Call came in earlier today. I didn’t have time to write a story ahead of time. The hunter had gotten my name from someone I tracked for earlier in the season but when I pulled up he was like “Hey, do ever go to that Aldeer website?” I just grinned.
Turns out it was an aldeer lurker. His son had shot a good buck yesterday evening but after doing an extensive search this morning, they called it off and decided to call in a dog. The buck was quartering hard away from the hunters on the shot and dad described the buck as looking loose in the back end after the shot. He said he waited a few minutes but it was getting dark so he wanted to see if they could find blood before they lost light. When they started searching for the buck, it was only standing about 75-100 yards from the hit site and it blew at ‘em and took off.
Where the deer stood there was a BIG area of blood the size of a couch cushion or bigger. The deer had stood there for 15-20 minutes after the shot until the hunter bumped it. After that it was spotty out to 200-300 yards where they lost it. Otis took it on a deliberate path another 600-700 yards past that where the track turned hot on us. We were in a major creek bottom with branches running here and there. The deer had just traveled straight down the creek branch the whole way before laying up next to it. Otis tracked it hot for several hundred more yards….but the deer never slowed up enough to hole up anywhere. We crossed the little creek branch several times before finally making it to the major creek (which was the property line) before calling it off.
I think this deer was hit in one of the muscles on the back leg and is why the hunter saw him looking “loose” in the back end. The blood at that one spot would have led you to believe the deer was hit HARD but I feel pretty certain this deer wasn’t hit in the body cavity. Deer that are hit hard in the body cavity don’t tend to stand there and then blow at you. A deer with a leg muscle blew up would bleed hard like that though. He’ll probably have a bad limp but be ok if he doesn’t have complications with the wound or yotes don’t get him eventually. This is just a guess though.
