Got a call about lunchtime today…….The hunter had shot a really nice buck yesterday evening. Him and a buddy had searched for it last night and this morning with no luck. He said they had found real spotty blood out to about 100 yards and that was it. When he shot the deer he said it was pretty much standing broadside….(we would later determine that it was likely quartering to him slightly)…..I forget what kind of broadhead he was using but it was some kind of little expandable….maybe he said Spitfire. The arrow had only gotten about 10 inches of penetration though and fell out at about 50 yards down the trail.

The track was around 18 hrs old when we arrived……Otis and Shelby took it pretty slow and methodical working a couple 5 minute checks…..All in all though, they pretty efficiently took us 500 yards to where the buck had bedded up and expired. The entry hole is where Shelby is chewing…….

That's a dang nice deer. Congrats on a successful track.

Thanks!

Got a call late last night about a big mature 7 pt that a hunter stuck too far back. Sounds like he got a pass through but has gut matter on the arrow and nothing to track. They went ahead and backed out and called for a dog after a short search. This should be a pretty promising track except for the fact that the hunter got a pic of a coyote sent to his cell phone cam not too long after he backed out. Fingers crossed that the yote didn't get the deer up and push him way off. We're about to head out there this morning and see what we can do.....

To be continued...….

Hellofa couple of bucks there. Very glad you ya'll found them for the hunters.

Got the first one.....headed to look for another one. Pics and story later today

You gonna start a new thread for 2018-2019 or just keep this one going?

Dr. B

Thanks!......That makes for some happy hunters. There ain't no better feeling than looking up ahead and seeing Otis staring down a dead deer that some hunter has lost. You turn around and look at the hunter with a grin from ear to ear and tell them....."Look right there!"......I'm not gonna lie, I've had a good number of grown men grab me in a big bear hug at that moment. People are giving high fives.....hollering out Wooo!!! Hoooo!!!....praising the dogs...... it's as exciting to me as getting to find your own deer.

I'm just gonna pick back up with this thread and continue it...…....

There wasn’t a whole lot to the first track from the call last night. The deer had bedded up about 250 yards away and the dogs led us straight to him. We were expecting to find an eat up deer but instead what we found was a live deer!.....Fortunately, he was too weak to run at this point and the hunter was able to slip in and put another arrow in him. He said that he had been getting pics of this deer for 3 years and felt like he was at least 5 ½ years old. He said he had much better younger bucks on the place and had been trying to take this guy out.

You can barely see the original shot hole just above Shelby’s head. The hunter did the right thing by backing out last night. Had he went stomping around the woods last night looking, he would have very likely ran the deer much, much farther than where we found him. It's very interesting too that the yote didn't find him.....maybe he just passed right by the scent line and never picked it up.

The second track was just a scratched up a deer I believe. They called just after daylight this morning from one they shot at yesterday evening as well. The hunter didn’t see what happened and had no idea where he might have hit the deer. There was some hair on the broadhead and just a tiny amount of thin blood on the fletchings along with what looked like a couple really small pieces of meat to me. We never found a single drop of blood but the dogs were still able to slowly follow where the deer had ran. It was pretty apparent by Otis repeatedly coming back to me and looking at me that this deer wasn’t hit well. When the trail led off into a 20 acre swamp that we were about to have to wade across……the hunter decided to call it off. Looking at the waste deep water in front of us, I wasn't about to argue. We both agreed that he probably just skint the deer a little. I double checked around the hit site to make sure we didn’t miss anything but the dogs never indicated on anything different.

Dude, do you have a job? Great find on that last deer too!

Dr. B

I've got two!.....I'm a housewife and a hunter...…….

Nice work! Great start to the season for y'all.

Thanks man!....

I love these tracking threads! I look forward to the latest post daily! Keep up the good work, Mr. Housewife! You’re living my dream!

Spend a few years stuck in the house by yourself with a couple of these and you may rethink your housewife dreams!.......That was nine years ago and I’m still not right in the head from it.

Haha. I hear you. Well, it appears that you've mastered the task quite well. Now go track us another deer to read about!

I’m waiting by the phone for one of you guys to gut shoot another one……….


In all seriousness though………We’ve talked about this before in the past but it sure won’t hurt to repeat it.

I had a call last Sat that we didn’t get to go on because the hunter had to be somewhere before we could get there. However, he told me the story about what had happened and it’s a classic mistake that so many of us make over and over again. He said the big 10 he had been after for a couple of years finally came in a gave him a shot but he’s pretty sure he hit high and back as the deer started ducking.

So right up front he knew that the shot was marginal….That’s a big red flag to back out and proceed conservatively with your search. The hunter proceeded to track the deer after an hour and jumped him at 150 yards. Like many, mortally hit deer……this one bedded up quickly. It’s usually somewhere between 100-500 yards. It’s only after the hunter pushed the deer that he went farther.

After the hunter jumped the buck he continued to keep tracking it. He said that he finally ran out of blood at around 1000 yards from the hit site. In this situation fellas…..that whole track from where he jumped the deer at 150 yards out to the 1000 yard mark where he lost it.... wasn’t ever gonna be a blood trail to a dead deer…..it was just pushing a live deer farther and farther away. Second big red flag to us as hunters is if we jump the deer…..BACK OUT and don’t keep pushing it. The deer may just bed up again a few hundred yards away if you leave him alone.

These marginally hit deer take some time to expire. If you know for a fact you’ve hit one and it isn’t smoked…..go home and give it some time…..a lot of time. Seeing these deer still alive 12-18 hrs later after being marginally hit will give you a new appreciation for waiting after the shot.