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.
