��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.