The bad news is that we didn’t recover the buck. I believe the hunter buried a .243 bullet off into one of his hind quarters and he’ll probably die a slow death that will take days.. The bullet could have possibly gotten into the back of the guts which would just about for sure kill it. That’s an awful shot to take with that caliber of gun. Not the best shot in the world to take with any gun but a higher caliber with a bigger bullet would have probably broke him down a lot more or penetrated deeper into the body cavity.
The good news is that Otis was still able to track it after 48 hrs. That gives me a lot more confidence now on these 24 hrs old tracks. Otis picked up on the scent where the deer swam across a little slough and took the track down the banks of the River for over 1000 yards before we finally ran out of property to track on. We found several more spots of blood but never any beds. Total this deer had run over a mile between where they had already tracked him and where we took the track. When I say we were tracking on the banks of the River….I literally mean right down the bank.
Oddly enough, we did actually find a dead deer while searching. This doe was laying right on the waters edge with no signs of being shot. Not sure what happened to her. She wasn't even that stiff when we found her. Had to have just recently died.
