards before finding it piled up in a thicket. It was bleeding a little at first but at the 50 yard mark it just quit and didn’t pick back up for another 100-150 yards. We found some decent spots right before we found it. We had to get on our hand and knees and crawl into this thicket to get him.

Awesome! Otis and Shelby work together on this one?

Sorta…..It’s really not so much work together as it is Otis tracks the deer and Shelby runs laps back and forth between us.

It’s all good though. She’s a 1 ½ old so it’s completely expected. AJ’s puppies did the same thing when I watched him run his dogs. They eventually quit being scared of leaving you and they just track on knowing that your following them. Before the season is over I wouldn’t doubt if she doesn’t start trying to take the lead. She’s a little dominant over Otis and her drive is insane. Not to mention she's twice his height and built like a gazelle where's he built like a weenie dog. They’ve never gotten mad at one another and only ever just played but she terrorizes him. He’ll stand his ground for a minute or two but he just doesn't stand a chance. She'll roll him up eventually.

Well, the "shot in the arse with a .243" track had to cancel…..the issues sounded like they were female in nature. On a positive note though, he said he still wanted to try and find the deer so this may end up being that 48 hr old track I’ve been wanting to test Otis on. We’ll see.

Nice job on the recovery. How old is that little boy? He looks about 3

Thanks man.....

He’s four…..I’ll have to give the lil’ man his due. He shot it by himself at over 100 yards and didn’t really miss by much. Had the deer just been quartered away instead of quartered to...…he’d have smoked him.

Not sure what happened with the first track for the little girl’s buck. I almost want to believe that they perceived him being hit but he wasn’t or maybe his leg was just knicked. He was standing right on the edge of the woodline so they couldn’t really see anything other than just him wheeling around and disappearing in the woods. Otis took us on a line that never panned out to anything. We backed up and grid searched but never came upon anything promising….No hair, no blood, no nothing. I just don’t think they hit it hard.

I did get another call though while I was out. The hunter reported hitting a buck yesterday evening and knocking him to his knees. He said the buck got back up and took off. They gave it a couple of hours and searched for him….jumping him in the process but finding good blood along the way. They backed out and came back in this morning with no luck. Otis and Shelby made pretty quick work of this one...taking the track another 200-250 yards past that bed to where the buck laid back down and died. We never found any blood past that point though. The shot was low in the brisket just under his right leg. Shelby did a lot better on this track. She settled down a lot and actually worked the track much more rather than running back and forth. I think a lot of that was because she was finally wearing down a little. Buzzards were already on it when we got there.

Whew, just got caught up on the week. Y'all have been busy! Great job!