My oldest boy killed a good buck a couple of weeks ago. Shot him in a plot with a 45-70. I heard the shot and soon got the text. We had about 45 mins of light left, so I got down and went to assist with the recovery. We looked till dark and didn't find anything except a couple of pinches of white hair where he stood at the shot. Now my boy probably won't qualify for army sniper school, but he has never lost a deer he's shot. I was beginning to believe this was going to be the first one.

Forty-five mins pre dark searching, and we probably looked with flashlights for an additional 20-30 minutes after dark. We looked everywhere you should look - in the plot, and fanned out in the general direction through the woods where the buck and the other deer in the plot escaped. So we are about an hour in searching, and we make one more loop around an old woods road that arched around the plot. I told Ethan that we were going to line up and slowly walk the old road and if the buck was bleeding when he crossed it, we should find blood. We started our slow march shoulder to shoulder fanning the lights on the old road and we hadn't gone very far when ethan found a single drop of blood.

I was almost crawling looking for more spore, and found another light drop. The first 20 yards off the woods road going steeply down hill, we probably found 10 drops of blood. I was still feeling uncomfortable with the very light trail that the buck may only had his belly creased, when I found where the buck slid/skidded into a small hardwood. Ethan was right there beside me seeing all the sign unfold in the light beams eating it up, and to the left of the tree was a big pool of blood. We both looked at each other and smiled. Three more steps down the hill there was another big patch of blood and a ping pong ball sized chunk of lung tissue. We could follow the trail standing up, and went about 20 more yards and I nearly tripped over the dead deer. We both celebrated the successful recovery. It was the best track I've been on since my bowhunting days!

Ethan lung shot the buck with a 405gr 4570. Entrance was an ideal bow shot.. low lungs, top of the heart, and exit was low about where the hair changed from brown to white (hence the white hair in the plot). The bullet just didn't hit anything substantial enough to expand much, and essentially penciled through. That was the first difficult track my boy had been on. He learned alot, and this old dog learned a few things too... as is customary on nearly every blood trail. It was good stuff and great memories and a real good learning experience for my boy. The post shot recovery, to me, is just as important to the hunt as any other part and I think people are quickly dismissing this very important part of hunting.

So here is the poll: I wonder what is the average time spent tracking an animal that isn't easily found in or on the outskirts of a food plot where it is shot before a dog is called in?

18 minutes

I don’t know exactly how to answer that question but there’s a LOT of deer that go unrecovered simply because ppl don’t put in the effort tracking, especially if they don’t see what they expect to see when they start looking.

I have no idea. But I know I have pulled some all nighters looking for deer. Just about every case was either with a bow or kids shooting .243.

I hate it when they make them hard turns and aint bleeding much .. you never know where it gonna go or what way its gonna get there .

My youngers days I have walked right by them laying to the side of the trails. Be hunting the damn deer and it dead 100 yards behind me .


Matt , you right some give up way to easy .

Lots of Folks get in a hurry. Got to go slow and be patient

The advantage of two sets of eyes when initially scanning for blood/hair/etc is priceless.

I’d say the average time spent looking is about 3 minutes. 🤣
For me, if I don’t hear the deer crash or see it fall I’m not going to waste my time looking for blood because I’m color blind and just CANNOT see it.
Luckily I have some excellent trackers in my family. The way they can see a drop of blood in the leaf litter is amazing to me.
Sometimes I’ll even call BS on them and they’ll pick up the leaf and let me touch it.
That’s why I shoot Barnes TSX in my .243. 😁

I think the only time I looked into getting a dog was after looking for nearly two hours for a drop on a decent buck. Couldn’t find the arrow either. Turned out it skipped after I shot low and finally found it to confirm it was a miss.


I tracked a doe for over 6 hours last year that a buddy shot. We were giving up at 2am when our flashlights started dying but stumbled upon it as we literally turned to walk out and call it a loss.

This is where pride (emotion) can trump rational sense if you let it…….Nobody cares if your Daniel Boone or not…….I have people routinely spend hours looking for a deer that it takes us 10 minutes to find…….The more people that stomp an area out for hours looking the more difficult you potentially make it for a dog to recover it for you…….If you shoot a good one and really want to find it then who cares if a dog recovers it…..Y'all know the Indians used dogs right?

Yeah and pushing them too quickly not waiting enough time to bed down and bleed out. Unless it’s going to rain I’m giving it an hour at least before I get down and start looking. I’ve made the mistake of going after them too soon and making more work for myself. Agree 100% with Matt, put in the effort and you’ll find it. I’ve lost blood trails and backtracked and found new blood. Amazing how good a trail they leave and how they turn back around.

This is where you are wrong CNC. I care.

It was extremely rewarding finding that deer and I wouldn't have traded that experience with my boy for nothing. Take responsibility for the situation and go the extra mile.

Edit: I know there are situations where a dog is needed, CNC. I just get frustrated when folks don't try. They are, in my opinion, missing out on a huge part of the hunt and short changing themselves of the total experience. How many tracks have you been on where you thought: "oh jeeze.. if they'd only walked 15 more steps."

That’s great but your thread is insinuating about what “everybody else does”......I dont think most folks care how they find it....That's just my observation

Now I’m not a historian on the matter but just using common sense and knowing that everyone in the old days had “cur” dogs for multiple purposes…..I would bet that this idea of the lost art of the great American blood tracker ….as if we used to all be Swaheeli bushman….. is something just invented by modern hunters to “care” about……I’m guessing that more game was recovered the way I do it with my dogs by Indians and early settlers than by the humans themselves blood tracking it……Why would they not let the dog go retrieve it in their situation if they had one??.....I get it that blood tracking is fun, I always enjoyed doing it when I was younger……but working with dogs is fun too and the kids really enjoy it……I had a guy call me out a couple years ago for his sons first deer just for the purpose of getting the dogs involved and making it a big to do……To each his own…..Y’all should stop running folks down though for them not being Daniel Boone…..as if anyone is these days.

i have been on a lot of “2nd looks” and it’s usually due to not looking where the deer actually went, not seeing gallons of blood, and immediately accepting u missed. i’m guilty of it myself but i won’t let myself leave so i start over going even slower. just this past weekend, my kid shot a big doe. quartering slightly towards us, crosshairs were perfect (tactacam linked to my phone) when the gun went off. we get the truck and go to recover. no blood where she was standing, she ran down a sandy road headed into cutover. open cutover on the left side of the road, a wall of volunteer pines on the right side 2-3’ tall, 4” spacing. i walked the road and walked 5 yards down each trail looking for blood and found none. i walked the road back looking for blood in the road, nothing. hmmmmmmm. i start over again, but walk 20-30 yards down each trail off the left side of the road all the way to the end of the road, then searched the road again heading back . starting to get the “what in the hell happened” is getting louder but i know what i saw when the gun went off and the fact she went down the road. 50 yards down each trail the 3rd trip down and zero. it’s been an hour now, jr is getting hot, hungry, and ready to go. buddy, we woke up at 3:30, drove an hour, we are finding this doe. she’s here, we just haven’t found her. well, we haven’t looked on this side yet, i’ll stomp around in here and zig zag back to the truck and we can make a decision then. i walk back up looking at every pine (there were 1000 in that 100 yard stretch) ordering the road and nothing. so i head back down the road and would claw my way through them and its a impenetrable wall of vines and trees 2-3” apart. rinse and repeat all the way back down the road. with 10 yards left of road, i climb back through the border of solid pines and there she was, in a ditch 3-4’ deep. i immediately start looking at everything between her and the road for blood. there was none. well she must have came down the hill through this crap to get here, so i start literally crawling up the ditch she was in and there was nothing. i have absolutely no idea how in the hell she got there but i found her. without the ability to be able to replay the shot on my phone , or see it first hand, i wouldn’t have spent that much time there and chalked it up as a miss. the tactacam with the fts mount is worth its weight in gold plus u get to rewatch what the shooter sees for life.

Tell you what. The only time I called for a dog ( thought it was a better buck than what it was) it was an awesome experience seeing that dog work!! Not a bad hit on the deer, just a big ole stubborn buck that wasn’t going down easily. 3 hrs for us searching and about 20 minutes for the dog.

PM to you CNC

I’m with CNC, I would much rather watch a dog work. Especially my dog that I trained. Give me the choice of watching a dog do what it’s trained to do or crawl around for 3 hours looking for specks of blood? That’s a no brainer to me.

Here's the way I would go about it if I were a hunter on the other end of these calls……..The first thing to do is to take a moment after the shot and try your best to accurately assess what just happened….You should already have an idea in your mind when you’re getting down if you were confident about your shot, the angle he was standing at, and if the deer looked to be hit hard as he ran off……Take that information and combine it with what you see on the ground for the first 100 yards or so to make a decision on the wisest way to proceed……especially if it’s one of your target bucks that you really, really want to be sure to recover

It isnt just a matter of always doing everything you can first as a searcher……Sometimes backing out and playing it conservatively is the wise move. If you are already questioning the shot and the sign doesn’t look promising……don’t make a bad situation worse by spending hours tromping out the whole area out looking for something that’s likely boogered up or marginally hit…..I see a good number of folks who go all out stomping the woods down when everything about the situation pointed to it being a bad hit.....gut shot or leg hit, etc....Make the wise decision based on the intel.

I did exactly that this bow season. Target buck shows up, shot felt good. It’s an hour before dark. I sat and gathered myself for a few minutes. Climbed down and went back to the camp. My buddy wanted to be with me to recover the buck so I waited on him. He got there about 8:00. We go in and find the arrow, no blood at shot site, guts on arrow. We look very quietly for about 30 yards in the direction he ran and found no blood. I backed out and called Jeff Adams who had found a gut shot buck before for me. Went back in the next morning and the track took 3 minutes. He was just quartered to me a little harder than I remembered in my mind. I caught the front lung. If we would have gone 30 more yards we would have got on the block and went right to him. He didn’t go 125 yards and was dead shortly after the shot. But I didn’t want to chance it. And I needed to check on Jeff’s dogs anyways and make sure he was still treating them well haha.

To each his own. I have only used a dog other than mine twice. And only used mine on easy tracks 4 times. But I enjoy it. I wouldn’t have done it any differently looking back on it.