Good stuff.

Call just came in a little bit ago.....I don't know a whole lot of detail on this one other than the grandson shot one this morning and they feel like its a gut hit. They backed out and want me to bring in the dogs this afternoon to help find it. I'll find out more when I get there.

To be continued...…...

Patiently waiting

No luck so far…..I’m going back in the morning to continue the search though. Very, very little blood on the ground for 50 yards and then nothing. We’ve grid searched out to about 500 yards but I ran out of daylight before I could check a swamp close by that should be holding some water. I’d like to check it and a couple more places before giving up. The air was dry as a bone this evening too and I’ll have better humidity for the dog’s noses to work with at daylight in the morning. I'm afraid the deer may just be clipped low. We had a run in with a pissed off mama pig about dark too so I decided that was enough until tomorrow morning. The deer are thick as fleas on a dog’s back at this place and it makes for tough tracking with deer scent EVERYWHERE and no blood to pick up on.

As I was headed home, I’d just made it up the road a few miles when I saw a couple trucks on the side of the road and some flashlights shining close by to them. I don’t do it as much as I used to since I’m pretty established now but if I run across someone close to home I’ve never tracked for I’ll stop and introduce myself. Well, I stopped about 30 yards from the flashlights and said

“Hey, how’s it going?”…..A deep, angry sounding voice responds….”Can I help you??”……

“Oh chit” I thought …..”I stopped at the wrong place”……

I responded with “My name’s Harold and I track deer for folks around here with my dogs….I just wanted introduce myself.”

By this time the guy is coming my way with a flashlight shined at me and as he gets closer to the truck I can see that it’s old Mr. Green Jeans…..He said “Oh, hey Harold….It’s Keith Mann….We’ve met a few times”… ..He shook my hand and said “We’ve got one in cuffs, let me get back over here and get this taken care of.”...and he walked off...….. I was like "Damn!!...What did I just roll up on?"

I sure hope it was some of them damn road hunters that hit this area pretty hard. There ain’t too many things Ol’ GW is gonna put the cuffs on you for is there? Maybe some drugs were involved or something I suppose….Would you get cuffed for hunting with a gun out of season?

I’ll update y’all in the morning and let you know if we end up finding the deer…..To be continued.

No recovery on the one I went back to this morning. Just judging by the way the dogs tracked it and all I would guess that this one is marginally hit…It’s just part of it with these tracks. We’re gonna probably have a good many like that as the season goes on because I don’t really screen my calls. I listen to what happened but if their in my area and willing to pay the fee then I typically go out and see what we can do with it. The approach I’m taking with tracking is that I’m trying to travel the least amount possible. I want to stay close to home and service the people in my backyard. I’m not really interested in driving 1 ½ - 2 hrs for a sure find over helping someone 15 minutes down the road that may or may not even have a dead deer to recover. It’s just different strokes for different folks. Now I may have to back peddle on this policy later in the year as the rut approaches just due to the number of wild goose chases that we get called on….but I really hate to have to start screening the calls like that.

Another call came in from a hunter that said he shot a really nice one yesterday evening about dark. They followed blood for about 100 yards last night before losing it and backing out. He thought he'd hit the deer well but was questioning the amount of penetration he got. They came back in this morning and found a little more blood as well as a bed where the buck had broken off half the arrow. They couldn’t find anything else after the bed though and they were searching in small pines that were grown up super thick in briars and other vegetation. That's when they decided to just back out and see if a dog could help.

I wish all tracks were like this one. We turned the dogs loose and they burnt this track up like a greyhound chasing the rabbit at the dog track. It took maybe 1-2 minutes for them to track 200 yards to where the deer had laid back down and died. When he got up out of the bed he had simply took a hard left instead of going the original direction he was running. He was just hit a little far back about liver/gut area. This is one our coolest finds to date. A main frame 8 point with split brows….a drop tine…and a sticker off the G2……..Yes, free range.

I bet that was one happy hunter right there and certainly glad he made that phone call. Glad to see you back posting on it CNC. Hope the pups stay healthy and have a good year.

Great buck

Thanks fellas.....Yep, that made for an extremely happy hunter right there. I was happy to finally get on an easy track too.

We've got one lined up for tomorrow morning that's probably gonna prove to be another tough one. I couldn't make it out there today after the other tracks due to having to pick up the kids from school and the hunter wasn't able to find another tracker. So were gonna run a 24 hr old track and try to find it in the morning. I'm really not so concerned about the track being old as I am where the hunter reported hitting the deer. The buck was only 8 yards from his tree and he feels like he hit too far forward. That's never good with a bow because usually it just results in an arrow buried up in the shoulder. They haven't found a whole lot of blood and the arrow stayed in the deer. The hunter thinks he got 1/2 his arrow down in the deer but I always take that kind of info they tell me with a grain of salt. I'm hoping for the best on this one but I'm not overly optimistic about a recovery. You can't ever tell though and that's why we run them.....

To be continued...…..

That's a cool buck! Good work Harold.

Thanks man!

Wowzers!! Ol Otis and Shelby would look good standing next to that toad. Hope they got some pics with him. I believe I'd have to give them both a kiss on the lips for finding that one for me. Keep up the good work!!

Good read right there.

Y'all doing real well so far this year.

Keep stories flowing...

Glad we have more great stories to read! Thanks Harold.

No luck on the track this morning. It was what we thought it was.....a pretty routine shoulder hit with an expandable. Of course you would have much rather had pics of a deer at the end of it but the hunter was happy and satisfied knowing that the deer was most likely gonna live and be right back in there for him or another club member to get another crack at later in the season. That's what a lot of these tracks are about too. We hope to recover a deer on all of them but some are just about verifying that the deer is still alive and giving the hunter some peace of mind.

A Conversation with My Wife………….


Wife: Where are you going tracking at in the morning?
Me: Smuteye
Wife: Where?!?!?
Me: Smuteye
Wife: Where in the heck is that!!!
Me: It’s near Perote
Wife: What??
Me: It’s near Perote
Wife: Yeah, like I know where Perote is at!!
Me: It’s just south of Blue’s Old Stand
Wife: Fugg it!....Just nevermind

Wife starts to walk off and then turns around to say

Wife: Well I’m going to the eye doctor………..IN MONTGOMERY!!!

You need to take her on a tour of south Bullock and Barbour county and let her dine at some of the local establishments. She might be amazed with just a stop at the Clayton Ten Cent Store for lunch, but probably not..........

You should get that woman out and culture her a lil bit....lol

Now don’t get me wrong my wife sure ain’t no city slicker. She’s about as country as you’ll find ‘em and still have good teeth. She’s from Douglas, Alabama…..She just hasn’t ever been around to some of the finer areas of south Alabama. She’s killed her fair share of deer over the years though....a hell of a shooter.

I’ve actually eaten at the dime store in Clayton quite a few times. I have a good friend that lives in Comer that took me there for the first time probably 15 years ago. I try to stop in if I’m ever down that way but that’s about as far away as I travel these days. I can’t think of the name of it but there’s a little place on hwy 29 just across the Bullock/Pike Co line that a hunter bought me lunch at last year. That was a nice little place to eat as well with some good country food.

No sooner than I got some dry clothes on and got settled in earlier…..the phone rang again. It was from a hunter just 10-15 minutes up the road that said he’d shot a doe a couple of hours ago and was having a hard time finding her. He thought he’d put a good shot on her and was finding good blood….. but she’d ran into a dense thicket and they’d lost the track in there.

I put Shelby on this one by herself figuring it would be a great one for her. I was expecting the deer to be dead but you can’t ever take for granite that what the hunter perceived happening was what actually occurred. With it only being 3-4 hrs after the shot there was still the off chance that we could have a live deer and a doe would be ideal practice for her to work one by herself. As it turned out though the deer was dead and the hunter was pretty accurate about where he’d hit her. What threw them off on the track was the fact that the doe had made a 90 degree turn to the right and ran out of the thicket into some wide open mature pines and then back into the edge of the next thicket over. They were beating down the original thicket trying to pick back up on the track and just didn’t realize she’d gone a different way. Shelby burnt up this track with no issues….taking us right to it. I was proud of how patient and efficiently she worked this one. She’ll be on point by the time we finish up this season.

Here you go….since I’m giving my wife such a hard time and to change things up a little from just tracking stories. Here’s a few pics from back in the day. She just hasn’t had the same interest in going every since the kids came along. Some of these pics have seen their better days.

The “doe” she shot one evening when she started sitting by herself……



Her and I doubling up….



Another double…..Hush up, them lil ‘uns are the best eatin….



The morning she shot the turkey decoy while trying to push the safety off on my 12 ga with gobblers running to us…..



Her first buck…….