Well, that stinks for the kid. I hit a 200lb plus 6 pt once from about 65-75 yds with a 308. Chunks of meat at the hit site. Hair everywhere. Deer ended up being about 60 yds away just hanging out when I got Down 30 min later. Too soon I know but I was too excited. He ran of course. Small blood pool where he stood for half an hour. Not a spot after that. He ran like fire to a cutover never to be seen again. Went back to see that my bullet had hit a small branch on a bush. Pretty sure I took a chunk of his brisket off.

This deer was shot with a 308 as well. You just reminded me of one detail I left out. The dad had found a small piece of meat when he tracked it. I think it was from the front shoulder or brisket…..or maybe even lower neck. It sounded a lot like your story. They thought the deer was smoked so they got down pretty quick to recover it and likely spooked him off. That's why the blood stopped....he was running.

The hunter sent me a better pic of the buck we recovered on Saturday. These folks also have an internet based hunting show that they were filming for. They filmed some of the track and recovery that will be added to the hunt footage. The whole hunt is supposed to be posted up in a week or so. I’ll link y’all to it when it’s ready………

Good deal!!

Great Day Outdoors Radio Show is gonna have a show on blood tracking dogs next week and they’ve asked me to call in to talk dogs with them. I think its gonna be a round table type deal with several different trackers. It’ll be Wed from 11:00-12:00. I should be on around 11:30………..Y’all tune in if you get a chance.

Call just came in on a muzzleloader shot……Very, very little to go on with this one. Deer was quartering to the hunter in a food plot at 75-100 yards. The deer was standing just on the edge of the woodline and all the hunter knows is that it wheeled and disappeared into the woods. Can’t find blood but feels like he hit it. He said it was a good buck and he didn’t want to push he so he just backed out. I’ve found deer for these folks before so they knew to back out on iffy shots. We’ll see what happens in the morning. I really hope its not a clean miss.

To be continued……….

Any update on the track this morning?

Clean miss. Otis never bit on anything.

Got another call from this morning. About to head after what the hunter said is a big 10.....To be continued

I’m a little perplexed on the second call. The hunter thought from the reaction of the deer that he had just smoked him. He was 75 yards standing broadside. The hunter was shooting Fusion Corelokt bullets out of a Ruger 30-06. He said the deer’s chest nearly hit the ground when he shot and that he almost plowed dirt before he got his feet back in under him and took off. There was only one speck of blood at the hit site and none after that. Otis got right on the track with no issues and took it about 250-300 yards before jumping the buck. He was out in front of us 100 yards or better and over a rise when the buck jumped. It sounded like he had him held up for a second or two……but by the time we got there the deer had broke and ran. Otis will bay one on the jump if its weak but he doesn’t take off after one like a Walker Hound or something. He pushes them more like a beagle. So we pushed it for another 500 yards before the deer crossed the dirt road onto the adjacent property that we didn’t have permission to be on and that's where we called it off.

My best guess is that maybe he hit him high or maybe the bullet did something funny on impact. The deer bedded up pretty quick and the hunter is baffled that he didn’t smoke him. I'm thinking maybe he hit him high under the spine or just over but I really don't know.

The funny thing about this track is that it’s almost identical to the track I ran for the same guy last year out of the same stand….ending in the same cutover across the same dirt road. He told me today that his deer from last year we pushed into that cutover was actually found later on by the black folks across the road. He said he saw it hanging at the processor a couple days later and was like “Holy chit!...That’s my deer!”…..Sure enough, he asked where the deer had come from and they told him three black guys brought it in. It was the folks from the land next door. He said he went to them and offered to pay for the processing and told them he would have it made into whatever they wanted if they would let him have the head. They wouldn’t give it to him. He said it had 15 scorable points and it would’ve been his biggest deer ever. Now don't that suck.

BTW.......Shelby is running every track with us now and shadowing Otis so she's getting in on all the tracks too. I let her run this one off lead and she did pretty well. She still doesn't have the confidence to leave me for very long so she worked a lot back and forth from me to Otis but that's to be expected.

Sounds like he needs to spend a little more time with his rifle to me... ... Keep up the Good work CNC... ...I really enjoy this thread...

Thanks man!.....He was headed to check his scope when I left.

I also enjoy the tales! Please continue

Call just came in for tomorrow morning. Hunter hit the buck at 265 yards broadside and knocked him down. The buck was kicking around trying to get up and as it was getting back to his feet the hunter slung a second shot at it but isn’t certain if the second shot connected. The deer disappeared in the woods. They found hair and blood at the hit site and trailed decent blood for about 65 yards before hearing a deer get up and walk off out in front them. They decided to play it safe and back out fearing they may have just jumped him. We’ll find out in the morning.

To be continued……….

Sitting here sipping coffee and getting ready to head after this one. We're gonna get a little bit of a later start this morning though with the heavy frost on. I'd like to start tracking about the time the frost starts burning off when the ground is nice and moist. Update later today....

Ended up being back-whacked…..There was good blood for the first 75 yards or so where the deer was falling all over himself but once he got his feet back up in under him then it got sparse. We found a few more drops of blood along the patch and a place about 400-500 yards from the hit site where he wiped blood high up on some sedge grass but he never did bed up. We called it off after about 900 yards. I believe the deer will live and show back up on camera again.

Got another call from this morning we’re gonna track this evening. It sounds like a classic low gut shot. Big wad of white hair at hit site and decent blood for a ways before losing the track. Hopefully this deer will be dead but these are the kind that sometimes live for 18-24+ hrs. He was shot at 8:00 this morning so we’re gonna give him until about 2:30-3:00 before going in after him.

To be continued......

I'm not really sure that many of these back-whacked deer actually survive long term. High hit bow shots, absolutely. High powered rifles do so much tissue damage through hydro-static shock that I've pretty much convinced myself that unless it is just a grazing shot that barely cuts hair, most of these deer will end up developing infection and eventually succumb to that.

Whew! Got him.....Story to come later.

This was a fun track. The deer was basically shot in arse. I left Shelby in the box on this one because I figured the deer might still be alive on this track. We tracked him for 1000 yards across multiple creek crossings that were verging on what you could call a ravine before finally catching up with him. It’s amazing he was able to go up and down some of the stuff he did. We found three different beds along the way where he was just bedding and moving….bedding and moving……Every time we would pass one Otis would go on alert and act like the deer might be just in front of us.

Finally we topped a little hill and I saw Otis throw his tail up and stand his hair on end. A few second later he cuts loose barking. I grab the hunter and tell him “C’mon!!” I knelt down beside Otis and seen the deer laying on his belly about 30-40 yards in front of us through an opening between two trees with his head up. You only had about a foot and half to squeeze a bullet through the opening but there was plenty room. I grabbed Otis and told the hunter to put another round in him. He looked through his scope and then back up out of it….then he started to move around to get in better position……then he decided to lay down to shoot….I said “Shoot him man before he bolts!!!” Finally he rounded off a shot but it didn’t look to connect…..so he shot again but again didn’t seem to hit the deer. At this point I realize the deer is probably not gonna run and I tell him….”Just walk up there a little more man and get a better shot.” That’s when his buddy who was with us said “Give me the damn gun I see him good.” …..Boooom!!!.....You could see it drill the deer that time and we started fist bumping.



The original shot........