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.
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.
