I recovered a doe that was shot about the same last year. It had been 12hrs when we started that one and she was still alive but in bad shape.

Headed out to look for one shot right at dark......Quartered to the hunter......Not sure where he hit exactly.....Arrow still in the deer.....Found spots of blood for 100 yards....Hunter said he appeared to be stumbling as he ran out of the field

To be continued.......

Good luck, I'm heading towards Fort Payne in the morning after one

Nevermind they found someone closer, I'm good with that though 1hr 45minutes is a little much for me

Ours ended up being a shoulder shot......We tracked him around 650 yards and found one pretty good spot of blood about halfway but it just petered out after that and eventually crossed the property line. Never did find the arrow but I think he may have worked it out of him somewhere around the good blood spot we found....

Headed out to track another one this morning that was shot yesterday evening.......Sounds pretty promising.....Pass through with possible gut matter on arrow......We shall see......

To be continued.............

#2 loaded up

This one was a ladies first deer with a bow. The hit was back and low barely grazing his belly enough to open him up late yesterday evening. We started the track at 7 this morning. Muzz had to work out a few spots but lined it out pretty quick. Heard him start baying the deer but the deer broke away when he saw me. They went another 100 yards or so and Muzz got him stopped. The deer was so weak at this point he was stumbling trying to stand up and the lady finished him off.

Holy cow!...... Finally got him.....Nice 9 pt

If you track long enough you see deer do some crazy things that buck the system from what they’re supposed to do. This morning was one such track.

The hunters had found a couple smalls spots of blood and were able to progress the track to the top of a ridge about 100 yards from the hit site where they lost it. On the other side of the ridge in the direction the deer was headed was a creek bottom that was backed up by multiple beaver dams. It was a text book situation where you would have thought that there was no way the deer went anywhere else but that beaver swamp…….Nope……Instead he turned back and went in the opposite direction.

We spent the first couple hours trying and trying to work our way around their search area to pick up where this buck had gone into the swamp with no luck. We even spotted buzzards at one point and worked over the swamp where they were circling….After working out to the north and east about 500 yards, we regrouped and looked at my GPS to see where all we had searched. We came up with the game plan to go back to the last blood and try working down the swamp to the west where we hadn’t looked yet….

At this point I’ve got all three dogs out just gridding. Out of sheer luck 3 of the other club members who were there watching decided to loop back around and pick up one of their interior roads and in doing so just happened to stumble right up on the buck…..This one was definitely a group effort for sure and recovered just out sheer luck and persistence. That’s the way these things go sometimes though, its not always textbook run right to them…..



You know how I like graphs so I drew a little pic just to illustrate what this buck did.





Here was the hit…..The hunter was using a little three blade fixed head so there wasn’t much of a hole…..I’m pretty sure the hole was completely clogged up with guts because there wasn’t squat for blood anywhere on the ground. We even back tracked it looking just to see but he just didn’t bleed. That along with the doubling back he did at the point of loss for no good reason threw us for a loop this morning. I’m really glad we finally found him or I’d have really been scratching my head for the next few days wondering what the heck happened on this one.

Heck, I almost forgot……I should have added another piece to the puzzle on the map to show just how odd this deer’s track was compared to what you thought he should have done…..He was running a small drainage headed right back toward the interstate when he laid down. We might have been 150 yards from it when we found him…..Close enough that I could see the cars going by off in the distance.

Headed out to look for a big 10 pt that was shot this evening......It sounds like its likely a shoulder shot but we're gonna check it just in case. The hunter isnt sure where he hit but the arrow stayed in the deer with a fixed blade broadhead

Turned out to be shot with a crossbow......Found the bolt.....it broke off about 7-8 inches in the deer......Started picking up on real good blood after about 200 yards but he eventually got to the top of steep creek bank crossing where it looked like he had stood for a long time bleeding....The dogs were having a hard time figuring out where he went from there so we decided to call it off until tomorrow morning. I'm thinking he might have bawked on trying to cross the creek and doubled back the way he originally came from. He's probably just stuck in the shoulder but with as much blood as we were finding we're gonna give it another shot. Saw an absolute toad on the way home....best buck I've seen in a while

To be continued..........

Long today to with no recoveries…….Lots of shoulder hits. First one from last night turned out just like we thought…..The hunter brought another bolt with him this morning to compare and the 7-8 inches was really more like 5-6……Classic shoulder hit.

Second track was shot yesterday evening…..The hunter didn’t know where he hit and couldn’t find the arrow or any blood. Otis meticulously picked it out for about 400 yards before the scent petered out on him in a big hay field. Likely a high shoulder hit but not completely sure on this one.

Third track was the one referred to me in the Serious Deer Forum…..Another high shoulder hit with no blood….Found the broke off bolt on this one…..Jumped the deer at 400 yards…..I got a good look at him running off and he appeared to be just fine. It was good it worked out that way because he bedded down within about 100 yards of a major highway and there wouldn’t have been anything we could have done in that situation anyways.

Ya’ll drop that aiming point back a few inches……I need more more center mass shooters…..

CNC sounds like you’re taking tracks right now you wouldn't normally. Just wanting to get the pups work?

Yes and no…….I’m wanting to get the younger dogs work but I still don’t want to go out on a bunch of shoulder shots knowing that they wont be recoverable…..So far though there’s just been several tracks where folks didn’t really know what happened and I took the chance that maybe they would turn out to be something else. I have turned down a couple calls that I knew for sure were shoulder shots…..One of them they had already had their own personal dog on it and pushed the deer off into a swamp where they didn’t want to go any farther…..Called to see if I wanted to pick the track up from there…..

Its all good though. Just part of it.

Ewwwww......this one's a little ugly but hopefully things will work out.......Eight year old boy shot his first deer this evening at 5 PM with a crossbow using a slick trick fixed blade......Looks to be a nice 8 pt......This is a cropped out pic of a zoomed in still shot of a video so excuse the graininess but you can see where it was clipped back in the guts...Hits like this can take a while to die so we may have a live one on our hands in the morning.....His dad did the right thing though and they just picked up the bolt and walked to the truck so we have that in our favor..........We're not gonna go in until 8:30 just to give it time.....Hopefully the coyotes wont get after him tonight

We got him........Got lucky on this one......He must have clipped the pyloric artery because we found him lying dead not 60-70 yards from the hit site. Otis made quick work of it and then I was able to re-run it with Ruby and Lu-lu to get them on an easy find.....Great morning for everyone involved. The spot you see on its shoulder is where the coyote were tearing at him......It didnt really get into any of the meat.....It was interesting because it appeared to have just gone straight for the liver.

Another call came in from this morning's hunt........About to go see if we can help rope a goat it sounds like.

To be continued........