Feb,3
Hunter said he wasn't sure where he hit the deer the day before,all he saw was white in the scope,we were pretty sure he hit it as it was going directly away from him. He and his buddies tracked the buck for around a hundred yards then the blood stopped so they spread out looking for him. No luck.next morning they looked a little more then decided to call us.
We got there in the afternoon some twenty hours after the shot. Twenty hours is no big deal. Oldest track Lucy has tracked and recovered was 71 hours old.
As soon as I got there I knew I was in trouble. We were in the mountains. I said to myself "oh man this is not going to be fun"
I hate tracking in the mountains these 65 year old legs just cant run the mountains like they used to in my younger days,chasing mountain lions through the mountains behind walker hounds out west.
Right off the bat Lucy took the track and the odyessy was on!
First we pushed crawled,busted through the impenetrable brush,getting Tangled in vines to make matters worse I had Lucy's pup Andy on leash for training. I was dripping sweat in about two minutes.finally we busted out still thick but lots better. Next we hit the mountains. We would go way down a steep montain then way,way up the next mountain,then repeat over and over again,Lucy was staying 200 to 500 yards ahead of us and tracking fast so I knew it was just a matter of time and distance before she found him. The question, was he still alive. Seemed like we went on forever,day turned into night. Finally we left the mountains and were in the bottoms. We stepped out onto a atv road,hot,sweaty,legs burning and still hadn't seen a drop of blood beyond the hunters last blood. At this point in time the hunter looked me in the face and said," mike you can call it,im convince he isn't hit fatally all this way several miles and no blood and they haven't even jumped him,I had turned Andy loose a little ways back I was just too exhausted to hang on to him any longer. I said no the way Lucy is tracking this buck she thinks she is going to catch him,about that time I looked down and there on a little stick was one tiny pea size drop of dried blood. We decided to give it a little more time we had been on it for hours might as well try a little bit longer. So off we went the dogs were around 400 yards away,only problem now was a big wide deep Creek on our way. Hunter said only way around it was to go back to a road to a bridge. Dang! Dogs would be way far away by then,so I started walking down the creek. I couldn't believe my eyes a huge tree had fallen across the creek,we mounted the tree like Riding a horse and shimmied across. The race was on! I looked at the gp's and the dogs were way gone. Some how we gathered some strength and picked up our pace trying to catch up. The hunter said mike! I hear dogs! I couldn't hear them my hearings not so good,to many guns shooting to close to my ears over the years.
They had the buck bayed up next to a creek in the thick stuff we snuck in crawling on our hands and knees taking caution not to crunch a branch,and dispatched the mortally wounded deer. Son of a gun he jumped right into the creek started floating down the creek on the swift current with the dogs hanging on, it was obvious he had expired. I looked at the hunter and said there's your deer you better hurry and get him before he floats away around that corner. He took out his wallet and phone and dove in after him!!One cool thing is after tracking, chasing for 4 miles through hell, he expired about 100 yards from a road.
Whew!
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