The look on that dogs face says “damn right we got him!” 😁

He was wore out, pulled briars out from around his eyes, nose and paws. Snoring on the couch now

Waiting on a hunter now to try and recover what is likely a gut shot......Shot was quartered away.....Little bit of white hair at hit site....Deer jumped from its bed 45 min after shot roughly 100 yards away......Some blood in the bed

It got a little western there for a minute but we got him.

The white hair the hunter had found turned out to be from the back of the front legs…..He hit just a little low passing through both front legs…..We jumped him again about 200 yards from where the hunter had originally jumped him……We were off in a beaver swamp and he made a beeline about 150 yards off into the creek and just held up there…..It looked like he was dang near drowning trying to stand up in the water when I got to him to finish the deal……He would have been coyote bait for sure……





Here’s the original shot in the upper leg……The other one is the finishing shot…….



You can see how it completely broke his front side leg……



…..before passing through and taking out the offside leg as well….Not really sure how he ran any at all……..

The one I got yesterday was shot with a subsonic 300 blackout from 150 yards. Broke the lower shoulder but never entered the cavity. Talked that guy into not shooting another one with it I hope

I should have mentioned this in the story but that last deer was a great example of why when we have those discussions about where to aim, I’m always for aiming behind the shoulder instead of at the point of the shoulder ……..The hunter’s aim really wasn’t off that bad on this one…..you just don’t have a lot of room for error missing high or low when going for that shot…..He was in a ladder stand shooting at a downward angle too so that makes hitting just a little low be even worse…..

We’re all grown men and can choose to do as we see fit….I’m gonna continue to post my stories up here the way they happen in real time……Instead of all the sensationalism that gets thrown around by folks who don’t know what they’re talking about I would rather the GW’s and powers that be see the reality of what we have to deal with in helping to recover deer for hunters……When or if it ever comes time that they decide to pass new rules hopefully someone in the chain of command is able to use common sense and do the right thing……For folks that think that just not talking about it here matters, you must not follow any other social media……

If Mr. Wendell is reading along with this……what would you have me do on that last one……I had no idea what I was headed into when I started the track and could only assume it was a gut shot by the small amount of evidence I had to go on. We started looking for it and after 10 minutes of searching I heard the dogs start barking 60-70 yards in front of me……I saw the deer pass through a few openings in the trees looking extremely injured…….10 seconds later I hear kabloosh into the creek and that’s where I found him with his head bobbing up and down out of the water trying not to drown……

What do you think is the commonsense thing to do in that situation?? Turn around and go home and leave him there?...... For any of y’all reading along…..if this was your neighbor would you rather him kill 6 bucks to get his 3 or us recover the ones he boogers up?....You know in a time where we’re already dealing with problems of overharvesting bucks this is one avenue that helps save a few more……Folks need to stop putting their personal prejudices and misinformed opinions ahead of common sense…..I’ll be glad to let any GW ride along with me and see for themselves what its really like…..

Some folks are going to say in response to that ^^^^…….”Well it’s the ones where folks are chasing them down for hundreds of yards that really look bad and yada,yada,yada……” But the reality of it is that part of it has very little bearing on the outcome or whether the deer’s mortally wounded or not, etc……In 99% of the cases, he’s either a dead deer walking or he's not and none of “the story” and how it unfolds really matter……That very same deer I just posted could have been 1000 yards from that swamp we were in and if that’s where he wanted to go then he would have stumbled and flopped his way to it and my story would have said “We ran him 1000 yards!!”…..with that mattering very little really.

I had one last year for a guy from Florida that had no choice but to leave that afternoon to go back home for the holidays……I chased one for over a mile and a half trying to recover it for him that was dragging his guts and had already laid for 7 hrs before we got there….Its just the way it unfolds sometimes…….Most of the stories about chasing them and the distance it goes just gets sensationalized and misconstrued. They’re either a dead deer walking or they aint…..If we recover them then 99 times out of 100 it’s the first option……

I don’t get why some guys want to take that 1 out of 100 and pick that as the hill you want to defend……especially when it’s a fellow tracker….Why??......I mean I get why the dog hunters would blow it out of proportion for their purposes……But why someone running one of the main pages in a tracking leadership role would do so and just give them more ammunition is beyond me……What do you think they we say now…..”Look, one of your very own is saying blah blah blah…..”…….Hell, it would be a little better if you were at least half way correct in what your putting out there but you’re giving them ammo with a 100% wrong opinion…….C’mon dawg.

Just don't be catching deers missings legs or with blew off antlers. Someone who has that many members on a page shouldn't be saying mixed up stuff like that. On one hand we're gonna claim 3 legged deer live and on the other we're gonna say don't catch deer with just one antler blew off. As if someone actually has dogs that catch deer with an antler blew off. If they have a dog that can do that then you can bet they are lying

Just be glad your not tracking in Wendels County CNC 😅🤣🤣. I only track in Marshall, Morgan, Madison and Mexico

I have a feeling I probably got at least one in my area too……I cover quite a few counties….Most of the GW’s are good guys though……Its just those one or two that need to control everything instead of just using common sense about the issue. The guy in your area is probably buddy-buddy with some of the dog hunters in some form or fashion…..Either that or he’s a sympathizer to them that has no understanding about what we’re actually doing…..

I’ll tell you something though for what its worth……None of this probably really matters at this point…..Michigan and Louisiana have already taken the lead in giving trackers the ability to do what we’re doing without having to worry about any of the BS like you had to deal with…….I think the folks who make the actual decisions are just making sure it works out ok for them first and then we’ll follow suite……IMO you’re gonna see the same or a very similar blueprint implemented…..

I guess if we’re gonna paint the whole picture then it wouldn’t be a thorough assessment of the situation to leave out the fact that a lot of this so called “outrage” is just faux outrage completely stirred up by dog hunters in an attempt to further their own agenda……..I guarantee you that if you went around to every hunting club and hunting landowner in the state and surveyed them on the situation you would get an overwhelming majority in full support of what trackers are doing…..and I mean like 9 out 10 type majority……I know this to be the case because we track deer for all of them…….Its only a small handful of people who are making the noise seem bigger than it is…….and some folks are taking the bait and pulling drag for them…….even to the point of calling up “Mr. Wendal” and reaffirming his misconceptions for him about leg shot deer…….Holy chit where’s the Tylenol.....

Can't drink all day if you don't start in the morning

I bet Wendals been reading all my stuff when he squats down to pee every morning

The lull of December is upon us........

I get that politics is a dirty business and people use dirty tactics……but what I don’t get….and this is just me personally…..is how folks can just completely sell out there moral compass and have zero shame about getting on social media knowingly and intentionally lying to try and persuade the narrative to their favor……Not just lying but trying to run a whole misinformation campaign with a “strategy” to it……I don’t know, there’s just something despicable about it……Maybe that’s how you have to be in order to operate in political situations…..I guess those folks would say that if you want to win you have to be willing to do whatever it takes or something of that nature……

Anyways.....I’ll say this again…….some of you don’t realize that you are being played by folks pretending to be trackers……If they’ve “been tracking for 14 years” yet somehow none of us know them……that’s a good clue.

Recovered a teenagers first buck this morning…….He hit it good but it was quartered to him and he didn’t get an exit……Only a little bit of blood near the hit site……The deer ran off a hill and took a hard right…..Him and his dad were just searching the wrong area……

Tracked a second one gut shot with a bow this morning……This was a semi-urban type scenario with the deer being shot out of someone’s back yard……We got him up still alive at 3:00 but we were just too close to main roads to be able to let the dogs go after him…..He made a circle and ended up running right down the side of the road just inside the wood line….He’s in a pretty small little area so I told the hunter to come back tomorrow and he’ll probably find him dead….It sucked to have to leave this one cause I’m pretty sure he was hurt bad and right in front of us…..The dogs were going nuts when I leashed them and pulled them off the track…….

Here’s the teenager’s buck………