The Tales of Otis and Shelby Lou

Alright��well�..I wasn�t going to start a tracking thread this year and instead just write a short story here and there in the LFTT threads like any other kill story. I�m afraid though that it�s going to take away from those threads if I�m constantly on them chatting back and forth with folks about my tracking stories. So I�m gonna just go ahead and start a thread down here in the dog forum where I can ramble on about whatever comes up if I get excited over a track and other folks can ask questions or make comments if they want to.... without detracting from other threads. Nothing to report this morning other than some tired feet. The day ain�t over yet though���.


Welcome to The Tales of Otis and Shelby Lou���.

I'll be checking this thread regularly through the season. Here's to a safe and productive season

I'll be keeping up as well. What does Lftt stand for?

Live from the tree

....

Thankya sir

Thanks fellas! I'll try to make the thread entertaining as well as informative. I'll try to include details like shot location, type of gun or broadhead, how far the traveled. etc....and maybe we'll all, including myself, gain a better understanding of blood tracking and how deer react to different shots. Feel free to ask whatever questions you want to. It's ok if the thread takes a few twists and turns along the way onto different subjects....I'll eventually right the ship with a new story.

I'll be a regular viewer, H. Thanx. A first for us yesterday . At the hit site was darker blood, dinner plate size, and two tooth size pieces of bone. At the shot the deer hit the ground struggled and got back on it's feet and was gone. This was the reaction of a deer hit above the spine but I have never seen bone that was not a broken leg. 3 hours later after over a 300 yard track we came up on the deer that tried to attack Reba. We found that the deer had been hit just above the spinal cord about mid-neck. 308. The bone was pieces of spine. Always learning something new.

Looking forward to it.

Man my 2 grandmother's names are Reba and shelby.come on mam....

Glad to have you along for the ride. Hopefully, you and Reba can get up here in January to go on another track with us this year.

I thought it might be good for any new folks if I introduce everyone a little more to our main characters in the story��.

Otis (left) is a 2 � year old male Slovensky Kopov. Otis came from the only Kopov breeder in the US located in Peoria, IL. Both of Otis�s parents were imported from Slovakia where Kopovs are used for the purpose of hunting Russia boar as commonly as beagles are used to hunt rabbits here in the south. Kopovs are a member of the hound family and said to have one of the best noses in the group, rivaling even the ol� blood hound. This is Otis�s third season of tracking and he�s really starting to hit his stride. I�ve been super pleased with how he�s started off this season.

Shelby (right)�or Shelby Lou as she gets called most often around here by my wife and boys�.is a 6 month old female chocolate lab that came from another Aldeer member�s kennel in south Montgomery Co�.She comes from a good line of duck and field trial dogs and is bred to be really athletic and nosy. Bamaeyedoc says she�s too good to be a tracking dog. She�s got a TON of drive and I believe will eventually be a top notch tracker. Right now she�s still just a puppy though and has a long way to go in order to be able to contain all that drive and excitement. I�ll take her with me on every track this year and run her in behind any short runs I may have. I�ll also try to get her on a few of her own tracks as well as we go along. I'll run her on any known kills that I or friends/family may have. Ideally, if I can put her on 20+ tracks total this first season then I�ll be happy. Next season I�ll start running her more off lead more��tracking alongside of Otis.

Pretty pup's right there.

Thanks man....

October 31, 2016

After starting out the season busier than expected�.everything has come to a screeching halt over the last few days. After going out on 5 calls in the first 10 days�..we�ve went out on none in the last 4. This last weekend was completely dead. I think the hot temps are keeping many hunters at home and it�s likely to continue through this week as well.

The tracks so far this season have all been under some extremely tough scenting conditions in the midst of the current drought we�re in. We�ve tracked a variety of shots from ones that were dead deer smoked�� to ones that were barely scratched up. So far we�ve recovered one dead�.found another 2 still alive..�.had 1 unknown called off on the property line�.and 1 that ran into the scent line abyss of a used dirt road. Really high midday temps are forcing us to only track really early in the morning or really late in the evenings.

All in all I�ve been super pleased with how Otis has started this season. One of the toughest things about training a tracking dog is having the patience to train one for several years before they start to really understand the game and get good. Every experienced tracker I�ve talked to has told me�..�Just wait until that 3rd to 4th season ���.This is the beginning of Otis�s third season and I can really see what they�ve all been talking about starting to unfold. He�s really starting to figure out the game and how to play it.

The other day I watched him work up and down a small creek branch to figure out where the deer had crossed and you could just see it all clicking for him. He has far more confidence in himself this year now that he's beginning to mature out of adolescence and into a grown dog. My confidence is much higher too after having another season under our belts. I can really read Otis well now and understand what he�s doing and why. I�m also learning more tricks of the trade and how to search an area in more ways than one. These Garmin handheld units are the bomb.


Anyways�.let�s go rake some more dust in the yard and wait on better days. I may have to start telling old tracking stories from last year if the weather doesn't soon change.

Blood Tracking Tip:


If you�ve tracked your deer for 150 yards and haven�t found it��..then back out. If you�ve smoked it through the heart or lungs then very rarely will the deer go more than 150 yards. That's really pushing it too. Most smoked deer with be within 50-100 yards. If the deer has made it farther than 150 ish.... then you�ve made a marginal shot and the deer needs time�..3-4 hrs with a gun and 6-8 with a bow�maybe more depending on the shot.

It�s not uncommon for people to call and say that they gave the deer an hour and now they�ve tracked him for 300....400... 500+ yards. If you've tracked him that far after an hour then the deer is very likely still alive and you're gonna push it. I�ve even had folks call me that jumped the deer and then kept tracking it until they jumped it a second time. That deer ended up going nearly 1 � miles. Don�t get so amped up after the shot that you start making bad decisions. Read the sign and make the right call.....

"When in doubt...back the fugg out!"

Glad I found this over here. Looking forward to the stories!

Glad you made it.

Hopefully this front that�s coming through later in the week will cause things to pick back up so I�ll have a story to tell. The youth weekend is just around the corner. That should bring in some fun calls as well.

I haven't gotten any calls either. I'm sitting in a blind now. It's brown and down this evening. Rim and I are chomping at the bit to get on a track.

It won�t really get good until the rut gets here. It�ll be wide open come mid-January.

That's kind of what I was thinking. Shot right over a big nannies back at 30 yards about an hour ago. No track tonight. At least it wasn't a buck.

I hear you. I did the same thing the other day on a little yearling doe. I hit a small limb that I didn't see and it was just enough to send my arrow high and it skimmed right across the top of its back. I'm gonna try 'em again on this cold front later in the week. I'm hoping to stick a doe for Shelby's first run.

A little more rambling intro whilst times are slow��.

I was on the fence in the off season about whether or not to go ahead and get a second dog this year. I�m really happy that I did instead of waiting. I think Otis likes having a sister around to play with and give him companionship. It�s also been a great help in getting him regular exercise and maintaining his weight. After switching food blends to a leaner mix and bringing Shelby into the fold�..Otis has went from 52-53 lbs down to 47-48 lbs. That�s pretty well spot on for what a male Kopov should be and a much better tracking weight for him. Kopovs naturally have a thick, muscular build to them though, with deep chests. Another dog man told me that dogs were bred to have deep chests like that for the purpose of lung capacity.

I�m not sure what Shelby�s weight is eventually gonna be. She�s the funniest built lab I�ve ever seen. Her dad was around 67 lbs and her mom around 54 lbs�.both with slender builds. Shelby was 35 lbs when she was weighed at the vet 3 weeks ago. I�m hoping she tops out in the low to mid 50�s. She looks like she�s part greyhound to me. It�s a bit odd looking really��but I like it!!





Our daily morning exercise routine���..We run and we fight�..



��..run and fight��run and fight���Viscous dogs!! .......C'mon cold front!!!!!!

Viscous dogs? They're thick? Haha. Shelby is a weird built lab for sure. I have a chocolate whose dad was a British and about 95lbs of pure muscle, and her mom was American and about 55lbs. My dog got the build of her dad and is about 65lbs of thickness, but has much shorter legs than yours.

Looks like a Lacy in the first pic.

Yeah, I was for sure being sarcastic when I said viscious. They�re both really friendly dogs. Some tracking breeds and individual dogs can be possessive of their finds or snappy toward people. I have twin boys that are 7 years old, so one of the reasons I chose the breeds I did was because they were �kid friendly� or �make good pets�. The hunters and kids at the camps we go to are always wanting to pet the dogs and play with them too so that makes it a plus. When I first started I was a little worried about someone else getting bit but I think either one my dogs are more likely to lick you to death��.

Flashback���. ......#viscouskiller

She does favor a Lacy a lot doesn't she.....Both parents were slender built but she really takes after her dad. Here's his picture...... you can see he has the same characteristics. If you look back at one of my first pics where Shelby is in the sitting position....it's almost identical to this pic of her daddy. It's the first dog on top......

http://www.magnumrunkennels.com/new-page/

She looks just like her daddy.

For any of you guys who may be interested in a dog in the future��here is where I got Shelby and some pics of her mama. So far I�m really pleased with the dog I got. I don�t think it would be one you would want to get just for a pet to keep in the backyard�.. BUT�. if you�re looking for a hunting dog then I this may be what you�re looking for�.lots of drive and very nosy.

http://www.aldeer.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1738429&page=1


For anyone who may be interested in a Kopov��.here is a link to the kennel where I got Otis. I�m very pleased with Otis and would recommend a Kopov as a good option to consider for a tracking dog. I keep up with other Kopov owners across the country too and they seem to be following suit. The only knock I have on him is that his black coat causes me to have to tailor my tracking early in the season to avoid midday bow season heat. Other than that, he�s a super all around dog and worth the road trip to Illinois to get. The only reason I didn�t go with a Kopov for my second dog came down to the fact that as a �trainer� I wanted to have the experience of raising a different dog. It�s bias to say I really like this dog or that dog if you don�t have something different to compare it to. So it really just boiled down to my personal experience moving forward. Anyways, here�s the link���I think me and Otis are in there somewhere in the pics with his first ever find.

http://www.bloodtrackandrecoverykennel.com/

He's about the perfect size for tracking and possibly Bay up if need be.im definitely going to get another dog to train and like you I believe I'm going to get a different breed just for my training experience. I think I'm going to wait a year or so to stager their age . What is the life expectancy for a kopov? With Remington being a jack russell I figure he will track about 10 years.

Life expectancy for a Kopov is 13-15 years. There�s a lot of opinions on tracking dogs but a lot of folks like dogs that are in the 30-50 lb range. It�s enough dog to move through the woods, across creeks, etc�..but not so much that you have a beast of an animal to load up in the truck or try to keep up with in the woods. People who track �on lead� don�t like big dogs because they tend to drag you through the woods behind them. I like the Kopovs size. Lacys...curs...catahoulas....Bavarians...are some other breeds in that range.

As far as �baying� goes�..I�ve dealt with a few already but I play it really conservatively and will likely continue to do so. There�s so many unknowns when you go into property you�ve never been on before. Giving the dog free reign to run and try to bay one up just opens up a whole new can of worms from a danger perspective. If anything ever goes wrong while tracking.....the stories usually involve trying to bay a live deer.

I look at it like this�..the deer is either gonna be dead, a little bit alive, or a lot alive. If he�s dead or barely alive then we�ll deal with him. If he�s the last option though, then I�m likely gonna just mark the spot on my GPS and come back to it the next morning. If it�s still good and alive the next morning�. then you should�ve hit it better. I�ve made up my mind that I�m not running them like a big rabbit chase and exposing my dog to the higher risk of �chit happening�. This is a call that every tracker has to make on what they are comfortable with. Folks with the little weenie dogs pretty well concede that they aren�t baying anything and that�s understandable. On many of the places you go you just don�t have room to let �em run anyways. There�s always a road or a railroad track or a property line with unknown hunters on the other side, etc�..or something. It may mean that we don�t recover every leg hit, or what have you, but I�m ok with that. I�ll eventually find me a little happy medium somewhere in the middle that I�m comfortable with.

Keep checking back to see of any updates or stories. Has it been just that quiet this week?

Did you keep a call log of last year? Curious to see if you're up, down or about average from last year.

I'm ready to hear some stories!

I�m ready for a story too 3FF. It�s dead as a graveyard right now though. I�m just rambling on and talking dogs with folks to pass the time. There hasn�t even been a single story or hunter call for a track on the Blood Tracker Facebook page this week I don't believe. I don�t think anyone is hunting much and movement is likely really slow for those that are out there. It should switch with the weather in the next few days hopefully.

Bow season is a little slow anyways as compared to later on. I�m still new, relatively speaking, so I can�t really compare last year to this year. I�m getting more calls this bow season just because more folks know about me now even though the hunting is likely a lot slower than last year. I only went on a handful of tracks all of bow season last year. There were days during January though when I had 5-10 people call me in one day. It�ll come in waves as the weather and the rut line up with a bunch of you guys being in the woods. I don�t keep up with a log or anything. I just go tracking when somebody calls.

Maybe trackncur will share a story with us. I hear he just found a GA buck pushing 200 inches��.

Ready for a long story? You'll hear all sorts of crap about a deer that big but this was a free range wild, Worth Co., Ga. deer, killed and recovered 100% legally, on Wed. Here's what happened. I have tracked for this hunter and his buddy several times before and last year in archery season Annie found a big bowkill for him. I was in N. Fla. tracking earlier this year and ran into him in a store. Well, last Wed. he called early afternoon and told me he had shot a monster and wanted no one but Annie to track it. I had to tell him about Annie being killed by the gator about 3 weeks ago. But I told him I had a lot of confidence in my new Lab, Reba, as she has found 8 this year already. I also told him I would get my friend Taylor Farrow to show up with his Drahthaar, Aggie. Aggie and Reba work well together and they will both catch. We showed up in an hour within one minute of each other, good timing. Before the hunter called me, his buddy had gone up the creek to shoot the deer if the hunter jumped it. Sure enough he had a quick shot at it's rear end. Starting here instead of the original hit site, we found a tiny piece of skin with hair attached and 3_4 drops of blood along the trail. The deer had been shot 3 times with 00 buck & once with a 308. After trailing with both dogs on lead, things just didn't look good or add up, blood petered out & no dead or bedded deer. Taylor and the hunters buddy went back to the original hit site while the hunter and I kept tracking the deer. Taylor's Drahthaar, Aggie finally found the buck not far from where it had been shot. We had been tracking a different wounded buck the whole time and I am pretty sure it was only lightly grazed.

I love the dog forum having so much activity. Keep the stories coming guys. Thanks

Tell one of those guys in the Bow forum to gut shoot a good one so me and Otis can write a story. In all seriousness, it would be cool if we could find one for a fellow aldeer member.

Dang right! ......I�d be calling the dog man too if I�d just shot a buck like that. I�m finding that the folks that have seen a dog work are quicker to back out and call us. A human tracker doesn�t hold a candle to a dog and folks who are hunting big deer don�t want to mess around if they hit one.

Photobucket is down or I�d post up the pic with you and Taylor on here with the dogs. This link is best I can do for now to show the deer.

http://www.gon.com/news/195-inch-worth-county-buck-is-real-deal

I'm wondering what all kind of gear do you seasoned trackers carry on a track. I have a back pack that I carry my dog in with to the start of the trail. I put an extra lead,GPS,extra flash light,first aid kit,pistol,and do extra knife.

I wear one of these��.

http://www.forestry-suppliers.com/product_pages/Products.asp?mi=11041&itemnum=94666&redir=Y

I hook the lanyard of my GPS unit to one of the eyelets and then put the unit in the bottom pocket. My cell phone fits perfect in one of the top pockets. The other top pocket has a small baggie full of minor first aid items like band-aids. I also have a pencil sized flashlight and a whistle in that pocket that�s tied to the other eyelet. I use the whistle when I tone Otis back to me sometimes to help him locate me. It also works as a back-up to call him back if my Garmin were to ever malfunction. I suppose you could also use it to help people locate you if you ever needed to in case of emergency. The bottom pockets I use to carry my gloves and GPS in one side when I don�t have it in my hand��water and an itty bitty bowl in the other bottom pocket to give Otis a drink with from time to time if the track takes awhile. The vest has inside pockets as well. I carry a leash in there so I can leash him if I need to. I also carry a roll of orange flagging in the inside pocket that I usually give to the hunter. His job is to watch for blood and to mark checkpoints with flagging.

Be prepared to deal with thick and briary. Wear some briar britches and for sure get some leather gloves. I like the soft deer skin ones because I still have plenty of dexterity to work my GPS. I attached a stylus onto my lanyard so I don�t have to worry about trying to push the touch screen with a fat glove finger. I also wear a long sleeve �outfitter� shirt that�s briarproof. Go ahead and wear plenty of orange so folks can see you. I wear an orange hat along with the forestry vest and the orange that�s on my shirt sleeves. It doesn�t hurt to keep some cheap orange vests in your truck or dog box too for the hunters. I�ve been surprised at how lax many folks are with wearing hunter orange. I�d prefer the hunter who was going with me on the track to have some on and be easily visible. Chit can happen FAST when you run up on a live wounded deer and I want to be able to visually pick up on the hunter very easily if it does.

You'll get lots of different answers on this one. Here's what I wear and carry. an orange cap that doesn't snag and that I , can use for a dog water bowl.a little spray tube with hydrogen peroxide in it. flag tape.pen and paper in case I get a call while tracking in one shirt pocket. a GPS handheld tied to my shirt in the other shirt pocket. glove on my left hand. secure phone holster. secure pistol with nite sites at least a 357. Toilet paper.licenses. folding knife. snake boots. 24 ft. stiff tracking lead. 3 small flashlights . 2 extra bullets, batteries and an extra bulb for my big flashlight. water. A 1" wide strap for emergency dog leash or dragging deer. Sometimes a real short lite rifle with low power scope if the dog might be turned loose to bay. what did I forget? as much orange as possible.

Thank yall advice taken

How did Shelby Lou do tonight?

She did good. I�ll write a paragraph or two and post it with a pic in the morning�..watching Bama play right now.

I was making a joke when I said "Viscous dogs?" Because VISCOUS means thick, like a viscous liquid. VICIOUS is what you are referring to. Sorry, science nerd here lol.

Spellun don't count on Aldeer.....

So I was able to get Shelby on her first real track last night. I had a group of does moving through just about dark and I picked out the only one I had a shot on at about 35 yards as it passed through a little shooting lane. Well, my little doe ended up being a little spike with � inch nubbins. No big deal though. It�s gonna be some tender eatin to go along with a pan of homemade biscuits and a pan of gravy. It'll probably end up being 1 of 2 deer that I kill all year. I might try to pop one more doe with my new pistol before buck hunting though.....we'll see how many show up.

As far as the track goes���.I hit the deer in the edge of the front shoulders a little low. The arrow actually deflected off the leg bone itself as it went through and hit bone directly on the opposite side. You're looking at a portion of the exit hole in the pic. My Muzzy is all bent up and the arrow is broke in half but I did get a semi-pass through until it hit leg bone on the opposite side and the deer was dead within about 10 seconds. It made it about 75 yards leaving a blood trail that a blind man could follow.

Shelby was extremely excited to track until we got to the hit site and entered the woods with the flashlight on. I don�t track much at night and haven�t been practicing it with her so she boogered up on me for a minute. I just sat down with her until she got calmed and realized that everything was ok and then we proceeded on. She slowly picked her way right to it. Before the track was done, she seemed to not care too much anymore about the dark and the shadows��she was concentrating on the blood and the track. Once we found the deer�..she certainly didn�t give a dam anymore. I need to definitely run a few more training tracks with her at night just so she�ll be familiar with it in case I do eventually track more at night.

Anyways, here it is��Shelby�s first deer!

Ole Shelby! Good deal man. You forgot to put blood on her face.. first deer man !

Thanks!

Trust me....she got plenty of blood on her face on her own once I hung it up and cleaned it.

Fresh deer carcass��it�s what�s fer breakfast. I constantly give my dogs deer parts as rewards or treats. Last year I had the local processor save me 50 legs and 15 livers that I put in the freezer for the off season. I�ve got what�s left of this carcass in the freezer right now. When its frozen, I�ll hang it up for the dogs and let �em go at it again. I may refreeze it and do that again every few days until they pick it clean.

Shelby gets into it pretty hardcore. She acts dang near blood thirsty�.ripping and jerking. Both of them love deer meat though like it�s Starbucks. The only downside I�ve found is that I have to watch Otis when he finds a deer or he�ll have the arse eaten out of it before you turn around. That�s probably not considered good etiquette.

It�s JMO but I think it makes them �want� the deer more if I give it to them as their treats and rewards. I see folks with puppies at the tracking conventions that seem to have issues with their dog not naturally wanting to follow a scent line. Make them really want what�s at the end before you try to make them work the line to find it.

They have found a gene in labs that causes them to incessantly want to eat, hence why they will eat every drop of food available even if they aren't hungry.

I had a Cocker Spaniel when I was younger that you could leave out a constant supply of food for and she would only eat a certain amount. She was never over weight either. I�ve seen other dogs though that are like what you�re saying and would eat themselves to death nearly. It�s just me guessing but I think it�s something to do with the amount of �wolf� still in them. I figure the wolf had to gorge themselves when they made a kill�.eating large amounts that would last them for days. I assume that�s the way many dogs are still genetically ingrained to do. I�ve got a buddy whose bulldog looks like it could explode it�s so overweight. They just give it a never ending bowl of food and it�s literally eating itself to death.

Otis looks pretty thick in that picture

The Georgia rut must be kicking off. I somehow got my name listed for Macon Co, Georgia and I swear I�ve gotten more calls from there than I have from Macon Co, Alabama. They�ve started up again this year. I can always tell when it�s a GA hunter because I don�t recognize a damn place they�re talking about. A hunter just called looking for someone in Perry, GA and said every tracker over that way was backed up. Gotta love the rut!

I've got a buddy looking for a dog in Athens,ga right now lol.

Hey Harold when my buddy was on the track he was following what he is calling blood but it's almost black. What could a black liquid coming from a wounded deer be?

Might have hit the gall bladder where bile is stored��its right beside the liver so he may have been getting a mix of blood and bile.

liver blood is kinda dark too, aint it?

Yeah. Dried up blood will look way dark as well.

Yep�.I thought about that too. Once blood dries it almost looks black. If it was fresh blood though then I�d probably guess that some kind of fluid from the gut, intestines, gall bladder, etc�..was coming out. I actually tracked a gut shot one last year that we didn�t hardly find any blood on but we could tell we were on the right track because we were finding pellets of corn here and there falling out of the deer.

I just went back and read the rest of the thread from page 2.

Nothing says "MY DEER" like sitting on it's head. Go Shelby girl!

I was trying to get her to sit down in that little hole in front of the deer but she was so excited that just getting her to �sit and stay� long enough to take a picture was a challenge in itself. I just went with it.

Just got home from recovering this one. You wouldn't believe how far it went after being hit where you see in the pic. It reminded me of Shaw's doe he lost. I'll write a little story in the morning to go along with the pic...........

Get'em Otis

So here�s the tale���.

The call came in around noon yesterday. The hunter told me that two bucks had come in and he had shot one of them but his arrow grazed a limb before it got to the deer and caused it to go off course. He said he was pretty sure he saw it hit behind the shoulder though and pass through the deer. He said there was pretty good blood out to about 100 yards and then it just stopped. The hunter also stated that there was white tallow on his arrow which usually means brisket hit. There were two searchers looking for the deer and one of them said that a deer they couldn�t see jumped up and took off in the cutover but they couldn�t see it and didn�t know if it was the buck he shot or not.

When we arrived I got Otis suited up and we went to work. He immediately picked up on the blood trail and took it out of the hardwood bottom where the hunter was set up and into a 3-4 year old pine stand that was so thick we were pretty much just plowing through briars and brush. We made it just inside the cutover where they lost blood and Otis continued to take the track on. I don�t know what he was tracking because we never found another single drop of blood past that point. I figure the deer they jumped was the buck and he clotted up while laying there in the bed. I never saw a bed but Otis worked a 40 yard circle for about 10-15 minutes before finally taking the track on.

The track continued on through the cutover until we came to an interior hunting club road. At that point Otis turned and went straight down the road for close to 200 yards and even went 70 or 80 yards through a plowed food plot of bare dirt. For some reason this seemed like the easiest part of the track for him and the way he worked the road so fast made me start questioning him. I remembered what Randy and others have told me over and over though and I trusted my dog. When I got in sight of Otis I could see that he was definitely still working a scent trail. He came to a stop in the road, turned around and checked both sides before entering back into the cutover.

Again, this whole time we�re looking for blood and not finding anything. I couldn�t believe we couldn�t even find some on some sedge or something that the deer had brushed up against because we were going through some seriously thick arse stuff. Otis took us back into the cutover though and after another 200 yards or so there he was. The deer had traveled a total distance of somewhere around 500-600 yards. I measured a straight line on my GPS of 480 yards from the hit site but we had ended up making a semi circle with the track so it was a lot longer than that straight line. The buck was actually headed right back to where he had originally came from. That�s something I�m seeing as a pattern. The deer very often times head back to their bedding spot even if they originally take off in the opposite direction.

This was not the longest track we�ve ever been on but it�s probably the proudest I�ve been of Otis. I really learned not to doubt him anymore and if he�s telling me the deer went this way then that�s what happened whether I�m finding blood or not. I think this was a big confidence booster for both of us. The hunter had never seen a tracking dog work before and he was blown away when all of sudden there his deer was laying in front of us. I�ll admit that I was a little blown away too.

Anyways�.I could keep writing but I�ll try to keep it short enough so that everyone doesn�t have to read a novel. It�s opening day of the youth season this morning and I�m just waiting on another call to come in. This should be a fun weekend.

Congrats to you and Otis CNC!

Thanks!.....You know we run into all kinds of situations while tracking and I�ll admit that there�s been a few deer where I thought to myself that the hunter might have possibly found their deer without out a dog��but they would have had a better chance of winning the lottery than finding this deer. I think that�s what amazed me and the hunter so much. After we both walked down their interior road for such a long ways I could see it in his eyes. He was like�..�Really? Ok, if you say so I�ll keep following you���

So that was the story��..If I could think of anything we could take away from that track it would probably be to not take any bow shot for granted. I know I�ve said this over and over but unless you see your deer go down or hear it crash��give your deer some time after the shot no matter what. Bow hunting is a sport of inches and really gun hunting is too even though you have a little more room for error. If we would have placed bets on it�..I�d probably go all in on saying that a deer shot right where this one was hit was a smoked arse.....but it wasn't.

This deer was semi-stiff when we found it so it had been dead for a little while. I�m in no way trying to criticize the hunter here but more just analyzing the game film. Had the deer been given a few hours though after the shot, then it would have likely been in that bed at 150 yards instead of the one at 500-600. That would have resulted in a much more likely find whether you called in a dog or not. It actually looked like he had just died in the middle of the deer trail like he just couldn�t go any farther. He wasn�t bedded or anything. I bet he died on the run after they jumped him.



Couple more things�..

- White tallow on your arrow is highly likely brisket hit
- The amount of blood or lack there-of really doesn�t mean anything. I�ve seen tracks now with no blood to lots of blood and places in between�..it matters where you hit the deer as to whether it�s out there dead or not.

Good story. I'm finding that I'm learning more about tracking and my dog on every track. We tracked a deer for a guy yesterday that shot a deer facing him at 25 yards.
Said he felt good about the shot . Found the arrow,it was covered in blood but it didn't have a strong smell to it. We looked for blood and could not find any. We track on lead and I was letting rim smell around but he wasn't going in the direction the hunter said it ran.
I was getting frustrated with rim so I just took the leash off of him and let him run around. About 30 seconds later I could tell he picked up on the sent and took off. We followed and started finding blood about 80 yds from the seen of the crime. I didn't have a GPS on rim so I called him back and we got back on track on lead.
we where seeing decent blood and steady but not pumping out in spots like you see normally on a deadly shoot. I started believe it was a leg shot. When eventually tracked 1.4 miles !! We got to the property line and stopped. I hated to not find the deer for all involved. I think the deer is still alive.

Yeah, it�s pretty common to run into property line situations. If a deer goes far enough, then it�s bound to eventually happen. I�ll keep saying this��.deer that are really hurt will try to bed up somewhere within a few hundred yards. Most of the time it�s when their pushed that they leave out.

Not a whole lot of a story to go along with this morning�s track. It was a pretty text book gut shot with a bow. The deer went maybe 300-350 yards total but the hunter just didn�t have any blood to follow after 60-70 yards. They said they could smell gut on the arrow and even thought they got a whoof of gut smell while they were tracking. This deer was shot yesterday evening by the way. They did an initial search last night about 2 hrs after the shot and after not finding anymore blood on a second search this morning�..they called in the dogs.

Otis ran this one like he could smell it from the truck. I haven�t seen him this excited in a while. He cut 4 or 5 doughnuts when I cut him loose and after 3 or 4 minutes of doing back flips he settled down and went to tracking. I don�t know if something has just clicked for him or if the gut smell was just so strong that he could follow it with no problem but he didn�t even act like there had been a search area to work through on this track. There were a few minor checks here and there but he pretty well trotted right to it. A really nice 6 pt that the hunter had gotten pics of for the last 3 years. The funniest part of the track was when we found it. I saw Otis up ahead chewing on it and I turned around, stuck my hand out, and told the guy congradulations��He looked at my hand with a surprised look and grin from ear to ear and said�.�Brother, if that�s my deer up there then I ain�t shaking your hand�..I�m fixin to bear hug you!���.and he did.

That says a lot about otis' nose that he was able to pick up the scent nearly 24 hours after the shot . In these dry conditions and hunters making 2 attempts to find the deer... Sounds like he's hitting his stride . Very rewarding. Thing's are about to busy.

I'm not trying to high Jack you're thread but I figured I would share a story or two as well. We just got back from a track. It was a liver gut shot. The arrow actually came out of the front of the Hind quarter. We didn't find blood initially but I let rim work. He was all over the place for about 80 yards and I hadn't seen ant blood and I could tell he wants on sent so we went back to the shot sight and started over . this time I could tell he was on it and we found the deer after about 150 yards thru a bunch of thick river birch.

Good deal!....Just keep going on as many tracks as you can he'll get better and better. They're fun to watch work. It's fun to watch the amazement and excitement of the hunter when you find the deer too. That may be my favorite part of the whole thing. I'm still new enough that I'm just as genuinely as amazed as they are....It makes me think back on the good ones that I've lost in the past and wish I would have known to call in a dog. I shot a 5+ year old buck a couple years before I got Otis from about 250 yards and I hit him dead in the guts.....never found. It kind of makes me a little sick now knowing how easily I could have recovered him had I just known.

So here�s yesterday evenings story��..

(Part 1)

A family member of mine called me about 30 minutes before dark and tells me that my little cousin just knocked down a pretty good one. He said it hit the ground, flopped around for a minute, and then got itself back to its feet and drug itself into the woods backwards. So I tell him�.�Y�all just back out immediately and I�m on my way�..we�ll give it a while and assess the situation when I get there.�

So, I get my stuff gathered up and I�m just walking out the door to take a handful of stuff to the truck when jlbuc calls me about coming to track a deer for him. Well, we�re talking back and forth about what happened while I head for my truck. About half way to my truck I look in the back of my field and see a big black spot�.�It�s that damn hog!!!� I thought to myself�..I tell jlbuc�.�Pigs!!...I�ll call you back!��.He replies�.�Bust their ass!!!....Bye!�

I run back inside and grabbed my 30-06, trotted back out, and got propped against a post. The shot was about 230 yards and I didn�t have the best prop but it was a big arse target so I was comfortable with it��.. Powwww!!!!....Reeee!!! Reeee!!!!!. Reeee!!!....It hit the ground and went to flopping and when it did freakin pigs scattered everywhere. I peeled back to try to get on a second one and rounded off another shot at one entering the woods. The first pig is just laying there now motionless. I call jlbuc back and say�.�Alright, go ahead now�.you were saying.... ���and with that I head out to help my little cousin on his track.

����to be continued.

(Part 2)

So, I arrived at my cousin�s club and we started an initial search to assess what we were dealing with a little better. I just left the dogs in the box until we knew what we had. At the hit site, there was a little bit of dark blood, some dark hair, and a wallowed out spot on the ground where the deer had flopped. You could also see on the ground where he struggled to his feet getting into the woods�..but there was not another drop of blood for to be found inside the woods.

I told them that I thought we were dealing with a classic back slap and I wasn�t very optimistic about it. I wanted to double check though so I got Otis out and suited him up to track on lead. I don�t normally track at night too much but I was really familiar with the area we were tracking in and felt comfortable with it. I did want to keep Otis on lead though because I suspected the deer would still be alive out there and I didn�t want him to run up on it in the thicket at night with the buck at full strength.

This was the first time we have tracked on lead in a long time. I was pleasantly surprised though. Now that he�s older and really understands the game�.being on lead didn�t seem to distract him it all like it once did. We took the track around 250 yards only finding a couple more small spots of blood. After we crossed over a little creek branch with some steep banks I called it off as it headed into the thick abyss of some young planted pines. I saw enough in my mind to verify it being a back slap. I was really pleased though at how Otis worked on lead this time. I feel confident that if we ever need to�we can go on lead and be productive. They went back in this morning and combed the area just to be sure but didn�t find anything new. I suspect the deer will likely live and show back up on their cameras within a few days.

After finishing up the track I loaded Otis back up in the box with Shelby and we headed back home to clean pigs. Well, I pull in my property and decide to just go ahead and pick up the one laying in the back of the field as I�m coming in. As I get closer and closer though, I notice that there was no longer a pig laying in the field. All I know is the damn thing must have done exactly like the deer my little cousin shot and eventually got up and staggered off. I thought for sure I had hammered it. I was aiming right behind the head in a spot that usually drops them in their tracks. I was so disappointed. I looked for blood but couldn�t find a single drop.

There in here on me now though. I have a nice water hole fro them and enough water oak acorns on the ground to fill up a dump truck. I�m surprised its taken them this long to show up. Folks within just a mile of me have been battling them for years now. I suppose this drought has them expanding their range looking for resources. Their about to find a lot of lead here on my property. I�m guessing they�ll be right back within a day or two�they ain�t leaving that water. If they go completely nocturnal, I guess I�ll build a trap��.cause bacon�s good�.pork chops are good....

BTW.....The track with jlbuc in the story got called off after they found the deer themselves last night. Congrats to them!

Dang.hate the whole story. By back slap do you mean grazing the top of its back?

Yes....most likely high on the shoulder/lower neck area. If you look at a deer's anatomy....the spinal column has a dip in it right in that area that leaves a chunk of meat above the spine that can pretty much be blown off but the deer still get up and walk away from. It just shocks their spinal chord and causes them to have temporary paralysis or maybe even partial paralysis. The shock eventually wears off and they get their legs up in under themselves again. A lot of folks aim for dead center of the shoulder and when they miss high, they hit this area. Any deer that hits the ground, lays there for a while, and then gets up and runs off is not likely to be recovered. Some will but just going on percentages that is a very, very low percentage find. Very often the deer just shows back up on camera.

November 14, 2016.........


I didn�t take Otis or Shelby out yesterday to where I shot the hog because I didn�t want them to even attempt to track it and me have to tell them no. We did go out there this morning though to let them run around and play. They also like to scent check everything in the field each morning to inspect what went on the night before. I look at it as just good practice allowing them to use their nose to gather input�..I figure it�s just like letting them practice using a tool. There�s deer, coons, possums, armadillos, coyotes,�..all kinds of stuff that comes through at night. Apparently now we can add hogs to the list.

Anyways, getting on with what I was gonna say�..it�s been 38 hrs now since I shot the hog and I watched both dogs throw on the brakes and hit on the area where the hog had laid. I don�t know if they could have really tracked it that old but it does give me a better idea of how good both noses are.... Shelby�s nose especially. I knew Otis was supposed to have a good hound nose�.and he�s proving it to be true�� but I was afraid Shelby was just gonna be a real hot nosed dog with a lot of drive. I believe she�s gonna be ok though. I see here hitting on old scents enough that I think she's got plenty of nose power to run old tracks.

Someone will inevitably call or come on here before the season is over with a deer that they shot Saturday and it�s now Sunday night or Monday morning and they decide they want to call for a dog. Before the season is over I�d like to try to run Otis on one of these tracks to challenge him and really just to see if he can do it. It's probably gonna have to rain first before we could try something like that. I'd like to start trying some though so I'll better know the limitations of what we can do when folks call.

Thanks for taking the time to type out the stories. Really enjoy reading them!

Thanks 3FF......

Two years ago we tracked a deer for a young boy who had shot the deer in the afternoon with a 243. The deer had fallen down but as they were walking to it got up and took off. Fred and I looked for it the next morning and on the first pass found no blood and I was about to chalk it off to the high back shot.
I took Fred back to the starting point and after he followed the exact path he had first taken I let go of the lead. Several minutes later I caught up with Fred baying the deer. It took off but we finally caught up with it and shot it. It turned out that the shot was dead in the shoulder of a broadside deer but did not penetrate the vitals. I have not been a 243 fan since but if using one I would recommend shooting behind the shoulder.

My wife has shot a few with a .243 and if you hit them in the right spot it can be devastating. It looks to me like the bullet may be fragmenting though so that can have it�s pros and cons. For a grown man, I can�t see why anyone would carry an undersized gun to the woods. It matters first and foremost where you hit it�.but I�d like to have that forgiveness offered by the larger caliber.

The deer shot by my little cousin was with a 30-06. He�s 15 years old now and shoots it pretty well for someone that age. The shot he made on the back slapped buck was around 200 yards down a powerline. There was a good amount of really dark hair at the hit site and the blood looked like meat wound type blood. That near black hair was what really confirmed the back slap in my mind.

No story this morning, just some rambling dog talk for the other trackers. I know every tracker will have different opinions but I just wanted throw out mine for the other new guys reading. More often times than not�.when I go out on a track, there�s a group of hunters waiting to go �watch the dog�. I let them go when I first started but I�ve quit doing that and started only letting one person go with me on each track. It�s going much smoother so far. You�re gonna see some sad faces but no one will care when you find the deer��and that�s the more important part to everyone rather than watching a dog show.

Not only is it distracting to a young dog but I found that when a group of folks went with me then I had to not only focus on Otis and the track�..but I was also trying to manage people at the same time�.. �Hey man�.y�all stay together in case Otis works back to us��.Hey man, y�all keep your voices down just a little bit in case the deer is alive.��..Hey man, where did the other guy go??� .......and on and on and on��

It may sound good to say were gonna let the little kids go watch too but when your plowing through a briar patch 500 yards deep into a young cutover, looking for a possible live buck, and the dog is taking the track on��it�s just really not a good place for a little kid to be�.especially when they�re not dressed to go through such nastiness. As a matter of fact, I just went by Tractor Supply and bought some more leather gloves and such for the hunter that goes with me and Otis. I think everyone has a different perception of how things will unfold as compared to how they actually do. Nearly every track ends up in the nastiest. ugliest briar patch on the property. I�ve had folks go in a t-shirt with no gloves that say at the truck �Eh, I�ll be good man.���......only to get nut deep into it and say........ �Wheeew!..Got dayum it�s thick in here ain�t it!�......


Go in prepared for battle.



Anyways�.yeah, JMO but I think you�re better off to leave the group back at camp waiting to help drag.

Your spot on brother

I didn�t want to keep completely hi-jacking Honey lou lou�s thread more than I already did with dog talk so I thought I�d put my response to Geno down here. It�s a good topic to talk about with everyone anyways. It was in reference to how long after the shot a decent dog should be able to track a deer.

I�m still fairly new to tracking but I�ve met a lot of the other trackers around Alabama/Georgia and I�ve been to several tracking conventions where I�ve got to meet trackers from around the nation. From listening and talking to these folks, it seems like the vast majority of trackers out there are working tracks of 6-24 hrs old routinely.....with a large percentage of those being in the 6-12 hr range. Tracks of 30+ hrs are a very, very small percentage of finds. You�ve got trackers who have stories about finding one 40 hrs old or 62 hours old, etc�.but those are like the white whales of tracking stories�.not the norm and certainly not what they want to run on a �routine� track.

A lot of it does depend on the individual dog but the right track under the right conditions matters a lot too�..a good gut shot might be able to be winded days later and the dog not even have to �blood track it� in order to find it. The age that ground scent will be able to be followed though, will depend a lot on the moisture in the soil and humidity in the air even if it�s a top notch dog.

I just don�t want folks to get the wrong impression and think that they can wait a day and then call in a tracker and expect them to be able to find the deer in routine fashion. It may happen or it may not but you�re starting to throw bombs and hailmarys at that point instead of running what would have been a routine play had they gotten in there within a reasonable time frame. If someone needs a tracker they ideally need to try to get the dog in there 6-24 hrs after the shot to give someone�s dog a high percentage chance at it. The sooner the better assuming you�ve given the deer due time to die.

So are you saying to give a minimum of 6 hours to die? Or are you saying 6 hours is about as quick as: 1) I can determine I need a dog, 2) Find your number, 3) You load up and get to me, and 4) begin tracking?

Both of your reasons really, but mainly to give the deer some time before we send a dog in behind it. If someone calls me and needs a deer tracked, then you can just about be assured that it�s not hit in the heart or lungs�..if it was�..then they would likely find it easily and not need a dog. Sure, they�ll be a few exceptions to the rule but playing the percentages�.. if I went out to track every deer within 2-3 hrs then I�m assuring myself of dealing with a LOT of live deer. Waiting 5-6 hrs at a minimum gives the deer time to die or at least weaken some from the marginal hit. One exception to the rule would be if you just blew the leg off and someone was gonna try to bay that deer up. That tracker would just assume get on a leg hit immediately. Me personally, I prefer to play it conservatively and give any track time.

This is actually something I have a hard time getting some calls to understand. In their heads, the hunters want to think that I can just come out right then and get their deer for them. I just can�t come out there though and get a dead deer for someone when it�s still alive no matter how big of a hurry they�re in.

A sweet spot to send a dog in would be anywhere from 5-12 hrs after the shot. A fresher track will allow the dog to be able to follow it easier because they not only blood track it�.but they also track the deer itself similar to the same way someone�s deer hounds would on a dog drive. That scent and the ability of the dog to track �the deer� itself dissipates quicker than the scent coming off the blood. The rate at which these scents age depends on the conditions (moisture/humidity). The older it gets the harder the dog has to dig it out.

What I would recommend to everyone is to give your deer some time after the shot and then do an �assessment� of the situation. Don�t just take off in behind it thinking it�s gonna be just right there. Use the information gathered at the hit site and the first 50-75 yards��combined with how you saw the deer react, etc�..to come to a general conclusion on where the deer is hit. It�s like being a detective. Use that assessment to decide how to precede from there. Is it a leg hit?......Is it a back slap?.....Is it a gut shot?......Is it a smoked arse?

If you know you just gut shot a biggun and it�s the best deer you�ve ever seen, etc��don�t be afraid to back out and call in the guy with the remote control deer finding machine. Most guys don�t charge much more to track your deer than the gas money that you�ll spend this weekend on the way back and forth to your clubs. If you take the right steps after the shot then it�s pretty routine to come out and recover a deer with a dog if you hit it good enough. It�s all the stuff the hunters do to fugg it up before we get there that makes it challenging.

Exhibit �A�

http://www.aldeer.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1917035#Post1917035


What?....Too soon?

Call just came in for tomorrow morning��.another youth hunter. Dad said he believed it was hit low and back. Deer �bucked� up in the middle and took off running. A little bit of hair at the hit site and decent blood. It�s only been about 2 hrs as I type this since the shot so I have to assume they tracked it pretty quickly. They jumped the buck up at 200-300 ish yards and backed out.

I don�t wanna count my chickens before they hatch but I feel like we have a good chance of finding this one. The deer is gonna go another few hundred yards and bed up again where it�ll die overnight. That�s the plan anyways. It sounds like it was hit in the area of the liver/gut and was just tracked a little too quickly. We�ll find out in the morning����.

Sounds like a good one for Shelby

I�m not gonna throw her on a true lost one just yet. I�m gonna get her on a few more training runs on smoked arse deer first and then maybe try to work her on a few toward the end of the season. Otis�s first year at this same age (7-10 months) we only went on maybe 4 or 5 true lost deer that season. We went on around 15-18 smoked runs though. The training process takes several years and this first one is really just an introduction��..ingraining in them that this is what they do. Technique is learned in the second year�.and the third they start putting it all together and honing their skills. That�s what I�ve seen so far anyways. They say (other trackers) that year 4 and 5 is when they really start getting into their prime years.

I have some family coming down this way to hunt next week and I should get a few runs for Shelby on some deer they shoot. If we find this deer tomorrow and it isn�t too deep�.I�ll rerun Shelby on the track.

I guess I jinxed us on this one by calling the find ahead of time. The shot must have been really, really low�.. somewhere from say under the legs on back to the gut area but maybe only catching an inch or two of deer. It�s possible that it was just a hard grazing shot. We tracked the deer for about a mile. We found one bed with blood at around 300 yards and another bed with blood around 950-1000 yards at the #5 tee box��and then the track seemed to go hot. Yep, I said #5 tee box. This was a first for me for sure. I couldn�t help but laugh a little as Otis emerged out of the thicket, tracking down the side of a fairway and eventually right across a putting green�..and yes we had permission to do it. Which golf course you ask? I�ll let that part just stay a mystery.

Either 1) the deer was out ahead of us moving or 2) it laid in that second bed for most of the night and the track was really fresh past that point. Otis started tracking pretty fast past the last bed though and we took it another 700-750 yards before running out of room. This is one that may live or may die over time. If I had to guess, I'd say it's still alive right now.

Just want to thank CNC for helping me locate a tracking dog for my daughters� buck this weekend! Also, thanks for all the advice you�ve given here on the site, on letting a deer lay and not moving right in on it, and for hunters not to do much of their own looking IF they think a dog will be needed for recovery.

Thanks 3G�s�.Glad it all worked out. That�s an awesome buck! You definitely did the right thing by backing out and giving the deer some time.

Went 2 fer 2 today....I'm wore out. About to partake in a couple ice cold adult beverages and then call it a day. I'll post stories and pics in the morning.

Congratulations. Looking forward to the stories.

Thanks!.....

Yesterday�s story part one����

Call comes in around 8:00 am�.actually a text. The hunter wants to know if I will come out and look for a buck he shot the evening before around 3:30. He said it was a really nice 8 pt that he didn't even really think he had hit at first. He said the deer didn�t really show any typical reaction to being shot other than bolting. No blood at the hit site and no blood for the first 50 yards or so. The first spot of blood came where the deer made a hard turn into the bushes. The hunters tracked very spotty blood for about 100 yards and then lost it.

After texting back and forth for a while about the situation I tell him that I�m on my way. I get my tracking stuff on, the dogs loaded up, the house locked up, and I�m literally putting the truck in drive to leave when I get another text from him saying �Don�t come��another hunter just saw my buck and he�s not hurt.� So, I get back out and go on about my business.

A couple hours go by and then the hunter sends me another text of one of the blood spots they found. In the pic I can see this big glob of blood about the size of a nickel that looked similar to big blood clot. It reminded me of the little chunks of blown up stuff that�s usually down in the chest cavity when you�re field dressing one. He said they had found several of those in the first hundred yards. I told him that didn�t really look like just a grazing shot and asked him if he was for sure the other deer was his. After talking more to the other hunter he calls me back and decides it wasn�t his deer and he wants to come on. So I load everything up again and actually leave this time.

There wasn�t much to tell about the track. We arrived around noon and Otis went 470 yards right to it without even really working any checks on this one. The tiny wound holes had just clogged up and it wasn't leaving anything for them to track. We only saw a couple specks right before we found the deer. I forgot to ask the guy what he was shooting in all the excitement but there was barely any entry or exit hole. The exit hole was about as big around as your finger. He had hit the deer low behind the front leg and it came out low in the brisket in front of the off side leg. The exit hole is actually covered up by the deer's nose in the pic....there wasn't much to it. It was amazing the deer went as far as it did. A really nice deer though and a really happy hunter.

Part two still to come.......

Sounds like those damn hornady american whitetails

Part two����

So let�s back up for a minute to me just leaving the house to go on the first track. I hadn�t made it 5 miles down the road when another call comes in. The guy said he had been referred to me by the hunter I was headed to track for and they had one down as well about 20 miles away�.could I come look for their deer too? I told him that I didn�t know how long the first track would take me but if it went smoothly then I�d be glad to. It turned out that these two families were friends with each other. The dad from one family was already on the phone with the grandad from the other one as soon as we found the first deer��.�They found it in ten minutes!....He�s on his way!�

This was a young kid�s deer that had been gut shot WAY back and low. It�s funny because both the dad and grandad said that they knew they were pushing the deer and doing the wrong thing�.but the amount of blood and gut material just made them keep on tracking.....thinking it had to just be right there. This is very common and something everyone needs to try and restrain yourself from doing. It's almost like natural instinct to want to chase after it when you see all the blood on the ground. The deer was shot that morning early��by 10:00 they had pushed it around 1200 ish yards where the blood trail finally went cold on them. I learned later on that they had also brought in the yard dog once the blood line went cold to look some more. Not a good idea of you need to call in a tracking dog.

The reason I say all of this is not to scold the hunter or anything like that�..but just to continue using these stories as learning/teaching tools for everyone. This would have been a very simple find had the hunters just backed out and given the deer time. Instead it turned out to be a really tough track for a gut shot like this.

Since they had already tracked it so far, I told them we wouldn�t start at the hit site and we would go from last blood�..it didn�t end up actually being last blood though....it was there next to last spot of blood. Otis started tracking like normal but I don�t know if he got off on the scent of the yard dog or a searchers feet with blood on it or what happened....... but he progressed a line that ended up being very close to where the deer was finally located but he wasn�t on the right track. We got down into a swamp bottom and eventually ran into the property line. Otis wasn�t really acting like he had the track anymore anyways and was more less searching to find it rather than tracking a line. By this time we�ve been tracking for about an hour and half and made it about 400 yards or so past last blood.

So the hunter tells me that he thinks they actually had another random spot of blood about 100 yards past where we started and he didn�t think the dog ever went by it. We walk back out to find the last spot of blood he�s referring to and do a restart. This time Otis took us on a different path down into the swamp with much more confidence. We tracked for about 300-400 yards past the last blood spot they found. He took us back down into the beaver swamp where there were little fingers of water running all over the place. We crossed a couple of those fingers of water and then across a good sized hole of water just over knee deep...... where I filled my boots with water just yards ahead of Otis finding the deer. We were watching him cross the little pond when a few buzzard flew off out of the trees ahead us and I told the hunters...there he is right there. Sure enough Otis found it moments later�����.

I should have thought to ask him but there was a lot of excitement at the time and I let it just slip my mind. I know I'd be seriously thinking about switching to something different if that wasn't just a fluke. He didn't hit the deer all that bad really but there just wasn't enough trauma to put the deer down quickly and it covered a lot of ground on a death run.

Great posts and great finds yesterday! Otis showed out in spite!

I love these posts CNC, keep the stories coming. They are very interesting and good reads. I'll echo what Beadlescomb is saying the American whitetail bullets are garbage and do not expand.

Thanks man��...

Thanks!.....


I�ve been deer hunting for about 25 years now and going at it about as hardcore as anyone. I�ve learned more over the last few of years of tracking though about shot placement and the deer�s reaction to it than what I did in the previous 20+ of just hunting. We vastly underestimate a deer�s resilience and we vastly underestimate �time� when it comes to backing out and letting the deer lay. I hope that by relaying these stories that everyone can see the same things I�m seeing and grow a better appreciation for the decisions we make after the shot. It�s a win/win for both tracker and hunter if you make good decisions after the shot because it makes recovering these marginally hit deer much simpler. Once these folks see a trained dog work then you can see that their idea of �recovering deer� has just been completely changed.

A couple takeaways��..

1) Everyone go by Wal-Mart�..Tractor Supply�..your local hardware store�..or wherever you want to buy it and buy a roll of orange flagging to put in your truck. If not, then at least grab a handful of toilet paper and generously mark key checkpoints of the track in tree limbs that can be easily seen. Mark the initial hit spot��mark first blood�.mark along the trail every so often�..mark the last spot of blood��mark places where it crossed creeks and ditches�etc�etc�..I see the same thing play out over and over.....folks don�t know where these key locations are at when we go back in���We had blood somewhere in here???......."I think we stopped somewhere around this bottom, I�m not sure.� Flagging these areas so that they�re easily visible and easy to go back to will make the search much more efficient and likely to be successful.

2) White hair is just about a sure sign of a low hit. The second track had white hair at the hit site as well as pieces of gut along the trail. Deer that are hit low in the guts need to be given LOTS of time�.probably 8 hrs minimum with a gun. If it�s an afternoon hunt and all you find is a big wad of white hair on the initial assessment�..just go home and come back the next morning.

3) By all means, do a search on your own. I�m not saying you should just back out on every shot and immediately call in a dpg��.BUT�.if you already KNOW it�s a marginal shot then take into consideration as you do that search that you may eventually want to call a dog. Don�t keep going past a controlled search of one or two people into massive search parties and yard dogs before conceding. You take a simple situation and make it complicated.

Good stuff bub

Thanks!

Love the stories!!! Way to go Otis!

Nice work Otis!

Call just came in. The hunter reported lots of blood for 150-200 yards and then nothing. Maybe the deer just changed directions. He didn't get a really good look at the deer after the shot but he said he didn't think he saw it holding a bad leg. Leg shots can bleed a lot like that. Let's hope its something else. Headed to find out..........

No luck on this one. I believe it may have actually been a leg hit after all. There was great blood for several hundred yards and then nothing. We tracked it with no issues for 1,000 yards but we just never came up on the deer. A leg or brisket hit is about all I can figure this one may be. No signs to point to gut hit. I think it went WAY too far to be bleeding that heavily from liver or chest cavity.

November 28, 2016



I tried to run a 28 hr old track yesterday but it was just too old this time for Otis under these conditions��..

The hunter reported that he had shot a good buck with his bow. He said he saw where the arrow hit and watched the deer run off with it in him. The hit was a little back and high on a slightly �quartering to� shot. The hunter gave the buck plenty of time before tracking. There was decent enough blood that they were able to track the deer 485 yards according to my GPS. They found the arrow at 80 yards where it had fell out of the deer. One side of the Rage expandable was bent. There wasn't any beds but there was a couple of spots where the deer obviously stopped and bled spots about the size of your fist.

We started at the hit site to let Otis run the good blood areas and get accustomed to the smell. He was progressing the line but I could tell that he was having to work really hard to follow it and keep moving it forward. We were progressing 30-40 yards and then working a check�.30-40 yards and working a check�.and so on. After 150 yards or so I decided to go ahead and progress the line myself to the last know spot of blood so that Otis did wear himself out on a known line.

This track was in the hills and hollers of some pretty good ridges but it was some of the most open hardwoods that I�ve tracked in to date. You could see Otis just about the whole time and really watch his technique for searching. He�s learned to work out from his last known spot in a spiral pattern until he picks up on the clean line again. Its really cool to watch now. That�s what he did at the last blood to work around the search area. After about 20 minutes of working around the last blood he finally found a way he liked and started progressing the line straight down a bottom where the ridges came together.

He was having to work it 30-40 yards at a time again and it was a super slow go. Otis will run a track in a situation like this by working out and back from a known spot he is sure of in a circular pattern like previously described. A lot of the time spent tracking on tough track like this is waiting for him to move the line forward on a line he is confident of. That�s what we did for the next hour and a half until we had moved straight up the holler another 300-400 yards. At this point we were approaching 900 yards from the hit site and I could tell Otis was wearing down from the intense sniffing. I finally called it as he lost the line again and got muddled down in a check.

I�m not really sure if this deer was hit good enough to recover or what happened. With the lack of moisture to work with�.the track was really just too old to work efficiently at 28 hrs. I�m as happy to see this rain coming for the sake of tracking as much as I am the food plots. I think in the long run this tough drought period we�ve just went through is gonna prove to be outstanding training for Otis though. He�s had to dig so hard in the dust that when we finally do have some moisture to work with again��I think it�ll seem a lot simpler for him in comparison. Bring on the rain!!!!

This rain is gonna help us all

We got good rain down here.....It's on like neckbone now!!! Woohooo!!

Call just came in for in the morning. The hunter stuck a good buck with his bow this afternoon after the front passed through. He said he felt like he stuck it in the pocket behind the shoulder and thinks it may have hit the shoulder on the opposite side. He was using expandable broadheads. He said the blades were gone from the head and the arrow was broken. After tracking for 250 ish yards and with the blood turning to specks�..he decided to back out and bring in a dog in the morning. It sounds like it�s a pretty dang good one.

To be continued��..

Looking forward to the rest of the story.

��and now the rest of the story.

Let�s start off with a couple corrections from the call. The arrow was actually not broken and was still fully intact. It was just the broadhead that was broken. The arrow fell out of the deer at around 80 yards. One more correction to the story is that they had actually only tracked it around 125-150 yards.

It took us a minute to work around the search area. The hunter was not able to locate his last blood spot and we kinda had to go about it blindly. We eventually got looped around in though and Otis took the trail. At about 450 yards he picked his nose off the ground and started bobbing it in the air. He picked up speed out ahead of us and had just made it out of site good when I heard him cut loose barking. I had to immediately tone him off of it because we were within about 150 yards of a very busy road. I was already antsy about working off lead where we were tracking.

That was about the extent of it. I wish we would have been out in a more rural area where I could have more freely give him an opportunity to bay the deer but we just couldn�t do it on this tract of land. We followed the trail for another little piece just to make sure the deer wasn�t crippled enough we could sneak up on it but no luck. I think the hunter actually buried the Rage expandable up in the back of the deer�s front side shoulder. He said it was quartering away and he thought he had hit it in the armpit. I think it caught bone though. The funny thing about�or not so funny I guess�.is that he had just been talked into switching from his Muzzy fixed blades to these new expandables. This was the first deer he had shot with them. I think he�s throwing the rest of them away.

Did you want to throw a big roll of orange flagging at him and tell him what a moron he was?



Hmmm...haven't seen Muzziehead post today now that you mention that.

I just take a deep breath and work through it the best we can. I try not to pile on in a situation like this where the hunter is already down. However!!.....I will bitch a little now that I�ve made it back to this thread.

For real fellas�..take some flagging with you and use it. It�s not just this one track�.it�s all of them. It�s rare that anyone has anything marked. Not only will flagging key spots help us to efficiently relocate these areas�.but taking the time to flag as you go will also slow you down as you�re tracking and make you be a little more patient with what you�re doing.

The broadhead debate is not one that�s just black or white. These large expandable do leave some impressive holes when they hit the middle cavity of the deer. They seem to fail badly though when hitting any significant meat or bone. If I were gonna shoot a head like that then I�d be sure to drop my aim point back to about 6-8 inches or so behind the shoulder. You could hit it as far back in the guts as the pecker and we would have a far better chance of recovering it as opposed to burying one up it�s shoulder. You might as well think about that shoulder as if it were brick.

Let me explain from my perspective as the dog tracker why it makes it a lot easier if you flag your blood trail. We trackers typically start at the hit site in order to give the dog an opportunity to get accustomed to this deer�s smell and to build up some momentum before working the point of loss.

This is generally 100-300+ yards. This scent line is often times very tracked up by searchers and the dog can run very erratic on this part of the track due to all the different scent trails left by the searchers. I watch Otis and if he�s really having to work hard to progress through the known line section�..then I help him out a little by moving him forward through it.....helping him pick back up on the real line on further past the section he�s muddled down in. I don�t want to spend 30-45 minutes and � a jar of Otis�s piss and vinegar just to get us to the spot of loss.

Ideally, I�d like to slowly but steadily walk right down the known blood trail and to the point of loss without all the wandering around the woods thinking it was somewhere over here or maybe it was down there�.I remember there was a big tree kind of stuff. I could work many tracks so much more efficiently if I could just look out through the woods and see orange flagging hanging down where you�ve trailed.

The rut is just around the corner and many folks are about to start slinging lead at some bucks. When you finally get that shot on the one you�ve been looking for and he runs off after the shot�..don�t just assume he�s gonna be laying just behind the next bush. Don�t rush in and make bad decisions. Slow down, take your time�.and track with the same diligence that you�ve done with your scent control, your stand location, your entry and exit routes, etc�etc�.We�re hunting like pros and then tracking like novices. Again, I don�t say that to be harsh on any one individual, but rather just to maybe open our eyes up to how much room for improvement we have in this area as a group.


Take some flagging with you and use it as you track!

Or even some tp. Never know when you're gonna need it but you will be glad when that time comes.

December 3, 2016


Call just came in. The hunter reported that his girlfriend shot a buck this morning around 7:00. The deer has been tracked 250-300 yards. Bone and brisket fat were found just past the hit site. We both agreed that we�re dealing with a high leg shot. The hunter said it looked the deer was falling down and running into trees a lot. Gonna be a 50/50 chance of it still being alive. It�ll be about 6 hrs after the shot by the time we get to it. Knock on wood, but we hopefully should be able to track to this one if it didn�t cross boundaries. What happens when we find it may get real interesting. To be continued�����.

Got it! A hell of a track on this one. I'll tell the story over a cup of coffee tomorrow morning. Let's watch some football for now. Roll Tide!

Looks like Otis got him a snack. Lookng forward to the rest of the story.

Excellent!

Great thread! Glad I found it too. I'll be back here on a regular basis to catch up.

Here�s the rest of the story��..

It did end of being a leg shot but just not a front leg. It was a solid hit to one of the back legs that completely shattered the bone just above the �knee�. Total distance of this track was around 1,000 yards. Like I expected, Otis didn�t have any problem following this one. The biggest issue was that the deer took us into a stand of young natural pine regen. It was some of the God awfullest thickness I�ve been in and we were in it for a long ways. You were literally having to fight your way through it at times.

One of the coolest parts of this track was about 300 yards into it. Otis was 50-60 yards ahead of us and we were just following along behind him. All of sudden there was a huge pile of deer hair the size of a trash can lid. We stopped and inspected it and were puzzled�.Did yotes get to the deer? Otis had kept on working so we marked it on the GPS and kept trucking. A few yards later there was a whole leg bone and just ahead of that was the carcass of a completely different deer that I guess another hunter must have shot a week or two prior and never found. The cool part though was that Otis barely checked up on it even though we tracked right through it. He knew that wasn�t the deer he was tracking. It's a big milestone to know that he is for sure recognizing the individual deer.

So anyways, we track on until we finally emerge in a SMZ. The track went off into the creek and back up the other side. There was lots of blood in the sand coming up the other bank but the trail went cold at the top. Otis worked the area for a few minutes and finally went back down into the creek and started progressing the line straight down the creek. The deer apparently couldn�t make it up the bank and fell back down into the creek ditch. That became his ultimate demise.

We tracked down the creek for several hundred yards with Otis down in the creek bed and the hunter and myself above him watching him work. After several hundred yards we came around some brush and there the deer was up ahead of us laying on his belly with his head up looking at us. Otis hadn�t seen it yet so I toned him back and gave the hunter the go ahead to rack a shell in the chamber and finish him. Boom!!!....He never got back up.

Thank you CNC and Otis!

This deer was shot on our lease in Bullock. The member texted me when I was at the game in ATL and told me the story and that Otis found him! It was his girlfriends 2nd largest buck ever and he and she are very glad to recover it. So glad you were available to track this one down for her! Based on what the member told me and you confirmed, this was a nightmare track to follow due to the brush. Thanks again!

Dr. B

Was the first dead deer a buck or doe?

Dr. B

From my experience those low back leg hits bleed a whole bunch. Was that the case of this track? Good job.

Thanks man�.Glad we could help recover it!




It was a young buck....like a cowhorn spike with a small fork.

Yes and no. There was good blood for the first few hundred yards....basically what the hunter had already tracked....and then it petered out and you only found it here and there on a sapling or where it crossed a ditch, etc. We didn't find any blood until about 250-300 yards past where the hunter stopped tracking and it was only a spot. You could really see where it tried to climb the creek bank though.

Here's one more pic from closer up. You can see the hit better in this pic. It pretty much took the back leg off. We've recovered a couple back leg hits now and they seem to actually be an easier recovery than a front leg hit. The deer seems much more immobilized after losing a back leg as opposed to the front. I don't think this deer would have ever made it much farther than where we found him.

Congrats on the find! I really enjoy reading your posts.

Thanks!

I shot a giant in 09 in almost the same spot but I hit both legs probably a touch higher than that except I was trying to shoot him in the hams and hit low. It was the only and last shot i had. That sucker dropped like a sack of taters. Finished him off with another shot. To this day that's the bloodiest kill sight I've seen.

good job to CNC and crew. Always like to read the update and glad the recovery worked out.

A rainy day update on Shelby���




A lot of the thread so far has been about Otis but I just wanted to give everyone an update on Shelby�s progress too. I haven�t been able to get her on as many known kills yet as I hoped for. My folks I was hoping to come through for me have either whiffed completely or dropped them in their tracks. However, I�ve kept the hide/neck/head of the little deer I killed during bow season in the freezer and I�m using it with some liver blood about every ten days or so to run mock tracks for Shelby.

From what I�m seeing out of her on the mock tracks�..she still has a long ways to go before I really get too concerned about working her on real tracks. The training process takes several years and some aspects of it can only be achieved with the maturity of the dog. In Shelby�s case, I don�t think she�s gonna be able to progress past where we are at right now until her puppy excitement calms down a notch. She has the desire to want to track and the ingraining in her that she is a tracking dog is being accomplished�..but to progress to the next step of focus and advanced technique is only going to come with some maturity.

It�s all good though�..I think at the 2-3 year mark she will be just as good of a tracker as Otis at that age. He just didn�t have nearly as much of a true puppy stage as Shelby. She gets so excited right now that she shakes and her teeth jitter. We ran her last training track off lead to see how she did and it was like watching greyhounds come out of the chute at the dog track. She was running S-patterns back and forth across the line like one of those show dogs running a cone drill. The funny thing was that she ran nearly the whole thing and wasn�t 30-40 yards from the end when she realized that she had run off and left me. She turned around and ran wide open back to me and then ran the whole thing over again. We�ll go back on lead again for the next track to continue to work on throttling back.

Pfft - she just likes to run and you like to walk. Let her run, call her back, let her run again. She'll get you trained eventually.

She's getting the hang of coming back to me on the collar tone ....so as long as she understands that then I'll turn her loose on a real track eventually. All puppies like to fast track but dang she's wide open.

Call just came in for in the morning....bow shot. The hunter says he drilled a big buck in the shoulder but feels good that he got a lot of penetration. He said he saw it after the shot and feels like it went through and hit the opposite shoulder. They've already tracked it 250-300 yards so that may be a little optimistic. We'll find out in the morning......To be continued.

^^^^ Will y'all start early with the heavy frost or allow it to burn off? How much does the frozen ground hurt/help? I always like to hear when Otis is gonna get to get after one the next day!

I�m gonna go in about the time the frost burns off. I�ve wondered the same thing about a hard freeze effecting the scenting conditions. I really don�t know. I give it an extra hour over what I normally would to make sure. We�ll probably start around 8:30 ish�..

Good luck! I'll be checking in tomorrow to see if y'all recover the buck.

Cnc do you know anyone near Dale County who tracks. My buddy shot one this evening and is going out in the morning to see if he can find it but if he cannot it may be worth trying to get someone out

Tony Luker is about the only person down that way and I don't think he's available to track for the next couple weeks. You could call him and just double check though....334-589-0767

Also try giving Randy Vick a call...aka trackncur....he's across the line in GA and if he doesn't have anything going on he might ride over there.....229-224-1814


Are you by any chance in the northern part of the county? I'm already headed in that general direction for tomorrow mornings track....if nobody else is available, call me in the morning and we'll see what we can do. If it's a quick track in the morning then I may be able to come down that way. Just have to see how hard Otis has to work on the first one.

It's near Ozark . My buddy let it be last nite and has found fat and white stuff at impact and fairly dark blood about 60 yes on.but nothing else

Touchdown!....pics later....headed to another one.

Hmmmm....fat and white stuff sounds like possible brisket shot. Be sure to watch for buzzards tomorrow if y'all didn't find a dog. Them things get on 'em a lot quicker than people think. I'm seeing them routinely on some of Otis's finds. There were two circling low on this morning's find and the deer wasn't even completely dead yet.

Finally made it back home. I�ll write us up a story in a bit if I ain�t asleep. Here�s a pic for now of this morning�s find. Ended up going on two more tracks but no luck on either one. The second track was a backslap that called off after 700 yards��Third track was a likely hard graze that we jumped and never could catch up to.

So this was the biggest deer we�ve found to date. A bow shot really far forward in the shoulder and brisket. By the way the crow flies the track was 750 yards�..the deer probably went 1100 though. It made a big 300-400 yard loop and crossed right back over on it�s on path. To make it more challenging�..2 does decided to jump up in front of us right before the point where it crossed. I think Otis may be farther along than his handler�.After several hundred yards and not seeing any blood, I saw him out in front of me high nosing and speeding up. I pulled him off and restarted him. After rerunning the same line again I found out that he was high nosing cause the deer was just right there. My bad Otis!

This was probably the happiest guy I�ve tracked for. I chit you not I think he shook my hand 6 or 7 times as I was leaving. I didn�t mind it a bit though and to be honest, I�m grinning now thinking about how excited he was. When we finally saw Otis up ahead of us easing up to the deer.... the hunter ran and bear hugged me and hollered �Wooooo Hoooo!!!!��..and that�s when the deer lifted it�s head up and tried to get up. The dang thing was still alive. We dispatched it and that was that. Like I was saying in my last post to Brad�..there were two buzzards already circling really low over him. Them things are damn good trackers too.

Another call just came in for in the morning......Not sure of the hit...deer was broadside....no sign at hit site other than a little blood. Deer tried to bed quickly within 100 yards. They believe they jumped him and after finding the bed and not much past it decided to back out. Decent blood to the bed and good blood in the bed but really nothing after that they said. The hunter said that just by chance they happened to see another speck of blood a little farther past the bed as they walked out. To be continued.......

Oh, one other thing about this last find...... The deer�s body was really small for a rack that size. I really have no idea of how old this deer was�.it honestly looked like a 2 year old or something�.3 at the most. I�m pretty decent at estimating weight and this deer might have weighed 150 lbs soaking wet. It put me in mind of an escaped high fence deer. I�m not aware of one that was just right there near us but there�s always the possibility that one is in the bigger neighborhood. It�s a heck of a deer though anyway you cut it. That was just something unusual for the body to that small on such a large rack.

It turned out to be a pretty straight forward gut/liver shot. Not a whole lot of story to it. The deer went around 250 yards past where they jumped him and died. We tracked straight to it��.

Headed out now on another leg shot from this morning. Likely about to have to deal with a live deer situation. To be continued���.

Yall be putting bucks in the truck. Good stuff

Thanks man!

Holy chit�.stick a fork in me and Otis for this weekend�.we�re done. We tracked this from the hit site about 400 yards straight to where the deer had bedded. We emerged out of some thinned pines into a 1-2 year old clear cut. Kinda thick but still visible to see across. Otis was tracking fast ahead of us but he woed up right in the edge of the clear cut in a thick patch. I eased up there to see if he had the deer and found him licking blood out of the bed. I told the hunter that the deer was likely close by and we had just gotten him up. Little did I know that the deer was actually within 10 yards of us still.

After Otis got done sniffing the bed he went back to searching for which way the deer exited. As soon as he chose the right direction the deer broke out of this brushy area nearly right out from under us. I immediately toned Otis to keep him off of it but we couldn�t get a shot before the deer went straight back the way we had come from into the thinned pines. He passed back by the truck within about 150 yards and into a stand of young pines maybe 5 years old or so. We chased him through the pines, into a creek bottom�.up the creek bottom�.back through the same exact same pine stand and within 20 yards of the trucks again. It actually looked like he saw the trucks and threw on the brakes before hanging a left and looping around them. We kept after him for another 1000 yards or so passing within a couple hundred yards again of where we had originally jumped him before calling it off as he crossed over into the neighbors.

We just couldn�t ever catch up to him. We made a big huge circle and a half for a total distance of 3.6 miles! I got a good look at him when he jumped and I believe they just blew the leg up. He was moving pretty good when he came up out of the thicket although you could obviously tell he was hurt. There was actually part of his leg bone at the hit site.

To add a little more to the story�..I don�t think Otis will ever be able to bay up many deer like this one. He�s just too short legged and doesn�t cover ground fast enough. He also stops and checks back with me. The farthest he ever got out in front of me today was around 230 yards at one point. The vast majority of the track he was in the 60-120 range. All of this is just fine with me though because these are the ones that I don�t want to chance too much. I actually toned him back to me a couple times when me and the hunter couldn�t keep up. I was more hoping to run the buck out in one of their clear-cuts or open pine areas and seeing him out in front of us than I was thinking Otis would catch him or bay him. I also hoped he might tire down on that one front leg if we pushed for a little ways�.no luck though.

I called CNC this morning for a little reassurance on a shot and to put he and Otis on semi stand by,....

Turns out a rage in between the hip and rib cage walking away from you does the trick.

Didn't go anywhere, glad I didn't waste otis' time

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I felt pretty sure that was a dead deer when you told me it was buried up to the fletchings. You did the right thing though by sneaking out and giving it plenty of time. Have you got another pic showing the rack better? That thing looks like a neat lookin rack�..

Just an old 7 pt. Mounting him because he has some cool features. (And because my best bow kill) Real long g2 with kicker on R side. Also a curly point off back of base I like.

Thinking hard left turn to show that side off. Not sure what to do with ears to see that curly point. Has great cape, dark dark neck, bleach blonde forehead. He recently broke a browtine off, have pictures with it

Thanks for your advice on waiting
[img:center][/img]

CNC,

I have really enjoyed this thread this year. I look forward to checking in on it every day to see the latest tales on you and Otis.

Looks like ya'll have been having a great year.

Keep posting the tales...

Thanks Cuz��


I completely forgot to add something to the gut shot story from Saturday��.I actually got to work Shelby on that track as well. It was a pretty quick find so I put Otis in the box and suited Shelby up to re-run it on lead. She did great. She�s actually still pretty timid out in a strange situation like that compared to working practice tracks here at home�.. so that in itself slowed her down a lot. She picked right up on the scent though and re-tracked it. I hope I can get her on a bunch more of these before the season is over for the sake of getting in plenty of �reps� for her.

Good deal CNC, You've got some loyal readers so keep posting pics and stories

I'm glad y'all enjoy them. I enjoy writing them. It's kind of like when you get excited after a good hunt and you can't wait to tell your hunting buddy the story. I get pretty amped up about it sometimes....

waiting... waiting... waiting...
withdrawals....

I killed me a big mule headed doe this evening and got Shelby on another good practice run. Now let's see if I can run this road block gauntlet on the way to Shana's to get some burger and smoked sausage made up.

Good job Shelby girl!

She gets so excited when she's finds one that it wouldn't surprise me if she just fell over like one of those fainting goats. She's one of those dogs that doesn't just wag its tail but its more of a whole body wag.

Call just came in for in the morning�.gun shot. Hunter says he shot a big buck but the only shot he had was hehind a little tree and he hit it back a little more that he would have like to have. It sounds like he hit it back and high. The hunter said he saw it fall down 4 times as it was leaving. They've blood trailed it around 250 yards and jumped it once in the process. They've found some kind of tissue they believe to be lung tissue. Let�s hope they�re right. To be continued���..

I shoot till they quit moving and if they run off I will shoot three or four times in that direction whether I see him or not... I carry plenty of shells and would have been shooting while he was getting up and falling down...Hope ya'll get him...Tuned in CNC and Good Luck....

I hear that�.you and me both. I ain�t afraid to sling some lead on a follow up shot either.

It really sounds like a high back shot but maybe several inches down in the body under the spine about midways back....gut/liver area. It sounds like they�ve found a decent amount of blood. I like the fact they�ve found some kind of tissue even though I�m skeptical on it being lung. At least maybe we�re dealing with some significant internal trauma and not just a back slap. I should also add to the story that they�ve already taken their own pet dog to try and track it with no luck. That�s not gonna help make things easy on us but I still feel pretty confident we can hopefully work our way through it. I feel like the deer is likely gonna bed up pretty quickly�.within a few hundred yards past where they backed out.

Well we were due for a bad day and we had it this morning. I don�t know what was up with Otis this morning but he just wasn�t acting his normal self. I don�t know if the other dog being in there threw him off or if it was the back slapped deer he didn�t want to track or what but he just didn�t seem that interested in tracking it like he normally would. I finally got him around the search area and picked up on the clean line but he only ran it for 400 yards or so before stopping. I�ve had Randy tell me that his older dogs wouldn�t track back slaps sometimes like they knew it wasn�t a killing hit. I�m hoping that�s all it was this morning. I�m just gonna chalk it up to a fluke and go back again on the next one with confidence just like we�ve been doing.

We found some more blood smeared on some saplings between waist and chest high on me. No doubt it was a high back shot. I believe he might have went under the spine on this one though. We grid searched for a long ways in some really open habitat so I at least feel like the deer made it a good ways out of the area. It's very possible he's still alive. I wish Otis would have done better on this one but that's the way it goes sometimes. Maybe he just recognized it wasn't a fatal wound like Randy said. I ended up doing this track pro bono because I just wasn't satisfied with Otis's performance.

Moving along......

Well dang, I hate Otis didn't perform as well as he usually does. Good for you for not charging on this track, even though y'all didn't find the deer you still made a good impression I'm sure.

It was a difficult track to begin with since there had already been another dog brought in ahead of him but he really regressed back to some puppy chit this morning. As a puppy when he didn�t know what to do or didn�t have the track�.he would stop out ahead of me about 40-50 yards and just stand there looking back at me. He hasn�t done that at all this year until this morning. He�s usually out actively searching around me. On most tracks he�s so excited that it takes him a minute just to calm down and slow down. He had a completely different demeanor this morning. Maybe he doesn�t feel good today or something�..I�m just not really sure. That�s the trouble with not being able to talk to them. Sometimes you just don�t know what they�re thinking. He could be thinking�.�Look humans�..we ain�t gonna find this one so I ain�t bullchittin around out here this morning.� .....If the deer was dead, it was either in a pond/lake or he was WAY out there somewhere. We did a pretty extensive search through some really open understory for 500-800 yards around the hit site.

I�m gonna have to go back and look at my GPS to make sure this is 100% accurate but I specifically deleted everything last night before this track to make sure my memory was clean. Anyway though�..the hunter asked me at the end of the track how far we had walked. I pulled up Otis on the GPS and checked his stats and it showed 8.2 miles for him. We searched for 3-4 hrs so I suppose that could be accurate but that seems crazy. Like I said though, I know I reset everything before this track so I don�t see how it couldn�t be right. I know a lot of folks don�t understand how you could go that far without going into the next county but think about it more like the pattern a timber cruiser would work rather than a straight line. The great thing about my Garmin unit I�m using is that I can see everywhere we�ve been and run a timber cruise pattern by just looking at my screen.

Everyone, even dogs, have crappy days... Better luck next time. Enjoy the post CNC.

Thanks!.....That's what I'm chalking it up to. We were out walking around a day or two later and I look over and Otis is up at the house sitting next my truck like "C'mon let's go!" I think he's ready to go again.

Call just came in for tomorrow morning. Sounds like somebody shot Ol� Split Toe for any TK & Mike fans. The hunter reported that he was sitting with his wife and she knocked the stuffing out of �big one�. He said they found hair and gut matter at the hit site but not much else. He said that knowing it was a gut shot, they just backed out and called for a dog. This sounds like a very promising track. You never know though until you get there. To be continued���

Alright, I hope Otis is fired up and ready to go. looking forward to the rest of the story.

Great big ol tk and Mike thumbs up! Good luck bub

Well, I hadn�t made it but about 2-3 miles down the road when the hunter called and said he couldn�t meet this morning due to getting called into work. So, now I�m back here at home sippin coffee and watching the sun come up. Hopefully, we�ll still be able to get on the track later today. Otis is not happy about it.

Well dang, I was hoping for a different story this morning.

How do you feel about the track if y'all have to go this evening as opposed to this morning? Will this fog/humidity help keep the scent heavy?

I�ve had folks back out before but this one was a little more disappointing than normal. It was a beautiful morning to track with all the moisture in the air and on the ground. I didn�t want to jinx myself, but with the good tracking conditions and it being a very likely gut shot�.. I felt like I could just about point my bat toward the left field wall on this one as soon as we stepped up to the plate. It certainly won�t make the track any easier if we have to wait until this afternoon but we could still likely work it if they call back. It would be a 20-24 hr old line. The deer�s probably less than 500 yards out.

^^^Good luck! I'll be tuned in hoping for a good outcome should you guys get to track.

That hunter never called back. I did go on another track though. It didn�t sound very promising from the start but I still went....you never know��..

One of my favorite things about tracking is that I get to go on different hunting properties all over south Alabama and see a lot of cool things that I likely never would have otherwise. This afternoon�s track took place along Pintlala Creek just south of Montgomery in the back end of some huge cattle pastures. All the areas I�ve grown up hunting have either been in the mountains of Jackson Co or the pine thickets of Lee, Macon, Barbour county areas. Going into that flat open blackbelt land is like stepping into a whole new world. I really enjoy getting to see it all.

I wish I had a happy ending to go along with the story but this was just a case of a hunter learning the hard way that a Rage expandable straight down through the back is not a great shot. JB could have told �em that. It was the exact same shot JB�..and the exact same result. The hunter said that he must have just barely missed the spine. Otis tracked the deer well. It was stuck yesterday afternoon so we were 20 hrs after the shot. We tracked it for about 900 yards and were making that usual loop back toward the hit site when the track went from cold to hot. We gave chase but never caught up with him. I think he was probably well out ahead of us. The deer will very likely live or take a lot of time to expire. That straight down into the back shot with a bow is just not a high percentage shot.....with any broadhead.

My new hiking boots are already paying for themselves. A lot of the places I�m tracking are dry upland areas and they work well for that. They�ll suck though if I ever have to get into any wet areas. With the distances we�re walking though�..I�ll gladly hang them on the boot dryer if I have to. I checked before we got started this last track to make sure Otis was on zero when we started. According to GPS, he traveled 5.4 miles by the time we made it back to the truck. I would say that put the hunter and I walking between 3-4 miles. There was a strip of woods about 600 yards wide between the wide open cattle pastures and the big creek. The deer ran a straight line just off the edge of the fields for hundreds of yards before making a loop over to the creek and then traveling down the creek right back the same direction it had come from. It had bedded in some canes just off the creeks edge.

There�s gonna be a little lull in action here around Christmas as we all take a few days off to spend with our families before hitting the woods hardcore. Lace your boots up tight boys�.it�s about to get good.

A quick update on Shelby: I�ve started working with her a little on shed hunting. I thought I would talk to folks and see if there was any interest in going on shed hunts with her in the spring. Right now, I�m just hiding some sheds around my property before we walk and allowing her to find them and bring them to me. She�s something else�.she�s got a whole different searching gear than what Otis has. Otis is a shortlegged, cold nosed slow tracker and Shelby is more like a bird dog. A more hot nosed, cover lots of ground, high nosed wind scenter. Don�t get me wrong, she�s still doing great at putting her nose to the ground and blood tracking�..but she�s gonna be hell on a grid search. Maybe a situation where we don�t have good ground scenting conditions such as one of these 2-3 day old tracks�� and we�re just gridding into the wind trying to locate the deer dead or alive. I�ll see if I can get a quick video of her on our next shed hunt.

Merry Christmas from Otis and Shelby!

Two calls just came in for in the morning. The first one is a bow shot I�m tracking for one of my neighbors. He feels like he made a pretty decent shot but he saw the deer run off for a decent ways with the arrow still in him. He said he thinks he may be a little low and hit the off side shoulder which stopped the arrow. Very scant blood trail so he just backed out.

The second track is a little bit of a mystery. A buck came in harassing a doe and the hunter rushed his shot. He said the deer bucked and took off. Good blood at the hit site and decent blood for 60 yards and then nothing. I figure he�s just hit too far back around the liver/gut area and the wound hole clogged up on them�� but we�ll see in the morning.

To be continued......

Good luck bub

Thanks man�.I think its gonna be a good morning to track right here at daylight. There a lot of moisture in the air and on the ground. My truck is wet from all the moisture.

I think my neighbor may have drilled this one in the shoulder plate. So far we�ve tracked it around 1100 yards but we�re finding good blood every 50-100 yards or so..... it makes me think we should eventually track up on him maybe. Some places better than that some a little farther apart. It�s crossed over onto another neighbor�s property though that I don�t know so we�re currently getting some lunch and trying to contact them so we can keep searching. I�m kinda wondering if the deer is dead or not.

Another tracker was able to get to the second track late last night so they called me off of that one. The deer was laying 30 yards from where the folks quit tracking�..go figure.

Got permission to keep going but it was just like the never ending track. Eventually just called it and decided the deer wasn�t dead. It was a pretty hard quartering away shot as the hunter described it. My best guess is that he buried it up in the back of the front side shoulder�..kinda like in the armpit area but catching a lot of meat on the leg to impede penetration. It appeared like the deer was going 50-100 yards and stopping�.going 50-100 yards and stopping, etc��

Folks look at you crazy sometimes when you tell them that the deer will likely live and will likely show right back up���But, but�.I knocked him clean off his feet and he was falling down when he ran off!!�

This is one of the back slaps I tracked a couple weeks ago. Another family member killed it yesterday evening. This deer was actually back slapped twice. I think somebody�s gun may be chootin a little high.

Yeah looks like somebody needs to go back to the range. Was the backstrap ruined

looks like someone didn't have their head down on the stock on those shots

There doesn�t appear to be much left of them. From the best I can tell though, it looks like the wounds are healing pretty well. That back one looks like it's beginning to scab over.

Call just came in for tomorrow morning�..another bow shot. Hunter said that the arrow was covered in blood. They gave the deer an hour before tracking but jumped it a short distance into the track. They can�t find any blood past the bed site so they decided to back out and call in a dog for tomorrow morning. I�m betting they just hit it a little too far back around the liver/gut area. This one sounds pretty promising. I hope we don't get a chit load of rain tonight. It's showing a really good chance just before daylight.

To be continued���..

Good luck in the morning, hope you don't get soaked.

Thanks�..this one may get interesting if it pours rain right before we go out. The good thing is that I don�t figure this deer went too far before bedding up again so maybe we won�t have it track for 100�s and 100�s of yards. They said you could tell it was hurt when it jumped up.

Sippin on a cup of coffee before I head out this morning. It looks like we may get lucky and get missed by the rain but that 15-20 mph wind is starting to whip up pretty strong. It'll be interesting to see how much of a challenge that poses to Otis. This will be the strongest wind we've tracked in I believe.

Found it! Pics to come later. Headed to another call for a young lady hunter. Blood at hit site and first 60 yards then nothing. To be continued.....

Way to go, Otis! Hoping he can go 2 for 2 today!

This is awesome! I look forward to this thread more than a kickoff!

Dr. B

Great job!

Thanks y�all�..I appreciate it. I�m glad everyone is enjoying the thread. We ended up going 2 for 2 on locating the deer but only 1 for 2 on recovery. The first deer was exactly what we thought it was��.just a little too far back in the liver/gut area. It went around 400 yards from where they jumped him. There was absolutely zero blood though. There wasn�t even any blood in the bed where he laid. Look in the pic below and you�ll see the bed.

The second deer must have just been a really hard grazing shot. We tracked out to around 800 yards and found the deer but he was still good and alive when we found him. We got a good look at him and the young lady�s dad and I both decided that it wasn�t worth pursuing. We weren�t really in a situation where we could have let Otis get after him anyways.

Here�s the first deer���..

Seriously one of the best threads on Aldeer, I check it every day.

Thanks dude�.I really am glad that y�all enjoy reading the stories because for me it�s just like when you kill a deer and you want to tell your buddies the story about it. It's all part of the fun of it. I haven�t had this much fun in the woods since I was a kid hunting.

One other nugget from one of today�s tracks��..

It�s become pretty routine for most hunters that are tracking with me to be in occasional communication with the other club members, etc via cell phone...�.letting them know how we�re progressing or where we�ve made to. Today, I�m listening to the hunter behind me tell the person on the other end��Naw man, we�ve already gone way past that�.we�re already over into the Cherry Hole!� I couldn�t help it fellas, I giggled like a 14 year old��The Cherry Hole!?!?!?! Dammit man, that�s the stand I want to sit in for sure.

Nice work. Should be a busy weekend for the cnc deer recovery team. Good luck in advance

x2. I've really enjoyed reading this.

Thanks fellas....It's a beautiful morning for hunting. I'm hoping the phone lines heat up later this morning and we'll have another story soon. Something ought to get shot today.

Call just came in for tomorrow morning. Not really sure on this one. There wasn�t a whole lot to the story. The hunter shot right at dark and didn�t get a real good look at what happened afterwards. They actually thought the deer might have went down. No blood at the hit site but they found some a little ways down the trail�.I think they said about 40-50 yards away. The blood was very minimal and spotty so they backed out. I�m not sure what type of hit we�re dealing with on this one. We�ll have to put the rest of the pieces of the puzzle together in the morning.

To be conitued���..

Got him!! Pretty exciting story on this one. Pics to come when I get back home.

This deer was hit high at the top of the front shoulder��just underneath the spine. You can't really see it in this pic. There was a good little spot of blood at the hit site but very little after that. We started finding a little more at about 250 yards into it but that was about it.

We were working up a creek bottom with Otis about 100 yards ahead of when I thought I heard Otis let out a bark. We were moving through some brush making noise so I wasn�t sure if that�s what I heard or not. Otis had crossed the creek and was working the track a little faster but not fast enough that I thought he was running the deer.

Well, me and the hunter made it across the creek and I checked my GPS again to see how far Otis had made it and he was about 150 yards but he was looping back to us. I just assumed it was him checking back in. About that time I look up from my GPS and see this giant buck headed right at me and the hunter with Otis trotting along right behind it. They passed within 5-10 yards of me and the hunter...I was like "Holy chit!!" . Otis had his tongue hung out and just looked over at us like he was smiling as they went by.

I immediately toned Otis back to me and the deer stopped broadside at about 80 yards out. I told the hunter�.�Rack a shell into the chamber and finish him.� I guess the hunter was too excited because he missed him 3 times before the deer bounced off again. I could tell the deer was hurtin so I sent Otis back after it. We hadn�t made it 100 yards when I saw Otis stopped and looking up ahead of him in the swamp. The hunter and I eased up to him real quietly and looked around. I was looking way out into the swamp but finally looked over to my right and saw the buck laying dead still in some cypress knees 10 yards from us. The hunter put a fishing shot on him and ended it.

This track reminded me of that scene in Jeremiah Johnson where the old man asked him�.�Can you skin grizz pilgrim?� Otis turned this deer and ran him all over us like�.�There y�all go�.skin that one!!!!� I�m still not sure why he wasn�t barking like hell at the deer. He was just trotting along behind it pushing it to us. One hell of a buck anyways�..easy 200+ lbs. The mass on that one base was bigger than I could reach around with my thumb and middle finger.

That's awesome! Great story and recovery.

Thanks man....

X1000. Please keep this going. Many of us love reading the updates. I assure you MANY more are reading them than have replied on here. It's not only interesting, it's educational.

Absolutely agree. When I killed a doe several weeks ago I paid much more attention to all the details after the shot. I knew she didn't go far but I paid attention to every detail on the blood trail as well. I've only killed 10-15 deer so each one I shoot is still a pretty new experience.

Thanks fellas. I�ll keep it up then. I�m having fun and if y�all are enjoying it too then we�ll keep sharing the stories. It may sound like a broken record but the biggest take home message I can give any of you guys is that deer are a lot tougher than we give the credit for. If you don�t see him go down or if he ain�t just plowing dirt with his nose�.then take a step back and really think about how you proceed.

Good stuff pilgrim ! Sounds like things are getting right.

Good story. Can only imagine what Otis was thinking as that deer came back by y'all. Keep the stories coming.

This^. Always checking in on Otis

Thanks fellas!

Best thread in aldeer history

Alright, now y�all are just getting carried away with it.



Thanks though top cat.

I usually just snap a quick pic with my phone of Otis and the deer when we find it. I�m not much of one for posing and all. The funny thing is�.Otis ain�t either. Anyways, I�ll try to start thinking to also snap a second pic of where the bullet or arrow hit the deer so you can see exactly what happened. I�ve got this chart we can use though if I forget.

That last buck was a very lucky one to recover. Another inch or so higher and he would have just slapped in on the back. He hit it just low enough under the spine that it really hurt the deer pretty bad. I knew it was hurt bad to just stand out there and let someone shoot at it multiple times. Even after it finally moved�it only ran 50 yards and laid down on its belly trying to hide.

He hit it in the lower part of the B7/B8 area.

Keep it up CNC!! Great work ..

Call just came in for tomorrow morning. This one is for a club I tracked for a couple weeks ago but a different hunter. The hunter reported that a big bodied deer came across his field right at dark. He scoped it out with his binoculars and decided that it was definitely a shooter. He got his gun up and got his crosshairs on him just as he was about to go back into the woods and squeezed the trigger. He said that it was only about a 60 yard shot and he felt really confident that he hit the deer�.but with the rain coming down like it is, they couldn�t find blood. They want me to bring Otis out in the morning and see if we can locate the buck. This should be pretty interesting with all the rain.

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

Great work Otis! Love reading the stories.

Good luck

Thanks man....

Thanks! I'm sitting here sippin on a little coffee and checking out the radar. Looks like there's gonna be another big line of rain move through this morning before we can get started. This is likely not gonna be a situation where we can ground scent right to the deer. I'm probably gonna have to use my GPS combined with Otis's nose to do a little gridding into the wind. If he hit it well and they didn't push it....then it'll likely be somewhere within the 300-400 yard range.

enjoying this photo journal. Thanks for sharing CNC - and the chart above is a great visual tool.

We tracked to this deer about 500 yards out but it was still alive and not weak enough that we could really do anything with it. We were too close to a major highway to really turn Otis loose on it. Actually the reason I started tracking for this club is because another tracker referred them to me not wanting to run his dogs that close to a highway. Otis works in close proximity to me so I can work him on a track like this until it goes hot. One thing I was pleasantly surprised by is how well he worked the track after at least an inch of rain at least. It really wasn't that much different than a normal track. I think the hunter may have hit the deer really low in the guts or something of that nature. You could tell the buck was slower than normal but he wasn't hurtin too bad.

Another call just came in as I was typing that last story. I'll be dang if it ain't almost the neighboring property from where I just came from. Let's load back up and head out again. Hair and a little blood at the hit site but that's all I know right now.

To be continued........

This one turned out to be another grazing shot. The buck was shot late this morning around 10:30 ish so we were on his trail just a few hours after the shot�.actually a little sooner that I would normally like. We tracked about 300-400 yards and got him up but was never able to catch up with him after we did. The track had really just gone hot when we called it off. The rain and lightning was moving in fast on us. The hunter said that from the reaction of the deer and sign that he thought he had just barely hit it but he wanted to bring in a dog and confirm it.

Regrouping this morning and getting ready for this cold weather to move in. This little boot dryer is one of the best investments I�ve made.

Call just came in for tomorrow morning. Not a whole lot of info on this one. Got pretty good blood for 250 yards and then lost the blood trail. No bone reported so maybe it�s not a leg shot. I asked the hunter how the deer reacted and he said it just took off into the woods and he couldn�t really tell much. It could be a decent shot back in the liver/gut area and they just tracked it too soon. Hard to really say though on this one. We�ll find out in the morning.

To be continued���.

Good luck this morning, I hope we see a dead buck soon!

Got him! Pics to come.

Good deal. We will have reading material shortly.

We don�t get too many like this one but I�ll dang sure take it. The deer was less than 100 yards from where they lost blood. It was a gut shot WAY back in the guts. The deer had gotten on one of their interior 4-wheeler trails and was walking down the center of it. It must have gotten up against the brush on the left side of the road and sprayed some blood over in the bushes because the hunters thought that it had taken a left into the thicket when actually it had just gone up the road a little farther and went to the right.

The shot is not the big hole behind the shoulder but rather the smaller wound you see just in front of the hind quarter where I drew the arrow. The yotes had gotten to this one sometimes during the night. I hate when that happens but I�d rather that happen than Otis get gored by a lively buck that we rushed in on too quickly. You just never know what you�re dealing with until you track it. Everyone has a different approach to dealing with these type of situations but I�d prefer to give any deer we track around 4-5 hrs to weaken down before tracking. It�s really dangerous business when you have to deal with them alive and frisky. Another tracking buddy of mine had his dog gored just last week. Luckily it hit the dog in the back end and the two puncture wounds didn�t hit any vitals. The way I looks at is��If you don�t want to risk something getting the meat, then don�t shoot him in the arse.

Way to go Harold! congrats

I'M headed to Union Springs in the mornin, and will be there thru February,, will be callin ya if needed for sure

Way to go, Otis! Love catching up on this thread each day.

Look forward to hearing from you. Call if you need us.




Thanks 3FF!

I really enjoy reading this thread! Congrats on another successful track, keep up the good work!

Thanks Deer Crossing!

congrats fellas, really enjoy the follow ups! Keep up the good work!

Good deal!

Good job Otis! and you too CNC

Thanks fellas!



Call just came in for tomorrow morning. The hunter reported that he shot a buck at 4:00 this afternoon that was quartered away from him at around 60 yards. He says he shot it with a 7mm-08 and feels like he hit back in the guts and didn�t get an exit wound. He�s found no blood or hair but says he feels confident that the deer was hit because it bucked up and looked hurt as it went off. The deer ran into a 3-4 year old cutover and he has nothing to go by to track it.

I would sure feel better about this one if he would have found something verifying the hit. Hopefully it�s exactly what he�s saying. We�ll find out tomorrow morning. To be continued���.

Good luck. Confident you will find him if he's hit. I am thinking the deer was at more of an angle than he thought. Let us know the shot placement and bullet type if you can.

Will do. The biggest question on this one is gonna be IF he really hit the deer. I feel pretty good about recovering it if he did hit it like he thinks.

Sitting here sippin on a little coffee while the truck warms up. There�s a nip in the air this morning. Feels like a good killin day out there for anyone hunting. Let�s go find a deer fellas.

Good luck CNC. This has become the first forum I check every morning when I arrive at work to keep updated. Its always a beautiful sight watching dogs work. Keep us posted on the track today.

Got him! Pics to come. Had another call just come in. Stories later.

Whoop-whoop!

Hootie Hoooo!.....We're 2 fer 2!!!

Now fer the rest of the story......


The first buck was definitely quartering hard away from the hunter. He actually hit it in the shoulder but due to the angle he just barely did catch good meat and the bullet exited the front of the chest cavity/lower neck. How it didn�t bleed I don�t know but we never did see any blood. It was shot with a Hornady ballistic tip but he didn't say what grain. The hunter had actually went in there last with his own lab to try to find it and I believe pushed the deer.

We found it between 700-800 yards out. It had actually ran through the thicket and came out to a paved country road. It appeared for a moment like it had crossed but we eventually determined that it had just ran parallel with the road for a moment and then looped back into the thicket. Otis did an outstanding on this one considering there had been another dog all over the area last night. It didn�t seem to faze him on this one. He�s also got a new little thing he�s doing when he finds the deer now. Instead of just staying with the deer like he was doing�.now he�s running back to me all happy and excited with his tail wagging, like he�s trying to tell me he found it. It cracks me up.




The second one was a pretty simple find. It was for a club I had tracked for in the past. The hunter shot the deer in the front shoulder with the deer quartering hard to him. Not far from being a straight on shot. There was no exit wound and zero blood. The deer ran between 150-200 yards into a stand of really thick young pines and crashed. Without having any blood to go on�.and the area being pretty thick�.the hunter said that he would rather send the dog in and know we would find it versus sending in the search party looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack.

awesome job. Keep up the good work. I bet you've made a bunch of hunters happy so far this year. Whats your success ratio so far on finds vs calls?

Congratulations x 2!

Thanks for posting these, I check this thread every day to see how the tracking is going. And thanks for the shot location information and taking the time to help us all be better hunters!

Great read! Thanks for sharing the stories!

I appreciate the comments fellas!

abolt300��.I haven�t been keeping up with any numbers but going off of what I been told by other experienced trackers�.typically around 60%, give or take, is what you�ll recover. I�m sure some get a little more and some a little less depending on how aggressively they choose to deal with live deer. If you�ve got a good working dog though, then that number is really a reflection of the hunter's shot placement more than the dog�s ability to track. A lot of deer just aren�t hurt that bad or go farther than we can follow them.

Congrats fellas!!

Good stuff

Rookie question...you mention no blood on the first find of the day, yet he went 700-800 yards. What is Otis following? If you drew a complete circle with an 800 yard margin of error in all directions, you're literally talking about close to a square mile. Without a dog, you're really looking for a needle in a haystack.

Awesome!!

That�s a good question for trackncur��I�m not 100% sure what Otis is following. I�m assuming that there�s actually a little blood on the ground that we can�t see but that he can pick up with his nose. I'm sure we miss some too that we just walk over. I'm watching Otis and the GPS most of the time unless we're working through a slow part of the track or I see Otis lick the ground, etc. The hunter is the one doing the most looking for blood as I guide us along Otis's path. Otis almost has to be tracking the individual deer scent too though because some of these deer only have small entry hole wounds and simply can�t be excreting that much blood. It�s amazing to me to think that a dog can come in behind a deer the next morning and still follow where that one deer walked the evening prior.

BTW�..These are not just guessed at distances�..I�m going off of GPS readings. You�re correct about the needle in the haystack. There�s some deer we find that could have possibly been recovered by search parties but most of the time they don�t even stand a chance from the get-go. I�ll reiterate this again though. Most deer that are hit hard and aren�t pushed don�t go that far. This deer would have very, very likely only been 300-400 had the hunter not went in after him too soon. Take the story from a few days ago about the buck Otis nearly ran over us as an example. He was still alive the next morning but only 400 yards from the hit site because he was never pushed.

A call just came in for tomorrow morning. This one sounds very similar to this morning�s first track. The buck came out in a greenfield with some does. The buck was quartered away from the hunter. It bucked up and then took off fast at first. The hunter reported that it ran by him and then right before it went out of site it slowed down, stopped for a moment, and walked off. He said they had pretty good blood for 100 yards and then it petered out to nothing and they can�t find anymore from there. It sounds like a pretty promising track. I hope the rain holds off long enough for us to track this one without getting wet.

To be continued.......

Also, wasn't questioning your distances at all. I figured you were giving GPS measurements. Honestly it makes me wonder just how far off I've been on some tracks that were never found. I always felt like the deer could be "right up there" or "maybe he turned here", but honestly he could have been 3/4 mile in the other direction.

Tuned in for tomorrow!

Oh no, I know you weren�t questioning the distances. I was just throwing that out there for anyone reading who thinks I�m just eyeballing these distances. I can measure a straight line on my GPS when we find the deer from point A to B. The only estimate is how much to add for us looping around or arcing back.

Here�s something else to consider about that 800 yards. Look in the background of that first pic at the understory we were working in. The whole track was just like that from beginning to end. You could barely see five yards ahead of you and deer trails criss-crossed everywhere. There was zero chance of finding that deer without a dog unless you spotted buzzards on it. A lot of the tracks we�re working are in these really thick young pine stands or some form or thick understory. A deer doesn�t have to go too far through that type habitat to make it a really difficult find without good blood. These thick areas are typically where most of us are hunting here in my neck of the woods too.

Congrats on the doubleheader.



Looking forward to tomorrows story. Seems to be a lot of deer getting gut shot.

Thanks!


Sitting here listening to the coffee percolate. I feel like I may need an extra cup of it this morning. Whew, this is gonna get fun before the seasons over if calls keep coming in. Let's go find a deer fellas.

Well, no recovery on this one. I think the deer was just grazed real good either under the armpit or on the brisket. The hunter was on the side of a ridge shooting down at the deer at a steep angle. He was probably a good 40 ft above the deer. We actually talked a little more about the deer�s reaction and he said the deer stopped and looked back after the shot before walking/trotting off. That leads me to believe that he wasn�t slammed in the body too hard.

We tracked the deer very well in a light rain out to 900 yards before the track went hot at the big creek. I let Otis take it hot for a few hundred yards before calling him off as the sky opened up and went from a light rain to a down pour. We headed back toward the truck but it was too late by then. We got soaked from neck to nuts. That spare change of clothes in the truck came in handy today.

The deer was quartered away and he was shooting down on it at a pretty steep angle. I figure he hit the deer something like this and why the deer bucked up a little when he shot.

Another call just came in from this morning�s hunt just as that heavy band of rain turning to sleet has hit my house. In as nice of a way as I could, I basically said���..





Otis & Shelby Tracking Services or temporarily closed....

You and Otis have had a heck of a tracking season thus far.

Looks like he has really come on this year.

This is one of the first threads on the site that I go to every day.

It's been real enjoyable.

Love the daily updates, keep them coming. From what I understand, yes, there is probably some microscopic blood droplets he is smelling that we can't see, but also, a deer has an interdigital gland that excretes a distinct smell when it is shot/injured/frightened/adrenaline rush/? or something and that is why a good dog will find deer that you can never find blood on. They are actually smelling whatever scent the gland between the hooves are putting down.

Thanks Cuz and foldemup!

Hopefully we'll get the stories going again later today. Somebody is gonna have to be pretty mad at 'em to be out there this morning as cold as it is....but with it being Saturday, I'm sure there's still plenty of hunters in the woods.

Otis is 2 � years old now and while he�s doing well on these tracks�..he�s still learning and improving. I don�t think what many folks realize when they get into tracking�.and certainly something I myself didn�t realize in the beginning�.is that it takes years and lots of tracks to create a finished tracking dog.

One of the places I still see Otis continuing to improve is with search areas and checks. The things I don�t understand about the scent lines and these check areas is why we may go for 100-300 yards like he�s following a gut wagon�..and then all of sudden we hit a point where he loses it and has to work the area over for 5-15+ minutes before picking it up again. Many times, the deer has just continued on the way it was going. It�s like there�s suddenly a big gap in the line. Otis is getting to where he casts really big circles around the check area now when he loses it versus what he used to do. He�ll circle for a minute or two and then come back to his point of loss�.sniff it, maybe back track it again�.and then continue his looping search.

Another way that I see Otis continuing to change is by him trying to communicate with me now. On this last track, we were working a check and after a few minutes I could tell by Otis�s body language that he had picked it back up and was about to continue on. I saw Otis pick up the line and start his little trot, trot, trot to take it on when all of sudden he just slammed on the brakes and looked back at me like to tell me he had it, let�s go. As soon as I took a step toward him, he put his nose back down and went on with it.

Call just came in from the morning hunt. The deer was broadside at 60 yards but slowly walking. This was around 7:45. The buck jumped up and kicked after the shot and ran off. It stopped out in the distance for a moment and the hunter said it looked wobbly but started going again and disappeared into the ever familiar �thicket�. They�ve found zero blood but feels very, very confident the deer is hit. I�m assuming that its likely a gut shot or low gut shot of some sort. I told the hunter I wanted to give him a couple more hours before we track it so we�re meeting at lunch to go after him.

To be continued����..

Good luck CNC

Good luck!

The hunter must have zipped this one right under the deer�s belly and just barely caught it in the guts or something. We talked a little more about it�. and he said the deer jumped straight up in the air, which is pretty common for that type hit. We tracked it and got it up at around 300 yards. We caught up to him one time at around 700 yards but he took off again before we could get any kind of shot on him. He still looked pretty lively but slower than normal. At around 900 yards he crossed the back road and went into some chest high pines on another piece of property. We backed out on him there in hopes that the hunter can get in touch with those landowners tonight and we can go back in tomorrow at lunch. If he�s mortally wounded he should stop and bed in that stand of young pines. Maybe they�ll call me back tonight with permission to continue pursuing him.

Good track, Otis. Sounds like y'all did all you could today. Hoping you get another call this evening and are able to find him.

Thanks.....That�s one where we would have been much better off had it been an afternoon shot and the deer had all night to expire. We gave him over 4 hrs but he really needed 8-12 probably after seeing how lively he was.

Call just came in for tomorrow morning. The buck was crossing a greenfield at 50 yards broadside. The hunter put his crosshairs on the point of the shoulder and pulled the trigger. The deer dropped down in the front end and nearly hit the ground before it took off. They can�t find any blood but feel really good about the deer being hit.

My first thought was a leg hit when he said the deer�s front end dropped but they haven�t found bone or blood so I don�t think that�s it. My best guess is hopefully it went in the point of the shoulder and just didn�t exit on the other side. I�ve found deer for this club before and they say it�s biggun and they don�t want to take any chances on losing it if it�s hit. They�re backing out and waiting on me to track it in the morning.

To be continued���.

I believe the meat will be just fine over night. My butt frozen the my treestand this evening.

Yeah, no joke. They'll probably have to thaw it out before they can skin it.

If the yotes don't get it the meat will be fine, maybe froze. I have seen deer drop the front end and bulldoze when heart shot. Bet he won't be to far when you find him.

I agree. If he did hit it where he was aiming, then it shouldn�t be far. It�s probably a 200+ lb buck that just toted the shot out a little farther than what they�re looking. It went into some young pines so it could just be right there and them not seeing it.

Tuned in for tomorrow.

'Nother question...are you seeing most of these deer heading into the thickest stuff on the place? Or are they just breakneck, high speed as far as they can go in one direction? Or do they do the old banana loop that I heard so much of growing up?

Quick take on your call that came in tonight...My son shot one in a greenfield that did the same thing you are describing above. Deer went down pretty hard on the front end and then left the field, tail down and in a "death run." We looked hard for him and never found him even though I was sure he was dead. Fast forward a month and he came back to the same field to get a bite to eat. This time didn't end so lucky for the buck. Ended up being my sons first deer and upon examining the first shot from a month prior, he basically hit the deer on the very bottom line of G7 on your chart. Hope this one is hit a little better than that one was, but just wanted to give you my experience. Good luck in the morning!

Many folks are already hunting right around some form of thickness and that�s where the deer came from and where they ran back into. It seems like one way or the other we end up in the thickest stuff on the property before it�s over. Right along the edges of creeks also seems to be a common place for them to bed up. We track many off into creek bottoms. If we track a deer far enough though, they typically all begin to loop back around. I think most of them have a core bedding area that they want to get back to where they feel safe and that�s where they�re looping back to. Most don�t run a straight line for very far.

I�m hoping that tomorrow�s track turns out to be a good one. You just never know. Often times the hunter�s perception of what happened and the reality of what happened are different. Many folks don�t think that there�s any way the deer is still alive yet about 1 out of 2 are��

1 fer 2 today. Stories and pics to come.

Alright, let�s start with the first track�..the call from last night. One correction from the call�.the deer was actually standing at 150 yards and NOT 50 yards. The hunter was shooting a 300 Win Short Mag with ballistic tip bullets. He said that he had always used regular ol� Corelokts in the past and one of the other members talked him into trying some ballistic tips. This was the first deer he had shot with them.

This hunter said that he had always aimed at the point of the shoulder in the past because it would break �em down and they wouldn�t go anywhere. I�m pretty sure what happened on this deer is that the bullet exploded when it hit this buck�s front shoulder. They said it was a full grown man so I figure the bullet just fragmented into the meat and never penetrated the body cavity. We tracked right to the deer at around 350 yards but once he got up, we couldn�t get him to woe up. We kept tracking him for 1000 more yards but never got him to stop. I really don�t think it was a fatal hit in the front of the body cavity or he would have been a lot weaker after laying up all night.

One really cool thing about this track was that the hunter was retired from working in the prison system after 30 something years. He was in charge of the man tracking hounds and he shared some cool arse stories with me about chasing bad guys with the dogs. He told me one cool story about chasing a cop killer through the swamps in Florida. I also learned the things that really give the man tracking hounds fits and it really translated well to understanding places where Otis might struggle or have to track slower. I really enjoyed the conversation we had.

So we finally called it off and decided to head back to the truck when right on time, another call came in. The hunter said that he had shot a good buck the evening before and not been able to find it. They said they found bone and tracked pretty good blood for a 200 yards before hearing the deer get up and take off in front of them. They backed out and decided to come back in this morning to recover it. They got to talking about it more and decided to go ahead and call in a dog for the search since it was likely a leg hit.

This was a pretty simple run for 200 ish yards right to the deer. The deer was actually shot in the back leg and I suppose bled out during the night or something. The yotes and buzzards had already found it and damn near eat the whole thing. Since it didn�t take long to find the deer�.I also suited Shelby up and re-tracked it with her. She did really well knowing what we were there to do and with her motivation to find it. She still has a long ways to go though with controlling her excitement. Just part of being 8 months old.

Congrats on the find. Love reading this thread.

Wow, the yotes made quick work of that one. As always congrats and keep the stories coming!

I find myself checking this first thing when I log on every day. been a real plus to me for this year's deer season( mine personally has been slow with limited opportunities to even go).
what sticks out to me is the number of deer that are shot and would probably not have been unrecovered. I won't give up on one now until I have called in a tracker. I am even making sure when I do get to go, I have gas and tip money for the tracker if needed!
keep it up CNC.

Thanks again fellas!

Call just came in for tomorrow morning. Pretty simple set up for this one. Good buck walked out into the food plot at around 100 yards quartering toward the hunter. The hunter shot at the buck with it quartering to him just inside the edge of the field. He really thinks judging from the deer�s reaction that he hit the deer but they cannot find any blood.

I believe he either hit too far back in the guts or clean missed the deer and perceived it to be hit. It�s hard to say for sure. We�ll find out in the morning. To be continued��.

Good stuff cnc. I'd like to have a beer with the man tracker and hear a story or 2

Yeah it was a pretty interesting conversation. One other good thing too is��if life ever takes a turn for the worse and I find myself on the run from tracking hounds�..I know how to lose �em!

A second call came in for tomorrow morning about 10 miles down the road from the first one. I didn�t get a whole lot of details on this one. The buck took off after the shot and fell down or crashed. The hunter got popped in the eye by the scope after the shot and was a little dazed so they didn't really see what happened too well. They thought the deer was down but when they went to get it�.the deer wasn�t there. They�ve tracked blood for a couple hundred yards and lost it. After searching for a little while longer the flashlight batteries faded out on them and they decided to back out and come in with a dog in the morning.

To be continued.......

Alright, two tracks for tomorrow!

You've got to be surrounded by some of the most unshootinist fellas in the state.

Yeah, for a couple hundred miles in every direction.

1 fer 2 again.....Headed home. Stories and pics to come.

So the first track this morning I feel quite sure was just a clean miss. We searched and searched but Otis was never able to pick up on anything. We spent over 2 hrs gridding any and every place the deer could have gone but just never came across anything that made me feel like the deer was hit. No blood, no hair, no nothing.

The second track was a different story. It turned out to be an extremely low gut shot. Otis took this one like he was following a gut wagon out to around 450 yards. We were in some quail hunting habitat of thin pines and sedge understory. At around 450 yards I see Otis up in front of me standing beside a small ditch giving the ditch a death stare�.damn near like a bird dog on point. I eased up to the ditch to peak over in it and when I did this buck came up out of the ditch like one of Santa�s reindeer taking flight. You could see guts hanging out of the deer as it ran off.

Otis took off after it but stopped at around 150 yards and came back to me. When he got back to me, he turned around and he led me back to where the deer had laid back down again. Once again he didn�t run up to the deer to try to �bay� it like I expected. He eased in and pointed it not ever barking a single time. As soon as we saw it, I pointed it out to the hunter to finish off and no sooner than I did the deer broke again. The hunter told me to just go ahead and shoot it with my .45 if that happened again so I drew my pistol and took a 2 handed grip stalking approach. Sure enough, another 100 yards ahead Otis stalks up to it and points it again with him laid down facing away from us. I popped a round in him straight down through the middle of the back into the chest cavity and he appeared as if that �let the air out of him�. We watched him for a moment or two and then started fist bumping thinking we had him. Nope.

About the time we bumped fists�..he picked his head up, looked back at us, and took off again. Otis trailed him up again and pointed him to us. This time I went ahead and double tapped him just to make sure. That was the end of it after that. I ain�t gonna lie��That first shot was steady and controlled but I guess him jumping up must have released a bunch of adrenaline in me or something because when we caught up with him again and I took aim�.I was shaking like a dog chittin a peach seed. I hit him every time though so I guess that�s what counts. You can see the original gut hit in the pic. The shots I put on him were all straight down through the back with him facing away from me. They're some tough arse critters, I know that.

Good story glad you got him. That probably would have been a slow miserable death if he was not found.

I don't think folks are spending enough time at the range shooting. You don't have to shoot a magnum to kill deer. Use a caliber that you can comfortably, accurately shoot and practice.

I won�t argue that many folks could probably spend more time practicing and learning to be a more proficient shooter�..but I think the reason people hit deer like your seeing is more due to not remaining under control after the rush of the excitement hits�..which also leads to bad decision making. You have to hold it together mentally even though that rush of excitement makes you go��

I think breathing techniques would probably help a lot of folks as well as forming a systematic approach to shooting a deer that goes Step 1, Step 2, Step 3���Aim small, deep breath, let it out slow, sqeeeeeeeze the trigger�..Every time, each and every shot. All you gotta do is grab ahold of yourself for a few seconds at the end of that deep relaxed breath.

Anyways��Roll Tide!�Let�s go win another national championship.

Thanks for the post CNC. Always great to read with a cup of coffee in the morning.

I agree with BigEd... people need to shoot more and shoot more often.

I�m questioning the power of my .45 after the incident yesterday. This was a little young buck with not much body mass. I was using a 185 gr accubond (+P) hollow point. If you imagine the deer laying on its belly facing straight away�.I put the first shot down its back angling toward the front of the chest cavity. The �X� in the pic below is where I hit it. When it jumped back up and took off, I was so surprised that I asked the hunter �Damn, did I miss him?....I could have sworn I seen it hit him!?!?�

They were taking the deer to the processor so I didn�t get to see it being gutted�..I was wanting to bad though so I could see what those bullets did inside of the deer. This was maybe a 15 yard shot or so. I need to go buy some more ammo anyways and I�m thinking about loading up with the 220 gr Critical Duty on the next one to see what it does. I was knocking some pretty damn good holes in it with those 185�s but man I just don�t like the way he toted it off like it wasn�t chit. Anyone have any opinions?

BTW�.me carrying a rifle is out of the question. It�s just too cumbersome to carry for the guy working the GPS and dog.

4" revolver in 45 colt or 44 mag loaded with some Hornady XTP or similar.

CNC...Just a suggestion, but what about a 20 GA and keep the chamber empty. Make the hunter tote it until it's time to shoot. That way you don't have to worry about a scope being knocked off or anything like that.

I'll check out that Hornady Ammo when I go to town. My pistol is a Sig Sauer .45 ACP with a 5" barrel I believe. I thought it would be enough gun to put them down at close range.



I've given a lot of thought to a small shotgun with buckshot but I really like the hunter having a rifle with us just in case we need it. I just don't see myself carrying anything more than a pistol. We just get into too much thick stuff that I need to be able to easily move through while still watching the dog and GPS unit in my hand.

Call just came in for tomorrow morning. The hunter was in a climber shooting at a buck which was quartering too him at a pretty hard angle. I didn�t ask but it didn�t sound like the deer was far away because he said he was kinda shooting down at the deer from the climber. He tried to shoot the deer in the chest/front leg area. The deer�s front end dropped to the ground and it took off. He found some gray and white hair as well as some skin but no blood. I feel like this is probably gonna be a grazing shot but we�re gonna go check it out for him just to make sure. I�m afraid the deer may have just dropped in the front end as part of its motion of getting the hell out of dodge. We�ll find out for sure in the morning.

To be continued���..

^^^FINALLY!!

I've been in withdrawals today with no tracking tales.

Looking forward to tomorrow!

I�m hoping that maybe the skin and white hair might be from the exit wound of a gut shot. If he was shooting down on the deer then there�s a possibility that he could have a high entry wound in the back and an exit out the belly�.maybe. My gut feeling though says that he just took off some hide from under the brisket or leg.

I�ve been doing some reading and it looks like you�re on to something there with the Hornady XTP. I think I�m gonna try the 230 grain XTP + P round.

Get them doggies rollin! I too am ready for another story.

That should be a better round. Barnes also makes a XPB that may offer what you need.

Well, it was what we thought it was��The hunter just grazed this deer and knocked some hair off of it. We tracked it out to around 400 yards where I could tell from Otis�s reaction that one had just got up out in front of us. We tracked it on and pushed it around for several hundred more yards before calling it off. We never saw the deer or even got close up on in but you could see very large running tracks in the mud anytime we went through an area where it would leave them. He knocked a good little wad of hair off the deer but I think it came from the bottom of the brisket. The shot was around 50 yards and he was shooting down at the deer at probably more than a 45 degree angle.

After we called it off, we spent another hour and a half or so sweeping the area around the hit site just to verify it but Otis never acted like he smelled anything else. With him still being a young dog, I like to double check him just to make sure he�s not telling me any lies on tracks like this. So far, I�ve yet to find one that he missed. I think the extra searching makes the hunter feel better about it anyways though. After we�ve circled the area for about 3 hrs it seems like most folks are ready to concede at that point.

Neither Academy nor Gander Mnt had the Hornady 230 gr XTP.....Are y'all having to order it online?

They didn't have the Barnes either btw.....

This weather sucks. The stories are likely gonna be slow for a few days fellas. You know what they say though�.�It just be like that sometimes��

Here�s something to talk about in the meantime...��

Something I�ve really noticed since I�ve started tracking deer is that the idea of it taking buzzards several days to a week to locate your deer is absolutely false. What I�ve observed is that buzzards can very well find them almost immediately or at least be in the area trying to locate your deer. I�ve even found deer that weren�t even completely dead yet that had buzzards circling it. The one we finished off in the last story already had two buzzards flying around it when we got back just in the time it took us to walk back and get the buggy. Don�t just necessarily look for 20 or more buzzards circling. Sit still and just watch those one or two that are flying around and see if they hone in on an area or keep circling around the area your searching. They�re just tracking dogs in the sky.

Nevermind....

Call just came in from the morning hunt. Bone and blood for 100 yards and then nothing. Deer really favoring it�s right side.

This is gonna be a leg hit so it could get very interesting. Hopefully it�s a high leg hit and he got into the body cavity. To be continued��.

Good luck on the track. I have killed several where I hunt while watching road ways where I would shoot one and drag I in the road and keep hunting. More often than not within 30 minutes there will be a dang buzzard sitting on the ground next to my deer trying to eat it. Must be a bunch of starving birds

It turned out to be a low leg hit. There was a bunch of bone at the hit site that we found after the track was over. We trailed the deer for about 400+ yards and off into a really wet creek bottom with little pools of water here and there. I knew when we got down into that stuff that he was gonna be bedded up in the mud somewhere in the bottom packing his wound but he saw us first and bolted on us. The hunter and myself both got a pretty good luck at him when he got up and he still seemed good and lively. Otis ran after him for a ways before coming back to me.

We kept after him and continued pushing for a little ways but eventually came up on the county road and called it. We were already a few hundred yards into the walk back when I was asked how far we had been. We were at 2.7 miles at that point. I imagine where we called it off was around the 2 mile mark. This deer just wasn't slowing up at all. I really think he'll make it unless he dies of some kind of infection, etc over the long term.

Thanks for the help today CNC. Wish we could have found it, but the buck just wasn't hit good. I really don't think the bullet made it into the body at all. I just hope I'm not to sore to get out there after them again in the morning. They sure are rutting up good.

It was good to meet y�all, I enjoyed it. I hate we don�t have pics to show but it was still a fun track. That�s a blast to get down in a creek bottom like that knowing that the deer is about to be laying there somewhere looking at you at any moment. Those low front leg hits seem like some of the toughest hits to recover though.

Y�all get back after �em!

My dog just spotted a pretty nice buck limping down the road in front of our house in Opelika. Appeared to have a broken leg or something. He must have been chasing and got hit by a car or maybe he was already hurt before he got in the neighborhood. He made it across the road twice by our house without getting hit again. They just get stupid this time of year.

Midway and Palmetto State show it in stock

Yep, they act crazy this time of year. The buck we were tracking yesterday had gotten with some other deer off in the swamp bottom and was bedded within about 50 yards of a doe group we jumped just ahead of him. I wouldn�t be surprised to see him just come right back into the same area and someone finish him off.

Got 1 � calls so far today����

About 11:00 a buddy of mine calls and says that Buddy Jr. just shot a pretty decent one and he�s pretty sure he gut shot it�..what should he do? I told them just to back out and I would be on that way in a little while. So, I get all my stuff gathered up and head that way.

In route to the first track I get another phone call from a hunter saying they had just stuck a buck with a bow late that morning. The hit was too far back and they had tracked the deer with pretty decent blood for a long ways before jumping it and backing out to call me. After talking it over we decided to give the deer until tomorrow morning before getting back after it. I�m thinking that this may very well be one of those low gut shots with a bow exactly like Audeerhunter just posted about the Cullman Co buck. The deer was putting off decent blood but going and going and going. That one is too be continued��

So I talk to the hunter and get the track lined up for tomorrow morning while I�m still in route to track Buddy Jr�s buck. I�m about halfway there and Buddy Sr. calls to say�..�Nevermind man!...I found it!�

Them damn buddies, I tell you what��.

You should have told him good job but, leave it laying so I can put Shelby on it since I'm halfway there. Ok good buddy

That was the first thing I said but apparently the deer was just laying right there within a really short distance so I just told him we�d get the next one. It was a lot better shot than they thought��. there just wasn�t any blood at the hit site. I think the waiting got the best of them and they had to just look a little bit.

Good luck in the morning, watch out for mr no legs slithering around. With this warm weather I probably wouldn't eat one thats been dead for several hours.

Thanks��.Let�s just hope this one is dead. Marginal bow shots can take a long time to expire....especially if it's really low in the gut/liver area. If he's not dead he ought to be really weak. It�ll be roughly 22 hrs after the shot. Me and bwhunter had a gut shot (bow) jump up and square off on me, him, and Otis last year after 17 hrs. I was amazed at how alive he was.

Another call just came in for tomorrow morning. Not a whole lot of details on this one. The deer was crossing a lane and the hunter put a broadside shot on it. The deer hunched and took off. Spotty blood for 40 yards and then nothing. They also said that there was one really good spot of blood at the end that appeared as though he was bleeding out both sides.

I figure that last good spot is where the stopped after the initial bolt out of the lane. He likely stood there for a moment and then bounced off. I suspect that this may be a hit a little too far back or both low and back. No bone or anything reported.

To be continued........

Make sure Otis gets to bed early tonight. He's got a big day tomorrow.

I�ll send y�all an update at lunch time. I got lucky on these two and they�re only about 6-7 miles apart. You don't get that too often. I really hope they�re both short and sweet because with it being Saturday during the rut, there�s likely to be a lot of lead slung around tomorrow.

Thanks CNC- I referred the call on the second call. Guide asked who could help, and I immediately thought of you. Hunter is with our Lion's Club charity deer hunt group. Hope you can find him.

I appreciate the referral. I was supposed to meet them this morning but they canceled on me when I called to head their way. Not sure what happened.

The first deer was still alive. We tracked it around 450 yards past where they jumped it the day before and found it bedded up in a creek. It jumped up on us and went 200 yards to the property line. He was hurt and I suspect he will eventually die. The shot was 48 yards with a bow just at daybreak. Not sure where it was hit. I suspect either really low or possibly just under the spine. I'm typing on my phone so I gotta keep the story short for now.

Finally made it back home. I spent the day riding around talking to hunters and handing out some more cards. That track this morning just verified a pattern that I�m seeing play out over and over. Many of these marginally wounded deer are headed down into a wet bottom. A lot of people say that they want to get in water to cool themselves because they feel hot. That very well may be the case but these deer are also headed to �mud�. They�re trying to treat the wound by packing it with mud.

When we got off into the creek bottom today I knew that�s where we would eventually find the deer. We ran parallel about 10-20 yards off the little branch for several hundred yards before Otis all of a sudden hung a left at a cane thicket and took a 90 degree turn down to the creek. He started circling the cane thicket and easing around it checking it out when the buck came up out of the canes and took off on us. I believe he was actually in the creek branch itself. Something else I�ve noticed is that these wounded deer will stay held tight until you kick them up like a rabbit.

Anyways, it must have been a slow morning for deer movement. I had a few calls from folks just calling me to talk to me in case they ever needed a dog but no calls for lost deer from the morning hunt. I was really surprised with it being Saturday. Maybe we�ll get one on the afternoon hunt.

Call just came in for tomorrow morning. This track is for a young kid sitting with dad this afternoon. The shot was broadside with a 7mm-08 at around 80 yards. The deer rared up some off its front legs and then took off favoring one leg. Zero blood and no deer to be found. I will find out for sure but I think he may have been shooting ballistic tips. He mentioned �tipped� bullets.

I think this one has been hit right in the meat of the shoulder. I�m hoping that if this is indeed a ballistic tip that it didn�t explode on the shoulder and never penetrate the body cavity. We�ll find out in the morning. To be continued����

I ended up going on three tracks today and I learned a valuable lesson in the process���Not taking the time to eat and drink enough fluids will catch up with you no matter how �tuff� you may be. I liked to have over done it today fellas. I feel pretty sure that I was on my way to a heat stroke. I�m just now really feeling like I�m over it after drinking � gallon of water on the way home and cooling off. It was the first time all year that I was the one who had to sit down for a minute.

Anyways, I�m headed for the shower. I�ll post pics and stories in just a bit.

You worry about taking care of the dogs and forget about yourself. Too dang hot to be running around these woods. But hey, I'm looking forward to the stories

Yep that�s about the extent of it. I gave them water all day but just didn�t give myself hardly any. I won�t do it again though because I definitely have a breaking point where will power no longer matters.

I�ve been doing some test runs here lately with Otis on allowing more people to go with us on the track in certain situations. He seems to have matured enough now that the extra people aren�t a distraction for him like they used to be as a puppy.

Today�s first track was one of those situations. The shooter was probably around 12 or 13 maybe so I wanted him to go for sure. We also had dad and little brother along but it didn�t seem to effect things at all with Otis�s performance. It probably didn�t help us in the fact that we were dealing with a live deer but it�s all good. Those young boys had a lot of fun. I heard the older brother, the shooter, say �This is the coolest thing ever!�

So anyways, Otis took us around 300 yards down into a bottom to a large pond of standing water�.not a man-made pond, just a flooded area of a � acre of so. We found spots of blood here and there as well as a chip of bone. This turned out to be a shot that zipped right under the belly and hit the offside leg I'm pretty sure. Either the deer got up just ahead of us or it had gotten up earlier in the morning and moved from the pond because the scent line definitely went hotter right there.

Otis took it from there about 500-600 yards up the bottom to the big creek. This was a pretty decent size creek too for what we are often tracking around. It looked to be over your head in a lot of places. It also had some steep banks on it except for just a few deer trails here and there that were still pretty steep themselves. Otis got up to the creek, crossed it�..and then started indicating hard that the deer was in the creek. He started going down stream right along the bank...... the whole time trying to get down in the creek if he could. I got him back on my side and he continued to do the same thing�..moving down the creek and constantly trying to somehow get down in it like the deer was just right there.

We followed it for several hundred more yards expecting to find him holed up in the creek around every bend but never came up on him nor found where it looked like he tried to get out. I tend to think the deer got up before we ever got there and moved earlier that morning. I think maybe he got down in the creek and couldn�t get out because his leg was blown up. I think he may have sank possibly if he was mortally wounded or he was just so far ahead of us that we never caught up. I figured we would surely run up on him bedded in the mud of the creek somewhere but just never did. We eventually just decided to call it after around 1300-1400 yards total.

That�s the first track��.More to come.

I know I was seriously thinking about drinking Otis's water the other day. A couple of miles through swamp bottom and clear cuts in this heat will sure get to you.

Story #2

We were riding out from the first track when the phone rang. The hunter was about 15-20 miles away and said he had shot one that morning that was quartering to him at about 75 yards. The deer was right on the edge of a food plot and bolted right back into the thicket so he didn�t really see much reaction but really felt like he had hit it. There was no hair or no blood though.

Otis started working the hit site and the direction the deer had ran. After about 30-40 yards in he really looked to be on a good line. At about 100 I found the first small spot of blood but it turned out to be the only place I saw any. I imagine it was where the deer stopped for a moment before taking off again. We ended up tracking straight to this one around 250 yards out into a young pine thicket. I didn�t get a pic of the wound on this one but the entry hole was on the other side about mid ways back on a "quartering to" angle�.no exit hole��.gut shot.

That�s me holstering my pistol after the find. I�ve gotten to where I just go ahead and expect to him to still be alive so I pulled my .45 and just watched him for a moment. Otis circles them as well before going in.

Y'all had a busy weekend. I know it's tough keeping up with Otis when it's almost 80 degrees. You should sure enough be getting some calls in about 10 days when the weather cools off again.

Man if it was cold right now it would really be rockin. I'm glad I went ahead and got a second dog when I did because I'll really need her to be ready to go next year. I may have to just tell folks I can't come out over the next few days if Otis starts acting tired on me and looks like he needs a day off. I just had another call come in for tomorrow morning. Otis is laying over here snoring.

Story #3

So by this time its getting close to noon and another calls comes in before I ever left from track #2. These guys had shot one earlier that morning crossing the top of a ridge in a HUGE clear cut�.. going from one draw to the next. We�re talking a clearcut in the 100�s of acres. They had found decent blood here and there for a couple hundred yards and even found one really good spot but couldn�t progress the line any further. The problem was that this clear cut was fingers of draws leading down to one main bottom and they were all slap FULL of treetops everywhere that the logging crew had left. It had also had a summer�s worth of weed growth grown up in it that was over your head in many places. It was a struggle just to walk through this stuff most of the time.

We probably tracked it for 500-600 yards or better and found more blood but the sun was beating down on us HARD out in that open clear cut. There wasn�t any relief at all in terms of shade. After a little while of tracking Otis had slowed way down and had his tongue hung out panting enough that I could tell he was getting pretty hot. He wasn�t tracking like normal anymore and I was having a hard time reading his body language to feel 100% confident that we were still on it the line. By this time we�ve crossed over another little ridge into the next draw. We decided to ease off into the main creek bottom, take a break, and circle back.

Otis got down in the creek and laid down on his belly to cool off. We stayed there for a while until he completely quit panting. I told the hunter that I wanted to check the main creek bottom (SMZ) we were in really well and see if the deer was there since that�s the way it was originally headed and that being such a common place to find them.

We worked back up the bottom for several hundred yards until we passed over the original draw the deer was coming down but Otis didn�t hit on anything. We decided to go back up the creek and check there and then see if we could take anything away from where we left off to take the break. By the time we finished checking the bottom Otis�s sniffer was about spent. We decided to check the next draw over from where we had left off earlier and then call it.

Checking that last draw was when the heat got to me. My heart was beating fast and I got really light headed. My legs felt like they were just shutting down on me. I had to stop multiple times on the walk back to the truck and I typically never have to stop period. I just didn�t feel right at all.

I don�t what kind of hit we were dealing with on the last one. I suspect it was a really low gut hit like the ones we see go for a long, long ways. It was putting out decent blood here and there too like those hits will do. The hunter said it just hopped a little and trotted off. He could see it trot off for a decent ways too and even got a second shot off but missed. This was a track we would have been much better off to not have worked during the heat like we had. It just took its toll on all of us before we could find it.

This is one of only a couple tracks all year where I was really disappointed in me and Otis for not at least finding the deer still alive somewhere, if not dead��.where I felt like we could have tracked the deer much better if the conditions wouldn�t have gotten the best of us. This deer was likely WAY out there somewhere but that usually doesn't stop us. Today it did.

A call came in for tomorrow morning while I was typing my stories . Dad took daughter out hunting this evening and she shot a doe for her first deer. It was quartering away and they feel like it was a pretty good hit. They found decent blood and tracked it for 150 yards before it petered out though. They searched for another hour before backing out and calling it. Hopefully we�re gonna recover a little girl�s first deer in the morning.

To be continued���..

The picture tells the story on this one.

I�ve gotten ahead of myself a little with my advertising. Demand is outrunning supply. Otis just can�t keep up with it right now. He got up this morning and was whimpering a little here and there. I felt around on him and checked him out real good but didn�t find any cuts or issues. When I rubbed his hind legs though he whimpered. He�s sore.

I went ahead and met the hunter this morning at daylight and Otis found the deer just fine but you could tell he wasn�t completely himself. I�ve given him some baby aspirin and just let him rest for today. I had a couple more calls come in this morning but I just couldn�t take them. I�m really glad now that I went ahead and got a second dog because I�ll need Shelby Lou to be ready to go next year. I just stopped by the deer processor a few days ago and stocked up on legs and liver for the off season. I'm gonna really amp up her training routine when deer season is over.

Call came in for tomorrow morning. This one actually came in earlier today. It�s a local outfitter I�ve tracked for in the past. They told me that a hunter had shot one this morning and it looked marginal. I told them that it would be tomorrow morning before I could track again so he said that they would give it till this afternoon and then track it to see what they had.

We talked again this afternoon and the guide told me that they had tracked it a few hundred yards to a creek 6 hrs after the shot and jumped it. He said the deer looked like it had one of it�s legs hanging off and that it seemed pretty hurt. The deer ran just out ahead of them and the guide believes it laid down again. They backed out and decided to wait on me in the morning. Hopefully they�ve gotten into the body cavity on this one and he�ll be dead in the morning. We�ll see����.

To be continued��..

Another call came in for tomorrow. Grandpa and granddaughter were sitting together and a buck came out on the greenfield. Grandad said the shot looked good. He said the deer bolted out of the field like it had been hit hard but they can only find a couple small spots of blood. The deer ran into some young pines and they can�t find it. He can�t meet until tomorrow afternoon so it actually works out good for me. I�m gonna track the one in the morning and then let Otis rest for the middle of the day before tracking granddaughters bucks tomorrow evening as it cools off. That's all I'm taking on for tomorrow.

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

Just caught up reading from the past few days, and shew, I'm tired just reading about all of the tracks! Good job guys! Looking forward to tomorrow's tracks!

Good stuff

"I had a couple more calls come in this morning but I just couldn�t take them."

I assume you refer them to other trackers?

Yes, I referred one to our tracking Facebook page�..another one was a neighbor of mine that was looking for what he called a �cull buck�. When I told him about Otis needing to rest he said just don�t worry about it�..The last one didn�t seem to happy when I told him I couldn�t come out. The conversation never made it to referrals.

This morning�s first track was exciting. Otis picked right up on the trail and led us another 400-500 yards up the creek branch. We came to a little thicket and Otis started pointing and indicating that the deer was in the thicket. The hunter was carrying a shotgun loaded with buckshot. I called Otis back to me and told the hunter to ease up to that thicket with his gun and be ready to shoot. Sure enough about the time he got in there�.�Booooom!!!!����.


��Buuut he missed. He said the deer was actually still about 30 yards from him and it was going away from him in some really thick stuff when it jumped. I sent Otis back on its track but we never caught up to it again. We went another 400-500 yards to the property line and called it off. I figure this one was just another low leg hit. This was 24 hrs after the shot so the deer had plenty of time to weaken if it would have been a hit in the body cavity.

Got one more track later this afternoon for Grandad and granddaughter. I hope this one is laying out there dead somewhere. Too dang many live deer situations here lately. To be continued.......

Dang, I just found this thread and I'm tired just reading it. You guys need some cooler weather and everyone needs to aim real good for a couple of days for you and Otis to get rested up.

I hear you brother. It definitely won�t hurt my feelings if we don�t get any calls this evening. Otis could use the rest. He was still a little sore today but not as bad. If you�ve ever lifted weights and know what it feels like when you first start�..I think he has that same type soreness. That really long day we had took its toll on us.

This afternoons track was just a scratched-up deer. My best guess is that it was grazed across the brisket. The shooter was 7 years old and it was about a 125 yard shot. Grandad said she completely missed the first shot but on the second one the deer just bolted out of the field�.no kick�.no hop�..nothing of that sort. There was just a few specks of blood at the hit site and a little about waist high on some sedge where the deer went out of the field. We tracked it for about 600 yards before calling it off. We didn�t find anywhere where it tried to bed up or any more blood. We both agreed that the hit wasn�t as good as they hoped.

CNC, you and Otis are putting in some work for apparently bad shots and shots where poor judgment play a role. I'm just gonna say it. We owe it to the deer to make/take ethical clean shots. Practice more, slow down when the time comes and make the first shot count. Everybody wants there kid to kill a deer. Until the kid can shoot and understand what they are doing they should not be allowed to shoot at an animal.

I look forward to reading the trails of Otis. The times he finds the deer and it is recovered are awsome. Keep up the good work CNC.

I'm sitting here hoping that more people lose their deer instead of recovering them so I can read more of these stories.. So everyone in Macon, Lee, Russell, Barbour, Bullock, Pike, Montgomery, Elmore, Tallapoosa and Chambers counties. May your .243 ballistic tips explode with no blood. May Otis always have employment with the stories to follow.

I agree with both of you.

In all seriousness though, there's a lot of folks using ballistic tip bullets. Maybe this is just another �Rage VS Muzzy� debate but I�m not a fan of the ballistic tip. I don�t think a lot of the folks really understand what they�re shooting and how it will react when it hits the deer. If you're gonna use them then for sure shoot the deer well behind the shoulder.

I�ll say this BigEd because I don�t want anyone to get the wrong impression about tracking dogs. I�ve heard folks make the statement before that tracking dogs could lead to more folks taking bad shots because they know they can bring in a dog��that�s not the case at all though. Folks are calling in the tracking dog as a last resort. I don�t think it ever even crosses anyone�s mind until long after the fact.

I think the truth is that that these type situations have been occurring for a long time and trackers are just shedding a little sunlight on it. I agree with you that we as a group could improve on our preparation for shooting a deer as well as our decisions during the heat of the moment.

I firmly believe though that it�s as much mental preparation as it is practicing to be a proficient shooter. Many of these situations are just due to rushed shots. The deer yesterday morning with its leg blew up was shot at 15 yards with a gun. Precision shooting doesn�t play much of a role at that distance. That�s all nerves. It was someone fairly new to hunting and they shot with the deer quartering hard away from them instead of waiting just another moment for a better angle. The deer came by the hunter walking down the road headed into the field he was sitting on. A high percentage of the ones I�m tracking are where the hunter saw the deer and immediately shot.

Read the deer�s body language. If they�re calm and not alerted to your presence�.then just chill out and wait for a good angle on your shot. Either broadside or just slightly quartered away. Especially be patient with any deer that�s coming out into a greenfield. Don�t feel like you have to shoot the moment it steps out of the woodline if you don�t have a good shot. These bad angled shots have a very low rate of solid hits.

Awe man you just need more bullet weight. Gonna be hard to stop a 150-180gr ballistic tip.

My suggestion would be stick with something that�s gonna blow a hole all the way through the deer or penetrate hard if you shoot the shoulder. I�ll take a plain old snub nosed bullet shot out of a 30-30 over some of this fancy chit.

Call just came in from the morning hunt. The hunter reported that the deer ran off with gut hanging out. They don�t have any blood to follow and gave up searching. These are the deer that take a long time to die and can go a long ways if you push them. I advised the hunter to back out and give the deer 12-18 hrs before we get after it. These deer are often still alive even after that long. We�re gonna go in tomorrow morning and recover it. There�s a chance they pushed it a little if they got too extensive with their search��if not then I expect to find him somewhere in the 400 yard range. Fingers crossed anyways.

To be continued........

Not really hard to stop any weight ballistic tip if it hits the shoulder. Soft bullets with explosive expansion don't make good penetrators.

It's quite common for them to shed their jackets and have small exit holes with straight through well placed shots.

Someone please make a bad shot already!!!

I must be an enigma then cause I have never had a problem with them. However the smallest caliber I hunt with is a 25-06. Never shot a bonded bullet and never really plan to. In 22 years of hunting ive only ever found two bullets in a deer. And it was the same deer I shot twice.

I've hit shoulder, brisket, neck, lungs, and everything else with a Hornady SST, which could be considered a ballistic tip. Every deer I've ever shot has dropped in its tracks. Granted, I'm shooting 150gr .30-06, but that bullet causes devastation.

I'll get back in on the bullet discussion with y'all in a minute. Here's an update on this morning's track.


This one did not turn out nearly like I had hoped. Otis took the track and led us straight up the creek for a few hundred yards and then all of sudden the track went hot. I let him go for a little ways but I was fully expecting a dead deer or a really weak deer..... so after a few hundred yards I told the hunter I wanted to stop right there and just double check Otis before getting after it any further.

We looped back to the hit site and led Otis down the creek in the opposite direction as well as across the creek to the other side but never got on anything promising that led me to believe he was wrong the first time. This deer didn�t have too many options on places to go either so it wasn�t too hard to narrow it down.

After double checking we got back on the original track and re-run it to look again for any blood or gut we may have missed but never did find a single drop or nothing. We followed the hot trail for a few hundred yards until we got to a young stand of pines about chest high and pulled off there in hopes that the deer lays back down out in the cutover and eventually dies.

We come to the conclusion that the hunter just barely caught the deer under the belly enough to rip the skin and allow some gut to pooch out. He said the deer kicked on the shot but then just trotted off like it wasn�t that hurt. I don�t believe that he actually did any damage to the innards of the deer at all because there was no gut matter splatter or blood or anything at the hit site�. just a wad of white hair. Even for the 100 yards that the hunter saw the deer trot across the clear cut there wasn�t a speck of anything nor on the trail Otis took us on. That�s just not typical for a really low gut hit and why it leads me to believe that he only cut the skin.

I fully expect this deer to eventually die but just how long that may take I don�t know. It�s likely to be days or even a couple weeks. I don�t think he�ll go far though and he�ll stay in a small area around the creek. The only positive thing about the situation is that it�s in a great place to see buzzards if they get on him. Here�s the hit site.



I believe this one was actually hit below the chart under the G11 square or maybe in the G12 box.

Looking back on this morning�s track I should have just trusted Otis from the start. The hunter said he heard Otis let out a bark right as we went hot which means he very likely saw the buck get up and take off. The situation just didn�t play out anything like I expected after giving the deer 24 hrs though. Hell, I was just hoping that the yotes didn�t have him eaten up when we got to him. That�s the damn thing about dealing with these marginally hit deer like this, it�s kind of like Forrest Gump�s box of chocolate��..

Ill prolly jinx myself on this but I just cant see how this many people make poor shots. I would have never guess it was this likely but following along on this thread has opened my eyes. Folks best be practicing.

This morning�s hunter was a very proficient shooter. It was someone in law enforcement who had actually been through some sniper training. Again, I�m not trying to take away from the fact that many folks could practice more but that�s just not all there is to these situations. It�s the heat of the moment. Also, to be fair to the hunters�.some of these are just tough shots that have to be made quickly. Situations like crossing a lane or chasing a doe, etc�.I�ve been there and done that myself.

By the way��.you�re definitely jinxed now.

Haha prolly so heck id just be tickled at the opportunity man. Guy at the hunting land shot the buck I was after this week while ive had to work so not much hope but who could know. I do know one thing. Ill tote a big enough gun where I wont have to worry about no pass through lol.

Here is one more reference pic to show the general area of where that long white hair comes from. If you ever have a big wad of hair like that at the hit site, then back out and give the deer plenty of time. If it�s a morning shot then at a minimum wait until that evening�..If it�s an afternoon shot, then go back home and come back the next morning.

If he hit him at G11 or 12 that boy won't be ruttin any time soon. Definitely give him a good shave.

They are awesome WHEN the deer drop right there, however the ones that don't drop run and you won't find blood until where the deer is laying dead (if you find them).

It took me losing 2 does but only 1 buck to realize they are junk. I went back to shooting Core Lokt's and haven't looked back.

Enjoying the stories CNC, I have a lab that could pass at Shelby's twin. She is a very good blood dog but very high strung doing so

Thanks man!......

Yep, Shelby has that same high strung gene too. I�m hoping she settles down a lot between now and next season. I�m gonna spend a lot of time working with her this summer on training tracks. We�ll probably do a lot of on lead training so I can hold her back and force her to slow down. Otis is pretty well finished now from a training standpoint.

On the bullet discussion��.

I think with both bullets and bows and arras, we have a tendency to want to flock to what�s new and fancy. We want precision bow shooting equipment that can group in the same hole at 50 yards�..all the while sacrificing the other things, like arra weight, that it takes to inflict raw damage on a deer....even though that one inch grouping falls apart for most folks in the heat of the moment and becomes more like six.

Use a forgiving setup. Use something that�s gonna penetrate hard and inflict lethal damage even if your shot is off. I�ve shot a chitload of deer with a 30-30 using a plain ol� 170 grain snubbed nosed bullet and from the standpoint of inflicting damage and leaving a good blood trail��it preformed time after time. I tried switching to silver tips for a while and fancier never proved to be better. I found myself searching the �thicket� looking for the deer I�d smoked because the bullet fragmented and there was only a small entry hole. The exit hole that�s blown out of the other side is your best friend from a tracking perspective. JMO but my advice would be to leave the ballistic tips on the shelf and choose a different round.

I agree CNC however not all ballistic tips fragment. The SST's for example to not and expand just like the core lokts. I for one reload for most of my hunting guns and long range guns and do not use the ballistic tips however I have used the SST and found two bullets on the big 11pt I shot three years ago and they were perfect mushrooms.

I do hold your opinion with value. You do see the good bad and the ugly and seem to be very unbiased.

Heavy storms rolling through the area this morning. Honestly, I�m happy to see a lull in action for a few days to allow us to completely get our legs back in under us before this next cold snap hits just in time for the peak of the rut. Otis and Shelby would usually be rasslin and fightin constantly�. but for the last few days Otis hasn�t wanted any part of it. I think that soreness is finally gone though because they�re back at it again today.

Y�all get ready to get into the woods when all of this stormy weather passes and that colder weather starts moving back in. If you scheduled vacation for next week then I think you�re likely gonna hit it just right.


One more big push to the end of the season........

Call just came in from the morning hunt. It sounds like a classic back slap but we're gonna check it to be sure. Deer laid there until hunter got down and then it took off.

To be continued.......

Back slap confirmed. The hunter pretty well knew what he had done but it was a really nice buck pushing 140� that he had been hunting and getting pics of. He just wanted to do everything to make sure. We tracked it for 700-800 yards before calling it off as a heavy band of rain started moving in on us. You could see the bucks tracks in the mud going across a clear cut and he was already back up and running within just a couple hundred yards of where the hunter shot him.

Josh Johnson is saying a tornado just touched down exactly where I just came from. Whew, that was close!

U could have had a wizard of Oz type of experience with you and toedo, I mean otis.

We just dang near about did. I didn�t think the next round of bad weather was supposed to hit until later in the day. I just barely out run it on the way home. The sun is shining now and I�m starting to see blue skies. Wind is still howling though.

The weather still sucks here. Rainy and windy again this morning. Good luck if you�re out there in it.

For you guys out there who are working with your dogs on tracking�..now is the time to stop by your local processor and get some training supplies. I�ve got approx. 50 legs put back for the off season as well as about a dozen livers. This year I�m gonna go ahead and process up my blood all at one time and bottle it up for individual tracks. That way all I have to do is grab a bottle of blood and a leg and I�m ready to go.



If you�re gonna really get into this type of training then you�re just about gonna have to get an extra freezer to store supplies in if you don�t already have an additional deep freeze. The side unit of the fridge just won�t be enough space unless you completely take it over. I wouldn�t suggest that though because your wife is already gonna likely be frowning at you. I've also saved the whole hide and head off of the two deer I�ve killed this year. I�ll take those out to replicate the deer at the end of the trail. I may also use them to work some more on grid searching and �winding� with Otis over the offseason.

I�ve even got a couple defanged snakes in the freezer to work on snake aversion training. I had completely forgotten about putting them in there and I was moving things around to make room for my legs when I came across them and was like �Hmmm, I wonder what�s in this bag??�

Oh, I scared the tee total chit out of my own self. I had to laugh though. I damn near threw the bag across the room when I opened it up.

That's a mighty bad trick to play on yourself, Harold! LOL

Man I squealed like a little girl at first and then just started dying laughing at myself.

If only there could have been video... that would have been AlDeer GOLD!!!

Yeah, fortunately no one saw it but me. I thought I�d done been bit.......by a headless snake!

It�s a pretty boring day today so far. I think its just the calm before the storm though. There should be one more big flurry of calls hit over the next week as these temps drop and the rut peaks. To be honest, I�m starting to feel like that die hard hunter who�s spent all season in a tree�..You�re sad to see it go but kinda happy its over at the same time. I�m closing in on that point. It�ll be sad to see the season go out but at the same time I�m looking forward to it being over for a while. I�m looking forward to the off season training and getting Shelby ready for next season. 18 days to go......


Some picture sharing of play time on a slow day��.

Looks like a lot of fun is being had right there!

The snake thing is priceless. If you want, I'll catch you a rattlesnake and put it in a cage. That and some high grass is all you need. Dope the wind, walk them by on the downwind side, watch for the facial expression when they smell it, nail them with a high power for that dog and scream terrified and run away. As soon as they run, don't nail them anymore.

Most of mine would jump 5 feet in the air and change directions (in the air) when they ran up on a box turtle.

I think Otis is pretty well broke from messin with snakes unless he just gets on one by accident. He got struck on the nose by a little rattler and that seems to be all it took for him to leave �em alone. I took the freezer snakes when I killed them and laid them out where I knew I was about to walk with Otis. He would see the snake well before he got to it and then give it a wide berth.... eyeballing the hell of it. I'll still probably do more practice runs with him with the freezer snakes from time to time just to reinforce it.


Shelby is the one that I�ve still got to do some more work with. I did all of the stuff your talking about doing with her last year except I didn�t hit her with the collar. We�re gonna start doing more work with the Garmin Alpha this summer and I�m gonna repeat the drill using the collar this year if she messes with it.

This is simply just my opinion and you know what they so those are like��.but anyone who aims at the point of the shoulder I would encourage you to drop back behind the shoulder instead. I know there�s a DRT area on the point of the shoulder but its really not that big of a target when aiming in the heat of the moment.

After having tracked a decent amount of deer now, I�ve come to the conclusion that back in the deer�s body behind the shoulder is a much, much more forgiving target than in the front 1/3 of the body. You can hit all kinds of places from the front shoulder and forward where the deer may likely be unrecoverable�..but unless you just barely graze him, you can hit just about anywhere in the back 2/3 rds of the deer and there�s a very high chance of recovery if the right steps are taken. Even a back leg shot is a much more recoverable deer than a front leg shot.

Again, this is just my opinion but the X is about where I would aim with a gun or bow either one. You could actually even aim just a touch farther back than that if you wanted to.





Here is a picture of a deer cut open exposing the internal anatomy. See how big of a target those lungs and liver make. Even if you get way back in the guts then that�s still a very recoverable deer. You may have to bring in a dog but it�s a dead deer within a few hundred yards if you leave it alone. Just something to think about. Look at the front end of this deer and at your target if you aim at the point of the shoulder. Just a little too high or too low and you have a very marginal hit. You can blow up all kinds of meat and bone on a deer but if you don�t sink something off into those internal organs then he�s gonna be tough to hem up.

You don't have to worry about all that if you shoot them in the head.

Ok....

I used to hunt with a fellow that changed from a 7mag to a 30-378 Weatherby. Said he was tired of the deer running off and having to track them. I told him it wasn't the caliber but bullet placement. First deer he shot with the new gun ran off same as the others. Another behind the shoulder shot. Deer dead but had to track. He finally went high shoulder, problem solved. And he got rid of the $150 a box 30-378.

Harold (CNC) I know your have only been tracking for a couple of years, and in the beginning when came to my house I covered several things about tracking. One was you need to get a Garmin Alpha 100, did a short demo. on one of my pups. showed you my freezer and how I put up deer liver and feet. I even took you on a couple of tracks so you could see how I worked my dogs off lead.

I really appreciate you sharing info. with other trackers, but the one thing I covered was that I don`t feed my dogs deer meat,or let them chew on deer legs. When my pups were young (1 yr old) I would live a small piece of deer liver at the end of the track. I want to let very one know don`t give your dog a deer leg and let him eat everything off the bone...you said in a earlier post that Otis you crack the bone open and eat the insides......dogs can get small pieces of bone in their stomach and die from it...google "don`t give your dogs bones to chew on its dangerous. We spend a lot of money on our dogs at least I do and its hard enough to put one to sleep when it has cancer.

This is my 11th year tracking and I have trained some good dogs and have good dogs now as you are aware. Let`s put out good info. out to the others that want to train their pups...Bones will kill theirs dogs just as a deer will kill with their horns.

Hope you are having a good season....I`ve sent you and Mike both several tracks for one reason or the other.

The bones and dogs thing is an interesting argument.

I am surprised there are any canids left in nature since they get bones with every meal.

I've been lucky in that respect I suppose. Mine have been some bone eating individuals.

That�s kinda what I was thinking too. I guess it�s just each person�s individual decision.

Mabye CNC decided to do things differently. Just because you do things differently doesn't make him wrong.

Went on one track this morning. The hunter had called yesterday about meeting but I never heard back from them and thought maybe they had decided not to search more for the deer. They called back just after daylight this morning and wanted to know if I could meet them.

The deer was shot yesterday morning crossing a small powerline so this was about 22-24 hrs later. It was roughly a 200 yard shot with the deer walking across the powerline angling toward the hunter. The hunter said the deer was just walking but wouldn�t check up even when he whooped. He shot at it walking just before it entered the woodline. He said it just flinched and disappeared. They had found small drops of really dark red blood for about 100-150 yards until it crossed an interior property road and that�s where they lost it.

I figured the deer had just turned and went up the road instead of crossing over and that�s exactly what we found to have happened when we started searching this morning. I�m finding that to be a very common thing for them to do so don�t always just assume that the deer crossed straight over the road. They often turn and run down the road before entering back into the thicket on a different trail�.sometimes as much as 100-200 yards down the road.

So we tracked up the road for just a short distance before the deer looped back headed in the direction it had originally come from. It went through this thick arse patch of young natural pine regen that was no more than a few acres I�d say. Otis was only about 15-20 yards ahead of us in the thicket when all hell broke loose. �Reeee!!!! Reeeee!!!....(snort, snort, snort).

A big group of pigs got up and sounded like they were all in the thicket around us. Otis is going ape chit up in front of me and I�m trying to get my pistol drawn before one comes running in on us�..about that time it sounded like he cut a piglet out of the group and took it down through the woods squealin like hell! In the meantime the other pigs are still around us snortin and making pig noises. I toned Otis off of the little pig and called him back to me�..but when I did I called him right back into the group of pigs again and he cut another one out of the group and took off again. The pigs around us are still hollerin and squealing this whole time but not running ....just staying in this few acre thicket with us. This time I popped Otis with the shock collar and we got the hell up out the thicket to regroup����

To be continued later this evening����.

Is "regroup" code for go check drawers. That many hogs in a tight space would definitely get me moving.

You dang right. I had my .45 drawn but it really wasn�t making me feel any better about the situation as thick as it was. You could barely see 5 yards in front of you. I needed one of those guns from the movie Predator and just start mowing the woods down!

The conclusion...........



So after we got out of the pigs I told the hunter that I wanted to take five and then back up and run part of the track again to refocus Otis on the task at hand. We circled back a couple hundred yards and Otis put his nose to the ground and got right back on it again. We re-tracked the same path except this time when we came up to the small thicket I told the hunter that I wanted to avoid that area and loop around it like it was a messed-up search area. You could tell that the deer was headed through that thicket going back to the swamp it came from and we weren�t far from making our way through it when we hit the bedded pigs�.. so I figured it we swept the backside of the thicket then we would hit the scent trail coming out into the hardwoods headed to the swamp.

That�s exactly what happened. As we were passing along the backside of the thicket about 100-150 yards past where we had earlier stopped�.. Otis picked up on the old track again and eventually a few more small spots of blood. With the track being 24 hrs old, it was pretty easy to know he was back on the right track versus say something like a fresher pig scent trail. The old track required him to track no faster than a walk and keep his nose glued to the ground really digging to smell it��also working checks and looping back from time to time. A hot fresh trail will have a dog�s nose up in the air a lot and may be moving pretty fast. Something to keep in mind for anyone training a puppy.

We took the track on and away from the thicket for another 600 yards or so (about 900-1000 total) straight down the side of a flooded swamp before coming to the big creek and the property line. Otis was out ahead of us 50-75 yards and when we got to him he was searching for a way across the creek. We called it off there instead of trying to contact the neighbors as it didn�t look promising at all. Unless we passed it during the pig fiasco, there was never a spot where it looked like the deer had bedded.

It�s really hard to say where this deer was hit with no more info or evidence to go on. My best guess would be that it was just a flesh wound across the brisket or a leg with the very spotty dark blood and no real mule kick or reaction of a hard hit. No bone or anything like that either. Just very minor drips of blood here and there. I feel pretty confident that he didn�t sink it off into the deer�s body on a �quartering to� shot like that or the deer would have never made it as far as he did. He was shooting a 300 mag.

Well dammit man�..one of y�all blow some green chit out one�s guts and call me. We need something to get the bad mojo off of us and break this little run of scratched up deer. It typically works out in the end for most trackers to be roughly a 50/50 split of recoverable and unrecoverable tracks when�s all said and done. It seems like sometimes you may get 2 or 3 recoverable in a row though and then other times 2 or 3 non-recoverable. It�s just about like flipping a coin if you take every call that comes in. Folks hit them about any and every way possible. Otis has done his job well so I can�t fault him at all��it just sure is a lot more fun when we find a dead deer at the end of the trail instead of a road, river, or property line.

Just waiting now for the next call to come in��the next flip of the coin. C�mon cold front!!!!!!

Too bad. It happens that way sometimes. Should have upped your game and boogied over to where the O-Man had a piglet for you. Twice. Those little ones fit in a smoker whole.

Kind of glad I hunt huge blocks of public property. The whole property line and legal issues with following a wounded deer onto private property thing is all new to me.

Of course, I say that and I'll see one I want behind the house and then it's really on.

Oh, we thought about it for a second cause there was pigs all around us close that we could have likely gotten a shot on. I asked the hunter if he wanted to shoot one while we had the chance and he said��Hell yeah!��..No sooner than he said that though than we both thought better of it since we still thought we had a deer down. If we started capping pigs then I may have never got Otis to refocus on the day old line we we�re following. It�s probably best we left them alone for Otis�s sake anyways. It was good training for him to reinforce to him that we�re not chasing anything else in the woods other than the one wounded deer.

The property line situation has probably never been a big problem for most hunters because the vast majority of the deer we track �by hand� never extend more than a few hundred yards if that. Some do but the vast majority of the deer like we�re tracking just can�t be followed without a dog. It�s pretty easy with a dog to cover 500-1000 yards or more following a deer if he�s just very marginally hit. With someone that�s only hunting 200 acres or 500 acres, etc�.you can hit property lines pretty quick. There�s other places that are 3.4, or 5,000 acre chunks of property where you usually have plenty of room and it�s not an issue. Most deer tend to circle back eventually.

Call just came in from another aldeer member. Buck was quartering away at 100 yards at about a 45 degree angle. The hunter was shooting a 257 I believe�..I�m not familiar with those guns. The buck immediately hit the ground and spun around on the ground before getting back up on it�s front legs and dragging itself into the woods on its front legs. They�ve found no blood.

The hunter feels good about the hit but the reaction immediately makes me think the shot is high and somewhere around the spine since the deer�s back end was paralyzed or temporarily paralyzed. Hopefully the hit is under the spine and in the body. I guess its possible that it may be high on the deer�s rump. Fingers crossed that this one doesn�t end up being a backslap.

To be continued.......

I tracked one about a 1,000 yds on a 5,000 acre club 10 years ago. I hit him in the leg and tracked him across three property lines but he was only about 400 yds from our line. Never found that deer but by 6 month old lab took me the whole way. Wish I had kept her going.

Yeah, leg hits can go a long ways. You�re likely gonna need plenty of room to be able to deal with one of those.

Another one just slapped on the back. This has to be one of the most common calls that we trackers get. It makes sense though. From the hunter�s perspective it probably looks like they�ve slammed it hard but when they look for it�.there�s no deer to be found. Not a whole lot to the story on this one. We tracked it out to about the 1000 yard mark and then called it off.

It�s all good though. I got to meet another fellow Aldeer member and it gave him some piece of mind knowing that the deer is still alive and going. That�s one of the reasons I choose to operate the way I do and charge a fee for coming out. If someone wants to check a shot like that and verify what happened, then I want to be able to go check it for them�.deer or no deer.

The main tracking book that most of us all read when we start teaches you to screen your calls and choose the ones that are more likely to be recoverable deer�.it has a whole chapter on it I believe. Therefore, many trackers won�t go out on back slapped deer. I understand where the book is coming from because it takes the stance as if you�re tracking for free or just tips. I just don�t like picking and choosing in that fashion and telling some folks no just because I don�t think we�ll find it. Most of these tracks are very close to home and for clubs and landowners that I�ll likely track for multiple times as the years go by. If they want me to come out then I�ll go win, lose, or draw.

That is probably a much better philosophy imo. They know the deer may not be recoverable - it's a chance we take doing what we do.

From what I�ve seen on just about all of these types of shots is that the hunter�s perspective and the tracker�s perspective of the situation is completely different�..I�m speaking of the time period just after the shot when they call for a dog. Most hunters are sure that the deer is gonna just be laying within a short distance and aren�t gonna hear it when you tell them that�s it�s likely a high back shot. Heck, I don�t blame them a bit though. If I were the shooter and saw a big one hit the ground and flop like that�..I�d be wanting to make sure too. I�d be like Jim Carrey when they told me that 9/10 with that story aren�t recovered��.

Call just came in for tomorrow morning. The hunter said he was bow hunting and shot a buck at 20 yards broadside but hit high and back. He found decent blood for about 75 yards and then it petered out to nothing. Hopefully the arrow angled down into the deer and got a lung or liver. This ought to be a dead deer but I�m not gonna bet the farm on it just yet. We�ll find out in the morning����

To be continued���..

Lol another high back. After a couple of hundred yards I was thinking mine was a goner. But it happens and gotta move on.

We got the monkey off our back this morning with a recovery. Surprisingly though, it wasn�t on the bow shot I went to track at daylight. We tracked that deer for over a mile in one big circle�..passing back by within just a couple hundred yards of where it was originally shot and right back into the bedding area it had originally come from. The track seemed to go hotter in the bedding area but not to the point that I felt like we were right behind him. I think he bedded for part of the night and then got up and started moving again this morning. The deer was shot yesterday at 10 am so it had been awhile since he was hit. He apparently wasn�t hurt nearly as bad as we had hoped. The hunter said he saw where the arra hit and it was just under the spine about midways back. I think he hit no man�s land. I�ve seen pics from other trackers of deer that were hit right there with a bow and were right back out in the greenfield feeding again within a few days with a hole in �em. We were approaching 1 � miles when we decided to call it.

As soon as I left that track another call came in for some folks I just tracked for a couple weeks ago. The same young lady that shot the doe a few stories back had shot her first buck this morning. Dad said that the shot looked good but the buck just wasn�t bleeding much and it just petered out after 100 yards. He wanted to for sure find it so they just backed out and called me. This ended up being a pretty routine find. The deer was hit good but just wasn�t bleeding much at all. I�m not sure what she was shooting but it may have been a small caliber of some sort. The deer went around 250 yards from the hit site and piled up. Otis ran right to this one. A heck of a buck for someone�s first.

I sure wish I could make these pics smaller.......

It happens to a lot of folks man. Don't sweat it too much. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he doesn't just show right back up in the same field.

Call just came in for tomorrow morning. It sounds like a pretty promising call except for the fact that they�re only a couple hundred yards from the property line and it sounds like the deer may be headed that way. The shot was about 75 yards quartering away. The deer jumped up in the air and took off out of the field. They found a lot of white hair in the field. They picked up on blood a little ways into the woods and followed it for a 100 yards or so before petering out. They�ve found a couple �good spots� of blood.

I suspect that this is a low belly hit about mid ways back and they�ve hit high enough to get into the body cavity. I think there�s a good chance that the deer will be bedded up dead but it�s likely to be 300-400+ yards. This one may end in a five minute run to the property line I�m afraid. Fingers crossed that the deer went in a different direction or they can contact the neighbors.

Good luck on this one. I'm think low grazing shot no body cavity penetration,, hope I'm wrong and you put it on the truck.

I hope so too. They described the "good spots" of blood as being about like a pie pan so it leads me to believe that this one may be hit pretty decent. That sounds about like the ones that usually have their guts hanging out the back. Those are the ones that tend to live for a while and can go for a good little ways sometimes if pushed. About to head out now after this cup of coffee.

To be continued........

CNC is going to be a tired puppy pardon the pun if he hasn't responded from this morning! Hope he is getting them all! Show us the meat Otis!

The bucks are definitely moving this weekend.

I�ve noticed a definite pattern through all of this. Many of the hunters when they call feel like they�ve hit the deer well��even though very few are more than scratched up and only maybe half are actually hit well enough to recover. Our perceptions of things in the heat of the moment will lie to us. You will tend to see things the way you want to see it.

Anyways, enough with the psychoanalysis��BigEd called the first one right. It wasn�t quite the pie plate sized blood spots I was hoping to see but this deer was actually bleeding what I would consider decent for a few short stretches of the track. They blew a good bit of white hair off of it too at the hit site. It looked about like the hit site pic in this thread a page of two back. The buck went straight onto the neighbors into a huge clearcut that was grown back up in sedge waist to chest high.

Fortunately they had the neighbors numbers ready to go and we got permission to go within a matter of minutes. That went way smoother than I anticipated. Unfortunately though, we tracked the deer all the way across that property before calling it off at the 1500 yard mark as it crossed over into yet another property owner. That was disappointing as hell because I really had high hopes for this one. I suppose they just blew the belly hair off because the deer had all kinds of places it could have bedded up and never did.

After we called it off we were walking back to the truck when another call came in from the morning hunt. The hunter reported that a buck ran a doe across the powerline at about 75 yards and he had to make a quick shot. He felt confident about the shot but could only find what they think might be a speck of blood. The had searched for over an hour and couldn�t find anything.

This deer was shot at what looked to be a slightly �quartering to� angle in the front of the shoulder with a 30-06. Look close in the pic and you�ll see it. There was only a tiny entry hole and no exit. The deer didn�t go 75 yards and piled up in a little thicket with no blood trail. The hunters said they had walked circles around him within 20 yards and just didn�t see him. It took Otis about 4-5 minutes. More to come later. To be continued���

Been checking in regularly today...glad to hear the updates. Tuned in for the "continued" part!

So actually before I even left the first track a third hunter called me from the same hunting club that I was currently tracking on. He was just on another track of land a couple miles down the road. He had one he needed me to track but I had already told the other folks I was on my way so I told him I�d have to come back. So after the second track was over I came back to the same hunting club where I started the morning.

There wasn�t much to this track. The hunter was up on a hill in a cutover and had a buck passing (feeding) through at about 150 yards or so. He said that he thought he smoked it and that the deer had run off favoring one leg. I�m pretty sure he just took a gash out of the deer�s leg. This track was only a few hours old so it wasn't hard to follow. There was a little bit of dark blood for 60-70 yards but nothing else other than that. No bone or anything so I don't even think the hunter blew the leg up too bad. We took the track out to 800-850 yards before calling it off after we came to the conclusion that the deer wasn't smoked and was just a little scratched up.

I did see Otis do something on this track though that really showed he�s maturing. We were tracking through a little bottom when Otis jumped a rabbit right in front of his face. He took off after it for about 5-10 yards and then locked on the brakes�.left it alone�.and went right back to tracking the deer. I was proud to see that because rabbits are about the most enticing thing other than live deer that can distract a tracking dog.

So by this time it about lunch time and 3 more calls have come in��.


Stories to be continued��.

Go getem Otis!

Lookin forward to the stories. Glad the weather is cooler.

Sipping coffee and getting ready to head back out again this morning. The cool weather has been great for tracking. I'll try to get caught up on the stories later today.

So in the interest of getting us caught up I�m gonna give the cliff notes for the rest of yesterday�s adventure. When we left off I had said that three more calls had come in��..

One was earlier that morning from a hunter I had tracked for a couple weeks ago. He had found a lot of blood and gut blown from the buck and wanted to know how long he should wait and if I�d be available later in the day. He waited 3-4 hrs and found it on his own so we didn�t have to go to that one.

Another one came in a little later around lunch from a hunter who had tracked his buck for several hundred yards and was just finding specks at that point. He said it was headed across the main road and onto the neighbors. I told him to get permission to go across the road and I�d meet him later that day or in the morning. He never called back so I assume he didn�t figure it out.

The final track of the day wasn�t a very promising track at all but it was on my way home anyways and I wanted to meet and make contact with the landowners. The buck was actually shot the day before and we were over 30 hrs old at this point. They had already searched for it with a 4 or 5 man party for several hours with no luck so the area was good and mucked up.

It was in a unique habitat for this part of the world. It looked more like I was in Kansas than Alabama. Large rolling sedgefields with cedars scattered here and there throughout it. It was cool to see. I don�t really think this deer was hurt much at all though. They had only found a one or two small spots of blood and the hunter had reported seeing the buck stop and stand in some cedars for a long time after the shot before just trotting off. He said he couldn't see it's body enough to get another shot.

Just to add an extra challenge to the situation, the wind decided to pick up and blow about 20 mph across those open �plains�. Otis tracked it like a champ under the conditions and for his 4th track of the day for about 400-500 yards..... before his battery just ran out of juice. He came back to me with his tongue hanging out�.giving me a look like �I�m done boss.� I knew it was time to call it.... so I did.

The cool thing though is that the 400-500 yards where we tracked it went in a completely different direction than what the hunter had thought. They had been blindly searching in the direct opposite direction. The buck had left out traveling toward where they searched but once he got out of the hunter�s sight, he looped back around and went right back the way he had come from. We grid searched a big section of prairie in the direction Otis was taking us but like I originally said�.I�m pretty sure that there wasn�t any deer to be found on this one. I ended up just doing that track for free.

So much for cliff notes�.. ..... but that catches us up to today�s stories anyways. Let�s start with pics first and then I�ll post the story later��.

Now for today�s stories��.

Actually let�s back up to last night. Three calls came in last night all literally within a 3-4 mile circle. The first one was the buck in the picture. That hunter had shot the buck with a 300 mag from about 300 yards. The sign at the hit site was classic low belly shot. Big wad of white hair. They had found two decent spots of blood but nothing past about 75 yards.

Otis was really slow and meticulous on this track. The deer was only bleeding speck here and there. He took us on a slow steady line though for 475 yards right to the deer. It only took us about 15-20 minutes. I was proud of the quick find to start the morning.

The second call that came in last night didn�t have too many details. They had tracked really good blood for a couple hundred yards before losing it. I found out when I got there this morning that they had also found bone too so I knew we were likely dealing with a leg hit. Otis picked right up on this one and took it on a trot about 600 yards to the paved road where it crossed over onto a well known hunting plantation. We found blood leading right up to the road.

The hunter had already talked to the folks the night before and got us the go ahead but he called them again this morning to let them know that it had for sure crossed. We tracked it another couple hundred yards onto the hunting plantation when we came upon where the deer had bedded for the night. There was a pretty damn good bit of blood in the bed.

I found it odd that we didn�t at least get the deer up out of that bed but I want to believe that coyotes got after this deer. He came up out of his bed and did a complete loop before entering in some hardwoods running parallel with the road we had crossed earlier. We found blood confirming it but it completely shut off after that point compared to what we were finding before the bed. Otis tracked it parallel with the road for another 400-500 yards before crossing BACK over the road again onto the original property. To make a long story short, we followed this deer a LONG ways before finally just calling it off so the hunters could get on the road headed home. They had a several hour drive. It was just surprising to me that we never came up on this deer at all. He should have been in that bed but something got him up out of before we got there and pushed him WAY down the trail. It never seemed like the track went hot.

One really cool thing about the track was that we came across an old cemetery along our route. I didn�t snap the best pic in the world but if you look the dates are Born 1821�..Died 1854. That pretty old there. Maybe some of first families in Alabama?? Many of the other tombstones could barely be read.

Oh, yeah�..the third call. This one was from a high fence property. The exciting conclusion still to come. To be continued���..

The XL big pen I assume.

Indeed.

Hmmmm...I thought he had missed earlier in the big pen.

Congrats on the finds, Otis. Enjoyed catching up.

Thanks 3FF!.....Sorry for the delay in stories. I think I literally fell asleep last night at 7:30.

Now the epic conclusion to yesterday�s tracking adventure��..

So the hunter�s brother called me last night and told me that they had shot one of the biggest, oldest bucks on the property. One that they had been hunting for several years and estimated to be 8 years old or better. A huge bodied buck thought to easily be 225 lbs.

The shot was made at around 200 yards as the buck crossed over a lane. They had found no blood or hair but felt like the deer was hit hard from its reaction as it ran out of the lane. They felt like they it could very well be a deer just like the one a couple pics back that had one little entry hole and no exit. They had looked for an hour or so with flashlights and decided to just back out and call in a dog.

Well�they sent me a text this morning (yesterday) saying he had shown right back up on camera and it was a clean miss��he was still alive.

The End.

Congrats Harold, really enjoy following your thread!!

Thanks!....Tell your dad that the dog box is being put to good use. I remember him saying that I was hauling off a lot of good memories with that box. By the time this dog box is finally retired, I think it�ll have one heck of a story to tell.

Yes you will for sure,I can remember trying to reach up and unhook the latches and them bird dogs knockin me down jumpin off the tailgate.. great memories for sure, enjoy

The phone rings about 7:30 this morning and on the other end is the unmistakable voice of a local outfitter I�ve gotten to know over the last couple of years. It sounds like you�re talking to Sam Elliot on the other end of the line��the long gray haired guy from Roadhouse that does all the truck commercials and stuff�.deep voice. He asks me if I can come track one this morning for them. I didn�t even ask any details other than whether it was shot this morning or last night. When he said last night I told him I was on my way.

The hunter shot this deer yesterday afternoon with some kind of bazooka. I may have this wrong but I think he said it was a .417 or something of that nature. They said it was used for bear defense when they went to Alaska. It was shooting a 400 grain bullet I believe they said. I�m not a real gun guru so it was a first for me. He was trying to shoot hogs with it and saw a shooter buck instead.

He shot the deer at around 100 yards slightly quartering to him. The bullet entered fairly low on the body in the guts and exited out the deer�s hindquarter. It only ran about 250 yards but they didn�t have much of a blood trail to follow so they backed out and called for Otis. This one was a pretty easy find. Otis made a couple loops at the hit site and then went on a straight line right to it. Its kind of a clich� thing to say but the pic really doesn�t do the deer justice. It had some really nice mass on it. An old gray faced buck.

GOOD JOB CONGRATS!

Never heard of a 417. Possible could have been the 416 rigby

That very well may have been it....It was 4 something for sure.

As soon as I posted the story about this morning�s track I had two more calls come in back to back within about 10 minutes of each other. I took the first one and referred the second one to another tracker. The first one was from Bamaeyedoc�s club. The same member I tracked for back earlier in the season called me and said his girlfriend had shot a big one�they had good blood on it�.but it just stopped.

We don�t go on too many tracks that just leave me scratching my head but I�ll admit that I�m not real sure what the hell happened on this one. They had tracked it with 3 folks out to about 250 yards in some real thick understory. In the field there was a small patch of light grayish hair. Definitely not white belly hair but not really dark hair either. There would be great blood that a blind man could follow for a short distance and then a gap�.another good stretch and then a gap�.You could tell the deer was going and stopping...going and stopping.

Well, when it got out to about the 250 yard mark there were erratic spots where it looked like the deer was just standing here for a moment and then moving 10 yards�..standing and then moving�..around in circles. That�s where they lost the blood and it�s the same place we got muddled down in as well. Otis ran circle after circle after circle in that area for a good little while until I finally told the hunter that we better try a different tactic before Otis wears his self out in that one area. It was pretty warm this afternoon.

I marked it on the map and we started trying to loop around it. We spent the next 2 hrs covering every possible way the deer could have went�..blind searching and looking for Otis to pick up the trail for several hundred yards out in every direction. Nothing. Not a spot of blood�.nothing. All I can figure is that the deer went straight back the same way it came from and the search area was just too stepped on for Otis to figure it out. This one really leaves me scratching my head. The best guess I have is that they hit the deer in the neck or across the chest. The more I�ve though about it the more I�m leaning toward neck but hell I really just don't know on this one.

That's a pretty, old deer you found this morning, good job.

I had one more call come in today from a bowhunter that I tracked for way back at the beginning of the season. He was still out there with his stick and string and finally got another whack at one this morning.

He said it was a long shot out around 45 yards and at first he thought he had missed low just under the deer. When he went and recovered the arrow though, he said it looked like a low gut hit with some white hair on the arrow as well as some gut matter. He�s using Rage expandables so maybe this time it will pay off for us. He asked how long he should wait and I told him at least 12 hours. He agreed so we just decided to give it until tomorrow morning to track it. Hell, it may not even be dead then. He didn�t track it so hopefully the buck stayed close and bedded up. We�ll find out in the morning. To be continued���..

Thanks BigEd.....Yep, I believe he had some age on him.

This one turned out to be a pretty routine recovery at 350 yards from the hit site. The deer was hit just in front of the hindquarter. I think a possum or something got on him before we got there and is why you see gut hanging out. One thing to note about this track is that the first bed we found where the deer laid down was at the 100 yard mark. You could tell it had spent a lot of time in that bed too because the grass was really pressed down to the point of forming a very distinct bed.

Had the hunter started searching for this deer any at all then he would have surely jumped him out of that bed and pushed him a lot farther. As it was though, the deer likely laid there for hours before getting up and moving another couple hundred yards down into the creek bottom where we found him bedded up on the side of the creek branch. Give bad shots plenty of time before tracking them.

was the buck from yesterday morning killed in Montgomery county?

Way to go Otis!

Is the right side of the rack broke off or just grew that way?


I'm no tacker but would that have been a good one to let Shelby track again after the initial find?

No...that one was Bullock Co.

Yeah, I probably should have tried here on it. It was 24 hrs old with zero blood but it would have been interesting to see how she tracked it. It was thicker than dog snot in the cutover.

I haven't posted about it but I've still been running her on training tracks. We just ran one two days ago and I was really pleased with her progress. It was one of the first times that we've tracked with a limp lead instead of her trying to drag me. She's finally slowing down a gear. She was still amped up and erratic but able to control her excitement enough to work the line much cleaner. She'll be ready for some real tracks next year. I'll still hand pick which ones I put her on so as hopefully not to get her on any live ones. They say one negative experience when they're young can stay with them for life.

I take that back. I said zero blood but there actually was a little bit of blood that we found along the way and I have to give the hunter all the credit on this one. Otis was working a short check when I saw the bed. He looped back around and sniffed of it before proceeding but I didn�t see anything in it from the standpoint of blood. I gave it a quick check and then started watching Otis again. The hunter got down and started meticulously picking through the bed until he found the most minute amount of blood down in the straw. It wasn�t much more than the size of your fingernail but there was no mistaken that it was definitely blood. One more thing to add to the track....there was also a small wad a stomach content at the hit site.

It just grew that way. I figure it likely had some kind of injury that caused it.

Could have been really difficult if he had pushed the deer last night. Good for him on calling in the dog. I'm sure the hunter was happy.

This hunter did exactly what you need to do in a situation like this and it paid off. When he saw the stomach content (big red flag) at the hit site�.he quietly slipped out and left it alone. Had he even started tracking and looking for blood, then the deer would have definitely been pushed out of that first bed at 100 yards where he probably spent hours weakening down.

CNC, thanks again for sharing all of this. Definitely a top-five thread for this hunting season!

Thanks Claims!....I feel like if I could just somehow incorporate some hot moms and jaguarondi into the story then it would push the thread right over the top.

CNC, if you posted up a thread about jumping a mountain lion while Otis was tracking a buck, you might melt the servers

Yeah, accompanied by some real grainy video footage of it.

I was driving into a track the other day and as we rounded the curve all I could say is �Hooooly chit man! ��..This has got to be the tallest tree house I�ve ever seen. I just snapped the pic as we were riding by and this is cropped from that�.so it�s not the best pic but you can still tell that it�s for sure up there. I�m guessing 50 ft or there abouts. Look at the oak tree its built in and consider its built in the crown of that tree. When I was younger I would have went up there just to check out the view�..but the older I get the less desire I have to climb trees. Y�all can have this one�.not me, no sir.

I had someone call a minute ago asking if I could come out, etc�I asked them what happened and they said the deer hit the ground and laid there for at least 15 minutes. When the hunter started getting down�the deer got up and staggered off. The hunter says �Man, I�m sure he�s hit good but we just can�t find him.� I�m thinking to myself��Yeah, aren�t they all.... � I explained to them that its very likely a high back shot and they said they were gonna talk it over and call me back after looking some more.

This is one of the most common calls. I had one do this to me years ago and its got to be the suckiest feeling in hunting to drop a good one in its tracks and think he�s down for the count�..only to watch him get up and ride off into the sunset. Everyone believes he�s just right there somewhere but they never are��..

Glad I've been watching this thread. Jumped up a good one thus morning I was late walking in. Back slapped him first shot and put two more in him when he was getting back on his feet

Good deal!....Yep, if you knock one down and he starts struggling to his feet, you better be slinging more lead. Glad to hear you were able to put some follow up shots in him.

It�s been a really slow weekend so far fellas. I can�t believe I didn�t get a call yesterday with it being a Saturday. That�s pretty unusual compared to how things have been going. Last weekend was nearly non stop. Oh well, we�ve only got a few days to go anyways. I figure we probably got one or two more tracks to run and it�ll be over. I�m ready to get on my tractor and do some bushhoggin.

Call came in earlier today. I didn�t have time to write a story ahead of time. The hunter had gotten my name from someone I tracked for earlier in the season but when I pulled up he was like �Hey, do ever go to that Aldeer website?� I just grinned.

Turns out it was an aldeer lurker. His son had shot a good buck yesterday evening but after doing an extensive search this morning, they called it off and decided to call in a dog. The buck was quartering hard away from the hunters on the shot and dad described the buck as looking loose in the back end after the shot. He said he waited a few minutes but it was getting dark so he wanted to see if they could find blood before they lost light. When they started searching for the buck, it was only standing about 75-100 yards from the hit site and it blew at �em and took off.

Where the deer stood there was a BIG area of blood the size of a couch cushion or bigger. The deer had stood there for 15-20 minutes after the shot until the hunter bumped it. After that it was spotty out to 200-300 yards where they lost it. Otis took it on a deliberate path another 600-700 yards past that where the track turned hot on us. We were in a major creek bottom with branches running here and there. The deer had just traveled straight down the creek branch the whole way before laying up next to it. Otis tracked it hot for several hundred more yards�.but the deer never slowed up enough to hole up anywhere. We crossed the little creek branch several times before finally making it to the major creek (which was the property line) before calling it off.

I think this deer was hit in one of the muscles on the back leg and is why the hunter saw him looking �loose� in the back end. The blood at that one spot would have led you to believe the deer was hit HARD but I feel pretty certain this deer wasn�t hit in the body cavity. Deer that are hit hard in the body cavity don�t tend to stand there and then blow at you. A deer with a leg muscle blew up would bleed hard like that though. He�ll probably have a bad limp but be ok if he doesn�t have complications with the wound or yotes don�t get him eventually. This is just a guess though.

Another call just came in for tomorrow morning. This one doesn�t have a whole lot of a story to it. It was an outfitter (guide) that I spoke with and the hunter didn�t tell him much other than that the deer just took off. They reported finding two softball size spots of blood about 75 yards from the hit site and that was it. The guide was looping out ahead looking for more blood and thinks he may have jumped the deer. They backed out.

This one is anybody�s guess on what kind of hit we�re dealing with. The shot was made at 7:00 am this morning so by the time we start tracking tomorrow morning this track is gonna be over 24 hrs old. To be continued���.

I got snookered into going on one hell of a road trip this morning. The outfitter said just below Banks when we were talking on the phone�.. but apparently he was only talking about where we we�re gonna meet�..cause we were damn near in Elba by the time we made it to land they were hunting. It�s all good though. I met what will likely be a long-term client for years to come. They had already lost 6 bucks this year and didn�t know about anyone with tracking dogs.

I have no idea where this hunter hit this deer. It had come a couple little showers since the shot yesterday and the two small blood spots they found yesterday were gone. Otis�s nose amazes me though. I�d like to try him on a 48 hr old track next year. This one was around 25-26 hrs old and he picked right up on it and went with it like it had just been laid down. He tracked right by the two blood spots, right through where the deer had been jumped and on for another 800 yards past that until the guide called it off as we started approaching an area where he had some folks hunting this morning. Its still anybody's guess on where this deer might be hit. It must have not been hit too hard.

It's down to the nitty gritty now boys....only a few days left.

So I�m thinking about getting a Geo Tracker for next season. I�ve found one with low mileage that�s only been used as a tow along behind a RV. Most of these tracks I�m going on are within 30-40 minutes of home and I�m mostly just running up and down the backroads of Macon and Bullock counties. A little straight shift Geo Tracker 4X4 seems like it would be the ideal thing. I should be able to put some more aggressive tires on it and follow folks right off road into their properties without leaving any more of a footprint than what a side by side would.

I need to look at one in person first though to see if I have enough room in the back. I thought I might be able to take the back seat out and either have a small custom dog box built or just use a couple smaller dog crates. I think I may paint it hunter orange.

Hey CNC I've been keeping up with your thread mainly to see how Shelby was doing but I got addicted to the bad shooting going on around here. Anyways I wanted to let you know that I owned Shelby's grandmother and she was one special dog. I also have Shelby's sister the big chocolate female because I told Taylor I wanted the first born no matter what it was. Just wanted to let you know as far as labs you couldn't have got any better pedigree for what you are trying to do in my opinion. Otis better watch out in a year or two once she figures it all out. Good luck and keep the stories coming

That�s really cool to hear. I�ve been extremely pleased with Shelby so far. I know there hasn�t been a whole lot written in this year�s stories about her but I think she�s gonna be a special dog in another year or two. It�ll be a hell of one-two punch with her and Otis. I think she�s got more drive than any dog I�ve ever been around��.and she�s really, really �nosy�. It�s just a constant sniff, sniff, sniff when we walk around. I'll keep y'all updated with her progress this off season.

This should make you feel good. My dog was a finished duck dog that spent most of the time in Arkansas duck hunting and at work with me. I leased my place to an oil company form LA in 2010 and they shot some deer like 75 a year on average. Needless to say tracking deer became a must over the years I've lost count but if the deer was hit or blood was found so was the deer especially gut shot. I believe that over time that tracking deer was more enjoyable for the dog because of the challenge. I'm not ashamed to say that I literally broke down the day that dog died. I have had a many a hunting buddy tell me I'll never have another one like that and most of them had fine dogs themselves but the difference was very easy to see. Drive is the best word the dang dog didn't know how to fail and could adapt to any situation and had the best nose I've ever seen. My pup has some big shoes to fill but I seen a lot of similarities

That�s awesome!....It�s good to know that Shelby comes from a good line of dogs like that. There�s no doubt she�s not your everyday lab. I�ve been working with her some on shed hunting and she�s like a machine. Her puppy excitement doesn�t cause her as much issues hunting sheds as it does with blood tracking. I�ve went ahead and mowed part of my property into rows like you would see in quail hunting setups so we could start working more. I hid 3 sheds this morning along a loop and she found them all within a matter of a few minutes and brought them too me. I�m gonna talk to a couple landowners I track for and see if they�ll let me take her on a true shed hunt this spring. There�s one high fence property that would be ideal for training. I found two sheds off the edge of a food plot in there earlier this year on just a short blood track.

Here's a few pics of Shelby shed hunting......

Dax...Have you got any pics of grandma or sister? I'd love to see them if you didn't mind sharing.

Yeah I do but not on my phone I'll get the wife to round some up for me. Bell the grandmother was British and high dollar best money ever spent. She was about 60 pounds of pure muscle and drive. I breed her one time to the best dog I could find you know it's on the pedigree. Taylor basically camped out at my house trying to pic a puppy and I sure am glade he picked a female. I told him that one day he may have to return the favor. My dog had been gone for a little over a year when he called me and told me that he did the same thing picked the best male he could and it was my turn to get the pick of the litter. I told him that I wanted the first dog born I didn't care about color or sex. We call her gator she is pushing a slim 65 pounds and is very muscular. She gets a lot of exercise because of my place with the ponds and all. Hell my yard is like a duck dog training facility. My wife has a over hyper active boykin so with all that and good dog food she looks good. She is a picky eater and food is not top priority witch is good. I saw Shelby when she was about 5 weeks if I remember correctly she was one of the smaller pups and my wife went crazy over her. I like a bigger dog but athletic ability is more important. I want speed in the nasty stuff and that's what I got. These pups are more athletic then bell was and a lot faster and I like that. One more thing you are dead right these dogs are not your 200 dollar AKC lab lap dog biscuit eaters they are bread to work and are not for everybody.

Shelby looks like my brother's dog witch is Taylor's dogs sister and she was the runt out of 11 pups. She is still a little slim but she filled out a lot at about 2. She is grease lightning buddy she looks like a black Greyhound on a dove field and her whole body comes out of the water when she swims. I told my brother to take her to victory land I'd bet on her. Seriously that's a good thing in a real hunting situation I can't stand a slow lazy dog.

This is all I have of gator on my phone its from about 2 months ago.

Shelby was at the vet at Christmas and was 35 lbs back then. I�d say she�s probably 40-45 now maybe. I figure she�ll top out in the mid 50�s. They're eating Taste of the Wild. The way I went about picking her out was by doing liver drags and seeing which pup responded the best to it. Her nose lit up when I put her down on the ground and she really started sniffing and showing curiosity to it. One of the things that really caught my eye when I saw the parents on here was that they were very athletic built.

Shelby will eventually be my work horse. We track in a lot of bird hunting type habitat that she�ll be able to work through a little easier than Otis can. She�s a lot leggier and moves through that type habitat a little better. Otis is about like a 45 lb beagle. It has it�s advantages too though. One track may be on 5000 acres in the middle of nowhere Bullock Co but the very next track may be on 200 acres that someone�s bow hunting on the edge of Auburn city limits. One track may be 4 miles down a dirt road and the next may be right up against highway 431 or 82. Otis�s shorter smaller stature makes him able to track in those tighter areas without much worry. He�s just a little short legged hound that walks and trots along. He�s got that cold, cold hound nose though. As fast as Shelby covers ground, it�s gonna be a long time before I could even think about using her off lead on a track like that. She�s still got to slow down and track with more control.

Yep that used to scare me when my dog would take off or when the deer was jumped and took off with dog in hot pursuit. Hell from know on the little bit of deer hunting I do or let anybody do these days I'll just call you if a dog is necessary. That will probably be the hardest thing for Shelby to slow down on a hot track. I guess it's a lot like having a steady gun dog that want break. By the way you need to come pick up sheds in all my bean fields before I put a tractor in them. Last year I sent a couple teenage boys to pick them out of the fields they didn't do a very good job I got 2 sheds hung in the disk and spent half an hour trying to get them out with out any tools.

Yep, I know exactly what you mean. The Garmin Alpha system gives you a lot of control over the dog once they learn how it works. There�s those first few trial runs on live deer though that you have to get through when you don�t know exactly how the dogs gonna react to the deer or the shock of the collar. Dealing with live deer too aggressively is where most dogs end up getting hurt of it ever happens.




Heck yeah�.Just let me know when would be a good time this Spring and me and Shelby will be there.

I gotta say man, I'm sad to see this thread come to an end. Hands down the most entertaining thread of the year for me to keep up with. Thanks for sharing the stories and pics with us!

Thanks Southwood!.......I�m a little sad to see it ending too. Tomorrow begins year 4 though and I�m excited about what next season will bring. Otis will turn 3 years old this summer and begin what will be his prime years of tracking. Shelby will start seeing her first real action too which will be a whole new adventure in itself. I may try to change things up a little next year with the stories. I�d like to post some go-pro videos if it wasn�t a pain to upload and post.


Thanks to everyone who followed along with the stories and thanks to you guys out there who called on us to help find your deer. We sure had a lot of fun this year.

I to have looked at this thread every day. I am going to try to come to the convention. I've got a 14 year old dachshund that thinks hes a person, best dog I have ever had. Didn't even bite the grandson that tried to check his oil. His replacement will likely be a german wirehair dachshund that I will start training.

How about putting the go pro on Otis collar? That would be way too cool to see when he bayed one up!

Cool!....I hope you�re able to make it to the convention. There will definitely be a few wirehairs around. I know Tom and Jackie Munoz will have their daschunds in attendance that you�ll be able to watch work.

They do make a version of the go pro to go on your dog but it looks like to me it would get snagged on something and end up gone.

I have to give you major props CNC for the thread...it has helped me out so much with being able to read a hit after taking note to your notes on what different hits look like...I honestly never thought about bringing in a dog for all these years and now if anyone shoots at a buck and has marginal blood, I tell em to back out and call a dog...This has been the most entertaining read throughout the season of any of the threads as well as informative so thanks a ton!! Cant wait till next season for this thread!!

X2. It's been very informative and entertaining

thanks CNC for taking the time to write the stories. Enjoyed keeping up with this thread. Looking forward to next year. Maybe Shelby will be able to get in on the action some with Otis.

Thanks fellas�.I appreciate it. To be honest with you, we�re all learning a lot of this together. I�ve been hunting since I was a kid and I�ve killed a lot of deer over the years but tracking deer with a dog like this has put a whole new perspective on things. Deer are some sho nuff tough critters. I�m glad everyone is enjoying the stories and finding them informative. I�m happy to be able to share them.

One more call just came in to finish the season. Dad and daughter were hunting together this morning and daughter shot a good buck. Dad said it hit the ground and spun around in circles before finally getting up and taking off. I thought back shot but he says he saw where it hit and it was just too far forward. Hopefully he�s correct and it got into the body cavity. I guess it might be brisket or low on the chest maybe�not sure. He says they found good blood for a couple hundred yards and then it petered out. They searched some at lunch with no luck and decided this evening to give it one last try with a dog. We�ll see what happens in the morning. Maybe we can end the season on a positive note.

To be continued��.

have thoroughly enjoyed you chronicling your adventures this year. thanks for taking the time to share. good luck on the last track.

Thanks Stickers!


I thought this story sounded awfully familiar and with every 100 yards we tracked it became more apparent that we were just dealing with another backslap or back whack. You know I kinda like back whack a little better. It just has a better ring to it�..Back-Whack!

I talked more with "Dad" as we tracked and he said he could see blood on the deer as it spun around in a circle on the ground. He said he couldn�t believe it got up but when it did he could see blood too far forward and high on the shoulder. He also said that it looked like the deer�s front legs had gone out on him.

That loss of leg use seems to be common on a back whack. We tracked this deer and found blood out to 900 yards with him crossing creek branches and ditches so his legs were actually fine. It was just the temporary paralysis that made his legs go dead on him. Once they get their legs back under them then their good to go. This buck crossed a steep creek bank within 200 yards of where he was shot. There was a softball size spot of blood just across the creek where he got up the bank and then stood there a moment. We called it off somewhere around 1300-1500 yards.

I actually have one more track to go to but it may or may not actually be a wounded deer. A local landowner called me this morning and said his daughter had shot one yesterday evening but they couldn�t find any blood or anything. He said the deer jumped up off its feet though so he wanted my opinion as to whether or not I thought it was hit from that reaction. I told him it could be hit or it could possibly just be grazed under the belly/brisket to cause it to react by jumping off all fours like that. We�re gonna meet after lunch just to check it out.

To be continued one more time.........

You gonna track some gobblers too . Loved this thread.

He'll be waaaaay more busy in the spring!

Dr. B

CNC- there will be some common things as you look back over all these tracks. Maybe for instance:
caliber most likely to used resulting in a track
good shots ( good bullet placement) versus bad shots
age of hunter calling for track
distance of shot resulting in the track
time of day -morning or afternoon
found deer - hit in front end or behind shoulder
lost deer-hit in front end or behind shoulder
club or private land

I doubt we track too many turkey but if it wouldn't ruin him....Otis would be hell on a pig hunt. I'm afraid it'll make him want to chase 'em when were tracking though.

Oh yeah...there are a lot commonalities. The caliber of gun doesn't seem to be one though. We get tracks on just about every gun in the book.

Young hunters is a very common one that repeats itself.

Back-Whacks are very, very common....maybe even the most common marginal hit.

We are much more likely to recover something hit in the back end of the deer rather than the front end.

Blown off legs are a crap shoot to recover and pretty much requires running the deer for long distances.

A lot of bad angles on shots.

A lot of very rushed shots taken as soon as the deer was seen or stepped into the field.

The last track was just a clean miss or grazing shot. We searched for little bit but there was nothing that indicated a wounded deer. That�s the reality of going on tracking calls though. I don�t know if any of y�all caught the latest episode of �Major League Bowhunter� but the show really hit home with what I�ve seen this year.

The guy with the beard had shot a good buck with his bow right at dark from 30 yards. You could see the lighted noc headed right at the deer and hit what looked like it was just behind the shoulder�..Got him!!! Smoked!!.......Well the deer took off running and the arrow fell out at about 40-50 yards as they watched the deer run off and disappear. It looked like they got about 40% of the arrow in the deer with good blood to that point on the arrow. Long story short, they backed out, came back the next morning and never found the deer. Before the season was over they ended up filming the deer 3 more times�.he had survived the shot. They went on to talk about that they were airing that hunt to show that it doesn�t happen the way hunting shows often portray it and they wanted to use that episode to show the reality of hunting.

That hunt reminded me of a lot of the tracks we have been on this year. Things just don�t always turn out the way we think they should and just because you hit one or draw blood�.doesn�t mean there will be a dead deer at the end of the trail. I purposely set up each call before we ran the tracks this year so that win, lose, or draw�..the story of each track was told just the way it unfolded. I could only show the winners and never tell you about the ones that get away but none of us would really learn much from that. The ones that get away are often times the ones we learn the most from.

I�ve beat it like a dead horse all throughout this thread so I might as well end it standing on the same soapbox. Take the time to slow down after you make the shot to make good decisions. I would even recommend to make it really simple on yourself and write out the steps you need to take on an index card and stick it in your jacket pocket. Pull it out after the shot and follow your own directions. When it doubt, back out.

Thanks- figured you had seen enough to draw some conclusion. Enjoy some rest.

Thanks for a great thread, I've enjoyed reading it!

^^^x2

Thanks fellas!

Lol when I saw the young hunters common I lold. I'm only 20. But I must say the one you came to helped track is the only one I've ever lost with a rifle. I could make the shot I took 9 out of 10 times. I just made a bad shot that day. But you have an excellent dog.

Thanks Cole!��..


When I said young hunters, I was referring to kids ages 7-14. They probably make up 10-20% of the tracks we go on. Making a marginal shot is just a part of hunting though that is eventually gonna catch up with every hunter at one point in their hunting career. We can make good decisions to minimize them�.but sometimes chit just happens. If you keep hunting long enough, that one likely won't be your last one.

Alright fellas, so in the spirit of telling it like it happened�..I�ve got to fess up and go ahead and tell the rest of the story. I was a little ashamed of myself on one of those last few tracks and left a little bit of detail out.

We had already called off the track and were on the hike back to the truck when it happened. We were walking through a wet hardwood creek bottom that a logging crew had just come in and clear cut and things were a mess. There were tree tops and chitty logs, that I suppose they didn�t want, laying everywhere. We were walking up a four wheeler trail when I saw Otis hit a scent pretty hardcore. He slammed on the brakes and his nose cranked up to high gear. Just to make sure it wasn�t our deer, I told him �Go check it�.

Well, he trotted out in the clear cut a little ways to a tree top where he suddenly went on point with his hair standing up and his tail pointed stiff. He stayed on point for about 10 seconds before the tree top exploded and Otis took off barking. They were in some thick stuff after that happened and I couldn�t see what was going on other than the tree top came alive. I could tell by Otis�s barking that it moving but not really running off. �It�s our buck!!��I thought. �He�s weak and can�t get away!���.

As I draw my .45 and start moving toward them to get a shot�.I hear Otis keep slowly taking it away from me at about 75 yards. By this time, I�ve got in a little opening where I can see a little better and as I look up ahead I see Otis running back to me��with a good size pig HOT ON HIS ASS!!!! Otis came running past my feet and stopped once he got behind me.... dumping the pig right in my lap. The pig thankfully saw me and locked it down at maybe 15 yards and just stared at me. I shot at it twice and missed before I even took aim. I just pointed and shot. I remember doing it and thinking to myself�..�Chit man, you panicked!!� Keep in mind though that this is all happening in the blink of an eye.

Troy was right that a pistol is tough to shoot accurately under extreme pressure. I did great on the wounded buck I shot earlier in the year but I choked on this pig. I may rethink things next year and look at a really small shotgun loaded with buckshot as my carry weapon. All I�ve got with a pistol is 15-25 yards anyways and even that is tough in this type situation. I should have that distance covered better with buckshot out of a small 20 gauge. It�s got to be a gun that I can easily carry without really knowing its there though. I don�t know�..I�ll have to give it some thought over the summer.

But yeah, anyways��.there�s the rest of the story. I let my nerves get the best of me and flat out missed a gimme with my new pistol.

I thought you were going to tell us you in fact did poop in your pants.

We can�t be telling EVERYTHING now 3FF.

That reminds me of a joke. You ever heard the one about the ol� boy standing up in church to testify and the preacher a hollerin out���Tell it all!!! Tell it all!!! �

So they was this ol� boy stood up in church one Sunday morning and told the preacher that he needed to testify and get some things right with the Lord�..and the preacher said �Alright son, tell it all.�

So the ol� boy started out saying��Preacher, I�ve been staying out late at night instead of coming home to my wife and kids���.and the preacher raises his hand in the air and says�..�Tell it all son!...Tell it all!!�

So the ol� boy continues on.....���and preacher, I�ve been spending up all of my money drankin and gambling instead of paying the bills.���The preacher gets a little more excited and replies�.�Tell it all!!! Tell it all!!!�

.... �and preacher, I�ve been laying out of work and not going to my job like I should.��..The preacher takes out his handkerchief and wipes off his forehead and in a louder voice this time talking to the whole church says�.�Hallelujah! Tell it all!!!�

And then they ol� boy says�..�and preacher, I�ve been a runnin around and sleeping with my wife�s sister!���The preacher puts his handkerchief down�.looks at the ol� boy and says��

�Damn son!!!���..I don�t know if I�d told that!!!!!�

^^^

Dang, can't let this thread just die.......You don't know Gary do you?????

I think it's been long enough now that someone needs to take a trip to the Chattanooga Bass Pro Shop......spice things up around here. It's kinda slow since hunting season ended.

We didn�t go on too many tracks this year that fooled us and just left us stumped�..but if you recall, we had one for bamaeyedoc�s hunting club that left us scratching our heads pretty hard. I tried to go back and find the story to repost but there�s just too much to sift through.

Well, Bamaeyedoc sent me a text yesterday saying that he had just located the deer and you�ll never believe where he found it. It was floating in a small pond��50 yards from where the hunter was sitting!! Here�s the crazy part about it. We tracked the deer, with lots of blood, for 300 ish yards�..in the complete opposite direction. I drew a rough sketch of the situation in the pic below.


I show this so y�all can see what kind of crazy things these wounded deer can do. The hunter in this story was convinced that this deer was lung shot and that we just couldn�t locate it in the thick stuff where the blood trail ended and we found the beds. Knowing what we know now�..I really feel like the deer was probably clipped low in the guts and doubled back through the search area like I had originally suspected. The search area is the pink �S� lines.

What really hurts is that Otis had originally tried to loop us back in that direction but after not finding any more blood we went back to the bed area and restarted. This deer was putting out a decent amount of blood before it bedded up so me and the hunter both were expecting to find some more spots along the trail but never found anything for several hundred yards. We should have just trusted Otis even if things didn�t �add up� to us. I�ve said that a few times now. The old adage is proving true to just trust your dog. It probably wouldn�t have done us any good on this one at the time anyways though. This was only about 5 hrs after the shot and I�m betting this deer wasn�t even dead yet when we were there. I don't think he ran and got in the pond immediately. I think he probably did that later in the dying process as he started feeling hot. A very interesting track to say the least. Always check the water holes fellas.

This little future tracker tells it like it is���Always trust ye� heart and always trust ye� dog.�

https://www.facebook.com/kasey.l.logan/videos/2764907248969/

yeah. That was the craziest thing. There was a brisk wind on Friday coming from the south and I got to smelling something close to the barn and coming from the pond and I knew it had to be a deer. I gotta tell you though, I was pretty shocked when I got to the pond and saw his rack sticking up. And I'll tell you something else, a deer laying in the water for about a month will make a buzzard gag.

To paraphrase the late, great Paul Harvey, "Now we know...the rest of the story."

Dr. B

Here�s the pics of the buck��.Sorry for the huge picture size. It's just the way my phone does for some reason.

Yep, I�m glad y�all finally found that one. That�s a really nice buck. This is really a telling track too in a lot of ways that we can all learn from. It shows how much that just seeing blood can fool you into believing you�ve smoked a deer. The hunter that day firmly believed that the deer was smoked because of �all the blood� we found.

This was also one of those �bubbles in the blood� tracks. The hunter felt like the blood was coming out of the deer�s nose because he saw bubbles in it. I don�t say any of that to hack on the hunter in any way�..but rather just to show how our brains often want to perceive things as the best possible scenario when other clues are still telling us otherwise. I see it in most tracks we go on. The fact that the deer went 300 yards, bedded, and then got up and left was a sure sign this wasn�t a smoked deer. It would be really interesting to know exactly how the buck ended up in the pond and how long it took him to get there.

Something else this track show us is how a marginally wounded deer like this has the potential to end up anywhere no matter which way you originally saw him run. I often hear people tell stories on here and assume that the deer couldn�t do this or wouldn�t have done that�..but these wounded deer can do pretty dang much anything and go in any direction.

Alrighty��.who�s ready to go do some shooting practice this summer.

When I was a kid, I was bow hunting on bogue chitto creek in Dallas County. If anyone knows this creek, they know how it looks. High soapstone banks and very shallow. I heard some dogs off in the distance and they were getting closer. Next thing you know, here comes a small buck trotting down into the creek. He ran up the creek about 40 or 50 yards and out of it, then turned around and ran back down the creek until I lost sight of him. When the dogs finally caught up with him, they ran up the creek then lost interest. Pretty cool watching that deer try to throw his scent all over.

One of the coolest things I've seen a deer do was on a fishing trip one day. My buddy and me were headed to go fishing when we crossed a bridge than ran across a small creek. My buddy says��Hey man turn around, I�m pretty sure there was a deer swimming up that creek.�

Sure enough we turned around and saw a doe swimming down the middle of the creek toward us. She swam in under the bridge and then when she got to the other side, she tucked herself up in under an over hanging bank. No sooner than she did that, we looked back and here came some dogs running up the creek bank with dogs on both sides. They couldn�t figure out what happened and eventually went on. I walked over to the banks edge directly above the deer and she never moved. She looked like she was give out and tired.

A friend of mine almost called you on Feb 8 to try and find a monster 10 point, but the buck ran straight into a beaver pond swamp that was logged thru about 10 years ago. Nothing but briars, water and thicket. I think Otis might have put in for his retirement if you sicked him in there.

He should have called us. Stuff like that is about par for the course when you go out on tracks. If you�ve got an area on your property that�s thick and swampy�.you can just about rest assured that we�re gonna end up going through it. Otis actually gets through most of it pretty well. It�s me and the hunter that are usually fighting our way through it all. I don't see how anyone tracks in this stuff using an "on lead" method.