Thanks! I suppose his nose is just able to distinguish the different smells the same way your eye can see several different objects all at once. At the 50 yards mark though, there was probably so much scent being put down on the ground by the deer that it would be like you following smoke to a fire.

Call just came in from the morning hunt…….

The buck was shot about 7:30 this morning. The hunter believes he has hit the deer too far back. He said it ran off with that hunched up look. They’ve tracked it for 400-500 yards and found a place where it bedded with decent blood. I figure they jumped him out of the bed. We’re gonna give it a couple more hours and see what we can do with it……

To be continued………..

People just can’t resist. Got to go looking. Good luck CNC

Well…..I think the deer is actually hit pretty hard. There was a nice size spot of brown hair at the hit site and the bed the jumped him out of had a good bit of blood in it. He was still alive though when we finally caught up to him. He didn’t bed back up again for a LOOONG ways.

We were well over 1200 yards when Otis finally cut loose barking up in front of us. He was about 100 yards ahead of us so it took me and the hunter a minute to get up there to him but it sounded like he had him held up. Sure enough when I finally got closer to the barking I caught the arse end of the deer moving in a briar thicket. Before I could get the hunter in position the deer broke on us and took off. We were only 50-75 yards from the property line at this point and the deer shocked me by breaking out across the neighbors open cow pasture....big pasture. Otis went after him but that was as far as we could go.

I think this deer may likely die but I don’t know for sure. I think maybe the hunter just hit him WAY back. We got on him 6 hrs after the shot and he was still alive. That’s one I’d like to have given overnight. On a side note…..I damn near stepped on a cottonmouth while tracking this one. C’mon cold front!!!!

This is a pic of where the deer bedded up the first time. If you didn’t hit the deer good…..don’t be fooled into thinking he’s just gonna be laying over the hill dead. This one went another ½ mile and then some after this bed.

That deer is coyote food tonight. Could you tell about how big it was?

Yep, he's probably coyote bait.....Best I could tell he was just a decent racked buck...nothing huge. The hunter said he thought he was a tall 8 point...

Call just came in…..Buck was shot yesterday afternoon. Hunter reported the deer jumping up in the air and then taking off. He says he found a good spot of blood at the shot but the blood trail quickly petered out. That’s all the info I have to go on right now. He did say that this would likely be the biggest deer ever taken off of their property.

To be continued…….

Get him Otis!

Another one still alive. I would have thought this deer was surely dead after seeing the blood spot where it stopped about 100 yards out after the shot. He must have just stood in that spot for a while.



We tracked on another 300 yards or so past where the hunter had lost blood until we emerged in a grown-up cutover. Otis was about 75 yards in front of me when I saw him stop on the GPS. Shelby had gone up there with him and not come back as well so I was assuming they had found it. I was about to tell the hunter that I thought they had it when he says..... “There he goes!!!!”

He definitely was hurt but he still had a lot of life left in him. We followed in behind him trying to get a follow up shot but never could get him to hold up. He would hunker down in the thickness of the cutover and let us get 40-50 yards from him before he would bolt again and go 300-400 yards. It was crazy thick and difficult for the dogs to even walk through so there wasn’t much chance for them to do much with him.

After a couple of hours and jumping him 3 times….I told the hunter that the best thing we could do is back out and let him die. The dogs were worn out and so were we. He must have just clipped him somewhere low or high or maybe in the brisket. I don’t think he was hit through the body to be a lively as he was after 15-16 hrs.

This is the cutover he was in….It’s hard to appreciate just how thick it actually was off in that mess. A lot of places were over yer head. We never could get him up while we were on a good vantage point like this. It was always when we were neck deep in briars and brush. The woodline in the background is where we emerged into the cutover and originally jumped him. He never stopped until he crossed the hill in the middle of the pic He would have been running toward me the way I’m facing taking the pic. We jumped him again in the thick arse bottom just in front of me...at which point he hauled arse across the hill I’m standing on and over into another nasty thick bottom behind me where we eventually jumped him again. There's actually little creek branches running through each of the bottoms that you cant's see that have ditches over waist deep. It was nasty...

Dang, I almost let it slip my mind..... to Dano for referring the track my way.

Call just came in for tomorrow morning……

The hunter reported the deer falling down in the front end and running out of the field damn near nose plowing. They found some blood and expected him to be just right there..... but they tracked him around 150 yards and jumped him….finding a piece of bone along the way. I think this is definitely gonna be a leg hit but I’m hoping its gonna be a high leg hit and it broke down both legs. The hunter is a seasoned hunter and shooter and says he doesn’t think he missed by a foot or anything like that. We'll see.

To be continued……..

CNC, fill in this blank.....

If you have tracked a rifle shot deer _______ yards and have not found him you need to back out and give him _______ hours to die.

I know this isn’t a hard and fast rule but what is your best guess in your experience. It seems like after a hunter gets past 100 yards your odds of finding a dead deer go down tremendously. If the deer hasn’t died during the initial death run, they are probably going to take some time to die.

If you haven’t found him within 100-150 yards then you need to start backing out…..for sure at 200. Any deer that’s smoked isn’t gonna make it much more than 100-150 yards and that’s being generous for most smoked hits.

How long to give the deer kinda depends on how he reacted and what kind of sign your finding. The best thing you can do is recognize a bad hit when it happens and back out before you ever do the initial track. Don’t spook him off. They all run a little ways….stop….and then look for somewhere to bed up. If you know you just gut shot one by his reaction or by a big wad of white hair, etc… then don’t even track him at all…..back straight out and decide how much time you think he needs. From what I’m seeing…..they need a lot more time than what we think if you haven’t smoked him. An hour or two ain’t nothing.

Got him.....Dilly! Dilly!!!

Waiting for story and pics!

There wasn’t a whole lot to this track. The deer had just run another 250 yards or so after being jumped and bedded back up. It made for a pretty simple find.

Unfortunately, the yotes beat us to this one. I hate it but it’s just part of it. It’s a tough situation when asking the question “what’s the right thing to do”?. You know good and well going into it that you’re likely dealing with a live leg wound. Do you go out there at night with dogs and lights in order to finish him off and “save the meat”….or do you wait and roll the dice on yotes eating him up? …. It might not be as pretty but for a number of reasons, I choose to wait.



Here’s the entry hole. It looked like he had probably broke down both legs and maybe clipped the bottom of the brisket. Another inch or two lower though could have really changed the situation.

Looking at our shot placement chart, you can see how close he was to not even hitting the body cavity......hitting in the G7 box.

Congrats on the find! Hate that the yotes got there first but the hunter did the right thing by backing out.

Thanks man!