No recovery on the one this morning but the fat lady hasn’t sung just yet……

As it commonly does…..the story changed a little when we arrived this morning. I may have misunderstood the hunter last night but I thought he saw arrow buried up to the fletchings. It turns out though that he didn’t actually know where the deer was hit so I’m taking it that he was just assuming it had to be buried up as close of a shot as he took straight down on the deer. The buck was probably 10 yards or less from the base of the tree but the hunter was in a tree on the side of a ridge and the there was a little ledge that dropped off right under his tree that probably put him 35 ft or so above the deer. It was walking broadside to him but spooked right before it walked through his shooting lane and it started turning back the other way. He took the shot nearly straight down onto it through a gap in the limbs with it basically facing away from him.

There was only one small spot of blood that was barely visible this morning. The dogs weren’t able to pick up on much as I expected with this one. Fortunately though, there wasn’t a whole lot of options on where the deer might have ran to so we were able to use satellite imaging on my phone along with the GPS to work the area over really well. There was a small pond about 300 yards from the hit site in the direction the buck had ran. It was only about ¾ of an acre in size but it looked deep. When we got close to the pond both dogs really lit up like they picked up on something…especially Shelby. She tracked the scent to the waters edge and then on out into the water where she swam around in circles for a minute before coming back. Again she looked like there was something there and went back in. I feel like there’s a good chance the deer may have gotten into the pond and sank. The hunter is gonna go back in a few days and look to see if it floats up. I just sent him a message with the idea of possibly dragging the pond with a grapple as small as it is….We’ll see what happens. Hopefully we’ll get a message in day or two saying he found it.