This one turned out to be a little bit tougher track than I had anticipated. The deer was hit about mid body around the liver/gut area. The hunter had found blood initially but the hole must have clogged up because there wasn’t a drop on the ground or the deer when we found it. The dogs were having a hard time working through the point of loss where the hunter had walked around and I was beginning to wonder if we were gonna be able to find this one. The last blood was just across a creek branch and finally I took an educated guess that if the buck was hurt bad then he wasn’t gonna leave that creek bottom. We started working up creek and about 300 yards from the point of loss the dogs picked up the deer’s scent on the wind and took me to him. That spot you see just below Shelby’s head is the entry or exit hole. Both were about mid body. This was the hunter's first buck with a bow...…

Waiting patiently

Just posted the pic and story...….look back above your post.

Great work as usual!!

Thanks!......I’m usually just following the dogs around but I earned my keep this time…..Definitely a team effort on this track.

A couple common themes I’m seeing play out with these wounded deer……..

1) A lot of times we’ll track the deer through some hardwoods or some other type of open terrain….eventually that’ll lead us to a timber change or a situation where the open area converges with some kind of thickness. Often times the deer (dead or alive) we’ll be 20-30 yards just inside the thickness.

2) Also water!………We’ve all heard that deer go to water after being hit and its definitely true. It may be a pond or a creek branch but if the deer is mortally wounded and you’re tracking him toward water….it’s very likely that’s where he’s gonna bed up. Check the creeks, ponds, etc…if he makes it to one of those areas then he’s probably not leaving it unless forced to. I we track one to a creek then I can just about count on getting him up alive or finding him dead either in the water or right along the edge of the water.

Great recovery with that last one. Looking forward to another great season-long read here. Keep up the good work CNC.

That last buck, is that where y'all found it? Pretty open woods.

Dr. B

Yes, that’s where we found him. The overall area was thicker than the pic makes it look. It was in a little creek bottom. He was only laying a few yards off of the water. Just out of the pic to the right is a small beaver damn that backed up a little pond and swampy area. The deer appeared to be running a trail up the side of the creek headed to the marshy area and died right in the middle of the trail.

Been doing a little hunting myself today so I’m a little late with the pre-game stories…..Got two calls for tomorrow morning…….Both are supposed to be really good bucks………

On the first one the hunter feels like he hit too high. He said he thought it was about where it should be as far as front to back but it looked like the entry was just under the backstraps. He got a pass through but didn’t see any blood on the ground and just backed out to bring in a dog…..

The second call sounds like a gut shot…..The deer was quartered to the hunter and he shot it too far back. He jumped the deer after tracking a couple hundred yards and decided to just back out until tomorrow morning. He reported bloody guts on the arrow.

To be continued……..

Quit farting around and post this story, CNC!

The first track this morning turned out to likely be a high shot just under the spine……We tracked the buck for around 800 yards and called it off after assessing that it likely wasn’t a good hit.

The second track was pretty routine. The deer was indeed gut shot. The hunter backed out after jumping him and he laid back down after moving another 300 yards. That’s where we found him bedded up dead. It was some thick nasty undergrowth that made for a slow track but the dogs pretty much went right to him. It looked like a single yote had probably found him and ate some off the back end…….

Good job! I bet there is a lot of satisfaction that comes from this. Being proud of you dogs and making a lot hunters happy!

Keep up the good work. Love reading about your tracks.

Thanks fellas!.....I appreciate it. It’s been a great start to the season for us so far.

This...

Thanks for posting the stories CNC. You and your dogs have found some really good bucks for people so far this year. Looks to me like the overall rack quality is up from previous years. Keep up the good work.

Thanks fellas!…….

I’m a little behind on stories……We got a chance to track one of those legendary Fitzpatrick giants yesterday but fortunately or unfortunately….depending on how you look at it…. I don’t believe he was hit very well. The hunter shot it with a crossbow at 45-50 yards just at dark. He could not tell where he hit it but found blood on his bolt. After coming back the next morning they were able to find some small spots of blood at around 100 yards but that was it.

We picked up on the track the next afternoon…..22 hrs after the shot. The dogs picked up on the scent and tracked it pretty well under the circumstances. We found one bed at around 400 yards with a minor amount of blood in it. We ran across a couple more beds along the way but none had blood in it so we couldn’t confirm whether or not it was from our target deer. After around 1200 yards the track just went cold. We grid searched another 500-600 yards farther with no luck. I believe this deer was very marginally hit.

Today we got a call around mid-morning from a hunter who had stuck a buck yesterday afternoon just at dark. He was in a tree right on the side of a creek and the buck came right down the creek toward him. When the deer got to about 5 yards he shot it on a steep downward angle with the buck quartered to him. He said it all happened so fast that he didn’t see the arrow hit but was sure he had hit the deer. He had came back in this morning and searched really well and the arrow was nowhere to be found. He couldn’t find any blood either. After an exhausted search this morning he backed out and called in the dogs

We got there today just before lunch and track the deer really well out to about 100 yards where the deer crossed a creek. The hunter had walked over the area a lot and it was giving Otis a hard time picking up on which way he had gone from there. I decided to push on down creek and check it first but after 500 yards there was no deer or no indication from the dogs that the deer had gone that way. We backed up to the creek crossing where we had lost it and checked up and down the other side. The dog’s noses lit up on a trail leading into a cutover and took off with it. We went through the cutover and into a stand of little pines where we found the buck….He had traveled just under 500 yards from the hit site. We never found a single drop of blood. You can see where the arrow hit. The wound is opened up a little more than when we found it due to the dogs chewing on it.