Originally Posted by CNC
I’ll add this to conversation too……I go on some easy tracks that some very experienced blood trackers might have otherwise recovered without the use of a dog…..But the vast majority of the ones I go on….even the best human trackers out there wouldn’t have stood snowballs chance in hell of finding the deer or better yet….giving the situation some closure.

I remember a track from a couple of years ago on a brisket bow shot where the buck ran about 300 yards through a stand of young pines right down a worn out deer trail until it came to an interior hunting club road. The worn out trail went straight across and kept going. The deer however decided to hang a left and run straight down the middle of the hunting club road for about 300 yards…..into a green field and out the other side and on down the road some before deciding to hang another left onto just some random trail that took him back toward his bedding area. We found him about 200 more yards down that trail in the young pine stand. Good luck tracking that one by looking for broke sticks, branches, and tracks. grin


I shot a deer about 60 yards away on power line one morning and it did not run after the shot. I could see a half mile down the line, so I know the deer did not cross back over. After walking a semi-circle area between 50 to 100 yards across one way and the other I could not find the deer. After an hour or two getting tore up in those vines and briars from head to toe I gave up. I was almost 100% sure I hit that deer. Wore myself out both mentally and physically and could not understand why it was not laying 10 yards off the clearing.
Long story short decided a couple of weeks later to try and find the carcass. Went back and the deer was laying about 15 yards from where I shot it. Only thing I can figure is it eventually came back and bedded down near where I shot it hours or days later. Area did not look like a well used bedding area, so really strange to me why it came back there. Bet a dog would have found that deer which may have been right out of my view 110 yards away. Like you are trying to tell folks hard to fool an experienced tracker and good dog.